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In a statement of purpose for a PhD in computer science in the US is it better to express interest in a single subdiscipline or multiple?
It seems that if I were to just express interest in a single subdiscipline (computer networking for example), and none of the networking professors are taking on students, I would not be considered based on any other merits my application may have. But if I were to express interest in several subdisciplines it may be difficult to create a structured statement of purpose.

Related: How many research interests should be included in a statement of purpose/objective

A PhD is about expertise in a narrow field. Showing too wide spread interests is counterproductive, you should have a rather clear idea what your principal interest is. It is OK to have wider interests, but you need a focus.
Do your homework beforehand, select prospective advisors and contact them for openings.

In the U.S., in general, it is not necessary to do this before applying to a department.

@aparente001  True, it's not necessary, but it's not a bad idea anyway.

If you can tie it in well, and show sincere interest, I would say that it could be helpful to include a second area.
In the computer science department I attended, one was expected to choose either two or three areas to specialize in.  One was not enough!  The department didn't want people graduating with too narrow a focus.  Once you had sufficient background knowledge in an area, you took an exam in that area.
Look at the list of areas in the department you're applying to, and pick one that looks interesting.  Perhaps Theory of Computing would go well with Computing Networks, for example.  You can talk a little bit about the second area in your statement.
Note that you'll likely be busy with coursework and preparing for exams during at least your first year.  Check in with the networking people from time to time, to renew your interest.  As a professor gets to know you, (s)he may be more motivated to squeeze you in.


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Ordering of co-primary authors on website
If a published paper had an author ordering [A,B] where A and B are primary authors and the ordering is alphabetical is it acceptable for B to list on his website the ordering [B,A] so his first-authorship would look more obvious to people skimming his website?

I would suggest formatting your name in bold to make it stand out. Also, I have seen people format their publications on their webpages by projects. I know these suggestions to not directly answer your question, but I think either one would help to make your own first authorship stand out more.

In Can co-first authors’ positions be swapped in a CV?, the answer with the most upvotes says

No. The reference is the reference, changing it to move yourself higher could be misinterpreted as willful deceit.

I believe the same logic applies to a website.
However, in a website, you do have more freedom in style and formatting than you would in a CV (although you still don't have the freedom to change author order...) For example, if you want to call attention to first authorship, you could list first authors and co-first authors in a slightly different weight or different color than the other authors.

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Should I acknowledge institutions where I did internships on unrelated works?
I'm a PhD student at a university. I have a main research topic that I started a while ago. I did a summer internship at another institution in my major field but unrelated to my main research topic. If I write a paper on my main research topic, should I mention the other institution? If so, as an affiliation or in the acknowledgements?

Be honest in your acknowledgments. Just don't add someone or some institute name just because you want to show your link with them. If they did help in any shape or form, well thank the institute and the exact people involve in your discussions. Something like the following:

I would like to thank Mr/Mrs X, from the institute Y, for their insightful/encouraging discussion on J,K, and Z.

Thanks. So I am not required to acknowledge financial support from an institution if they did not provide any assistance with the project in question?

@rhombidodecahedron Why not? Any support is beneficial to your research. And you should thank all the external support you got, either on financial side or the research itself.

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How can I tailor my faculty application to maximize my chances at a liberal arts college?
I graduated in 2007 with a mathematics degree and have since had multiple postdocs at R1 universities. While I have definitely enjoyed my experiences as a researcher, I am very interested in pursuing a career teaching at a small liberal arts institution.
So, my question is how to present my research-heavy resume in a way that is palatable to a college which may be wary of my credentials? Is it advisable to drop "invited talks/conferences" from my CV? Do I select only my favorite publications to include?
Also, I understand that it is inappropriate to give an overly detailed research statement. However, as a representation theorist, I think it is to my advantage that my research draws on a lot of different fields. Is it better to explain the broader relevance of my research, or do I ignore that in favor of what I can teach undergraduates to program on a computer? Does it make sense to write separate statements?

Related (for when you get that job offer :)): Negotiating startup package given differences in institutional norms

You might be interested in this recent essay on applying to liberal arts colleges over at Inside Higher Ed

I wouldn't drop anything from your CV.  I might shift things around so that the "List of Courses Taught" (or that you could teach) is on page 1 or 2. Teachings awards and anything similar also up front.
The cover letter is key. Your research accomplishments should be one paragraph while discussion of your love of math, the fantastic students you interacted with at one of your postdocs, the courses you would like to teach at X, and your teaching style should be at least 2-3 paragraphs.  One thing that I did when I was applying to SLACs was to have a list of my courses in my cover letter followed by a very small print (all course syllabi listed here are available on my website: www.example.com).
And of course you should also include a separate teaching statement if they require one -- or even hint of wanting one.

I largely agree with what RoboKaren wrote (that the cover letter is key, and it and the CV should emphasize teaching over research), but I want to add a bit to address the OP's last paragraph, regarding research statements. I'm a math professor at a small liberal arts college (SLAC) in Ohio.
For a SLAC, there is a bar for teaching and a bar for research. You must be above both bars (and it helps to show you are gung-ho about service too). Different SLACs will have different bars. If you're above both bars, then it's very unlikely that having "too much" research would be held against you. I say this as someone who has published 30 papers in 10 years, when 10 papers would have already been "exceeding expectations." Good SLACs want strong research faculty. But be sure to make the case that you actually want to be at the SLAC you are applying for, so they know you're not just going to leave right away after taking the job. Let me turn to the last paragraph of the OP:

Also, I understand that it is inappropriate to give an overly detailed research statement. However, as a representation theorist, I think it is to my advantage that my research draws on a lot of different fields. Is it better to explain the broader relevance of my research, or do I ignore that in favor of what I can teach undergraduates to program on a computer? Does it make sense to write separate statements?

I recently wrote an answer about research statements for SLACs. I argue that it's good to start off very basic and work your way up to your research accomplishments. The hiring committee is probably using your research statement to decide if you're good at explaining things and would be a good teacher, as well as to decide if you have enough of a research trajectory to get tenure. So, yes, you should write separate statements. I would certainly explain the broader relevance of your research. Anything about teaching students to program can go in the teaching statement, but ideas for how to include students in your research program can be a section of the research statement.

This is a solid answer. I've been on many faculty searches at my institution, and there's no such thing as "too much research" per se: it just makes one wary that the candidate will just use us as a stepping stone, leaving us to repeat the search two years later.

I wouldn't advocate so much for the inclusion of your "favourite" articles -- but those that are most relevant to the position to which you are applying. Same for invited talks -- it'd be crazy to delete all of them. Suggestion:  "Publications (selected)" (perhaps indicate h-index here, too); "Invited conferences (selected)".
If the reviewer is interested in your academic output, s/he can just check google scholar for the more detailed overview anyway.

I see a lot of good advice offered here by several knowledgeable people.  Still, one important detail is missing.  You will strengthen your application considerably by stating that you intend to involve undergraduates in your research, ideally with an aim at publishing in peer-reviewed journals. If you decide to mention this in your cover letter -- also reiterate it in your research statement.
This will give you extra points for the obvious reason that an undergrad doing research (especially with a paper published or a conference talk presented) has a higher chance of getting admitted to a better graduate school -- which will add to the profile of the college.

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Undergrad students grading other undergrads: ethical, professional, or even legal?
As an undergraduate, I've been working as a TA in an electronics lab for a while. Recently I have been asked to grade other students' lab reports. I have also done some oral examination, but I guess that's relatively fine, since there you can indeed see if he knows what he's supposed to know.
However, when it comes to grading reports, they may be to some extent copied from other reports, may have data tampered with after the lab so they look correct, and in general are made to look correct through collaboration and some Google copy-paste, it becomes very hard to tell who deserves the grade and who doesn't.
Also, I myself wasn't getting good grades at those reports, and I never could understand what those correcting were expecting from me, so I would be grading on a different basis than they are. In fact, I really can't find much wrong with the reports, so I feel like I'm doing a lousy job (even though any time I express doubt about my judgement I am assured that stuff can't go wrong).
One final detail is that it's a hardware lab, and while I'm not bad at it, I'm headed straight to software, so I probably look at things from a different perspective, not to mention that what's important for me may be quite different.
Considering the above worries, does it seem fair that undergrad students grade the reports of younger undergrads, does it seem professional for those in charge of those groups assign such work to undergrad TAs, and finally, is it even legal for an undergrad to affect another undergraduate's grade by handling grading processes?

It sounds like you may be less than qualified in more aspects of the TA position than just the grading component.  Presumably the experience has had some benefit anyway, helping you decide on software not hardware, helping you decide whether you want to pursue teaching, etc.

