text:
Why have lectures in the information age?
The primary method of instruction at most colleges is lecturing, where the professor delivers and explains a set of well-established knowledge to the students.
However, there are drawbacks to this: people have different goals, intellectual orientations, and levels of prior knowledge. What's more, the information delivered in these lectures is well established, well documented, and easily available online -- and for far less money than the average college tuition.
Can lectures be more effective than, say, reading a book oneself? I am unconvinced. Instead, I see people learning by imitation, reading, discussion, and practice. If education is a way to prepare for life outside of academia, shouldn't the method of instruction also reflect the ways people learn outside of that environment?
What advantages (if any) does lecturing have, that make it worthwhile in an age where there are so many other options? Is there any systematic, empirical evidence that supports the widespread use of lecturing?

This question is very subject specific. You can assume as such in say, humanities (my field ) but I doubt that your assumptions would work for a class on differential equations or mechanical engineering. Lecturing is based on the assumption that you're providing students a foundation and gradually scaffolding it to higher order ideas, so that they can understand. The premise of taking a class is to know and learn more about a particular topic, I'm not sure that is how we learn out in the real world--- I'm not sure not sure why you'd equate both learning environments when they are not equal.

Sitting in a lecture for me is just to see that certain things that are seemingly out of reach for ordinary mortals can be comprehended, performed, instructed and articulated. That is the purpose of traditional lecturing.

@AndyPutman The only reason why I wrote this question is because I'm genuinely baffled by the discrepancy between my reasoning and my observation of how teaching is down in reality. The hope was that by outlining my argument someone may be able to confirm my idea or point out my mistakes. I apologize if the question came across as rude or arrogant.

One point apparently overlooked here is the issue of "added value", that a lecturer may or may not bring. For myself, I try to think in exactly that sense, that I should add something that would be hard to obtain from "available sources". Sometimes it's just the pep-talk to the specific people, in lower-level (math) classes. In advanced graduate-level (math) courses, I do try to not only pep-talk but give two more things: methodological pointers, and examples that cannot be found "on the internet" or in "standard sources". (I choose to ignore the fact that most people don't read sources...)

It seems the MOOC is coming.  Whether the lecturers like it or not.  Whether students learn from it or not.  Pure economics cannot be denied indefinitely...

It seems the MOOC is coming. — I'd love for that to be true, but the same thing was said about earlier computer instruction (PLATO), and television, and radio, and even printed books, and yet lectures are still popular. It has been cheaper for students to learn on their own from textbooks for centuries; MOOCs are just a different medium of textbook.

... so I would definitely "argue that lectures are more effective means of instruction than, say, reading a book by oneself."

Eric Mazur at Harvard has quite a bit to say about this. His classes are structured at active environments while the content has either been relegated to reading or watching videos.

Why do we still see plays when we can go to the movies?

As a student, I can put my phone down and listen in a lecture (I don't bring a laptop). I can and do focus and listen better in a lecture, whereas an online course I can get distracted from and a video can be paused. I'm actually not bad at reading a textbook and staying on task, but if I had the option I would always go for a lecture over any other way of presenting materials; because I learn best that way. Obviously everyone is different, but one answer could be "for people that like them."

Here is an interesting TEDx on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CztomeFzNoQ (The title doesn´t quite capture that...)

I think if you don't understand the textbook, you would search on youtube.. which IS a lecture..

Inertia/tradition accounts for many things. "Doing things they way they've always been done" [sic] is usually considered defensible, too. Also, people have already-existing mental models for what a lecture should be like, often including specifics about the subject matter.
The fact that information is available on-line is not wildly different from the fact that information was available in universities' libraries. Yes, a sufficiently motivated person can simply go to the internet/library and find lots of information. A potential problem is that there is too much information, that it is fundamentally chaotic (despite our attempts to impose order or develop "search engines"), and fundamentally hard for a non-expert to evaluate. Even worse, a non-expert may fail to realize that they are failing to correctly evaluate information. :)
Still, yes, very many classes/lectures are boring, and attendance is often easily replaced by reading the designated textbook or other sources. However, in several decades of observation, many students (at all levels) either prefer or have become accustomed to a kind of passivity, so that they'd rather show up somewhere at a regularly scheduled time, see their fellow students, and have the pace and content dictated to them by even a fairly boring lecturer.
In my own student days, I did not like going to classes, for the obvious sorts of reasons: for one thing, if one had read the book, a slo-mo flawed, re-recital of it seems pointless in comparison to just re-reading at one's own speed. Second, if one found the material interesting, why stop? Why not read ahead? Why not look at other sources, too, for complementary viewpoints? Why not look at related stuff? (This was as feasible in libraries as it is on the internet, with perhaps two added advantages: there really was not much junk in libraries, since it was filtered, and, second, the chances of serendipitous discoveries in libraries was larger than on the internet.) Such a process inevitably makes the "canned" lectures seem crazily irrelevant.
(Also, years ago, libraries were some of the few reliably air-conditioned places!)
But let's ignore the problem of student passivity, and ask why/how a lecture _could_be_ better than just reading a book or searching on the internet. Arguably, a lecture is not better if it just amounts to reading from the book, copying from it onto a blackboard, etc. I would claim that trying to make lectures simply present text-book material is a big mis-use of the medium! That is, systematic presentation of all the details belongs in a book or on-line, but not in a lecture. Oppositely, what could be in a lecture that could not be in a book or notes? "Affect", meaning intonation, gestures, facial expressions, theatrical effects, and so on, are hard to put into writing, but (by "lecturers" capable of it) can be put into a lecture. This includes reaction to facial expressions and body language of the audience/students, and conversational interaction if the group isn't too large. For example, lectures can include "pep talks" that would be hard to fit into writing. "Reassurance" can be done live better than in writing, I think.
Another feature is the "live/real-time" aspect: a lecturer (in mathematics, my field, for example) can literally do things in the lecture room, live, in real time, with voice-over narrative, in effect. That is, the audience can witness the genuine activity as exercised by an expert practitioner, with accompanying critical and methodological comments. Yes, up to a point, textbooks and monographs could be written in such a fashion, but it seems that stylistic pressures move them in the opposite direction, aiming for a sort of artificial perfection that can only be achieved by much editing! Too often it seems that writing aims to create impressive edifices rather than be accessible, helpful ... and a live lecturer can easily do better, if they try.
So, for my own lecturing, I definitely do think in terms of "adding value" beyond what students could derive from written sources, and in terms of using the medium in ways that distinguish it from static written sources (and not having a lecture be a bad re-copying of those written sources).

very many classes/lectures are boring — For the record, so are many textbooks, library filtering notwithstanding.  And so are many MOOCs.

@JeffE, indeed. At least with books one can skip boring parts (reserving the privilege to revisit them if it proves necessary). Hard for an audience to fast-forward a boring lecture. More design possibilities with MOOCs, but/and it's very unclear to me what scope they'll have, and to what extent they maybe "cheap knock-offs" of something else.

@paulgarrett, first, as someone who studied algebra using your notes, I'm glad to see you here. Second, it is important for me to stress that many students simply cannot follow lectures, because of many reasons, mainly because of cognitive inability in understanding oral material. I would guess that around 20 or more percent of population cannot follow lectures. That's why lectures are simply not something that is helpful for many people. Online courses are different, because the students can simply pause and go back if they choose to, which enables them to actively circumvent their inability.

sometimes people are not getting fully prepared when we do not make lecture in class and tried some other activities (like flip classroom etc - and again, people will blame the lecturer for not preparing the students to prepare for the flip) - then lecturers ended up need to lecture them the topic again..

I think the first critical false premise in your question is the notion that lectures are not frequently used outside of academia.  Speaking as somebody who sees quite a bit of both academia and industry, as well as some of the government and amateur communities, I would say that the lecture is used nearly universally in every domain where one person is trying to convey information to a large group of people at the same time.
This is not to say that a lecture is always the right choice.  There are, as you point out, a lot of different ways of conveying information and many of them are useful in the university setting as well.  Flipping the classroom, for example, is something that many schools are experimenting with at all levels.  That very overabundance of information that you point out as a value, however, is also a problem that a well-done lecture can solve.
Here is what a lecture does that is unique: within the sea of related information, a good lecture shows which exactly are the conceptual elements that a particular expert believes are most important about a topic, and then shows a well-developed way of understanding how they relate to one another.  The format may be anything from chalk to powerpoint to documentary movie, and many good lectures incorporate elements of audience participation and embedded example problems to help further stimulate learning.  In every case, however, the distinguishing feature of a lecture is that the class turns over its collective attention to direction by a single expert, and the way in which that attention is directed is a significant part of the value.

