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How to deal with failing a student?
I supervise a student who is working on her bachelor's thesis. The problem is that she has not delivered anything, never asks for any help, and when I offer her some help she claims that she understands and she will work on it. But nothing really happens afterwards. We (me and my supervisor) talked to her multiple times in different 'intervention'-like sessions, with no success. Now it is the end of the semester and she has done no more than 10% of her assigned tasks.
Also, she never delivers what I ask for, even the most basic of things. For example, all students are supposed to hand in their time plan within two weeks of their work, but she has never handed it in, despite my (and my supervisor's) repeated requests. Not only does handing in a time plan help to keep track of one's work, it is also part of our grading scheme. And she knows about that, since we are very transparent about how grading of the thesis works, by giving the students our grading excel sheet before they even sign up for a thesis with us. Nevertheless, she didn't bother handing a time plan in.
All the other students in our institute have their final presentations next week, and even though she knew of it, she was asking for an extension. When I refused that via email (I saw no reason to give her an extension), she just dropped in, claimed that she is not prepared for a final presentation, and that I have to give her an extension and so on. I eventually gave her an extension, because she was extremely stressed and not in normal conditions, was almost breaking into tears, and most importantly made a scene in the institute hall. I played a little tough though, by asking her to give me an exact delivery date within two days.
I have even asked my colleagues and fellow PhD students multiple times if they think there is something wrong with my supervision of her, but they always assured me that there is nothing wrong with that and it's about her personality/character (we have a very transparent culture in our group, so we criticize each other openly). Also, my former students gave positive feedback to my adviser regarding my supervision. I even made my supervisor ask her privately about quality of my supervision, and she gave him positive feedback!
Moreover, she also has an exercise class with me, and she was the only student playing computer games on the lab computer instead of working on her exercise. She knew that I (her thesis supervisor) can see her, but she didn't bother. That, I have to say, was the last nail in the coffin.
Given this background, I already know that she cannot (will not) deliver, no matter how much time I gave her. Thus, she will almost certainly fail her thesis. But on the other hand I feel very bad failing a student in her first big project, especially since if she fails she will probably need to study one more semester to finish her studies.
Now I am struggling with these three options:

Wait for two days, and if she doesn't give me an exact delivery date (which she probably won't), just give her a fail grade.
Give her an extension for ten days or two weeks, and then grade her based on what she delivers eventually, which most probably is a fail grade anyhow.
Give her a longer extension, long enough for her to pass the thesis.

I would be glad if anyone can give me some recommendations on how to deal with this situation.
PS: For all people asking if I was allowed to give her an extension: Of course I was. Otherwise I would have a very good reason for refusing her request. In our university supervisors have lots of freedom in how they want to deal with their students.

Are you sure you were even allowed to give the extension?  I would be extremely surprised to see a syllabus which permits course staff to change due dates on a whim, let alone for a thesis...

Update request: What did you do? How did this turn out?

If she made a scene, then I suggest to just fail her. It is just out of the ordinary for a university student to not care about projects/thesis and then get stress out over it. She does need some psychological counseling for sure, probably have depression or something else.

Wait for two days, and if she doesn't give me an exact delivery date (which she probably won't), just give her a fail grade.

Given that you already agreed to this extension, this is the only option you have. Do this.
Honestly, you should not even have agreed to this extension. I understand that you were under stress when you agreed to it, but students making a scene will happen more often to you in the future, and at some point you will get inured to it.

I feel very bad failing a student in her first big project,
  especially since if she fails she probably need to study one more
  semester to finish her studies.

This seems to be your real question. Unfortunately, there is really no way around this dilemma. If someone persistently does not deliver assignments and refuses all offers of help, failing them is the only option. Anything else will make a mockery of the entire system of higher education. (And be sure that other students will notice.)
Look at it this way: if you pass her, and she gets a degree, what will her employer do with her if she continues this way? They will fire her, and quickly so.

It appears that this students needs some serious help and counselling. It appears like you already did all you could do in this regard. I would recommend that you wait for two days, fail her if she does not hand in the date, and write up an explanation like you did here. Send this explanation to her in writing. Explain that it appears she is not ready to take a course like yours. Direct her to any counselling resources available at your institution. Keep a copy of this explanation for your file, in case she escalates this to your department head/dean/whatever.
Then do not enter into any further discussions with her, unless she retakes your course.

+1 It is much, much better for her to take an extra semester over her bachelor's degree and learn that she does have to do projects, than for her to get fired from her first job.

+1 right.. As a student I can say that I get irritated when this kind of people get good treatment. She was playing computer games, not caring, and then she complains about not having time? While I am doing hard work to graduate? Just grow up, will you? Retake the course and learn a lesson. It's really, really frustrating when this happens, as Stephan said in this answer, this will mock the entire system of higher education.  (I wrote this comment because this is how I would feel in such a situation. I believe many other student would feel the same way) :-)

+1 When I was studying we had a guy in our class who sounds like this, and was absolutely useless. I was glad when he failed to graduate with us, because if he had passed it would have negated my education and hard work, and made my degree feel worthless. (I could have done his year-long "Honours thesis" experiment in an afternoon and written it up over a weekend better than he did.)

I would suggest assembling the evidence and taking it to your chair or the dean now - they should have your story so they aren't blindsided by the student. Get their agreement now.

+1, but I would emphases "Direct her to any counseling resources available at your institution" much more. You may want to give your institution student medical care or other suitable service a notice about your student, so that they seek an appointment with her. Obviously, what is wrong here is not for a professor to fix.

Thanks for your answer. It covers all the aspect I was thinking about. Specifically, I was wondering whether I should contact any student counselling office regarding her care. Your answer, as well as other's, made it quite clear. I totally agree that I shouldn't give her an extension in the first place, but the circumstances did not allow for that. But still, maybe I should learn to be more assertive in dealing with such situations.

I agree with your conclusion but take issue with several of your points. "Making a mockery of the entire system of higher education..." probably not. The system of higher education will probably be just fine, and I think we should be more worried about the individual than the institution, which is perfectly strong. "Her employer will fire her". Maybe, unless this really is extenuating circumstances like death/serious illness in the family, and regardless I'm not sure that's relevant. I agree that "there is no way around this dilemma", but your answer seems too single-shaded

Good answer, but I'd be careful about sending her an explanation in writing. She might use some less than perfect sentence in it to sue for a passing grade because you were prejudiced against her or something. Even if that's unlikely to be successful, just save yourself the hassle.

I could imagine she just needs a boot in the arse. But I could also imagine that she has serious problems. Playing computer games in class can show contempt - or she could be so deeply frustrated with not being able to solve the exercises that she needs to do something else or she would break down. I know both kinds of people. So the course of action needs to be hard enough for the former to learn, without destroying the latter.

As a previous grad student who has worked with other non-performing students, I am in favor of this as well. One student in particular passed a number of classes while almost completely neglecting core activities, team work, receiving bad reviews, etc. Regardless of her reasons, it really made me feel like my efforts towards degree completion were somewhat trivialized, and the degree itself was not representative of any particular exceptional effort. While there are strong disincentives for failing people, you have to draw the line SOMEWHERE.

@Ant We had someone like that in my course, never did work, playing games all the time, utterly clueless about the material, even attempting to cheat incompetently but the disability support service was dragging him bodily through the course no matter what. The lecturers were under pressure to allow him through so he couldn't fail anything (even when he handed in a copied assignment in which every hyperlink was a link to the wikipedia on plagiarism). It really hurt class moral especially when he got graded higher than some people who'd done real work.

+1, Anything else will make a mockery of the entire system of higher education. (And be sure that other students will notice.)

Sometimes a student's failure is a teaching success.
The lesson is just not the one you wished that you were teaching.

Could you elaborate on why the students' failure is a "teaching success"? Who has learned what?

@Moriarty: In the long run, if it causes the student to change her ways, it's a success.

@Moriarty The lesson is that the actions that she is taking (or not taking) is not the path to success, or at least not a passing grade.

I agree that it is a good lesson for a student to learn.  I think, however, that the answer should state as much, rather than relying on an intuition leap from the reader.

This is very true. I was taken out of a high school competition my senior year by my physics teacher because my grades were slipping and he indicated he was very disappointed in me. I respected him a lot and looked up to him even more. His being really disappointed in me hurt in a way I'd never experienced. I started studying like crazy and I ended up demolishing his final exam (highest grade by far). I've never let my grades slip since then and I've worked my butt off to keep a high grade in all of my courses. It's not fun punishing a student but sometimes you have to do it for their sake.

