text:
What should I do if someone submit a review of a manuscript in journal system sooner than I know and I already prepared a detailed review?
I am a Ph.D. student. My supervisor frequently tells me if you want to do a review for journals, login into my account and perform the review. He never reviews any paper. He is very lazy and I have to do all of the submission of my articles into journal system myself using his account.
A while ago, I wanted to check a journal and I saw a pending invitation for review from a famous researcher, which I love his works very much, as associate editor of that journal. I accepted review and downloaded manuscript. I read the manuscript and wrote a detailed review of it, six pages long!. I recommended a major revision. It takes a lot of my time to read the references and perform the review. In my review, I suggested a set of improvements to the authors which I think will help them improve their work.
Today, I wanted to submit the review using my supervisor account. I suddenly noticed that my supervisor submitted a review. I am very upset as it took much of my time to perform this task. I read his review, a very short note to reject the manuscript, less than half a page long. Other anonymous reviewers recommended a minor revision.
What should I do? Is there any way to make the best use of my review? not to waste my time.
Disclaimer:
Please don't be so judgmental. Assume someone in such a situation.
He didn't know it is unethical not even a bit until asked this question. He even guesses his supervisor himself not knows this. Since there was never any evil intention by any of them.
Here we want to ask questions and consult/educate ourselves from members; not judging people. He just worked hard to help some other researchers and nothing else. Not a first-year Ph.D. student.

You used your supervisor's account to review a manuscript under his name without his knowledge - and now you are upset??? This is a serious misconduct on your part, and if I were your supervisor I would probably stop my supervision (if possible).

No, He frequently wanted me to do so. He granted me the full authority for this tasks.

He wants you to login to his account, accept reviews and submit reviews all without his knowledge?

Yes. Exactly. In our university, manuscripts must be submitted by Proffessors. He didn't even submitted a single manuscripts. All by his students.

That is ethically questionable on so many levels.

What do you mean by I have to do all of the submission of my articles into Elsevier systems my self using his account.? Are you also submitting your articles under your supervisor's name?

Yes. He is forcing us to submit our manuscripts from his account since this is our university rule that corresponding author must be faculty members. Otherwise, they didn't accept our paper for graduation.

Slightly relevant: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/97193/is-it-ok-as-a-junior-phd-student-to-review-ranked-conference-papers

@user85361 : in what country are universities allowed to have "rules" like this?

@user85361 That’s a different question and a different problem; but: This is scientific fraud on behalf of the University (and potentially illegal), and it’s a lot more serious than submitting reviews under your supervisor’s name. Somebody should (probably anonymously) alert all affected journals of this fraud by the University department. Better yet would be to make this public (via a public letter/blog post/press article), to pressure the department.

Never mind, I think I misunderstood: you’re performing the submission on behalf of your supervisor, but the paper properly lists you as the author? In that case, this seems to be in order (and is somewhat normal).

Are you sure this review was done by your supervisor, not by some other student?

"university rule that corresponding author must be faculty members" In my experience, the account used to submit does not have to be the account of the corresponding author.

@KonradRudolph, I didn't know it is unethical not even a bit until asked this question. I even guess my supervisor himself not knows this. Since there were never any evil intention by any of us. Here we want to ask questions and consult/educate ourselves from members; not judging people. I just worked hard to help some other researchers  and nothing else.  I am not a first year PhD student.

@user85361 Looking through your post history it is as if you're actively hiding which country you are operating in, even when this information would be useful to give advice. For example, someone from the same country or situation could tell if this is common or not.

@Bitwise and the 36 people who upvoted Bitwise: doesn't the first sentence of the question state very clearly that the supervisor asks him/her to use the supervisor's account? Or can that sentence be read at another level that I have missed?

@PatrickT To my understanding, the first sentence suggests that the supervisor allows using his account to access and submit the review. I could imagine a scenario where the supervisor decides to accept a review task, tells the student to review and possibly submit the review while he is supervising the process in some way. The access to his account in this case is more of a technical issue. This is very different from the whole thing being done without his knowledge.

@Bitwise, I see. The bit about He never reviews any paper. He is very lazy and I have to do all of the submission of my articles into journal system myself using his account. suggested to me the whole thing being done without his knowledge. Interesting how we came to different conclusions...

Can we just establish that a "manuscript" is different from a "review"?  A manuscript is original work that will be published under the OP's name (and evidently with the supervisor as corresponding author).  A review like the OP describes in the question is not published; it is a pre-publication assessment of another person's manuscript.  In this case, that other person is evidently "a famous researcher".  Neither the famous researcher nor the journal would not be expecting his work to be refereed by an inexperienced grad student.

I understand that this proxy review may be a cultural norm where you are. Nevertheless, it is considered malpractice in many places, and admitting to doing this can land you in trouble. Keep that in mind, because a publisher like Elsevier is massively cross-cultural, so they may take umbrage to something like this if it is reported.
Now, coming to what you get out of it. Your learning has happened anyway; I'm sure you expanded your understanding by reading all the references etc. At no point were you getting any credit for it - certainly not from journal,  probably not from supervisor (I understand this particular review was not done with his knowledge). So there's no reason to be upset. I would suggest conserving your energies. If anything, you could show your supervisor your review, just so he knows how hard you worked. But if he is as lazy and uninterested as the question makes him sound,  he may dismiss it.
Bottom line is, don't be upset. You volunteered to do the review by proxy and didn't inform supervisor what you were doing - so it's hard to find fault with anyone else. Learn from this incident and move on.

Is it a good idea to send the review using an anonymous email to authors so at least they can use it? for their goods.

Don't risk it; the authors are likely to report this to the journal, and then your supervisor will be in hot water. I appreciate your eagerness to help someone, but this can lead to a big mess.

"You will find the word you want is uninterested, all good policemen are disinterested." (credit David Mitchell)

Talk to your supervisor. If he doesn't mind (and I don't see why he would object) he can write to the editor saying his student also wrote a review for the article. The editor can then register you and invite you to review the article using your own account.

If the supervisor was not supposed to show the article to the student it can be phrased as "I think my student user85361 would have useful comments on this" or, more generally, a recommendation to make the student a reviewer in the future.

+1 Dont let your work go to waste (in respect to what the author would gain from your review), and try to get yout supervisor to do that!

+1 This would also allow the student to get some recognition for their present and future work.

+1 This is the way out for everyone, if phrased well. Journals I review for (the APS family) explicitly allow having someone help you preparing a review, and they are thankful for recommendations on new passionate referees. They would surely welcome such contribution, even if it's too late for them to act on it anyhow.

I have a serious problem with the professor's modus operandi. He should not be allowing/asking students to submit reviews from his account over his signature, whether or not the publisher is OK with this.
A graduate student (in fact, anyone) deserves credit and recognition for the work he or she does. The professor should ask the editor if he can pass the review request along to a graduate student to be submitted directly by the student. That's a good public endorsement of the student.
That said, it's hard to know what the OP should do   with this particular professor if/when the next review opportunity comes up.

+1 because this is the only answer so far that even mildly gets to the point that this is massively unethical behavior, and an outright fraud victimizing the journal, the authors whose work is being reviewed, the University being represented, the students being forced to work in this way, and so on...

@Mike Thanks. My ethical objection was indeed too mild.

I'd also be concerned that the student reviewers may not have the necessary level of expertise to notice flaws in the research.  I've done reviews where I've informed people that I'm only dealing with specific portions that I know (and making sure acronyms are defined, stupid stuff like that) ... but I would argue that a student review is not peer review

@Joe It's part of the supervisor's job to know when a student is ready for any particular professional task. The editor can then say yes or no when asked if the delegation is OK. That's not what's happening here.

