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Should I change my submitted recommendation letter due to the student's unethical behavior?
A couple of months ago, I submitted a positive recommendation letter for one of my students for a master's program, and she got accepted by the university. However, after my submission, I've noticed unethical behavior from her side – cheating at an exam –, and violation of the university’s code of ethics – insulting one of her professors.
My questions are:

Should I change my positive letter to a negative one?
If I did this, what impact is it likely to have?

My inclination to send the negative letter is motivated by my strivings to be clear and honest with my colleagues, and provide authentic and true information.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/128582/68109

""I have noticed" sounds like "I do not have proof of". See @Anton's answer.

I recommend completely setting aside the issue of her insulting one of her professors. That professor can decide how to deal with that—it's not your place to do so—and people in positions of power can handle the occasional insult by someone they have power over.

It's impossible to evaluate the answers to this question in terms of how well they fit your situation if you can't tell us how you "noticed" this "unethical behavior". Have the facts been established by a legitimate institutional or legal process? Or are they just your opinions based on hearsay? I would tread very carefully here, since if you write something unsubstantiated to harm your student, not only have you acted unethically, but you make even have committed actionable libel.

Why not turn that round and Ask instead whether you should ignore unethical behavior from her side - cheating at an exam, and violation of University's code of ethics - insulting one of her professors?

As Johnny Depp would say, "hearsay!"

As a general rule, if you send a letter stating that you believe a fact X to be true, and later get new information causing you to no longer believe what you previously wrote, it is completely ethical and reasonable to inform the recipient of the letter of this change in your beliefs.* After all, you not only have an ethical obligation to the student, but you also have an ethical obligation to the Master’s program to not mislead them about who they are admitting into their ranks.
It is also in most cases ethical and reasonable to do nothing, since the original letter you sent is dated, so it is implied that you are only stating that at date Y, you believed fact X to be true. This says nothing about what you will believe in the future, and indeed, in the context of LORs, most people will have a reasonable expectation that your opinions about the person you are writing the letter for will change over time. So I don’t think you will be compromising your integrity by failing to update the letter. (If the update was meant to correct facts you stated in sworn testimony to the US Congress though, the calculation could be different.)
The bottom line is, I don’t think there’s an objectively correct way to proceed here. It’s a personal decision, and I’m not even sure what I would do in your situation. It would probably depend to some extent on the severity of the cheating incident and what I felt it says about the student’s future prospects to succeed in her graduate studies. For a relatively minor incident, I would probably let it go.
* For the current LOR context though, you will want to make sure that you are not breaking any laws or university policies related to protecting the student’s privacy by discussing her cheating incident.

Hearsay about cheating, or hearsay about anything else, is not the best basis for any action...

@paulgarrett neither I nor OP said anything about hearsay. To clarify, I am assuming that whatever OP writes in any letters are things whose factual correctness they can stand behind. If this is not the case, then yes, I agree that gossip/hearsay should not be a basis for action.

Sorry, I was unclear. What I meant was that hearing about bad behavior is not witnessing it first-hand, ... and, in my opinion, letters of recommendation should best/only refer to first-hand information. Even references to grades in other courses is irrelevant, since the transcripts show them! That kind of thing...

@paulgarrett agreed.

It is also possible that if the infractions are serious enough then ordinary procedures by the university, without the OP's participation, will result in denying the degree, making the problem moot, I'd suspect. And, if the university doesn't treat them as serious, then there is no basis for action IMO.

+1 for the first two paragraphs, though I was a little disappointed when the conclusion turned out to be "I'm not even sure" :-)

@cag51 that’s interesting. A related thing I’ve noticed is that academia.se answers that express doubt or uncertainty tend to receive fewer upvotes than ones that give strong, actionable advice like “do this!” And yet, for my part I often feel it’s downright irresponsible to offer that sort of advice, and the best I can do is say “I’m not sure”. If people find that unhelpful or disappointing, so be it.

@DanRomik: Well, you've bucked the trend with this excellent "I'm not sure" answer (+1).

Sending a negative letter would put the student at an unfair disadvantage because students strive to have the most positive letters of recommendation that they can have. If you no longer hold a positive opinion, you are not among the professors that should provide recommendations for this student. No one is supposed to have a LOR from a professor that holds a bad opinion on them.
If you feel you can't stand behind your letter anymore, you may withdraw it. But it would be unprofessional and even petty to go into any details why you stopped supporting this student. And you should also take into account that the student might find it out ("Prof. Sane withdrew their LOR, you need another one."), so maybe it's best and most fair if you notify the student straight away as well.
The withdrawal could be as simple as

Hello, Admission board. I wish to withdraw my letter of recommendation for Student. I've also notified Student that I'm withdrawing the recommendation.

I think this is the most fair and even-handed way to address a situation like described in the original post. I would definitely notify the student as well.

You cannot ethically change your recommendation without first discussing it with the student.  So, if you decide to make a change, please arrange to talk with the student.
The student presumably has or will pay the appropriate penalty at your institution.  Unless that penalty is academic dismissal, the student has presumably paid for her mistake, or will do so.  (She has paid if dismissed, too, but that suggests an incident so egregious that you might feel obligated to take action on the recommendation.)
An unrepentant cheater will cheat again, and get caught again, at the new institution.
Her offense may appear on her transcript, which may be seen by the other institution.  (Some institutions request a transcript at decision time and also after the completion of the student's current term.)
My advice: Do nothing unless the cheating incident was so egregious that you feel compelled to intervene.  Note that you still have to have that discussion with the student if you decide to intervene, regardless of the reason for intervening.

You cannot ethically change your recommendation without first discussing it with the student. Hmm, what ethical principle exactly is at play here? I mean, the student didn’t exactly “discuss” her intention to cheat with her letter writer prior to taking this ethically compromising action. I’m not necessarily advocating changing the letter, but I don’t see why OP should be ethically bound to have any discussions with the student.

@DanRomik  OP and student reached a possibly unspoken understanding that the recommendation would be a supportive one.  Changing the recommendation undoes that understanding.  At a minimum OP should inform the student.  I believe it would be far better to have that "discussion" and give the student an opportunity to express contrition if indeed she would.

As a practical suggestion, I don’t disagree that this may be a good idea, but I think framing it as some kind of ethical imperative is going too far. It is clearly the student who, in choosing to cheat, first broke whatever “unspoken understanding” she had with OP pertaining to the letter and what it will/should contain. IMO this frees OP from whatever ethical obligation they had (assuming they even had one in the first place, which also does not seem obvious to me) to discuss the content of the letter with the student.

@BobBrown Does not the student and their professor also have an unspoken understanding, that the recommendation only applies if the students behavior does not significantlly change? Is it really a one way street?

Duscuss with her without saying it can change the recommendation. To ascertain her liability, remorse and mental state.

It would certainly be permissible to withdraw your letter of support. Arguably, in the EU the student might have a right to be forgotten, and the OP shouldn't give the other university information about her which she hasn't permitted the OP to give. If the other university considered the OP's recommendation in accepting the student, then that university will reverse their decision unless the student can find another recommendation, which they likely can't.

You wrote the personal recommendation in good faith on the evidence available to you at the time you wrote. A decision was taken on her master's course. It seems unethical to seek to later modify such opinions and the decision on the basis of new personal experience; where would such a process stop?
Only if there was formal recorded institutional action taken against cheating, and only if that action nullified the grounds of admission to the masters' program  might you have cause to notify the accepting institution of the false premises on which it had admitted the student to the masters' program.

Why should such a process stop? It seems reasonable that the letter-writer should be able to update (or withdraw) his letter as long as people are still relying on it to make their decisions.

Suppose you sent her transcript to the other university, then later discovered that she had broken into the registrar's server and changed her grades. The correct action in such a case would obviously be to inform the university that the records sent were incorrect (and that the student was the one responsible for falsifying them).
Grades are meant to represent the student's knowledge. By cheating, she effectively tricked the grader into entering an incorrect grade into the system. The mechanism by which the grade was falsified differs between the two scenarios, but in both cases, the student knowingly caused a grade that does not reflect her ability to be placed in the system.
Assuming that the letter of recommendation was based in part on class performance, it was inaccurate, and for the same reason the transcript was. The other university should be informed of this.

I tend to agree, but let's not forget that university are not institutions preserving knowledge: universities are quite often very powerful money machine. Should a professor be updated on every informatic intrusion in the uni's servers, or should the university be responsible of providing grades about a certain student whenever asked?
The amount of work universities performs for the money they recieve is almost negligible. And then professor are even required to integrate universities fundings from external sources!

