text:
How should you approach your adviser and tell him that he has a communication problem

(Not his actual hand writing)

I am currently working under an academic research adviser who is a very nice person and very knowledgeable but I think he has problem in communicating with others (myself included) that is hindering the research progress and outputs of his group.
This problem is demonstrated on three fronts:
1. Poor handwriting
His hand writing is very very messy, comparable to the figure above. I do not understand how anyone can understand him. Everyone else in the research group communicates using Latex or some other software to make the writing neat and understandable. Further, he never erases anything but just scratches things out. Can you imagine what scratches on messy hand writing look like? Even messier.
I'd like to think that messy hand writing is linked with unfettered intellectual creativity but I just cannot understand anything that he writes and neither can anybody else.
2. Unclear presentation or slides.
In my opinion slides should be made to the point, clear and concise. I found a random example not even related to my field of study to clarify what I mean: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2011/sargent-lecture_slides.pdf
But his slides are routinely overloaded with equations and unclear graphics obviously cropped and pasted with no regard to background, positioning or anything. Simply put, the slides do not capture the main idea. And because of this reason he routinely go over time or skip large chunk of complicated equations during presentation, this causes 1/2 of the people to stop following him and it is very noticeable.
3. Unclear notation
I think this one is quite serious because he routinely uses symbols that are a little ambiguous in their meanings. In fact his symbols seems to consistently go against whatever is currently in the literature. For example, people in my research field uses Greek alphabets for one thing but he uses it for something completely different. Also there are definitions he sort of made up on the spot that I thought were standard. I am honestly not sure whether I should just adopt his conventions or keep whatever other people have been using in this field.
I think part of the reason is because he is from an older generation who is used to the paper and pencil type of work and is not very adapt with technology. I think he is also a very busy person so he has to come up with ideas and notations on the spot which causes conflict with the rest of the world.
Is there a good way I can approach him to address these problems without offending him or hurt his feelings?

How should you approach your adviser and tell him that he has a communication problem [?] — Like an adult; you know, by simply letting him know that you do not understand what he is attempting to communicate. I think part of the reason is because he is from an older generation who is used to the paper and pencil type of work and is not very adapt with technology. — Yes, but all the technology in the world doesn't do you any good if you don't know how to ask questions on things you are unclear on.

I don't know why his cluttered slides are relevant to you as his research student. In what context does your advisor use slides while advising you?

As it's stated, this seems like a rant about an adviser and not much of a question. The answer to the question to "how should you approach ..." is simply "by talking to them nicely and respectfully".

You cannot change his handwriting (mine is bad, and it's not like I don't try); you are unlikely to teach him to make better slides; and I doubt that his notation is ad hoc - it's just unfortunately what he's used to even when academic consensus has decided otherwise (an introductory analysis class at my undergrad school had a prof use sub-scripts in NE/NW/SE/SW (all of) corners of variables, resorting to Hebrew letters when that wasn't enough). Bad is it is, try to get used to it.

Send him/her to this page anonymously.

I would advise you to approach him on a different base than he has a communication problem, namely on the base that you have a problem with his way of communication. Note the slight shift.
Phrasing it that way eliminates the problem that you may accuse him of something or even offend him. For example, you would not say "your handwriting is poor" but "I have a hard time to read your handwriting and it costs me a lot of time to read it". Also, you would not say "your slides are unclear" but "I do not get the main idea from the slides and would find it helpful if [...]". Finally, instead of "your notation is unclear" you would say that "I consistently get confused since the book X uses the notation Y while you use Z".

I found two typos that I'm apparently not allowed to edit: 1) .. base than he has ... 2) ... your handwriting is poor...

I can understand your frustration, I have an advisor right now that has some of the qualities you have mentioned (points 1 and 2)! Here is my take on your situation.
Facts;

He is an older and busy professor => I'm sure he has heard many complaints about these points before. I'm even sure his colleagues and dept. chair know that too! Guess what, he is still the same, he will be the same. My advise to you is learn how to adapt. My adivor's had writing is really bad and we (his PhD students) keep old drafts of his writing with marks up of words that we could not get the first time just in case we need to decode his writing from a current draft! We all faced this issue once we joined his team. We would go to his office just to ask on how to read certain mark ups he wrote on our drafts and papers! To be honest, we tried to introduce him to the very simple and friendly Word "track change" but he politely said that this is not the way to teach and correct drafts. He only requests hard copies of manuscripts to go over and only asks for the soft copy once the paper is ready to be submitted. Also, he gets annoyed if he sees any of us reading/reviewing a paper or a draft using the computer, he would simply shake his head and say, "Kids these days!" (smiling and in a funny way). Honestly, I used to hate that but now, this is what I do. I still use pencil and a hard copy of the paper I'm reviewing or writing. To be honest, my advisor is right in a way. I agree that it is not the best/optimum/environmentally friendly way to do research (by printing pages and pages of drafts), but papers really sound and look different when you hold them in your hands. As I said earlier, to each his own, but since you are his student, you do not have to agree with him/her all the time! But, to keep your work going and avoid delays and arguments, you might want to do things his/her way! I believe that each student should has his own scientific charisma, but so far you are still a student so you might change your views if you try new (or in this case old school) stuff!
His note are all over the place and 1/2 the people stop following him and it is noticeable. If it noticeable to you, it must be noticeable to him/her too (during all his/her years of research and teaching)! Keep in mind that slides or presentations need to be somehow clear and easy to follow. But, they also do not need to be colorful and include cinematic effects! Perhaps to your advisor, having clean cut presentations is not that important. S/He cares about the science only. I would suggest that you offer to fix 1-2 of his presentations. Change them into something completely different. Arrange them in a way you would do your own presentations. Then, show them to him, perhaps he will like them and change the other slides (or most likely, will ask you to do change them).
Unclear notation => read point 1 above again.

Finally, being a graduate student is tough. The truth is, if you look closely, many PhD students turns to be like their advisers (in a way or two). How many of us have said "he (your advisor) does not know hat is he talking about?!" or "That does not make sense, he (your advisor) must have not read the previous page". But that is ok, I'm sure our students will say the same one day!
Having daily contact with someone can and will change the way you do or see stuff. Simply put, try not to over think such things that are annoying you and focus on the positive aspects. Your advisor is a nice and knowledgeable guy! Trust me, this is a hard combination to have in an advisor!


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Paper rejected because 'it did not fit the scope of the journal"
So, I recently finished my first ever paper and submitted it to a journal. A few days later, I got a response from the Editor saying that my manuscript had been rejected because it did not fit the scope of the journal.
The thing is, before submission, I was asked to suggest two reviewers. One of them, recently published a paper with the same theme in this same journal (I even used him as one of my main references). Beside the work of this reviewer, there are plenty of other papers with this theme being published in this journal over the years.
The paper is related to an application of AI in the Electrical Engineering field.
I understand that if my methodology or something else was wrong, I would get a rejection. But my work did not even get reviwed by others and this "your work did not fit the scope of the journal" is a bit weird to me.
What could have possible went wrong here? So I can understand better this process and see how I can try to improve my paper to submit it elsewhere.

Did you discuss this with your supervisor?

@FerventHippo Sure, he's my co-author.

And what did he say?

@FerventHippo That the reason for rejection was indeed weird (for the same reason I already stated here), but we should submit to another journal, and maybe change something in the abstract to be more clear (other colleagues don't think this is necessary at all, it is already clear enough).

Maybe the editors have been in trouble to find reviewers for previous papers of the same topuc?

Sometimes "out of scope" doesn't mean that the topic/theme of the paper is outside the scope of the journal, rather it may be that the impact is out of scope.
This is just standard terminology for a desk reject and I wouldn't spend much time thinking about the precise meaning and dissecting the language of the rejection. It's just time to submit this particular work to another journal. I don't think it's worth appealing a decision like this, it's just more polite for them to say "out of scope" than "the editor doesn't think your paper seems important enough".
I dug through my email for a rejection letter (these are not too hard to find there), and here's an example of some wording from one to support my answer:

I am sorry to report that we are unable to publish your paper... the study provides some new observations ... (but) ... the findings do not provide a sufficient advance. ...
While your manuscript does not fit within the scope of papers currently reviewed at (this journal), we believe that your manuscript was technically and methodologically strong, and therefore could be appropriate for (lower tier journal by same publisher with the same topic scope)

You might also have a colleague proofread it just to be sure that that won’t be an issue.

As an editor, my own practice is the opposite of this answer.  I will only tell you your paper is out of scope if it truly doesn't fit under the topics covered by the journal.  If it is simply too low-impact, the rejection letter will say that.  For reference, I am an editor for a SIAM journal and an ACM journal.

@DavidKetcheson you may be an exceptionally scrupulous editor.  Thank you for your service.