In a world oversaturated with complicated and even conflicting information, it is sometimes difficult to discern what is true and what is important.  In such cases, it's helpful to have an expert to help filter and condense the overabundance of information into a cohesive, perhaps sequential structure.

While jakebeal's answer is excellent, I will add just two more points.
Some university educators simply do not understand pedagogy very well. That is, they spend their time improving their knowledge of their specific domain and do not focus on improving their knowledge about how to best facilitate student learning. Some educators also make the mistake thinking that their students have the same ability to "drink from a firehose" and if they just deliver the most important content then the students will be able to sort it out in their out-of-class studying. In that regard, a 1-2 hour lecture might save a student 10 hours of research time, especially if the student is unfamiliar with research (like a first or second year undergraduate). As pointed out in the answer I already referenced, these lecturing sessions could be recorded and moved out of the classroom (flipping), providing more time for discussion in class.
Lastly, and this partially repeats the sentiments of jakebeal, lecturing is great at some things. For example, I have some classes where we meet in two sessions per week. The first session is a lecturing session where I introduce them to some of the most important ideas they should be aware of. They are expected to then take those ideas, and do some research, applying the concepts to the real world. Then, the next session, is more of a seminar with much higher levels of interaction without any lecturing.
So, lecturing can be done for the wrong reasons but it also has its place.

+1 I'm curious what the "seminar with much higher levels of interaction without any lecturing" entails. Is this different than flipping the classroom, and if so, do you have any pointers you can link to, or any simple examples you can list?

@MadJack In one of my subjects the 'seminar' session is filled with student presentations. That is, the students are introduced to several ideas within one topic (during the lecture session) then they pick a company (I teach business) and they research one or more of the ideas and present on how it applies to their chosen company. The presentations might be 5-10 minutes per student (or student group) and have Q&A after each presentation. This way, I make sure they can apply the concepts which is really what's important when they graduate.

Some may argue that lectures are more effective means of instruction than, say, reading a book by oneself. I am unconvinced, since I have not encountered lectures outside the educational system.

I am a bit surprised at this statement.
I work in industry. When I present the results of an analysis or pitch our product to a potential client, either on site or via a conference call, this is a lecture, usually with slides and with questions in between or at the end, but a lecture nonetheless - I read at my audience. Same for any earnings call by a CFO or CEO. Nobody disseminates a product pitch or their earnings numbers solely by distributing reading materials.
I would definitely "argue that lectures are (often) more effective means of instruction than, say, reading a book by oneself." Note the "often" I added. I fully agree that I'd prefer to get a lot of information I currently have to digest in the form of video tutorials rather in the form of printed matter.
But sometimes, and the math lectures I attended in my dissolute youth come to mind, it simply is far easier to learn if the material is presented by an experienced teacher at the blackboard. You can agree or not, but I'd say that the argument is not as outlandish as you seem to take it to be.

In some of these more-professional interactions, perhaps the human-interaction (assertion of authority/competence/etc, challenge-response, ...) is nearly as important as the "objective" content, and can be "done" well or poorly. I think course lectures really have the same potential component, despite occasional (subject dependent?) pretenses that it's all "purely objective".

I disagree. Specifically in math it is far more easier for many people to learn from notes/books/lecture-notes etc. Certainly for me, as an academic (professor) it is. I do not like not very successful with lectures. And I know many like myself. Nevertheless, I do agree there are many who do prefer lectures (possibly even majority of population). But as I explained in my answer below, about 20% of population cannot really comprehend/follow detailed lectures.

Reading a technical book (or any written source) is an art that is not as easy to master as it might seem. One should know (or, better say, feel) what their mindset ought to be. It's some kind of the right “viewing position” that one should learn to have. Simply put: reading a book is an act, not a passive process, and so one needs to learn that art just like one needs to learn doing carpentry. Lectures certainly ought to help with that.
In other words: a human is a guide to a book; before you hear from someone knowledgeable, you may well look at the contents in the book from the point of view of the wrong assumptions, inclinations, etc, and not even realise you had a choice where you in fact made that choice incorrectly. There's a lot of talking about “body language”, “intonations”, “showing what is important”, and so on, but I think the honest answer is that we don't know why it happens. Just that's how it is. Just we humans are able to influence one another's mindsets in ways that are totally unpredictable and sometimes useful. We talk differently than read a completed work.
We still don't know how brains work. So, we don't need to be too enchanted with the assumption that in learning, people just “copy” some “information” from one brain to another. Practice shows that the process is more complex…
PS: I just thought of an example where that matters: a lecturer might often mention, when exposing the material, some “dull details” about how perceive the material, that just don't fit into a completed written work (they would look wrong there, or would be understood incorrectly, or would be blended with the material itself), but are very good for forming the right “point of view” about the subject, and so in conversation (after all, a live teacher talks to live students, therefore that's a conversation, in a way) are not really dull at all. It might be some advice on learning, like for example “when reading a mathematical exposition, stop right at the first thing that you don't understand and ask a question” and many others of this kind.

A lecture to a live audience gives the lecturer the oportunity to "read" what is understood and what isn't, to field questions and adjust the material presented to the situation.
True, the lectures started out as a reader reading the text and the students writing it down as their own copy to study (before newfangled stuff like printing presses, or $DEITY forbid, Internet and web pages with class notes), and most are still handled mostly like that. As to why my students show up to class without peeking at the notes, and insist in copying my scribblings when the notes are much better organized, beats me.

As an academic (a professor) I concur with your view. Lectures are not an effective way to transmit information to many students. That said, for some students it is a good way. But certainly for about 20% (just an approximation) of students lectures are a very unproductive way, and might even hinder their academic advancement. The reason for this is that about 20% of the population has cognitive difficulty in listening (e.g., ADD), so for such people lectures are only harmful.
I would argue that lectures are used because of historical reasons, and also because it is non-trivial to come up with a different method which is also reasonably economic (private lessons are better than lectures, but are not economic).

It would be interesting to see where the 20% approximation comes from

Here (approx 11% only for children ADHA in the US; ADHA doesn't cure with age): "The American Psychiatric Association (APA) says that 5 percent of American children have ADHD. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) puts the number at more than double the APA's number. The CDC says that 11 percent of American children, ages 4 to 17, have the attention disorder." (http://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/facts-statistics-infographic)


text:
Why is the phrase "including but not limited to" used in conference announcements?
There are so many conference announcements that use the phrase

the topics of interests include but are not limited to

I honestly cannot understand why such phrase is used. The announcment already lists more than 20 topics and then declares that the topics are not limited to the listed ones.
I have two questions related to this issue:

Why lot of topics are listed if they do not limit the topics of submissions?
Does listing these topics mean that the submissions about listed topics are given higher priority?

I'd translate that to "as long as your talk is interesting to the majority of people that are interested in these listed topics, it's probably on topic".

@Moriarty That is a fair explaination. However, this could be emphasized by writing "the topic of this conference include but not limited to X" where X is the name of the conference e.g. 16th International Conference of Machine Learning

Maybe consider changing the title?  The question in the title would really only be appropriate for the "English language learners" site, as the quoted phrase is completely clear and unambiguous.  The question asked in the body is much more reasonable.

This phrase is just standard boiler-plate verbiage.
The title of a conference is generally too vague to define a community precisely, because different people might interpret such a short phrase in different ways.  Thus, when you are designing a call for papers, you generally try to give a bunch of examples as a way of giving a more concrete outline of the sort of community that you are trying to reach.
But it's a highly inexact procedure, and the boundaries of communities are generally fuzzy in any case.  Thus, the "not limited to" phrase is included as a less informal way of saying, "If what we described kinda smells like your research, don't worry too much about whether it fits a bullet point, and just submit."