First, academia is based around the search for and discovery of truth. This often requires changing positions and conclusions to fit new observations, no matter how uncomfortable or inconvenient that may be. That should be your guiding principle in everything you do as an academic.
To answer your first question, if you had submitted a research paper that drew conclusions based on data you later learned to be faulty, would you submit a retraction? I would hope so, as you now know the conclusion to be unsupported by the data, and to continue to allow people to make decisions as if it were would be unethical. You have a duty to correct that misinformation.
As for your second question, it is irrelevant. You do not have a responsibility to ensure the success of her academic or professional career, only her instruction and the development as a student. The academic dishonesty this student has shown in cheating ultimately calls into question their entire body of work (falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus), including that which you based her recommendation on. Allowing the institution they have been admitted to to operate under the assumption that they have legitimately demonstrated themselves academically and should be admitted rewards that dishonesty and will only serve to deny them accountability and stunt their personal growth. Your student is the one who engaged in unethical behavior, and the consequences are theirs to deal with. They are responsible for their own success, academically and professionally, and if this negatively impacts this, it is of their own doing, not yours.
Your desire to be clear and honest with your colleagues is exemplary and the correct course for many reasons. If you were in their position, you would expect the same candidness and truthfulness. Your reputation is also at stake. If they later observed such behavior from this student, they may call your judgement into question. If they were to learn that you knew of this behavior and maintained your positive recommendation at their expense, I would expect them to question your judgement as well as your character. Lastly, whatever program this student was admitted to likely has limited room, and their admission comes at another student's expense. Failing to inform your colleagues about this behavior and inform their decision making may potentially deny a more deserving student this opportunity.
As for your actions moving forward, the best course of action in my opinion is to contact the university she has been admitted to and explain the situation, as well as explain your position and actions to the student. If you still believe they should be admitted to the institution and the behavior you have recently learned about is an aberration that is not indicative of their entire body of work or their character, then let them know. You can maintain a positive recommendation while still being frank and honest. If you no longer believe this student should be admitted into the university based on their actions, then change your recommendation. The pursuit of Knowledge never benefits from the obfuscation of the truth to fit personal or political agendas, and taking a course of action based on the convenience of the ramifications does no one any good in the long run. In short, be truthful because that is where your ultimate duty lies.

Should I change my submitted recommendation letter due to the student's unethical behavior?

No.

Because once sent, you can't change a submitted recommendation letter. You can write a second letter, but no party has solicited such a letter, and receiving institution may not even have a mechanism to deal with "errata" in recommendation letters appropriately. They asked for a snapshot with a timestamp and you provided it.
Drawing outside the lines and trying to do other people's job (evaluating the student for the program) no matter how well-intentioned can lead to unexpected consequences, perhaps even to you. If the student learns of multiple letters, might they perceive potential harm to their future and take academic or legal action?
Where does it end? What if you learn more? Should you send a third letter? A fourth? What if you discover your new view is incomplete and/or nuanced in such a way that you regret your second letter? Will saying "Oh please ignore letter B and go with letter A"? Will they just toss all your letters?

If the letter was honest, correct and valid on the day on which it is dated, your responsibilities were completed.
By getting in the driver's seat and trying to manage or steer the repercussions of the students new actions in a certain way I think you're going down a rabbit hole of unpredictable outcomes that might even come back to bite you.

@Trunk No, not a correction. What the OP asks is "Should I change my positive letter to a negative one?" It would be a new letter with not only new information but a different conclusion. Presumably the original letter did not say explicitly that the student had a high degree of ethics and would never cheat on tests. Calling it a correction is misdirection. "For sure it will affect inter-university relations." Really doubtful, an entire university does not stake its reputation on every recommendation letter written for every undergraduate applying to a master's program.

@Trunk Imagine the answers that would be posted if I asked a new question here, something like "I am afraid to write a letter of recommendation for a student applying to a Masters program because there might be some things I don't yet know about them and my university's reputation is at stake" The student asked for a letter based on what the prof knew, and they did so, and the Master's program will receive it as exactly that, no more, no less. It's not supposed to be an ongoing investigation with no end.

"But I think it is fair to expect an academic referee to review the student's full academic record," Really? 1) doesn't that run headlong into privacy concerns? 2) Is it fair to expect a letter writer to look into the future? The reality is that at the level of application to a Masters program letters are scoped on what the writer happens to know at the time of writing.

@Trunk if the program is interested in grades, they will ask the student to supply official transcripts supplied by the university. They do no expect to see grades listed in letters of recommendation.

@uhoh, I think this is exactly right. The letter writers have no obligation to "investigate" students, and, indeed, there are surely privacy considerations. And, right, it should not be an "on-going..." anything. And, as I said in another comment, letters should address first-hand info.

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Referencing works that request you use a specific reference format?
I've come across several documents that say something like "please use the following reference to the whole report:," or "reference to this report may be made in the following form:"
Maybe this is a dumb question, but is it necessary to abide by these suggested references, or are they simply examples that lay out the components of an accurate reference? Incorporating them into my bibliography as-is without context seems like it will raise eyebrows.

It doesn't mean the format or referencing style. As you say, it is just laying out the components of an accurate reference, or the components they want you to use.
For example if there are several possible URLs for a paper, you should use the one they give. If a conference name can be abbreviated or written in full, you should write it the way they suggest.

I agree with using their URL, but abbreviating or not abbreviating the conference name should be consistent across your reference section at least, and possibly conform to an external style guide. These are not possible to combined with following each reference's suggested style.

Its possible that there are several possible ways to abbreviate a name so they may have some preferred form, when the abbreviation is the suggested style.

Conversely, I would presume that there are at least a few conferences (across all disciplines) that share abbreviations.  So if that's a known issue for a specific conference, spelling it out may be preferred to avoid confusion.

I agree with the comments and deleted the part about conference names. I can't think of another good example, but the answer is clear enough .

They are suggestions and requests, not requirements, provided that they refer to the form and not the content. Some content requests should probably be honored, such as the order and spelling of author names.
Some such names might be related to cultural norms, such as the relative placement of family and personal names. Other things, such as author order, might be deemed important in some fields.
It is probably best to honor these things unless there is a reason to deviate, just out of respect for the authors.
One reason that you might need to deviate is to conform with the requirements of a journal for specific formatting style if you include such a citation.

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Does “Historically excluded groups” in job posting mean that they want to hire Black/Hispanic?
I have spotted a job posting for tenure-track positions at an R1 school in the US, saying that they look for candidates who bring perspectives in their research that reflects membership in groups historically excluded from higher education and the field of X (within public health).
Does this mean that they want to hire someone who is Black/Hispanic and considers their membership in their research? Or does this also include other groups including such as those disabled, veteran, immigrants, Asian, indigenous people, women (depending on fields?), nationality, etc?
My colleagues and friends from different fields have different ideas. Some in social science who study diversity insist the former only and (with some sarcasm) argue that applicants should read the context,  while others in fields of STEM, public health, and social science, say that “historically excluded” should be more inclusive like the latter, and/or is meant to be so.

The exact groups depend on the institution, but no, it's not just those two groups. It's also not limited to race or ethnicity, since underrepresentation can extend to gender, religion, sexuality, socioeconomic status, personal and family history, and various other factors.
Sometimes institutions publish their definition of historically underrepresented groups. Here's an arbitrarily selected example (Emory University) that's broadly consistent with common definitions at American universities.

This term refers to groups who have been denied access and/or suffered
past institutional discrimination in the United States and, according
to the Census and other federal measuring tools, includes African
Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics or Chicanos/Latinos, and Native
Americans.
This is revealed by an imbalance in the representation of different
groups in common pursuits such as education, jobs, and housing,
resulting in marginalization for some groups and individuals and not
for others, relative to the number of individuals who are members of
the population involved. Other groups in the United States have been
marginalized and are currently underrepresented. These groups may
include but are not limited to:

Other ethnicities
Adult learners
Veterans
People with disabilities
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals
Different religious groups, and
Different economic backgrounds

Just to illustrate the point, if the field in question is something like midwifery, men would be a historically excluded group.

You forgot the group of people whose names start with Wq.

@markvs reallly, those are historically excluded? There is a difference between being absent and being excluded.

@Wrzlprmft really, those are historically excluded? There is a difference between being absent and being excluded.

@DanRomik: Practically almost certainly (though I am far from an expert). I don’t know whether any “hard” exclusions were ever in effect, but then neither were they for many other cases for a long time – it was just much more difficult if you were in the wrong group.

@Wrzlprmft If we're talking OB/GYN more broadly, it was actually women who were historically excluded, but that got massively inverted over the past 50 years or so.


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Sign copyright agreement before paper acceptance?
I am submitting a research paper to a journal and they asked me to sign the copyright agreement in favour of the editor before the paper is accepted.  Is this right?
And what happens in this case is if the paper rejected?

What do you mean with “in favour of the editor”?