Better than submitting the same work to another journal is - since this is your first paper - asking an experienced colleague if they think the paper is ready for submission or if it needs further work.

@Randall I also disagree with this answer. And while David Ketcheson may or may not be exceptionally scrupulous, he is simply describing the correct usage of "out of scope" and the way the vast majority of journal editors (including many who are only moderately scrupulous, I'm sure) would use that term, in mathematics at least. See the answer I posted.

@DanRomik I do think yours is the correct meaning of "scope", but in my experience editors do not stick to this strict definition of topic so OP and other people submitting papers should be aware of this. I've added a sample to my answer where the editor explicitly refers to not a "sufficient advance" while referring to not fitting within scope of papers that are sent for review. Of course it may certainly be the case that editors in math are more careful with this terminology.

Perhaps a different editor made a different judgement about your paper than an earlier editor made about the earlier one. Perhaps it was some feature of your paper.
You can appeal to them, pointing out what you see as a discrepancy, and you might be successful in getting a review. Or not.
Or, you can look for a more obviously appropriate journal. Some desk rejections will be treated as final, but you can still ask.

Well, there is no harm in aksing, i guess. Thanks!

There is harm, as it delays you handing in your paper in another (lower ranked?) journal.

It's the editor's job to make sure papers a published appropriate. Similar to grants, papers can be returned without review if the editor doesn't think the contribution in the journal matches to the journals scope. The key thing is "the manuscript's contribution" to the field, not the topic or theme of the manuscript. What is unique and innovative needs to be clear, and whatever that is has to fit the journal's scope. New authors sometimes have difficulty articulating exactly what is new on their paper. If that is not clear, an editor might quickly reject it as not being in the scope of the journal.
I'd suggest taking an honest assessment of whether the specific intellectual contribution of the paper fits the journal scope, rewrite it to clarify, and try to find a more appropriate journal to submit to (or resubmit to the same one if it was an issue of clarity).
One thing you can do in the future is to make sure it's clear in the cover letter why it is a good fit for that specific journal.
On field specific note, are you doing IA (industrial automation) or AI in electrical engineering? If you are doing AI, those journals are flooded with papers on AI applications to EE that make zero contributions to the field of EE. If the innovation was solely applying an existing AI method to an EE problem without clearly identifying the intellectual contribution to the field of electrical engineering, it will be out of the scope of nearly any EE journal. Same goes with IA. If the innovation was in some technical implementation of existing methods, it would be out of the scope of most EE journals.

Sorry, my mistake. It is AI in EE. My methodology is different from other papers, wich showed some improved results from these earlier works. Like you said, maybe they are being flooded with these type of work and (at the moment) not acceppeting anymore?

@Murilo You can't know and you won't know. It's not worth your time trying to read the tea leaves. Move on, submit elsewhere.

"make sure it's clear in the cover letter why it is a good fit for that specific journal.". Is it ok to write in the cover letter that "since some of my references published in your journal, it seems that its topic can be of your interest"?

@m123 I think it can, but not the first thing you say and I wouldn't word it like that. Something like "This manuscript makes an important contribution to [x], which is of particular emphasis to this journal. This work contributes to the body of knowledge that includes refs 7, 12, that were published in [publication].". That said, I just give an argument as to why my paper is a fit on its own, without mentioning citations.

I wrote a paper, supervisor suggested one journal. The editor rejected based on "we don't publish empirical research" I wrote back asking if she had suggestions where I might publish. I got a suggestion and the published.
You can always ask for editor suggestions as to where you might publish or any suggestions for paper improvements.
Many editors assume that you have a good research lab, supervisor advice and know what is expected. However this is not always so, so be polite and ask them nicely. Maybe you get a useful response.

If you're certain your paper is within the scope, write back to the editor and ask them if they're sure (because they published another paper on the same theme recently, for example). It could be human error.
However, don't expect too much, because it could be they were going to desk reject anyway and just sent you the wrong reason.

Scope of this answer: mathematics.
In mathematics, the "scope" of a journal is commonly understood to mean the set of topics that are considered appropriate subject matter for the journal. This is consistent with the regular meaning of "scope", which the dictionary defines as "the extent of the area or subject matter that something deals with or to which it is relevant".
So in mathematics at least, an editor should not normally tell you your paper is out of scope simply because it is not good enough for the journal. If an editor does that, they either don't understand English well, or they are sloppy with their language (more sloppy than one should be when writing sensitive emails in the capacity of a journal editor, in my opinion); or they are not sloppy but are knowingly choosing this euphemistic phrasing in a misguided attempt to be "more polite" as @BryanKrause puts it (also a bit euphemistically, I think) in his answer.

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Applying to a different job in the same department when I have a fixed-term contract
I currently have a one year fixed term contract in the department where I studied for my PhD. It is due to finish in April. It is not ideal for my career development as it involves no opportunities for teaching. Recently another one year fixed contract has been advertised in the department which is ideal for me, absolutely my subject area and involves lecturing and all the duties that I would hope to develop. Is it bad form to apply, as it would mean leaving my current post in September if I was successful? It would give me an additional six months of work if I was successful however.
I don't want to get a bad reputation though! It is in the same department so my current boss would know I have applied.

Are you in the US? It is probably fine to apply, the new fixed term will not overlap with your current one it sounds like. But you should also apply outside of the university where you did your PhD. In the US, this doesn't look very good to stick around for two years. You want to do a postdoc somewhere else and establish some independence.

I don't think it is bad form to apply. Some people would say the same opinion but much more strongly.
Your boss should understand that a one-year postdoc is hard because you have to start applying for new jobs almost as soon as they start it. If they don't realize this you can tell them.

It certainly is not bad form
It usually takes about six-months to go through a recruitment procedure in academia (sometimes longer), so if you're only on a one-year contract, it's not even bad form to start looking for your next position as soon as you start.  An employer who offers you a one-year contract is not willing to commit to a long-term employment relationship --- in such a circumstance it is perfectly reasonable that you would be looking for alternative positions that offer you either a more secure position, or even just a continuance of employment beyond your present contract period.  If they expect some greater loyatly from you, they can show you greater loyalty by offering a long-term or permanent position.
As to the overlap between the positions, it is usual in a recruitment process that the interviewer will want to know when you can start in the position if selected.  It is widely accepted that you ought to be given the liberty of a reasonable notice period in respect to your previous position (e.g., four weeks), but in some cases you might have more wiggle-room than this (especially in this case, where they are at the same insitution).  In cases where the recruitment process itself is slow, you are probbly going to be able to negotiate a reasonable period before starting, if that is something you want.

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How does one keep oneself updated with new research without forgetting older results?
The title is fairly generic in nature, so I'm trying to elaborate in the body. I'm interested in answers pertaining to Theoretical Computer Science (TCS), but I'm certain the question would be equally relevant in fields which have been around for more than a couple of decades, and hence I hope to get responses from researchers in other disciplines as well!
What I'm trying to understand is how researchers (who have been working for quite sometime) in any specialized field (like TCS) keep track of results that have already been published - not just seminal results, but also results which have a lesser (but not insignificant) impact on the field but were published years or decades before. At the same time, one has to keep track of results being published in (at least) the notable conferences in the current year as well, in order to absorb the new ideas presented there and incorporate/extend them in one's own work.
I find it kind of incredible to believe that all of the above is possible without any kind of disciplined approach to reading and subsequent assimilation of the ideas on a regular basis - which is why I'm asking members of academia about their experiences/practices on this. In particular:

How frequently (if at all) do you revisit "classic" results?
Do you keep written/electronic notes on a regular basis to keep track of continuing progress in a field (say, for instance, inapproximability results for geometric problems) - or do you prefer to keep it all in your mind?
To keep track of current state of art, do you only attend/read Tier-I conferences, or do you get useful ideas from results published in Tier-II/III conferences as well?
What kind of time/resources would you typically set aside for reading, as opposed to working on a problem?

In short, I'm trying to find what kind of things would you expect a top researcher to "know" off the top of his head, and at what level of depth - and how would you go trying to maintain that level of perception over the years?
(I understand that the question IS subjective, but I'm hoping that it satisfies the guidelines for a "good subjective" question!)

Here are a few additions to Suresh's list (converted from a comment at TCSgrad's suggestion):

Don't even try to remember details. Just remember that somebody published something related, and use Google (or Mendeley or Papers) to find the paper again when you need it.
Chase references. Interesting papers tend to cite other interesting papers.  When you read any paper, also look at the papers in its bibliography.
Chase citations.  Interesting papers tend to be cited by other interesting papers.  When you read the paper, find other papers that cite it (via Google Scholar, for example) and look at them, too.
Follow whims.  If you see a paper with an interesting word in the title, or an interesting figure on the first page, at least read the abstract.
Don't try to read everything. That's impossible. Just try to read a little more.
Stop reading.  Eventually you have to do your own research.  Don't worry about reinventing the wheel; sometimes the best (and even fastest) way to understand what someone else did is to ignore them, figure it out yourself, and then read their paper.