Talk to your supervisor about your review.  Fortunately, you failed to actually submit it, so it's just a matter for discussion between the two of you.  Consider yourself lucky.
There are two completely separate issues that have become muddled in the question and in the comments: submission of "articles" (also called "manuscripts" or "papers") on one hand, and submission of "reviews" on the other hand.  Just to be clear, an article is original work intended for publication under the OP's name (evidently with the supervisor as corresponding author and possibly with other coauthors).  Meanwhile, a review like the OP describes in the question will not be published; it is a pre-publication assessment of another person's article, that is communicated via the journal's editor directly to that other person.  This is also called "refereeing" or "peer review".
Just to confuse things a little, it's also possible to publish a "review" — particularly in journals (e.g., Mathematical Reviews) that specialize in such things.  These are reviews of works (books, papers, etc.) that are already public and — where relevant — have already gone through peer review.  The OP mentions that the other reviewer "reject[ed] the manuscript", which means that this isn't the type of review under consideration.  So the question is really asking about refereeing / peer review.
I'm not too surprised that the supervisor asks his students to submit articles (articles that he presumably has some familiarity with and generally approved of) using his account, but I am in utter disbelief that he might have suggested that students independently write and submit a review of another article using his account without his input.  Those are two wildly different actions.  The first is not entirely proper but is not unheard of, while the second is enormously unethical and inappropriate for so many reasons I can't list them.  You and your professor could get a minor slap on the wrist for the first, but you could both get into serious trouble for actually doing the second — ranging from public shaming that could harm your professional trajectory, to formal punishment and loss of funding, to outright firing, possible loss of government funding for your university, and even legal repercussions if the journal or the authors whose work you were trying to review chose to make an issue of it.  Misrepresentations like these are fraud and may even cross the line into crimes, with real harm being done to the journal and the authors whose work you reviewed.
For these reasons, I suspect that your supervisor did not actually intend for you to do this review yourself and try to upload it.  I really hope you misunderstood what he told you.  On the other hand, if your supervisor really did tell you that you could do this, don't.  Just do your work to finish your Ph.D., and get away from him as quickly as possible so that you can establish an independent career before he drags you down with him.  If you feel that you are being pressured to do something you shouldn't, talk to someone else in a position of authority at your university.
This is not an issue of cultural differences; it is an issue of basic standards in academic publishing.  I've worked closely with colleagues from all around the world, and have never heard of anything remotely like this except in the context of professors who have lost their positions because of misconduct.  Don't take up your supervisor's patterns of misconduct.

Well, these things are part of student life in some places. Getting doctoral student to grade undergraduate exams unofficially (off the record, no credit) is another example. It's great that we didn't have to do all this, but some students do, and they may deserve some sympathy along with due condemnation.

@user153812 First of all, active complicity does not deserve sympathy.  The OP specifically says "if you want to do a review", meaning that it's optional.  In fact, it sounds like the professor never would have heard about this review if the OP's plan had succeeded.  Second, grading an exam (presumably with some form of an answer key and supervision) is very different from writing a six-page review of an academic paper without any supervision whatsoever.  Third, the existence of some ethical lapses does not excuse all others.

Condemnation is due, without doubt. I believe it should be directed primarily at the supervisor, who has no excuse, and no business opening his account up to students. A student, especially during initial years, may not have the judgement or knowledge of accepted practice required to make a call. Not that ignorance is excusable, but conscious malpractice is certainly worse.

As for grading exam sheets- from an ethical standpoint, it is equally shady: (1) Is someone doing something that you are paid for? Yes. (2) Are they receiving any form of remuneration/compensation? No. (3) Would you be uncomfortable if this act of yours was common knowledge? Probably. Providing an answer key only ensures that the results are more accurate, it doesn't address the means.

@Mike, Until I post this question here for some helpful suggestion, I didn't know, not even guess a little that some people may think it is unethical. My supervisor himself asks us to do so and he is so busy which doesn't want to be bothered by something like I want to do a review, that why he asks us to do so. I certainly have to be more careful about this. But before knowing, what a person know and be forced to do, please don't judge so harshly. At least here.

@user85361 I wasn't judging you; I was stating the facts. This was unethical, whether you knew it or not — that's not a judgment of you. But frankly, you should have thought about it. Your comment above says "I want to do a review."  That's not "forced to do" it. Just because you want something, it doesn't mean you're entitled to it, and you shouldn't feel free to misrepresent yourself to get it. You're supposed to be an adult; be responsible for your own actions.  And don't trust that supervisor. "Busy" professors are the ones that get caught up in ethics violations most often, so be careful.

@Mike I believe that in some fields having “subreviewers” is customary. Although I think the journal is typically notified. Perhaps this is just the lazy way of handling it. It may not be the act that is the problem, but the (lack of ) communication of that act.

@Dawn I agree entirely that the act would be totally permissible if it were communicated and the journal accepted it.  When a journal allows subreviewers, they mention it and usually have a field in the submission form to list them.  And even if it's not advertised, it would still be acceptable for a requested referee to offer to delegate.  But in this case, there was to be no attempt at such communication — just plain misrepresentation.  And as such, it would have been wrong.


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What is the probability of rejection for a long-time-review in the revised version of a manuscript?
At the January of the current year, I have submitted a paper to a high-rank math journal. After around 10 weeks review time and 4 weeks editorial time, a decision of reject-and-resubmit was made (1 minor revise, 2 major revise and one reject-and-resubmit were the decision of reviewers).
I answered the comments, which, in my opinion, significantly improved the paper in a than response letter with more than fifty pages. For example, I proved a set of new interesting theorems and lemmas in the revised version of the paper in answer to some of the comments.
From the submission of the revised paper, nearly 18 weeks have been passed, during which the paper is under the review. I wonder why such a long time is necessary for a journal which gives its reviewers just an 8-week reviewing time.
Does this mean that the probability of acceptance of my paper, is high or low? What is happening in the journal for my paper? I am very much dependent on this paper to finish my Ph.D., and for my job. I worked very very hard but unfortunately at a low-ranking university. Will they judge my paper by the rank of my university or my advisor (co-author)?
My supervisor urges me not to contact the journal editor for the decision about the paper since they may get angry and reject the paper.
My main goal is to sooner defend the thesis as I am under immense pressure. My university needs at least one JCR Q1 or Q2 paper to be able to defend the thesis and graduate.
As this may take more time, my main question is: what is your advice for me, assume rejection of this paper and work on a new paper? Or assume acceptance, or revise and work on writing my Ph.D. thesis? Since the draft of my thesis is dependent on this choice very much, this decision is very crucial for me.
What would you do if you were me? In other words, what is the probability of rejection for a long-time-review in the revised version of a manuscript?

I don't think reviewing time is a good predictor of acceptance/rejection. The time depends on too many factors. For example the immense length of your response letter and the scope and depth of your revisions probably affect the turnaround time much more. But the reviewers may also just be busy etc.

In short: We can not tell. There are many influence factors to be considered.
Maybe the following thoughts help a bit:

Usually the same reviewer are evaluating a revised version of a paper. If one of those reviewers is late (due to whatever circumstances), one usually waits for them since they are much more competent in reviewing the revised version then a new reviewer would be.
If they still do not deliver, the paper might be moved to a new reviewer. They again have 8 weeks of time (even though one usually asks for a rapid response).

This sums up to 8 + ~4 + 8 weeks, which is 5 month. Add one month for the editor and you are at 6 month just for the review. With your 18 weeks I would say the paper is within a  time scale in which you don't have to become nervous.
I would recommend writing on your thesis since you did the work and it can be part of the thesis regardless of the acceptance of this specific journal.
If you don't have a response at the end of January (Christmas break for finishing reviews, Jan. for the editor), I would recommend to politely ask the editor about the status.