@Wrzlprmft: I think the OP talks about the possibility that the paper is rejected and later in the process - published (modified) by someone else. Without giving credit to the authors that did most of the work.

@CommuSoft: I doubt that. The author writes, that he was “asked to sign […] in favour of the editor“. The journal will hardly tell he should sign so that they can steal his work.

@Wrzlprmft: I agree on that part. I think stealing is too strong. Say the paper contains some huge mistakes, but has some promising idea's it's always hard to tell who "came there first"...

This is rather normal for non open-access articles in my field (Physics), however all journals I have submitted to until now had a clause that the copyright transfer is voided if the paper is not accepted or withdrawn. For example IOP’s copyright agreement contains the following sentence:

In the event that the Article is withdrawn prior to acceptance, or is rejected, this agreement shall have no effect and no party shall be bound by it.

If such conditions are included, requesting such an agreement at an early stage seems somewhat reasonable to me, since it would be a waste of time to review your paper if you did not agree with these terms.
If such conditions are not included, this is a clear warning sign that the publisher may be up to nothing good. However, even with such a clause, problems may arise, as the publisher may just instantly accept your article.
For open-access articles (pay-to-publish), a similar situation holds, however, the copyright agreement usally requires less commitment from you, as you should retain most rights on your article (since the journal does not make money with being the only one making your article available). This not applying to the copyright agreement is another warning sign of a predatory publisher.
In both cases, you should read the copyright agreement carefully and ensure the reputability of the publisher.

Unfortunately, a number of large-scale publishers expect you to sign over the copyrights before the article is accepted. For instance, the American Chemical Society, as well as the Materials Research Society will continually hound you about the transfer agreement until it's submitted, and moreover will not formally accept the article until they have the transfer agreement.

And so if they reject the paper, they hold the copyright and the author violates copyright by submitting the paper elsewhere?  This doesn't seem to make sense.

No, usually the agreement is worded so that it's conditional on the manuscript being accepted.

I am looking at the MRS copyright form right now thanks to the link you provided, and I don't see any wording that makes it conditional on acceptance.  Did I miss it?

Hmm. The ACS version has it. Not sure why the MRS doesn't. But yeah, that could make things awkward. But I know when I had to submit proceedings there recently, all authors had to send in the transfer agreement at the time of submission.

@PeteL.Clark The copyright form for the Journal of Materials Research begins with the clause "In consideration of the publication in Journal of Materials Research of the contribution entitled ..."  My non-expert opinion is that, if they do not publish the contribution, then there has been no consideration, therefore no contract, and therefore no transfer of the copyright.  (Legal experts are invited to correct my opinion.)

@Andreas: I don't read the wording that way.  For instance, the phrase you quote is not part of a complete sentence, so is not asserting anything, as far as I can see.  Also, by signing this form you are transferring over the copyright unconditionally, as far as I can see.  It is pretty well established that you don't need to publish what you have under copyright.  I would certainly not sign this form without at least checking how the journal interprets the language.

But the whole idea of signing over copyright before the paper is refereed or accepted just seems incoherent to me.  Presumably the submitted version of the paper is not identical to the published version.  If there are revisions (which is most often the case) it may actually be intellectually different.  Can you have one copyright form that covers different documents?  If so, I guess the journal has the right to make whatever revisions they want -- they have the copyright.  That sounds like an absolute mess.

@PeteL.Clark I conjecture that the phrase about "In consideration" is part of a complete sentence, which is interrupted by a boldface section heading and instructions, and which then continues with "I/we assign ... online version." So I'm inclined to think that the copyright assignment is in the scope of the "In consideration" phrase and becomes void if there is no consideration. I'm also inclined to think that "the said contribution" refers to what is published, not what is submitted, since the published version is "said" in the earlier phrase.

Nevertheless, I agree that, before signing such a thing, one should find out what the publisher thinks it means. Perhaps even more relevant is what lawyers and judges think it means.

@PeteL.Clark I agree that copyright transfer should be after/subject to acceptance and should be void if withdrawn by the author(s). But I'm not sure if it's the copyright that protects you from the publisher's evil modification such as publishing a paper under your name with contents you've never written or agreed with. Sure, it's unethical (and illegal in a serious case) to put words into your mouth, or to trick people into believing it's your work when it's not. But if your name is used this way without your consent, it seems to me it's more than just a copyright problem.

Besides, the publisher could do the same thing regardless of when you transfer copyright; your paper gets accepted and edited, so you give them the copyright. A few days later, you take a look at the latest issue, and lo and behold, the published version doesn't look anything like what you've written! I'm no lawyer, but I want to believe that there has to be a law that protects you from this kind of behavior other than copyright... I mean, if your name is abused this way, and if copyright is the only weapon to fight back, it's the publisher who has that precious weapon when you fight back...

Many big publishers will often start asking pretty much immediately (I don't know if this is policy or just brain-dead software configuration). You can generally safely ignore these requests until the article is actually accepted, however, because until then the idea of copyright transfer is moot.  That is certainly the policy that I follow, and it hasn't caused me any trouble yet.

Have you checked this journal against Beall's list of Preadatory Publishers and Preadatory Journals? There's little reason to sign over the copyright until the article is accepted, and this practice seems sketchy at best to me.

See my comment to @paulgarrett and the answer by aeismail: unfortunately, many large legitimate publishers do this, particularly in biomedical and chemistry journals.

Do not sign any copyright release before the paper is accepted, in any case.
The irregularity of this practice is itself a bad sign about the legitimacy of the journal.

Unfortunately, a lot of legitimate large publishers do this. For example, I have found ACS particularly obnoxious.

@jakebeal, I am amazed that this is still so. "We", collectively, should not tolerate it. Legit mathematics journals do not seem to do this, happily, despite their other manifold failings.

Unfortunately it is so: from what I have seen, math and physics generally have the most progressive publication policies, followed by computer science.  On the other end of the spectrum, many biomedical and chemistry publications are practically abusive, and this will not change until the authors in those communities object.

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I made a major (criminal) mistake in college and the whole faculty knows about it, but I graduated. Might they admit me for grad school?
I’m looking to apply for my MCS at a well-known North-American university – the same university where I completed my BCS with honors. My grades are good, more than sufficient to get into an MCS program. My BCS GPA at completion was a 3.6.
However, I was young and especially dumb in university. I won’t go into details, but I’m lucky to not be in prison right now. My professors and instructors fought hard to keep the university from expelling me. I owe another group of staff who kept another entire department calm. There was no property damage, injuries, or anything like that. I was supposed to be on permanent disciplinary probation for it, with the understanding that any misstep would result in my permanent expulsion. However, my official transcript shows “in good disciplinary standing” after a year. I was never placed back on probation.
There is no avoiding that blemish (and nor should there). There isn’t a single instructor, professor, assistant dean, associate dean, or dean who doesn’t know what happened. I have an excellent relationship with my former instructors and professors. My relationship with the various levels of the deans would be best described as non-existent, save one assistant dean.
TLDR: I made a pretty large, well-known (at the university) mistake that should’ve seen me be expelled and jailed. Instead, I was officially placed on disciplinary probation for a year. It should’ve been permanent (by transcript records). Relationship with former instructors/professors is excellent. Relationship with former dean, assistant dean, and associate dean is non-existent.
Am I screwed?
Addressing comments

Absolutely it’s important to acknowledge my past, without dwelling on it too much. That balance will be for me and an admissions board to determine.

Any letter of recommendations I get would be from three respected professors, and two very reputable and trusted instructors. The professors haven’t been at the university as long as the instructors. The professors are important members of a research group. Additionally, I've done graduate-like work with two of them, with a couple articles published. Both instructors have the ear of the dean.

Legal office: I'm not sure how involved they were. I've only ever heard rumors that a federal agency was called. That's never been confirmed (to me). I know that the highest levels of the university administrative team (up to and including the president and chancellor) were read into what had happened.

Time Frame: within the last five years. It's recent enough that most faculty and staff who were involved remember the events and are still employed at the university. With the exception of “the other department” the only group who refused to speak to me would be my deans, with one exception.

I have made steps to make peace with everyone involved, over the years. Some of them have gone unanswered, some of them have been accepted with open arms. It varied heavily on who I’m talking to and their mood that day.

I'm not able to openly speak about what happened, that's partially why I haven't explained what actually happened here (as well as to maintain a little bit of privacy for all of those involved). In order to discuss it, I'd need multiple people to sign off on a full disclosure (partial would make it look like I'm hiding something), which given the sensitive nature is not likely to happen. Anyone in a position to make or break my application already knows the full story. They were involved from the beginning of it.

Financial support is not a concern of mine. I already have everything I need to do my research. I'm employed making a comfortable wage. My employers are in the loop of my desire to get an MCS. They're willing (but would prefer not to) to shift my schedule, as needed.

