text:
Is Proctorio safe for me to use?
I am taking an online course and it has 2 summative assessment exams and a final exam. However, since it is an online course, it says I am required to use Proctorio to ensure no cheating occurs, which is a browser extension.
So naturally I looked it up quickly and instantly saw all the bad reviews of these online proctoring apps. Proctorio on the web store has 1.1 star review ratings, and there are some articles online about these online proctoring extensions being "spyware" and even sued.
But since this is a fully online course, I have to take it anyways. Is proctorio really that bad, and if so, is there anything I can do to minimize any potential harm done to myself or my computer? Or have these bugs and issues been fixed already? (as a lot of these articles and news seem to be from 2020-2022 in the pandemic)
Other information:

It requires me to do a full room scan
My face should be visible on camera at all times
Microphone should be on at all times
Before the exam starts you need to show your ID
Screen is to be shared at all times
Proctorio requires “Read and change all your data on the websites you visit” permission

I wonder who are submitting the bad reviews ... the professors or the students?

@GEdgar both, but students make up the large majority I'm pretty sure

It may be helpful for you to express your concerns to the online course administrators. They may not be aware of these reviews, and other students may have concerns. This may improve the situation in the future.

Not tested (hence not an answer), but the first thing I would try is Windows Sandbox, since it's built-in and easy to use.

@GEdgar The bad reviews are there because the extension is able to see and monitor all you activities. That is a major privacy problem. This is bad regardless of whether you are a student or a professor. The bad reviews are not about the ability of the extension to do what it is supposed to do but rather about the side effects.

For some more issues, see Cory Doctorow's summary of some of the issues (on his own site, as I don't have a Medium account, where it's also published).  He tends to cite sources, if you dig into the older reports.  A lot of the issues aren't software bugs but conceptual problems

Basically I'd only enroll on  a course with those requirements if it was that or lose my job, and work would have to provide a computer and suitable space.  But it's not widely used here, partly because the well-publicised issues could easily lead to discriminatoin

I’m not suggesting cross posting per se, but there is an information security stack that also might have some good info on using browser extensions safely.

It's unfortunate that we seem to have to trade our privacy and security for a decent education (or anything at all these days).
I agree with Ethan that using another computer is the best bet. Since it sounds like that won't work from your comments.

Use your computer's operating system to create a new non-administrator user. For bonus points, you can use an operating system that runs from a USB stick without being installed on your computer, like Ubuntu.
Log into the new user and download Chrome.
Install the browser extension. Allow microphone and camera access.
Use the new user's browser to take whatever test you need.
Log out of the user and go back to using your computer normally.
For bonus points, delete the new user's profile as soon as you're done.

Sorry in the comments I said I can't use a public computer, but I do have another spare computer to use. But this answer is helpful too, thanks!

There is probably not much you can do. Here are some suggestions.
You might have a computer you can use just for this task, then wipe clean.
Enter no information other than that needed to identify you to the instructor.
If the app needs to watch you, check the background the camera sees.
If the app is browser based, can you use a public computer somewhere quiet?

Thanks! I added some extra information to my question, a public computer wouldn't work here as it would have background noise. (I do have a spare computer though that I can wipe)

Rather than use another computer, you can use Sandboxie to isolate the browser from the rest of the system.  Or run a VM.

I suspect that if a proctoring system can detect that it is running on a VM then it would regard that as breaking the terms of the invigilation as it would not be able to see what was happening on the computer as a whole.

@DikranMarsupial I'm absolutely sure I've read that somewhere.  I have a feeling they object to live Linux (or Linux at all?)

No, you don't need to be worried.
If you sat an exam in a traditional setting you would expect to be watched and have your behaviour monitored. Proctorio is doing is the same thing. That does mean that it's running on your computer, so you will want to make sure your email is shut, notification are off, etc. - but you should be doing that anyway. And it will be able to see if you're opening other webpages; but the rules of the exam probably say you can't do that anyway. Staff chosen by the institution will be able to see you and the room you are sat in; this seems to me to be unavoidable if exams sat online are to be invigilated at all.
Treat the experience like being sat in a physical exam hall under invigilated conditions, and you'll be fine.
There is a legitimate concern about technical issues using the plug-in but Proctorio does include a pre-exam check that should ensure everything is fine; obviously this can't help with, e.g., your internet going down but that's an inherent problem with online exams it is up to your institution to handle.
The Proctorio plug-in won't collect anything except during the exam, when you directly switch in on, but if you're worried at all just disable it when you're not actually sitting an exam.

How do you know that the Proctorio plug-in doesn't collect data when it is not supposed to?

@Arno The same way you know anything else you install on your computer doesn't.

@JackAidley that is kind of the point, you have a choice about what software you install on your own computer, but in this case the OP is being coerced into installing something that they have concerns about.  I suspect proctoring software is likely to be a much bigger security risk than most software that a user will install because it will require much higher access privileges than is needed by most programs.

@DikranMarsupial: It's a Chrome plugin. It gets installed with the given privileges, limited by what Chrome will allow. It comes from a known company, who give assurances about what it does and does not collect - and can be sued if they lie about it, not to mention the likely cost to their business if they do.

And note, the question is is it safe? not is it proportionate and reasonable for universities to require it.

They did get sued, just a few years ago. They have also sued their critics.

@GlennWillen They did not get sued for collecting data they shouldn't, did they?

ProctorU (another proctoring app) got sued by some students for a data breach leaking passwords and other information of over 500,000 students. Also "The 25-page case claims ProctorU has violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act by collecting students’ eye movements, facial expressions and keystroke biometrics without first providing the individuals with sufficiently specific data retention and destruction policies"

@DialFrost: It was thrown out: https://www.law360.com/cases/619d6b5f8aaf8a02bdfdace2 - obviously, any company you give an email/password combo can leak its database, but there's nothing special about ProctorU there. It wasn't harvesting passwords or anything.

@JackAidley From a quick skim: they did get sued over the legality of collecting biometric data in the state of Illinois, but the suit was dropped. There was another lawsuit against Cleveland State University, about the legality of forcing students to video their surroundings; the student won the suit, but the decision was apparently fairly narrowly tailored to the circumstances of the specific student, and may not create precedent.