Would you please take a look at this other question posted by me:https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/122885/may-they-delay-for-a-long-time-the-decision-of-a-submitted-manuscript-of-someone . Thank you very much.

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Does the page number matter?
Does the page number of scientific publication mean something? For example, are papers of an issue highlighted by placing them in the first pages?
Or they are the page number just randomly assigned?

I'd speculate that the page number corresponds to the camera-ready date of the article, i.e., lower page numbering of an article means it reached camera-ready status before articles with higher page numberings. You could check whether this holds for a particular issue of a journal that publishes acceptance dates. (Noting that there's some difference between acceptance date and camera-ready date.)

Of course, when you refer to something in a paper or book, give the exact page number of it.  Do not merely refer to the whole paper or book.  IMPORTANT

@GEdgar I favour referring to sections (and to a lesser extent chapters) since page numbers may vary in different versions of a document (e.g., a published manuscript and the corresponding technical report, or different editions of a book), whereas sections (and chapters) are less likely to change.

Also, don't forget that in many cases, page numbers carry over from one issue to another within a volume. So if Journal 7.1 starts on page 1 and ends at 145, Journal 7.2 may very well start at 146. Libraries will often bind together several issues making this continuous page numbering more useful. So even if within a given issue ordering were important, the page number itself won't be necessary indicative of anything.

@GEdgar: "give the exact page number of it" Especially if it the reference to something like Zygmund's Trigonometric Series treatise and the word or phrase involved is not in the index, something I've encountered many times. Recently, I was looking at many papers on lineability properties, and one of the things I saw over and over again was that Lebesgue in his 1904 book supposedly gave the first example of an everywhere surjective function, but NO ONE gave any indication as to where, and I suspect most of the authors never even looked it up. (It's on p. 90 of that 138 page book.)

Let's randomly assign page numbers to a publication of 1000 pages ... :)

@GEdgar: Surprisingly, I happened to remember my 13 December 2017 comment AND was able to find it by googling. I thought I'd update my comment with a specific example that I just came across. At the beginning of the 1991 paper Removable singularities for analytic functions of Zygmund class by Lord/O'Farrell, reference is made to Zygmund's 2-volume treatise (a total of roughly 750 pages of densely packed text) for "Zygmund class" functions. Of course, Zygmund doesn't use this term and Zygmund's index doesn't help in trying to locate it. (continued)

Worse, there's a typo in Lord/O'Farrell's definition of "Zygmund class" (one of the z+h's in their displayed inequality should be z-h). FYI, Zygmund calls these functions "smooth" and they're introduced on p. 43 of Volume I of his treatise (1959 2nd edition, the edition Lord/O'Farrell cite).

tl;dr-  Page numbers are a hold-over from when journals used to be magazines.  The exact number chosen probably doesn't have much practical significance, but it may relate to when an article was ready for publication (camera-ready date) or however the editor might choose to lay out the issue (e.g., with related articles closer to each other).

Once-upon-a-time, scientific journals were basically magazines that collected articles interesting to a specific scholarly community.  Today, libraries still retain some in reference sections and I think that some publishers still actually print them out, but they're mostly funny novelties or historical artifacts.
Anyway, these old-fashion journal volumes would have a table-of-contents that'd refer to page numbers.  Then when the internet came around, they basically stayed the same, except they put copies of articles online, too.  And so, the online copies retain page numbers as a vestigial artifact: they're not really useful to most folks today, but they're still there anyway for historical reasons.
Speculation on what page numbers may've implied
Since page numbers basically reflected order within a printed edition, it'd seem that they likely correlated with how the editors chose to lay out the printed editions.  This may've varied from journal-to-journal.
Possibilities:

Article content.  Articles may've been laid out such that closely related articles would be consecutive.  In such cases, page numbers would correlate with an article's topic.

Camera-ready date. @user2768 suggested that articles may've been laid out in the order that their content was ready to be amended to the current edition's proof, i.e. the articles' camera-ready date.

"Once-upon-a-time" is still true today: Journals are printed and archived in libraries. Albeit, this is becoming less common. Regarding speculation on editors putting articles on related topics together, this can be witnessed in journals that group related articles under common headings. I'd speculate that the ordering of those headings doesn't serve any purpose.

Kinda curious; do kids today necessarily know about magazines?  It's weird to think that stuff like watching TV for news/weather, or reading a newspaper, were so ubiquitous but rapidly becoming unknown in some demographics.

About "article content", some journals have explicit parts devoted to specific topics.

So, you people are saying that the difference between magazine and journal is whether it is printed or not?

@Philosopherofscience In the above, I was referring to a "journal" as an academic journal, which'd be a body of articles.  A "magazine" would be a particular form-factor, like a book.  These terms can mean different things in other contexts; for example, a "book" can just as readily be an e-book.

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How would the UK leaving the EU affect academia and PhD admission?
Will all European applicants count as ‘international students’ then?
Are there any proposals on this yet? I am finishing my BA in two years and was considering applying to the UK, but am worried now that I will have to pay international fees.

As far as I know, European students are international students in the UK right know. The issue with fees is complicated, e. g.  the Erasmus program for BSc and MSc students is not related to EU.

European students are currently fee'd as home students, i.e. no difference to UK students. A strange situation can be found in Scotland, where, to my knowledge, home students (Scottish and EU) do not pay fees, but English do. What would happen after a Brexit is anyone's guess. I think no-one can give a good prediction and all bets are equally valid: 1. no change; 2. EU gets privileged, but non-UK status; 3. EU is treated as overseas. And everything is compounded by visa problems - although one educated guess of mine is that visa-free travel will be sustained for Western (!) Europe.

Please see this meta question for my vote to close rationale.

The following are opinion, not fact, as AFAIK nobody has a clue what a potential post-Brexit academic situation would look like:

It's standard for qualitative features in regulations and costs to remain fixed for students over the lifetime of their studies. So I would guess that the fees won't change halfway through: you'll know the approximate costs at the start. It wouldn't surprise me if in two years fees for EU students would remain the same, especially if (as your question seems to imply) you've been normally resident in the UK for 3 years.
I would always expect a PhD studentship to cover fees. I would be very wary of one that didn't guarantee this. The risk of higher fees should be on the studentship, not on you personally. (Of course, you may self-fund, which is a different issue)
In the current UK climate I would be more worried about visas to study. With the current arguments around net migration, and the crazy situation where students are counted as immigrants, I would expect student visas from the EU to become a problem.

+1 These are good comments, but the first sentence is key.

Definitely visa concerns, and the treatment at the border even with a valid visa. I did my masters in the UK (US citizen) and was treated very poorly. A PhD graduate was arrested, detained, and deported (check the news about this). It's shocking.

@lafemmecosmique, given the US now stop UK citations based on nothing more then their faith, why do you find it shocking for the UK to enforce borders in a way you don't like?

I don't think it is possible to know the exact consequences unless and until negotiations are complete on a withdrawal treaty. AFAIK the main rule for this is Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. The UK and the EU could agree to keep some mutually beneficial arrangements. They could agree on a longer or shorter schedule for withdrawal. Or they could fail to agree on anything and the UK would be out in two years.

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Use of theses after their completion
Can a student expect their completed thesis – undergraduate or master’s – to be used by the supervisor once in a while after its completion? Or are they mostly just stored on some thesis shelf?

Well, one of my students turned in a copy of a chapter from my master's thesis with his name on it to meet a term paper requirement.

used by 'whom'? If it's of high academic quality, it will become part of the scientific discipline and cited. If it is of value to industry, it will be used commercially. And of course, the author will use his knowledge and skills gained (and possibly the thesis itself) in his or her academic and professional career.