This, I got straight A's in high school without ever really needing to try very hard and then when I went to university, I still didn't try, my grades got slightly worse every semester until I failed a few subjects. This really opened my eyes and taught me the most. It helped me to focus on actually doing work.

I agree with failing this student, and here is some other advice:

As mentioned in other answers, make sure you have collected e-mail correspondences in case she files a grievance.
If you need to write to her, write as little as possible. Simply state the fact in a couple sentences. Do not put any evaluation or judgmental statements in the e-mail. The more you write, the more she can later pick on.
Once she misses the ultimatum, simply submit the grade as soon as you can. If she comes to talk to you again, tell her that it's been in the formal record and out of your control. Refer her to the registrar.
If possible, do not meet with her with just you two. Invite at least one supervisor, registrar, or other relevant person to be there. Desperate students can potentially make up a lot of delusional accusations; having a third person can avoid the "you said, I said" confusion.
Just give the simplest explanation, repeat that if you may. Even if she presses for more explanation or justification, always go back to the simplest explanation. And feel free to tell her there is no more you can say. If she explains with a learning disability, accident, or hurricane, do not join the discussion. Say again that the decision has been made and it's out of your control. Refer her to the higher-up.
Get the next in the line involved. It can be the Dean of Students or the Dean of the Department. Let them know you may refer her to see them if she requires to have her plead advanced.

Remember to chill out. Failing students is in no way a pleasant experience. However, it's our job to give objective evaluations. The student lacks fundamental cognitive input and basic professionalism; to me, it's a one-way ticket to the Fail-land.

Normally I would jump down your throat about dismissing a learning disability, but that is the sort of thing a student has to tell an instructor at the start of class, not the end of it.  So in this specific case, the student has no recourse.  In fact, any inability to meet deadlines should be brought up  before the deadline passes.

@Zibbobz, thanks! Learning disability can still play a role and I did not mean to dismiss it specifically, more so, I meant to advise dismissing every sort of excuses and insist that the best informed decision has been made. Regarding learning disabilities, the "report at the start" rule works most of the time, but there are exceptions such as students thinking they can tough it out, ashamed, diagnosed recently, or even was having depressive disorders causing them not to report at the start of the course, etc. These are worth reconsidering, but it should no longer be the OP's job in this case.

Try not to pass the buck and blame something seemingly out of your control.  Just state that you submitted the final grade and will not change it.  No need to make some other person's life miserable by making her think she can go complain to them to get things changed.

-1 For being dismissive regarding a learning disability. If that claim is made - while she should have mentioned it to begin with, it still merits consideration. But not immediately and not by OP. OP should suggest she get an official diagnosis, and that if that is presented, you would discuss her case with the Professor in charge of the course or what not. In such a situation she might be in need of certain special arrangements or counseling in order to actually make deadlines - and just failing her may not be the best solution.

@Eric: It's not about passing the buck, it's about making the student understand that the deadline is not a personal agreement between the OP and the student that can be debated away, but a restriction imposed and enforced by the whole university, a deadline that will not just postpone itself if you let it pass. Quite in contrary, I think it is adviseable to distribute control over the issue to as many people as possible, who will, if it comes to that, deal with the student on their own and (if the case description is accurate) come to the same conclusion. On the one hand, it provides a ..

... chance for the student to realize the OP is not the only one who she might get in trouble with for her current attitude towards deadlines, on the other hand, it should help the OP with their current qualms if they see that the other colleagues the student approaches have the same impression of the case.

You have to remember your obligations to the cohort as a whole. Failing this student is your act of fairness to the students who performed at the desired level. If a disability is uncovered later it ought to be up to the board of examiners (or similar) whether any allowance apply retrospectively. And document EVERYTHING. I keep contemporaneous notes of any student meetings either by emailing the student to confirm the meeting content or by emailing myself, this timestamping the note through my university's server.

@einpoklum even if I am presented with an official diagnosis, I am in no position to evaluate how much this actually hurts the student, and how to fairly compensate. Plus, after systematic failing to deliver progress and dismissing the work, it seems like the student is not even trying.

@Davidmh: It may seem to you like that, but not actually be the case; or maybe she really isn't trying, but then - why is she even enrolled in the first place? At any rate, indeed, it's not for you to evaluate, and in the case she has a learning disability, a person with relevant professional experience on these matters should be consulted, regardless of her grade in your course. You never know, she might even have some chemical imbalance which prevents her from focusing attention, and she's explaining it away with other excuses.

I'd like to contribute with a bit of personal experience, and perhaps isn't the advice you're looking for, so let downvotes ensue. A few people here mentioned possibility of a learning disability, so here goes.
Six or seven years ago, I was exactly this student. I switched majors twice in my undergrad and ended up taking extra classes to catch up with the curriculum. I was taking over 20 credits every semester including summers and running on less than 4.5 hours of sleep on an average night. This lasted for three years -- including summers. It ruined my health, my motivation, my looks, my relationships, my hygiene habits and more. I was completely lost and wasn't even looking for advice at that point. If I told my family I was going to graduate late, I'd be in big trouble.
By the end of this whole thing, I was so depressed, worn out and physically ill that when I asked to take a final on a different day (I had three back-to-back) and got rejected, I got drunk all by myself for the first and only time in my life. Something really broke in me that day, and the next semester I just couldn't force myself to do work.
If I knew then what I know now, that I could probably go and ask someone for advice, seek professional help or at least counseling, I would have certainly done that. Some professors knew something was wrong, because I was very interested in the subjects, and was ahead of most students in theoretical knowledge, especially mathematics, but I would never submit my homework assignments and lab reports. They sincerely tried helping me, but everyone missed the point that I drove myself into a state of serious mental illness. I would find myself sitting in rooms staring for hours at a single point, I couldn't force myself to sleep, I had bad social anxiety and constant panic attacks. But I didn't realize for a very long time that I was ill, that this was a real tangible thing that had a name, a physiological basis, and methods of treatment.
So what I'm asking you to consider is whether she's overall a bright individual. Does she seem to have previously done reasonably well? Is this a change in behavior? Clearly, she's gotten herself this far, so what's happening now? If you find that this is a recent development, refer her to counseling. Most universities have such services. She may not realize that she may have a problem. Most people in these situations don't.

Thank you for posting your story. It will be valuable to help academics think more clearly about the situations their students find themselves in. I am glad you took the time to write it.

I don't think you'll get any down votes. You're not, as far as I can tell, recommending that she be given a long extension or other extraordinary academic favors, but that she be referred to professional mental help. Perhaps even a mental health professional intervention?

You bring up an excellent point. I agree that the behavior of this student points to a mental problem - not simply laziness -, and the advice to refer her to counseling services is excellent. I have seen this happen to a person I was very close to, and your story resonates.

Been there, done that. The OP’s student does indeed sounds like she could benefit professional help. Inability to work for some reason, which lead to shame, angst and anxiety, which in turn lead to lack of communication. At the same time, guilt makes you refuses any kind of help. Recipe for a vicious circle. I believe supervisors would benefit from learning to detect these behaviours early on.

Unless your course specifically allows for extensions on deadlines, you should not have offered one to her - this is unfair biased treatment based on coercion on her part.  It also de-legitimizes any student who would come to you with a reasonable excuse for a deadline extension.
Knowing the position your student was in, you should have told her, upfront, that she had already done too little work to pass your course, and that extending the final deadline would not help (unless the final is somehow greater than 65% of the course grade, but even in that case, she has not shown any indication that she would meet even an extended deadline).
Now that you have offered this to her though, you Must allow her the opportunity to propose a new deadline as you've said you would.  Be extremely strict about this.  If she does not deliver on time, she has wasted her one opportunity for an extension and has failed your course.
At this point, you have done all you can for your student.  You have reminded them of the consequences they will face numerous times, you have attempted to help them and reminded them of necessary coursework several times, and they have listened to none of your advice, done none of the work you requested, and still expect a favor from you in the end.
Do not feel guilty about failing her.  Do not feel guilty even if she manages to get her thesis in.  Unless it is perfect and your grading rubric actually does allow for more than 65% of the grade to be based on her final, do not pass her on that alone, and even if it does weigh that heavy on her grade, do not feel pressured to pass her on a less than perfect thesis.
She will complain.  She will say terrible things about you.  She may even throw a fit in the middle of the thesis defense or in the faculty office hallways.  Do not give in.
If she can afford to slack off for an entire semester, she can afford to pay for another semester and do it right.