This is a very good answer.  I suspect that sometimes the phrasing means something slightly different: "Ideally we'd like to see talks on the following topics, but we'll take what we can get."  And of course you never really find out whether other people are talking about things of interest to you (and vice versa) until you get there.

And also the organizers don't have to answer a bunch of questions like "is my talk on XYZ appropriate for your conference"...

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text:
How should I cite the ministry in my own country in APA?
In my research paper, I have cite from a curriculum published by the Ministry of Education in my country. Should I cite the name of the ministry in my own language (i.e. Milli Eğitim Bakanlığı; MEB as abbreviated in subsequent citations) in Turkish or in English translation (as Ministry of National Education; like MoNE, 2020)? And how should I reference it at the end in the sources section?

Everyone please note that the APA has a very strict style that goes to ludicrous lengths in specifying every dot and tittle. (I am unaware of other organizations' styles that have their own website and a style blog. The APA Publication Manual, 7th ed., has 428 pages.) Since the OP asks specifically about APA style, answers based on common sense without reference to the APA's style guidelines will probably be misleading.

The standard in APA when citing something titled in a language other than the one you are writing is to use the original title (transliterated to the Latin alphabet if necessary) but to also include a translation enclosed with [ ]s.
For an example from the link below:
https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2018/09/how-to-quote-a-foreign-language-source-and-its-translation.html

Bussières, E.-L., St-Germain, A., Dubé, M., & Richard, M.-C. (2017). Efficacité et efficience des programmes de transition à la vie adulte: Une revue systématique [Effectiveness and efficiency of adult transition programs: A systematic review]. Canadian Psychology/Psychologie canadienne, 58, 354–365. https://doi.org/10.1037/cap0000104

See also https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/referencing/apa6/works-in-non-English-languages and https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/referencing/apa6/works-in-non-English-scripts

What about in-text citations?

@nick012000 In APA I think in-text citations are always author/date format, right? Is there an exception where the title of a reference would matter? I can't think of any citation style that uses the title in-text, but I may be missing something outside my area.

Yes, author/date, but what about when the author is an organization whose name isn't in English? For instance, when you do an in-text citation for something written by Google in 2019, you'd cite it in-text as "(Google, 2019)".

@nick012000 Ah sorry, now I follow you. I can't find specific APA guidance on that circumstance with an institutional author but in examples from less authoritative APA reference guides it seems the institutional author is used as-is (transliterated but not translated).

If the rest of your paper is in English and aimed at an international audience, it's more helpful to cite it in English translation. You might even want to write "Turkish Ministry of National Education", to make it clear which country's ministry you're referring to.

Sorry to ask, but is your answer based on common sense or on the APA style? If the latter, can you cite the specific section in the APA publication manual you are referring to?

I was just going off common sense. If you want to reach an international audience, you need the translation (possibly in addition to the original Turkish). That's regardless of which specific citation style you're using. You need to look beyond strict adherence to rules to why you're citing things - so that people can understand what your sources are.

In principle I do agree with you. But APA style thinks differently. There is pretty much zero allowance to "look beyond strict adherence to rules to why you're citing things" in the APA Publication Manual. I'm not saying this is the way things should be, but in a question that explicitly asks about APA style, it would be good to clearly indicate which part of an answer is based on common sense, and which part is grounded in the APA Publication Manual.

Both. If the legal/official name is X, then you certainly want X appearing, for example as a searchable item, whether or not it's in English or whatever. At the same time, yes, you probably want to give an explanatory translation (e.g., into English), for what the official title/name/label means.

Sorry to ask, but is your answer based on common sense or on the APA style? If the latter, can you cite the specific section in the APA publication manual you are referring to?

@StephanKolassa, based on common sense, yes, or utilitarian criteria. Not on any official "style rules".

Thank you! Here is my answer to ObscureOwl, which would also apply here. Unfortunately, common sense/utilitarian criteria have a small intersection with the APA style.

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text:
Manually adding citations to ResearchGate
The source information of scientific publications uploaded to ResearchGate is often not recognized automatically. As a result, the cited works cannot be recorded in the statistics.
Can I add source information to my uploaded publication  so that ResearchGate can record it and include it in the statistics?

As has been discussed several times in various forums, there is no direct way to add source information manually. However, there are proven workarounds. Based on this idea, the following procedure has proven to be effective.

The following steps only work BEFORE the paper has been uploaded to
ResearchGate. (If it has already been uploaded, the entry must
first be deleted)

Copy all the sources of your paper into a new
Word document: do not use any special formatting, font size 6,
landscape, Arial. IEEE often works as a citation style. Name the
document “References”, or something similar.

Create a new ResearchGate entry (e.g. "Conference Paper") for your publication and upload the previously created PDF "References"
as a private copy to the newly created entry. (ResearchGate should now have recognized all the references automatically)

Add your actual publication as a public full text
to the created entry.

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text:
How should I use 'the,' when referring to 'authors,' 'algorithms,' 'functions' etc.?
If I refer to authors of a publication, a specific algorithm, a specific function etc., do I have to write the definite article the?
I'm confused because on the one hand, I refer to concrete authors, a concrete algorithm, or a concrete function. On the other hand, they are, in particular algorithms and functions, proper names, and thus do not require an article. In scientific publications that I've read so far I can spot some inconsistencies in this matter.
Some examples:

In [10] X and Y propose a method... The authors suggest that... or Authors suggest that...
DBSCAN is an algorithm that... or The DBSCAN is an algorithm that...
Figure 1.1 shows the values of the distances computed by use of Euclidean distance... or the Euclidean distance...

Perhaps ask at https://english.stackexchange.com/

@user2768 There is an overlap, but the focus is clearly academia-specific.

@lighthousekeeper I don't see how English grammar is specific to academia. The question is the same no matter which words the OP is asking about, so it's a better fit for the English Stack.

@astronat Beyond grammar, permissible language use depends on pragmatics, which is inherently context-specific. The context in this case is academia.

It's presumably the authors (unless you are referring to authors more generally, e.g., all authors), the other two should be DBSCAN (or the DBSCAN algorithm) and the Euclidean distance.

Precise language usage really helps make papers clearer. They are already information dense and often length constrained, so the little things count in accurately conveying meaning from the author to the readers.


text:
Failed to submit the final grant report on time
I am working on my PhD thesis.  This study was funded the Foundation for Joint Russian-Finnish Scientific Innovation Projects (TEKES - Funding Agency, Finland). The grant consists of two intermediate stages, at the end of which it was necessary to report on the research carried out and on the published works.
The final report must contain information about the defended PhD thesis.  I successfully completed the first two stages.  But then the circumstances were not the best for me.  And this caused a delay in the submission of the final report.  I haven't completed my dissertation yet.
The foundation that sponsored my research requires one of two ways:

Submit my report as soon as possible (I can't do this because I haven't completed my thesis).
Letter explaining the reasons for the delay and requesting an extension of the submission of the final report.

The letter obviously needs some good reason.  Because TEKES cooperates with Russian funding agencies, I can’t say that by the time the third stage was over, well-known events had happened in Ukraine and this had affected my distant relatives and close friends, which unsettled me.
In addition, I worked almost to the point of exhaustion, did not allow myself to rest and fell victim to procrastination and laziness.
Although the study is almost completed and does not require additional funding, but only 2-3 months, I do not know how to get out of the situation that I am in.
This may affect my career, and sanctions may be imposed on the institute and the scientific advisor.  How should I proceed?

If you can't do #1, what do you expect us to suggest besides doing #2?

@AzorAhai-him- Yes, I can't do the first point.  Regarding the second point, I would like to know what strategy to choose for interaction with the fund and explain the reasons for the delay so that the fund does not reject the possibility of submitting a report and gives time for revision.

@AzorAhai-him- Yes. I'm just not sure that revealing deeply personal experiences would be considered a good enough reason by the Foundation.  It should be in the spirit of "in the process of research, difficulties arose that go beyond ...".  This is true, but in part, because.  I have already resolved them and it remains only to put them on paper.  And things would have gone faster if not for my worries and procrastination.

What does your advisor suggest? What would someone who didn't finish their thesis do? Does the thesis actually need to be completed to finalize the report? - you state it does, but that seems strange to me.