BTW, when it comes to data tampering or unauthorized collaboration, you should punt to the course professor.  Assign a grade objectively based on accepting the data as real and the content as original, and document your concerns about veracity of data and/or plagiarism to the professor, who can determine whether the ethics violations you are concerned about actually occurred, and apply discipline (which may not be a mere adjustment to the grade on a single assignment) appropriately.  You just decide what the grade is, not who deserves it.

@BenVoigt, I'm qualified to do the assisting part, as they require that we know what are the expected results of a given exercise, which components are responsible for every part of the result, and that we are comfortable with all the cables and stuff.
Those are the principles I am trying to apply to the grading process, turns out it is easier than I had first thought, but unless I doubt myself I can't keep myself in check..
The professor considers everything to be ok actually, so I've got my rear covered, I'm asking out of general concern.

So you're a TA who's worried about doing the best job for your students. Congrats - you're doing it right :-)

So you've never had a question from a student about how to prepare the report, or whether it is important to mention a particular step in the report?  It sounds as if you're qualified as a lab resource, but a TA usually must have other skills as well.

The question of legality almost certainly depends on the examination regulation of your university. There may be some jurisdictions out there which handle this on a general basis, but then we do not know, which jurisdiction applies.

@BenVoigt, we get those questions all the time, and we suggest that they can give us as much data as possible without getting off-topic so that we can't misjudge them due to lack of data. Can you explain what other skills you consider necessary? BTW I said lab assistant because I don't do any teaching, I only assist students in the lab, since you're getting into terminology.

@user3079666: Well, grading or answering questions about preparation of lab reports and grade breakdown are typically required of TAs.  I once had a "lab consultant" position for an introductory computer science course when I was an undergraduate, where I helped students save their work, run the compiler, understand the error messages, and discuss their design.  But I had no role in the grading, I didn't even know the grading structure, which differentiated me from a real TA.  It sounds like you signed up for the first but were given the title and responsibilities of the second.

(and by "save their work", I mean "in accordance with the file naming and encoding requirements of the Java compiler"... not just "how to use the menu to save a document" that any CS student ought to know beforehand)

@BenVoigt: in CS, the second definition is just as applicable for students learning how to use Emacs and Vim for the first time :)

@tonysdg: For first time users of those editors, it'd be a miracle if there were any work to save ;)  But we're getting off topic.

Somewhat tangential to the question, but if anything, I'd consider having students examine other students orally somewhat questionable. When students check written assignments or exams, there is at least the theoretical possibility that a professor who is formally the examiner cross-checks results and submitted exams. In oral exams, on the other hand, even though there is a log, a lot depends on the personal impression gathered by examiners (e.g. how swiftly questions could be answered, whether there seemed to be a lot of stalling, etc.). Moreover, in written exams, the stated problems ...

... are pre-defined (and thus, again, can be influenced or at least greenlighted by the official examiner), whereas oral exams are in part guided by the examinee (who can direct the conversation towards certain topics or statements), while the examiner has to make up reasonable questions (which in turn can have a significant impact on the performance of the examinee) on the go. Details of this will, however, depend on the respective regulations and general culture in the university.

@O.R.Mapper, I know exactly what you mean, and I do unfortunately have major concerns as to one of the assistants... Thankfully though, if one is not biased, it is very easy to see if they know what's going on - actually if a student has studied, he doesn't need to be pushed to start talking, so we only need to nudge and probe the other ones and then report back with whether or not they seem to know what they should. But grading can be messed up regardless even when done by professors, so I am not so concerned until that gets fixed

I could totally see this being both ethical and beneficial for teaching undergraduate Bachelor of Teaching students about grading papers. "Okay, everyone, pass your homework to the person sitting on your left for marking."

As to the question in the title it is certainly ethical, professional, and legal.  More than that, in the US at least, it is extremely common (in my experience at both public and private universities).  However, undergraduate TAs should be handled by faculty somewhat differently since the potential for conflicts of interest which arise from grading students in their peer group is higher.
Carnegie Mellon has some very nice resources available on their website for both undergraduate TAs here and for the faculty supervising them available here.  One of the points in your question about which you seemed particularly concerned was grading other students' assignments.  An interesting point from the document for faculty above is the following instruction for faculty:

Provide clear, explicit grading guidelines to undergraduates involved in grading and evaluation. Without clear guidance, undergraduate TAs tend to be tougher graders than faculty.

So, I would say if you are in doubt about how to grade a particular assignment, you should not hesitate to ask for more guidance from the faculty member you are grading for.  You should also certainly speak to your faculty supervisor if any conflicts arise.  Another quote from the above documents on this point:

We expect the undergraduate TA to be neutral in teaching or grading, but we must understand that this is a very difficult ideal for anyone to meet. Following are some tips for averting such challenges:

You and the student should work together to identify potential conflicts of interest. Before the start of the semester, review the list of students with the undergraduate TA. Faculty cannot simply assume there will be no problems; likewise, undergraduate TAs may not be aware of these difficulties or their potential severity. The undergraduate TAs have interacted with the “potential conflict” students prior to the class, and may continue to do so for many semesters afterward. In our survey of undergraduates involved in teaching, a significant number of the students identified problems of this nature.

You might also find this article from earlier in the year in USA today interesting.  It's just a quick overview of the social aspects of being an undergraduate TAing for undergraduates.

As a point of comparison:  I taught at Williams College (entirely undergraduate) for a few years.  They had a pretty strict policy about TAs being used to grade:  they shouldn't be used in cases where the grading is subjective, the professors should provide detailed answer keys for the students to work from, and the portion of the students' final grade affected by the grading of TAs should not exceed 15%.  Compared to this, Carnegie Mellon's policies seem pretty liberal.

During my masters', I was a TA for an undergrad course, that included close friends. It helps to have clear policy and objectives. I defined beforehand the values of some common errors ("gramatic, -0.25 each") for instance. Then I reviewed all the works, cataloging the errors into categories. Then I assigned the value of each error and did another pass calculating each grade. That way, when asked, you can say, "you did this -X, this -Y and that -Z". Its fair, consistent and impartial. One of those friends failed the course and still let me crash at his place once a week for a semester. :)

It's a fairly common practice at some universities for older undergraduate TAs to grade younger undergraduates' work. My undergrad institution relied heavily on this - it's perfectly legal and ethical SO LONG AS you, the TA, do not discuss one student's grades/work with another student. More generally, a TA in the United States is bound by FERPA as to what is legal or not.
If you're concerned about not knowing what to mark as wrong, consider asking the professor you are grading for for an answer key or an example solution set. They may be unwilling to give this to you outright, but hopefully they will at least walk through an example with you and point out what they're looking for in a fully correct answer.

In most cases, if you're grading at all, the university will (in the US) require you to undergo FERPA training. I'm surprised the OP hasn't, because I think that stuff would have been covered and they would have been subject to it (but maybe other universities aren't as zealous with mandatory training sessions as mine haha)

@guifa: My undergrad institution made sure we knew that sharing grades was a very bad idea, but there wasn't anything terribly official.  I think the relative size of the university/department will have a lot to do with that.

Undergrad students grading other undergrads

I've seen much more: undergrad students grading grad students, grad students grading postgrad students and research scholars! Before my opinion I'll state the basic concept:
Any of those who are qualified with the course subject are considered eligible to evaluate the answer scripts of the subject. This includes those who didn't complete the degree per se. Undergrad students who have completed the subject are said to have more up-to-date knowledge in the subject enough to grade other students of the same.
As a PhD research scholar myself, I felt the same. However, this even occurs in IITs (Indian Institute of Technology, some of the most prestigious institutions in India). Hence, this is something one has to accept. I'll be happy enough - if the grader who doesn't know the subject doesn't grade my course work - irrespective of their age or degree.

Why is that worse?  In one of my first year grad classes, we had an undergrad TA.  I'm pretty sure he knew the material well and was responsible.

@Kimball: replaced worse with more. Besides, I've stated the same in my answer before.

I graded papers for a graduate course while I was an undergraduate, and one of the classes that I took as a grad student had an undergraduate grader.  I'm not aware of any problems arising in either case.

I think this is not a matter of ethics or something more. It’s all about sharing. I think if you have prepared yourself and gained some skills that give you some advantages over the others, you can evaluate a master. There are some graduated people who do not have the correct prerequesites for certain areas and somebody who has a only master degree in title, but from experience can give any advice and many times correct graduated people.