As an aside: Do NOT accept any offer from her to hand in 'all the late work' at once. She may be mistakenly thinking that this is acceptable practice at the college level: It is not, and you have reminded her about the deadlines she had many times in the past.

'If she can afford to slack off for an entire semester, she can afford to pay for another semester and do it right.' Well said!

You are not failing her... she has failed. You are only acknowledging this fact.
I had a similar situation with a student in a software development class who came within one percentage point of a passing grade... and I refused to give her any slack at all because she never showed any interest in actually learning the material, never asked questions or otherwise participated in class, and never approached me or anyone else for help.
By all means, keep your word and allow her the extension. However, you have every right to expect that she keeps her word as well and gives you a new date, and then delivers on or before that date.
It's an unfortunate situation, but I can't see where you could have done anything to avoid it.

Since you have agreed to two day extension it is the only proper thing to wait for this time period, but not more.
One of primary goals of Bachelor's degree or Uni in general is to qualify you for work. And that also includes being able to live with the consequences of your action.
If after 2 days the delivery date (Which if she provides, should be short not long in my opinion) then fail her until she improves. It can be even multiple times if she still doesn't learn.
After she learns to do the work properly she should be a person more appropriate for working environment and will be beneficial for her in a long term. Which means you were successful as her supervisor.

There is a reason that you give a student a PASS or a FAIL: it's because not every student is worthy of a PASS. In this case, the student is obviously worthy of a FAIL. I wouldn't give it much more thought than that.

I guess you should let her go... it's a university, you tried everything. She's an adult now, if she refused your help but complaining about she needs more time to present something, I think you can't do nothing.
Let her fail. Of course she will hate you and she will think that this whole thing is because of you, but it's not true. She should understand that there are rules that can't be changed because of her.

I don't think she will hate you. She might complain loudly hoping you get emotionally involved and let her pass, but inside she knows what's happening. She wants to get away with doing absolutely nothing, I'd be surprised if she really believed that slacking off is the best way to pass.

If she made through university to her bachelor thesis, and cannot get any work done on it, then the problem is very likely not academic but elsewhere. Could be depression, could be severe family problems. Which means that although you are willing and trying to help her, you can't.
If you are convinced that she has no chance getting her bachelor thesis delivered (and that seems to be the case), there is nothing you can do from a professional point of view to  help her. From a human point of view, it would be excellent if you could direct her towards someone who can help her; and possibly turn things academically so that she doesn't end up with a failed thesis but as if she had never started with the thesis (which is more or less what happened) so she can come back in a year or two when her problems are fixed - obviously only if that is something that you can do without problems, and if it is something that would help.
(I suppose there is a point up to which she can abandon a thesis as if she had never tried to write it, but have no idea where that point is).

I disagree that the problem needs to be a new non-academic issue. If all examinations so far did not involve single-person long-term projects, it is not unlikely that the student is the type that always starts working at the last possible moment and got this far by relying on all-nighters and supervisor leniency. I know of several students who never learnt time management and the respective self-discipline before their bachelor thesis. Given the extent of the issues described in the question, this is probably still a problem deserving professional help or similar, but it need not be new.

That is actually the conclusion that me and my colleagues came to.

"If she made through university to her bachelor thesis, and cannot get any work done on it, then the problem is very likely not academic but elsewhere." - I doubt the validity of this assumption. What @Wrzlprmft said might apply, but even otherwise, curricula often intentionally feature several times the same type of courses/milestones. Like this, students who may be lucky once and somehow manage to talk themselves out of failing despite not quite living up to the expectations will have a hard time to avoid failing like this several times during their major.

There is a lot of great advice here.  I just want to point one thing out, which will help when considered and applied with the other strategies.
You spent a lot of time in this question defending yourself and your performance.  You, or at least part of you, feels that her failure is your failure, and you're trying to convince yourself that this is not the case.
It is a fact--that is, it is accurate that her failure is not your failure.  You did not, in any way, fail to do everything a reasonable person would have done.  However, you do not yet believe this (or at least you did not at the time you were writing the question).  The answers here should help you, as anyone who is an objective observer, looking at this evidence, can tell that the student failed herself, 100%, no question.
But you have something to learn here, too, which is:
Do not internalize the failures of your students.
You seem to care a great deal, and there is nothing wrong with that--in fact it is a very positive quality in a supervisor.  But it is going to degrade your performance if you consider it a personal failure every time someone who is under your supervision fails.  It is not good for the other people that you supervise, it is not good for the people you work with, and it is not good for you.
That's all--I just wanted to bring out that point because it's something you (or anyone else in the same situation) might be missing about yourself, and it's something you can ponder and learn to recognize and hopefully overcome (or at least strengthen your defenses against) over time.

Your experience is not at all uncommon. I have had similar experiences with graduate students at my institution.  At first I "felt bad" about giving a bad/failing grade to a student or not granting extensions, but over time, I have learned not to let my personal feelings get in the way.
I sympathize with your concerns:

Yes, it is frustrating when you care more about your
student's progress/success more than he/she does
Yes, it is easy to believe that the student's failure reflects your own failure as an educator, especially if you have counseled the student multiple times with no results...
Yes, "things do come up," and you should be flexible given extenuating circumstances
Yes, it is difficult to refuse extensions to the student, because we are socially conditioned not to hurt people's feelings or be a "mean" person

BUT

At university, the student is an adult, and you cannot "force" them
to do the work
At some point, the student needs to learn to take responsibility for
their own work and respect deadlines.  They need to develop this kind
of maturity to be successful in the real world, and by being too
nice, you may actually be doing the student a disservice
From your account, the circumstance did not seem extenuating.  You
counseled the student multiple times and she blew you off until the
last minute
It is not fair to the other students who are, no doubt, just as busy
as that student but still managed to get their work in on time
You, as an educator, have a personal responsibility to ensure that
people who pass your class/capstone requirements/thesis have
fulfilled the requirements to pass, be it all the course assignments
or the thesis.  Not only would the student have to "turn in
something," the quality that something has to be up to standards.  If
the student is unleashed on the real world with zero skills and zero
knowledge, it reflects badly on the program and may affect the
employment prospects of other students that come out of the program.  If the person has to stay an extra semester, so be it.

Now to answer your question:

Now I am struggling with these three options:

Wait for two days, and if she doesn't give me an exact delivery date (which she probably won't), just give her a fail grade.

Give her an extension for ten days or two weeks, and then grade her based on what she delivers eventually, which most probably is a fail  grade anyhow.

Give her a longer extension, long enough for her to pass the thesis.

I vote for Option A (wait for two days, and if nothing then fail).  Again, the student is an adult, and it is not your place to hound this person for her work. You are investing too much time in someone who cares less about her own progress than you do, and the end result can be disappointing.  For example, early in my doctoral program, when I was still "nice," I had a student who kept on making up "legitimate" excuses for not turning in his mid-term exam on time ("I was doing HIV testing at X Festival this weekend," "I overbooked myself with Z").  I e-mailed him several times asking him to turn in his exam, and when he finally sent me his exam ~2 weeks after the due date, the accompanying e-mail read,

Haha Sorry!
Just being honest: I'm sitting in a house that I'm renting on the
beach in ________, Mexico right now... It's difficult for me to
concentrate!!!!

Granted, your student may not be sitting on a beach house in Mexico, but my point is that your emotional investment may not be worth the reward.
This is just the first of many experiences you will have with students.  It is important to be able to emotionally detach when the situation calls for it to avoid burnout.  There are a couple of ways to remedy this for the future:

Set a strict deadline and deduce points for late work except for extenuating circumstances.  In grad school, I had a prof who took off 10 points for every hour the assignment was turned in late starting at 10 minutes past the hour. He announced his policy the first day of class.  I also worked for someone who made it a policy that the highest grade she would give for late assignments was 80%.  The latter is a bit tricky, because if you set the maximum grade too low, you might trigger a "what's the point" reaction, so tread carefully.
If you allow extensions, have a clear extension policy that can be applied universally.  I understand that sometimes students are embarrassed or shy to ask for extensions, but if you go over the policy you have written on the syllabus in the beginning of class, and encourage open channels of communication, this may save you frustration in the end.
If it is possible to break the huge assignment down to small deliverables at regular intervals, this may add some structure to the process, and the multiple deadlines may create a sense of urgency among the students. For example, ask them for an outline by the second week of the semester so that you can give feedback in a low-pressure environment regarding the viability of their research endeavor.  Then ask for an intro section 1 month after that, methods 3 weeks after, etc. You can also catch students who are lagging behind before they get too far behind.