@BryanKrause My adviser wants to send the dissertation to the dissertation council as soon as possible, but it is so "raw" that I can't do it. Need more improvement. And yes, a dissertation accepted for defense and a corresponding note from the dissertation defense council is a mandatory requirement for closing the grant.

Has your advisor seen it? Do they have a difference of opinion on its rawness?

I edited some info you provided into the question - hopefully it captures your meaning. By "but only 2-3 months" do you mean you only have 2-3 more months of funding?

@BryanKrause He saw one of the versions of my work and agreed that while it is "damp".  He proposed to make a number of amendments, but I did not complete them either.

Can you make those amendments quickly? If you can't, what does your advisor think you should do with respect to the funding agency?

@AzorAhai-him- No, 2-3 months are needed to finalize and complete the dissertation itself.  According to my feelings.

@BryanKrause I can't make these changes quickly.  The adviser has not yet offered me a course of action.

@dtn They're a lot closer to this than the rest of us are, as they have direct familiarity with your work and with the granting agency.

@BryanKrause I am slightly confused.  He proposes to send the raw work for consideration and obtain the appropriate document for the fund.  But with such crude work, one way or another, you will have to do some refinement.

That bit about putting in all the work, exhausted, but procrastinating and feeling lazy too..... I can't say but if it was a friend I'd be asking them if there's a chance of undiagnosed ADHD or other similar condition going on. Its so easy to assume lazy when its not that at all that is happening. Just a thought.  (And of course if so, then the medical circumstance would be of itself a valuable thing to explain)

@Stilez The fact that my inner state needs to be investigated is undeniable.  Laziness and procrastination are just a manifestation of deeper causes (burnout, predepressive state, etc.).  Why am I not focusing on this?  I want to avoid additional difficulties associated with a medical examination and the provision of these documents.  Whether the doctor will reveal depression and burnout or some other problems ... And how to use this in an explanation - I don’t know either.

A funding agency that expects that all research projects are successfully completed on time and within budget is being unrealistic. Research ain't like that.
I don't know how this would be received, but I suggest that  you submit a report stating the current state of affairs and the expectation of completion. Make it as complete as a final report. Say what was accomplished and what still needs completion.
But, within the report, offer to submit a supplement later, at some specific date.
I can't predict how it would be received, and it might even mark your project as "failed", but, again, people funding research need to understand that exploring the unknown is impossible with a  firm schedule.
I suspect that they get lots of such reports if people are willing to be honest, though not all are.

Thank you for your strong answer!  Indeed, I am too honest.  And I want everything to be perfect, because  This is my first serious career experience.  It is the fund's unpredictable reaction to my honest explanation that scares me.  But it's probably the only option.

Yes this seems right, as someone who has gotten extensions on final reports in the US. You say what has been done and what remains. Maybe say what aspect of the research took longer than expected: maybe subject recruitment was more difficult than expected etc. You give an proposed revised timeline. Short and direct. The fact that they offer option #2 means it is not totally unusual.

100% honesty is the best policy.  "Research ain't like that" is a fact of life that does and will continue to create many situations and motives for researchers to hesitate to be fully forthcoming and honest.  Succumbing to these pressures is a mistake, and does the scientist, the scientific community and the scientific discipline a grave disservice.  @dtn you don't need to (and they don't want you to) indulge them with the minutia of your personal life.  "Shit happened, we're not done, at the current schedule we'll be done by (date).  Thanks for your patience and support"

Everything ended successfully. Thank you for your advice and support!

I worked almost to the point of exhaustion ... and fell victim to
procrastination and laziness

How could you work hard and be lazy at the same time? :)
Anyway, the reasons listed in your question won't look good to any funding agency, but there's an elegant solution: "unexpected" "difficulties" in research. Sure, it is not ethical to make up things, but hey, we are talking about just two months and you are not even requesting additional funding.
Come up with an idea about something that you can claim to be an unexpected difficulty. For example, a multidimensional integral turned out to converge much slower than expected, which necessitated developing a highly complex numerical procedure to tackle the problem. Or your statistical calculations had to be adjusted for an additional factor. Or your cat ate the lab mice. Kidding about the last one.
And the funding agency will buy it. After all, they are not experts in your field. Even if they were, they wouldn't check the details of your explanation anyway. They each have a too large pile of paperwork to enjoy, so don't expect your carefully worded explanation to get more than a few minutes of their attention.
Good luck with your deadline extension request and don't be a penguin next time. Couldn't resist typing the penguin part - I'm a learner of Russian and you are Russian. Спит пингвин который день - a всему виною лень :)

There is actually a class of student called productive procrastination including me

Thank you for your answer!  I mean, I started to get a lot lazy and procrastinate towards the end of my job.  Those.  The beginning and middle of the journey really resembled the clip Rammstein - Sonne (in the part where they mined)

How could you work hard and be lazy at the same time? Meet me :) I work extremely hard on the parts that interest me within a topic, and then the ones that do not get pushed and pushed and pushed. Another case is when 99% o the job is done via hrd work and then the last piece is dragged because other things popped out.

Also, two years of hard work are enough for a good PhD thesis. You need three or more years only if you are like most other PhD students - and they don't work really hard. – I like the rest of the answer, but I find this statement highly derogative and an invalid generalization. Even if you agree that most PhD students don't work really hard, the time required to complete a PhD will still heavily depend on your fiel of search, advisor, environment, etc.

@F30 Ok I've removed that part

Everything ended successfully. Thank you for your advice and support!

As nobody here would have any reason to know what that funding agency would require in this case, you should probably call the funding agency to find out how they want you to proceed.
It's probably a good idea to make this a conference call with your advisor on it.

Everything ended successfully. Thank you for your advice and support!


text:
Should I meet my professors at a celebration party?
I finished my exams, the results came in, and I scored well but not in top 10. There is a celebration that all my professors will be at. I am in doubt whether I should go, because I fear my professors, who expected me to finish among the top 10, will be disappointed. Should I still go?
It's like a victory celebration organized by our institution as students have done well in the competitive exam which I also gave but could not go to top 10.
What I feel bad that I didn't come in top 10 which my professors hoped that I would come that makes me feared and creates a dilemma. I wanted them to be very happy because of my result but I don't think they would be that happy meeting me. What should I say to them? Even though some professors won't tell but their facial expression may convey their sadness I think.
Even the students from top 10 would be there so I would feel little shy , what should I do ?
All in all here are my doubts :

Should I go ?

How will I talk to my professors ? (I feel bad of not meeting their hopes)

I feel shy in front of the toppers and I don't have courage to talk to them , How shall I talk to them ? ( once they were my friends but no I feel little sad of being behind )

Is this a graduation party open for everyone? What's the dilemma? Why shouldn''t you attend?

I'm also not clear on what the dilemma is.  Why wouldn't you go?

Yes it's like a celebration party But what I feel bad that I didn't come in top 10 which my professors hoped that I would come that makes me feared and creates a dilemma. I wanted them to be very happy because of my result but I don't think they would be that happy meeting me

You scored well, so I see no problem. Furthermore, you might want to apply percentage rather than fixed numbers. I.e. being top 50 in a class of 1000 students is still great. :)
It is your own choice if you want to go or not, but I don't see a problem if you did.

I have edited the question to make it more clear :)

I am absolutely unclear about this question. What is this celabration party for? A contest? Graduation? Or something else? Please clarify.

The celebration is Victory celebration in our institution, for many students of our institution have done well and brought 5 out of top 10 ranks in a competitive exam.

Are you a university student? What is the competitive exam about? Compete against whom? Other institutes? Why is this exam so important?

It's not a specific party for the top 10, so of course go.

Get over your disappointment and celebrate your achievement. It's important to give yourself a pat on the back when you've done good work, no matter if it's perfect or not. If you only look at what you didn't achieve and not at what you did achieve, your motivation is going to suffer at some point.
As for your profs: If they are not total jerks, they will be very happy to celebrate with you. Nobody in their right mind is going to hold it against you that you didn't meet very high expectations, especially not on an occasion like this. You sound more disappointed than they will most likely be. In the unlikely event that someone is giving you a hard time, just turn around, grab another glass of champagne (or beer) and high-five someone nice.

"high-five someone nice" - exactly! As well as celebrating the fact that you scored well, you can also enjoy celebrating the fact that others scored well too.