Welcome to Academia SE. I tried to fix the grammar of some of your sentences and make them understandable, but I am not entirely certain that I grasped what you wanted to say, so please check whether everything is still according to your intentions. Also, I failed to understand what you want to say with “you can evaluate a master”.

Allowed and legal? yes. Ethical? Absolutely NOT in practice in my opinion. I have junior psych majors grading the papers of junior psych majors whom they will almost certainly be competing with for honors.
I do agree with the information from Carnegie Hall shared by @bamboo. HOWEVER, as the information also states, it is nearly impossible to actually achieve these standards, yet universities use UG TAs anyway.
I should mention I have faculty appointments at two undergraduate institutions. One in Europe and one in the US. Comparatively, grading in the US (where I was educated) is laughably subjective. In the UK, exams go through three rounds of refereeing and there are clear and genuine appeals processes. There is also often calibration exercises before the exam is issued or before grading even starts.
In one class I took as a student returning for a second undergrad degree earlier in my career, undergrads graded papers where a rubric and the grading sheet was provided to all students. This transparency was a great practice, but the undergrad TAs didn't use them AT ALL and when one TA was asked why she marked something wrong, and then had it pointed out by the researcher who wrote the article that was being summarized by the student who was marked wrong, that the student was not wrong, the undergrad TA said "oops, well I wouldn't appeal it to the course faculty because here are some other things that could have been better." AND COPIED THE FACULTY MEMBER.
The faculty member showed the same deference to the undergrad TAs as they do graduate teaching fellows and other faculty members. THIS is why it's unethical. In other words, like 99.9999999% of any grading questions or appeals in the US, the initial grade stands because faculty in the US are infallible (yes the same group of people who tout intellectual rigor and a peer review process)
The idea might not be unethical, but in practice it almost always is.

I'm sorry, but it isn't about sharing like @campussano's answer suggests. This is - almost certainly - the result of universities cutting costs by hiring under-experienced teaching staff. While you may be able to effectively check your colleagues' lab assignments, you're probably being used as a pawn against the graduate researchers, to lower their overall employment/upkeep costs. University managements very often try this "juniorization": non-tenured Doctors head courses, Ph.D. candidates teach, and undergrads check homework or even serve as teaching assistants. For shame.
What you - not personally, but collectively - should be doing in my opinion is forming a academic staff union (or overthrowing the comatose leadership of the existing union). At the very least people in your situation should get the same pay as their seniors (if not more), to de-motivate this kind of practice.

Finances are indeed the fundamental motivation, of course, as usual, rationalized by claims about benefits and equity and whatever...

That's exactly right einpoklum. That is why my department this year decided to fire our dedicated team of Nobel prize-winning TA's and switch to employing uneducated high school dropouts, and to outsource the grading to a sweatshop in Indonesia. When students complain about the poor quality of TA's, we plan to tell them that the Nobel prize winners were overqualified, and that the high school droupouts will benefit from a valuable training opportunity. But we all know that's bullshit, and will be laughing all the way to the bank to cash our inflated yearly bonuses. (/sarcasm and -1)

@DanRomik, if you're not seeing the corresponding degradation in your environment, so much the better. And, no, I'd not claim that a 23-year-old is in any way clearly better than a 20-year-old in explaining lower-division mathematics to kids who are trying to do the least possible to fulfill a requirement. On the other hand, I do adamantly declare that the 23-year-old grad TA should feel more responsibility... just as a PhD'd faculty, or tenured, etc., should feel more responsibility: commensurate with the relative seniority and potential competence-by-experience of their situation...

Why do you assume that the OP is paid less than graduate teaching assistants?

@paulgarrett as it happens you guessed correctly and I am in fact lucky to be at a well-functioning department and university (though we do employ undergrads as readers grading other undergrads' homework, and like other posters I see nothing wrong with that practice), but that's beside the point; my sarcasm was addressed mainly at the over-the-top, conspiracy-theoretic overtones of einpoklum's answer, so I think I would have reacted the same way even if I were in a less well-functioning department.

@ff524, actually undergrads here only get a CV reference and probably a letter of recommendation, but graduates are paid 64 euros per month due to low and strictly distributed funding, so they aren't really getting much more than us. Are undergrads paid in other countries? Nationwide there are no funds allocated to undergrad students.

@ff524: I implied this was very likely, I did not make this assumption. However, I would be willing to wager a can of campus vendin machine soda that this is the case, because it's quite prevalent.

@user3079666: In most (?) countries, graduate students (and I don't mean professionals who do some research on the side, I mean full-timers mostly) get paid. Sometimes they get paid as full-time employees; sometimes they get paid "stipends" or "scholarships"; sometimes they get paid salaries for teaching only, or for research only; and sometimes a combination of the above. But it's generally the rule that they're paid non-token amounts for doing teaching work. I stand by everything I said, my friend. I'm still guessing there's some exploitative scheme going on there.

@DanRomik: My alma mater had 2 nobel winners in the department of medical research. Both of them are now occasionally giving fiery lectures about the decline of Academia, and how their achievements are unlikely to be repeated in decades to come considering the under-funding of their department. In that department, many lab technicians have been let go (or retired without replacement) and grad students need to train their incoming colleagues to the best of their abilities. Again, that's not to say that they can't. They manage. But it's wasteful and suboptimal.

@einpoklum, I knew they got paid for taking up jobs in the campus, I didn't know that they got paid for lab work though. In any case, in the entire country they don't get paid, so this is how it's done here legally. As for exploitation, we are having a really tough time dealing with the labs as we are right now, with an approximately 70% undergrad staff, so it's a necessity, which is also why I don't want to ask to cut down on the hours. Without us, the labs would be in chaos.

@ff524 That is quite natural in many places. We have tables for full-time salaries of employees according to their qualification. They do also apply to part-time jobs as grading or TA'ing, you just get the appropriate part.Even if the department head wanted to pay his student the same as a doctor, he is not allowed to do so. Boosting the hours on the contract  instead will also get the dean's office angry.

@user3079666: You're caught in a vicious cycle. You're trying to make do with the resources you have (and by you, I mean your department, or lab complex, or university) instead of pushing for budget increases; and you somehow manage, but this tends to motivate more cuts. And that's doubly the case if your research output suffers from understaffing or relying mostly on undergrads (which may or may not be the case).

I truly hope that the people willing to extort a budget increase by willfully failing to help out students are really few, and hopefully none among us. We are facing budget cuts due to a tough economic era for the country, but our job is to function and aid as much as possible, in spite of any or all difficulties.

@user3079666: It's a two-way "game of extortion", unfortunately. I mean, your university doesn't tell the electric company "we've got less budget, so we'll pay you less". They light up the buildings and make do, or tell the government "we can't run the university without paying our electric bill". But when it comes to people, it's a different game. With a strong union, these kinds of actions are not possible without deliberating with the academic staff and reaching agreements acceptable for both sides; the way things stand now, management does what's convenient for it rather than what's best.

@einpoklum I'll be the first to admit that academia has all kinds of exploitation, senseless cost-cutting and other stupid things, but there's nothing to indicate anything like that is going on here. Your answer is not helpful because it makes the most negative assumptions possible about human nature. More generally, almost all your answers that I've seen fill in any missing information with the most absurdly negative, sensational, attention-grabbing assumptions and language. They are always full of bad, incompetent or "comatose" people trying to undermine the noble efforts of the "hero" OP.

..."hero" OP, who is being used as a "pawn". That's not helpful, and that's why your answers get voted down even when they contain some useful ideas. If you want your answers to get more respect, I suggest that you tone down the rhetoric, and start taking a more scientific and reason-based approach to answering questions. Don't make assumptions about things that aren't in the question, or state clearly when you do. Don't inject your personal and political world-views into the answer. I think you will see that some small changes of this sort will do wonders for your reputation and success here.

I suppose I can agree w.r.t. toning down the rhetoric, but: 1. I expressly conditioned my answer on the assumption, as I believe it's likely to actually hold, and 2. Of course I should inject my personal and political views into the answer. My answers on this site (as opposed to, say, math.stackexchange.com) are very much based on my views and politics, as are many (most?) people's. In my case it's more evident since my views are perhaps less mainstream, or maybe I'm more, shall we say, passionate about them.

