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ChemRxiv vs. arXiv acceptance
Both ChemRxiv (https://chemrxiv.org/) as well as arXiv (https://arxiv.org/) are services for publishing preprints.
arXiv focusses on physics, mathematics, computer science (CS) and some more topics. From the questions and answers in this discussion forum, I got the impression that publishing a preprint on arXiv at least in some disciplines is rather common as an accepted way to have your work published.
In contrast, in a chemistry context, it seems that publishing preprints is far less common, and I as a chemist only know of ChemRxiv because I wondered myself if a preprint service exists for chemistry related research. At the institutions I have worked so far, this was never considered at all. Only peer reviewed publications count.
Provided that my impressions are correct: Why is there such a relatively low acceptance for preprints in chemistry as compared to other disciplines? Or the other way around: Why do some disciplines value preprints higher than others? Especially in CS related questions, it seemed to me that arXiv is suggested rather frequently. Are preprints in other disciplines really helpful for the publication record?

Clarifying note: this addresses the main thrust of question regarding preprints: even in preprint-happy disciplines, preprints are not a replacement for peer-review.
It's really just cultural, and in twenty years this will likely look like a silly question to a newer generation of researchers.
The preprint movement happened to start in physics, which may have been predisposed to it due to the use of TeX and the long lead-times of much work in both theoretical and experimental physics. The arXiv merely formalized this practice, then helped enable it to spread to other closely culturally related fields---particularly the more theoretical portions of those fields.
The next big cultural leap was bioRxiv, moving into the field of biology. The barriers to starting there were, once again, facilitated by cross-disciplinary linkages, this time with the more mathematical bioinformatics sorts of researchers, who had gained experience and comfort with preprint publishing on arXiv.  For the past few years, bioRxiv has been growing explosively and as the community is embracing it, so are the journals, creating a feedback loop of growth.
With these two examples now so successful and the pressure for open science continuing to build, there is now a mass radiation of attempts at the same model for other fields, not just ChemRxiv, but also PsyArXiv, SocArXiv, EarthArXiv, engrXiv, etc.  Between this ongoing explosion and other preprint models, it seems likely that preprint acceptance and availability will continue to grow rapidly throughout most of the scientific community.
In short: the difference in attitudes about preprints between physics and chemistry is a transient state that exists right now because chemists currently happen to be in the middle of a cultural transition that physics went through a couple of decades ago.

There is definitely a lot of truth in this answer. I thought about publishing a preprint of a manuscript I am about to submit to a journal soon, but I have to gather some courage to do so. I just do not feel comfotable about the preprint idea (yet) because it contradicts the publication concepts I was educated with.

@Alexander I have much the same conversations with colleagues in biology still, even as bioRxiv has shifted from unknown to common in conversations.  But there is still a great fear (slowly being overcome by shifting attitudes and accumulating evidence) that journals or peer reviewers may consider a preprint to be a "self-scoop" rendering work unpublishable.  On the other hand, I never even considered the possibility of being "scooped" in my computer science work, due to the difference in publication culture there.

+1 ...though it is unsettling it took DECADES in other scientific fields in comparison to physics. Culture may be the reason, but it is no good argument at all...

This answer makes it sound like preprints started with TeX and the internet. Reality is that, at least in math, preprints were a thing decades earlier. It was just common practice that, as your work was doing the rounds of back-and-forth snail-mail refereering and printing, departments and institutes would publish the work locally.

The main problem is that your impressions seem to be incorrect. (At least from my maths perspective) Putting a preprint on arxiv is just that, namely putting up a preprint. Almost everything put on arxiv will be sent of to a peer reviewed venue as well, usually at the same time (there are exceptions, e.g. when people put up non-articles such as lecture notes for posterity). It is useful to make a result widely available and in cases even to establish priority, but it is not "proper" publishing and generally is not accepted as such. It is just a way to put the result out there right now instead of waiting until it is published (which in cases can take years).
In a way this approach is an attempt to please both sides. The bean-counters and bureaucrats who care about numerical "publication record" generally ignore arxiv and look at peer reviewed stuff only. But the actual peers reading your papers care more about the content than about the venue it is published in. (Though they still will cite the published version if available)
Also keep in mind that people can only cite what they actually know about. And in some disciplines, the use of arxiv is so prevalent that it also functions as a unified source. Since every preprint is on there anyway, many people only check the new releases on arxiv, so not releasing a preprint is not an option anymore.

+1 Arxiv is not "an accepted way to have your work published".

Thank you, your clarifications were necessary. You also touch a bit why preprints are relevant at all. Although I tend to like the idea of preprints, I still have to digest the available information a bit to come to a rational conclusion. So far I could think of many valid arguments making preprints unnecessary. But that is stuff for another question.

Well, there ARE peer-reviewed journals that are based on arxiv: https://www.nature.com/news/leading-mathematician-launches-arxiv-overlay-journal-1.18351
So that the arxiv-version IS the published and peer-reviewed version.

This does not answer the question.

In short, preprints are newer in chemistry due to historical roadblocks.
Many chemists (including myself) have put preprints on arXiv for years - although mostly in the theoretical or physical chemistry subdisciplines.
ChemRxiv is a new development, starting only in August 2017, mostly because chemistry journals, particularly including American Chemical Society journals would consider pre-prints as "prior publication" during submission and would therefore reject such manuscripts outright.
There were several previous attempts to have pre-prints in chemistry, but when ChemRxiv was launched with the backing of the ACS, other leading world-wide chemical societies, and "buy-in" from top journals, it started to gain traction. In 2018, J. Amer. Chem. Soc. (JACS) also started accepting preprints - coming from one of the few remaining holdouts - was another strong signal of acceptance.
I find some colleagues still reluctant to submit, for fear of being "scooped" between a preprint appearing and the final manuscript acceptance.
However, I will almost always submit a preprint as the manuscript is submitted:

It indicates priority - sometimes the review process is long and the preprint will be available for others to read and cite.
I can cite the preprint in grant applications or project reports, since a DOI is assigned when published. Several grant reviewers have appreciated this.
It offers a centralized "open access" version for manuscripts.
I can discuss the work online and gain interest in the paper. I often receive comments outside the review process. (Indeed, I have found the preprint gets more useful comments than most reviews.)

Answer is spot on. For a longer discussion on this, I've published a comment on that topic which may be of interest to the OP


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How to formally address two individuals with different titles for PhD cover letter
I am in the process of writing a cover letter for a PhD application. The two supervisors of the project are part of my faculty (where I am doing a postgraduate degree), and I have previously been in touch with them through an interview and because one of them taught me some classes last year. I would surely want to address the letter to their names, I am whoever doubting how to officially address them since the first supervisor has a title of professor and the second supervisor has a title of doctor. Maybe having this kind of issue seems exaggerated to some, but I do not know whether to make a distinction in their titles in my letter. I am studying in the UK now, but I previously studied in the Netherlands and getting the right title was always a big issue. To those who might know within the context, can I simply address them both as Dr. to avoid the whole feeling of pointing out their different levels in the letter?

Where is this? Still the UK? It might be different in Germany or a few other places with similar traditions.