Another reason this question can not be answered: Whether or not a particular thesis is used by the supervisor is entirely dependent upon whether or not the thesis is useful. For example, a piece of software might be used every day by a professor for research purposes.

The fate of a thesis is much the same as any other scientific publication: many will never be used again and will lie forgotten where they are published.  Some will be useful to somebody and will be cited or built upon.  And a few of those will actually be truly significant.


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“Percent” in chart title and on axis – redundant?
Consider the chart below:

When writing percent in the title, and % on the axis marks, is this redundant? Is the word amount preferable?
I haven’t seen this addressed in any style guides such as the APA guidelines.

Please avoid writing "percentage" in the title, just report the quantity that it's represented. For instance, in the example you linked, a more appropriate title would be: "Fraction of the widgets that are blue".

@MassimoOrtolano: That looks like it can be extended to an answer.

Thanks for the input/answer. I did consider "Fraction," but found it equally odd saying "fraction" then reporting percentages. Still, I'm definitely considering your input!
Also, thank you Wrzlprmft for the formatting edits. (And the typing tutor that is your username.)

Percentage (parts per hundred) and, more broadly, abbreviations like ppm (parts per million) or ppb (parts per billion) do not describe any quantity, they are just multipliers for dimensionless quantities.
In a graph, instead, you should accurately describe the quantity being represented. In the example given in your question, a more appropriate title would probably be: "Fraction of the widgets that are blue".
In the SI brochure, §5.3.7, the document that defines the International System of Units, it is stated that

In mathematical expressions, the internationally recognized symbol % (percent) may be used with the SI to represent the number 0.01. Thus, it can be used to express the values of dimensionless quantities.

and, furthermore,

Phrases such as "percentage by mass", "percentage by volume", or "percentage by amount of substance" should not be used; the extra information on the quantity should instead be conveyed in the name and symbol for the quantity.

The percent symbol can, instead, appear in the tick labels.

At least in physics, usually graphs do not have a title at all.

True, in most forms of academia you can expect something along the lines of "Figure 2: percent of widgets that are blue".


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Request an unpublished paper owned by another (foreign) university
I am a graduate student at a US university. One of the papers I need for my research is a Ph.D. thesis, owned by the University of Birmingham, U.K. (but this question is for a more general case). That thesis has never been published and is not available on the web. When searching for that paper on the University of Birmingham library website, they only have the hard copy of that paper in their library. Is there a way that I can obtain that paper?

Ask your friend.

@SmallChess If I knew anybody studying there, I'd have asked already.

A dissertation must be published, in the UK and anywhere in the world. It might not be available any more, if it's old. And, sorry for asking: Have you written an email to the Library in Birmingham?

If the thesis is recent enough that it would have been written electronically, you can try to locate the author and ask if they would be able to send you an electronic copy.  This is a reasonable request.
Otherwise, talk to a librarian at your university library.  They almost certainly have some sort of inter-library loan that can get you a copy, or access to the original.  Requests like this are part of their job and this is a perfectly reasonable thing to ask them to help with.
Related:
Requesting a copy of the PhD thesis from an author?
Is it okay to ask someone for an (electronic) copy of their PhD thesis if it is not available online?

"Ask the author" is a surprisingly very successful technique for getting hard-to-retrieve articles: most authors actually want their work to be read and are happy to share it on personal request. The hard part, sometimes, is finding a current email address for the author (especially for older articles, but that is probably not the case with the OP).

I think the British Library can provide any PhD thesis from a UK university, even if no electronic copy has been stored in a library. See
http://ethos.bl.uk/

Not necessarily. The very first one I looked at told me that Ethos doesn't have the full text and I would need to contact the university's library.


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Changing majors for masters degree specifically in Europe
I have done my bachelors in Electronics & Communications Engineering from India and I am currently working as a software developer with 1.5 years of experience.
I would like to do my masters from Europe but either in Computers or Software Engineering field. Is it possible to change from a field like electronics to software specifically in Europe ( preferably Germany or Netherlands).
I know it is quite common in US but I am not able to figure this out about European universities.

Not an answer to this question, but in this answer I wrote how to apply if you don't have all the required undergrad courses because you come from a different major. http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16013/what-is-the-best-way-to-take-missing-courses-before-applying-to-ms/18194#18194

I will put a bit of a damper on cleverrainbow's and deloz's enthusiasm.
First, there are two kinds of masterks programs in Germany: consecutive and non-consecutive. Non-consecutive programs are open to anyone who meets the general admissions criteria, while consecutive master’s programs require that a student have a degree in the same discipline as the original degree, and enough overlap between the curricula at whatever school the student did their bachelor’s at compared to the bachelor’s at the school with the master’s program. If the difference is too large (more than about one semester’s worth), you can be refused admission.
Secondly, if you are coming from outside the EU, the university must recognize your undergraduate degree as being at a school comparable to the one to which you are applying.
Finally, in the event you are admitted, you may find that you need to get approval from the study advisor of the major you wish to pursue, and possibly have to obtain credit for each individual course you want to transfer from each individual instructor responsible for the respective courses at the new university. Moreover, if you are missing too many credits, your application for transfer will likely be declined, as there are generally minimum limits for how many credits can be transferred from the bachelor's degree.

Additionally, you will need to find out whether your bachelor degree is recognized in the country where you want to pursue your master degree. Also, for many studies in Germany you will be required to pass a German language test (you do not need to be fluent, though). In the Netherlands there are also many degrees that are taught in English (I don't know to which extent they exist in Germany).

Thanks for your response. I didn't quite understand what you mean by obtaining credit for each course I want to transfer from. Also, when I send my completed application it gets either selected or rejected by the admissions committee. Where does the process  of contacting the study advisor comes into the picture?

I only know about Germany, and as @deloz already mentioned it is definitely possible.
Most Universities will look at what you have already studied during your bachelor's degree and sometimes require you to take extra classes during or before your master's degree in order to catch up to their standards.

It is definitely possible in germany, but depends on the university.
But why change?
I studied electrical engineering in my b.sc. and and m.sc in munich.
My masters studies had a strong focus on the software part of electrical engineering (security / machine learning).
So its definitely possible to do a master focused on software with a electronics background in germany.


text:
How to give a short talk at big math conference (section talk)?
Context:
Very big math conferences are often structured in the following way: there are key note speakers, but also sections on more specific topics, as well as satellite workshops on quite narrow subjects. This question is about the second type of talk. Due to the size of such conferences, the talks maybe rather short (20min, 30min).
Such sections (Algebra, Topology, Geometry, Probability theory, etc.) are still very broad. The organizers might make an effort to group similar talks together within different daily sessions, but it should be taken into account that many conference participants will follow all daily sessions of one section.
Question:

How to approach such a short talk?
How to find a good balance between bringing the own results across to the broader audience without having to spend all of the talk explaining background, and saying something interesting to experts?

It seems find that in a typical 1h seminar talk it is easier to provide something for everybody: listeners who have not seen the basic constructions of the topic, and experts of the field.

For a real challenge, try the US Joint Mathematics Meetings, at which some talks are as short as 10 minutes!

Most computer science conference talks are 20 minutes long.  That's not "short"; it's just normal.

Most of my [biology] talks are 12-17 mins!

In every hour long math talk I've ever been to, I barely understood anything after the first 20 minutes. I've heard from tenured Professors that they have the same experience. Maybe this is a good thing for everyone!