I'm very bad at keeping track of things, so maybe all I can share is what NOT to do :), but I find it easiest to keep track of ongoing work in the community (and I'm in TCS too) in three ways:

By working on problems and being willing to indulge in flights of fancy (which allows me to read beyond the narrow scope of the problem I'm dealing with)
By perusing the list of accepted papers at a conference when it's announced.
(more recently) subscribing to relevant arXiv feeds and saving papers to read on my IPad - this works only partially, but I always have things ready to read when I feel like it.

This system is not perfect - I still miss lots of interesting papers - but I've slowly come to accept that it will be impossible to keep track of all interesting results in the field (let alone the flashy ones). For breadth beyond the above I rely a lot on surveys and slides that I can quickly browse.

Nice list! The idea of using surveys to keep track of results is pretty neat - but do you need to re-read older papers at all? I find it hard to remember all the technical details of papers that I've read a while back, so I was wondering if it was just me who had that problem!

Yes, I often have to re-read older papers: a good paper often has many ideas and if at the time I only need one key fact, I might not realize that there are other things worth squirreling away.  Although I'm not the best person to ask: I've frequently forgotten blog posts that I wrote myself and am pleasantly surprised to discover them on Google.

A couple of additions to this list: Don't even try to remember details. Just remember that somebody published something related, and use Google (or Mendeley or Papers) to find the paper again when you need it.  Chase references.  Interesting papers tend to cite other interesting papers.  Chase citations.  Interesting papers tend to be cited by other interesting papers.  Follow whims.  If you see a paper with an interesting word in the title, at least read the abstract.  Don't try to read everything. That's impossible.  Just try to read a little more.

+1 "Don't try to read everything: just try to read a little more"

@JeffE - Its an awesome comment, should be one of the answers (which tend to get better visibility than comments!)

@JeffE +1 for do not remember details (I thought I should in the early times). Totally agree with the OP suggestion..  Chasing references/citations is a key skill in being up to date :)

Read review articles in your field. That's where someone else already did the hard work of reading and summarizing the literature. Tenured-track professors have a strong incentive to write invited review articles because it's prestigious and gets them a lot of citations.
Maintain a library database of papers you've read along with the dates you read them. Add your own keywords to them so you can find them later and cite them. Keep this database separate from the new databases you'll make when you start writing a new paper (don't make the mistake of trying to keep it all in the same file -- you'll never find anything when it gets too big). I do this in Endnote, though obviously you could do it in bibtex or some other program.
Put a repeating monthly reminder on your calendar to send you an email when the new issue of each journal comes out. You can do this easily on Google Calendar or MS Outlook. Delete the email after you've looked through the new articles. (Remember to put the important ones you read in your library database!)
Also put semi-annual reminders on your calendar with abstract submission due dates for the relevant conferences for your field. I'd suggest putting two email reminders about a month and also a week before the actual due dates.
Carry a notebook (not a laptop or other device) with you at the conference and write down titles of the important events and what was important about them. Yes, handwritten notes! You won't have time to type up pretty documents. Managing battery life and surfing the internet is a waste of time when you could be networking with the best researchers in your field. You'll have time after the conference to go back through your notes and then add those presentations to your library database.

I am not experienced researcher but I will say what I usually do:

Subscribe for Google scholar alert.
I found this very helpful specially for new topics and to keep you updated. Once google scholar indexed a paper contains your word, it will send you alert. It is simply an awesome feature to know almost every new paper in your subfield.
Subscribe in ArXiv
My goal here is to see the general field papers. (I am subscribing to Artificial Intelligence and Game Theory). You will get the abstracts along with the paper title. If you found this paper is interesting then google it.
Follow up with Top-conferences and journals
(in Computer Science) Sometimes visiting the new DBLP page for the conference/journal might be useful. Same goes to visiting the pioneers DBLP pages.

I do maintain a plain text file contains some (crazy) ideas/strong statements/question related to the papers I read. When it is the time to look for new project/idea, I usually consult this file.

+1 for Scholar alerts. I forgot about that one, but it's greatly improved and often produces articles of interest to me (based on my publications)

Same here but I believe the recommendations show only when your profile is public otherwise you will not have recommended papers.

At some point in your academic career you have to be pragmatic. By this I mean you will read a paper when you need to, and you often read the papers only in parts. Still you will read plenty of papers: research, teaching, refereeing there are many occasions.
On the other hand you have to keep your eyes open. You should have a rough idea what is going on in your field. But you don't have to know the details, since you don't have the time for this. Many ideas how to do this were already posted. Here is what I do (I also work in TCS and Discrete Math).

Subscribe to the arxiv's rss feed you are interested in.
Read the important blogs, they will also list paper accepted at main conferences.
If you are interested in a journal, subscribe to the newsletter.
Talk to your peers.

Often I just scan the titles, and the list of authors. If I find something interesting I have a look at the abstract and try to understand the statement of the main result. If you don't already use a rss reader I strongly recommend to use one to keep track of everything in one single place.

Research Lei was an interesting attempt at visualizing groups of people working together, clustering documents with similar subjects of work, using a simple python interface. I am not sure if it still works but making such graphs and reviewing your community gives you a global view of work being done in the field.

You don't need to know everything. Older results only matter as much as they're relevant to what you're researching and writing about now. Also, since research is about discovering NEW things, older results can pretty much just sit there and gather dust until they become relevant for current research.

Well, the interesting question is actually “how to make sure you remember of their existence when you need these older results”…

Keep a research journal database. I use FileMaker Pro.

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How to properly assess a student's knowledge of a subject
Good afternoon,
Often times (in my experiences) tests questions are based upon irrelevant specific details that do not necessarily reflect a student's knowledge of the subject matter. For instance, I was once faced with a test on "The Once and Future King" that asked, "What was the name of the cow?"... I believe asking questions such as this does not accurately reflect a student's mastery of the subject.
In this light, are there any established best practices for formulating examinations that properly assess how well a student has grasped the concept of a subject?
P.S. - If you down-vote, please leave a reason so that I ask better questions in the future.
P.P.S. - I don't believe this question (singular) about examinations (specific) is too broad, since it has two very helpful (definitely adequate) answers with additional resources, which have been developed by Universities as best practices. These three qualities are what the 'too broad' hold explicitly asks the questioner to address. If, after these edits, Mods still think the question is too broad, please leave more feedback so that a better question can be formulated, or simply go ahead and close the thread. I think the two answers already given are adequate for anyone seeking an answer to this question.

I had a professor occasionally ask questions on trivial details to confirm we had read the assigned readings. The students who read summaries rather then the actual material would always miss those.

Good insight, @MichaelMolter

I have found a couple of resources regarding the question of credibility of examinations.
The University of Michigan advocates that examinations should be:

Valid, (providing useful information about the concepts they were
designed to test)
Reliable (allowing consistent measurement and discriminating between
different levels of performance)
Recognizable  (instruction has prepared students for the assessment)
Realistic (concerning time and effort required to complete the
assignment)  (Svinicki, 1999)

For others' reference:
https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/assesslearning/creatingexams.html
http://www.crlt.umich.edu/P8_0 <- referenced UofM material above can be found here.
P.S. - The UofM website has further references, including the '(Svinicki, 1999)' that is listed above.

A good question is related to the learning goals of the course. Those goals should be clearly defined beforehand and if they are not it is time for the teachers to do so.
You say the test was "on The Once and Future King". On what exactly? What was the purpose of reading the book?
If the learning goals are:

to be able to reproduce the names of animals in literature, or
to correctly identify all cows by name in books written between 1950 and 1960, or
to develop a photographic memory,

the question about the cow is great. However, if the learning goals are:

to learn about the behavior of knights and squires in historical literature, or
to critically compare the writing styles of Sir Thomas Malory and Terence H. White, or
to identify irony and distinguish it from sarcasm

the question about the cow is not useful.
In other words: The teacher should consider what students should to be able to do independently after having read the book and followed the course, and the questions should be formulated to test whether they are indeed able to do so.
[ PS. I am a biophysicist, so my choice of literature learning goals may be terrible. I just decided to go with the original example instead of one from my own field. ]

thanks for the words of wisdom. At this point, I'm gonna leave the question open until I can accept my answer, only since it has references, further resources, and more up-votes (at this time). But I do appreciate your answer as I think it adds value to this post. =)

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Pursuing other PhD offers, after accepting one too early
I have accepted a PhD offer too early (offer was made on jan. 18, acceptance on jan. 25), mostly because I was pretty sure which university I wanted to go to.
However, I've received a very good offer at another university, and I want to visit it and see what it's like.
But after reading similar threads to this, I'm worried about the ethics of this.
Can I still go visit the other university, and potentially reject the offer I accepted?
Should I email my advisor and the graduate school and tell that I made a quick decision and I would like more time? Or should I just keep quiet and visit, so as to not look unreliable.
Am I making a big deal? I think I'm in my right to reject the offer I accepted (if I turn out to prefer the university I want to visit) because I shouldn't have made a decision prior to April 15 according to US regulations.
Please let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks
edit: This is all in the US. At the university I already accepted I only have a stipend and tuition waiver. At the other offer I have the same thing but I also have a fellowship (exempts me form working) and don't have to pay for my health insurance.
I got an offer from the professor himself, and the graduate school in both universities.