Yes, still in the UK, I am applying to the same university where I am studying at the moment

In all likelihood, nobody will pay much attention to this. But if anyone is going to take offence, I think it is much more likely they will be upset if you haven't given them the correct title than because you're "drawing attention to their different levels". So I would address my letter "Dear Prof. X and Dr Y".

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Applying ABD: mentioning defense date and thesis committee, but still waiting on a publication
The job description (UK) says I need a doctorate.
I have a paper under review that I think has a 90% chance of acceptance based on the reviews.
If my paper is accepted, I'll be able to graduate before the start date.
If it's not, I may have to withdraw my candidacy (this would be before the interview date).
I want to form my thesis committee and set a date for the defense to reassure them, in my application, that I will be graduating before the start date.  On the other hand, there's still something like a 10% chance that I might not be able to, although I suspect I might be allowed to graduate without this publication if I had the job offer in hand and it was all that was holding me back.
(How) can I get what I want here without burning any bridges?

Get what?       Comment is minimum length.

You call them (the job guys) and tell them your situation and ask. Rarely does "something is written in some rules) (like the doctorate here) really somehing unmoveable. (But this depends on your location, so please add a location tag.)

@AnonymousPhysicist: I want to form a committee and set a date for my defense, despite my adviser having said that I need this article to be published in order to graduate.  And I want to ensure that in the unlikely event that I can't graduate in time, I'll be able to exit the application process gracefully (e.g. so that I could reapply at a later date).

So you have two different questions.  Please only have one question per post.  I suggest not worrying too much about a job you have not been offered.

Apply for the job and if you get an offer, you can easily negotiate a later start date. This is common (at least in my field).

I agree with @astronat - most folks who hire fresh PhDs understand that dates are, well, highly subject to change. It is just the nature of those last few months of scramble. I, personally, had a ~3 month delay to the start of my post-doc because things did not go as smoothly as I had optimistically suspected. And the institute completely understood, as I have for all my post-doc hires.

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


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Sending official transcript with mistakes
I have been admitted to a Ph.D. program in the US recently. I have to send my official academic transcript. The university issued me a transcript that has a number of courses with no grades written next to them. These were added by mistake. They were not included in the unofficial scanned copy that I used in my graduate application. Would it harm my application if I sent this transcript?
Also, I have received a transcript from my university (signed and sealed envelope) in February. Can I send it as an official transcript if I have it since February? My school does not have a mechanism in place for sending transcripts directly.

Am I understanding correctly that you have received two copies of your official transcript, one you opened to identify this error, and one you have not?

I was not clear. I have a sealed and signed transcript that has these errors (courses I did not take were mentioned with missing grades). I received it in February.

If it is sealed, how do you know it has these errors?

What can you do to get the errors corrected?

Because I have scanned it before the university sealed the file. I did not look at the PDF carefully. I just discovered these errors when i opened the PDF

Ask the school. However, the registrar office is closed due to this coronavirus.

That's unusual to my US ears. You should talk to the school you were admitted to

"I have been admitted..."  "Would it harm my application..."  This is inconsistent.  Please fix it.

Can you delete the last paragraph? There is supposed to be only one question per post.

Would it harm my application if I sent this transcript?

Not if done correctly. This is one of those "special circumstances" where there is likely no established rule; you just have to contact a human and explain the situation. What you can do is:

Send the transcript with the errors
Reach out to the person in charge of admissions (either the professor and/or an administrator) at the University and explain that there is an error on the transcript.
Reach out to someone at your own University to see if they can send some kind of official notice to verify that there is an error.

Once everyone is aware of the problem, it should not be an issue. They can verify with your university that the transcript is indeed an error.
Of course, the best solution would be to contact your university to see if they can remove the errors and correct the transcript. But if this is impossible, then the above should be good enough.


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Publishing a paper that is not related your field
I am graduate student in mathematics, but I did undergraduate in a different field (Astrophysics/Geophysics). I did my undergraduate reaserch somewhat seriously and have a good thesis as an undergraduate. My advisor told me that maybe the result I got is publishable. I have never done any publishing beforehead, so preparing for it may take some time. Of course by doing that, I will have less time to focus on mathematics. Also it is not guranteed that the result will be published in the end.
Now the question is : will it be beneficial (in terms of career in mathematics) to spend time to prepare publishing my undergraduate thesis, which is different field from my current major? Will the publication make my CV stronger?
Of course I know it really depends on some factors such as 1.how much time will I loose by preparing the publication? 2.how is my undergraduate thesis related to the mathematics? 3.What is my future goal?, and perhabs more, so there is no single answer. I just want to listen to the opinions from more experienced.

My honest advise is to try to publish it.
Your work speaks for yourself.
It means you were dedicated, motivated and got some results.
If it is not some kind of 2 years writing thing, I would do it.
All your work represents you and your education and motivation, and I would always chose to work with someone who showed passion for some area, even if it is not his major.
P.S. In my country, mathematics and astrophysics are ojd the same faculty. They are connected.

Thanks for your advise! It is hard to believe that astrophysics and mathematics are in the same department in your country!

Is "ojd" a typo? what is intended there?

I am sorry, it is a typo, it should be "at".


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Requirement on referees for a peer-reivew
I'd like to know if there are any requirements for referees to review a paper in a peer-review journal. For example, for an editor in another journal, is it OK to be a referee for the paper? I think it should be OK because, if an editor at journal A has reviewed a paper but somehow A rejected it, then it is reasonable for the same editor to be a referee for the paper at journal B because he already knows it. (Assume the editor likes the paper, as well as A and B are not in the same field and in the direct competition.)

Do you mean formal requirement?  I think it is usually just that there is no siginificant conflict of interest (e.g., it shouldn't be one of the authors or family members etc)

When editors are employees of a journal, it would probably be prohibited, perhaps informally, by the employing journal. But if the editor is a volunteer, then there should be no problem, although the management of the journal might get grumpy about it.
I've assumed, of course, that the two journals see themselves as being in competition. Then it would only be a question of what "full time employee" really means.
And, an employed editor can ask a superior at the journal (their employer) for guidance; either general or specific to the paper in question.

Yes, that is my assumption @Kimball. Do you think my answer is inconsistent with that? Say more if you think so, please.

An employed editor would be wise to ask a superior first, then. Why risk a confrontation?

There is no risk of confrontation because the two journals are not in the same field and in the direct competition, as I said earlier.

Being in direct competition worries me a bit.

As I said, the two journals are not in the direct competition.

Then I read your comment about competition backwards. Sorry. But to avoid too much speculation here, why not just ask? It could avoid the risk of losing your editorial position.

@Buffy Sorry, when I read your first paragraph, I thought you were talking about some internal conflict of interest issue.

@Kimball, ok, thanks. Interesting self intro on your university home page.


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Is viXra a good site for e-prints
ViXra.org is a host site for e-prints similar to Arxiv.org. I wonder if ViXra is a good place for posting e-prints and how well it is known to the scientific communities.

It is known but does not have a particularly good reputation. Check also the Wikipedia page on that for more information.

No it is not a good place.  In fact it is infamous in the community.
While not everything there is crackpot, almost everything there is crackpot.  It has the well-deserved reputation of being the very last outpost for those who are turned away everywhere else.

+1  "viXra, the last outpost" - sounds like the perfect movie title for the next movie about zombie research(ers) stranded on a planet for derelict science.