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


text:
Is it possible to find an unpaid and "half-time" postdoc?
I've defended my thesis, and I would like to do my postdoc abroad. But the problem is that I am married, and I have two little children. So, I can't just leave my family for a couple of years, and neither I can bring them with me (too expensive, too difficult etc.).
I have a couple of colleagues in the same situation, and they seem to find a solution: a kind of unpaid postdoc (they receive only small sums of money covering travel expenses) which supposes visiting the inviting university regularly but without staying there for a long time. In this format they prepare a monograph and give some seminars, it is counted as a postdoc by ANECA (homologation institution) here in Spain but doesn't require full-time occupation if you can maintain certain level and volume of academic publications. In both cases they were invited unofficially by their postdoc coordinators, it was not an announced grant or scholarship.
For me it could be the best option. It will give me an opportunity to get some foreign postdoc experience, stay on academic track (in Spain it is really difficult in the umanities) and at the same time I don't have to leave or move my family...
But I really don't know how to start. Is there any opportunity to get an information which universities offer this way of collaboration and how to apply? In the case of one of my colleagues, it is one of the Swiss universities and in another case it's Finland, but the information offered by these universities on their webpages is related only to the "normal," fellowship-based, full-time postdocs. And maybe there are some other opportunities of this kind in other countries and universities?

I wonder why going abroad is important right now. It would seem that getting experience closer to home in the short term would be an advantage. Your kids will get a bit older and you might even be able to save some money to do a full term postdoc later, including relocation. Presumably you aren't able to leave Spain (semi) permanently for a position.

What is a homologation institution?

@AzorAhai, I'll guess it is something like "accredited".

@AzorAhai, To start a tenure track in Spain, one needs to obtain the accreditation of "Profesor ayudante doctor", which gives access to the positions like associated fellow.  This title is obtained through special evaluation/accreditation process carried out by ANECA (http://www.aneca.es). The minimum requirements include PhD+publications+some teaching experience The foreign experience can be homologated by the same organization.

@Buffy, thank you, you are right. Accreditation for national experience and homologation for foreign experience, carried out by the same organization.

@Buffy, because 1) it is difficult to find a postdoc if many years have passed after one's thesis defense. And, in addition, I am not so young, it will be difficult to start my academic career at 50, for example :-). 2) Now in Spain I can find a non-academic job (actually I have one, in linguistics but outside of the university), but it is really difficult to find a postdoc with my profile. The things seem to be easier for later career stages, but here only 1 of 7 recently-cooked PhDs finds an academic position. Most of Spaniards have to go abroad or give up.

Actually, in many places it shouldn't be harder to start at 50 than at 30. Lots of people do it. My former spouse for one and she then had a rich career.

I know that some institutions can offer the "associated member" status to a researcher who is not on their payroll. The researcher needs to be recommended by a senior professor from the institution, who typically presents a project with this researcher to justify the request. However I've seen it used only with somebody after they had been a postdoc in the institution.
Obviously one needs at least to prepare a research project with a member of the institution, so I think the best way would be to contact the academics in your network who could be interested in a project with you. I'd suggest to propose to work with them for free on a grant proposal, since this would be interesting for both the PI and for the institution. If you find a suitable EU call, you could even try to involve a partner in Spain which would hire you if the grant is successful.

Thank you! yes, it is jus what I am searching for.


text:
posting photos of my students in classroom
Is it legal/ethical to include photos of my students in my classroom online (as in my online portfolio)?

Legal in which country?

In the US, it would violate FERPA to identify students as having been in your class. I assume other countries have similar laws and I think most would agree it is a violation of their privacy (i.e. unethical) to do so without permission.
Talk to legal counsel at your university and do everything under their guidance, which would probably involve a signed release by each student.

Correct. Somewhat related - my kids high school asks permission to post photos of the kids, but does so with no names attached. Similarly, for USA Swimming, the club cannot post pictures of swimmers with names attached. Both of those generally apply to minors, mostly under 18, so additional laws may apply.

There's a consent provision in FERPA, so it is (probably) legal if each student signs a suitable consent... and, of course, they are of age to do so.  Your advice to talk to the university's lawyers is bang on!

The FERPA part is not so clear cut. FERPA does regulate "educational records", but photos and videos of students only count as educational records under specific circumstances (e.g., videos used in disciplinary hearings, or of a student giving an academic presentation). Classroom pictures that only "incidentally" show particular students may well be allowed. More discussion here. That said -- I agree completely that the right answer is to seek guidance from legal counsel; your institution may have specific rules also.

@cag51 I suppose my first thought was "Here is Jane Smith, who took CS 150" but I guess that could have been what the OP meant; wide shots.


text:
Do reviewers really not know the identity of authors in fields that frequently use arXiv?
The point of peer review is anonymity but since most authors upload their papers to arxiv long before the paper is published (at least for math, stats, computer science etc), the reviewers should see who wrote the script by simple googling right? Will this have an impact on the review process? That is, a famous scholar's article will more likely be accepted to top journal given similar quality.

Interesting, I myself have never been asked to review a paper that was anonymous. I don’t think the point of peer review is anonymity, it’s to review your proposal.

I'd object that the point of peer review is anonymity, the point is review of the methodology and (to some extent) novelty

Am I lost in the past, or isn't it still the case that most math refereeing is just single-blind (the referee is anonymous)?

@paulgarrett I think all the AMS and MAA journals are now double blind, and have been for a while.

@EthanBolker ... Hm! Thanks for the info!

@EthanBolker: I refereed a paper for Proceedings of the AMS a few months ago; it was single-blind.

No - only a few MAA journals have gone double-blind - AMS journals are still single-blind.

I would be sort of flattered if a reviewer went through the effort to search around about my work. Almost all "bad reviews" that I've gotten are ones in which they obviously don't care and barely even read it.

It is in fact often easy for a reviewer to find out who an author is, unless the author is quite  new to publishing and has not uploaded the  paper to arXiv.
Sometimes it is hard not to know even without a search since the author may be building on their previous work so the list of references will be a giveaway even if the the text doesn't refer to "my previous work in [reference]".
That said, refraining from such a search is implicit in the unwritten contract between the reviewer and the editor.
I hope and suspect most reviewers honor that contract.

+1. Example policy: "As a referee, you are not disqualified to evaluate a paper if you think you know an author’s identity (unless you have a conflict of interest, such as being the author’s advisor or student). The journal asks you not to do additional research to identify the authors."

I doubt that experienced reviewers would even bother to try to search out an author. They have better things to do.

In my opinion it can be very difficult to separate "research to identify the authors" from a referee's due diligence on searching the literature.  What kind of search for relevant recent work is not going to turn up an arxiv preprint with the same title?

This is extremely field-dependent. I have never heard of double-blind reviews in mathematics: never got to referee a paper that had the author's name redacted, never seen a paper where the author made a point of hiding if cited work is indeed theirs (e.g. "X did [1], Y did [2]" instead of "X did [1], we did [2]"). But at least some psychology/sociology journals I know maintain the policy of double-blind review, and I read papers in these fields that were written in third person, as in the example, apparently to conceal themselves. I have my doubts if this can work at all - even if the bibliography doesn't give the author straight away, the reviewer is often expected to check if the prior work in the field is well represented and discussed, which leads to queries and googling, which again can give the reviewer a pretty clear picture who they are reading.
And to comment on the opening of your question: the main point of anonymity of the reviewer is always that they are protected from retaliation of a rejected author, and since the author I am reading may well be my own superior (how many experts on foo of bar are there?), I am glad that I enjoy that protection. This is fundamental for the confidence in the process, regardless of your field.
But the other way round, it is not as clear cut: we all accept end expect the reviewers to give their expert opinion. But in some subcommunities we have agreed that said expert opinion can or should take into account who the author of the paper is, of course your mileage may wary on whether you like it or not. You describe one hypothetical often given (but not as often observed in nature) as an example of corrupting effects of this situation. As a sometimes disgruntled author, completely sure that I would have been accepted for publication if only I had more recognition, I must admit that stories of top journals publishing long series of sub-par papers of famous mathematicians are exceedingly rare, and if happen, tend to end badly for the editors, authors, and sometimes reviewers. I think that for the most part we do believe this market regulates itself, or at least we don't think that the prevailing single-blind in mathematics is the main problem in urgent need to be corrected. But again, your mileage may vary.