In what country, and what educational system? Are there any PhD grant involved?

Was it an offer from a PhD programm or gradschool, or did you apply directly to a group and got the offer from the professor himself?

I added this information (both Basile and BPND questions) in the edit section.

I would surely visit the other university. And if you can switch, and want to switch: switch! I've been in a similar position (for a post-doc), and these kind of decisions which you finally regret can haunt you for a long time. If you decide to go for the other university, just explain it to your advisor. Most people who I worked with would only be happy if I found another position/university which suited me better.

That would be like keeping the bird in the hand when you can have a whole chicken farm instead. Nobody is going to be terribly shocked if you go for the latter, if you do it quick.

Policy Answer
As both an answer to this question and as a PSA, most major universities in the US are signatories to the "April 15th resolution," which gives students until April 15th to accept offers of admission/financial aid. A full list is here: http://cgsnet.org/ckfinder/userfiles/files/CGSResolution_RevisedOct2017.pdf
As part of that policy, most relevant sections bolded:

In those instances in which a student accepts an offer before April 15, and subsequently desires to withdraw that acceptance, the student may submit in writing a resignation of the appointment at any time through April 15. However, an acceptance given or left in force after April 15 commits the student not to accept another offer without first obtaining a written release from the institution to which a commitment has been made.

Assuming the universities you are interested in are on that list, then, you can still change your mind according to policy. What remains to consider is the personal relationship with the institution/professor whom you have already accepted an offer to.
Interpersonal Answer
The institution itself is unlikely to care all that much since you are likely one of many graduate students - but do inform them quickly once a decision is made. Ideally it is most polite to give them as much time before April 15th to offer your funds to another prospective student. This might be different if it's a smaller program. Some professors at the institution might be a bit offended, but many will also understand the attraction of a fellowship over an assistantship, especially if the fellowship comes with any prestige. If you have accepted a position with an individual professor, that person is the person most likely to be offended, but this will depend entirely on their personality and how much stake they had in bringing you to their lab.
The ideal course of action would have been to wait to accept anything until you had all possible offers in-hand. It's unfortunate that no one gave you this advice while you were applying, but somewhat understandable that you would make this mistake simply because people don't typically apply to graduate programs more than once or twice in their lifetime.
Personally, I would probably not inform the school where you accepted simply that you are interviewing at the other school to avoid causing bad blood if you end up staying with the initial offer after all, but if you change your mind you must inform them immediately.
For your particular situation, consider also the duration of the package offered and the field you are in - a fellowship is nice, but in some fields a research assistantship effectively pays you to do your own research, and is only marginally better than a fellowship (besides any prestige of the fellowship). A one-year fellowship may be hardly worth changing your university choice. In other fields, a fellowship is a huge deal because RAs are not typically part of your personal research and degree progress.


text:
Asking about funding when you've already been told you'll be funded
Disclaimer : Please consider I'm in Europe, and this is for European funding
I've been accepted to do my PhD. I've been told in writing something along the lines of "You'll work for Prof. A doing project X for T years". My professor sent me his proposal and told me that even though it was done in 2016 he still has money for a PhD student.
However if I look for the project online, the funding agency stops giving funding on 2022.
So I'm worried about this divergent information (what my professor says vs what the funding agencies say) and I'm wondering whether I should ask my professor by email if he indeed has money for me to work on that project and also about how funding agencies really interpret their end date. I see this as possibly inappropriate because he already told me in writing that he can fund me for that project, and I don't want to sound like I'm questioning his word especially at this early stage.
How do funding agencies interpret their end dates? I mean, is a professor only meant to hire PhD's several years before the end date? This seems odd because one doesn't know exactly how long it'll take for a student to graduate.

Thanks for accepting my answer, though it might be better to leave it unaccepted and wait for some other answers, especially if you want one more Europe-centered. Of course people can still answer even with one accepted, but it might also discourage some. I'm in the US and wrote my answer before you clarified Europe (you might want to be more specific though; there's a lot of variability in Europe).

By Europe, you're referring to those scenarios where a PhD is funded. It's safe to presume this is not for those PhD, in mainland Europe and Scandinavian, where PhD is a (university) job right?

It's common for funding to end during a prospective PhD student's expected stay, especially in places where a PhD takes 5 or more years. If grants are for about 3-5 years then this is almost a certainty. It's not unusual to get a student late in a funding cycle - maybe there wasn't an appropriate student for the role until now, maybe a prior candidate went someplace else or left early.
However, yes, it's a bit of a short window to have this funding already expiring within the next year. Sometimes there are other funding streams for a lab, sometimes there are possibilities for non-competitive extensions. You don't have enough information to know this is a problem.
All these uncertainties make it an uncomfortable but also necessary conversation to have. A PI should be comfortable talking about funding plans and contingencies and you should definitely ask about it. PhD programs should also have information about what they do when there are funding issues. For example, is there some department funding that can help cover a student if there is a gap?
Definitely ask your professor about funding. Avoid being accusatory and alleging any sort of misrepresentation, and just go in with questions you have: how long is funding actually secured for? What are the plans when it runs out? What happens if those plans fail?

Definitely talk to your professor. As Bryan Krause says, not in an accusatory tone. Just inquire.
You can say that you read that the project expires ini 2022 and you'd like to inquire what the plans are for that project or any follow-up projects. Maybe the project will get an extension (which might still not be enough to finish a PhD). Or maybe a follow-up grant is in the works? Or maybe the professor is counting on other means. However that may be, they should be counting you in for 3-4 (or even 5) years, depending on field and country.
It's normal to worry about funding and plan for the future, and it's also normal to want to know what the plans are for the continuation of a project. You might be interested in the environment you will be working in, e.g. will there be other PhD students and postdocs, etc.
I had a co-supervisor who had a student leave because he was hired for a project that would run out in 2 years and was told something along the lines of "We're sure there will be money/we can always find money somehow for the other two years" without ever being given a guarantee. He found that a bit uncertain and took a position that had 3 years of funding guaranteed.

In some countries, offers come from universities, as opposed to individual researchers, and the university guarantees the funding.  You should ask other students, or the graduate chair if there is one.  In any case, it's a good idea to clarify this with your supervisor.


text:
What to do when majority of the students do not bother to do peer grading assignment?
I'm trying a new type of essay in the community college class that I teach. Once a week the students write a 700 word analysis of a topic I choose. It's worth a regular essay (a measly 10 points) but I've been trying a new grading method.
Turn in the paper (1 points)
Peer analysis x 3 (3 points each)
In the peer analysis, students dissect three of their classmate's essays and give them between 0 and 3 points. On average, I find that students give a higher grade than I would.
The main issue I'm facing is that 19 of my 30 students aren't even bothering to do the peer review. By default, they are giving their peers F's on their assignments. This is vastly dropping my class's average score, and as a relatively new teacher, I'm somewhat concerned that I'll be penalized for their inability to do their work. In my opinion, bumping up everyone's grades would be immoral.

Why are you expecting the students to do the grading, rather than doing it yourself? Are they all being paid as TAs?

As an aside, doing this in a highly competitive environment is also a questionable idea. Grading from peers will inevitably lead to resentment and (probably justified) accusations of unfairness by some graders.

"I've been trying a new grading method": Now that you've tried it, I suggest you to go back to the good ol' method before soon.

Aside: I must admit, even in a non-community-college through graduate school, I was never asked to write 700 words weekly. You've learned that the student grading is a disaster. No doubt, you need to adjust your protocols.

I am a bit confused by your statement "On average, I find that students give a higher grade than I would." - by "higher grade", do you mean "alphabetically higher, i.e. worse grade", or "semantically higher, i.e. better grade"? Because if "19 of [your] 30 students (...) [b]y default giv[e] their peers F's", certainly, the average can at most be between C and D (if I understand the grading system in your place correctly), and if that is a "higher" grade than what you would choose, you probably mean you'd grade them better than that (?)