@GlennWillen It's not Proctorio who makes them record their surroundings; it's the university who decides to use the software.

" And note, the question is is it safe? not is it proportionate and reasonable for universities to require it. " if there were no risks, how would there be a proportionality or reasonability issue?  Define "safe" I would not consider it safe for a company that has leaked personal data to collect biometric data from me.

"If you sat an exam in a traditional setting you would expect to be watched and have your behaviour monitored. Proctorio is doing is the same thing." This is a weird statement. In a regular exam, one is being watched in a university/school owned examination room. As an examiner during Corona, I've seen dining rooms, bedrooms, friend-I'm-staying-at-rooms wink, tidied-only-for-the-camera-but-then-they-had-to-move-that-camera-rooms, with pictures of family, personal items, and even room mates; and that's just what the camera captures. The scope of "being watched" is absolutely not comparable.

Proctorio is also more like having the invigilator standing in front of your desk staring intently at your face for the whole exam, which is very different from a normal invigilation.

@DikranMarsupial Not to mention that the invigilator is not just staring at you, but recording your every movement, and sharing the recording with any third parties "required for services pertaining to invigilation". Oh, and the recording is done using your camera (but you have essentially no control overhow your camera is used).

Quite a few of my students are uncomfortable having their camera on during unrecorded teams meetings, so I can see why they are so concerned about this.  I was always pretty comfortable doing exams, but it is stressful already for some.


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Do graduate school admissions appreciate individual "free time" study?
I am a year away from completing an undergrad degree in Computer Science and I find myself increasingly interested in more advanced subjects from pure mathematics that sometimes lie outside the scope of my major, and I think I would enjoy doing graduate work in pure math. But I feel like the amount of formal education I've had the opportunity to have in my undergrad isn't quite sufficient for graduate work in math.
If I were to go and buy a book or two on some subject I'd like to learn more about that I can't take a course on (say, Abstract Algebra or Number Theory), and spend this summer getting comfortable with it, is it likely that a graduate admission committee take my efforts into account?
My situation is worded specific to a CS --> Pure Math trajectory, but it's part of a more general question. Do graduate school admissions take into account personal study, or do they only care about formal university education?

I have limited knowledge about this and I speak from experience as a graduate student who has gone through a similar situation (from the outside) as well as being the student representative on our graduate admissions committee (on the inside). Obviously, a professor or academic with much more experience than I have can attest to this in better ways.
In general, formal education is given preference. Grades in relevant courses are given more importance than others. Note that there is a lot of competition for slots in a PhD program. Self study is a very fuzzy area and there is little scope for the graduate admissions committee to evaluate it. There exists of course, two mutually non-exclusive ways exceptions to this general norm:

A respected recommender in the area attests to the fact that you did engage in significant amounts of self study and that has contributed to your overall knowledge.
You do self study. Then you do research based on it. Then you publish in a non trivial journal or conference. That automatically attests to your knowledge in certain ways.

Otherwise, ask yourself this, why would graduate admissions committees believe you, especially when there is usually bound to be a few more well qualified applicants with good scores in relevant courses?

This says pretty much everything I wanted to say on the topic.

The other answers are of course reasonable, but my own viewpoint, perhaps an outlier, is that energetic/extensive self-study is a much more positive indicator about motivation and self-discipline and genuine interest than course attendance with good grades.
Yes, there is the obvious point mentioned in other answers: how to measure or certify self-study? The GRE subject test is very iffy, in a variety of aspects. Thus, the ideal circumstance is coursework and self-study, to have certifiable conventional ("passive") education as well as demonstrating initiative and interest. Further, very often the available undergrad curriculum really doesn't prepare people for grad school, so I'd strongly recommend substantial self-study in any case. Perhaps best under the aegis of math faculty who can provide some certification in letters of recommendation.
The thing that might be missing from self-study, if that's all one has as mathematics background, is the "regular drill" on basic reflexes that, in any case, routine coursework does cultivate. If one has to stop and think too much, the slowdown/cognitive-load can make routine things effectively impossible.
Also, beware, the usual first year-or-two of math grad school include "routine" coursework and exams that do presume a "standard" undergrad background, including routine drill on a fairly standard body of material. With an extremely thin or idiosyncratic background, one must play a lot of catch-up. This can have several bad effects: may give the impression of incapability, may make you tired and discouraged, may stifle natural interest. So "brace yourself" if that's the path you find yourself on.

If possible, I would recommend first seeking out a math professor at your university, preferably someone you know and who holds you in high regard. If you are home for the summer, e-mail would suffice, but an in person meeting would work much better.
Anyway, explain your plans, and:

Ask the professor's advice about your self-study plan (maybe the prof has different suggestions)
Ask if he or she would be willing to evaluate your progress at the end of the summer (e.g., you show up to his/her office and take an informal oral exam), and to write you a rec letter if you've done a good job.

Good luck!

I strongly agree with this comment. My husband is a math professor, and if you approached him in this manner ("I just love math, would you please go through this number theory book with me?") he would leap at the opportunity to do independent study with you.  People like you are why professors go into academia. :)

Another option for the special case you describe is to take the math subject GRE after your self studies. This would validate your knowledge of the undergraduate curriculum in pure maths. They might take into account that you did not take any of the courses (you probably won't get the same score you would have gotten as a math major, because you don't know real analysis, topology, etc.)

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Differences between PhDs in Australia and France
Can somebody tell me what are differences between an Australian PhD and a French PhD in terms of applications, requirements, Fees and Scholarship, the way it works once admitted, the kind a successful profile ?

I would suggest you to first do your own research and look for PhD programs that interest you both in Australia and France. I'm sure you can find the most relevant information on the institutions' web pages. If you have questions regarding a specific point, you can provide the references and ask here. I'm saying this because your question is too broad to be addressed (for example, you are not even saying if you are interested in STEM or humanities), thus it's hard to give you a useful answer.