Why not apply to a different university where it would be easier to make a fresh start?

Any application to another University would require sending transcripts. It's more than a little strange to see honor marks (with no history of cheating), followed by a student being put on Academic probation. I'd be back at the same square I'm currently in.

You'll probably need a letter from your current employer (not necessarily a recommendation letter) to state that you have been a good employee.

A question for you to consider (don't answer it here): How relevant is your mistake to your future studies? There's a world of difference between stealing university equipment to sell it on Craigslist vs assaulting a fellow student vs making meth in the organic chemistry lab. The latter won't be much of a concern anymore if you're now applying to a computer science program.

If the crime was victimless or the victim was someone's wallet it is generally more likely to pass over quicker. Is that something you can mention anything about? (without revealing information you want to keep private)

Is there any chance you are still going to be prosecuted and convicted in the future?  An unspent conviction is a risk in taking on students or employees, so may be treated differently from spent convictions.

"Criminal" covers a lot of ground - too much.  It's understandable that you don't want to share the details, but at the same time you have to appreciate that we also can't help with a situation we have effectively no information about.  The advice you get here could be good or it could be catastrophically wrong - because we don't know what we're talking about.  You do.  I'd suggest you seek advice from people whom you trust and who are fully acquainted with all of the circumstances.

If the mistake didn't stop you graduating, why should it otherwise stop your academic career? If you were asking someone to trust you to look after company or clients' money, that might be different but what, here, would be the problem?

This is a fundamentally valid and even interesting question, but I agree with others that it can't really be answered without knowing more about what you did. If you were drunk driving and ran over some freshmen and damaged the founder's statue, that would likely be treated differently than if you were cooking meth, running an advance fee fraud scheme out of your dorm, smuggling assault weapons to terrorist organizations, or committing religiously-motivated hate crimes outside the chapel.

People who commit crimes need education too (some would say, even more so)
It's obviously extremely difficult to speculate on this, particularly without details of the offence, and the policies and culture at your university.  In any case, since your department apparently fought for you to remain as a student at the time, logic would dictate that the same people would be happy to have you as a student as your offence becomes more remote (and given that you have not done anything wrong since then).  Moreover, if your official status in the program is that you are now "in good standing", that suggests that the effect of the initial offence on your status has now lapsed.  That also bodes well for any application you make.
Different universities have different policies when it comes to relevance/irrelevance of criminal history in student applications.  Some universities solicit information on criminal convictions and take this into account in applications, and some do not.  (For more information on this you may want to read about the "ban the box" movement in academia.)  It is unlikely that a university would solicit information on criminal offences that have not led to conviction, but in your case, where this is already known, it is possible it would be taken into account.  A recent study by Stewart and Uggen (2019) involved a randomised-controlled-trial to estimate the effect of disclosure of a low-level felony conviction on a college application.  They found that the rejection rate for applicants with felony convictions was nearly 2.5 times the rate of their control group.  So, that gives you a rough idea of the estimated "average" effect of an actual felony convicion on an application.
You should also note that some universities specifically go out of their way to provide education to convicted criminals, in some cases including offering education-by-correspondence to people who are actually still in prison.  (For an example of a post-prison program see e.g., St Francis College, NY).   There is an ethos within certain parts of academia that encourages education for people who have committed criminal offences, as a means to give them pathways towards success in a law-abiding productive career.  I happen to agree generally with that ethos (though with some limitations and caveats), so I would generally not hold a prior criminal offence against an applicant for a university education program, unless there were some serious ongoing risk in admitting them.  More generally, I take the view that the criminal law system exists to punish crimes and the universities exist to provide education; not to act as an ancillary legal system.  Of course, like any other major public institutions, universities want to discourage and penalise criminal offences committed by their present students, so that cuts the other way.  There are also some ethical complications with service to criminals when university is funded or subsidised by taxpayers, but that is a can-of-worms for another time.
Ultimately, the prospects of your application may depend heavily on who ends up assessing it ---i.e., whether it is assessed by one of the university staff who wanted you to stay, or one of the staff that wanted to get rid of you.  The best thing you can do is to be up-front about your offence in your application, make clear your contrition and subsequent good behaviour, and then hope that your undergraduate record subsequent to your offence (both good grades and good behaviour) gets you over the line.

Unfortunately, I suspect the only answer we can give you is "maybe." The admissions committee will have to weigh the seriousness of what happened against the evidence that you've learned from your mistake and are otherwise a strong candidate. Some important factors:

Naturally, your application materials, when you address what happened: you will have to explain what happened without minimizing your culpability, but also without spending too many words on the past.
Your letters of recommendation will also carry great weight; if your professors are willing to state clearly that past mistakes are unlikely to be repeated, that should help you a lot.
The details about what you did. The legal office may be concerned about the university's liability if they admit you and you were to do it again. Similarly, if what you did is really horrible and is in the "public record," admitting you may raise concerns about the university's reputation.
How long ago this happened. You say you were "young" -- if this happened more than a few years ago, that should help a lot. If this happened 10+ years ago, then I wouldn't spend more than a sentence or two discussing this incident.

It sounds like your transcript shows that were put on probation; so, the analysis probably doesn't change much if you consider universities other than the one you are at now. Though if your current school still has several people who are personally upset about what happened, other schools may be more calm. I definitely recommend applying to more schools than just this one. I don't think your non-disclosure agreement makes this impossible, you can write something like:

"I do want to be transparent about one incident. During my 2nd year, I was put on academic probation. In short, I [did something really bad]. Due to an NDA, I cannot give all the details about what happened, but I freely admit that it was a major mistake and I am lucky not to have been expelled. [Another sentence or two presenting evidence (not just stating feelings) that you have put this incident behind you.]

I'll edit my original post to answer this. Too long for a comment.

OK, though to be clear, I wasn't really asking you for clarification. You did a good job making your question suitably broad that it could be useful to others in the future; this answer is intended to be equally broad.

OP: if what happened would be in records, then I think you have better chances at the current university. Apparently many people seem to agree that was a past accident. The records should be seen as more scary in a place where nobody knows you.

If it was 5 years ago, you're overthinking the situation. You were probably not even old enough to legally drink by US standards. Young people often do dumb shit and 5 years is long enough for maturity.
e.g. My buddy once hacked into the network(he was really talented) of our CS department's main undergrad computer lab and wrote a script that remote-wiped every single machine in the lab, because he was really angry that we were playing games there instead of the planned cram session(with him) for a Linear Algebra exam later that day that he was otherwise utterly unprepared for.
He was in a hurry, did a sloppy job covering up his tracks(usually he wouldn't, it wasn't the first time he'd hacked the network) and so was caught. The lab guys had to work nights do a complete fresh re-install of every single machine, the lab was closed for several days and the Dean was pissed, but not heartless, so my buddy managed to get a "plea deal" where he had to single-handedly mop the floors in the computer labs, as "community service", in lieu of criminal charges, for the rest of the semester. He was in the shit-book for the rest of his undergrad and the butt of every professor's joke, since he had to admit the dumb reason he did it. Yet when we came back for a visit(about 5 years after the incident as it happens) the Dean(same guy), slapped him on the back and cracked a joke about them needing to watch out for the master hacker.

There's an old idiom "there's no such thing as bad publicity" that comes into play for stories like that. Becoming infamous can occasionally be a path to success. Being obscure never is.

Might they admit me for grad school?

Yes, it sounds absolutely possible. Look at it this way: you say you are lucky not to be in prison. Well, if there’s a lesson there, it’s that sometimes you get lucky. If you got lucky once, it could happen again with your grad school application.
I suggest that you simply give it a shot. Your academic success clearly shows that you have mended your ways and are no longer engaging in dumb, criminal activities. Your professors seem to recognize this too. Given the political attitudes of the typical US academic, many of them probably believe in second chances and in the narrative of personal growth and redemption. This could make the idea of admitting you seem appealing, or at the very least, as reasonable as the idea of admitting anyone else with similar academic credentials.
The one piece of practical advice I’d offer is, apply to many schools, not just one. This is good advice for any prospective graduate student, so it applies equally to you. Any single student generally cannot count on getting admitted to any single program they apply to.
Good luck!

People from both ends of the political spectrum agree on personal growth and redemption, although the ideological systems supporting these convictions differ.