Why would it be immoral? :)

Upvote because I like the idea of making peer review an assignment. (But it goes without saying that it is a bad idea to delegate the actual grading to the students.)

"By default, they are giving their peers F's on their assignments." --- this is where I have a big problem. Not doing the work should be an automatic F for the grader, and the person whose work should have been graded now gets graded by you. They should be unaffected.

I don't think this is a good idea. However, if you're determined to press on with it I participated in writing classes where this was done fairly well. The key was to get students to read out their reviews. This put pressure on to do the reviews (or be exposed as lazy) and keep it civil (because the rest of the class would judge the review quality). Review and editing is key to good writing, so we had ample time for this aspect of the process - which is not going to be the case in all disciplines.

@DanielR.Collins-Some states have rules that require universities to make it a requirement that students take courses that have substantial writing requirements in order to receive a degree. For example, Florida has a requirement for 24,000 words. In Florida, typically universities would require everyone to take 3 classes with each class having approximately 10,000 words of writing as part of the class. Did I capture  every variation of the various forms of require in my first sentence?

FWIW - The writing requirement seemed to pay off for me. The white papers and trade studies that I have to write on the job always get high praise and there's always great comments about my written communication skills in yearly reviews. Perhaps they also need to add a 24,000 word verbal communication class requirement on top of the written. It may have solved some of my early career deficiencies.

I think there's some value in asking students to analyze and critique each others' work, but you are responsible for assigning grades, not your students.  It is irresponsible of you to delegate any substantial part of that to your students without supervision and review.  Indeed, the resulting situation could as easily skew too far to the positive side instead of too far to the negative side, so it ends up being just a big random factor.  In the end, that's because the students have no personal accountability for producing well-considered reviews.

Are these writing assignments, or is the main purpose of the assignments something related to subject-matter?

@Dunk: That would be great! We should all have that, I wish.

@PatriciaShanahan Sometimes it works (letting other do the work). For example here on the StackExchanges we also all do the grading without payment.

Consider a student's motivations: Why the hell would I waste my time grading other papers? Why would I give them high marks, when my own mark depends on being on the high end of the curve?

Consider the student that stays up until 3am the night before to haphazardly finish this mandatory 700-word paper; in a community college, probably 66% of your students. That student is tired enough so now you want to make them read, analyze, and grade 3 of these? Is this peer-review applicable to their majors? Are they all going to become teachers?

I'm surprised the students didn't collude so as to guarantee high grades for everybody. After all, you're not grading the reviews themselves but rather using them as a way to outsource your own work.

You seem to have the grading scheme mis-targeted.
When you make peer review part of your grading scheme you grade the review not the paper reviewed. Failure to do the review should be reflected in the reviewer's grade not in the author's grade.
The criteria I use for grading reviews are along the lines of

Does the review correctly identify strengths and weakness of the submitted material?
Does it communicate problems clearly and helpfully to the author?
Are the criticisms couched in constructive language? (I know, this is not actually necessary or honored in the real world, but I want my classroom to be a comfortable learning environment so I insist.)
Does the review identify what parts of the paper are the source of particular complaints. ("Section 3.2 is unclear because..." as opposed to "Some parts of the paper are unclear").

Note that this means I have to read and review the paper myself and then read and grade the reviews. It's painfully time-consuming.
The positive aspects of this kind of assignment is that it engages the students at the "evaluation" tier of Bloom's taxonomy, and exposes them to a range of different quality of work so they get a chance to understand for themselves that some writing is just plain better than other samples.
The negative aspects include the amount of time used, the somewhat subjective nature of the grading criteria, and a tendency for students to tell each other how very well they are all doing (it requires a certain expertise to do a good—and especially a critical—job of evaluating the work of others; if your students aren't at that level yet they won't set high standards for their peers).

Addendum
Over the weekend I saw a talk on a system called calibrated peer review, which provides a framework for using peer review as part of the grading scheme for student essays. I have no personal experience with the system.
The whole system is mediated over the internet. Assignments proceed in several phases.

Student receive the prompt, do any necessary research, then write and submit their response.
Students then receive a rubric for assessing responses to the same assignment and apply it to three sample responses provided by the instructor (designed to mimic poor, adequate and good student responses).
Success in this stage is defined by having a rating close to that assigned by the instructor. They are allowed a second chance on any where they deviate excessively.
The weight of a students review in the third stage is determined by their performance in this stage (students whose use of the rubric does not match the instructor's will have less impact then student whose application of the rubric matches the instructor's).
Students then read and rate three anonymous responses from their peers (and possibly from the instructor who can provide a 'student' response as well as the three used for calibration). These responses are factored into the author's grade on the assignment using the weights established in stage 2.
Finally, students read and rate their own response. Success here defined by matching the consensus.
Disputes and special cases are resolved by the instructor.

Clearly there is a lot going on there. The anonymity, the use of the calibration stage, and the weighting of student evaluations by their success in rating the calibration responses all work to prevent the worst failure modes of just asking students to grade each other's work directly. Even so, you need that rule that the instructor can overrule the system in exceptional case.
When all is said and done a student's grade on the assignment can be based more on their rating (of samples, of their peers's responses, and of their own submission) than on their own writing. The speaker showed a grading scheme he used in which the essay itself was only worth 20% of the assignment grade with the rest coming from various parts of the review sequence.
This is a lengthy process and is used more on short writing assignment than on substantial papers. It also requires considerable prep, as the instructor must provide the prompt, the rubric, three calibration responses and possibly a fake 'student' response.

This is a really nice teaching method. (+1)

Assuming we are talking about undergrad & up students (maybe high school too), the ability to do a fundamented critical analysis is more important than just soak up and parrot knowledge. The method above is really nice, and I had some professors use something like that on a course I took. Challenging but rewarding.

+1 as @RemcoGerlich said above, "Not doing the work should be an automatic F for the grader," not the gradee.

It's actually quite simple: grade should represent the quality of work. If no evidence is available, best guess on work's quality would be F only for students that are already failing mercilessly. Now, one could keep the grade on a safe (lower) side of confidence interval - or even outright penalize not turning papers in - to create incentive for providing sufficient evidence for grading. However, that's a different mechanism and it has gone wrong in OP's case bacause of misplaced incentives.

The thing is, it's not clear OP's course is supposed to evaluate the student's skills as reviewers. While it's an important skill - should s/he really have students practice it in this specific course?

If I understand right, you are penalizing students who did nothing wrong, because others were supposed to peer review their work and didn't? And you didn't bother to grade your own students' essays? Nothing personal, but if I were your department chair I would see to it that this came to an immediate end.
Students' grade should be based on their own work, and you should be the one to evaluate it. To outsource this work to your students is to abrogate your responsibility as instructor.
Peer review can be a great thing. If you want students to review each others' work, and to hold students accountable for writing thoughtful reviews (or at least for writing something), then grade students on their own work, and also on the quality of the reviews that they write about others' work.

I think the essential part here is the last paragraph. There is nothing wrong with having the students "peer review" but if this is supposed to make any sense you have to grade the "peer reviews" AND the original assignments.

@DRF But after having graded the "peer reviews" he could take the results of those "peer reviews" that he graded as good to help him grade the original assignments with maybe even gaining statistical accuracy. This way he could kind of outsource some work. The net effect might be positive but it depends on the average quality of "peer reviews". By giving points for good "peer reviews" he might incentivize high quality "peer reviews". Not sure I would like this outsourcing.

The following two sentences demonstrate a severe misunderstanding of what's happening:

By default, they are giving their peers F's on their assignments.

And:

This is vastly dropping my class's average score, and as a relatively new teacher, I'm somewhat concerned that I'll be penalized for their inability to do their work...

The first sentence is written such that students give each other grades. The second sentence is written such that you give your students grades. The second sentence is correct (or at least it is in every country I've worked in).
This is not to say you cannot assign students to give each other feedback or to provide peer assessment. Instead, the point is that this Q's peer assessment is not X's student's grade. You can make:

Q's completion of the peer assessment assignment a part of Q's grade
Q's assessment a (small) component in X's grade

But clearly in the case where Q fails to complete this component of their work for the class, X cannot be penalized.
It may legitimately be lowering the grades of the 19 students who are not doing it, but then that's a different problem (one of motivation or clarity of assignments or level vs. student ability) rather than the problem that seems described in the OP.

Giving your students first experience with peer review is a good idea. You can grade them on their ability to do peer reviews. Maybe, a small fraction of their grade can also come from how their peers graded them, but never 90%.
Right now, underachieving students are probably unfairly advantaged as you pointed out. At the same time, the best students are probably not getting their due credit. Only average students would remain unaffected, except that they can also randomly suffer when their reviewer simply doesn't review them. For what reason do you lay the reviewer's failure onto the reviewed student?