A likely duplicate of the canonical question, which has entries for both countries: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/176908/75368

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Book publishing used anti_plagiarism tool
Is all book publishing used plagiarism detection? And can i check plagiarism for old book published from two years and get true percent of similarity?
Regards

Most publishers do not systematically check for plagiarism. Usually, the book author simply has to assert she or he has all the necessary rights for text and figures - as a part of the contract with the publisher.
In matters of checking an already published book - yes, you may certainly do that. If you find a book is (in part) a plagiarism, you should notify the publisher. To my knowledge, there is no "automated" solution to check for supposed plagiarism which yields "valid percentages"... you will have to analyze and compare the text yourself.

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How long does it take to reach a decision after "Pending Decision Approval" status?
I have a paper that was under review with one of Wiley's journals. The paper received an R&R last summer and a revised version was provided. The status of the paper has since changed from "Under Review" to "Decision Pending", and recently, maybe 4 days ago, the status has changed to "Decision Pending Approval". My understanding is that the editor has made the decision based on the reviews, but they have now passed the decision to the editor-in-chief.
My query is how long this process of "Decision Pending Approval" normally takes?

So many people would be much less anxious if they just stopped refreshing the author page on journals.

@henning yes, it provides a sketchy idea.

No way to tell.
Check with Journal, they usually provide statistics as to what is their average decision time. In case they don't, it won't hurt to ask these numbers.
If they are well past their normal decision times, you should inquire about your submission status. Since they seem to be updating, albeit slowly, I would consider you to enhance your patience.

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Submitting 2 manuscripts explaining the same scientific fact but by two different methods
I have submitted two manuscripts on physics both have analyzed a new finding by me but the methods of the "analysis" are different.
They differ in data, results and figures, just at the end, the both are saying that; for example: X is better than Y.
Is this ethical?

What sort of "unethical" are you concerned with?

Is the new idea in both? This could count as self plagiarism if so and you did not reference one in the other. If the new idea was in a preceding paper that both reference, you should be in the clear. There have been a decent number of posts here along these lines that give really good advice.

There is no ethical concern as long as you have cross-cited the papers if necessary to avoid self plagiarism. That is probably not an issue given what you say, but I haven't seen the two papers.
Different directions of evidence or proof toward a result can be enlightening. Alternate proofs in math, for example, can lead to new insights.
It is, of course, up to publishers to decide whether to publish either of the papers.

Thank you,Since both submissions are under review I couldn't cite one to the other as reference. submitted to two different journals.

You will probably have a chance to edit each paper before publication if accepted. You can add citations then. But you have some risk if you get the same reviewer for both papers, even from different journals. Be prepared to explain things to an editor.

very good advice sir. Thank you very much.

@SariraMiri Another option would be to post pre-prints of the papers at the time of submission, and cite the pre-prints in the submissions.

There is always "(submitted)" or "(in preparation)" as an option to cite a yet unpublished work. These are rightfully frowned upon, but in this context they would certainly be an improvement over not citing the other result at all.

Is this allowed? In theory and practice, yes, there are many mechanisms which would allow you to do it.
Is it ethical? It depends on perception.
In my opinion, this qualifies as "salami slicing", i.e. cutting up results to generate more papers. Now if you published one method, then discovered the other method is either better or worse and published it afterwards, that is just the progress of research.
However, and this is my opinion, grounded in my personal ethics for publications, what you are doing is unethical. You currently have both studies which together could form a more concrete and informative publication, yet you are deliberately choosing to split them, presumably to generate two, less-informative publications.
The good news is that my opinion, and those who share it will merely earn you an eye roll and less respect in the community. So really, what's that worth to you in the end?

That is pretty bold, given that you haven't seen the papers.

Thanks for the answer. For me the worth is getting more citation. two different jurnals give more chance to be seen, I think.

So, shall I withdraw one of them? or wait for when they sent back for revision.

@Buffy, based on what the OP states, two methods to solve the same problem done simultaneously seems to me a prime example of a comprehensive study. It would make a stronger paper to publish together, especially if one method is clearly better than the other. It can make a much better argument as to why Method A is better than Method B for example.

@SariraMiri You should do whatever you want. This is just my opinion. Better papers get more citations. I would always advise someone to publish the best papers possible, not the most papers possible.

Thanks anyway sir.

There are other considerations that require seeing the papers. Length can be an issue as can the coherence of an individual paper. Such a situation wouldn't be an issue if there were two different authors. But, to the OP, you have no guarantee that you increase the citation count this way and you now have me worried that you are salami slicing. But backing out would be very complicated, especially if both papers have merit.

@Buffy of course, it is all contingent on the papers. In such a situation I would personally err on the side of submitting a large paper. Often an editor will slice the papers for you (ie make the decision for you) and publish them back-to-back in the same issue. This is to improve readability. Again, there is nothing "wrong" with what the OP is doing, but there are also more universally accepted and rather "respected" ways to do it.

Over decades the scientists found parameter X is the answer for a problem in physics. more than 70 paper I have read showing such opinion. I have found that it is not.
When I submitted the first method I said it is not enough. Then I looked for the more analysis for proof that. Then I found the second methods and I submitted it to other journal.
This is the story of why I did two submissions.

I didn't mean more submission. I said that before just to give a simple answer. But I found you guys real experts and now I am telling the true story. I appreciate your wise answers.

It is natural to be very proud of solving a problem.
But in my experience, the method used to solve the problem, or even just the adaptation of an existing method to your setting, is often a more important result than the problem's solution on its own.
It's highly dependent on the field of course, and impossible for us to judge without reading your work, but it might very well be worth publishing two papers with a focus on the methods, rather than one paper with a focus on the problem's solution.

Thanks sir. This was what I mean. Also, when I put two methods with discussion it is almost 30 pages. No one wnts to read such long materials. I counted it was 8 figures and 6 tables. Thank you all. I got what I must.