@DanRomik: Also, I don't mind the votes all that much :-)

My post grad psychology paper was graded recently by another post grad.  It became clear to me by this marker's comments that they, in fact, had no idea of the context of the assignment question, had no idea of the peer reviewed literature surrounding the topic, and, worst of all, could not recognize diagnostic-criteria quotes from the DSM-5 in the diagnostic section of the paper.
It was also obvious that this marker had absolutely no idea of HOW to mark a written/research assignment. I was given a mediocre pass across the board, ie: for every aspect of my paper: referencing, content, synthesis of research, and written communication skills.
My paper was given a poor grade and I am now fighting for my life for the second time in 4 months for some justice in the marking process.  This practice is just plain dangerous.  These so called markers hold the future of other students in their hands.  Why are we paying excruciatingly high fees for university courses if our work is not going to be graded by a qualified professional who is getting paid to do the work.
I work in a psychology clinic where two ex-graduate students attend as patients.  Their lives have been destroyed by this practice.  They are anxious, depressed and traumatised. One of them, once a promising student, now crochets blankets and throws as her therapy. She does not leave her home unless accompanied by her mother and only leaves home to come to sessions at the clinic.  This practice of students marking university papers is borderline criminal.
Students pay high fees and pay the salary of the teaching staff.  Thus it is within the students' right to demand a refund, just like any other commodity.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


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How to reference/link to an online code repository, whose location may change in the future
We are about to publish a paper in PLOS One Computational Biology about an algorithm that we developed. The code will be open-source on GitLab and we want include some obvious way of finding it.
It is suggested here that one should include the link to the code repository directly in the article (ideally the abstract). I think this makes a lot of sense.
However, I am a bit hesitant, because the location of the code might change in the future.
Are there any good ways to work around this? (such as e.g. redirection service, where I could update the URL; perhaps especially for academic work)
Or is there another way of addressing this, such as revising the manuscript (like I said, it is PLOS One).

Maybe Zenodo - see https://forum.gitlab.com/t/how-to-create-doi-digital-object-identifier-for-gitlab-com-repository/3749

The first thing to check is whether your institution already has a policy for this. Mine for example maintains both a GitLab instance and a database of software written by research teams. We can use to the first for permanent links, since they are institutional. The second feeds directly into our annual reports.
If there is no policy, but there is an institutional Git service, then it is usually possible to create a repository specifically for your project (if your team doesn't already have one). I recommend creating a specific project, rather than mixing in with your personal project: it costs nothing more, and provides the best long-term stability. You can always update the README for the project or the repository to point to a different one, later on.
If there is neither, then you could create a specific project on gitlab.com (or equivalent). Same recommendation as above: create a specific project to contain the repository (again, unless your team already has one).
You mentioned PLoS Computational Biology so possibly there might be some experimental data or analytical output that you would like to provide. A Git service isn't appropriate for this, even with LFS, but an open archive like Zenodo is an excellent choice.
As a final note, if your project happens to be funded by the EU, then it should already have a data management policy.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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How do you respond to students complaining that practice questions are both insufficient and too easy?
Having been teaching at the undergraduate level for six years, I have always been receiving complaints from students about:

The practice questions I gave are too easy and do not match the difficulty level of the actual test.
There should be more practice questions.
I attended all classes and understood EVERYTHING. But I could not do the actual test questions. I simply don't know what to do.

What are appropriate responses to these?

from your viewpoint, would you say the difficulty level for practice and actual test questions differs (and thus the students actually have a point) or not?

Well, are these complaints true? I'm not sure how we can help you responding to these questions, we don't know if your test questions match the practice questions and your learning content.

In my experience, most undergrads don't know how to use practice questions properly; they just flip directly to the solution and try to memorize it. But that won't be enough even to solve closely related questions of the same difficulty.

When I was a student I used practice problems as a way to judge my competency. If the questions were too easy, I’d develop a false confidence in my ability.

What are you looking for? A way to tell your students you think they are wrong (i.e. your practice questions are enough and not too easy)? A way to tell your students you don't care (i.e. the question are easier than on the exam, but you are not going to change that)? Or a way to adjust your practice questions and/or exam questions so you don't get those complaints in the future?

A way to have them understand that practice questions are only meant to cover SOME topics that will be covered in the test, and that these practice questions are at the easier side (meaning that in the actual test, I'd like to see if you TRULY understand and are able to apply the learned concepts). Suggestions?

@user2574706 To help your students develop that true understanding, perhaps you should give them harder practice questions, that cover all the topics.

@user2574706 I think your approach is wrong - practice makes perfection, not theoretical studies of the material. At the very least, make it clear to your students THROUGHOUT THE COURSE that these questions are not representative for the exam questions so they can try to find practice questions themselves. Right now, I'd say your students are right in complaining, so there's nothing I can suggest you tell them.

It would be helpful if you could edit the question to add: (1) whether you agree with the assessment of the students; (2) what you have already tried; (3) specifics such as where you get the practice questions and where you get the exams.  For example, when I was in college many years ago, it was common (at least within the basic sciences) to use exams from previous years as practice exams; and (4) what your colleagues have to say about the issue. Do they also get similar complaints?

Based on your comment, it sounds like you are intentionally making the test harder than any of the practice problems and perhaps requiring that students can do things on the test that have not been spelled out in the lecture? If so, how can you expect anyone to be able to succeed on tests unless they know the material from outside of your class? How could they be prepared to "TRULY understand" if they have no way to discover that there are gaps in their understanding? Are they supposed to have psychic powers to learn what they need to know?

How about giving past examinations?

Make sure the practice questions are harder by at least 2 to 3 notches than the exam. You do have time during practice, people and tutors to discuss with, and no pressure.
All of which you do not have in the exam.
There can be one difficult question in the exam (as Buffy suggests), but it should be clearly marked and should only be enough to distinguish the top layer of the students, but not be pass-critical or relevant lower to middling grades.

As a wise professor once said: if you simply ask students to regurgitate what you told them, this will already allow you to distinguish the students who have learned the material from those who haven't. Maybe you want to add one hard question to challenge the best students and motivate people to study harder, but that's enough.

@user1149748: But I don't really care if the students have learned the material.  I really only care if students have learned to think and communicate.  The material is merely an exercise machine to train on.

I disagree that practicals should be harder. Sure, you have more time and people to discuss with, but practicing should allow one to solve similar questions on your own and in shorter time in the future, e.g. in an exam. And I've seen enough people who, by only practicing harder tasks, failed the simple task in an exam when trying to apply the tools needed for the harder task.

@Sabine If you want to easily run 5km, train to run 10km.

@Sabine If you worry about that, shortly before the exam, tell them that the exam will be slightly easier than the practicals. Also, sometimes, the exam questions think they are hard, but aren't. As a student I encountered a question that was supposed to be very hard, but found a two-liner shortcut that nobody (not even the setter of the question) had seen. It cuts both ways.

As a practical matter you often already have these too-hard questions -- Q's that were written for the exam, but are just a little to hard (ambiguous, too much set-up, too much to write... ).

@Sabine - this means that the students did not learn how to think and communicate, only how to apply the material in situations where someone else has thought about it for them.

@ZeroTheHero That's a way to run a 5K, but it's not a good way to win a 5K. In other words, it's not clear how that analogy applies to mathematics.

@AlexanderWoo Are you expecting students to learn to "think and communicate" in only about 14 weeks (or whatever the length of a class you're teaching)? Seems like a lot to expect. If the material is just the "exercise machine", that should apply to all material. So the 12 years of school before their first undergraduate class is also about thinking? So one university class is at most 1/24 of their total education in "thinking and communicating". Seems to me if they can merely state Lagrange's Theorem on a test and remember it after graduation, that's not too shabby at all.

That's a good advice, but practice questions should not be too hard: if you make a question about a certain problem/skill too hard, they may label all the same problems as hard and skip it during exams. Ideally, there should be some progressivity in practice: an obvious question (to clear misunderstanding), then several simpler to exam-level questions to assimilate the method, and then harder to test their thinking ability. And that may not be necessary to label the harder question: that's a skill to know for which problem there is a standard method, and which one there is not.

@ToddWilcox the training should be harder than the actual event (when practical).  This isn’t about winning, it’s about finishing.  In addition assignments should be formative, where you train your brain to think about problems, whereas tests should be summative.

@Taladris There always should be a spectrum of easy-to-difficult questions in the practicals. Easy reproduction, technical skill and understanding. But the spectrum should be stretched further towards harder questions than what you assess in the exam.

Maybe you can clarify: I think exercises over the duration of the whole course should be in a range from very easy to a bit harder than the exam. And one can clearly explain "now this is the kind of questions you will see in the exam" - "if you can do these 3 questions in 20mins you can be quite confident to do well in the exam"

@Falco Personally (philosophy may vary), I am very much against telling students that something they learn will be practically equivalent to an exam. They should have a certain amount of uncertainty. Otherwise, they will learn by rote. Sometimes, this is unavoidable, but it should not be the general case. Being adaptable is part of what an exam should be assessing.