The advice is the same as for any talk, only moreso: Think of your talk as an advertisement -- your goal is to get people interested enough so they will look up and read your paper (or, in this case, invite you to their seminar to talk about it in more detail). Specifically:

Assume no one in the audience is an expert on your topic. (Seriously. It's hard to underestimate how much everybody else knows about something you spent years studying.)
The most important question to address is why should the audience care about your work? This question needs to be answered by slide 2 at the latest, and it doesn't hurt to remind them on the last slide as well. This is easy if you solve a long-standing open problem, but anything in the direction "if you have such-and-such a problem, my result will help you" will do. (If you really cannot come up with something, at least tell them why you care about the work -- presumably, some aspect of it was fascinating enough to make you finish it.)
Skip the details. Honestly, if in doubt, leave it out. Focus on a few core ideas, and try to get them across as plainly as possible. If your main result needs two slides of assumptions or notations before you can state it, see if you can find a more specific (non-trivial) setting where it will fit on one slide. Don't try to give a blow-by-blow proof, but stick with two or three high-level bullet points ("Proof uses Galerkin approximation, compensated compactness, and the embedding of X into Y").

(Also, since this is such an old question, you probably already went to the very big meeting. What did you hope to get out of hearing those talks? In hindsight, which ones did you take the most away from? Keep this in mind when preparing the next talk.)

Thanks, this gives some very helpful points. Also implicit the use of slides, which is not necessary standard in some maths seminars, but makes a lot of sense for such short talks of course.

Be sure to focus on YOUR work. Compress the background information to only that which DIRECTLY connects to your work.

This does not appear to be applicable in general. It might be good advice for some talks but not for others…


text:
Can a university restrict publication of students' work due to plagiarism fears?
My question is inspired by this question. Say a student wants to publish on GitHub some code that they've written as assignments for a programming class. The student may be motivated by a desire to show off their programming skills and advance their career this way, or by a wish to provide a useful resource on the internet that others might useful (say, people who are teaching themselves to program, or programmers who may be able to use the code to save themselves some work in connection with a project they're working on), or some combination.
The student publishes the code, but is then contacted by their department who ask him to take down the code, citing concerns that the code might be used to commit plagiarism by students taking the same class in following years.
First question: is it appropriate and ethical for the department to make such a request of the student? Are they not putting their own selfish interests ahead of the student's own interests and the interests of the community of people who might benefit from having the student's code be made available online?
Second question: Is the student obliged to comply with such a request, or can they simply say they have a right to put their work online in a publicly hosted website if they so desire and be entitled not to suffer any retaliation from the department for this refusal?
Note that even if the student is not obliged to comply with the request, it may still arguably be inappropriate of the department to make it, since the department has authority over the student and under such circumstances it is not clear that the student can make a decision to refuse that is free of duress.

Probably depends on the institution and course academic honesty rules, as of the date that the student was in the course or was last enrolled at the institution.

See my answer to Private Git repositories for students, that don't become public later

@ff524 thanks, that's a great answer, and reflects precisely my sentiments of extreme discomfort with the legal and ethical issues around the practice of universities attempting to use fines, academic misconduct policies and other coercive measures to restrict their students from publicly posting work that they have created, something I feel they both have a right to do and can gain significant career advantage from doing. Laziness on the part of course instructors is not an excuse for restricting students' rights and hurting their interests in such a way.

@DanRomik I removed some content. I refer here

My former department had such restrictions in place prohibiting the dissemination of course work, although very little of the course work involved programming. Students signed an agreement at the beginning of every year. Further, every piece of course work required a signed cover sheet that stated that the students would not share the course work. Sharing course work was treated as academic misconduct and results in either a reduction in the students grade if the offense is discovered while the student is taking the class, a fine (talk about unethical) if the offense is discovered after the student finishes the class, or possible revocation of the degree if the offense is discovered after the student graduates.
While serving on the my department's academic misconduct committee I over saw incidents of all three types. The one case of misconduct after graduation was settled by asking the student to remove the content from the web and the student agreeing. Had they not agreed, it would have gone to a university committee. The couple of cases involving distribution after the class, but prior to graduation, were resolved with fines. In some cases the students paid, in other cases they appealed to the university committee. The university committee sometimes kept the fine and sometimes repealed the fine. The "in class" cases were sometimes appealed to the university committee, but were rarely (if ever) over turned.
As to the ethical question, our policy was reviewed annual at both the departmental level annual and the university level. It was also reviewed every couple of years by the legal department. We often discussed why the policy was so broad. In the end, we always decided that it was easier to make a broad rule and allow students to request exceptions than to try and cover all the creative ways students can cheat.

I remain unconvinced with your last paragraph. Isn't that basically an "appeal to authority" argument?

@xLeitix I am also unconvinced by my last paragraph. While clearly allowed, I am not sure our policy was ethical. I am convinced that fining students for doing someone else's assignment is unethical, yet that was the university regulation.

"Students signed an agreement at the beginning of every year.": There are things in universities that can make me mad. This is one of them. I'd rather ask the professors to sign an agreement to not reuse their assignments verbatim year after year. After all, we are paid for that.

@MassimoOrtolano to be fair the agreement outlines our entire academic misconduct policy including citations, quoting and paraphrasing, group work, late work, missed work, etc.


text:
What does IPR mean on a grade report in Canada?
I'm was doing some continuing education in a Canadian University this fall.  I was looking at my list of final grades on their website (none of them seem to be in so far), but one of them is marked IPR.
I did a bit of Googling, and found that IPR stands for (supposedly, anyhow) Inward Processing Relief.  Is this the case, and if so, what does it mean?  Does it mean that they haven't finished processing the grades yet?  If so, why do I only have it on one of my courses?
Screenshot for reference:

IPR can also stand for intellectual property rights , but not relevant here probably....

Lol, I doubt it.  I did run across that one, and ruled it out.

@SolarMike or inter partes review ;)

I am a former lecturer in Canada. As Nate has already answered, it (almost certainly) means In Progress.
I'll add (while this still falls under the "grades not yet available" scenario) that the student could see IPR for a course well after grades are normally available because they contested their grade and it's under review; some institutions may use a special notation for that (mine used GNA).
The professor may also have agreed to give the student an extension on some critical work to account for extenuating circumstances during the term, or delay the exam, while not forcing them to re-register in a following term.
My alma mater calls this IP, and it can be used for a myriad of other reasons:

IP In Progress – a notation (IP) assigned to a course by a faculty
  member when:
At the undergraduate level, an undergraduate thesis or
  course has not been completed by the end of the period of
  registration.
At the graduate level, a graduate thesis, research
  essay, independent research project or comprehensive examination has
  not been completed by the end of the period of registration. The IP
  notation may also be used at the graduate level when a research
  seminar has not been completed by the end of the period of
  registration provided the research seminar has been approved by
  Graduate Faculty Board as being eligible for the use of this notation.
In the case of re-registration in any of the above courses, the IP
  notation will remain; a final grade will normally be assigned in the
  final period of registration. Where there is no re-registration in any
  of the above courses, the IP notation must be replaced with an
  appropriate notation or grade within the prescribed time period, or be
  replaced by a notation of WDN.

More Google suggests that IPR actually means "In PRogress".  This is commonly used as a temporary placeholder when grades are required to be submitted but the real grade is not yet available.
I'm not sure why it would show up for one course and not the others - it may have to do with how the paperwork was done by that individual professor - but I would suggest you ignore it for now.  Most likely it will be replaced by the real grade around the same time that your other grades are posted.  If it still appears on your record after a reasonable time, ask the professor and/or the department for an explanation.

Ah, interesting.  Didn't run across that one.