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Navigating Ethical Dilemmas: Addressing Forced Authorship and Academic Misconduct in Doctoral Research
I am a doctoral student working in a research group with other students who are also my seniors. They are very diligent and have published some commendable papers. However, my advisor frequently includes students' names in various articles that we have never heard of, without notifying them in advance. These articles often pertain to research fields quite different from ours, and the students are listed as authors in lower positions (e.g., fifth author or further down). The students discover their names on these papers only when they receive submission emails and are left bewildered about their contributions, feeling very upset about the lack of prior notification. Often, the advisor only briefly informs us after the articles are published, saying something like, "I recently collaborated with a certain university, and you were listed as a co-author." Sometimes, the advisor doesn't mention it at all, as if it never happened. Once, when a senior questioned our advisor about this practice, the advisor responded, "Doing this will increase your citation count compared to many ordinary professors," leaving the student speechless.
From the advisor's perspective, this might be seen as a gesture of support and encouragement, but from the students' perspective, it violates academic ethics, and students who have already published good papers do not need to have their academic reputation tarnished by these questionable authorships. Yet, the students, in order to secure their doctoral degrees, are forced to accept this situation.
Unfortunately, I have encountered this situation as well. I received an email from a journal with the title and author list of a paper from a research group at another university, with me listed as the tenth author, my advisor as the twelfth author, and a professor from another university as the corresponding author. I had no prior knowledge of this collaboration between my research group and that university, nor of this paper's existence. I had been discussing my thermal simulation project with my advisor. Realizing that this was a "forced authorship" situation, I speculated that (1) it was indeed a case of "forced authorship," and (2) even though it was "forced authorship," I might not be entirely without contribution, as the paper's topic was related to thermal simulations. Therefore, I decided to remain silent and await an explanation from my advisor.
After several months of revisions, I received an email from the journal stating, "Your paper has been accepted. Please complete your personal information and review the final version of the paper." Upon reading the paper, I found no significant errors, and as I had suspected, the paper included thermal simulations. Additionally, in the "Author Contributions" section, my contribution was described as "writing revisions and reviewing the initial draft of the paper." Considering these points, I felt that my research experience contributed to the paper through my advisor’s work on its "reviewing and revising." Seeing this, I felt that my contribution was acknowledged, and I updated my personal information, including my Google account details. The paper was eventually published, and my advisor approached me, saying, "This is a collaborative work with another university, which is highly relevant to your work."
I thought the matter would be resolved smoothly, but as I continued my research, my understanding of academic ethics deepened. Years later, I realized that my involvement in the paper was minimal and that the authorship was likely a case of academic misconduct. However, this practice seems to be widespread in my research group. Since the paper has already been published, contacting the editor to retract the paper would directly damage my relationship with my advisor and disrupt the collaboration with the other university, potentially jeopardizing my academic career. Consulting my advisor would likely lead to vague explanations, and if he were a principled and serious researcher, such issues would not arise in the first place. Seeking his input would not yield any positive outcome.
Although this paper has no direct connection to my doctoral thesis and my authorship is towards the end, I am deeply concerned about how my acceptance of such authorship might affect the awarding of my doctoral degree. I worry that my degree could be revoked later due to this issue, which would undermine years of effort and severely impact my career.
Therefore, I seek advice on the following:
(1) How can I protect myself and avoid being accused of academic misconduct? I only have the email from the journal and my published papers in thermal simulation as evidence. My advisor has never discussed the authorship with me through social media or email, and he only mentioned it to me in person, which I have no record of.
(2) Will this issue affect my doctoral degree?
(3) How common is this behavior in academia, particularly in research groups, and is it considered academic misconduct?
(4) Should I report this to the university, even though I lack substantial evidence?

This post is similar to my earlier questions

Addressing the Impact of Unknown Authorship on PhD. Students’ Academic Reputation and Remedies

Ethical Concerns of Uninformed Authorship: A Case Study on Student Recognition by Supervisors

but about a concrete case and different timeline.

I have removed almost all meta-information from the question, since Q&A should stand for themselves and this one is already quite lengthy. Note that the timeline of the student knowing about their authorship here is different, so it's not a duplicate of the pervious questions.

Why do you think you could be accused of academic misconduct?

@Dr.Snoopy  From my own perspective, I did not participate in any part of the work, meaning I made no substantial contributions. Additionally, I was not informed before the submission, which violated my right to be informed. All of these actions breach academic ethics, and I believe I do not deserve to be listed as an author. Since these actions violate widely accepted academic ethics, I am concerned that I may be accused of academic misconduct.

The way I see it, these are not actions that you did, but that someone else did, so someone else could be accused of misconduct, but not you.

@Dr.Snoopy   Your points make sense. However, what makes me uneasy is that when I received the acceptance email for the paper, I followed the instructions and linked my academic accounts (Google Scholar or ORCID). To some extent, this felt like actively accepting the authorship. Anyway, thank you for your response!

From my perspective: you've now asked this same question 3 times, gotten the same range of answers on all three, and continue to argue with each in the comments. If you plan to ask until you get a certain answer you want, you could skip the process and just pretend someone gave that answer - it kind of defeats the purpose of asking.

@BryanKrause   As a newcomer, I’ve asked the same question three times in different ways, which is my mistake. I hadn’t figured out how to express my thoughts properly. Based on the responses I've received, I now understand everyone's views on the matter. This will be my final question. Regardless, I appreciate everyone’s answers and attention!

@Dr.Snoopy It would be an uphill battle to convince people you were added to an author list and you had no idea until the paper was published, at least if they're published in respectable journals. While not every journal requires author's consent, you should at least receive a submission email, as detailed, which is when it's your ethical responsibility to decline authorship.

What you describe is a very clear case of scientific misconduct (on behalf of your supervisor) and very likely a violation of the journal's policy on authorship. Whether and how you want to deal with it depends on your relationships with the supervisor and whether you are ready to face the consequences. I would start with politely asking the supervisor (in writing, e.g. e-mail) not to include you as co-author on papers to which you did not contribute. If that happens nevertheless, I would do two things: (1) inform the editors of the journal that your name was inserted without your consent and ask them to remove it; (2) ask your institution's ombudsman for an appointment and discuss the issue.