I am sure the three suggestions I provided above, which I copped from former profs, were all developed as a result of the profs' having faced similar situations during their doctoral training.
EDIT: One other possibility is that the student may have ADD or a learning disability.  Maybe you can talk to her about undergoing tests for ADD and other disabilities, which may be covered by student health insurance.

You are obviously a caring educator.  I tip my hat to you.
When I was an academic advisor, I used to remind my students of something very important.  It is up to the student to complete the assigned work in a manner that fulfills the instructor's requirements - all while meeting the posted deadline.  The instructor only fails the student if she or he does not fulfill their end of the student/instructor agreement.
A student earns their grade.  Please allow me to repeat that.  A student EARNS their grade.  A grade is not (hopefully) arbitrarily assigned by the instructor.  A student who completes work as assigned, before the posted deadline, and with few to no errors will earn a passing grade.  It's a simple concept.  A student who ignores deadlines and submits an assignment that is riddled with errors cannot reasonably expect to pass.  That student has not earned a passing grade.
As long as you are living up to your end of the student/instructor agreement, you are not failing the student.  In this case, the student is on her way to earning a failing grade.

I would be glad if anyone can give me some recommendations on how to deal
  with this situation.

It is clear that you have done the right things and the advice you got from others is mostly correct. An important thing to learn is how to deal with this in the future. I would be more proactive than requiring that "all students are supposed to hand in their time plan within two weeks of their work".
In my experience even graduate students do not necessarily have good time management skills, although some do. I prefer to err the other way: give them a time plan, and make it aggressive: 1/2 the semester length. After all the inevitable excuses and delays, my class still finishes its projects before the others. I never tell them this is the real reason for having an advanced time plan - just that that's the way it is!

Like everyone else, I would say that you should give her a failing grade. Everyone else has expounded brilliantly on why you should as it relates to her performance and manipulation of your good intentions. I write this answer, not to reiterate what others have said but instead to offer one more piece of advice about why giving her the grade that she earned is the only appropriate course of action.

If you give her extensions, you have lied to every other student in your class about expectations and grading.

and therein you begin to erode the confidence of those who have worked hard and met your expectations.

In a similar situation when a student was asking me for an extension, I asked the student if he/she realizes that - if I do - then they're asking me to lie to every other student just so they can have more time. When I asked that student if they actually wanted me to lie to the rest of the class, he/she understood, and said 'no.'
In the end, it is a great disservice to those who have taken you at your word and trusted your educational authority. It is those students who have worked hard to meet your deadlines and expectations that will lose faith in you, your class, and the subject, if they see that the ones who don't take class seriously get more advantages than they do.
Good luck in decision making. Do the thing that is best for your whole class and know that what you do for one student, you have to do for all students.
Let us know how it goes!

Not where I've taught or gone to school. It wasn't unheard of, but a request needed a verifiable reason in order to make it authentic... especially for a final presentation.

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How to change to a part-time lecturer in the UK
Currently a full-time senior lecturer in a UK university (post-1992, lower middle-ranking if it matters).
I am thinking of going part-time (0.8 or even 0.6) due to physical or/and mental health. Not sure what I am asking here. Guess I am wondering how I may approach this, as I have never done this before. Nor do I know of any 40 male (no child) having such arrangement around me... Do I need to have "hard evidence" for this? I mean, it's not like I am taking advantage of the university or something... Physical health-wise, I had a successful operation years ago, It's not major at the moment (touch wood), but occasionally gives minor discomfort. Mental health wise, my therapist is happy to confirm for me.
I wonder how I may approach this?

thanks @quantum

I might suspect that conversion to part time because of a documented disability (physical and/or mental health) might be easier than just stepping back voluntarily. I read that is the approach you want to take. So, what are the disability policies at your institution? Going over to your benefits people and having a chat might be a start.

Thank you guys for your replies. Not sure where I can give my own update to my original post so I post here. I am only expecting pro rata salary.

All UK employees have a statutory right to request "flexible working", which includes part-time. Now, the employer doesn't have to grant your request, but it does have to go through a predefined procedure to make that decision, rather than it just being the informal snap decision of your Head of department/school, pro-vice chancellor or HR bod.
There is a specific form to fill in usually.
See the advice here: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/rights-at-work/flexible-working/flexible-working-what-is-it/
I'd start by approaching your head of department. Its probably worth knowing who your union rep is, although the union will usually only provide individual case work help if you've been in the union for at least 3 months when the problem with which you want help arose.

Thanks Ian. We usually have next year's workload planning in April. Would you say that's a good time to naturally bring up to the line manager (head of department)? And thanks for the union information, hope it won't come to this...

Sounds like a good plan.

Buffy explores options to reduce the workload at full pay. This will only work with medical reasoons and for a limited amount of time (it might be a long time though).
If you are considering a reduction in work time and pay this should be a lot more straight forward. Reducing your weekly hours to 80% or 60% and reducing pay in line is probably an option you can take just because you want to. Talk to  HR to inquire about the formalities, your dean probably has to give a formal signature but in general I would expect you can just choose to reduce your hours without having to give any justification.

Thanks. I hope it will be this straight forward... yes I am expecting a pro rata pay...

Talk to HR. Talk to a department head or dean. This is a local problem that you need to work out. Some places (not UK specific) will let you do such things with no salary adjustments for even an extended period. People have accidents. Employers, not just universities, expect to have to make adjustments for such things. They likely have an insurance program to cover the fact that you are effectively part time so that it is reasonable to avoid reductions in salary.
How much you need to reveal depends on local law and custom. Knowing your doctor will back you up if necessary is a plus.

I really would not start there in a UK university in 2022. Better have a conversation with the UCU representative first. Then you can approach your department/whoever with a clearer view of what the options are. (I am sorry to think this is now the case, but fear it is.)

@erstwhileeditor, maybe you should write it up as an answer, since it is UK specific and mine is not.

Note UCU = https://www.ucu.org.uk

Take this as an example (NOT my university!) https://www.ucu.org.uk/yourcontacts?action=view&branchcode=NE079&q=hull  Is Branch contact the UCU representative?

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How to choose very good journals in mathematics
I am a junior researcher working in Mathematics. My manuscript was accepted into the Journal of Statistical Physics, where I am the sole author. When I submitted the paper, I considered it a very good journal as some great mathematicians have papers on it. But now, I find out the journal is not Q1. Honestly, I feel so bad as I submitted my paper to such a journal. I thought the journal was better than the nonlinearity journal, where the journal is Q1, and my paper could have been published.
I don't want to make such a mistake again (i.e. I want to submit the paper in a good journal). What should I do? My policy was to look at where the grand machinations publish a paper and compare it with my documents, and then I submit the paper.
P.S. I have neither a good supervisor nor a mentor to ask questions.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/101/how-do-you-judge-the-quality-of-a-journal

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2158/how-to-identify-predatory-publishers-journals

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/83764/how-do-i-identify-predatory-and-low-quality-journals-with-bealls-list-gone-ho

I have never heard of Q1 outside of this website, and neither have any of my colleagues, many of whom have distinguished careers in math. If you want to be like them, you should forget about Q1 and focus on the (correct) heuristics you’ve already been applying, and on finding good mentors who can advise you on such matters.

As a learned person in the area, you should always make your own judgement whether a work is good.  Do not rely on ranking or some metric.  Even Q1 or top journals publish rubbish.

This really is not a shopping question. Adam isn't asking us to tell him what journal to publish in, but rather to tell him how he should judge for himself. It also is not really a duplicate of any of the linked questions, as the issue here is not about avoiding bad journals, but separating between the "good" and the "very good" ones.

@DanRomik however, there are some places where things like 'Q1' determine whether one has a career or not, and it is not mathematicians who determine these things.

@DanRomik, you should have heard it. It is the SCImago ranking of journals divided into 4 quartiles Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4. It makes sense. https://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?area=2600

@DavidRoberts can you name such places? (Not denying they exist, I’m just genuinely curious)

@DanRomik "things like" include IF rankings etc. I don't know any place that explicitly wants the SCImago rankings, but the faculty at the uni I just left wanted to be able to give a 'score' to people's papers, and I vaguely recall that things like quartiles were bandied around.