While not everything there is crackpot, almost all the crackpot stuff is there. --- There is a huge amount of crackpot stuff [on the internet] that is NOT there. What you mean is: "While not everything there is crackpot, almost everything there is crackpot."

@DaveLRenfro I edited my answer to plagiarize you much better formulation.

Incidentally, for proof that "not everything there is crackpot", see the comments to this answer. However, my guess is that less than 0.1% falls into this category.

@DaveLRenfro yes it would be too sweeping to suggest everything is crackpot on vixra.

Taking a break from work (contract, at home), I spent the last 20-25 minutes surfing through math papers in viXra, something I haven't done in several years I think. I managed to find a few papers that are clearly more than just non-crackpot -- these papers, and this paper which was published in the Amer. Math. Monthly, and probably most of these papers although they seem to me mostly low quality citation-purposed papers.


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Retractions in mathematical journals
The number of retractions in some scientific fields like medicine, life and material related science seems rising in the past years. However, retractions in mathematics seem rare because of its rigorous nature. I wonder if there are retractions in mathematical journals.

Probably, but errors in math journals are often corrected by writing a new paper with better results. Citing the old paper, of course. In medicine, not retracting bad results can result in harm. I don't know about material science - bridges falling down?

Here's a related post from Math Overflow.

The Daniel Biss case is one example where the retraction is due to legitimate mistakes (not misconduct). These retractions are rare because much of the time, incorrect proofs can still be salvaged with some work (recall Wiles and Taylor) and even papers with wrong results often contain enough correct material to be considered useful. Also, there are much fewer people that have the time to properly evaluate a paper in mathematics than in (say) psychology, where anyone with a decent understanding of statistical fallacies can find half a dozen bad studies per day.
There are also, quite likely, some cases where plagiarism has led to retractions.
Then there is the Ted Hill GMVH controversy (Quillette, Gowers's blog 1, Gowers's blog 2, Retraction Watch). NYJM has removed that paper from its archives, which can be construed as a kind of informal retraction, albeit easier to construe as a mess-up in the face of unexpected hostility from parts of the community. (The explanation given for the retraction is that the paper did not fit the journal's scope and level; note, however, that this is an extremely unusual grounds for retraction in academic publishing.)
RetractionWatch has a tag for retractions in mathematics.

(I also vaguely recall a journal publishing one and the same paper twice in a row... anyone?)

Many years ago I saw a page in an Eastern European mathematics journal retracting a past paper.  It seems the paper had originally appeared in a Chinese journal, and some enterprising guy in Eastern Europe translated it into English and submitted it under his own name.  The journal only found out about that fraud years later.

I definitely think there are field differences.  Psychology and medicine are much more prone to issues with sample size, confounding variables, etc.  Plus there is a huge amount of money pumped into biology/medical research (look at NIH budget versus NSF) and this likely leads to issues of worse scientists, declining returns on investment, etc.  (Add in business drivers of drug research, political biases on social policies, etc. and it becomes even worse.)
There are some sketchy mat sci papers (nanoscience, devices) where there is hype science present and even deception.  But in general, I bet mat sci has more solid stuff than psych and medicine.  Math even more so.
A lot of times when people talk about the replication crisis, they really mean fields like psych, nutrition, cancer, education, crime, etc.  I don't see general replication issues in chemistry.  Yeah, there are a very small percentage of mistakes (wrong crystal structure).  But in general if you repeat a chemical synthesis for a new molecule, you get the new molecule.  Try that in a priming study!  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)#Criticism

"Mat Sci has more solid stuff..." I can see that - concrete, granite, steel...


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How troublesome is it for a professor to replace a document posted on D2L?
On many occasions I've had professors that will post assignment instruction documents on "Desire 2 Learn" or D2L, realize they made a mistake on those instructions, and tell us students either in class or via school email that they had made a mistake and what to do about it.
I have never once seen them simply replace the document itself.
I am not here to complain. I have heard that D2L is difficult to handle, and I've seen many professors get confused by it. I am just curious if D2L makes it difficult to replace files that have been posted, or if there might be some other reason why they don't bother updating their documents.

For those of us who don't know: What is D2L?

D2L is an online service where professors can post class materials and students can submit assignments. There are other features such as forums for class discussions, but they are rarely used in my experience.

It is not that hard to change a file in D2L.
Click a small sign (looks like v) right side of the file name, choose “ change file”.   That’s it.
I guess your professor worries what if there is a student(s) who already printed the document out and never go back to D2L since he/she has a printout.
Indeed, D2L has an option “notify students” when the instructor change a file in D2L. Just one click is required to sent notifications to students that the file is updated.

I have to mention that  this isn't a single case, I have seen many professors fail to update their documents. However, this is enlightening. Thank you.


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Citing paywalled articles accessed via illegal web sharing
There are a few sites which offer paid articles for free. It’s something unethical, especially for those who upload to that site, but for me, it’s good for expanding knowledge.
As a readers, can we cite those documents, and can the editorial board know that I’m using those articles?

This is a great question. It seems that you are not asking about the ethics of downloading articles from questionable sites, but only the ethics afterwards - when the downloading is already a fait accompli, and the real question is whether citing said document counts as an additional unethical act above and beyond what you did when you downloaded it (e.g. "citing a document obtained through an unauthorized route"). Does this sound right?

That the provenance of a source actually used be questionable in no way makes it anything other than completely unethical to fail to cite the source that has been used. This seems entirely obvious.

Note that illegal and unethical are not necessarily the same thing. Indeed, many academics (also on this site) do not consider illegal access to articles behind paywall to be at all unethical.

@tomasz : also, in many jurisdictions, it's not the downloading is what is illegal (or at least enforceably illegal), but the uploading to such sites.

@SyafiqZaidi If editorial boards were trying to chase people who potentially downloaded their content illegaly nothing would get published anymore because of the delays...

@DanFox You certainly didn't fail to avoid omitting double negatives there.

@P.G. With this era, I think most of company have resources to pay any private institution to ensure those citations based on legit source. But, as Brander said below, nobody will know where we get the articles, or maybe they don't even care where we get it. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I want to recommend Unpaywall,  a browser extension that finds open versions of paywalled articles. They source exclusively legal sources, like ArXiv. It has been useful for me a few times, even with two university libraries.

@SyafiqZaidi An editorial board could absolutely hire a company for that but I doubt they do that because of the time and money they have to spend. They do care where people get articles from, otherwise they wouldn't try to shut down websites where anyone can get them for free.

Can you be sure it is the same article (and article content, with addendum, corrections, etc) without accessing the real (paywall) article?  Are you willing to accept the risk of citing something then finding later you swallowed a poison pill?

" It’s something unethical" - this part is highly debatable, I believe it is better to leave such judgements out of the question if question isn't directly about them. As a taxpayer, I find it highly unethical that someone tries to charge me for access to something my tax already paid for.

I think you would agree that ethics demands that everyone in the world have access to an excellent library.  And that that library should contain all publicly funded research.