Teachers support students who learn
If they didn't indict you and they let you graduate, they probably want your path to continue. They also made mistakes. Teachers don't want students who don't need to learn, but they love students who learn and progress the most. To many teachers, you are the ideal student.
It looks like you learned and took responsibility. If your tone and attitude at school and in applying are the same as you have here, those professors may likely send good words for you as they rub shoulders with the admissions committee. They probably already have.
The work culture is in your favor
The way it often works with a student in your shoes having graduated is faculty dropping lines randomly in the lounge and cafeterias about you with words like "attitude" and "improvement" and "potential" and "learns". Someone might make a call, calm tone, "I've met with him, and he gets it. We should be good here." At any meetings, a few would make a few similar statements, then most would just nod, smile, and vote in your favor.
While a carpenter stands back to admire freshly finished remodeling, teachers admire students they helped make a comeback. They get off on it. Teachers love to be part of stories like Lean on Me (based on a true story). They get angry about different things, like office space in the latest building project. Helping you progress restores good vibes at their meetings like an afternoon dessert at the beach.
It's one big fish tank. All the fish know each other and this "school" of fish seems to like you.
Normal risk, best to try
Faculty, heads, and deans can trip on power. Institutions always have that some. But, don't fear it because it's an "expected/acceptable risk" wherever you go. You may be surprised by who turns out to be your opponents and proponents—the dean who comes down toughest goes to bat for you later, the department head who smiled the most may have been undercutting you. But, that seems not the case here. You probably mostly made friends if you graduated.
You never know until you try. In your application, don't belabor your faults, just make one, single statement that you are "very undeserving... but maybe the world needs [you] having overcome personal flaws..." Be only positive in the rest of your application.
I hope you succeed. But somehow, I think your teachers hope you succeed more than I do. By all means, try!

Teachers definitely love seeing students succeed. I know some of the faculty outside of school. They're always happy to hear from me.
I will certainly try. It won't hurt anyone - and the worst that happens is they reject my application. Nothing ventured, nothing gained! Cheers!

I think you may mean https://www.dictionary.com/browse/indict .

I think you need to ask a different question. The answer to both 'might they admit me to grad school' and to 'am I screwed' is 'maybe, you'll only find out if you try'. The fact that you're asking these questions indicates to me that you're wrestling with the guilt that you feel over your actions. I think the more you can meet this guilt and let it go, the more clearly you will be able to look at your situation and see what your actions were, and what the potential consequences may be. This could then help you to rephrase your question as something like 'how can I handle this matter in my job applications and potential interviews to minimise the impact it has on my chances of getting a position'. Do you feel like you deserve to ask this question instead?
I think the straightforward approach you've taken in writing your question is commendable and you'll need it to move forward. Good luck.

This question is virtually impossible to answer by the good ol' generalization of life experiences, and yet...
It is common to give people second and third chances in academic culture. When missteps happen, normally the way out is proving you've reformed to someone and have them vouch for you: regaining credibility and re-socialization are closely coupled here. Since you've retained good relationships with some of the profs, it's already a huge plus.
When making amends, one would likely need to sacrifice comfort and a measure of privacy: expect some kind of probation in spirit, if not in letter. It is also tied to the nature of the offense: if you've committed fraud, be able to come with the way to handle related affairs transparently enough; if you were drug dealing on the campus, maybe some check-ups with an addictionist would be in order. Probably the least troublesome to deal with would be a prank went wrong kind of scenario.
It might be that while you're allowed to perform research duties, the bar for teaching duties is higher (at least this is the case here). MSc programs don't generally require to perform those but otherwise it could cause issues, too.
They do some good will towards you, so the issue might be of capacity. Either they would take delight in seeing you overcome your past or they are overspent already and dread of seeing you again. And there is only one way of finding that out.
Be humble but direct. Apparent doubt might be a complete deal-breaker here: if you're not sure about yourself today, why would they be? While you definitely can't just walk in and pretend nothing happened, a certain clarity and assertiveness would be good. "I want to apply" instead of "I was wondering if you maybe could admit me into your MSc program", if you will.

My professors and instructors fought hard to keep the university from expelling me. I owe another group of staff who kept another entire department calm.

This isn't a guarantee, but it's a good sign - if they fought hard so that you could stay at the university, then they may fight hard to allow you to stay for a postgraduate course too, given that you meet the academic requirements for it. You also have nothing to lose by applying (except an application fee if there is one in your country, but that should be small in the grand scheme of things).
That said, if there are people at the university who you harmed, and they would be uncomfortable with you continuing to be at the university, then you might consider whether staying there is the right thing to do. There are some kinds of crimes where the continued presence of the perpetrator can cause more harm after the fact. I don't know if this might apply to you, but if it does then it's something you may not want on your conscience.

To my question "Why not apply to a different university where it would be easier to make a fresh start?" you said

Any application to another University would require sending transcripts. It's more than a little strange to see honor marks (with no history of cheating), followed by a student being put on Academic probation. I'd be back at the same square I'm currently in.

So yes, it would look a little strange.  But compare one little strange thing on a transcript to:

There isn’t a single instructor, professor, assistant dean, associate dean, or dean who doesn’t know what happened

You are in a much better spot applying to a new university (assuming of course that this incident did not make national news and that faculty/deans at other schools would not recognize your name).  Yes there will be something a little strange on the transcript.  You should acknowledge this in your application (but without going into too many details), say that you've learned from it, and then move on.  If you have good letters of recommendation and an otherwise good academic record, I think you'd have a decent shot at another university.

I don't know where OP is located, but in many countries suspects in criminal trials may not be fully named by news sources.


text:
Is it Common to hire and fire people in lab frequently?
I have never seen this happen in other research labs in my university and I am trying to get into the mind of my advisor and understand what his intentions are! We are an HCI lab of two people. In last year, we have hired and fired seven people. They get hired, work for a month or two, my advisor is not satisfied them and removes them from the team.
My professor is new to the lab, it was given to her upon joining in Summer 2012. Another PhD student and myself have been working since beginning of the lab before the professor. We are the only permanent fixtures.
I am the defacto programmer and I program all the projects in lab. I had asked my advisor for PhD last week, as I completed my thesis defense last year, but she said she needs to check her funding and will get back to me. At same time she is putting out a word to other professors that she needs good RAs.
In the interim, an established tenure professor in our department in operations research had asked me to join his lab as PhD student for a project in data mining. He said I am very good at Computer Science and he needs my skills for his projects. I had asked him if its common in his lab to change people constantly and he told me there were only four people working in his lab for past 5 years and he said always asks for input from his own students in lab before contacting anybody for RAs.
The professor I am currently working with has never asked me or the other PhD student for advice before taking on people or firing them. It puts an uncomfortable pressure on me as I feel that she is not happy with my work and looking for replacement. I really don't like working with new people every two months. So why is my advisor doing this?
How frequently do you hire and fire people in your labs?

Additionally, and this may sound nit-picky, but it's important: practice your writing skills, even for these small types of posts.  If you ever want to be a serious academic, all of your writing should be clear.  The only way that happens is by practice.  Rambling, weasel words ("kind of"), punctuation issues (this?How), and inconsistency (PHD, PhD, Phd) are your enemies.  You improve by practicing constantly, not just when writing a key paper.

Also, is this the same advisor from your prior posts?  If that is the case, why are you even still in this lab?

@Namey well we have one more faculty joining our lab soon and there is a very good chance i can work under him directly.Hoping for everything to work out fine now.

First, it is uncommon to hire and fire people that quickly in almost any context.  Evaluating and hiring good people takes time.  Training people to do anything useful takes time: usually more than two months of time.  What you're describing is incredibly inefficient and, as you note, bad for morale.  It's also bad hiring practice in a small lab to not conduct a group interview with the potential coworkers.  To be frank, your adviser does not seem very good at the HR aspects of running a lab.
However, as a counterpoint, it depends very much on the funding situation.  A new professor, unless they're particularly lucky, may not have very much funding on-hand.  Especially if their funding agencies pay out the award in installments, they may literally have to let people go because the funding has run dry.  To be quite honest, a new professor supporting 2 full-time PhD students and their own summer salary is already looking at an annual outlay of $100k-$150, at least in the US (most of which is tuition, since they're supporting two students through grad school).  Many grant agencies (e.g., NSF) typically award $100k-150k per anum grants.  So they could be scraping very low on their funding and have to cycle through people for that reason (e.g., can afford them for the summer, have to dump them in the fall due to tuition costs).  Funding has been particularly tough the last few years.
Secondly, if they are not sure if they can cover your tuition, but the other professor certainly will?  It's possibly time to jump ship to the other guy.  Currently, having just finished your masters and early in your PhD, this is the best time to do so.  If I were you, I would do the following:

Talk to the tenured professor to ensure this is a serious offer, backed by grant or internal money.  Inquire about how long currently awarded funds are likely to last.
If the situation sounds good, ask if it would cause any political problems to talk it over with your adviser.  Ideally, you want to do this (they are a reference), but not if it might sink the sure offer.
If it won't ruin the new opportunity, tell your current adviser the situation and ask the same questions (is there money, how long).
If they're comparable, choose the one that seems like a better fit for your interests and your academic security.
If it's lopsided, go for the funding security and find a way to work your research into what you are doing.  To be frank, I would avoid any PhD that you can't get funded for.  If there's not enough money in the area to train you, why would there be enough to hire you when you finish?