"Maybe, a small fraction of their grade can also come from how their peers graded them, but never 90%." - I see a general problem in that the students are grading something which they are just learning how to do at the same time. Note that each student has to write the essay, and each student will write that essay the way they think is correct. And at the same time, without even having received any feedback on what was indeed good or bad about their way of writing the essay, they are supposed to also judge other essays. I think the only way this can work is to split writing and reviewing ...

... phases up to consecutive weeks, and - if the review result is indeed supposed to influence the other students' grades - maybe reserve the actual grading part for the very last assignment during the course/unit, when the students in the class can be reasonably considered "knowledgeable" about that type of essay.

It's not necessarily a good idea. It very much depends on the course. Students should not get a first experience of too many things at once.

I think you miss the way to force students to DO the grading. I thought of simillar peer grading, but with rules:

Student will grade their classmate essay/report according grading rules and mark errors. (0 - 10 pts.)
I will grade the essay according the very same grading rules. (0 - 10 pts.)
I will grade the peer grade (-inf - 10 pts.) 10 points default, -1 for false positive (they miss an error) and -1 for false negative (they mark correct part as an error).
Students score is given by  weighted sum of peer grade (#1), my grade (#2) and peer quality (#3).
Applying Rule #3 you can mark the default-graders with F without any chance to complain. You can find as many false negatives/positives as you want to ruin the score of their essay :)

Be careful with grading false positives though. Scrap the points for errors they actually can recognize as errors (they were covered in the lecture; they were mentioned in the grading rules).

-1 for the "You can find as many false negatives/positives as you want to ruin the score of their essay :)" - Grading should be fair and objective, there should be no need to "ruin the score" of anyone

@user2813274: When somebody fails to grade fairly, and default F or default A is unfair grade, then they does not deserve to pass, do they? Simillar result but with different wording can be: To pass, the student must get at least X points from each task. But it is vulnereable to Default-F schoolmate.

I suspect part of the reason you're even trying this out is the lack of budget for teaching assistents, or even for paying you personally to check those essays. If that's the case - it's really too bad, and I would consider trying to do something about that (perhaps through some kind of collective action by teachers? Through a union maybe?).
Also, I would suggest that if you're trying out a new pedagogical mechanism you would start your trial by a discussion with students at the beginning of the semester and the reaching of a tentative understanding, if not proper concensus, regarding how the experimental grading mechanism should work. That's at the very least. I believe this would either improve student participation or at least inform you why it is unlikely to be as high as you would prefer.
Finally - I object to your excessive focus on grades. What's important is that students get comments, suggestions, pointing-out-of-errors - on their work. That's the qualitative feedback they can and should learn from, not the point on some scale on which you put them. If that were the case, it would be meaningless to "give an F" on an essay, and reviewing could only result in something substantive.

Just because I think some of the answers here are misinterpreting the question here is my view.
You are saying that each student rates the other students papers and writes a brief opinion regarding it, and that each rating gives the rater 3 points, right? That is a great exercise and it definitely encourages support between students!
However, you are saying that 18 of the students won't do the peer review portion of the exercise, right? Well, if that is the case and they do not have any legitimate reason to ignore the assignment (protesting the subject you gave them as not reasonable, thinking you are outsourcing grading, etc) then you should just not give them the points as a reviewer. They failed to do it. However, if they do have a legitimate reason you should still take the points away. If they have an issue then they should speak to their advisor or someone with the department. Ultimately, the professor has the final say on what happens in a class, not the students, and while yes... there are things you shouldn't do having student peer review English papers to encourage participation is not at all "wrong" or "unfair" to the students.
I would also suggest asking the students why they didn't do it and consider not doing the assignment in the future. You could also bump the essay up to 3X its current length and make it worth 10 points since people don't want to do it. I'm sure the students will not want the alternative and have no problem doing the assignment from then on. Then, for those who did the assignment like you asked you could somehow figure out a way to not come down so hard on them by giving them a score boost or something or by flat out saying "the one's who did the assignment only have to do a regular sized essay".
There are plenty of things you could do to fix this. In fact, you could even just give extra credit assignments that are reasonably difficult. Then, those who just felt uncomfortable reviewing will end up still getting a good grade because you will see that they are willing to do the work and just didn't feel comfortable with the assignment. Of course, there is only likely to be 1 or 2 people like that in the class. Most of the people will probably just blow off the extra credit and end up with a not-so-good grade in their homework.
Finally: don't worry about it too much
There will be students who are just lazy or don't want to do assignments. At some point, it will become clear that they just won't change no matter what you do. At that point, they've made their bed and they'll have to lie in it. I'm sure you gave your students a grading metric of some kind at the beginning of the class. If they end up with a bad grade or fail, that is ultimately their fault.

I don't think you read that right. Note that the OP says "By default, they are giving their peers F's on their assignments" This is the fundamental problem: people are getting graded based on what their peers do or don't do.

@dmckee She didn't say the peers actually got an F. She said that the students are rating their fellow students with an F. It doesn't mean the fellow students actually get F's, just that the other students are by default saying they hate their peers work which is a very negative attitude to have.

@dmckee I already said my opinion regarding using the F grades as the reviewed students grades. I flat out said that if it were the case then I recommend the students immediately go to their academic advisor and report the teacher for bad conduct. I was giving the asker the benefit of the doubt and assuming that maybe some people misinterpreted it. Because when I read it, I merely thought she was saying the students were just doing peer reviews to demonstrate reviewing skills, and that the students were not doing it which implies they hate fellow students work.Also,not grading = no grade not F


text:
How much time do academics in fact spend refereeing the research of others, on average?
This and similar questions ask how much time a researcher should devote to reviewing a paper, or to reviewing papers in general. But how much time do scientists spend refereeing papers as a matter of fact?
I am specifically looking for answers based on empirical statistics with a large-enough n, be it within one or across several disciplines. I'm not so interested in anecdotes or educated guesses.

At those who close-voted this: I completely fail to see how this is off-topic.

This reads as if you want people here to do your research on a particular topic. That would put it out of bounds. I don't see the relevance of this question, honestly.

@Buffy, I did (and shared) my research, as you can see below. I also want to tap your knowledge -- a reference request (see the tag). That's what a Q&A is about. As to this being off-topic, I can hardly imagine anything more specific to academia. Even research isn't more specific to academia than peer review, since lawyers, journalists, engineers do research, but don't write peer reviews.

I also considered voting to close as a "shopping question." You aren't asking for a reference, but a list of references. Dilemma.

@Buffy I'm asking for an answer that's based on valid sources (as opposed to a long list of personal observations).

@Buffy As far as I can tell, this question is perfectly in line with how the reference-request tag is supposed to be used. Perhaps all such questions could be strictly interpreted as "shopping for individual papers to read", but they don't tend to be.

@Buffy: As for your first argument, I opened a respective Meta discussion, if I understand it correctly.

@Buffy: As for reference requests being shopping questions: They are far from the list of things (universities, journals, etc.) we consider unshoppable. Also, you can always interpret a reference request as asking for the current state of literature on a question. If the asker of such a question knew that there is only one answer, they wouldn’t have to ask in the first place. I do not see anything that makes this question more problematic than other reference requests. If you think we should close all of those, please take it to [meta].

@Elizabeth Henning, thanks for your tag edit, but there was a discussion about the reference-request tag, here. Following this, I think the tag should stay in.

I think a useful analysis would be to pick a journal and look at a year's worth of reviews. What is the distribution of review frequency by person? Granted this doesn't tell you the total impact on reviewers (there are other journals) but it sets a floor. Also gives a useful perspective from journal perspective on how concentrated/diverse they are.

Short answer: One day in a month.
In a piece on the "challenges and opportunities" of peer-review, Ware (2011, 25) estimates the median time spent per article to be 5 hours, and the average to be 8.5 hours. He acknowledges that these figures "vary by discipline and also by experience" (ibid.), but doesn't go into more detail. "Active reviewers" report an average of 14 reviews per year (ibid., 28). There is no explanation in the paper of what counts as "active" or how many papers the average academic reviews in a year.

However, in a follow-up publication, the same author defined active reviewers as those who review more than one paper per month (Ware 2016, 3). The same publication reports a follow-up survey with a slightly different methodology. Although the findings are therefore not directly comparable, their thrust is similar, with the average (mode) number of papers reviewed per month between one and two (ibid., 33), the median time spent on the last review at five, and the mean at 8.4 hours in 2017 (ibid., 34). The survey included more than 2000 respondents from different fields and demographics, with the arts and humanities somewhat underrepresented (ibid., 45).

Figures: Ware 2016. CC-BY-NC-ND.