Nobody will know how you have gained access to the article. Feel free to cite articles found via whatever sources.
It might not even be illegal to download content from the website; check your local laws and Berne convention (if your country is signed up) to be sure. In any case, this is unlikely to affect your reputation in any way.
Remember to cite the source appropriately; a journal or a book, not a pirate website or any other medium. The pirate website is usually not the publisher. You do not cite the university that has bought access to research (probably funded by public sources and peer reviewed by academicians funded by public sources), or the colleguage who shows you an article, or the library that contained a copy of the article; these all have the same role as pirate website.
You might not want to be vocal about using such a website. Some people still see it as ethically questionable. That said, using various pirate websites is increasingly common, and the status of many academic publishers among academians seems to have taken some hits, so many researchers will not care about how you get your articles.
You also have the ethics tag on the question. The ethics of pirating digital material are a polarized subject. You might want to do your own research here, or ask a new question for what the main arguments for both sides are, if it has not been asked already. Some people say that pirating material is analogous to physical theft, while others say that intellectual monopoly laws are bad and breaking them creates more good than ill. (I happen to think the laws are far too strong and harm humanity, and should be weakened substantially or entirely removed.) I strongly suggest reading on the matter until you have found strong statements of both points of view to come to an informed decision.

Another point is that some journals allow authors to self-archive and embargo periods are variable, so depending on the age of the article and the author, the pirate site might just be hosting a copy that is available elsewhere.

@anonymous: Even in this case, you should still check the published paper -- pirated or not -- to make sure that you are citing correctly. For example, it is possible to have the numbering of theorems slightly changed in the published version of a math paper. Also sometimes authors might make some changes in the review which they do not bother to (or are not allowed to) propagate to preprint servers.

@tomasz Obviously, the point was about the ethics though...

"Remember to cite the source appropriately; a journal or a book, not a pirate website." -- additionally, at least in some jurisdictions, distributing a link to a pirated version is outright illegal.

I'm quite surprised no one has questioned your first point: "Nobody will know, so it's OK" seems like a very weak and unfounded justification. Is it OK to rob a bank when no one is looking?

@dwizum that's not what he's saying. He's saying the source is irrelevant to the citation. So in your analogy, if you paid into someone's bank account via bank transfer or via hacking, from the point of view of the payee there was no ill. The hacking is still an offence but the payee has nothing to do with it. Similarly, the cited paper is cited legitimately (and appropriately), the fact you gained access to it from an illegal source does not undermine your citation, and is not something that should be mentioned in any way. The fact you should not perform illegal acts is a different issue.

The "separate" issue of having obtained the material illegally is the literal question the OP asked. Dismissing it because "no one will know" seems to be dismissing the actual question at hand. If you're arguing that the citation is okay, then claiming it's okay specifically because no one will know about the illegality of how you obtained it seems like an weak argument at best, and an incorrect one at worst: If someone asks "Is X okay?" and the answer is, "no one will know, so it's okay" how is that a legitimate answer? For the record, I think the rest of this answer is great.

@dwizum The later points, aside from 3., address the question of whether or not it is okay to use internet websites.

Yes, and together they make a complete answer, so why muddy the water by (also) claiming "it's okay because no one will know?"

@dwizum Because that answers the main question, which is the last paragraph in the question body.

Yes, it answers the question. But it's a terrible answer. Saying something is okay "because no one will know" just strikes me as an incredibly weak justification. That's my point.

@dwizum I edited the first point so that the content is mostly the same, but the emphasis different.

"No one will know" as the first argument doesn't sound very good, true. Perhaps the first and stronger argument (not only about the "can we cite" but also about "should we cite") should be "if you used material from an article, you could cite it, no matter where you read it from". The "no one will know the source" is only to assure you are covered (from legal or other accusations).

@DanielHatton thanks for the comment. I am not familiar enough with UK legislation to edit it into the answer with confidence, but maybe you would like to write your own answer and include that as a part of it.

If you are at a reputable university you can probably get legal access to nearly everything you need for research just by visiting your university's library and asking for a copy of the article. This is nearly always available to you. If you are grant funded, then grant funds can probably be used to obtain the necessary papers if the university cannot get them. In the US, even my town library has been able to get me access to things just by asking and because they have developed relationships with other (university) libraries. Small universities can have formal relationships with large research universities to "borrow" books and articles.
Likewise, borrowing the resources of colleagues is permitted. If s/he has a legal copy s/he can print it. The printed copy can be loaned to you. There are no issues with this at all.
So, the situation you describe should be rare if you do a bit of legwork.
But if you cite something, cite a legal repository, not a website known to pirate academic work. You don't need to actually own a copy of a paper to cite it, but it is probably a mistake (for your reputation) to flaunt illegal or unethical access.
It probably isn't as difficult or as costly as you imagine to do the right thing.

Or just don't cite the repository at all. I mean, if I have a paper copy.of the journal vs a scanned copy I get from another library vs a publisher-provided PDF and all are identical, the repository shouldn't matter and many (most?) style manuals don't require you to cite the exact location you obtained the copy except for rare one-of-a-kind works like medieval manuscripts, etc. (Although MLA started so in protest I've decided my next paper I'm going to cite every library involved in an ILL transaction to show how stupid it is)

@guifa Could you expand on the MLA part, maybe with a link? It sounds wholly impractical.

@Anyon MLA8 wants us to specify the "container" so if we got an article from JSTOR we're supposed to cite JSTOR along with the article. It's the same article regardless, and most people just happily pretend they got it on paper to avoid doing it :-) I'm jus planning on taking it to the other extreme because to me a library is no different than JSTOR

If you have legal access through your university, "pirating" it certainly isn't unethical.

@guifa: MLA8 wants us to specify the "container" so if we got an article from JSTOR --- I don't know how that would apply to me (and I don't really care either) because I have literally tens of thousands of photocopied papers and paper preprints obtained since the mid 1980s (arguably the early 1960s if you count the preprint archive I received from a well known researcher in my field in the mid 1990s), from many dozens of libraries, and other than an occasional library stamp on a photocopied page or remembering where I got the paper from, I would have no way of knowing. (continued)

In fact, just two days ago I emailed a scanned copy of a fairly hard to obtain 1963 paper to someone in Poland who asked whether I had a copy of it, saying the scan was made from a photocopy made "sometime in 1991-1994" (I couldn't pin it down more precisely).

If you are at a reputable university you can probably get legal access to nearly everything you need unless that university is in Germany, Sweden, Peru or Taiwan.

@FedericoPoloni: at least Germany isn't as cut off as that News article suggests. I'm currently associated with an institution that doesn't have Elsevier access any more since January. However, there's an inter-library catalogue that shows which other libraries have a journal (example: https://zdb-katalog.de/title.xhtml?idn=020659016&vol=2019). In addition, the TIB (≈ national library for technical literature) even has a paper copy. All in all, it's not as convenient as it was, but our library will still get Elsevier papers I ask for via inter-library loan.

"but it is probably a mistake (for your reputation) to flaunt illegal or unethical access." Plus, if the site gets shut down, that part of the citation will no longer be valid.

@cbeleites basically what happens is: most paper are not available any more via the official channels, my institution abandoned many Springer publications as well. You just ask friends from other institutions or download somewhere on the internet. I got to find every paper I want so far.

@kap: yes. In Germany we have this variety of fair use that allows not-too large copies (i.e. not a whole book, but archiving the important portion so you're sure you'll be able to look it up again is OK) for personal and scientific  (or teaching, btw) use in return for the VG Wort fees universities/university libraries pay. (VG Wort distributes these fees to authors and publishers). So it's not even that this use wasn't paid for.