Finally, if your adviser takes it personally that you are exploring other opportunities when they can't assure you funding next semester?  Jump ship.  A boss who takes things personally is a bad boss.  I had a great programming intern last summer, who we would have loved to keep as an RA.  Unfortunately, a big chunk of funding was delayed due to Congress playing chicken.  A company affiliated with the university offered four years worth of tuition and stipend, guaranteed.  We do work he is more interested in and we could almost certainly cover him over that whole period.  But the key word is "almost."  I told him that I would not blame him at all if he took their offer (which he did).  I hope he's doing great over there.  If your adviser doesn't have that attitude, it's time to go.

most of the people my adviser hires for programming (By the way we are in HCI which is part of industrial and human factors engineering)take help of other PHD students in CS and get their work done. I have repeatedly pointed it out to my adviser and he lets them go.He gets gamed by students a lot. My issue is i want to be in HCI and the other prof. offered me PHD in Operations Research. The other prof. is highly established and has won the Frank Edelman Award in OR  but its not my field. Also ,my adviser said has no funding for my PHD,but asks other prof's for RAs.IDK what the hell is going on

and baffling thing is i never took a course with the other prof. He was on my thesis defense committee and this is first time in 5 years he is taking a PHd Student(me).I had asked my advisor for her advice on switching to other prof, but he advised against it saying his research is crap (literally). But everybody in university knows the Prof. is very good. So i asked my adviser directly for PHD and he said he has no funding and will let me know in future.

I have to be frank, I would be wary of a professor that trashes other professors and has no funding.  Even if it is not your main area, you could still use your dissertation to integrate both HCI and OR.  OR is applying statistics to help people make decisions.  HCI focuses in interfacing humans and computers.  Visualizing and navigating stats and metrics for decision-making spans both, as do a few other topics.  I certainly wouldn't go $100k out of pocket in tuition to avoid a little cross-disciplinary research.

Besides, if you ever become a PI for yourself, half of science is being able to pitch a grant that finds the intersection between your interests/strengths and what the program officers want to see done.  Balancing OR and HCI might be good practice. ;)

The scenario you describe is not uncommon in my lab. Let me explain why:
In my department, we get some funding for RA work for M.S. students "free" (i.e. out of department/university funds, not research grants). The rationale behind this is that is valuable for M.S. students to get some research experience, so the department/university wants to make it possible for more students to get these positions.
We therefore have a fairly low threshold for hiring students for these positions. We obviously prefer to hire talented students - we ask other faculty to recommend students to us from their classes, etc. But since the money is "free", we're not as selective as we would be in hiring for positions that are paid out of our grant money.
As a result, there is a lot of turnover in these positions - we hire a few students, try them out for a semester. If they don't work out very well, we don't hire them again the next semester so someone else can have a chance. If they are talented and hard-working, then we hire them back, and also offer additional support out of research grants on top of the department-money stipend they're already getting.
Not all labs in the department do this. Some feel like it's worth it to use the department funds to cast a wide net, in hopes of picking up someone good, and to give many students a chance to gain experience. Others will hire very selectively because they don't want to waste time and energy on random M.S. students, many of whom won't work out.
Perhaps something like this is going on in your lab?

By the way the people he is looking for is not for research.We are HCI group in Industrial Engineering and Human Factors.  He is looking for programmers (so CS students) whom he can hire on 20hrs pay per week . So he is not really looking for researchers ,he is looking for part time help.

@james234 The M.S. students funded by my department are 20 hours/week, too, as that's the limit permitted for international students in the U.S. And they are generally hired to do things like programming, collecting measurements, etc. to support the research in the lab.

@james234: You seem to be mistaking how students are employed in academia.  Programming for a research lab is research experience.  Even if they only touch code, they're still researchers.  Ideally, there should be more mentoring/balance, but you can learn a lot by working with the guts of a research system if you're savvy.

It may be uncommon to have high turnover, but so what?  You don't know the circumstances of those hires -- perhaps they were favors or trial runs that were likely to fail.  Or maybe your advisor has high standards, or just got unlucky.
You might not enjoy the high turnover, but that should be a small factor as compared to your own degree, future job prospects, and own job security.  If you're worried about these, you should address these issues directly with your advisor (and not the indirect issue of lab turnover).

Please see my comment on ff524 thread.

This certainly isn't normal - when people complain about the high turnover in academia they're normally talking about contracts of one or two years rather than a couple of months. However, as @vadim123 says, perhaps there are reasons.
IMHO the most important thing is whether your adviser and fellow group members are people you feel comfortable working with, and whether they are giving you the support you need for your research. If not then you'll end up being miserable and producing bad work.

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


text:
How to read Eigen factor and AI for a journal in specific field?
I am trying to understand the reputation of a journal in specific field of science. I am looking at this journal CHI Paper. How do I read the information from the graphs and figure out how this journal compares to other journals?

Did you try reading their faq and comparing the numbers to those of other journals? On the other hand, I've never heard of a journal's eigen factor before.

Both eigenfactors and Article influence score (AI) are reported by Thomson ISI, so its well known. Look at the FAQ at http://www.eigenfactor.org/ and at the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenfactor. In general, AI is more comparable to IF, while eigenfactor scales with the number of papers published. Also have a look at SNIP and SJR if you are interested in journal metrics (http://www.journalmetrics.com/values.php).

If you want to understand the reputation of a journal, you should discuss this journal with experts in the field, rather than looking at citation statistics.

Look at the entire list of journals in the field Information theory, where this journals belongs. There you see that ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction is at place 53 out of 248, ranked by AI. By combining this number with knowledge of the field you can probably draw some conclusions.
In general, both eigenfactors and the Article influence score (AI) are reported by Thomson ISI as well, so they are well known. Look at the FAQ at eigenfactor.org and read the wikipedia article on eigenfactor for more info. In general, AI is more comparable to the impact factor, while the eigenfactor scales with the number of papers published in the journal. Also have a look at SNIP and SJR if you are interested in journal metrics, info can be found at journalmetrics.com.


text:
Does PNAS allow authors to request referees who have not co-authored with them but work at the same university?
I'm looking to request an academic who works in an entirely different department and is an expert in the field, but he is in the same university and we have yet to co-author a paper together. Do you know if PNAS allows that? Is it too ethically ambiguous?

That strikes me as a bad idea, if for no other reason than that you (appear to) have more of a chance to influence the decision of the referee.  If you must suggest one at your instituion, suggest one at a different (preferably far away) institution as well.  In my humble opinion, this is one place where appearance matters.

That's what I was thinking as well. Thanks for your input!

Though I have a letter published in PNAS, I don't know PNAS policy on recommending reviewers.  I suggest the following:

Recommend this professor/researcher, making clear that he/she is at your university and in a different department.
Make clear that you've have not co-authored a paper together and have no other common interests (e.g. funding).
Explicitly tell them that this is a potential conflict of interest in the reviewer role (bias in preference of the same university), and that you trust PNAS to make a judgment in this particular case.
Make other recommendations for reviewers so that the PNAS editors have other choices if they aren't comfortable with the controversial recommendation.

The main principle in these cases is to be open, forthcoming, and transparent.  Even if the PNAS editors do not take your recommendations, you shouldn't be hurt by making them.


text:
Is it plagiarism to closely mimic the structure of a table in a publication?
I am writing a paper on a topic closely related to previous literature (but in a different study population). As such, the statistical analysis is very similar to a previous publication and I really like the way the previous authors (which I have cited in the literature review) have structured a particular table.
Would essentially copying this structure, but putting in my own results, be a form of plagiarism?

Why can't you add to the footnote saying the structure of the table is modified upon the work of so and so with a citation?

Hi @Penguin_Knight, I can do that. I'm afraid that it would seem overly fastidious, particularly since it seems debatable whether or not the structure of a table is the intellectual property of the author (which is essentially my question). If so, it seems we would see many more such citations (I've never seen any). In this particular case, the table displays the output of a multinomial regression model and uses a clever device to denote whether levels are different from each other (and not just different from the reference level).

Like "estimates sharing the same superscript are not significant different from the other?"

@Penguin_Knight-- Yes, something like that. I am very familiar with models like this, but have not seen them reported frequently in publications. Is this device commonplace? If so, does that indicate to you that this can be taken without reference?

If it's close to what I described then it's a pretty common practice used by statisticians when reporting results of analysis of variance. However, if the author did inspire you, I don't see citing the work as fastidious, rather I would take that as a tribute. But anyway, you should be clear of plagiarism.