I'm pretty sure this means "In Progress". However, grade scales at the college level tend to vary by the institution and are not constant within a country.
At my alma mater (CUNY College of Staten Island, United States), there are actually several different grades used for situations like this:

INC, for Incomplete, meaning that the student was supposed to finish the course at the end of a previous semester but has not done so for some valid reason, and the instructor has allowed the student to continue working on the material until a future date.
PEN, for Pending, used for administrative purposes when a grade cannot be assigned until further review, such as when dishonesty is suspected.
Y, used when a student is partway through a course that spans multiple semesters.
Z, used when the instructor has somehow failed  to assign a grade at the end of the course.

Any of the above could be reasons for an IPR at your institution.


text:
What are paths that physics majors/PhDs can follow?
I’m currently a high-school student that has been aspiring to be a physicist for quite some time. However, after much research I have found the following to be stakes in that path:

There are about twice as many physics PhDs as tenure-possible jobs in academia for them, and those who make it don’t usually get tenure.
Physics majors lack the skills in life that others do, like engineering majors or math majors. This makes it very difficult to find a job where they are competitive applicants.
Job prospects for future physicists is at 10 %, slightly below average, meaning that this situation won't get better in the next decade.

I’ve always been interested in the sciences, but this is rather depressing. With a physics major, and no PhD (which would otherwise put you in the above position), the best possibility seems to be a high-school teacher. That’s respectable, but I would like to know what other options there are for physics majors (BSc, or MSc). Be as creative as you’d like – include options like moving to another country with better job prospects for physicists (I checked and couldn’t find the job prospects of other countries).

like moving to another country with better job prospects for physicists – what country are you currently in?

I currently work for a trading firm that just hired a couple physicists as prop traders because they are good at quick mental math and decision making and I know they had offers from a bunch of places to do similar jobs

Physicists end up everywhere. That said, applied physics (engineering) is possibly even less limiting.

Physics majors lack the skills in life that others do, like engineering majors or math majors - As a physics and math double major, I found the opposite to be true. Of course it depends what you focused on during your degree, but a lot of physics is much more "connected to reality" than a lot of math. I can't imagine using topology in most jobs, but my electronics lab may certainly come in handy.

Various AIP subsidiaries including the APS keep tabs on these things: check out the APS's 2011-2012 survey results.
Don't believe "Physics majors lack the skills in life that others do, like engineering majors or math majors", most engineering employers expect to teach a substantial set of specific skill they need in house even to engineering majors. And a physics major is well positioned to bone up on engineering subject.
But do be prepared to have a little trouble getting your foot in the door; you have to get past HR so that your paperwork is seen by a technical manager. That takes a well designed resume, and you if don't have a mentor with the right experience it might be worth paying a consultant.
General answers to the "What can I do question?"

BS Programming, engineering, business are the big three and lots of other jobs are represented in the surveys. With a JD there are specialized areas of the law available to people with a technical background. With a MBA, there are companies who want to hire people to lead the technical end of the business. Med school is an option too, and physicist actually pass the MCAT more often than any other major (they're only second in passing the LSAT as the mathematicians squeeze in front).
MS Minimum degree for some reasonable chance of doing science. All the usual suspects plus industry research work and some chance of teaching at the post-secondary level (but generally not tenure-track).
PhD Programming, engineering, business, teaching and research. The thing to understand here is that many Physics PhDs don't end up doing physics,1 but most do end up employed at a job that uses the traits that brought you to the major---curiosity, focus, detail orientation and the ability to construct and organize large and complicated models.

With a MS or PhD there are good jobs in the patent office.
The APS recently held a webinar on this very subject.

1 The percentage that end up doing some kind of physics is in the low 50s, and about half end up changing subfield from their dissertation work.

I have a PhD in mathematical physics (in particular in algebraic formulation of QFT) obtained in Germany, after a master's degree in Italy (on discrete theories for quantum gravity).
I am currently employed as data scientist for a private company, where I have the opportunity to still carry on research in particular areas (mostly machine learning and algorithm methods for data analysis, which, strictly speaking, are not "physics", though). It is a lot of fun and I enjoy it; most of my colleagues have undergone the same carrier path, with PhD in physics/mathematics. Before I also spent some time as quantitative analyst for a bank.
This said, there are opportunities out there for academics having PhD in very technical areas, mainly as data scientists, data/quantitative analysts for private companies or research platforms, or the financial sector. It is also true that, although placing your foot in is not particularly easy, companies do like academics who are able to think, carry on ideas and projects, rather than just doing mere technicalities. Moreover, most of the times people who have done research are much faster in developing solutions and finding possible errors and bugs.
Therefore my opinion is that albeit finding a job outside academia is not the easiest, it is possible and does not have to discourage anyone from pursuing a PhD.
I would like to comment on few sentences of yours:

There are about twice as many physics PhDs as tenure-possible jobs in academia for them, and those who make it don’t usually get tenure.

Actually it is even worse: there are about ten times as many physics PhD as tenure-possible jobs, especially in Europe.

Physics majors lack the skills in life that others do, like engineering majors or math majors. This makes it very difficult to find a job where they are competitive applicants.

This is just completely nonsense. Physicists are exactly the most competitive applicants: they can be employed in any field at any time, despite the skills required, because they can make their own skills. I double dare you to find applicants who are more suitable, pick any job you want. Furthermore, I have never met any physicist or mathematician or engineer who lacks the so-called social skills: on the other hand most of them have been the most entertaining colleagues and co-workers I have had. If someone is weird or anti-social it is about themselves and is totally unrelated to whether they have studied physics, biology or nutrition for dogs and cats.

I wouldn't give up on academia just yet. But if you do, then Wall Street, say, is littered with PhDs (and bachelors) of physics, in particular hedge funds. You'd typically do a lot of coding, and, to a lesser extent, financial modeling. To give you one example, I've interviewed with someone who researched fluid motions on Jupiter before becoming MD at Goldman. You can google "quants" for that particular option, but you're not restricted to being a quant. You'd be hired for smarts.

Physics majors lack the skills in life that others do, like engineering majors or math majors.

Knowledge of concrete physics is only a small portion of what you learn when studying physics. You also learn: Scientific thinking and working, problem solving, abstracting things, doing useful approximations, developing models, programming, mathematics, statistics and communicating all of this. Something similar applies to many, if not all other fields.
Also, what makes you think that studying mathematics of all things gives you more “skill in life”? It’s the nature of mathematics to go one step further in terms of abstractness, theoreticness or purity than physics (relevant XKCD)¹. There is a grain of truth in the cliché that mathematicians are detached from reality². Of course, there are some mathematical tools that are generally very useful – so useful that they are part of the physics curriculum as well.

¹ Of course this only holds on average. There are certainly some fields of mathematics that are more applied than some fields of physics.
² Note that I do not want to bash mathematicians here (in particular since I am half of a mathematican myself). This really is a cliché and only few mathematicians are detached from reality. Moreover, mathematics needs to be the way it is. All I am saying is that you do not become closer to reality just because you study maths instead of physics.