Choose one of the practice questions and put it on the test
As a math teacher, I used to get complaints from students that the tests were harder than the homework, even though that was not true.
Then I started putting one of the questions from the homework on the test. This would typically be a question that looks easy at first glance, but is actually a bit difficult. (I don't check homework, but I guess some students skip these types of questions on their homework.)
I found that usually this question was one of the lowest scoring questions on the test.
Then, when discussing the test afterwards, I would say for example "Question 6 was copied directly from the homework, but only 46% of students got it right."
Then the students stopped complaining that the tests were harder than the homework... and started paying more attention to their homework.

Overall I think this is a good idea, with some limitations. When working on homework, you can refer to the textbook and notes and take more than a class period working on a single problem. So the exact same problem could be a lot harder to solve in a test environment with limited time and no access to information not in one's head compared to the homework environment. Only if students essentially memorize the homework problems would this be always an easy question for those who have done the homework.

Consider that perhaps they are correct. You can, if you like, provide a wider range of practice questions, some quite difficult. You can also, if you like, make the tests a bit easier.
In some ways the practice set is like an advertisement for the exam, saying, in effect, "this is what the exam will be like." If that is false advertising then you should probably make changes. You can, imperfectly, solve the "advertising" problem by telling them that the exam will be harder than the practice problems, but that is unlikely to please them.
Don't make the exams a "gotcha" exercise. If the practice questions give the wrong impression about what the test will be like, you aren't actually helping the students prepare for the exam. Even dropping the practice questions might be better.
My old (retired now) practice was to put one very difficult question on each exam, but warn the students ahead of time that this would happen. That question didn't greatly affect grading, but gave the best students something to chew on.
I never tried the following and it just occurred to me. If one needs five problems for an exam, then make up ten valid questions and randomly choose half of them as practice questions. I'd need to think about this for a while and find a way to assure coverage for both the exam and the practice sets. Just a thought.

In addition to the other answers, consider that no matter what you do, there will always be people who are going to be unhappy.
Over the years, for one of my recurring larger classes I have done the following:
Gave lots of simple problems to solidify context - then asked few but composite type problems where understanding of those concepts can be demonstrated (some students complained that I was testing them on concepts they had never seen before).
Gave difficult problems to teach them the concepts and just asked very simple problems on tests so they can answer easily in a stress free manner to demonstrate that they got the basics of those concepts (some students complained that I wasted their time with problems that they were not specifically tested on).
Gave the EXACT problems to study throughout the year and then asked them again, unchanged on their final (some students complained that I asked them questions on concepts they had never seen before).
So, take that for what it's worth. Whenever I have student comments or complaints I try to take a real honest look at them to see how I may be able to improve. I'll even ask my colleagues to check whether I may be blind to something. However, my experience has been that you can't please everybody.
My approach now is to just give them a wide range and test them on a highly representative pool (they still complain, but there's only so much attention I can give to my service class given my research and mentoring FTE being over three times that of my teaching)

Since you have been teaching the same subject for six years, you have a nice collection of exams. You just need to publish those exams for your students to practice or even for you or other lecturers to use as exercises in class.
This way, nobody can complain that the practice exercises are easier/harder/different from the test exercises. Additionally, you will be using a material that has costed you work to produce.
In case you don't like the idea of publishing a collection of exams, please be sure that the students already have them - unless you have been careful to avoid students taking exams in previous years to take home the statements, and even then they may have been reconstructed from memories.

The practice questions I gave are too easy and do not match the difficulty level of the actual test.

In addition to the great advice of other answers, another option -- provided you are comfortable with this and it is allowed by policy -- would be to use questions from previous exams that you have given as test questions. That's not a guarantee that the difficulty will be equal, but difficulty is partly subjective, and at least gives you response you can use if you get complaints about difficulty.

There should be more practice questions.

As a student, I remember always wishing there were more practice problems. Seeing the other side, I understand why it's hard to generate an arbitrary number of good practice problems. One practical idea (if you have a textbook) is to say additional practice can be found by doing problems in the textbook that weren't assigned as homework. You could also suggest specific unassigned problems to do.

I attended all classes and understood EVERYTHING. But I could not do the actual test questions. I simply don't know what to do.

To some extent, there's not much you can do about this. Obviously if they understood EVERYTHING then they could do the exam (assuming the exam doesn't require the use of some technique not covered in class). It's hard to say in general whether the person saying this was anxious in the exam, or if they are exaggerating their understanding, or if the problem genuinely was more difficult than what they had seen before.
There is one situation I remember coming up as a student that might be relevant here. Sometimes, on a problem, it's possible to take a wrong turn, and suddenly the problem looks very unlike anything you've seen before. Especially at the beginning of a problem when you haven't figured out how to fit it into the framework of the class and you are staring at a white piece of paper. For example, you can make an algebra mistake and suddenly the integral you need to do is impossible, or you could think the problem looks like it needs method A when it actually needs method B, and get stuck on trying to make method A work. It can be difficult to accept that you've made a wrong turn and need to throw away some work and go back under exam pressure, partly because of time pressure and partly because of a sunk cost fallacy. It is useful to be able to say in these situations that the solution can be found using similar methods that could be used to solve practice problems and with similar amount of grunt work, and if they are hitting a wall then they might want to rethink their approach or check their work.
Another scenario that came up as a grader for a quantitative field (physics) that I found surprising was that often, students did better and it was easier to give partial credit for quantitative problems ("calculate this") compared to short response type questions ("what would happen if we did this?"). The hardest problem I ever graded -- both in terms of how the students did and in terms of how hard I found it to give partial credit -- was a purely conceptual question ("what would happen to this superconductor if I turned on a magnetic field?" etc). However, it was also very easy to see who understood the material and who didn't. Although it probably wouldn't be popular, that kind of question might be useful to give as practice (or on a test) to show that you aren't just looking for the ability to carry out an algorithm, but to reason from principles given in class. Relatedly, in intro physics, I often found that the conceptual questions in the textbook helped me understand the material much more than the calculation problems. (Later on, in upper level physics courses, the calculations become difficult enough that they are also essentially conceptual problems, so this distinction tends to disappear in upper levels, but I think it's still useful to go through detailed calculations at different levels of granularity, sometimes with a fine toothed comb to get every detail, and sometimes at an outline level to make sure all the individual steps and arguments are logically coherent).
As another strategy... I'm not sure how realistic this is since I've never seen it tried in real life, but on social media I've seen a supposed exam with the question "You probably studied topics that weren't covered on the exam, please explain one of them in detail." I could imagine something open ended like that allowing students to demonstrate knowledge and give some warm-and-fuzzy feelings toward you, as well as giving you an idea of how good their understanding is of something they think they understand well, although that might be hard to grade.


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Will a dishonesty incident destroy the chances of getting into a good PhD program?
This is going to be a long post but I believe is the only way to understand my situation.
I studied B.Sc in Information Systems Engineering in a small private university in Latin America, it's not a research oriented institution and thus does not have a high reputation, especially outside my country. My GPA is very high (here grades range from 0 to 100; I have a 84.5 GPA which is top 12~15% of the class).
After having completed my first degree I wanted to study M.Sc in Computer Science, in a different university, much larger and public-founded, that has a relatively good reputation worldwide(ranks consistently among top 300 universities in the world).
To get into the program I was asked to complete some supplementary courses and get a certain minimum grade average. On my first semester I got good grades BUT I ran into some serious trouble in one final exam.
In this final exam, I fell asleep and arrived a few minutes after the exam had started, with all the hurry and all I forgot to take my phone out of my pocket (It's forbidden to have a phone on you during test). One of the exam supervisors noticed it and I was found guilty of academic dishonesty (which meant I had no chances of continuing towards this degree). I was pissed off but instead of quitting, i pursued another degree, in the same university but in a different faculty. I pursued M.Sc in Information Systems Engineering.
To be able to get into this new program, I was asked again to complete some supplementary courses, this time I got excellent grades and didn't run into any problems. Now I'm about to start my first semester in the M.Sc, and I started to think about PhD.
So finally I can ask the question: will this incident affect my chances of getting into a good PhD program? I mean if I wanted to go abroad say to study in the US, will this incident hurt my chances beyond repair?
Edit: Possibly a new issue has arised. I started to worry about being rejected from this M.Sc., even if I completed all the sumplementary courses with grades higher than requested?
After this incident had ocurred and after the discipline hearing in which I got "disqualified" instead of the actual grade as punishment, I applied to this different M.Sc program at the same University.
I did send an email to one professor that is in the acceptance comitte of this different Masters program, asking about my chances of getting into the Masters(I didn't mention this incident, I just asked if I stood a chance).
He replied with the list of supplementary courses but now that I think about it, he probably didn't even look at the current transcript of the university, He probably just look over the transcripts of the B.Sc.
I mean I have with me a letter (which I received after the hearing) that says: You have to complete all these courses with minimum GPA of X, which I did, and every grade has to be no less than Y, which I also did.
Should I be worried?