If the structure of the table was not one of the topic of the article or did not require a specific work from the authors, I don't think it could be considered as plagiarism. For example, if they created a 3d software to visualize datas and you just copied their source code and plugged into you own values, it is plagiarism (unless acknowledging their authors). If it is just a presentation "trick" (like underlining important words,...), I guess it is not plagiarism. If this particular structure adds clearity, it is more like spreading good writing habits and help the entire community.

I doubt anyone would consider a table format as plagiarized when used to show new data. It would be akin to saying use of Tukey's box-and-whisker type plots would be plagiarism. The question is understandable, however, since someone could arguably claim some such structure as intellectual property. I think the key here lies in what is being copied. You are copying the structure but not the content. To protect the form would be quite pointless since no-one would buy the rights and it would be simple to make sufficient variations to argue it is not the same form. I am sure this could be discussed at length by lawyers.
Although, not within the scope of your question, most author's will be happy to see something they produce becoming reused and maybe even a standard. I had a figure in a paper that was picked up by IPCC and used to show something different than my original but still unequivocally based on my design.
So in the end, as suggested in comments to your question. you can pay homage to the original by acknowledging the idea of the table in your acknowledgement or by citing the paper and stating the table is based on their table. Which makes most sense, will depend on circumstances in your paper.

I think that we - myself included - tend to think of citations primarily as a defence against accusations of plagiarism, but don't they also provide the reader with an account of how the thinking behind the paper emerged? In which case citing here seems like an opportunity for a possibly quite valuable aside.

we...tend to think of citations primarily as a defence against accusations of plagiarism — Nooooo, citations are primarily a way to properly credit people for their words and ideas.

... and to tell readers where to look up the details.


text:
Leaving soft-money job for tenure track position that doesn't start until August: when to tell current advisor?
A verbal offer has recently been extended to me for a tenure track position that I'm 95% sure I want to accept, although I have not officially (verbally or otherwise) done so yet. This position is slated to start at the beginning of the next academic year.
Right now, I am working as a very junior-level "soft money" research faculty at a nearby university (with a considerably more renowned research reputation than the university where the TT job is, if that matters). I have a primary mentor there who I obviously have to notify about my change of position but the question is: when? This mentor is a reasonable person and we get along fairly well but I'm not sure how s/he would react to this news.
Obviously, there is "work in progress" at my current position that I am fully committed to finishing and, in a perfect world, I would maintain my current research collaborations in my new position. I would even accept some minimal responsibilities (not necessarily requesting pay) after I leave to make the transition smoother and to ensure that these collaborations remain strong and I do not leave them "high and dry".
Any advice from the managerial end or from someone who has been in a similar position would be greatly appreciated.

Perhaps your mentor's boss (department chair) is also reasonable; you might ask them for advice on how to handle this.  You can get some generic advice here, but unless the person answering is working (or has worked) with the same group of people, they will not be able to go past that.  Also, I imagine your mentor has encountered similar situations before: if they are a good mentor they will advise you with respect to what is best for you (which may include more specifics on fulfilling your current responsibilities).  In short, get local advice on dealing with a local situation.

DO NOT say anything at all until your TT offer is signed, sealed and delivered. Hopefully this can be expedited.
Once that's done, you should tell your mentor the information as soon as possible just so that s/he doesn't get the news from elsewhere.

The overall message you want to convey is: "I've enjoyed working here,
  and am excited to move on to the next phase of my career. I value the
  collaborations I've had with you so far and want to make this
  transition as easy for everyone as possible"

Don't worry about their reaction though: that's not something you can control, and for the most part a mentor will be happy for you (as well disappointed). Just make sure above all else that you are straightforward and open, and don't try to hide/shade/evade the truth for fear of "offending" anyone.
Note: As regarding financial commitments, it might be possible to carry over some of the money to your new position, at least for travel/equipment/students. You should make a list of potential carryovers, and bring that up for discussion when you talk to your mentor.

I'm honestly surprised by the advice in the first sentence.  Wouldn't your mentor already know that you're on the job market?  (Didn't they write you a recommendation letter?)  Or do you really work for a psychopath?

My boss at my prior job didn't know about my new job till I told him. And no, I didn't ask him for a recommendation.

@JeffE, this question clearly presupposes that the mentor does not know that the person is on the market. In my particular case, I had several other relevant references and did not request one from my current mentor, primarily to maintain discretion.


text:
How should I address a potential FERPA violation by a professor?
In the United States, federal law prohibits professors from releasing any student's grades to any party other than the student and any party whom the student authorizes to receive the grades.
One of my professors appears to be violating this law by uploading each student's lab grades in one file, which is accessible to anyone who is enrolled in the class.
Here is my proposed plan of action:

Ask the professor - in private - to post the grades using the online management system the professor already uses for other things.
If the professor doesn't fix this privacy violation, inform the professor that the method by which he/she post grades is a violation of federal law.
As a last resort, contact the department dean.

Go with your proposed plan. I never had a problem with your professor's actions, but I understand many people like their grades to be private.

Is it of the form ", "?

Is there even a real question here? It sounds like you're just itching for a fight of some sort.

@NickT: The question is clear in the title: "How should I address...?"  The OP offers one suggestion for how to address it, which implies that he/she would like to know whether this approach is reasonable.

Looks like there's a FERPA complaint form: http://familypolicy.ed.gov/complaint-form

Update: Professor responded favorably to my request.

Go with option number 1. See what happens.

1) Ask the professor - in private -

If you're just worried about your grade being posted, may be you can ask him to at least remove your grade from there and leave the rest for the students that want to know their grades as soon as possible. Either that, or may be he could just post people's student ids next to each grade. Or assign a random id himself once, and use that id to communicate future grade reports.
Do note that some online management systems are not all that user-friendly, especially compared to an excel spreadsheet. So do not mandate the way he should solve the problem, mention the problem, and discuss the kind of solutions that may be acceptable to you.
Also note that some grades only affect a tiny percentage of the entire course grade. So that is why some Professors are less worried about the privacy implications of releasing those grades publicly.
And yes, option 2 and 3 would work too, if option 1 doesn't work, but hopefully you won't need to escalate. As you can see from this Supreme Court decision regarding peer-grading, FERPA is not as absolute as you might believe. Furthermore, very few students would have the motivation or the tenacity to pursue this issue in a court of law.

Reading the article you linked to, I wonder how these cottonwool-wrapped kids are ever going to survive in the real world.

Yes, the article I found is a bit much. Also, that article is only attracting comments from parents that have been googling for that topic. I think the Supreme Court made the right call in that case.

Using student IDs would also be a FERPA violation, since they're personally identifiable information, but assigning random #s specifically for this purpose works. Complaints nearly identical to OPs have been found to be violations. The reasoning in the peer grading case wouldn't apply here.

I would go straight to your departments director of teaching (or similar person) and not approach the professor directly. The downside of going directly to the professor is that he/she can hold it against you. There is no real upside of going to the professor directly. Assuming the professor is not a habitual nuisance to the department, a FERPA violation like this will not result in any repercussions. The department chair/director of teaching will simply verify if the professor's behavior is a FERPA violation and if so, tell the professor to cut it out.
If you go to your director of teaching, your name will likely never be mentioned. The DoT can verify the information without you and there is no upside for him/her to reveal your name. There is of course still a chance the DoT will not be discrete. In my experience, things like FERPA violations are a big enough deal that departments like to address them quickly.

"There is no real upside of going to the professor directly." I disagree.  The upside is that there is a good shot that the problem gets resolved immediately and everyone walks away happy.  That's quite an upside.  In general, whenever you have an issue with a professor, you should try first to resolve it with them.  Note also that going over someone's head before talking to them certainly also risks that they may "hold it against you."  Moreover, "Your name will never be mentioned." Come on: you are certainly not in a position to guarantee this.

@PeteL.Clark hopefully the edit helps explain my position.

Objetively, I think you should ask a lawyer just to be sure before taking it to the dean, since it's a federal law violation and acussing someone of that would make a huge deal. And you wouldn't want to make a fuss over something for being ill informed.
Personally, I think you shouldn't care whether your professor uploads your grades where somene else can see them or not (even if it's a crime or whatever, i wouldn't give a single care).
Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

I disagree. As I understand it, it's the university that is potentially violating federal law, not the individual professor. OP should definitely report the situation to the dean, without being accusatory, and then the dean should consult a lawyer. (I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.)

@JeffE: it's the professor who's showing the student IDs on the gradebook.


text:
What options do rejected applicants have if mistakenly told they were admitted to a program?
I was reading up the Reddit page here, which described a case of admissions error, in which:

The person obtained an acceptance for a PhD program in writing.
The person personally called the university and confirmed acceptance of the program
The university then said that they had made a mistake, cancelling the acceptance.