All great mathematicians have (basically by definition) written some great papers.  It doesn't follow that all of their papers are great.  Some of them might not bother to write up and publish their mediocre work (and some of them do), but almost all of them will still publish their merely good papers.  Those merely good papers end up in merely good journals.  Indeed, most great mathematicians are publishing more merely good papers than great papers.
If your paper is about the same quality as several merely good papers by great mathematicians in a given journal, then you made the right decision to publish in that journal.  If your paper is better than that, perhaps as good as the merely very good papers of some great mathematicians, then maybe you should have aimed higher.
Frankly, at the level your paper is at, it doesn't matter much.  If you could have made it to the top journal in mathematical physics (or some other appropriate subfield), or a decent general journal, that would make a difference, but I'm guessing you're not judging your paper as being good enough for that.  People in your subfield can read your work (or at least the introduction) and judge for themselves; people not in your subfield (like myself) will see both your choices as reputable but not great journals.  At a research university in the US, publications in journals like this will be thought of as contributing to your body of work, but generally not good enough to be the paper that gets you hired.
I am assuming you can generally tell the difference between great and merely good work (even if occasionally your judgement of a specific paper differs from that of everyone else).  If you can't, and you also don't have a mentor, you have bigger problems than figuring out where to submit your papers.

Thank you very much for your answer. You are saying that the Journal of Statistical Physics and nonlinearity journal are same level, right?

From my distance (which is pretty far away in mathematics), yes.

I am assuming that with "Q1" you refer to the Scimago rankings. These are rubbish for mathematics, and its best to ignore them unless forced into them by clueless administrators.
Your original strategy of seeing where people you highly respect publish is a good one. In addition, discussing with colleagues what journals they deem to have high standards gets you a clearer picture. Most people will perceive significant quality differences between journals they actually do publish in.

Thank you very much for your comment. Which one do you consider as a better journal, nonlinearity or Journal of Statistical Physics?

@Adam Not my part of mathematics.

For those wondering, the reason that the Scimago rankings are rubbish for mathematics is that they're based on "impact factors", which come from how many citations a paper gets within a limited time frame (a year or two, I think).  In this case, the time frame is entirely too small for most if not all mathematics fields. The time from submission to publication for math papers is routinely measured in months and can easily go over a year, and the typical time it takes researchers to synthesize the ideas to produce new results is also often measured in years.

@zibadawatimmy there are many other reasons why impact factors are a lousy way to measure actual impact. Which is why arguably the [whatever] rankings are equally rubbish outside of mathematics.

@DanRomik Well, yes, but the claim in the post was being rubbish specifically for mathematics, which has more particular issues than the general ones faced by impact factor approaches.  In mathy terms, the very assumptions of the theorem aren't met, and that's why we don't apply it; that the theorem's conclusions are also largely useless is perhaps interesting (and so useful!) but not formally the reason to not invoke it.  I guess how you feel about that depends on your perspective on proximate cause versus ultimate cause here, but that's my take anyway.

Yes, "Q1" is irrelevant for mathematics.  But, unfortunately, not for university-wide promotion committees.  In my career, the only time we considered impact factors was in preparing promotion cases to go beyond the department.  Experience showed that, if we did not include impact factors in the report, they would send it back to us and ask for them.

Rankings are a very good way of ranking a huge amount of data fast, using an average over many rankings.
Example:

If you have 1000 journals and you want to distinguish between top 50 journals and bottom 750-1000 journals, you can do this quite easily using an average of rankings.

The same with ranking universities. No matter which rankings you use, you will always see that MIT is one of the top ones, while "Kangaroo University" is at the bottom.

Rankings are not good if you want to distinguish between a medium-level journal and a slightly lower journal or if you want to know if the university in place 450 is better than a university in place 600, etc. They don't work in high resolution.
Conclusion: Using SciMago to distinguish between Q1 and Q2 journals is unreliable.

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Past or present tense, when reporting results?
There are several questions about tense use in paper writing. My question is specific to the results section. What tense should it be used when reporting the results of the paper itself?
"Two groups out of three had a higher incidence of..."
"Group A is taller than group B"
I guess both might work but I can't find any good rule to follow.

I find writing in different tenses in the same paper annoying (not sure why!).  I'd go with In our experiment, group A is taller than group B. But then most of my reporting is more mathematical and more likely to be true for all time.

Different fields have different standards for writing.  In mathematics, the "best" style is is present tense and imperative ("Do this, then do that"), though many mathematicians write in the first person plural and in the present tense ("We do this, then we do that").  I understand that historians tend to use the historical present tense ("The bread lines are long, and many people starve"), while chemists tend to the past tense in the passive voice ("The beaker was agitated").  I would try to determine the writing standards of your field, and conform to those.

There is one important difference between

Group A is taller than group B.

and

Group A was taller than group B.

When you write in the present tense, you claim that your finding is always true, in the sense of an eternal truth. There is nothing wrong with reporting results in the present tense if that is what you want to express. However, if some other paper reports results that contradict your findings such a general statement quickly becomes wrong.
So scientist usually are careful with what they say, and a statement in the past tense, if it reflects your observations, will always be true in the framework of your paper. Conflicting findings cannot possibly invalidate your statement in any way, because you simply reported how it actually was.
So there is basically no rule that you follow when writing in past tense, it is a decision you take about what you want to express.

The results section, as the name itself suggests, 'reports' the findings. Reporting should take place in the past tense in a passive voice. That would be the first sentence you quote.
Additional thoughts:
While the past tense clause is difficult to argue against, some may argue that active voice is easier to read and perhaps should be preferred. It may boil down to preference, and you may have your own, as long as you stay consistent within the section/article. Make sure it does not conflict with reporting, see the other answer on that.

But the finding are facts, and they "should" be true at all time. In my example group A will always be taller than group B, not just at the time of measurement.

@HermanToothrot, note that samples only give "evidence". They don't necessarily give the truth, and certainly not truth for all time  if humans are involved.

@HermanToothrot Well, don't forget we are always reporting what we measured, very infrequently would you be reporting static truths.

@Herman Toothrot  Are you sure neither group has acromegaly?  Even adults change height.

@HermanToothrot If you have a sample of some population, the past tense helps separate your, say, smokers, from smokers in general. "Smokers were 2 meters tall" carries an implied "in this sample"; "Smokers are 2 meters tall" sounds like an inappropriate generalization to everyone who smokes. I guess if you were writing about history you might introduce an ambiguity again, if you could be understood as "smokers in the 19th century", but that's not a circumstance I've come across in my own writing.

@BryanKrause sure but my question was supposed to be general. I should not have mentioned people. Maybe inanimate object. How about when discussing populations with static properties?

@Herman Even if you're talking about, say, the mass of a hydrogen atom, if you put some atoms on the scale and have a measurement, you're still reporting your measurements for a collection of hydrogen atoms. Someone else might decide your measure is the gold standard and start saying "the mass of hydrogen is..." but that's distinct from your own measurement of it.

You can use either (so long as it is clear when your findings were made)
Contrary to other answers here, I see nothing wrong with reporting results in the present tense.  When you read old newspapers from a century or two ago, and they write in the present tense, you don't take that to mean that the things in them are still true, and you don't consider it an error on the part of the writer if something they assert is no longer true --- "Even with the arrival of the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, the horse and buggy is still the favoured method of transfort for society ladies".
Any sensible reader of an academic paper understands that the assertions made relate to research conducted at that time and that assertions about the state of the world related to the time and place under consideration in the research.  In particular, when you refer to groups of research participants, it is understood that you are referring to a particular group of people as they existed at the time of the research.  (If this were not true, how would we ever report age data for such groups?)
I disagree with the other answer here asserting that writing in the present tense makes a claim that something is "eternally true".  That is simply ridiculous --- people make assertions in the present tense all the time, and they rarely intend these assertions to contain eternal truths.  To the contrary, any sensible reader will interpret writing in the present tense as meaning that the relevant facts are asserted to be correct at the time of the research (i.e., usually about a year or two prior to publication).
In terms of which tense is better, that is contextual, and you will need to use your best judgment as to what sounds clearer and more accurate.  Either tense should be legitimate so long as it is clear to the reader (often from context) when the findings were made.  Unless there is a good reason to the contrary, present tense will usually be interpreted as referring to the time at which the research was conducted.  Past tense is a bit trickier --- depending on context, it might be interpreted in this same way, or it might be interpreted as meaning that the asserted fact was true at some time prior to the research being conducted.  If you are using past tense, you should be careful to ensure that you are not implicitly suggesting a contemporaneous change in facts occuring at the time of the research --- e.g., saying "Group A was taller than group B" might suggest that they are no longer taller now.

Both are common. The present tense is more lively and it has one other advantage: It allows you to separate what you did from what previous authors have done. "The chemical reactions are divided into three groups, whereas Adam et al. (2021) divided them into two groups."
Unless an event definitely occurred in the past, such as "the comet impacted Jupiter", I always use the present tense: "The results show ...", "The values are calculated with ...".  The choice of tense should be uniform; unnecessarily switching between tenses would be confusing.