You are blowing this out of proportion.
In an ideal world, yes, you would have approached the group/your supervisor actively to contribute or to be removed from the author list, or ultimately be removed from the author list by the other collaborators for inactivity.
Academia and especially PhD studies do not happen in such an ideal world.
Students have to learn what the correct academic behaviour actually is, that is the entire point of doing a PhD. Professors and researchers do not always have the time to keep track about the precise contributions of over a dozen (!!!) collaborators. Advisors have to juggle research and helping their students.
Rules for authorship vary wildly between domains, and especially between individual versus collaborative research.
You might want to approach such situations differently going forward. But no one will seriously accuse you of academic misconduct, retract your doctoral degree, or take meaningful steps based on the available information.

Thank you very much for your response! The main issue is that I really didn’t contribute anything, and I had no idea this paper even existed before it was submitted. Getting credited as an author has made me quite anxious.

Rules for authorship vary wildly between domains, and especially between individual versus collaborative research.

I can't imagine a rule where you get authorship because your advisor possibly contributed. That's nonsense and hurts other scientists in other papers that actually contributed.

@Mihail There are domains in which support tasks also result in authorship (see e.g. the CERN collaborations), which appears to come close to the situation here. Whether it actually matches their situation I can’t say.


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Help with referencing a summarized data from multiple sources into one single reference
What would be the best way to reference the following case:
I have taken some reported financial figures from the annual reports ranging from 2017 to 2023 of 5 different companies. Using those financial figures I derived my own calculations and findings, which I want to include in my paper. The findings are divided into different ratios, where I plan to have a paragraph designed for each of the ratios.
That said, I also read that according to APA it is not allowed to include only one reference at the end of each paragraph as it is hard to understand which thoughts are from the author and which were taken from somewhere else.
Therefore, I am not sure how to include all those 5 companies and 6 years into a single reference, especially as I have to repeat the reference across multiple sentences. When generating the reference through Zotero it gives me this:

(Company A, 2019, p. X, 2020, p. X, 2021, p. X, 2022, p. X, 2023, p. X, 2023, p. X; Company B, 2019, p. X, 2020, p. X, 2021, p. X, 2022, p. X, 2023a, p. X, 2023b, p. X; Company C, 2018, p. X, 2019, p. X, 2020, p. X, 2021, p. X, 2022, p. X, 2023, p. X)

However, especially if I have to paste it on multiple places inside the paragraph it would make it hard for the reader and also rather unpleasant (my opinion). Therefore, I am curious if there might be a better way for me to reference the source without needing 3 lines in word for a single reference. Thank you in advance!
PS: Was thinking to remove the page number and just do Company A 2019-2023...., but was wondering as the annual report are 100+ pages it might not be a good idea as it will be hard to find the referenced numbers in them if the page is excluded.

This seems like a case where you have a hammer and you're trying to treat everything like a nail. Including that chunky three-line reference multiple times in a paragraph would indeed look terrible and be unhelpful to your readers (unless I'm checking your work I'm most interested in your findings), so it's worth taking a step back and see if there isn't a more suitable tool to use.
Here it seems you're not really taking ideas from the cited sources, but collecting numbers to form a data set that you then process within the article. Since you mention that "the findings are divided into different ratios", one possibility might be to create one or more tables with rows corresponding to company/year combinations and columns to different data and evaluated ratios. Put the references on the relevant rows within the table to make it clear where specific data originated (example). Then you can just cross-reference the table(s) from within your paragraphs. Relatedly, it can make sense to define your data set within a methods section along with the sources it was collected from, and then refer back to that data set in these paragraphs. Combining these two approaches is often ideal. Either way, the point would be that now you can write paragraphs discussing your findings (the computed ratios) without having to cite the sources for the numbers that went into the calculations over and over again.

Thank you very much for the detailed answer, I really appreciate it. I followed your instructions and included the references as you mentioned above.


text:
is being mentioned in acknowledgements section of a paper worth putting on a CV?
Recently, there was a paper that asked for both antibacterial and anti-adhesion assays against bacteria.  I contributed and performed all these tests but in the end, the other authors decided to omit me from the authors' list and put me in the acknowledgments section. They were not going to change their mind and I had only two options whether to have my name removed completely or remain in the acknowledgments.
I was wondering if it is a good idea to put this paper in my resume or not.

This question was already asked here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1112/should-i-include-a-publication-where-im-only-acknowledged-and-not-one-of-the-a?rq=1

I would not put a paper in the CV on which I am not a co-author. However, I would consider describing my contribution to that paper in something like a cover letter and briefly mention the acknowledgement as a confirmation that your statement is true. Being on the acknowledgments does not always imply an important achievement, so I would not mention it unless you have the possibility to summarize your contribution in writing.
Edit: Depending on your (academic) age, the fact that you've chosen to mention such a minor thing as being mentioned somewhere in the acknowledgments might be seen negatively by some, implying that you have no other achievements to mention. For an undergraduate or 1st-year PhD, this could be an achievement, but otherwise I would consider skipping it altogether or mentioning it only in passing, without much emphasis. If you already have a PhD or are nearing the end of your PhD, you will be expected to have your own publications against which you can be assessed.

thank u for the answer. i must say that im on my masters and ive got only 1 paper with my name on it, so that's why I asked this question.


text:
Can we stop looking at recommendation letters and rely purely on "objective" measurements during the admission process?
My question has different emphases from Why are recommendation letters highly relied upon?.
As we know, the letter of recommendations are heavily relied upon in the process of university/graduate school applications and job market. Sometimes it is considered the most important part of the application. Sometimes, if a referee wants to strongly recommend someone, they may even directly make a phone call to certain departments/professors.
However, as we know, the quality and importance of recommendation letters depends largely on the subjective opinions and the reputations of the referees. As a result, the system of recommendation letters sometimes encourages young scholars to spend more (and perhaps unnecessary) time using strategies to gain the favor of professional scholars (I believe there are clever ways for average students to "demonstrate" to the professors that they are strong...) or spend less time in communication to avoid bad opinions (if you can't show people that you are smart, then you'd better talk less and try not to show people that you are stupid).
Meanwhile, writing letters seems to be a heavy burden on professors. You might want to argue that this is part of their job, but shouldn't they be given more time for their research and teaching? I heard some professors write dozens of letters every year, which costs them a lot of time (excluding the time for communication with applicants).
My question is, is the letter of recommendation really an indispensable part of academic application processes? Can "objective" things like GPA (well, "transcripts" or "courses and grades" might be a more accurate measurement), test and competition scores, publications alone provide enough information to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of applicants?
Aside: I don't know much about the application of professional positions (postdoc and tenure-track positions). However, for university/graduate school applications, can we simply raise the difficulty of standard tests (for the information of those who think SAT and GRE general and even subject tests are too easy) to better differentiate between applicants? I heard that in China, PhD applicants need to take qualifying exams BEFORE being considered.