Plus, we have on the author site now the right to make accepted manuscripts available (though not the publisher-typeset version) after an embargo period - regardless of what the publisher's contract says (inalienable right to secondary use). (My personal view is: with that we have substantial room for improvement without even starting to discuss further changes to copyright, and a lot could already be done before the need to pirate papers arises)

First, you have to cite if something is relevant for your work! It has nothing to do with how you acquired the article, and even if you do not have the article, just know the abstract or one particular result that is relevant, cite it! (big insight as I entered academia, seldom the articles cited are also read in entirety).
By the way, in academia authors get NO money from their articles, it is all done for reputation in the scientific community; so by not citing you actually do more harm to the individual who wrote the article then by the act of downloading (where maybe just the publisher loses money). And by the way, for scientific articles the system works a little bit different. It is seldom the case that an individual buys individual articles (and if they like to they are tremendously expensive). They are either acquired by your library through subscription, by interlibrary loan (many libraries are connected by networks), given to you by the authors themselves (once I just got a copy from an article that is hard to get in person from the authors send by post after asking him at a conference), or nowadays by the way you asked for... I will not judge what is unethical here but after reading this (or being in academia for yourself some time) you might view it a little bit different...
So, if nothing works you usually end up not getting the article at all!
On a side note, this is a little bit different for books as the authors get some money from them, not much in academia too. But for non-academic books, where the authors have to life from the money, it is definitely unethical. But this is an entirely different system. Do not judge and confuse it by that (which people might do here if they compare it to robbery, netflix etc...).
Also, if you do not cite something relevant, some reviewer of your article will probable notice and either point you to the literature, or if it is a well-known article might conclude that you have done a bad review of the literature yourself.

Just cite the paper properly (e.g. take into account where the article was originally published), obviously don't cite Alexandra Elbakyan. Seriously, nobody cares and nobody can find out anyway. And the people who care have a very bad case of boy scout/teacher's pet disease. The editorial houses are rent-seeking rackets that profit from publicly funded research and hard labour of academics. And they still have the nerve to paywall it.  Anyone that feels bad about avoiding that needs to do a deep reflection on their moral priorities.

Would you incriminate yourself?
For some articles, the abstract is so clear and concise that it effectively says everything you need to know in order to cite it. I've previously been advised when writing abstracts for articles in paywall journals to make sure someone could cite the article without actually having it. Obviously, it's not an ideal situation, but it is very much possible to cite an article purely based on the abstract, which you would have access to without acquiring the article anyway.
In short, if I see someone cite an article and I somehow know that they have not paid for access to it, I'd assume they've cited it based on the abstract.

I would consider citing based only an abstract to be extremely bad practice; bordering on a mild form of academic malpractice. Yes, I know it happens, but that does not mean we should so casually accept it.

We're on a thread talking about illegal web sharing, everything here is bad practice. The point I was trying to make was that no one could distinguish this form of bad practice (illegal web sharing) from another form of perfectly legal bad practice (citing from an abstract).

@JackAidley That's right. But if you consider that there are people who will cite sources just because someone else has cited them, it is not that bad.

@E.Rei there is a difference: using illegal web sharing might be bad practice from copyright/legal point of view. Citing based on abstracts is academic malpractice.

Robert Columbia's framing of the question:

It seems that you are not asking about the ethics of downloading articles from questionable sites, but only the ethics afterwards - when the downloading is already a fait accompli, and the real question is whether citing said document counts as an additional unethical act above and beyond what you did when you downloaded it (e.g. "citing a document obtained through an unauthorized route").

For discussion purposes, I'm going to go contrary to the accepted answer and say yes.
First, if you're using ideas that are not your own, you definitely have to cite the source.  Failure to do that is plagiarism.  With respect to avoiding plagiarism, it doesn't matter where you got the ideas; credit is due.
However, inaccurately citing where you got the source makes it harder for others to trace that back to the source.
In some cases, the content posted to a pirate website looks like or maybe is labeled as a copy of the content from the original source, but in fact has different content.
I have wasted many hours trying to figure out why an author cites X for assertion Y, when in some cases they were actually citing a hidden X' which differed from X on, among other things, assertion Y.  I would have much appreciated if the author had included a citation like:

J. Ixsom, P. Smiflich, and D. Seuss: "Methods for safely pipetting oxyflogated dexlahydrates at STP." 23rd Annual Conference on Unusual Chemistry (CUC '17) London.  Retrieved Jan. 18, 2019 from https://authorsite.org/pdf/1234.56789.

Then I have all the usual citation information about who published that and where, and in most cases I can go to that source and get it from them.  In this case, the publisher gets an extra sale from the author having cited that work, regardless of how the author obtained it.  However, if I can't find support for what's being asserted, I can then trace through to what the author actually looked at.  If there's a difference, I can more quickly debug.  I might see how the author was led astray and be able to resolve the issue another way.  Without that link to what the author is actually citing, though, it's very hard to determine the basis for that assertion, and requiring that extra work is a negative impact caused by a difference between the source the author claimed and the source the author actually used.
Also, note that content differences are not all malicious, and the "authoritative" record is not always better from a content perspective.  Sometimes, authors posting a file on their own website, with the publisher's permission, will update those files (e.g. correcting a mistake in a formula) and then the formula being used in the citing article looks different than the one it's being cited for.  (To authors: If you do this, please explicitly call it out as a correction.)
Sometimes, the differences are honeypots intentionally inserted by publishers designed to get the message out that only official sites can be relied upon for accurate information.

Sometimes, the differences are honeypots — Really? Do you have concrete examples?  I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that publishers engage in questionable behavior, but this sounds particularly unethical.

Not handy from memory, but I've definitely seen it. I suspect it's more common with textbooks than papers, but maybe that impression comes from an environment where many folks have relatively easy institutional access to official paper repos. For example, if a price-sensitive student tries to purchase a textbook edition that the publisher doesn't want sold in the country where the student is studying, the publisher might permit it but include numbers, examples, etc. so the student does not have the same information as those who bought from the publisher & can't follow along, to send a message.

That’s a bit different. Changing the examples or exercises in a calculus textbook is petty and stupid, but ultimately only an inconvenience—after all, the studnets are slearning skills, not numerical examples, riiiiiiight?  Similarly, changing unimportant details in a journal paper is petty, stupid, and ultimately pointless.  For tis stategy to work, the modified details have to be part of the core message of the paper, like experimental data, or plots / statistical analysis thereof; any such modification would be grossly unethical. So again: Can you give at least one specific example?

@JeffE Maybe eventually, but I'm not currently in a position where I'm as likely to see those things as I was before.  If that line of the answer bothers you too much, ignore it and read the rest.  I have definitely seen issues in a key formula which have major impacts on the result of the formula, and that formula is the main reason for citing the paper.

@DanielHatton They don't claim that the honeypots are authoritative copies, just free PDFs.

Some bad news: fraud happens. Lots of it. Publishers justify this to themselves by saying that's less bad than copyright infringement.  Typically, individuals are not harmed severely enough to justify all the costs of pursuing a claim and those that do get shot down quickly by "Why didn't you buy the official copy?" or by dead-ends trying to figure out who actually posted something, as publishers doing so tend to keep their connections obscured.