References

Ware, M. (2011). Peer Review: Recent Experience and Future Directions. New Review of Information Networking, 16(1), 23–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/13614576.2011.566812

Ware, M. (2016). Publishing Research Consortium Peer Review Survey 2015. Mark Ware Consulting Ltd., Bristol, UK. http://publishingresearchconsortium.com/index.php/prc-documents/prc-research-projects/57-prc-peer-review-survey-2015/file

In a follow-up survey in 2015, Ware apparently found the same median time. There's a report here. There active reviewer is defined as those reviewing one or more papers a month. There's a lot of detail there about variation with field, with region, and with age (the mean time to review falls off with experience).

@Anyon, thanks! Feel free to edit. I'll do it when I get around to it.

You're welcome! However, I've been told that I'm on vacation and shouldn't spend time on lengthy edits or answers, so I'll have to leave that for you or volunteers.

@Anyon fair enough. :)

@Anyon If active means reviewing at least 1 paper a month, I think most pure mathematicians would not count as active reviewers, which may skew the stats a lot for math.

@Kimball I agree - seems like a high bar for physics too. I wouldn't count, for example. More importantly, since time is finite it probably skews the stats towards those who spend less time on a single review, regardless of field.


text:
Are athletes' college degrees discounted by employers and graduate school admissions?
This question and the pertinent answers suggest that, as a rule, college athletes in the United States are not held to the same academic standards as other students. It also seems that this is well-known.
If so, employers and graduate school admissions committees can be expected to discount the degrees and the GPA of college athletes in order to control for an informal "athletes' bonus" when screening applications.
Do employers and admissions committees, in fact (but likely not formally), discount athletes' grades and degrees? What is the approximate "discount rate", as it were (e.g. the average athlete's bonus)?

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Apparently MIT thought John Urschel's B.S. in Math was pretty legit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Urschel#Mathematics_career

"College athletes" is much too broad a brush.  The kind of double-standard you're referring to is mostly focused on a much smaller group of men's basketball and football players at Division I schools.  These are essentially full-time professional athletes.  A lot of the very best athletes among this group do not stay long enough to graduate anyway.
I also think you're overestimating the value of academics and underrating the value of athletics to employers.  It takes incredible dedication to become one of the best people in the world in a sport.  That's genuinely valuable to employers.
Finally, even in the revenue sports, there are many fantastic students who get good grades in rigorous classes.  I've had great students who are world-class elite athletes.  Looking at the major and the grades gives a pretty clear indication of the level of rigor involved.  And of course there are plenty of non-athletes with non-rigorous majors and mediocre grades.
This last point is especially clear in the context of graduate admissions.  Graduate applications include letters of recommendation and a full transcript. It is easy to see directly whether someone is taking rigorous advanced classes and doing well in them. There’s no reason whatsoever to discount athletes based on the existence of easier classes when you can see what classes they actually took.

Fully agree. Some of us folks here were college athletes and know the amount of dedication required to balance sports and academics, as well as the time management skills learned while doing so. I'm quite happy to find sports on people's CVs. Sure, they need to be competitive on the core things, but being a collegiate athlete is a differentiating factor.

I'll note that there are world class athletes in some educational institutions in just club sports. They get no funding and are treated like any other student. My old judo coach and fellow student studied engineering as well as competing internationally at a very high level.

I also think you're overestimating the value of academics and underrating the value of athletics to employers.
In 20+ years of hiring, I have never once noticed an applicants athletic skills nor used such skills to make a hiring decision and as far as I know, known of my colleagues have been doing so either. But I've been hiring for technical positions, do other fields pay attention to athletics?

Some people do, some people don't.  You can definitely easily find lots of people who say that they do consider it or that other people should, here's one notable example.

This answer reminds me of an Engineering professor who, near retirement age, still boasted of his college American-football career decades earlier, including with trophies in his office.  It's my impression that he found it to promote his career standing despite having nothing to do with anything related to his research.

@Buffy Emma Pooley was world cycling time-trial champion in 2010 while studying for a PhD in engineering at ETH Zurich.

John Urschel who played for the Baltimore Ravens quit and joined the math PhD program at MIT

@Johnny - for entry level technical positions (fresh out of school hires), yes I pay attention to athletics. As I noted above, athletes still need to meet the requirements, but given two applicants with similar major and GPA I will take the athlete any day.

@Johnny A cs student of mine who went on to a very successful career in industry noted on a blog he wrote about recruiting that he was once selected from a number of appropriate candidates the one who'd been an olympic rower, thinking (correctly) that the dedication required for that would carry over into work.

I can tell you that the football (American) players at my 4-year university cheated like fiends and without consequences in the 101-type classes. -- I'll say this though, they understood teamwork and cheated as a team in class during exams.

As far as (US-style) football players, Matthew Miller (Cornell professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering) might be instructive: https://www.mae.cornell.edu/faculty-directory/matthew-peter-miller. Not just college player, but 6 years professional as well.

If so, employers, and graduate school admissions committees can be expected to discount the degrees and the GPA of college athletes in order to control for an informal "athlete's bonus", when screening applications.

I have rarely been asked my GPA (Grade Point Average) when applying.  So I suspect that college athletes grades aren't discounted because they simply aren't evaluated.
If athletes' GPAs were evaluated, then it's not really necessary to devalue them.  When the answers to that question say that GPA is inflated, they don't mean from a 2.0 to a 4.0.  They mean that the GPA is inflated from a 0.8 to a 2.1.
A summary of the requirements:

Maintaining NCAA eligibility
There is another element to NCAA academic eligibility, and that is maintaining your eligibility once you are in college. While you should have the full support of your college's compliance office to ensure you maintain eligibility, here is a rough breakdown of the academic requirements once you are in college:
By the START of sophomore year, you must:

have a cumulative GPA of 1.8
have completed 36 units

By the END of sophomore year, you must:

declare a major

By the START of junior year, you must:

have a cumulative GPA of 1.9
have completed 72 units (40 percent of your total degree requirements)

By the START of senior year, you must:

have a cumulative GPA of 2.0
have completed 108 units (60 percent of your degree requirements)

By the START of a fifth year, you must:

have a cumulative GPA of 2.0
have completed 144 units (80 percent of your degree requirements)

A 1.8 or 2.0 is a mediocre GPA.  A student with much lower grades will be flunking out of school.  The NCAA (National College Athletics Association) is basically saying that students have to be students passing classes on their way to a degree, not just athletes pretending to attend the school.
This is especially a problem in college football (American rules, not soccer).  Because football doesn't have a minor league system where an athlete can turn professional straight out of high school.  So the only place where someone who wants to play those sports professionally can go is college (unless they are so good that they can skip college, which is nearly unheard of in football).
In terms of GPA then, there is little need to discount the GPA.  For the relevant students, their GPA is already lousy.
I would also agree with this answer that college athletics has value of its own that may offset bad grades.  College athletes demonstrate that they can maintain a high level of efficiency in an endeavor.  For some careers, that may be sufficient.  I would not want someone like this to be my boss, but I wouldn't mind seeing such people in sales.  The ability to get good grades does not necessarily indicate that someone is good at sales.  My position and my boss' position would require a stronger athletic background.

Minor nitpick: the NBA does have a D-league, which is somewhat similar to the minor leagues for basketball.

Thanks for the update on the league name. The last basketball game I saw was, in fact, in 2017!

I don't think that employers will discount the degree of a college athlete merely because they are an athlete, but there is a chance that in some cases an employer might discount the degree because of the major that the college athlete had. I couldn't find recent statistics (or any statistics which cover all college athletes) but this article looked at the most common majors for major college football programs. Not surprisingly, STEM disciplines as well as the more rigorous humanities such as history and philosophy are under-represented. There is a chance that a degree in General Studies (whatever that is) might fail to impress prospective employers.
On the other hand, if someone is applying for graduate school, then more likely than not they didn't take an easy route to graduate and are furthermore applying either to the same or a related field as their major. In this case, the choice of major won't be an issue.

Well, if you are going for an engineering job, and don't have an engineering degree, yeah that will be a pretty big competitive disadvantage for your application.

Speaking from the perspective of hiring in industry, I've neither asked for nor considered GPA as a factor when evaluating a resume.  The reputation of the school plays a small role (commercial for-profit schools, in particular, warrant further scrutiny), but mostly for an entry level position I'm looking for work experience and extracurriculars.  The existence of a degree and (to a lesser extent) a relevant major is a first-pass filter, but mostly I want to know if it's someone who can work in a team and learn quickly.  Athletics might actually be a benefit in that regard, since it requires working with a team and time management skills, but even better would be internships or other work experience, particularly if it's related to our industry.
To put it somewhat bluntly, I don't discount the value of the degree because the degree honestly has very little value in industry, other than as a checkmark in an HR filtering process and possibly as a conversation starter for the interview for an entry level candidate.  This isn't to say that the process of earning that degree isn't personally valuable and might not develop valuable perspectives and life skills, just that academic performance is, in and of itself, largely irrelevant to industry.