Is this written somewhere on your transcript/record?

Yet it's written on my transcript. Instead of the grade I got on that exam it's written "disqualified". Now I started to get worried about the acceptance onto this M.Sc because i didn't ask if this incident is going to be an issue, they gave me the supplementary courses based on my B.SC transcript but this issue appears on their system for sure and I don't know if they looked into this. OMG

Just to clarify: Are you saying you didn't actually make any attempt to cheat, but were given this academic dishonesty "conviction" just for possession of the phone?

That's correct, by university rules it's forbidden to carry a smartphone on you during a test.

At my university, students who have a cell phone or other device during an exam get to defend their case at a discipline committee, which allows for resolving issues and meting sanctions as necessary. Did you go through such a process? It's not uncommon at my university for students caught up in those circumstances that they get exonerated, particularly if they weren't seen using the phone. Having dealt with this at least 3 times in the past 10 years, I am wondering about the details of how you were found to have a phone (i.e. did you take it out?).

I did have a hearing. I didn't take it out, the supervisor noticed it when in the middle of the test I requested permission to go to the bathroom, when I started walking he must have noticed the lump in my pocket.

In my university's hearing process, witnesses (e.g., the supervisor) provide written statements as evidence, and usually students get a copy. It would be good if you can provide that as proof, in case someone wanted to know exactly what happened in your "disqualified" situation. Such a statement could support your claim that it was a careless mistake and not necessarily fraudulent. Also, my university's discipline committee provides a written statement (email) about outcome of all hearings. That could be useful if it gives details about circumstances that are consistent with your claim.

@Fuhrmanator The infraction may be for possession of the phone, itself, rather than using the phone to conduct another form of cheating. This is similar to how in some jurisdictions, you can be criminally convicted for possessing an open, even full, container of alcohol in the front of a car, even with blood-alcohol level of zero and no evidence that the driver was drinking it. You & more users on this site might disagree with that rule, but it could be the committee was just asked to find if the student possessed the phone (admitted), not if the student used the phone for anything.

@WBT the difference is that phones are more common than open containers of alcohol. It's harder to argue I wasn't going to drink the open container than to argue I wasn't going to cheat with my phone.

@Fuhrmanator Your arguments are against what appears to be the rule and might be helpful in a debate about whether to adopt, maintain, or repeal the rule. They might not be particularly relevant arguments in the enforcement process which seems likely a pretty straightforward application in this case. It'd be like protesting the open container law by saying the drink was for a passenger in the front seat: while it may be an argument to bring to the legislature, it's not likely to help when law enforcement applies penalties, and the judicial branch might find interpretation pretty clear.

@WBT Policies for getting in to PhD programs (the context of the OPs question) are (thankfully) not so black and white.

Throw away your cellphone. Burn it :D (wonder what you are doing now after 6 years)

A citation of exam disqualification on your official transcript will probably arouse some concern in those who see it.  (FYI, although most or all graduate programs will ask for your undergraduate transcripts, it is not guaranteed that a given admissions committee will read them carefully enough to catch this.)
Switching into a different master's program at the same university is a good idea.  If you succeed in doing that, then the issue was clearly not of the highest level of seriousness, i.e., not serious enough to get you kicked out of the university.  Assuming you can switch, Captain Obvious has just told me to inform you that you should keep your nose absolutely clean (and leave your cell phone at home!) for the remainder of your new master's program.  Also I would put more than the normal effort in to make sure you get the best possible grades.
Now what happens when you apply for a PhD program elsewhere, e.g. at a good American university?  Assuming that the disqualification will continue to appear on your transcript, in my opinion you should address this in your personal statement and also ask a sympathetic faculty member to confirm your story in their letter.  The tone here is very important (and it is also important that you do not dwell on the issue too much; more than one paragraph would probably be excessive).  If this is handled well then it becomes somewhat in the eye of the beholder how seriously to regard the issue.
For my part, assuming I believe the story you've told I have a lot of sympathy for you: forgetting to remove your cell phone from your pocket is a failure to comply with an exam directive.  I am a mathematician so can be very literal-minded, but I think that to call something "academic dishonesty" there must be some actual dishonesty involved, i.e., an attempt to cheat, deceive or take unfair advantage. [This means that plagiarism can be separate from academic dishonesty, which is a fine cutting but I think correct.  Also plagiarism has a victimized party, an important distinction.]  So to me calling your action "academic dishonesty" seems extreme and unkind.
This is also colored by the fact that in my academic culture (public university, US) we would generally not ask students to remove items from their own person before taking an exam nor would we feel comfortable searching a student's person in an exam situation.  It may be that in your own culture the removal of cell phones upon taking an exam is so standardized that the failure to do it looks self-servingly negligent.  Still, for me it is not a big problem.  As an example, when I give exams in freshman calculus, calculators are not permitted.  Once I noticed 5-10 minutes into an exam that a student was in fact using a calculator.  I walked over to him, pointed out where it said on the exam sheet that calculators were not permitted, asked him to put away his calculator, took away the work he had done on the exam so far and allowed him to start fresh.  I thought it was an honest mistake which gained him little if any advantage and I didn't see the point in making a big stink about it.  Others might feel differently.
In fact, "Others might feel differently" is one of my main points: I think that you should apply to a larger number of programs than you otherwise would because some programs and people will find this problematic and others likely will not, in a way that will not be possible for you to predict in advance.
Anyway, good luck and remember that cell phones are the root of all evil.

There was a quite public case of cheating here, were students shared questions and answers via smartphones during an exam.

cell phones are the root of all evil - Hear, hear!

To some extent, the answer depends on the university policies, which you probably need to (find out and) specify in the question itself. If that action constituted an act of

academic dishonesty (which meant I had no chances of continuing towards this degree)

If they consider it that serious an offence, they must have recorded it somewhere in your official transcripts - even if not containing an explicit description of the offence, at least in the form of a (code) symbolic grade, which stands for such generic cases. (I'm imagining something on the lines of my university, which, for example, awards a W grade for every course from which a student withdrew before satisfying the passing requirements.)
if the above happens, it goes down as a permanent blot on the academic career, and then there may be problems in subsequent academic pursuits. However, you also mention that:

I pursued another degree, in the same university but in a different faculty.

That tells me that my apprehension is incorrect. If they believed it was that big an offence, there is no way they would let you do that. Plus, it appears to suggest that it hasn't been recorded in the transcripts (I hope so, or else, they disregarded it, which again means they don't think it is that big an offence to warrant complete disqualification).
In general, that very university which recorded an instance of academic dishonesty, is quite likely to take a strong view of the same while considering your candidature in other academic pursuits. If it wasn't a problem in your more recent degree (subsequent to the prior one), I don't think it will be a problem in still more subsequent ventures.
Hope that helps :)


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What is the h-index exactly and how does it work?
What is the h-index, and how does it work ?

You can check the similar g-index meanwhile. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G-index

The h-index is a measure of the impact of someone's publication list. An h-index of 10 for example means that the person has published 10 papers with at least 10 citations. The total number of papers published may be higher, but only 10 will have 10 or more citations.
Critics argue that this measure disadvantages young researchers who did not have time to publish a lot and whose work has not been published for long and thus may not have attracted many citations. Other criticisms include that it makes a researcher focus on how to increase the citation count for a paper that may be not that good but would increase the h-index.
For more explanation, see for example the Wikipedia article.

Interestingly enough, a supergenius who publishes one paper getting 200 citations, still has h-index = 1

Exactly, and if that supergenius dies young the h-index will remain low even though the person had a huge influence. An example for this is Alan Turing.