I have spent a LOT of time and money, often unsuccessfully, attempting to pursue justice for extremely clear-cut cases of fraud where real people have suffered high direct and real costs. The authorities you would think would hold people/companies accountable just don't care, not nearly as much as you might hope. This kind of issue is way, way lower on the priority list and the probability of anybody being held accountable for that in practice is below big-lottery-win probabilities.

can we cite [(possibly) illegally obtained] documents[?]

Yes, but you might be incriminating yourself, if legal access isn't plausible.

can editorial board know...if I'm using those articles?

No. At least, not without collaboration.
EDIT: I'm flabbergasted that a factual correct answer has four down votes. Especially as an answer that appeared afterwards, with essentially the same message is being up-voted. It makes be question why I bother helping people.

You don't have to demonstrate legal access, in general. The burden of proof lies on the accuser, in most sane legal systems.

And as anyone that's ever marked undergraduate coursework will tell you, referencing an article is absolutely not proof that you've read it :)

@FedericoPoloni Rephrasing as if you could not have legally accessed would perhaps be better, which the publisher might conceivably be able to do, e.g., with an argument such as: we accused has not paid for access, nor have their co-authors, nor have any of their institutions. Defending against such an argument could be problematic. (Not a lawyer.) Although, following from E.Rei, I suppose acknowledging academic misconduct works... Albeit, that requires lying if document were obtained illegally.

@user2768 Another valid justification is "I saw a copy in the office of a colleague". If I have access to a paper, nothing forbids me from showing it to another person privately.

@FedericoPoloni Indeed, but also requires lying.

@user2768 The point is that you can't reasonably tell who has legal access to a published paper. Even if somebody is at a university that doesn't have a subscription to that journal, there are so many other legitimate ways that the person could get access to the article without leaving any kind of paper trail, that nobody is ever going to conclude "You must have accessed that illegally."

@FedericoPoloni "The burden of proof lies on the accuser, in most sane legal systems." This is true. Unfortunately, copyright enforcement goes well outside the bounds of sanity pretty much everywhere.  If the requirement of the burden of proof being on the accuser were applied consistently, copyright-enforcement things such as DRM and the DMCA takedown system simply could not exist.  But unfortunately, they do.

@user2768: why would any lies be necessary when reading a colleague's (physical) copy of a paper? Even loans of whole (paper) books are legal. Main side take-home message: there are typically several perfectly legal ways of obtaining a paper (maybe not as convenient as the pirate web page, though).

@cbeleites Saying "I saw a copy in the office of a colleague" or claiming academic misconduct, as opposed to admitting the truth (illegal downloading) is lying.

It makes be question why I bother helping people. that's why I'm upvoting.

@Allure It's a known platform problem with stackexchange/stackoverflow. There are some excellent blog posts.

Isn't this the same thing as breaking into a house and stealing everything, then asking if it's ethical to watch Netflix using the victim's account?
You are asking the wrong question.
The unethicalness occurred long before the question of attribution arose.  The publishers of the papers placed a value on them.. and you, for whatever reason, chose to obtain the document from a thief rather than the publisher.  Just because "everyone else" is doing it and it's "wink wink" accepted practice in no way makes the act of theft ethical.  Everything that follows from that act is then tainted by the original act of thievery.
So to recap...

Pirate steals from publisher.
You obtain copy of document from pirate, making you at best an accomplice and at worst a thief yourself.
Question of ethics regarding attribution of stolen documents in your own paper is really not a valid question at this point.

And to offer the contrasting take: Pirates steal nothing, as no thing is lost by the publisher. They are breaking ineffective and socially harmful laws to create net benefit for the society. Intellectual monopoly laws are a way of restricting property rights of people for no good benefit, and in a largely unenforceable way, which is used as an arbitrary punishment mechanism for little benefit to anyone but lawyers and certain big rent-seeking companies.

Also, this does not really answer the question.

This reads more like a criticism of the question than an answer. The OP already stated that they deem the act of publishing the documents unethical. Could you clarify in which way "is really not a valid question" provides a useful answer or at least a credible frame challenge?

@TommiBrander If we adopt your attitude (breaking ineffective and socially harmful laws is okay), then we are lawless. If you don't like the law, change it, don't break it.

Humm.  What laws?  The laws saying if you take something that isn't yours, then that's theft.  How exactly are those laws socially harmful?  I never once mentioned IP - only the ethics of being a thief.

@RutherRendommeleigh Its not a criticism of the question.  It's a condemnation of theft. And its invalid because you can't begin to consider the ethics of an act that is a direct result of an unethical action until you have fixed the original ethics violation.

@Sam Axe "The ethics of being a thief" doesn't seem on topic as an answer to this question, especially if you're, as you stated, not talking about IP or the question. If you think the question's invalid, I'd recommend that you comment and/or flag it.

@user2768 Presumably most laws are not harmful to the society as a whole. Ideally none are. And, yes, changing them is important, but not relevant to the question here.

@SamAxe The question does not mention stealing, but rather using websites that have broken intellectual monopoly laws.


text:
Conventional left and right margins
I realized that in some public academic proposals, on each page, the left margin and right margin are not equal (e.g., the left margin is greater than the right margin).
Does anyone know what's the reason for that?
Are there any conventional rules?

I would think that this is pretty standard in any document, not just academic proposal. Mirrored margins come from printing conventions, and have been carried over e.g. by LaTeX, which is used across scientific fields.

That is likely an historical artifact from a time when pages were printed single-sided on paper and bound at the left edge. The larger margin is to account for the binding.
Even today that is pretty common with two-sided printing, although even numbered pages likely have wider margins at the right, rather than the left, since even numbers pages appear on the left (bound at the right).
The rules have to do with the usage. A print journal might have its own rules, such as in the paragraph above. But for things not bound as in internet publication, equal margins should be fine.
Alternatively, wider margins at one side or the other are useful for on-page note taking by readers, even of things printed personally.

This is also the reason for the alternating headers, as it was assumed one would see an even and an odd page at the same time.

@Buffy, don't you mean something in the direction of "two-sided, and bound at the left edge of (I forget) the odd-numbered page"?

@paulgarrett, even numbered pages appear at the left so are bound on the right. The opposite for odd numbered pages. This is the book convention, also.

@Buffy, yes, that was something like what I was thinking, but/and saying "print single-sided" confused me... and might confuse readers here...

@paulgarrett, I edited the second paragraph to clarify.

Actually, verso pages (left side) have more margin on the left, and recto pages (right side) have more margin on the right. This is because it looks nicer when the margins around the binding add up to about the same margin as on the left and right, and also because outside margins may contain notes. The documentation of the memoir class provides a good overview of traditional page construction.


text:
How can I find an American university that has an education department that appreciates homeschool?
I feel that most often the master's programs in education focus only on instructor-led curricular learning.  How can I find a school in the U.S. that offers masters degrees in education that emphasize homeschool with findings/recommendations for self-study as being more beneficial for students over regular schools?

Do you mean taking the degree as an external student, or a Master's Degree in Education focusing on teaching homeschool students/distance education? The two are very different, and the latter has become a lot more relevant since Covid happened, while many institutions were forced to allow the former due to pandemic lockdowns and restrictions.