I have reviewed for and submitted to a journal that does double blind refereeing. I think the goal is to make sure that authors from less prestigious places  get a fair shake, not to prevent established people from coasting on their reputation. Whether double blinding makes a difference in acceptance would be hard to tell.

The journals affiliated with the MAA (Mathematical Association of America) have been double blind for more than five years now.  With regard to the field of mathematics as a whole, they are definitely outliers.  (In fact I have refereed papers for MAA journals and done just as the author says: found the corresponding arxiv preprint by googling.  I find the situation a bit odd.)

Thank you both for these comments. Though - and I write it with genuine respect for MAA mission and core values - I wonder if we have any example of a cutting-edge narrow-specialization research journal that went the same way. And - was there any reason given when MAA switched to duble blind.
There is also the issue that the fair shake for the affiliatly challenged (and I jest only because I am probably one of such people) is not threatened by the reviewer, it is sometimes the editor that desk rejects the authors not glamorous enough for their journal.


text:
Is it OK to ask for deferral of graduate school admission because one has failed courses to make up?
What would happen if a student was admitted to graduate school (only consider US institutions here), but failed a course later and would have to wait till the next time to take the course to make up for it and get the bachelor degree?
Do they have a chance in this situation to apply for a deferment of admission for a fraction of a year?

Is taking the course over the summer an option? Are we talking about a major course or a "general education" requirement?

@cag51, I mean the worse case, compulsory course, as I said the failure is going to defer the acquisition of diploma.

I understand that; however, that does not answer either of my questions. :-) Compulsory courses may be taken at other institutions and/or over the summer. Further, a physics student failing quantum is much worse than a physics student failing music.

@cag51, Oh, I got it. May I see your analysis on both cases XD? i.e. physics student failing quantum vs failing music.

@cag51 and I mean courses taken at home institution

I suppose it's okay to ask.  But since graduate admission is generally contingent on successful completion of your undergraduate degree, I think it's much more likely that the graduate institution will rescind your admission.  You would need to make a fresh application in the next admission cycle, with no guarantee of acceptance, and the failed course would tend to weaken your application.

I'll also note that fractions of a year might be problematic in any case. It depends on the institution.

@Buffy I mean, for example, one semester.

Yes, that is also what I meant. Some places like grad students to start in the Fall and organize the admissions process around that. Others are less concerned.

As I mentioned in the comments, there are a few cases here.
The best case is if you can make up the necessary course before grad school starts. In the US, you might fail a course in the spring but be able to make it up over the summer. Note, you can usually take courses at a different institution -- so if you fail a course in the fall and your institution will not offer it again until next fall, I would try pretty hard to find another institution where you could take the course over the spring, and then transfer the credits. If you can find some way to pass the course before graduate school beginning, then there is unlikely to be an issue.
The second-best case is that the course is completely unrelated to your degree -- e.g., you are a physicist and you failed music and therefore won't get your degree on time. This is bad, because the university could refuse to accept you over this, or could make you defer an entire year. But it is likely that a work-around can be found. For example, you may be able to make up the music course at your new institution and then transfer the credits to your old institution to get the degree.
The worst case is that you failed a major course -- e.g., you are a  physicist and failed E&M. As before, they could revoke your admission over this, or force you to wait an entire year. But in this case, they are far more likely to rescind your admission, for obvious reasons.
As Buffy pointed out, deferring your admission for a fraction of a year is difficult, unless the program routinely does winter admissions (and most do not, at least in the fields I'm familiar with).


text:
How to finish my medical training in the UK as an immigrant?
I was studying in medical university in Russia for two years and was in the top of my class, but circumstances led me to Wales, UK around 4 years ago (I'd soon be eligible to apply for a UK citizenship) and I want to continue studying medicine here.
Looking at the medical college requirements I understand that I need GSCEs and A-levels to be passed successfully. Frankly, it is overwhelming for me to cover 11 years of studying and I am afraid I can't do this.
I've tried to find alternative ways into school of medicine, but have no clear idea how to do it.
Few alternatives I found are:

Apprenticeship. As far as I understand there is half accepted way to work and study and as a result to get some or most of GSCEs and A-levels covered. But I can't find whether these results are accepted by any uni whatsoever.
Gateway to medicine programs. To my best knowledge, these are including few years of studying in college which guarantees you to be admitted into uni. But again can't find whether this is universal thing or every university has it's own rules. And also, do I have to pass GSCEs and A-leves or can I somehow transfer my foreign results.
To become a nurse and somehow eventually to be accepted to the university (this isn't so clear whether this is possible).

One important thing is that I'd likely to start studying only when I'd get citizenship as I don't have enough funds to pay for the courses as international student.

Admissions officers at all UK universities have a significant amount of information on educational systems around the globe and the mapping of a student's background to UK equivalents and are able to measure each applicants ability or academic level on admission.
Some examples of the information available might be:

UCAS Guide to World Qualifications 2015
UCAS Tariff Calculator 2022
ECCTIS

There are also many British citizens that have not obtained the necessary qualifications when leaving school but decide they want  to study in higher education later in life. (Often known as Mature Entry students). The UK education system has ways of enabling their entry to their desired course. One such route is a one year "Access to HE" course at a local college. These are usually accredited by a local university to certificate the late learner's academic level in a short time. There is a factsheet available regarding Access courses for medicine specifically.
For applicants from overseas whose qualifications are of the right level but not done in English, then some form of English language qualification would be required. One such certification for this would be IELTS, but there are others that are equally recognised.
As mentioned in other answers, your best route to detailed information would be to consult an admissions officer at the University of your choice, or attend an "Open Day" event at a nearby university and speak to staff in person. Most universities have such recruitment events throughout the year.
I regularly speak to potential applicants in similar positions at open day events and will probably be handling their applications at some time during the year. This is not an unusual or abnormal situation, particularly considering the ebb and flow of world events over the recent past.
Addressing  the issue of an applicant who has already completed some of their course elsewhere (in the UK or overseas), some courses permit Accreditation of Prior Learning (APL or APEL or APCL) to allow someone to enter at a later stage of a course (such as only take the final year or skip the first year) by transferring credits, but this usually requires documentation such as a full curriculum specification and results transcript to be presented, often in notarised translation form.
Medicine is a special case; above I have addressed the general subject independent procedures. For medical schools, the best source of information is The Medical Schools Council. Unfortunately it is not possible to transfer credits from overseas into a UK medical school and therefore entry must be to the first year for an overseas applicant.
I hope I have covered all the necessary points both generally and specifically raised by your question.

Not part of a general answer, but specific to Cardiff:
There does not appear to be a full-time access to medicine course in Cardiff, but there is a part-time one. There are such courses offered in other cities. There are also online distance learning access to medicine courses available in the UK for home study. Cardiff does have a graduate entry scheme to medicine and this can be another route. It depends if you are willing to re-locate what option choices you have.

Re. "not possible to transfer credits from overseas" - It might be possible to use transfer credits towards a non-medical degree (e.g. biomedical science) and then enrol on a 'graduate entry'/'fast-track' medical degree. I have no idea whether this is a good idea - you would need to carefully investigate the financial and practical implications of doing so. Talking to some admissions tutors is definitely the way forward (and talk to several - you may find that some universities are able to offer more flexibility than others).

Thanks for your answer. I've been on open day event in Cardiff Uni school of medicine and staff there didn't know how to help me. There were no specific advises on how to find a college which has "Access to HE" program compatible with their uni. It felt like the staff were less from admission but more like hands on doctors or professors, there were eager to speak about courses particulars but not admission process.

You will probably find that most medical schools have a section that describes the entry requirements for overseas students. For example, my own university's medical school's entry criteria say:

For all applicants, other qualifications are also considered for admission i.e. Scottish Highers, Irish Leaving Certificate, the International and European Baccalaureate and some national qualifications from students applying from other countries.  A number of qualifications, (including but not limited to BTECs, T-Levels and Access Courses) are not accepted.

https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/medicine/undergraduate/medicine-admissions/a100-mbchb-policy
I recommend you email the admissions tutors at the medical schools of your choice (or possible all medical schools in the country) to specifically discuss your situation.