What would be some things that the person can take, and if some of these actions required specific conditions, what would be the conditions be?
For the purposes of answering this question, we will assume that there is no stipend involved, and the acceptance was confirmed by the departmental admissions staff.

Is the acceptance in writing?  Paper or email?  Does the acceptance include a financial stipend?  Does the student know to whom he talked when confirming acceptance?  (You can and should edit your question to include this material rather than answering in the comments.)  Oh, wait!  Are you asking about the question on Reddit and not about a personal experience?

The school is free to accept, or reject, whoever they want to. Mistakes happen, and I don't think there's any way you can hold them to the mistake. AT MOST, I think, you might be able to take them to civil court if you can prove that their error caused you significant harm (eg, caused you to not accept an offer from another school which is no longer available), and I'm not convinced that would do you any good -- among other things, it makes you look like someone other schools wouldn't want to deal with.

This happens just about every year

(Loosely) related: What should I do now when this conference first sends me an "accept", then a "reject"?

I've been putting off answering this because it's really a legal question, not an academic question, and I'm a computer scientist.  In my one business law course, I learned that the essence of a contract is an offer and an acceptance.  We have those.
If I were in this boat, I'd probably suck it up and apply elsewhere.  If I really-really wanted to go to the school that first accepted, then rejected me, I'd consider paying a lawyer a few hundred dollars to call the counsel for the university.  My lawyer would say something like, "My client is damaged blah-blah and has cause of action blah-blah.  However, we do not want to be unreasonable.  All we want you to do is honor the offer you made in writing and later confirmed verbally.  Um, and keep these circumstances confidential from anyone who could assign a grade to or otherwise evaluate my client."
There is a huge down side to doing that.  It is that the circumstances are quite likely to leak out.  Then one is facing professors who know how one was admitted.

I tend to look at the issue from the other side, i.e., that of the admissions crew.  From that perspective: this is a really serious error.  To me the big question is: how many other students were mistakenly admitted in this way?  If they mistakenly admitted more students than they have room for, then there is simply no satisfactory redress.  If they mistakenly admitted one student, in my opinion the "suck[ing] it up" should take place on the university's side.  My department would probably do that, anyway: we take some pride in behaving honorably whenever it is possible to do so.

No doubt accommodating the student is the right thing to do, both legally and morally.  In OP's question, the university has already said they won't do that.  In my pre-academic career I found that if one side is clearly right and the two lawyers talk, problems can often be fixed.  Possibly lawyers have learned to look at disputes more dispassionately than others.  (Like me.)  University counsel is in a position to say, "Troops, we blew this one, and the easiest thing to do is for us to suck it up and do the right thing."  (Always assuming there's space, etc.)

@BobBrown morally, yes. Legally, not necessarily. A school is likely permitted rescind an acceptance for a variety of reasons, of which clerical error is likely one.

@Compass: So, let the lawyers talk it out.

@Compass: Yes, but within reason. If the student sent in an acceptance in April, and the school did not rescind the offer until months later, the school would be at fault, and potentially liable for a lot of damages (moving expenses, lost wages if the person was employed, etc.).

@aeismail: The longer the time, the worse it gets, certainly.  But even in a very short amount of time the hypothetical student can contact all the other schools she has applied to and withdraw applications.  If the student would have been admitted (with funding) and her spot was given to someone else, then this is at least in spirit a "lost wages" situation.  Well, it's easy to imagine bad hypothetical scenarios...

keep these circumstances confidential from anyone who could assign a grade to or otherwise evaluate my client. — Utterly impossible.  Graduate admissions decisions are made by a committee of faculty.  Those faculty will notice if a student they decided to reject shows up in August and starts taking classes.

@JeffE: See my last paragraph.

I don't think anyone has enough experience with this rare sort of situation to say with confidence how best to handle it.  A lot of it depends on the details.  For example, how much time elapsed before the mistake was noticed?  Correcting the error a few days later might not be so bad, while a few months later would be crazy.  How close to being admitted had the student been?  There's a big difference between someone who narrowly missed being legitimately admitted and someone who is manifestly unqualified.
I'd recommend against getting lawyers involved except in extraordinary circumstances.  The problem is that the culture of academia is based on reputation and trust, and this culture does not mesh well with the legal system.  If a student manages to gain admission to an unwilling department by legal threats, that fact alone will outweigh all other aspects of the student's reputation for many years to come.  (For example, hiring committees will wonder what else this person might decide to threaten legal action over or in what others ways they might prove disagreeable as a colleague.)  And there's no way to keep it secret: it will be one of the most interesting pieces of gossip in years, and enough people from the admissions committee will know what happened that someone is sure to leak the news more broadly.
For comparison, I've seen a couple of people ruin their reputations by litigating tenure cases, so that this fact is what they are best known for by far.  It's really not a good outcome.  That might be worthwhile if the prize is tenure, but it's certainly not worthwhile for admission to graduate school (no matter which school).
It's still reasonable to make an argument for why they should honor the acceptance and to explain the hardship that rescinding it would cause.  However, it's important not to exaggerate the difficulties.  For example, in my experience with graduate admissions it's rare for students to take irreversible steps immediately upon receiving an acceptance (for example, withdrawing/declining at all other schools).  If someone told me they turned down all other options the same day they received a mistaken offer, I'd be a little skeptical, and I'd at least expect them to recognize that this was unusual and explain further.  Of course the longer the mistake went uncorrected, the greater one would expect the hardship to be.
If attempts to convince the school to honor the acceptance fail, then the least one could expect them to do is to help fix any problems they caused.  For example, to get in touch with any other schools the applicant turned down, explain that the error was entirely theirs, and help try to convince the other schools to reinstate the applications/offers.  (The reason is that if a student says they had an offer from X but it turned out to be a mistake on X's part, many people will assume the student misinterpreted something rather than that X genuinely misled them.)  Of course this isn't guaranteed to fix everything, but I expect some maneuvering behind the scenes could at least help.

This is a good answer.  Intervening on the student's behalf with other universities is really the minimal honorable response, I think.


text:
Is there a point of applying to a University if potential adviser rejected me
I have recently contacted a professor in a reputable university in the hopes of discussing our common research interests and to apply for PhD under his supervision, and he just replied that he is not going to take anybody for the next year. What should I do now? Is there a reason why I should still apply to this university assuming there are no other professors who share my research interests?
I adopted the suggestions in (How much detail to include in first email to potential PhD supervisor?) when I reached out to the potential adviser.

More info about the department:
When I contacted the department's graduate office showing my interest part of their reply was:

If there is a particular professor you wish to work with, you may wish
  to contact him/her prior to applying and discuss your application
  further with them.

If the department is good, yes, I would apply. Something to think about - really, how well do you know what research will interest you? Many people here seem very definite about what interests them, but frankly you have not seen enough at a deep enough level to really know. Maybe I'm weird, but lots of things interest me, and the more I look the more things look interesting. And that is after 30+ years doing research.

@JonCuster as far as I understand, a department will not offer acceptance if there is no one to supervise you and since all the research experience I have is focused in one topic therefore I am trying to match my interests with potential advisers to increase my chances of acceptance. So in my case "research interest" is the only research that I have experience doing.

Some departments accept PhD students that are later distributed amongst professors; some require some period of study before you are assigned one; others don't. Do you know the specifics of your case?

And all departments are quite used to accepting people that don't align immediately and directly with their research - if you are good, interested broadly in the field, with demonstrated success in one area, than you should be rated pretty well. What you have seen so far is barely scratching the surface of any field.

@Davidmh I have added more info to the question related to your comment, however from their reply I can't really figure out the answer to your question.

@TheHiary you should ask further and gauge your chances. On the other hand, if truly there is only one guy you want to work with, chances are you would be stuck with any of the others, and you should consider applying elsewhere.

@JonCuster Unfortunately, not all departments "are quite used to accepting people that don't align immediately." This is highly field-specific.

I'd be wary of even applying to a department where there was only a single person possibly interested in me.

@Corvus - let me know where so I can stop interviewing from there...

@JonCuster This really varies on a field-by-field basis. If you are in certain fields, you'll have no choice but to interview at such institutions. See the discussion at http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/42546/can-a-professor-influence-the-graduate-admissions-committee-if-he-or-she-is-inte/42547#42547

You may have answered your own question in the comment above, I fear.
In many disciplines, as you say,

a department will not offer acceptance if there is no one to supervise you

In those disciplines, offers tend to me made only if a particular faculty member advocates for a student. If the faculty member you would like to work with is not taking students, it seems unlikely that you would be admitted. So if yours is one of those disciplines, save your money.
For further discussion, see this question.

Downvoter, could you let me know the reason? What I've written here is well-known fact, whether or not you like it that the world works that way.