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Can a modification of an existing method be still named original resarch
I have found a method in Computer Sciences that I have modified to solve some subject related problems. Are those tweaks of existing methods still be considered as original research? Or is it just hacking and crafting of those methods?
I am asking because the criterion 'original' is quite important in Sciences. And also useful for writing grants and research proposals

Hard to say. It depends on what exactly you have done. The word "modification" could be used for both things that I'd consider "original" and things that I wouldn't. Also it probably makes sense to use "original" in a graded manner, i.e., what you have done could be a bit original but not that much, rather than binary "either something is original or not".

@ChristianHennig, that would be a pretty good answer.

@Buffy I don't think so, it doesn't really answer the question (it can also be interpreted as a request for more details;-).

Expanding on (i.e. stealing from) a comment of Christian Hennig, the answer is yes, it can be, but it may not be. It is a judgement call by those who evaluate your work, such as reviewers at a journal.
The fact that you use a modification of some technique (or even the original technique) to solve some "interesting", problem would be the key, not the technique itself, in most cases.
If I were reviewing, I'd look at whether your work provides some insight into a class of problems that can result in future advances. Perhaps you had an insight that a, possibly, minor change had a big effect. That might be important. The nature of the problem solved would be important, especially if it is a problem that has been seeking a solution for a while.
But a small delta resulting in a small epsilon probably wouldn't be very interesting and thus, not very "original".
So, to make your own evaluation, think about the insight it provides, and think about the problem it solves. Small things can add up to big results, but it isn't guaranteed. And, again noting Christian Hennig, it isn't a binary thing, but a range of possibilities requiring judgement to evaluate.


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Postdoctoral references asked to provide recommendation letters - does it indicate the candidate passed a screening?
I recently applied for a postdoctoral position at a university, and provided a list of three references. Today the university asked them to write a recommendation letter for me. Would this typically indicate that the candidate passed some screening?
I'm asking because this is the first university that replies and it would suggest that my cover letter is not terrible.

There's no typical answer.

That's not a good way of determining that your cover letter is not terrible. As a rule of thumb, your cover letter is not terrible if you (a) explain why you're the right person for the job; (b) don't make silly mistakes (grammar, typos, including the wrong name and citing false information about the PI/department).

While every university has its own processes it is likely that you passed at least some initial screening. But it might not be terribly significant. It might be nothing more than that the university wants to communicate directly with your references rather than some other way to obtain the letters.
If you get invited to an interview then it is much more likely that they find you "interesting". But at the moment, it probably just means that they put your application in a pile of folks not to be immediately rejected for reasons of obvious ill-fit. Good luck, but don't read too much in to it yet.


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The benefits of strong PhD dissertation referees in case of a 3 paper dissertation?
I have submitted a three paper PhD thesis.
At my university, there is no defense. Instead, four referees read, make a decision, and may ask for revisions, similar to a paper review process.
My supervisor has recruited three local referees and the remaining one needs to be international. He suggested the biggest professor in the field, an expert on the very specific dissertation topic.
Is there a benefit to having a big name refereeing my thesis?
These works have been reviewed by dozens of referees at over 10 international conferences, and the journals in which the papers were published are the best ones in my field. I'm worried that someone like that will be very opinionated and I wonder what there is to gain here.

The gain is to get accurate, specific feedback on the quality of the work.

Does your advisor know this superstar personally? If not, and the person turns out to be unnecessarily negative, can your advisor save you from failure?

#Buffy and #jon I'm not worried about failure but excessive work without benefit deep into my postdoc when I need to promote my career. Every work can be improved, even Nobel papers. Including conference proceedings each paper was reviewed by 10 referees each. My view is I don't need the best reviewer in the world unless there is something to gain. Is there any prestige associated with that? I'm not native and if a paper would have to go through 10 instead of 2-3 referees even some amazing papers would never get published.

You seem confident that your work is good. If so, one advantage of a 'big name' refereed is that they will be impressed and that can open up postdoc opportunities. It's not about prestige, but about networking.

Why do you think that stellar expert has time and willingness to nitpick on already-reviewed papers? In my experience, this does happen, but only if their "glory days" are long past. For an expert who does not "need to prove themselves" and is actively working, glancing over the entire thing and offering possibly-overlooked deep cut insights is far more common. That is valuable. You also are not obliged to agree with every critique they have, but having those insights - provided you can get them - is about the best you could wish for for this specific research.

Yes, there is the benefit that he will know you.
If your work is of "marginally better than acceptable" quality, or your answer to his remarks are spot-on, he may consider you for a PostDoc position that he urgently needs to fill because he did not yet open up to the world (since he is the big name in the field, form the moment he opens a position he has to evaluate tons of applications ... where tons may be just 20, but it is still more time than he has).
You can go to the top 5 conference next year and you can only dream of having more than 12 minutes of attention from the biggest name, and maybe to get a remark from him at the end of your talk (remark where he will subtly promote his work while barely touching yours), now you have the chance to have his attention and 2-3 iterations with him ... what else do you want from your PhD non-defense :D ?


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What do people understand by Masters in Chinese Studies
I'm keen to find out what people understand by a Masters in "Chinese Studies" Is it China Studies? I.e. is it a catch-all social sciences area studies? Is it language? Is it culture?
I ask because I am setting up a new Masters at the University St Andrews in "Chinese Cultural Studies". It's a novel concept since it focuses on the Chinese-speaking world as a whole and not just China, and it is not multidisciplinary since it focuses on a cultural studies approach.
But I just wonder how people would go about searching for a Masters like that on the Internet?

I'd look around at other universities. Various programs in Near Eastern Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Chinese Studies, ... Likely quite a mix of how they are constructed.

This could vary a lot between institutions and certainly from country to country.

But a search for a multidisciplinary program would probably include a lot of keywords, such as you have done here.


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Allegation of Academic Offence
I received an email from the university saying that the similarity report for my work identified that one of my answers shows a similarity to the answer within the script of a fellow student. They are asking to write a statement and explain what happened. Basically myself and my partner...we are studying the same thing and he copied one of my answers as he came from a night shift and he was very tired and he couldn’t think. Could you please advise what to answer.
He received the same email and he has to write a statement as well. What should he write?
Thank you for your answers and advice.

Probably honesty would be good. If you find yourself in a hole it is a bad idea to keep digging.

Your problem isn't that someone alleges you conducted academic misconduct, your problem is that you conducted academic misconduct.

With no more information to go on, it is possible that the OP was unaware of the copying rather than facilitating it.

Did you know your partner copied your work? Did you give permission? If you did not give permission, when did you find out? These things substantially change the situation you are in.

Well, you let him copy. What else can you say?
Bear in mind that lecturers hate hunting down plagiarism/collusion. In one course, hunting the offences and collecting proof cost me more time than marking all submissions (and these were a lot).
You just created a bunch of pointless extra work for them. Don't increase it, you have already been caught. This is not a court lawyer cat and mouse game. You are not going to get out of it free by technical tricks and it's insulting to your lecturer's intelligence to try, trust me on that.
Put the cards on the table and promise with contriteness never to do it again (and, of course, adhere to this). That's your best bet.

Please, please, please follow this advice. We are just going through a pile of plagerism/collusion cases. There has to be consequences for cheating, but we understand that in very few cases will mallice be involved, and we want to help the students out best we can, particularly this year when everyone is going through a lot. But if the student flat out denies any wrong doing, all we can do is pass it up the chain to the a more official hearing, and the outcome/punishment is then out of our hands.

I don't think it is obvious from what the OP writes that they  permitted or facilitated the copying. That may be the case of course.

@Buffy OP was careful not to say it, but they gave a "reason" for their fellow student to copy, so I felt it was implied. Otherwise, OP probably would have been more indignant that they would be punished for an offense they had no part in.

I agree that it is ambiguous. And your solution is correct if the OP did, in fact, do the deed.

I have a slightly different answer from that of Captain Emacs:
How you should respond to this depends on a few factors:

Did you encourage him to copy your answer?
Did you know he copied your answer before he did it?
If not, when did you find out? Before or after submission?
Is he happy to be honest about what occurred?