I think it is actually representative of the actual job market. Landing a job is not only a question of skill, but of having the right references or knowing the right people... Academia is not that different from the industry in that regard.

@BlaB You are right, but I think compared with industry, academia need more people who will focus on teaching and research instead of social networking whose main purpose (for some people) is to gain the extra "advantages" which don't have much to do with one's true academic capabilities.

I am sorry to disagree. I think academia need more people who are able to communicate more efficiently, network and create links with the industry. People in academia, sometimes especially in the hard sciences, tend to neglect soft skills a bit too much. The industrial reality (at least in science), requires a lot of soft skills. If you acquire those as a professor, you can more efficiently transmit them to your students.

@BlaB But I totally agree with what you said... We do need to "communicate more efficiently" with other scholars, but we should NOT need to worry too much about how to communicate with accomplished scholars well to gain their favor in order to get better opportunities.

After you have worked with, much less managed, some reasonable number of people, you will (or at least should) discover that human capacity and human performance can never be captured with your 'objective' measurements. There are other factors, including soft skills, that directly impact how well people perform. Personal recommendations will always be sought after, and recommendations from people you trust are worth their weight in gold out here in the real world.

For grad schools in particular, in some fields very few students will have publications, so that's out.  And at top schools, you may have a huge number of applicants who all have GPAs between 3.98 and 4.0, and GRE scores above the 95th percentile.  You cannot distinguish statistically between such applicants.  So mathematically, no, these objective measures are not sufficient.

As someone who was lucky enough to make it into a top-5 school in a relatively competitive field, I had a few talks with the admission committee afterwards and they explicitly mentioned that they trusted the letters much more than scores, as the comparability between universities was extremely hard. I was personally only asked about my one bad grade from my masters - as others mentioned, everyone who applies are pretty great, it is the other factor that matter it seems.

See the [help/dont-ask], which explains why questions like this ("What if ___ happened?") are off topic here.

(Your question "Is the letter of recommendation really an indispensable part of academic application processes? Can "objective" things like GPAS, test scores, publications alone provide enough information to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of applicants?", on the other hand, seems fine to me. I would vote to reopen this question if you removed all the stuff about "culture" and the "what if" stuff.)

@ff524 Thank you! I have edited the title. No sure if it is okay now. Please feel free to edit the wording of my question(as long as it doesn't change my meaning too much)

Beware of recommendations that include phrases like "You'll be lucky to get X to work for you".

Lately I have noticed that many post-doc applications for positions and for grants do not require any recc letters, not even the contact of 2-3 people. This is in Europe. So is it always that way?

Related: Intent behind Recommendation Letter requirement?

We don't have GPA in Europe.

@henning Interesting...but do you have transcripts showing grades for courses taken?

@TiWen Yes, but grades can barely be compared between different courses taken at one and the same university, let alone across countries. ECTS points only measure expected workload, not performance. There is just no reliable standardized measure.

It would be interesting to learn what you believe an "objective measurement" means, or maybe more to the point, what you believe it tells you. Interpretation is subjective too. And @jim, that's one of the classics!

The problem, in my experience in mathematics in the U.S., is that neither GPA nor GRE test/reflect what is of interest for graduate work in mathematics. So, for example, making the GRE more difficult wouldn't help anything. The point is that the modes of thought, the methodologies, the world views, that are successful for undergrads or course-based Master's students are really quite different from what is needed to do a PhD.
Of course, human beings seem to have an impulse to automate things, or make them formulaic, so that GPA and GRE have a tremendous appeal. The fact (in my observation over a few decades) that these are not good predictors of success in math grad school in the U.S. (after the first year or so) does not deter many people, who'd like things to be that simple.
That is, I think it is inconveniently the case that it is impossible to make "exams" that gauge what astute grad-program admissions committees want to know.
For postdocs and further faculty positions: to my perception, it is significantly more oppressive to have to impress journal editors and referees (who have other interests) than to impress relatively senior people in one's field. That is, the assumption that making a positive impression on senior people is a burden is missing the point. Sure, yes, it is a natural feeling, much like the reaction of teenagers to the "oppression" of their parents, but I think that senior professional academics are more competent in their roles than parents may be, statistically. No, that does not guarantee lack of bias.
As far as I understand it, in the U.S., the game is that one needs to make a good impression for a while, but, then, at a certain point, one has tenure, and, in mathematics, if one has not planned finances to depend on huge external income from grants, one can exercise one's own judgement.
The abstract-economic conflict is that there are far more people who'd like such situations than there are situations. How to decide? ...
EDIT: in light of the original questioner's comments below: the premise that grades reflect the seriousness of a student I think more reflects the assumption about what "serious" means. E.g., it is possible to very scrupulously follow instructions, and to pay careful attention to what will optimize one's grade, without caring at all about the subject of a course. And, in many math courses, the "assigned problems" (from traditional textbooks) are substantially a caricature of what the subject truly is. Often, artificial makework, to fulfill the mythical need for "lots of problems". So I am not particularly interested in performance in regard to such.
There is also the implicit premise that "mathematics is obviously objective". In a certain sense, this is relatively true, but the question really should be about good mathematics. That is, (logical) correctness is not the highest virtue, by any means. And not all details are of equal significance, by far.
So, to my mind, capacity to see a larger picture and infer wise actions from it is a very important thing to cultivate, for professional mathematicians. The basic stuff, in undergrad and beginning grad courses (in the U.S.) is so standard that there are many sources, and anyone who's interested can learn it from those sources. In particular, I tell my students to not over-invest in drilling themselves on things that in real life are easy look-ups. Rather, the general "physical" sensibility and context of questions is what one needs to reflect upon... not standard stuff. Knowing what is standard and what is not, not the power to reproduce it on command, is the desired skill.
And, so, again, performance in usual coursework or GRE and such really tells nothing about the future sensibilities of a student. Letters from astute mentors/advisors have a chance to do so.