That's good advice, to start as overseas student. But the problem is, that you needed to study in your home country in the school which has compatible courses. And I didn't. The second problem is that I am already in the UK. The 3rd problem is admission fees are significantly higher. So if there was a way to pass some exams as overseas student and transfer into being regular student that would be alright, but I don't know if it is doable.

Sorry, I wasn't suggesting entry as an overseas student - you don't get a choice of overseas or home. Rather, if they have set out entry requirements for overseas students, those same requirements will apply to home students who have those qualifications. In any case, you should contact the admissions tutors. The worst that can happen is that they can tell you they don't accept your qualifications.


text:
My examination centre made a big mistake, what should I do?
I live in the U.K. and I'm taking my A-Levels (the qualifications before university).
Yesterday I sat my Computer Science exam. This is the first of two papers, and is completed on the computer.
Once we enter the examination room, we are subject to examination conditions - no talking, no looking around and all unauthorised materials (notes, books, phones) are banned from the room.
We were assigned examination logins to the network which had the files we needed for the exam and nothing else. The computers were already logged in (as per the instructions issued by the exam board).
They had also locked down the computers, for example to disable the calculator and other unnecessary programs.
Slightly unusually, however, the Upload Centre for Windows 10 was running. This is a program on Windows 10 use to manage file conflicts when syncing with One Drive. I thought this was a little odd, and opened it to satisfy my curiosity. As expected there were no files pending. I didn't notice at that time, but there was no error message saying that it could not connect to the internet. I closed this program.
Before the exam started, we were instructed to open the PDF, containing some instructions. As is the default on Windows 10, this opened in Edge - the web browser. I was a little surprised - I assumed they would have disabled Edge as it wouldn't be needed, but they hadn't. Again - I'm curious. I opened a new tab, pressed the 'H' key, and hit return. To my surprise - and concern - Bing proceeded to search for 'H'.
I raised my hands and spoke to the invigilators. They were surprised and simply informed us to not use the internet. They didn't seem to realise how serious this was - they informed us that they "didn't want to see us playing any games". I am confident I could have accessed Stack Overflow without them noticing.
To start the exam, a computer science teacher has to confirm everything is ready, resolve any issues, and give the invigilators the go ahead.
Throughout the exam, I did not manually access the internet. However, I know that Windows 10 certainly will have been forming connections for various programs (for example, one drive, windows monitoring tools, and any connections that Edge makes when it is opened).
After the exam, I had a maths exam in the afternoon, so I ignored the issue. When I was traveling home on the bus, I composed this email and sent it to my computer science teacher. It was sent after their work day finished, and I have not heard back from them over the weekend:

Before the exam started (at 9:15) I did 2 Bing searches, and discovered the internet was enabled. Of course, I did not access the internet again, but I would still like to confirm that even though my exam account accessed Bing there will be no issues? My account was No. 22 I think - candidate number 1499.
As an aside, apart from this being a bad idea (neither invigilator would know I was using the internet as neither were especially technically savvy - it would not have been difficult to search for answers), I was also rather concerned that I would accidentally click a link - for example in the Delphi Help, or when searching Cortana for a program and it provides web links.
I hope IT have turned off the internet connection for the exam accounts now. If not, I'm happy to tell them how I accessed it so they can prevent that.

Having submitted this question, I apologise for how long it is. You're welcome to edit out any details that are not necessary.

A summary:
In a horrendous breach of national exam regulations, I was able to access the internet during an exam. I did not access the internet during the exam, although background tasks on my computer likely did. The senior computer science teacher who was in charge of the exam was informed: around 5 minutes before the exam started. He instructed us not to use the internet.
What should I do about this?

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about high-school examinations procedures, not academia.

This question is a bit lengthy.

You've informed the relevant people. There is nothing more you can do at this point.

@Coder I did apologise for that. If there's a place to cut it down please do.

@DavidRicherby in the UK, A Levels are kinda considered Higher Education - are they not on this site? If not, is this on topic elsewhere on the SE network?

@user74876 A-levels aren't higher education because you do them at school, not at university. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of anywhere on SE where this would be on-topic.

@DavidRicherby that's fine. I guess it sometimes comes under the category because this education was optional until recently. Sorry for posting it.


text:
Public archives for PhD thesis
I am aware that PhD theses can be self archived in university site, personal webpage or sites like researchgate (ePrint Archive for PhD Dissertation in the Social Sciences).
I am not really fond of researchgate. I wish to know if arXiv (or biorXiv; as my field is biology that involves both mathematical modelling and experimental techniques) allows archiving of PhD thesis. This is not explicitly mentioned in these sites but this university site provides instructions on submitting PhD thesis to arXiv. I think this would be better than self archiving because arXiv submissions receive a DOI (I guess).
Does anyone have an experience with this? Are there other public repositories like arXiv that allow submission of PhD/masters theses (especially those that are biology related or accept all disciplines of science)?

One technical note: arXiv submissions do not actually receive a DOI; instead arXiv IDs are a separate system.  I don't think this matters (and I wouldn't recommend making your decision on this basis), but based on your comment I figured I'd mention it in case it matters to you for some reason.

@AnonymousMathematician Thanks for the clarification. Actually it doesn't matter but I think it would be better if the files have some kind of an index (arXiv IDs are fine).

Possible duplicate of Is it advisable to upload theses to the arXiv?.

Are the chapters of your thesis being published in peer-review journals/conferences? If yes, you might not want to publish the same things in arXiv. Because, same results or claims should not be present in two different sites or sources.

@Coderif if preprints can be published then why not chapters of thesis that are perhaps equivalent to the preprints.

@WYSIWYG No, certainly don't post single chapters unless you have very good reasons for doing it. Post the thesis on its own, or not at all. I wouldn't be particularly worried by the duplication; it's generally understood that the thesis often contains material that has been or will be published elsewhere. (However, if you're too pushy with posting the thesis, that distinction gets slightly weakened.) You do need to check that any prospective publication venues are OK with you putting the thesis material online, though.

@E.P. No I did not mean posting chapters separately. I meant that if articles (which can be chapters of thesis) can be submitted in arXiv which can later/already be published elsewhere, then a consolidated thesis can also be submitted. It should not be considered as the "same thing being in two places". Many journals allow non-commercial archiving at any stage during the publication process. I just needed more details on this.

I believe archiving the thesis would allow better access to it (for the public). It seems arXiv supports it (JeffE said in the other liked post that it does) but I would like to know if there are other sites (especially biorXiv or others that are bio-related) allows this, or is there any other way to allow easy access to a thesis.

Seriously, the best place is your institution. If not, check bioRxiv's policies (from its about page it does have an emphasis on articles, but I can't find at the moment the equivalent page on the arXiv).

@E.P.: Archiving at the institution is usually required anyway.  But for a reader, finding a thesis archived at an institution tends to require navigating the institution's library catalog website, which is often arcane and idiosyncratic.  Given the choice, I'd much prefer to find a thesis on arXiv.


text:
Ethical Problems Brought by Academic Paywalls
The question is simple. I am working on a topic. I came across a paper that is behind a paywall which my research institution (i.e. university) has no access to it and it may or may not be relevant to my research. If I skip it and some reviewer says that work is quite close to the work I have submitted and I should cite it, or even worse it is so close that it is on the edges of plagiarism.
I have the option of obtaining it from different sources without paying. Should I take it to avoid such claim? If I pay there is a good chance that I wasted money. In today's world literature is so vast and there are so many false positives and a paper might cost up to 40 bucks.
Let me flip that question. Suppose I created a publishing firm. I and my mates do superb research and publish on a journal of our publishing firm. (Assume our research quality is good, so omit academic nepotism.) One catch, our firm charges and exorbitant fee (say millions) for granting access to libraries and universities. Then we start waiting. When I see other research quite similar to ours, I press charges that our work has not been cited or acknowledged and the situation is plagiarism. I am the academic equivalent of a patent troll, except that you cannot see my work until I sue you. Should the poor guy suffer a plagiarism charge just because I kept my research behind a paywall that he/she cannot reach?
Professors and other academic people I ask about it pretend to be either unconscious or dead. Just kidding, they usually offer to send the papers that I cannot reach. But it does not answer my question.
p.s. There is a similar question here citing the problem but not the ethical dilemma. Are there any known Universities that refuse to pay for paywall access to academic journals?
EDIT due to possible duplicate reports: There are three questions which all refer to the same problem: unfettered access to academic research. I paraphrase and summarise three questions below. Suppose there is a body of research (say, group of articles) that are beyond the researcher's reach due to lack of resources (no ILL, no institution access, no sufficient budget etc). Should the researcher take the "gray" ways to obtain it? If not is he/she responsible for research he/she does not have access to? If so, where do we draw the line? How much is too much to pay to access research? (hence the publisher question) It is not the 80s anymore. Research is published almost faster than one can read and it is readily available (at an inflated cost). So, thorough examination of literature to conduct original research is unjustifiably more expensive than before.