If you actively told him to copy you, the jigs up, fess up, apologise, move on and learn your lesson.
If you knew he copied your answer but you didn't give him express permission, then it's a slightly more grey area. Arguably, you should have reported this to the prof but most reasonable academics would consider this a lesser offence than actively encouraging it. So again, make sure you press this home but only if it's true.
If you didn't find out he copied until you got the academic misconduct email, then you've done nothing wrong. This actually happened to me a couple of years ago, someone I'd never met had found the code for my coursework on my self-hosted GitLab instance (I've improved the security since then) and copied it wholesale. At this point, make it very clear that you didn't condone the cheating and were unaware of it. You should fight the charge tooth and nail.
Given that you say you work together regularly, you're likely of similar academic ability. So the chances of this defence succeeding largely revolve on whether your friend is willing to own up to copying it without permission. Whereas if you were of wildly different abilities, the prof could almost certainly tell whose work it was.
Overall, just be honest with your prof. Lay out exactly what happened, any mitigating circumstances you think might apply and promise to make sure it won't happen again. Even if you don't think it's your fault, promise to secure your work better in the future.
Take this as a learning experience and try not to get too down over it, stuff happens, we all make mistakes and as long as you're honest this isn't going to follow you forever, once it's been dealt with, that'll be the end of it.

I think this is the proper analysis, given what the OP has said.


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Advice on pursuing higher education after working for 7 years
I completed bachelors in Mechanical engineering in 2013 and have been working since Jan 2014. My current job as a 'manufacturing engineer' is a non-technical back office job (because I'm from India where my bachelors does not really mean what it's titled) where many MNCs set-up their back offices.
I just wanted to start earning when I finished studying and hence did not bother much about higher education. Now, after working for 7 years, I've started to think about pursuing higher education in the field of engineering, with my specific interest being Robotics.
I do not have any experience pertaining to the field of Robotics. But I've started studying math diligently in-order to prepare myself for the knowledge that I'm aiming to acquire to be able to get myself into that field.
I want to study MS Robotics from a good university (and do a PhD after that), possibly a US based one. To do that, I'd require letters of recommendation from either my professors or someone of repute whom I work with in that field (Robotics in my case). It's been 7 years since I've finished my bachelors and since I'm working an a field that has nothing to do with Robotics, the chances of me getting a LoR form someone relevant is non-existent.
I do not know how to pursue my target of getting into a decent university for Robotics (but I'm doing self study regardless). It would be of great help if someone can give me some practical piece of advice on how I may go further in that path.

Are you within easy travel distance of a good university? I suspect so, from your profile.

@Buffy In the USA? No. I'm from India.

Yes, I meant Karnataka.

@Buffy Yes. There's the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore which is a premier institute in India.

Let me suggest that you make an appointment to visit the head of department at some "interesting" department at the university. Ask for a meeting to discuss your future briefly.
In the meeting ask to be put in touch with a professor or two, preferably in robotics, preferably educated outside India, so that they have some foreign experience.
Then work with them on a plan to get you started. It may be that the institute itself is your best option. But they might have some suggestions about things you can do to build a portfolio, leading to your goals. You might even have skills that could benefit a professor there as a way to get started.
But if you can build a portfolio that would get you admitted to a good Indian institute, it would probably also work in US. People there can advise you on that.
Note, however, that if you want to study for a masters in US that they are almost always unfunded. And living here, in some places, is very expensive. Doctorates, on the other hand, are usually funded through appointment as a TA (or RA).

Sorry if this has a bit of US bias where professors and department heads would be likely to talk to you - briefly. I suspect that India is also a bit "informal" about such things, but don't know that. Personality matters in such things, of course, and some will be more helpful than others.
Good luck.

Sounds like a plan. Let me do that.

Definitely worth a try, but it is very less likely that anyone will probably give you time. Most professors in India are not so tolerant, as far as my knowledge goes. It will be better if, in your first email, you simply ask for advice in the email itself rather than requesting an appointment. Most of the time, you won't even get a reply to the email. Also mention why you specifically seek that person's advice and why that is important to you.


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Faculty member plagiarized my work. What do I do?
When applying for a postdoc, I submitted writing samples from my dissertation. After I was accepted, I added to the institution's library a number of texts that I cited in my research. (This was a small library in the research center that was started by the postdocs, containing no more than a few dozen books.) I developed some of the ideas from my dissertation and workshopped a paper on related matters with faculty members in the research cluster. I published that paper and acknowledged funding and input on earlier drafts. A couple years later a professor who supervised me, who never worked on related matters before, published a book in exactly my area, citing books I added to the library, utilizing original concepts and analytics from the paper I workshopped and published. The book does not acknowledge me or reference my work. I have an email trail showing the sharing of these ideas and documents. What should I do?

Does the person still have any authority over you?

citing books I added to the library --- I don't understand how this is relevant. When going to the library to look for books on a certain topic, books that I might later decide to cite, it has never occurred to me that I should investigate who was responsible for obtaining the books (if in fact it was a non-library staff who suggested their purchase or donated them) in order to acknowledge them. And even if I tried, I suspect that in over 99.9% of the cases (probably higher), no one on the library staff would know. And what about books obtained by interlibrary loan?

This does not sound like plagiarism. It sounds the faculty member may have scooped you (https://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=scooped). Although less than honorable,  it would be hard if not impossible for you to do anything about this other than learn for the future about keeping your ideas close to you.

Hi and welcome to Academia SE. It seems you accidentally created a duplicate account. Please refer to the help center to merge your accounts and regain ownership of the question and reply to the comments on your post. For this moment, I edited the post and added the information.

Hi @DaveLRenfro. To clarify, I edited my post to add that this was a small library in the research center that was started by the postdocs, containing no more than a few dozen books.

@RichardErickson Plagiarism includes presenting information already written by someone else as new and original. It does not need to be verbatim. Even if it was not already published, things this close should have a personal communication citation. But this is published research.

@PostdocinFearofRetaliation The size of the library is not really relevant; if someone used those books, they have to cite them. Citing those books is not plagiarism of you. I think the commenters (and this would also apply to me) are hesitant to recommend steps for you to take if it is unclear whether what occurred was actually plagiarism, because the text of your question suggests you may not have a good handle on it. These are serious accusations, and making serious accusations that are not founded can really blow back on you. I'm also unclear why "writing samples" are relevant.

Is there a reason you don't want to speak to the professor directly?

Did he publish a research handbook (for frontier researchers) or a textbook for students?

The only thing I see here that might be plagiarism is if the resulting work used "analytics" from your paper without citation and that would depend on the author having known of it and not just developed them independently.
There is, of course, the issue that you "workshopped" the ideas at the institution, but don't indicate this author was part of that. I don't have a way to know if your ideas moved somehow to this person or if they were independently developed. Either is possible. It is also possible that they got disassociated from your name on a path, making it hard to claim that they used "your" ideas without attribution.
But, publishing a book in "your area" isn't plagiarism. Using books/papers you put in a library isn't plagiarism.
As stated, I think you have a very weak case, if any at all. Sorry, but independent development happens frequently in scholarly research. If you left breadcrumbs that could be followed but left no way for them to know the source then you really have no recourse.


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What to do when finding fake authorship in duplicate publication
I recently found a case of duplicate publishing and at the same time conflict of interests. Here is the case:
Someone sent a paper (in Persian) as the sole author in a scientific Persian journal. Submission date is Jan 1, 2020 and acceptance date is Aug 8, 2020. Based on the author academic background it is related to her academic career. She was being employed in a highly competitive university during the submission time.
She seemingly adds the faculty dean as the first and corresponding author and re-submits the same paper (now translated into English) to a WoS journal. Comparing the two papers, subject and abstracts are word-by-word the same, and the article body is almost (over 80%) the same (the difference comes from the formats and limitations of the journals). No kind of reference to the first Persian version is specified. The second paper submission date is not specified in the published version but if the first review appeared 2 months after submission, it should be March 2020, because the first review date is 2020/05/24 (according to review log).
I have two questions:

What should be done in case the first Persian paper was proved to be submitted sooner than the English one?
Can this be considered a case of conflict of interest?

PS All scientific Iranian journals accepting original researches require that the work should not be submitted or printed anywhere else.
UPDATE: Persian journal removed the sole-author paper without any notice about retraction or something. Still traces of the Persian paper is available on paper search platforms. What to do?
UPDATE2: Persian journal links was broken because of the system upgrade. The paper is still up and accessible.

Could you clarify if both papers are in English or if one is a translation of the other?

The first paper was Persian, the second translated into English.

I've made minimal edits to clarify this information; I hope you don't mind; change it back if you do.

This seems pretty similar to https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/176606/changing-authors-after-a-paper-is-published (probably a continuation of the same story)

Unfortunately yes, same faculty, but different persons.