Since homeschooling is a bit of a political hot potato, I suggest you research masters programs at conservative / religious univertities that are homeschool-friendly, for example:
Liberty University (Baptist) - because the university is homeschool-friendly.
Brigham Young University (LDS) - same thing.
Biola University (Christian)
University of Dallas (Roman Catholic)
Houston Baptist University
Regent University
LeTourneau University
etc - you see the pattern. If the university's web site has resources for homeschoolers, then it is more likely that the M.Ed. program might also be homeschooler friendly. Having identified some universities, youcontact them by e-mail, identify your potential interest in the masters program, and pose your questions. If you don't get responses that you like, then you look elsewhere.
For obvious reasons, you should double-check that the programs have the accreditation that you want. Expect that having one of these names on your CV will be viewed very negatively by people on the other side of the political spectrum who might be making hiring decisions.


text:
How to preserve a rare version of a book respecting the copyright as well?
Electromagnetism by EM Purcell is a classic book on electromagnetism. Luckily in my college library I found all the three editions of this book. After many months of observation, I found that the first edition published in 1965 had many concepts, practice problems and explanations which were omitted in second and third editions. The author explains in preface to second edition that it was necessary as these subtle points were either not suitable or were presented in a tough way for first reading hence were modified or omitted.
However I realize that they are invaluable for someone who has done a course already to learn and ponder on new tricky arguments but I was not able to find any PDF for first edition on internet and the books in my library are already in torn condition and may get lost within years. In this case what can I do to get this edition preserved and people from my college may continue to benefit from it?
The first edition of this book was funded by National Science foundation and I read on Wikipedia that these books had some copyright relaxation, however I couldn't comprehend it. In this case, is it allowed to scan it and circulate its soft copy? - I thought of it or should I request the library?
PS: This is the copyright page from the first edition:

You might try to reach this person who shares your thoughts: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/free-edition-of-purcell-electricity-and-magnetism.727335/

thanks , this is really helpful, all the text is there at https://github.com/bcrowell/purcell but i couldn't see any images. Can you please help me with location of images ?

I can't help further. Why not try  contacting  Crowell at http://www.lightandmatter.com/ ?

The images are in the figs directories. GitHub fails to render some. I had no problem looking at the pictures after cloning the repository.

@Kutsit:  I think you should consider changing the title of your question.  Perhaps "Copyright Situation for Rare Textbook".  Maybe others disagree, but I thought you were going to be asking about physical preservation techniques such as "keep book in a low humidity environment, etc".  Good luck!

Thanks for pointing out, I have edited the question, it is really the copyright infringement that is troubling me about making a soft copy of it but I believe @Ben Cromwell has clarified all that we want to know about this book !

@Ben Crowell: Regarding the 1975 date that Kutsit's scanned page shows, my copy says "will be available for use by authors and publishers on a royalty-free basis on or after April 30, 1970". Incidentally, my copy is in essentially "like new" (I think I've only read about half of Chapter 1), and it still has a stamp-sized price sticker on the upper right front cover from Indiana University Bookstore for $22.95 (so I suspect I purchased it in Fall 1982).

Discuss with the librarian - they may know what is available - ie it could be scanned while the book is refurbished and recovered.
And, take the opportunity to explain to the librarian why it is worth saving - you know why as a specialist in the subject...

There are explicit permissions in the US for this kind of archiving, but come with limitations on the consultation of the texts (for example, only at the library). But the library can absolutely do it

Someone (Benjamin Crowell) has actually tried doing this. Apparently the copyright status is not quite clear:

As of March 4, 2014, the project is on hold because of the cloudy
  legal situation. The copyright page of the 1965 edition says to obtain
  a royalty-free license from EDC, which still exists. EDC, however, no
  longer owns the copyright to the 1965 edition. That copyright has
  changed hands several times, and now belongs to Edward Purcell's sons,
  Dennis and Frank Purcell. Cambridge University Press has refused to
  tell me how to contact them, but has said they would pass on my
  request to them.

Regardless of copyright, I would recommend checking out Library Genesis. It is not legal, but it actually has a scanned version of the 1st edition.

Thanks, that serves my purpose its already there on library genesis !

Scratch that, the github this is such manual re-typesetting. By the way, I have seen some efforts on manual re-typesetting of classic books, those were out of copyright. I wounder what is the legal situation of not scanning, but re-typesetting this book. Probably, even more cloudy!

Possibly -- based on author name, book title, the publishers and year of publication provided by you -- there is an electronic copy of this book at the internet archive (here) in (encrypted) *.daisy, *.epub, and *.pdf format in the section of books to borrow.  You need Adobe Digital Editions as management software since each loan is for fourteen days, and "the library card" of archive.org.
It is a scan created with ABBYY FineReader 8.0, so it is OCRed, too.

@BenCrowell Are you saying, according to your experience this post (https://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/install-adobe-digital-editions-in-ubuntu-linux/, with wine, in written in 2012) does not work anymore today (2019)?

As an update: A step-by-step instruction for using ADE (if you don't mind, version 2.0.1 instead of the current 4.5.10) in a fresh installation of Ubuntu 18.04 as recently as by 2018-May-12: https://patdavid.net/2018/05/installing-adobe-digital-editions-on-linux-with-wine/


text:
How to cite statements in book based on unverifiable sources
While reading books on Indian politics (not aware if this happens outside as well), frequently the citations for a particular claim is some interview with a person being talked about. In this case, one reading the book can trust the statement only if he personally gives his belief to the author's word. This is OK if the reader personally believes in the integrity of author but this becomes problematic in debate since we cannot ask other side to trust an author for his unverifiable account if author is not well-known or known for political bias, these are genuine misgivings and I feel the one using these books must be the one to mitigate such concerns
In this case, how should we present a statement/claim in a manner that acknowledges possible ambiguity and unverifiablilty or should one abstain from this practice and cite only authors recognized by both sides as reputable??
Some particular examples are:

In the book "India after Gandhi", Ramchandra Guha cites some anonymous accounts.
In the memoir "Accidental Prime-Minister", Sanjay Baru has exclusively put his opinions and done away with citations and references.
The current book I am reading, Half - Lion: How P.V Narasimha Rao Transformed India also contains many citations in form of personal interviews  conducted by the author

The technical answer to your question ("how to cite") is that you cite the book the same way you cite any other book, following the citation guidelines of the publication to which you're submitting.
However, your actual question seems to be more focused on how to ensure you don't mislead readers into thinking your sourced quotes are stronger than they really are. I don't think there's a definitive answer here. My recommendation would simply be to tell the reader that the cited source is based on personal claims. For example:

Based on personal conversations, Michael Wolff has stated that Steve Bannon does not drink alcohol [22].
[22] Wolff, M. "Fire and Fury: blabbidy blab". Publisher. Page whatever.