Because of things like interlibrary loan, this might be a false dichotomy.

Usually, it's the library of your institution that orders and pays for a single article for you.

Not all journals are reachable by ILL or not all institutions pay for individual requests (or have the budget to do so). Not all of us live in the States either :) The main question is "if the only way to access a research is a gray one should one take it to avoid missing the research?"

And see also http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/62999/is-it-ok-to-refuse-to-cite-paywalled-papers and http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7797/what-do-you-do-when-you-find-yourselves-with-an-unreadable-inaccessible-paper

@NateEldredge Yep they are similar but none of them cover all the aspects of my question. First one is about preprints, sure that one is easy. Second one is about refusing to cite which is not asked here. Thank you for referring to the third one, it didn't show up in my search. But it is about rare papers, badly archived. There are two sides of my question. First one I am on two bad choices, second one is about being a patent troll.

Note that the fact that someone failed to cite a paper containing the same work isn't inherently plagiarism, unless it can be shown they had read the paper and intentionally passed off its work as their own.  It happens all the time that someone rediscovers and publishes previous work without knowing it.  They don't get punished for plagiarism; at most they have to publish an "acknowledgment of priority".  And their claim of innocence would hold all the more weight if your journal was known not to be widely read (because of its cost or any other reason).

http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/63350/is-it-ethical-to-obtain-journal-articles-from-places-other-than-the-publishers doesn't say anything about preprints in the question.  Some answers chose to mention them.

That's actually a good point (you might want to turn it into an answer). There are examples of it in the past such as Ito/Doeblin formula. Though, the claim might be made for any paywalled article if you or your institution have no access to.

The marked answer is a clear and accepted answer to the question, so it is about preprints and if not, responsibility belongs to the uploader.

The idea that not citing a paper you didn't read could lead to "a plagiarism charge" strikes me as extremely contrived.

Come on people it is not a duplicate and it was not a literal question. Every one of us knows to dance around the rules to get the papers we need. Yet, everyone suggests the obvious solutions and no one addresses the heart of the issue. I am so disappointed.

On the second thought, this guy summarized it all as "I don't care, I will use whatever necessary to get the article": http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/63385/52972 Honest person, I think you can agree with that.

This seems contrived, as normally you can at least read the abstract to find out if you need to read the paper.
If you do need to read the paper, you have valid ways to do it, such as interlibrary loan, without paying $40.  It's not free, but not a huge expense.  You can opt to not read the paper, in which case you'd be doing your professional practice a misdeed.
Lastly, there is ALWAYS similar research by other people, who have not seen or heard of your paper.  It is NOT plagiarism to independently come up with something on your own.  There would normally be no charge of plagiarism, and you are wasting your effort serving as a patent troll.
If you are a publisher charging exorbitantly for access, you would build up your reputation, hire editors of stature, maintain a staff that keeps papers moving through the business, maintain a list of good referees, and do many other things to try to add value to your service and repository.  If you build up your reputation, institutions would subscribe.  If you can't establish a reputation, you'd go broke.

Should the poor guy suffer a plagiarism charge just because I kept my
  research behind a paywall that he/she cannot reach?

The most likely scenario is that the person will not face a charge because no plagiarism occurred, as your paper has not been read.  Another likely scenario is that the paper were acquired through legal and nonexorbitant or free means like interlibrary loan, prepublication sources as required by NIH under the Public Access Policy, etc.
There are sound reasons to advocate for open access, but the fear of forcing plagiarism probably isn't in the hit parade.
Lastly, I encourage you to find the papers you need by legal means, so no, I don't feel acquiring the paper for free through extra-legal means is the way to go.

To do proper research, a researcher should examine many papers deeper than their abstracts. Many studies have seemingly relevant abstracts but completely irrelevant context. It is especially true if the researcher's work is in an interdisciplinary domain. I also disagree about the plagiarism charge. I published a work and charge a fee for my deed which I deem fair but too much for others. Another researcher comes and published work quite similar to mine in another paywalled journal. If I complain, he/she would probably have to retract it. Btw, the question is more abstract than real.

There are several legal ways to get a free version of an article. See e.g. http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/85623/what-to-do-if-cited-papers-are-not-freely-available-while-reviewing-a-manuscript/85628#85628

@FuzzyLeapfrog yeah but these solutions are not always reliable and final original work is behind a paywall most of the time. I am lucky to do my PhD in an institution with vast academic resources but not everybody have the same opportunity.

@berkorbay -- I don't suggest that people only read the abstract, but I do suggest that usually a person can tell if the paper needs reading by what's in the abstract.  Also, I think  you have a funny idea of what constitutes plagiarism. Plagiarism is representing the work of others as your own work.  A failure to acknowledge other work cannot be plagiarism if you don't know about the other work.  In fact, having someone blind to the IP is a common way to get around software copyright -- just redevelop from scratch.

@ScottSeidman Unfortunately ignorance is not an excuse, especially today. If I were an editor of a respectable journal and I come across a paper that closely resembles an existing work it would raise an eyebrow or two. Sure, plagiarism is an extreme accusation but you can easily be "implicated" of not doing your research well. First time perhaps you can be lenient, especially if the submitter is a young researcher.

@berkorbay  Ignorance is not great for a career, but it's not plagiarism.

The concept of open access is relatively new. Two decades ago when you wanted a paper, you had to go to the library and photocopy it. If your library did not have a copy you could try to obtain it through an inter-library loan (ILL) or contact the author, or colleagues, directly. To my understanding, none of these methods violated the copyright laws and the "paywalls".
A decade ago when you wanted a paper, you could go on to the journals webpage and see if you could download the paper. If not, then you went the library ILL contact author and colleague route. Again, to my understanding, this is legal.
Today, when you want a paper, you Google it. If you don't find it, it seems, academics then complain about paywalls. In my limited understanding of copyright contacting authors and colleagues is still legal.
In the extreme case of limited access to a research finding, either because of a restrictive license or more likely government classification, repeating the research is perfectly legitimate. Repeating research is not academic misconduct, and definitely not plagiarism. One should make an effort to acknowledge that research finding may have previously been achieved (and reported) so that it is clear that you are not claiming priority.

This came up in another topic very recently. If you go out of your way to point out you may not be original, you shoot yourself in the foot.  Let's leave it at, it's not plagiarism unless it's intentional.

@FredDouglis  no, plagiarism does not need to be intentional.  It is representing someone else's work as your own, and I can point to a ton of penalized students who did just this without ever realizing that that was what they were doing.

Doing the same work independently, unaware of it,   is not plagiarism.

@FredDouglis  that's better.

@ScottSeidman Independent recreation is not plagiarism: if I actually do the work, it is my work, too. Indeed, this happened many times in the days before the internet, when it was much harder to find out what had already been done.

@DavidRicherby, we agree.  In fact, that's a popular way to avoid software copyright infringement.  Just never look at the original.

It's what i meant in the first place.  If you read something,  then do the work based on  it without acknowledging,  it's intentional misuse.  If you weren't aware,  as the OP said,  any overlap would be unintentional.

Everything you said is legal. Additionally, it is always legal to contact the author and ask for a copy of the final published paper. This is legal, too.

Perhaps in the past you are right. But today with access to internet, it is different. Umm no, it is not legal to share your published final work to everyone who asks you to do so. Then, just post it on the internet why bother? Also if it was actually legal, no library would have paid publications such a huge sum. They would post a sign writing: "Just ask the author". Check Elsevier's page https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/sharing ("Otherwise sharing is by agreement only").