I will second a lot of what has been said here. As an astrophysicist I spent 10 years working for NASA, then 25 years as a professor at a Research I university. I had a good and high profile career, but also had other things I wanted to do. A lot of that came from experiences advising and mentoring hundreds of students. Some years ago I took early retirement and these days among other things coach professionals, including engineers and academics, helping them meet professional and personal goals. That includes career coaching.
If you dig into it you will discover that the unemployment rate among physicists is very low. A physics education is less about learning physics, per se, than it is about developing a very powerful way of thinking about the world and attacking diverse problems. There are physicists in an extremely wide variety of positions ranging from systems engineering, to data and other analysis, to private and public research labs, to finance, to modeling, to teaching, to medicine (in medical school physics undergrads tend to run the table on premeds), to government labs, to you name it. I have a client right now who is moving from theoretical physics into analysis of data from networked consumer health monitoring devices with an eye toward improving public health. Every now and then you even find one doing something like coaching. Pick a career path and there is a very good chance that you will find physicists there applying their thinking skills to just about every sort of task you can name.
In a world where perhaps half of current white collar jobs will have disappeared in 15 years, and the best jobs have yet to be invented, a physicist's way of approaching the world is likely to be far better preparation than those who pursue field-specific degrees. (Do pick up a good computing background along the way, including exposure to things like genetic algorithms and AI.)
Were I to give advice it would be to take advantage of opportunities while a student to work outside of Academia. That might well include taking a year's break at some point and taking a job or internship. That will help you grow a network and build a resume, as well as expand your perspective beyond Academia. As someone already mentioned, very few physicists wind up in Academia, but when you are in school those are the physicists that you meet and work with. There is a common attitude among faculty that those who remain in Academia "made it" and those who leave Academia have "failed." That perspective is... well, I probably can't use the language needed to describe just how nonsensical, myopic, and self aggrandizing that attitude is. The choice between Academia and other careers should be approached as a thoughtful decision rather than viewing Academia as the default option.

If you're concerned about getting a job while also getting an MS in physics, try identifying a branch of physics that is likely to become more relevant in the future. As an example, the field of handling greenhouse gas problems is likely to grow in the future. Perhaps there are areas in geophysics (for carbon storage) or more towards chemical physics (carbon capture) or mechanical engineering (CO2 transport) that you could pursue. Another (perhaps more high-risk) topic would be fusion power. Another would be the intersection of "big data" and physics.
The difficult things with this strategy are

knowing what will be important in the future
timing it such that these things are becoming important when you are entering the job market
finding such things which are also interesting for you

In some sense I followed this strategy myself. I did most of my BS and early MS studies in quantum physics, but ended up pursuing computational physics (specifically CFD) for my Master's degree, which had been more of a hobby than anything else up to that point. Turns out, physicists who can write good high-performance code in languages other than C++ are in high demand.
This brings me to my final point: what you do for your BS is probably a bit irrelevant, in the sense that you can relatively easily switch to a different sub-field of physics later on.
(And, because I can't resist: a physicist is obliged to take the path that minimizes the action.)


text:
Are there good reasons to avoid using color in research papers?
I do scientific research, and I noticed for a lot of plots, the different curves are represented with different styles, but they are all black.  For instance, one curve may be a solid line, one may be a dashed line, one may be a dotted line with triangular markers, etc.
However, this makes it hard for me to differentiate between the curves.  Color is much more effective for helping people distinguish between data (and I’m taking a data visualization class that has research to prove it).
So... can I do this in my research article?  I imagine most people are keeping their plots black and white because of printing restrictions on color, but at the same time they include colors in all kinds of other figures in their document.  Also, how many people actually read printed articles anymore?  For scientific work, I look all of it up online.
Are there good reasons for me to stick with this backwards black-and-white scheme?

actually, I read all my articles on paper. I love to scribble on the margins. But, truth be told, if there's any figures in the paper, I'm gonna have it open on my screen and look at the pics on my computer.

"Color is much more effective for helping people distinguish between data" except for people who are color blind.

That's why you use color-blind safe colors.  You can calculate how colors will appear for different kinds of color-blindness.

Many journals charge extra for colour plots.

One reason for the lack of use of colors is simply financial considerations. In some Journals , a color page actually costs the author to include. I will only add color if it makes the plot much clearer than line styles, shades of grey, and thickness.
Otherwise, I don't see any downside to sensible use of colors, bar readability concerns for people with certain color blindness.

Every serious guide I read while preparing my thesis suggested colors where possible but mandated that figures be interpretable without them (i.e. for fully color blind readers or when the articles has bee printed in B&W or xeroxed), and I expect to stick to that rule essentially forever.

I like to read my articles with a high-contrast mode on my PDF viewer. The colors really mess up with my settings, but most of the times they are on not so important pictures. In the end, I don't pay that much attention to them anymore unless they are key-parts of the article.

In some journals, including color figures can cost the authors thousands of dollars. Depending on your funding situation this could be an important consideration.

PDF stands for printable document format, I like to keep PDF files printer friendly (no colors). At the same time, if you have plots, data or even interactive visualizations of data, all those really help. They simply don't need to be in the paper, you can link to a webpage that may have colors and even be interactive.

Colour plots can be very expensive depending on the journal.

Hail to Colorbrewer
I use Cynthia Brewer's website Colorbrewer to pick color schemes. It's also embedded in ggplot2 which is a common choice of graphing package in R. It allows users to specify colorblind-safe and photocopy-able color schemes. It's meant to be for map making, but the idea works for visualization all across the broad.

Other color specialists
For graphs that are used in more eye-catching media such as reports, posters or infographics, you may consider taking some advice from fashion and interior designers (See the graph below proposed by Japanese Shigenobu Kobayashi). Each combination can conjure a certain type of feeling, color schemes that seem absurd may work in other settings.

Works on data visualizations
You mention there is research backing up the use of color, which I do believe there must be. Though for that, I'd just like to share another point of view. Bill Cleveland, whom I consider the guru of visualization in science, advises that color should actually be avoided. In his book, he lays out this hierarchy:

I may not go thus far to suggest color is worse than area and volume, but I do agree that positioning along non-aligned scales is much better than color. In other words, if I have two curves to show, I'd opt for paneling them onto to their own coordinate then put the graphs side by side, or plotting them together using line with different styles or grey scales over using colored lines.
The baseline for me is, the added colors should have their dimension (aka variable) to represent. If there is anything that does the same job, remove the colors because now the colors are "non-informative ink," as described by Tufte.
Human eyes are prone to visual tricks
I do agree that colors catch attention, but just because it gets attention does not mean people can distinguish them well and can isolate the information well. Particularly, colors interact; just by pairing with some different colors, the same color can look different. For instance, here is an example borrowed elsewhere. The brown and the orange tiles pointed by an white arrow are actually of the same color.

Why care about black and white?
And you asked "how many people actually read print articles anymore?" I would think that there are a lot. Schools in developing countries may not have color printer, and not every student has access to computer and the Internet. Their only way to learn about a journal article may just be through photocopies. Even in the US, with the rapid adoption of tablets, I still see a lot of journal clubs and meetings relying on B&W photocopies.
Now when I go to deliver any workshops in other countries, I always photocopy a few sample pages of my handout to make sure they are still legible. And Brewer's work has been a lifesaver for me.
Closing remark
In a nutshell, I embrace data visualization and the increasing acceptance of colors thrills me. Though in the process I believe we should remind ourselves to be humble and do not create works that very disproportionally benefit people who are riding high at the technology tide. John Tukey laid the groundwork of some graphical exploratory data analysis, Charles Minard made a visual with rich amount of variables like 150 years ago and yet still considered to be pretty bad-ass by today's standard. How many colors did they use? Just one.
At the end of the day, I would probably argue that design trumps all. It's not about color or non-color, it's about if they are used efficiently to maximize information transfer and minimize noises. At this moment, for me, lines, dots, shades along grey scale, and empty spaces are my staples; colors are my spices.

Ok, let's try this new ColorBrewer thing. I'll pick my most common use case for a paper: I have three (or more) algorithms to compare, and I want to plot their results on the same graph. So I choose: qualitative; 3 (or more) data classes; photocopiable; colorblind-safe: "No color schemes match these criteria." Looked nice, but I am afraid it won't work for me.

@Federico, because there isn't black-grey-white color blindness, for copying purpose you can uncheck "colorblind-friendly." As for colorblindness, the most common type is green-weak colorblindness, which can be worked around by avoiding putting red and green on the same chart. For the other cases, if you provide both colored and a photo-copier grey scale versions, it should be fine.

this is a really excellent answer. +1 for colorbrewer as well as emphasizing that the color needs to serve a purpose.