This seems less like a case of fake authorship than it is a case of duplicate submission and/or plagiarism. You contact the journals and let them handle it. You mention that you can see the "review log" for one of the papers, which suggests you work at that publisher; if that is the case you still contact the other journal and work out a coordinated response. Warning: this is a delicate situation so if you are a junior employee you want to talk to your supervisors before proceeding.

You can contact both journals, of course. Let the editors work out whether there was any deception or improper behavior.
Beyond contacting the editors there isn't much you can, or should, do.

No reference in either version to the other version. I believe the added author (and faculty dean) does not even know that the original author published the work before.

Why do you believe that?

Because 1) the dean fired a professor for the sake of duplicate publication in the same year. 2) sooner or later either Persian or English journal would probably retract the paper and this is a bad case his resume.

If you are in mathematics, you should also contact MathSciNet, which indexes and publishes short post-publication reviews of papers.  I don't believe similar services exist in other fields.


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Paper is lying in findings
Basically, in this IEEE paper, the writer states an equation that he has developed and consequently plots a graph to validate such an equation. The equation is a model of a wireless system.
At first, I didn't give it much thought, but then I notice something wrong. I started plotting some of his equations and they don't match what he plots. It seems as if he has used the plots to trick people, cause there are many inaccuracies in the paper.
My question is, how can it have been published? Should I contact the author?

And how do you know they are lying instead of just sloppy?

What steps have you taken to check your analysis of the plots and equations to ensure that it is not you who is making a mistake?

Well, I always tell all my students, do not believe everything authors said in their papers.   I've read many papers that are just rubbish with unrealistic assumptions or parameter values that ensure their system works.  In most cases, I would say that it is due to incompetent authors.  Many authors are students, and hence, it is quite likely they the theory wrong.  Also, do not expect their supervisors to check their work carefully.

In my experience, when there is a situation like this, in which a low level student thinks they have found a fatal flaw in the analysis of a peer-reviewed technical paper, 95+% of the time the student has just made a mistake in their own analysis.  If the student instantly believes the author of the paper is lying, without making inquiries about the substance of the analysis, I would bump that probability up to 98+%.  If the student makes a clear spelling/grammatical error in their description of the issue, bump that probability up a bit more.
Now, perhaps you're one of the small number of cases where the student is correct and the paper is actually fatally flawed.  Perhaps this case is even in the extraordinarily rare class of cases where there is a deliberate misrepresentation in the paper by the author, as opposed to an unintentional error.  I'm going to play the odds and suggest that you should proceed with caution, making absolutely sure you are correct before you make any contact with the author or the journal.  Start from a position where you do not assume malice, and show your work to an academic at your school to see if they understand the analysis any differently to you.  If you find that some other skilled person agrees with you then you can write to the author (politely) to inquire into the difference between your own results and the material in the paper.
It is possible to get to a point where it is reasonable to infer an erroneous result in the paper due to deliberate malice by the author.  However, that is something that should happen at the end of a long line of sober inquiry and consideration of all possibilities.

"Lying" is a very, very strong accusation. Maybe there are some details that you missed? Maybe the description just isn't complete? There are many possibilities here, and you cannot prematurely assume malicious intent. Of course you can contact the author, but you should state how you tried to reproduce the result and politely ask for clarification instead of jumping to accusations. If it turns out you're wrong, you will otherwise look very bad.

Contacting the author seems like a polite thing to do first. It may give them a chance to clarify that perhaps there's an implementation difference, or there are some steps that were omitted from the paper write-up for clarity, etc.

Well maybe --- it is not the polite thing to do if he contacts him to immediately accuse him of lying.

Use PubPeer, find the paper (e.g. by using its DOI), and add your claims there.
PubPeer is specifically designed for such kinds of 'post-publication reviews'.
To be on the safe side, you could keep your comments confined to factual observations, without inferring motives (e.g. "lying").


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Changing authors after a paper is published
A published article in an Elsevier journal has 5 authors (the first one is also corresponding author). A corrigendum appeared in the next issue, telling that the authors regret to forget to mention a second corresponding author for their paper (who is by chance a parliament member), resulting in the number and order of the authors (6 authors now). This corrigendum was also published in the next issue.
I believe this process is highly prone to corruption. When an article is published, what is the excuse to add another author, let alone a second corresponding author. A new author can be mentioned by editor or reviewers to the original author (once they are aware of his or her identity). When journals have blind peer reviews, after a paper is published, the reviewer is aware of the author and can simply ask him to add s/he or his/her colleagues as the author of a published work. Can someone put light on this please?
Just for further reference, I asked this from the journal manager at Elsevier and he answered me:

Please be informed that the correction to a published article will be
accepted when there is a request from the corresponding author. When a
corrigendum is published it is generally sent for the editor approval.
The article will be processed only after the handling editor approval.

So, as I understood there is no kind of corruption prevention process here. Everything is in the hand of the editor.

Why would the author agree with this?

Original author is a colleague of the added author in the university.

No it doesn't. The case is specially more interesting knowing that the added author is a parliament member.

None of the editorial board of the journal look to be closely affiliated with the country or universities of the authors. Nor is Elsevier (the publisher) associated with that country. I'd think it's more likely that the original authors or their institutition were pressured to make the change, rather than the reviewers or editors forcing it on them.

This is certainly an unusual situation, and as an editor, I would want to have a very serious conversation with the authors about what specifically happened there. One does not "forget" to put someone on as an author. There is a serious ethical lapse that must have happened there.
What specifically that ethical lapse was is something we will probably never know and could only speculate. One might think that someone complained that they should have been an author but wasn't (to the journal, to the university, to the publisher) and that that led to the corrigendum. But we don't know.
Regardless, your specific question is whether this suggests a path to corruption by way of reviewers suggesting other authors. But I don't see how that would work. It is not clear why authors would agree to this, nor why editors would. It is true that authors are often at the mercy of editors, and corrupt editors can impose unethical things on authors (and, I am sure, have done so many times). But at least for the top end of journals, editors also represent the best people in a community and are respected leaders of a field; they have ethical obligations to their community and take those serious. It would be a pretty good way to ruin your reputation in a community to force authors to agree to add names to a paper.

Thanks for your informative answer. The case of reviewers/editors can be so: you as accept my paper as a review, and after publication send me your request to add your fried (for example) as a second or third author. This is a risk for you to mention this and for at the same time to me to reject this, which can cause my later papers being rejected.

@Ali It would be far, far simpler to do this before publication - doing it after publication is going to attract a lot more attention. I don't doubt such things have happened, but it's a pretty risky thing to do if it comes out.

Indeed. I don't see what is special about doing it after publication as opposed to before, possibly as a condition for recommending publication. In any case, any decent person in the editor role will say that this is unethical and oppose it.


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What do you think of scientific editors for different publishing houses as a career path after a STEM PhD? Is it a rewarding career path?
After PhD and/or postdoc, one usually have three directions to go to. One leads to a tenure track position, other industry related to the field or third where one changes the field completely. However, recently, I came across other jobs that require PhDs, and specific fields but is not typical industrial position.
Scientific editor seems to be one such position. I have seen openings for this position on the Springer, Elsevier, Wiley career sites. How is it as a career path? Is it a rewarding career? By rewarding, I am referring to both intellectually and financially.
Please share your thoughts.
I understand there are ethical concerns considering working with scientific publishing houses. But, as a person who would like to have a decent job just to pay her rent and loans, I am really interested to know about the experience when working at these positions after PhD. The posts that are recommended for this question fails to address this aspect and talk more about the ethical concerns regarding working there.

Does this answer your question? https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/46402/career-options-in-scientific-academic-publishing-for-phds-and-postdocs and https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/137410/what-should-one-consider-when-pondering-a-career-as-a-scientific-editor

Does this answer your question? Career options in scientific/academic publishing for PhDs and Postdocs

I don't understand your edit. There is a link to a description of a typical day in one of the answers to the linked question. What else do you want to know?

@Allure That post is about a role of an editor without a PhD or postdoc. I was expecting an answer from a perspective of someone who has been working in the academic career as a PhD/postdoc but had decided to shift to academic publishing.

I.e. you want to know what a day in the life of an acquisition editor is like?

"I understand there are ethical concerns considering working with scientific publishing houses."
No, there are no absolute ethical concerns. You have ethical concerns, and thanks God/Allah/Budda/Thor you are free to have ethical concerns about everything you feel like. If it is a problem to you, how can anedoctal experiences improve your views on that?