Which raises the question: What useful predictive information is contained in recommendation letters? And is it predictive of anything besides conformity to prejudices about who should be a mathematician, i.e., self-replication?

@ElizabethHenning, yes, of course, degenerate letters of recommendation may fail to reflect anything more than conformity... "Looks like a mathematician", etc. But GRE and GPA most often test for conformity in certain peculiar ways, too. At the best moments, letters of recommendation can actually circumvent pressures to conform, and biases of various sorts.

It might be worth spending some time on whether or not some hypothetical measure could be made that would more objectively encapsulate the relevant information. That GPA and/or the GRE fail to do so is a good point, but the question to me seems more speculative than that, not necessarily focusing on existing measures. (Personally, I would guess that the answer is no, we cannot capture that information in an objective way in which case the problems with recommendation letters listed in the question—which I mostly agree with—doesn’t matter because we have nothing better.)

As in my comment below: In Nature, vol 510, 12 June 2014, pp 303-4, Casey Miller and Keivan Stassen wrote a column "a test that fails", with many stats about the GRE.

@paulgarrett GREs/GPAs are irrelevant to my point, which is that a "good" letter makes comparisons to other students who have gone on to succeed in grad school, possibly implicitly including the letter writer himself. And that is the very definition of self-replication, unless there are other independent characteristics which have predictive validity. If so, what are they?

@ElizabethHenning, yes, indeed, if all that a letter does is make comparisons to other students, or to the letter writer, it may perpetuate stereotypes, etc. And, yes, this is common. But there is also the possibility to predict success for a not-stereotypical person due to their talent for, and interest in, mathematics, due to those traits. In fact, for people from unfortunate situations, fighting through them and still having an inexplicable interest in mathematics is a very strong positive signal. Much better than comfortable, coddled kids just continuing their undergrad major. And so on...

@ElizabethHenning: your argument seems to prove more than it means to. You seem to complain that letters that compare students to existing mathematicians might just be measuring similarity to this existing population. But surely the greatest commonality among successful mathematicians must be "manages to turn vague musings into original questions and eventually into theorems", not anything like "tall white man" or "self-taught child prodigy". (It seems you're in math, so you must know how much rarer the former is, and how orthogonal to other things!) So why would filtering for that be bad?

I don't understand why grades and test scores(note that I am not restricting to GRE only) fail to reflect "the modes of thought, the methodologies, the world views". IMHO, years of training in math courses greatly shaped my the modes of thought by improving my math maturity, and the capability of solving math problems in undergraduate or beginning graduate courses is the foundation of doing any serious research in math---grades are a good indicator of how well one is preparing for the research in the future. In fact, many referees require students to show them transcripts.

Moreover, my experience tells me when two students have the same grades. The one who keeps a low profile and talk less(ask less stupid questions) usually has a stronger capability of solving math problems while the one who interacts with the professors more often may be more likely to get stronger recommendation letters. I think the former will be more likely to solve open problems and conjectures while the latter may be the one who will organize more conferences and seminars. Can you tell who will become a better mathematician from their recommendation letters?

Well, grades don't have much to do with one's "world views"(except for one's ambition and seriousness). However, I don't see how "the world views" are relevant to one's success in graduate schools for STEM majors---Idealists, realists and cynics can all become very successful scientists.

@TomChurch Obviously if there is a substantial history of actual theorems, then there's no need for reference letters. The letters are a proxy for theorems, or more precisely, they're someone's opinion about some presumptive proxy which is supposed to be predictive of producing theorems. Although Paul Garrett's answer is excellent, he still says only that a good letter indicates some je ne sais quoi. So I'm very skeptical that these proxies actually identify future theorem-proving ability rather than conformity to the extreme homogeneity* of mathematical culture. [*Not up for debate.]

@ElizabethHenning, yes, indeed, the ol' je-ne-sais-quoi can go in bad ways as well as good, and, yes, visibly, is often about conformity. Yes, letters are a proxy for something else, namely, theorem-proving, understanding, and care for the subject. The operational problem in the U.S., in math, is that there is typically little substantive theorem-proving prior to grad school. Typical REUs are fun and inspiring but not substantive. So how to predict future theorem-proving from a pseudo-objectively "null" past record? How to predict how an immature person will grow up? Tricky.

@ElizabethHenning I totally agree that "does this candidate remind me of myself at their age" can be a dominant undercurrent in reference letters, but I suspect the same exact bias, baked into societal prejudices and access to insider know-how, applies to "quantitative" measures as well (cfr. gender bias in citation metrics, the point you make below about Putnam, etc.), with the dangerous illusion that the number is intrinsically more objective and therefore fair. I suspect strong, personal recommendation letters are actually the only route into a post for some non-traditional applicants.

@Guest Possibly, but one advantage of some quantitative metrics is that we have data about how they are biased, so it's possible to make adjustments for that. Although I suppose this might also be applied to reference letters, eg if a woman is described as "hard-working," the reader could take that as equivalent to a man being described as "talented."

You are correct that the system of letters of recommendation is pretty universally disliked, by the people who need letters, by the people who write letters, and by the people who read the letters.
But the problem is that nobody has come up with a significantly better system. In particular, let me outline a few of the things that don't work:

We know, from experience and research, that undergraduates' GRE and GPA scores are poor indicators of success as a graduate student: There appears to be little correlation between GRE scores and the probability that a student succeeds in a graduate program. Rather, personal and interpersonal skills seem to be important determinants whether students succeed in graduate school. There do not seem to be other quantitative measures a selection committee can rely on other than personal references.