Wow, I had to get out my color picker and check the RGB values before I believed those colors were the same.

@DavidKetcheson loading it into an image editor, selecting one of the orange/brown areas, and watching it change color as you drag it to the other is an even more interesting effect.

@Penguin_Knight ok, unchecked "colorblind-friendly", and I was left with a single set of three colors, one of them clearly too pale to be used for a line in a plot (unless you also change the background color, which has its set of problems in print). This may be ok for maps, but I don't find it as good as you're advertising for coloring a plot, which was the original question.

@Federico, glad that you're experimenting with it! Please also check out the "diverging" categories because there you'll get a few more color schemes with three color (high, neutral, and low.) Time to time I may modify the scheme (for instance, if the color is too pale, try factor down the RGB code by the same number, say, 0.8, and you can have a darker theme to work with.) followed by a photocopier test by myself. And you're correct that the site is for cartographer, but the schemes has been giving me some bases to work on.

con'd: Also, I believe by no means those are the only schemes. If we read Brewer's research articles, she also details how color spectra were chosen (a bit technical but nice read nonetheless). From that work it is possible to enrich the schemes by ourselves. All in all, the difficulty of finding a color scheme that is photocopier friendly should not be understated; it's a risky business, and line styles or paneling may be a better alternative.

+1 for information, but I note that Colorbrewer renders huge classes of graphs unrepresentable.  It's very conservative and strongly biased in favor of a certain aspect of aesthetics.  (For instance, it avoids strong contrasts for qualitative data, which makes it impossible to have qualitative data printed in black and white with more than a very small number of colors.)

When making plots, I like to use reasonably subtle colours and combine them with different line or marker styles (e.g. blue triangles and red circles, or a black solid line and a blue dotted line). If printed in black and white the figure is still easily readable, and the colour version makes things a little more differentiable.
Stick to dark or pale colours, and they will enhance the appearance and readability of your document.
Do:

Don't:

Use of the colorbrewer palattes is a near defacto standard in cartography now, and is becoming widely accepted in other fields. You can see the online tool also has color-blind safe and scales that can stand black and white photo-copying.

Excuse my ignorance, but why is the "don't" color scheme not preferred? I'm trying to understand the reasoning behind all the suggestions here. For instance Sigmaplot uses a default scheme of black, red, green, etc. lines, which would go against all the advice herein.

@che_kid - Bright colours are attention-grabbing, jarring, distracting, and unattractive. None of those properties are ideal in a published paper. Yes, the majority of plotting programs use RGB coordinates of [255,0,0], [0,255,0] and [0,0,255] for their default red, green and blue (and have similarly bright intermediate colours). But, aesthetically, that's usually an extremely poor choice.

Used correctly, bright colours can be very effective as well as attractive. To accentuate one curve, for instance, do use a bright colour (and use dull colours for the others). I think the advice in this answer is way too generalised.

@KonradRudolph It depends on your definition of bright. If in doubt, use colorbrewer. Colorbrewer has some bright(ish) colours, but they're not too bright. I would never use any of those "don't" colours, so I don't think my answer is too generalized (I just chose extreme examples to make my point obvious).

@Moriarty I actually use ColorBrewer (not exclusively, I also create my own) – take “Dark2”: it has a brighter accented pink than two of the three colours you label as ”don’t”s. But granted, those bright accents are the exception.

@che_kid: The "don't" is also bad because it's very difficult for people with red-green color blindness to distinguish  those colors!

Why might be reasons for you to stick to black and white:

Some legitimate scientific journals, even in the beginning of this 21st century, still have publishing fees for color figures and do not allow the combination of “color online and B/W in print”. It's sad to realize, but I know some in my own field.
Having color figures allows you to have a higher density of information on a given figure. Yes, it sounds like a good thing and it usually is, but it is a double-edge sword. First, because you may end up making figures that are just too dense and difficult to interpret (if the caption requires more than 3 sentences, you may have a problem). Second, because if you do not choose your colors well, it may be actually less readable than a black and white figure.
The rendering and perception of colors in printed materials and in video projected presentations is not at all the same. Thus, if you want to provide top-notch material, you might need to make two versions of your figures, which is extra work.

Mortiarty has said that the choice of colors is crucial. This is very true (and under appreciated by many), both for rendering and perception. I would advise you to read a book about color theory or color design (this one is the one I read to strengthen my understanding of these things).
To given an example, the software I love for drawing figures (Grace) has an almost unusable default color palette (left below), but with some practice I could change it to a palette that is quite nice to use (right below):

Look in particular at how the basic colors have been desaturated: red, blue, green, and yellow.

The ROOT default palette is pretty grotty, too, though it is not a patch of the abomination that was the PAW default palette.

Basically, the reason is as you suggested: historically, it has been very expensive to print in color, which made it unattractive for most research groups to do so.
Now, however, it is increasingly common for most distribution of journal articles to be in PDF form, which can just as easily use color as not. Many journals will let you do "color online" for the same cost as black-and-white. However, if you are planning to use colors, then they should be used in an intelligent manner. Arbitrarily using colors in a haphazard manner can make understanding even harder than using black and white. (Don't forget that many people are color-blind!)

Being exactly the same cost in PDF doesn't stop journals charging extra for colour.

Typically color charges are only if the print version is in color.

+1 for the link from which I found this blog on information visualization and the "Colors for data scientists" web-application.

Some might claim that having black and white is better because it's cheaper to print and keeps the focus on the content.
But I disagree with using black and white and think that the content is better supplemented with color.  There is research that if your mood is changed positively when learning (with our 5 senses), humans retain more information.  (Example: don't you retain more when you eat dinner with your friends in a new restaurant versus sitting at your desk and talking to someone on the phone?)  This is not true if the brain becomes conditioned to the environment (or restaurant in my example).  So the environment should continually change to increase one's ability to learn.  Thus, you should have a web interface to keep changing the theme to something new each day they visit the research.  If it's on paper, then you're S.O.L.
You could keep it in black and white if it's on paper and just spray some good smelling perfume on the paper.  That may allow others to retain more with smell than with color, because smell has more of an impact on the brain than color.
Sight
Hearing
Touch
Taste
Smell

Another way would be to put it in a card that plays classical music.  When listening to classical music while learning, you will retain more.  Hearing is on the list of 5 senses.
I found this the other day that might help you.
https://kuler.adobe.com/create/color-wheel/
Then click the "Explore" hyperlink.  And finally click the "Most Popular" hyperlink and the "Most Used" hyperlink.
I'm not sure which one is better.
You will find the work of many Adobe geniuses that might make your research a lot easier, rather than re-inventing the color wheel.

Many journals will either charge for the use of color (especially those that still appear in print) and a few I've run across outright ban its use unless it's essential for an understanding of the figure (some photographs, etc.).
That being said, there's no reason you can't use color if you're willing to pay the fees, publish in online journals, use color in electronic supplements, etc.
One essential thing I find, that I always check as a reviewer, and find appallingly uncommon in color figures: make sure they're still understandable in black and white. It doesn't have to be as good, but someone printing out your work on their office printer should still be able to understand what you did. Distributed in PDF or not, I can't read things for comprehension on a screen, so I print them out - I know a fair number of colleagues who do likewise. And I have yet to encounter a figure that needed printer unfriendly colors to be understood.

Some journals will ask you to pay a per-figure fee for your print figures to appear in color.  If color really enhances the figure, then this is worth it.  But if, say, you're just using a monochrome red colormap instead of grayscale, it's not.