Interesting. Thanks for your answer. Which branch of industry is your experience about? I guess the value of a degree might differ between, say, construction and chemical engineering.

@henning, My industry is industrial automation, with a focus on software engineering, so it may well vary, certainly.  This is also only an anecdotal report; not sure if there's been any actual research on to what extent degrees/GPA are considered during hiring.  If I was to speculate, I'd say it's probably more likely to be considered for research positions or when the company comes from an academic culture, with a lot of PhDs on staff.

I guess such companies would be much more interested up to what level you took e.g. math or physics courses, than what grade you got in them, or even what your overall average was.

@Johnny question to @NoahSnyder's excellence answer.

I also think you're overestimating the value of academics and underrating the value of athletics to employers. In 20+ years of
  hiring, I have never once noticed an applicants athletic skills nor
  used such skills to make a hiring decision and as far as I know, known
  of my colleagues have been doing so either. But I've been hiring for
  technical positions, do other fields pay attention to athletics?

During a talk of Eric Schmidt to the students at CMU Silicon Valley campus (you may try looking for some recording).

He liked to hire PhDs, not because he thought they were more talents than others, but because those people often had a lot of passions on what they do.
For sale positions, he liked to hire (well-known) athletes, for exactly the same reason in @NoahSnyder's answer: to be at the top of their game, it required incredible dedication and self-discipline, which was very useful in sale.

I know nothing about sale, I only repeat what I heard. So please don't ask me anything.

In the industry I work in (software development), the standard practice is to test candidates, by giving them practical tasks to complete in a real programming language, either on paper/whiteboard, or on an actual computer, and then review their solution.
It's also done through complex technical discussions, where it's usually clear whether the candidate knows his stuff or not.
How he got the knowledge or skills is much less important. University, work in other companies, open source projects, whatever - the point is whether he has the skills and knowledge or not.
This will naturally filter out those who didn't really study - regardless of whether the reason for it is them getting some sort of athlete special treatment, or any other reason, without the company needing to take each of these causes into account.
I'm not saying that >> every << company does this, but most of them do.

Mildly, yes, they are.  Even if you get high grades and in a tough major, people know you had to spend significant time in a side area and likely did well by disciplined time use versus immersion in the major.  That said, there are some fields (sales, military, etc.) where the athletics may give you a benefit as well.  Overall, I don't think it's a huge deal.

employers...can be expected to discount the degrees...of college athletes in order to control for an informal "athlete's bonus"

If an "athlete's bonus" is equivalent to the value add of their sport,* then no discount is necessary.
*Competing as an athlete demonstrates attributes not necessarily demonstrated by others. E.g., non-athletes may not have shown the commitment an athlete has.

Do employers...discount athlete's grades...?

Such a discount could be considered as discrimination, which is illegal in many jurisdictions and likely something employers should avoid.

So, are the universities / institutions that give the athletes "different" standards also guilty of discrimination?

@SolarMike Yes.

I downvoted because this doesn't fall under any legal definition of discrimination known to me and I also don't remember anyone being sued for it. Athletes are not a protected class, and any sort of non-professional activity can be side-eyed in the hiring process without needing justification.

@darijgrinberg Thanks for clarifying. When two candidates are like-for-like, legal definitions of discrimination cannot permit one candidate to be discounted because they are an athlete. Admittedly, it is difficult (if not impossible) to prove, because no two candidates are ever like-for-like.

@user2768: Well, "like-for-like" isn't given when one is an athlete and the other is not :) This is the same reason as why red-flagging "gaps in the CV" is not discrimination.

@darijgrinberg "like-for-like" covers this case, the non-athlete just needs to do something similar.

I should clarify: I was thinking of an informal discount. Just like community college degrees might be discounted compared to ivy league.

In general discrimination is perfectly legal (employers always try to discriminate against the incompetent).  The only time it is problematic is if the discrimination is based on a protected characteristic; "being an athlete" is not a protected characteristic in any jurisdiction I know of.

Since I don't know if discounting happens, I haven't yet formed a strong opinion whether it may constitute discrimination or just meritocratic selection. Feel free to read my question as: Are college athletes discriminated against? To the extent you answer this question, it seems quite hypothetical and optimistic. (As if what mustn't happen won't happen.)

legal definitions of discrimination cannot permit one candidate to be discounted because they are an athlete — [citation needed]


text:
Are there any journals where I can publish a research proposal?
Just curious, are there any journals  where I can publish research proposals?
I know there is one (Research Ideas and Outcomes) out there, but are there any others?

Sorry, journal recommendations or requests for journals meeting some criteria are out of scope of this site. See the [help/on-topic] for details.

I believe this question should be reopened, as the heart of the question is not "which journal is best for proposals" but rather "do any journals exist for publishing proposals", which deserves a Yes/No answer, perhaps with one example.

@WetlabWalter I think the OP is already aware of one example: "Research Ideas and Outcomes" and  is looking for any others.

Ah, fair enough. Then yeah that's no good :)


text:
How to give credit for conference presentations on CV?
I'm an undergraduate writing my CV.
I've given two presentations at undergraduate conferences on my (unpublished) research projects. I independently prepared my presentations but my lab mates/supervisor helped with the research. I want to list these presentations on my CV.
So my question is:
How do I properly credit the contributions of others for these conference presentations?
Should I just state the title of the talk and the conference name? Should I include the names of all the people that helped with the research? Since we didn't publish any papers, how do I determine what order the names should go in? Would it okay to list them alphabetically?
Note: these aren't peer-reviewed conference papers or anything. Any undergraduate student can submit an abstract and give a talk.

Note: Conventions differ between fields. Mine is mathematics/TCS.
Conference contributions are listed on my CV (and on many others I've seen) in two places:

Extended abstracts in refereed proceedings are listed as a subsection under publications, complete with all coauthors.
Presentations given are listed as their own section, with a distinction between invited conference talks and other presentations. As a presentation is only given by a single presenter, there are no coauthors listed here.

Of course many contributions show up in only one part: If there are no refereed published proceedings, there is nothing listed there. If someone else gives the talk, I don't have a presentation to list.
Thus, in your case, I would not acknowledge the other's contributions on my CV at all (yet). Once there is at least a preprint, your coauthors will be listed there.


text:
I want to completely redo my thesis without repeating the research course. Has anyone had a similar experience?
I have completed all but one course (which is tied to the final three chapters of my thesis) for my M.Ed. My research was designed back when I was teaching and I designed an experiment for use in my own classroom. I had to postpone conducting my research (and graduating) because my family relocated and I had a baby. I now want to finish my Master's, but am unable to complete my research, and would like to choose another topic altogether.
I would like the be able to start from scratch, write the first three chapters of my paper outside of school, return for my last research course, take my comprehensive exams, and graduate. Does anyone have any experience with a similar situation? Of course, I realize that this is likely a school-specific question, however, are there any users that have had a similar experience?
I know there must someone who has had to change their research question at a similar point in their program of study; I would love to hear how your situation was resolved before I speak with my advisor about this. Thanks!

Hi, you should precise where you are preparing your diploma (the U.S.?), this kind of stuff is highly country-dependent.

What does your advisor say?

"I realize that this may be a school-specific question, but I'm wondering if I may not be thinking this through." - in my place, a Master's degree involves various classes with associated exams, and once you have passed all of these, you can, at any time, pick a topic for your Master thesis and work on it for up to 6 months. So ... what you propose seems (all regulations etc. aside) feasible. However, I suspect this statement isn't going to help you, because, as you say, things are very much dependent on the respective university rules. Thus, the question should really be narrowed down.

You really need to first ask your examinations office or similar what they allow you to do – that’s what they are for. We do not know their regulations (if they cover such a case at all) and we also do not know how exactly your degree program is structured. All we can do right now is provide guesses, all of which can turn out to be false. Once you have acquired this information, you could possibly ask here about pros and cons of some actual choices you have – but even then somebody with detailed knowledge of your situation and your program should be able to provide better answers than we do.

Thank you; again, I knew when I asked the question that I would ultimately have to consult my school's office of graduate studies, however I was really hoping that someone out there would have had a similar situation that give me an idea of what to expect.
I am working the United States, to the user that asked.
I have not consulted my advisor yet; I wanted to, as I said, have a general idea of what he would say in this situation.

In all of the Masters programs that I have encountered, the specifics of one's thesis are largely unrelated to the classroom courses that you have taken. As such, changing thesis topics would not be any problem as long as you have (or can find) and advisor who approves of the new topic.

That's what I was thinking too, but I've also never heard of anyone who just up and changed their topic half way through writing their thesis. Thanks!