Alan turing was killed young :(


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Corporate branding of chair professorship
For obvious reasons I will not be too specific, but I am aware of a situation (at a private research university) where a company with a somewhat less-than-stellar public reputation has endowed a chair professorship.  The concerned department and dean want one of their current professors to accept the chair (though some of the faculty would much prefer a new search to fill the position).  There is some reluctance to accept this offer, in large part because the professor being offered the chair balks at becoming a "brand ambassador" for the company making the endowment while getting no explicit benefit (the chair would cover only the salary that is paid anyway).  This professor (who is evidently preferred as having the best research profile in the department) and some colleagues also claim that an endowment named after some individual(s) would have been more acceptable.
So my questions are:

Is it generally the norm that any academic offered a chair professorship will accept it, for collegiality?
Is it standard for such an endowment to cover only the professor's salary but not offer any grants, etc.?
Also, is there a real difference in perception between an endowment named after a person/family vs. one named after a company?

You are asking too many questions in one post and most ask for opinion! Brief responses to each:

Usually faculty accept named professorships because of the increase in prestige (named-professorships are a scarce commodity and operate as such) as well as the increase in salary or research funds that usually attaches to these. Cynical people would say the latter is more important.
Usually (almost always?) the endowment would carry an increased salary at the very least and typically additional research funds  but I have not found any statistics on the average and sd of this delta. One way to explore this is to look at the public salary data available at state-run universities in the United States and compare named vs. non-named professors at the same rank in the same department. This is left as an exercise for the reader and doesn’t account for research fund deltas.
Yes, in that most person-based named-professorships are named after a person who most people do not know  whereas corporate names are more familiar (for example:  Prof. Mark C. Elliott, the Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History at Harvard versus Prof Sheldon Garon, the Nissan Professor in Japanese Studies at Princeton). And thus while neither Mark Schwartz nor Nissan Motors influence the work of either faculty person, the perception is worse in the second in that we've heard of Nissan and can attribute ulterior motives to it. And as dmckee notes in the comments, humans are mortal -- while corporations are immortal.
Note that there is a third category of alumn-class-named professorships: Cornel West, the Class of 1943 University Professor in the Center for African American Studies. These are essentially crowdfunded by a class cohort. I should note that some named fellowships are also crowdfunded — they are named in honor of so-and-so. Often the benefactor is the spouse or children, but occasionally the departure of a very-loved professor motivates students to donate. There is also a fourth category where a named professorship is created by the trustees of the university (or by the state or national government) in honor of or recognition of someone or something.

A large fraction of chairs named after people are named after dead people, so influence from the person whose name is attached to the chair is a moot point unless it is a Chair of Postmortem Communications.

@dmckee I would assume most of the alumns of the CLass of 1943 to be dead too, so they aren't influencing Cornel West either!

@RoboKaren Thank you, but to clarify for #1, would a professor (almost) always accept an endowed chair even if named after a company that has an unsavory reputation?  Nissan, Microsoft, etc. (which have endowed chairs) don't have much of PR problem, so they're not examples.  The closest similar instance I know is Michael Bérubé who actually resigned the Paterno Family chair at Penn State.

@sr3u This is way too subjective. Even Bérubé had no issue with being a Paterno Professor until after the whole affair blew up. All of this depends on: 1) how ethically flexible the receiving professor is; and 2) how terrible the offering endowment is.  Some people are more ethically flexible than others, some organizations and some people are more evil (or perceived to be more evil) than others.


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Transfering between graduate programs at the same university
I have just completed my first year of a 50/50 coursework/research masters program in physics. I have a supervisor, but have not yet started the research component, which is meant to run until the end of next year.
After a year of graduate study I've realised that a lot of the theoretical physics done at my university is still too applied and not mathematical enough for my taste. I also feel like I need significantly more mathematics to carry out research in the areas which interest me most. Also, after looking at the areas of active research in both departments, those of the maths faculty interest me much more.
Because of this I want to transfer from my physics program to the equivalent maths program (both at my current university). I dual majored in maths and physics as an undergraduate, so I meet all the requirements and have even completed three subjects that I should be able to use as partial credit in maths. My concern however, is with leaving my current supervisor. I haven't yet started on a research project with him, but I'm worried about leaving and really don't want to inconvenience or disappoint him.
Has anybody else had a similar experience, and is this at all common? How did you handle leaving your supervisor? How did they handle you leaving? Is this likely to effect me if I end up back in the physics department for a PhD (i.e. is it likely I'll be "blacklisted")?
Thanks in advance for any advice, I'm feeling quite lost and would really appreciate it.

Is it possible for you to stay in the physics department and be unofficially supervised by a mathematician?

Not really, unfortunately there's very little crossover between the two departments here. Most of the physics department is very focussed on the phenomenological side of physics rather than the more mathematical side, and so there isn't much in place for crossover between the departments.

My concern however, is with leaving my current supervisor.  I haven't yet started on a research project with him, but I'm worried about leaving and really don't want to inconvenience or disappoint him. ...  Is this likely to effect me if I end up back in the physics department for a PhD (i.e. is it likely I'll be "blacklisted")?

Since you have not yet started any research project with your supervisor, it is unlikely to be inconvenient to him to have you transfer to another program.  Unless your supervisor is an extremely resentful individual (which would be rare in academia) it would be highly unlikely that he would take any negative view of you for wanting to change to a preferred program of study, and it would be similarly unlikely that you would suffer any long-term consequence if you wanted to come back into physics.
As with any situation like this, the key is to be polite and thankful for the existing help you have been given.  Tell your supervisor your reasons for wanting to change to study mathematics, and thank him for all the work he has already put in supervising you.  Although it is unlikely you will inconvenience him much, it is not a bad idea to pre-emptively apologise for any inconvenience you may have caused him, and let him know that your decision is about your preferred program, and is not due to any deficiency in his supervision.
If you do this well then you will be able to leave on friendly terms with your present supervisor, and you will ensure that you have not "burned your bridges" with your move to another program.  There is a reasonable possibility that your supervisor might even like the fact that you are pursuing more mathematics, and might be interested in doing research projects in physics with you later, once your mathematical skills have improved.
Anyway, don't be nervous --- most academic supervisors are friendly and want what is best for their students.  Sit down with your supervisor and lay out your plans.  Be polite and thankful and put yourself in a position to be able to come back later if you decide to renew your interest in research work in  physics.


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My PhD research has a negative outcome -- how can I still graduate with it?
A former PhD student at our lab had this idea for an algorithm for solving an engineering problem that has many well known solutions. The student developed preliminary results but ended up applying the algorithm to some other simpler engineering problems instead and graduating. I 'inherited' the project and it has always been a project my advisor has had high ambitions for. My advisor actually ended up changing my research project to this one after 6 month even though I heavily objected. The project is not funded. I TA to pay the bills.
At this point I have already advanced to candidacy and I'm in what I was planning to be my final 6 month. My research has basically consisted of building other algorithms based on the one the other student came up with. All are for an application in a measurement system. I have derived all of the mathematical solutions that will be at the heart of my algorithm and I am in the process of validating them with new experimental data. The previous data I worked with was all provided by the first student to work on the project.
I have recently discovered there are some issues with the original algorithm that create errors in the solution. The errors are larger than those  of the previous (well-established) methods. This does not happen in all conditions, however, the experimental data I was left with all happened to be cases where this error does not show up (I'm not entirely sure this was by coincidence).
How can I salvage this project and graduate without delaying my graduation much. I have family obligations that require me to graduate soon and I'm devastated that I've discovered this so late. This is partly my fault for trusting the research from the previous student too much (it was easy to do since my advisor can't stop praising him).
I personally have always been of the opinion that research projects do not need to have positive outcomes and PhD students should be assured that things will be fine for them even if there research has bad outcomes. I feel that doing research to show that something has a bad outcome is still equally valuable. I also feel that because of pressure to have good outcomes a lot of researchers exaggerate their results out of fear of possible consequences and it ends up doing more bad than good when people try to use their publications.
Do you think I have a good case of being able to graduate given my situation? And how would you approach convincing my advisor?

If I understand correctly, you've found that an algorithm that is in the literature (at least in the previous student's thesis) sometimes fails to work. It seems to me that this information, amplified to show when the algorithm works and when it doesn't, and to explain exactly what goes wrong, would be a reasonable body of research. Whether it's enough for your thesis is, of course, for your adviser to say.  It would be even better if you could repair the faulty algorithm.

Yes. It is only in his thesis (he never published any papers). I would actually like to focus on that a bit in my thesis. I guess I'm a bit worried about how my advisor would react. I haven't told him about my discovery yet and given his lack of command of the material, and the high opinion he has of the other student, I'm afraid he will think I am utilizing his method incorrectly.

How much time you spend on your PhD?Did you focus only on this particular approach, or you have tried another directions?

Negative results are motivation in research, at least I feel so.

@MikeyMike, I'm in my fourth year. The bulk of my work has this approach in it although some of my work may not be affected by the errors. The more significant parts of my research have definitely been affected though.