You should simply acknowledge the limits of verifiability and cite the source. There is no question of finding sources that are acceptable to 'both sides', because you cannot possibly know every reader's leanings. Also, choosing to cite individuals because they are 'reputable' seems to be rather unscientific and will only further selection bias.
(1) The available literature, primarily derived from personal conversations, suggests that this statement is true [ref].
(2) This statement is derived from the partly anonymous accounts provided by Guha in [ref].
(3) Interviews conducted and provided by Rao [ref] suggest that this statement is true.
(4) On the basis of opinions provided by Baru [ref], it appears reasonable to accept this statement as true.


text:
PhD funding with a Pass at Masters?
So, I just finished my Masters at a top University in the UK but I was awarded a Pass. I recently met up with a potential supervisor at another top institution about my proposed topic - and she really likes me, loves the research, and has been sending me funding information.
However, how do I get around the fact that I got a poor grade on my MSc for funding applications? Some of the funding offers a chance for students to do a MSc then a PhD. Is it wrong to apply to these and not even say that I did a Masters? It feels like I'd have been better off.
To add to this, I actually have a very good record of research experience, and my transcript for the MSc is good. I just lost marks on my thesis which meant I couldn't get a Merit (or 2:1).
I'm so worried, I want nothing more than to do a PhD, particularly on the topic I proposed (community stigma, mental health). I really don't want this to set me back!

Do you have any reason to believe that not having a merit will significantly impact your chances of getting funding? Maybe you're right, maybe you're wrong, but I didn't get a merit for my MSc and I never heard any suggestion that it would be an obstacle when I was looking for PhD funding.

I think this is based on the potential competition for funding places. I would assume the better the qualifications, the more likely you are to receive funding. Do you think a strong proposal and experience in research is considered more valuable?

I would imagine so. There are so many other factors (e.g., research experience, the proposal, publications, content of the masters, etc.) that I can't imagine whether or not the candidate received a merit/distinction as being that important in the decision.

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


text:
What should I do about my friend who wants me to help her cheat?
Friend: Rome
Rome and I started at our new school last year as juniors. We are both now seniors. At this school, we have a chance to graduate high school with our AA degrees. In fact, we are graduating with both our high school diplomas and our AA degrees in less than 3 months. I made the regrettable decision of skipping a few biology classes during my second semester at the college/high school. Rome kindly gave me the notes to which I was very thankful and ended up passing the class with a little bit of extra studying. Due to her helping me, I ended up helping her understand a few assignments for our senior CAPSTONE class (a graduation requirement). This class is a little difficult, so I myself even asked for a few ideas from friends for writing up my final presentation. However, Rome asked for me to send her my ENTIRE presentation slideshow so she can basically write hers up in the same way. Not exactly cheating since she's only copying my format and her topic is different than mine, but still frustrating that she didn't come up with some originality of her own. This semester me and her both have Psychology with the same teacher, just on different days. So her tests and assignments are always due the day after mine. She never can remember when the assignments are due, always asking me when mine is due. This is also incredibly frustrating as I have the care to memorize when my assignments are due. Recently she has been asking me for my homework assignments and take home tests for this class. She also has been asking me what will be on the in-class test. I made the unfortunate mistake of helping her the once by sending her the answers for 1 homework assignment and half of 1 of a take-home test. I do not plan on sending her any more answers or helping again, but she still sends emails asking for my calculator, for assignment dates, test answers, etc. I don't know what to do about her, and I don't want to risk her telling the professor that I have helped her cheat if I do not continue to help her.

You sit in an unfortunate corner between loyalty, gratitude and duty. Nonetheless, you were lucky so far. At some point, however, you will be caught if you continue. What will happen then you can guess from others that have been caught. What do you wish to know from us?

I am not planning to continue helping her cheat, I have done my own work and made my A's fair and square. I wanted to know what I should do with her continuing to ask me to help her cheat.

I got that. Unfortunately, I am not sure this is actually a question for Academia, but more for interpersonal.SE, because it is not so much about how to navigate academia, but how to get a friend stopping to induce you to do something unethical. It is not obvious how to do so, except if you can just let her know that you are worried sick of being caught and cannot sleep for anxiety. If she is a good friend, that might make her realize that you do not wish to continue. You probably will have to continue supporting her with legit logistics (calculator/dates) if you do not with to break entirely.

The institution is probably clear that “cheating” or “helping another to cheat” is not permitted, so don’t do it - if you are caught the penalty can be severe...

You may find this worth reading : https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/43839/72855

Breaking down this wall of text....

Rome and I started at our new school last year as juniors. We are both now seniors. At this school, we have a chance to graduate high school with our AA degrees. In fact, we are graduating with both our high school diplomas and our AA degrees in less than 3 months. I made the regrettable decision of skipping a few biology classes during my second semester at the college/high school. Rome kindly gave me the notes to which I was very thankful and ended up passing the class with a little bit of extra studying. Due to her helping me, I ended up helping her understand a few assignments for our senior CAPSTONE class (a graduation requirement). This class is a little difficult, so I myself even asked for a few ideas from friends for writing up my final presentation.

So far so good, this is completely normal and acceptable behavior among classmates.

However, Rome asked for me to send her my ENTIRE presentation slideshow so she can basically write hers up in the same way. Not exactly cheating since she's only copying my format and her topic is different than mine, but still frustrating that she didn't come up with some originality of her own.

Still mostly okay; if you are working on separate topics, hard to see how this could be considered cheating.

This semester me and her both have Psychology with the same teacher, just on different days. So her tests and assignments are always due the day after mine. She never can remember when the assignments are due, always asking me when mine is due. This is also incredibly frustrating as I have the care to memorize when my assignments are due.

This seems like a very minor, irrelevant point. Either help her or tell her to go away, calling it "incredibly frustrating" seems unnecessarily dramatic. But everything up to this point is really irrelevant.

Recently she has been asking me for my homework assignments and take home tests for this class. She also has been asking me what will be on the in-class test. I made the unfortunate mistake of helping her the once by sending her the answers for 1 homework assignment and half of 1 of a take-home test.

Here's the problem! She asked you to cheat and you said okay. That makes both of you cheaters. Period.

I do not plan on sending her any more answers or helping again

Good.

but she still sends emails asking for my calculator, for assignment dates, test answers, etc. I don't know what to do about her, and I don't want to risk her telling the professor that I have helped her cheat if I do not continue to help her.

Yes, this is the risk you take when you do illegal, unethical things.

The part about the calculator and assignment date is fine; that's just an annoyance that you'll have to address, try asking on interpersonal.SE if necessary
But you need to be sure that you never give her test answers or participate in any other form of cheating ever again.

If she is a close friend, you should be able to just explain that you regret cheating and won't do it again and she should understand. If not, my advice is to do two things.

First, gather your evidence so that you can prove that she is also guilty, and potentially even guiltier than you. Make sure you have enough evidence that she's can't pretend she is innocent and you are guilty.
Second, address the situation head on. You have two options here:

Own up to it. Tell the professor everything, show him your evidence, and take your punishment. Hopefully they will only lower your grade rather than failing or expelling you.
Confront your friend. Tell her (in writing) that you regret having helped her cheat, that you won't do it again, and that you're prepared to take the evidence to the professor and get both of you in trouble if she won't let this go. Don't get drawn into a big fight, just give one-sentence responses (something like: "I understand your position, but I can't keep helping you cheat; we either need to stop this once-and-for-all or else turn ourselves in.")

Some would say the first way is the only way to behave ethically, but the second is likely sufficient if you never do it again. Whatever you do, don't continue cheating or letting her blackmail you. Good luck.