See http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30995/what-to-do-when-you-spend-several-months-working-on-an-idea-that-fails-in-a-mast/31082#31082

Theses and dissertations are by definition published.

Einstein is attributed as saying (paraphrased) "If I knew what I was doing, it wouldn't be called research". I completely agree that a negative result is still a result, and in fact, a very useful one! The other comments address the technical merits, so I will focus on interacting with your advisor.
You have to provide a good pitch. As an academic, he will likely be swayed with good data, so spend some time verifying your result.

How do you know the algorithm is wrong? Find a way to quantify the error. It might be just comparing it to the well-known case you mentioned.
Once you have that, run the old experimental data + the new data through your code and make a graph or chart of the error. Show that the original data set results match the original work (so that your code is shown to be correct/consistent implementation of previous work), but that other data sets produce larger error.
Propose a modification to the algorithm, then re-run all the data. Show that the values and error are still consistent on the original data set, but with lower error on your new data set. Even if its not a real full solution, it's important to show that you have improved it.

For political reasons, you may want to avoid the term "flawed", so as not to insult the past student, but rather to say that you have extended the algorithm to other situations. That's definitely publishable material, as others said.
I think this is doable quickly since it sounds like you already have most of these pieces together, you just need to arrange them to make the argument to your advisor.
I had an old advisor that loved graphs of everything. You could sway him with a good graph. Hopefully that is true for your advisor too. Good luck.

Thank you. I will definitely do this! I have to admit that I usually just describe everything for him and it seems to put him off. I'll come prepared this time :)

+1 for "extended". That's the kind of thing I usually see in papers, and it sounds like the supervisor would immediately react to "error" talk.

Conditions Under-which Fancy Algorithm Has Inflated Error Properties by A. Student. Journal of Science and The Doing Of It. 2017.
This would be a perfectly acceptable paper, and one which should appear in the literature. If you can, correcting said algorithm so it does not do so would be a bonus, but not necessary. Also, it's slightly late for you, but one should always ask when embarking on a thesis/dissertation project "What happens if the answer is "No"?"

I definitely see the merit in this. It will be a difficult discussion with my advisor though.

@Hadi By the sound of it, it looks like a difficult discussion with your advisor is on the cards no matter what.

@Hadi If your advisor has much experience in academia, they should recognise the merit in your result, if you can frame it properly. What you've done is demonstrate that a well-known algorithm with well-established behaviour in certain scenarios actually deviates from that behaviour to cause significant errors under certain conditions. This is a useful thing to know for anyone in the field. A sizeable portion of science is about learning from other people's mistakes; most of the remainder is about making your own and letting everyone else learn from them too.

I can't comment on PhD theses, but nobody has mentioned how to actually talk to your advisor.

Do not immediately slam your advisor with, "Your favorite students work is wrong, I want to write about how wrong it is."
Start by saying that you think (be non-deterministic, there's still a chance you're wrong) you have found some issues with the previous work.
Present a clearly written memo detailing the edge cases and why they break the existing work.  Include an "out" for the previous student and the advisor.  Graciously say that the sample dataset did not include these edge cases so couldn't have been proven broken at the time.  Do NOT say that you suspect the previous guy fudged the data.
Allow the professor time to digest and draw his own conclusions.  (They may have already had suspicions about these edge cases so they may be pretty accepting of this news.)
Listen to the feedback. Make a mental distinction of feedback that is their immediate reaction and feedback after "a while".
Calmly take in the feedback and spend some time going over to see if it is possible you missed something.  Give your rebuttal after "a while".  (Don't immediately react to your advisor.  You'll say something that you'll kick yourself for later.  Your absolute main rebuttal point should be the very first one your advisor hears because people tend to block out the next few arguments while they argue the first one in their head.)
After your advisor has accepted that the previous work had flaws, propose the possibility of a paper about why the previous method is incorrect.

This should happen over the course of several days.  You both are very good at your technical specialty, but you're both human.  This is a social situation and you should approach it as such.

I like the point of creating an out in (3), this has helped me deal with some horrible situations and get the things I wanted. Also +1 for its the fault of the data


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Should you ever pick "recommended" or "opposed" reviewers for journal submissions in social science?
This question applies to all disciplines but I am curious here about social science journals in particular. Is it ever a good idea to name/identify specific reviewers that you would like to have them assess your work, or opposed reviewers?
If so, when is this acceptable professionally?
I see this question a lot in polsci and economics journals where part of a journal submission process would be a question as follows:
Please choose your recommended or opposed reviewers below, if any.
I ask because the only cases that I anecdotally of coworkers selecting an "opposed" reviewer are those where two scholars might have been or currently are in a relationship and happen to publish in the same area in their discipline.
Meanwhile, the other case that I know of a person selecting a "recommended" reviewer was a former PhD colleague who selected someone who was essentially their informal advisor throughout the PhD thesis, which I thought was unethical as they may have a positive bias towards that person's research since they supported them through comments and feedback.
However, beyond the cases above, I cannot think of a reason why social science journals include this question as a requirement for submitting research.

Are the answers to Having preferred and non-preferred reviewers in journal submissions, How to suggest reviewers for a journal? applicable also to social sciences? E.g. the possibility of an author being in an outright conflict with a potential reviewer seems fairly universal.

Note that my answer assumes this is from the editor's perspective. If you are asking whether the author should make those recommendations, make that clearer, please.

I'll leave aside the question of "suggested reviewers" which seems a bit different and assume the author(s) get to make recommendations from a list.
There are many reasons for "recommended" or "opposed" and, unless the editor asks "why?" there isn't any way to know the mind of the author. What it does, however, is give the editor a bit of additional information about how to interpret reviews. One reason for opposing a reviewer is a bad history with a person and an expectation that they might not be impartial. That is a conflict beyond the ordinary conflict of interest.
One reason for recommending a reviewer (best case) is that the reviewer is known to be very knowledgeable in the subject matter. And, of course, (worst case) is that the author thinks the person is guaranteed to give a favorable review with minimal suggested changes.
But, the editor needs to choose appropriate reviewers, which doesn't exclude recommended or opposed suggestions from the author. They can make a judgment in reading the review in light of the additional "bit" of information, discounting some things in some cases.
Choosing only recommended or only opposed reviewers would be a mistake and counterproductive (even unethical in some cases).
Ideally the editor has some history with the reviewers they choose and can make a good judgement about how to interpret their reviews  when especially positive or negative. That is the ideal world. In the real world, the editor wants all the information available so that the journal publishes appropriately and maintains its reputation.
So, yes, the editor can choose some of the reviewers from either heap, though it might be better in practice to choose based on prior history or knowledge about the reviewer. The goal is quality, not gamesmanship, one hopes.

Thanks, useful answer from the editor's perspective. Would appreciate your thoughts from the author's perspective as well?


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What is meant by “Study Track”?
I’ve been looking for master’s programmes on university websites for a while and a couple of times, I’ve come across “Study Track” written in front of the programmes like English Studies [Study Track]. I wonder if it has a specific meaning which distinguishes it from a programme!
Thanks in advance for your help.

What country? .

@AzorAhai-him- If you’re asking about the programme I talked about above, it’s offered at uni of Padua, Italy.

To make the question more concrete, let us consider an example.
It seems that they are actually offering a Master of Arts in European and American Languages and Literatures, but this is far too broad a topic. So, they have predefined several "study tracks" to provide a thorough grounding in a more narrow topic (in this case, English Studies -- particularly, English language, linguistics, and literature).
Such "tracks" are also common in undergraduate degrees: for example, students earning a B.S. in Mathematics might be able to choose between tracks offering specialization in pure math, applied math, math education, or actuarial science.

"European and American Languages" is an enormous set of languages ... but they probably don't mean indigenous languages of the Americas ...

I had in mind exactly the same programme you provided as an example in your explanation :) So, as far as I understand, it actually means branch or sub-category, right?

@Azor They probably do include indigenous languages "in principle"; not much point in adding the qualifier "and American" if they only mean English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. I agree it's highly unlikely they regularly offer courses in indigenous American languages though.

@HaniehMirhosseini - right. I would think of it as "focus area"; i.e., which part of this huge topic are you actually going to study. Not so unusual: for example, I have a PhD in Physics, but I certainly don't have expert knowledge of physics as a whole. I know almost nothing about superconductivity, for example.

@cag51 I see! I don’t know how to thank you! You were a great help to me. Thank you

@cag51 Tbf, there's more speakers of English, Spanish, and Portuguese in the Americas than in Europe, so maybe they're just trying to be pluricentric.