When applying for postdoc positions and starting tenure track positions, applicants may have 1-3 and 5-15 publications, respectively. There are typically no grants or awards at this level, so publications are the only quantitative measure available. But publications are difficult to assess quantitatively: What you really want is an applicant's ability level, but what you get in a list of publications is a melange that also includes the abilities of coauthors, the question of where the papers were published (which may not always have been the best location), your inability to assess whether the best work of the applicant may still be stuck in preparation or peer review, or whether an applicant does great work but writes so poorly that their manuscripts are too often rejected (something that they may still learn, or that could be rectified with appropriate mentoring and/or coauthors). There is of course also the issue that you're going to have someone as your colleague for the next 30 years, so you want to filter out the jackasses who don't get along with folks. In other words, there are again no good quantitative measures that would assess the qualities you are looking for in applicants.

The only place where I would think that letters of recommendations are pretty pointless is for hires of people at the senior level -- say, ten or more years after their first faculty positions. By that time, there is a sufficiently long track record of publications, citations, grants, speaking invitations, etc, that one can form an objective picture of a candidate from a CV alone. These people are also typically known in their communities (and if they are not, then that's a sign as well).
For all other cases, however, I think we just don't have good "objective" measures to determine whether an applicant for anything is good or not, and so we rely on letters of recommendation.

"We know, from experience and research, that undergraduates' GRE and GPA scores are poor indicators of success as a graduate student". Thats rather interesting. Do you have a source at hand?

@Polygnome, having been involved with graduate admissions for 35 years, and occasionally as director of grad studies in math, I've observed about 700 grad students' trajectories, and I'd agree that GRE is not a good predictor, nor undergrad GPA. They simply measure different things than what is needed for graduate studies...

@paulgarrett I do not seriously question that this is true. its something common sense dictates. Common sense however is often not an argument. that why is asked for some more sources instead of "some stranger on the web told me".

@Polygnome -- I don't recall the exact reference, but here are a number of studies: https://www.google.com/search?q=predictiveness+of+gre+for+graduate+school+success&oq=predictiveness+of+gre+for+graduate+school+success&aqs=chrome..69i57.10277j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

@WolfgangBangerth You posting such links is beyond rude. If you know some good, usable sources, I'm very welcome. Otherwise its quite hard sometimes to vet authors of blog articles and even some journals without being from the field.Google puts out a lot of garbage if you just know how to play the SEO game.

In Nature, vol 510, 12 June 2014, pp 303-4, Casey Miller and Keivan Stassen wrote a column "a test that fails", with many stats about the GRE.

@WolfgangBangerth well other countries have better systems. USA is pretty unusual in having recommendation letters.

@Polygnome -- I didn't mean to be rude. I just didn't remember the exact location where I read things, did a google search, and found that the first few hits all seemed to be relevant. I didn't intend to suggest that you could have done the google search yourself.

@Stumbler -- other countries have different systems. But do you have evidence that their system is better?

@WolfgangBangerth objectivity is objectively better than subjectivity. Systems which are based upon objectivity (anonymity, level playing field for all competitors, lack of bias, fair competition, etc) could not include recommendation letters. Recommendation letters are an inherently subjective method of evaluation.

@Stumbler: But that doesn't answer the question whether there is a better system. As I have pointed out in my answer, essentially all quantitative measures we have are not particularly correlated with the qualities one looks for in an applicant. In other words, "quantitative" is not equal to "objective". If all you have is noise, a letter that tries to be objective but may be tainted by subjectivity may be the best you have.

@WolfgangBangerth official country-wide examinations (le bac, A levels, etc) are certainly an imperfect means of measuring aptitude, but the results that they produce cannot simply be categorised as noise. If there is an aptitude that is in demand, it makes sense to provide an examination to examine a candidate's proficiency in that skill/talent. A recommendation letter can only be a useful measure if the writer has no stake in the outcome and doesn't know the candidate personally, which is (I think) never the case.

@Stumbler: We could go around this for a long time, but maybe this is not the forum for this. I don't disagree with you. It would of course be nice if there was a test that measures the aptitude that is in demand. I entirely agree with this. It's just that there doesn't seem to be such a test (for reasons not important to discussions, including "for reasons not clear to any of us"), and so pragmatically we don't know what to substitute letters of recommendation by. As I stated at the top of my answer, we all wished there was a better system.

A brief extra word on top of Wolfgang Bangerth's and paul garrett's excellent answers:
1) Here's a few references as a starting point for discussions of success in graduate school, and admissions:
a) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3923635/
b) https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0166742
c) https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0169121
2) The best prediction of future research success is past research success. However, especially for undergraduate research, the "objective" lines on a CV are very noisy measurements. This is partially because there are fewer publications, but more because how credit is given to students (especially undergrad researchers) is widely variable. Examples: if you are 5th author, does that mean you washed bottles or you proposed and did a side experiment that got bundled into a different paper? If you are first author of a paper, did you do the experimental design and writing, or just the data collection?
Letters are not just a pile of flattery - they can describe what the student actually did, how much insight they provided to a project, etc. This part is, in fact, basically the only detailed description of what an undergraduate has actually accomplished themselves in doing research. So it's not surprising that they are useful.
[I'm going to put one minor caveat here. There may be some signs that someone will be successful using an objective test in Mathematics. The strongest example I can think of is the Putnam exam. However, even there, there is a great deal of skepticism that it predicts research ability - since one is problem solving on the six hour scale and the other on the six month scale. See this answer: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/15848/what-to-look-for-in-applicants-to-graduate-programs-in-mathematics
More importantly, though strong results are a good sign, weak results may not be a bad one - I have been told there are successful math professors who received zeros on the exam.]

I would be stunned if Putnam or other math contests have any independent predictive validity whatsoever. In particular, they are heavily biased towards non-URM men from professional-class (or at least educationally savvy) families.

Hm. This is an interesting point - certainly the demographics of the winning US teams have been biased in that way - but I'm not sure if it's more or less than the usual math grad student population. Re: independence - this is suggesting Putnam basically correlates w/past experience and math enthusiasm? Possibly!

I think Putnam probably provides absolutely no information about interest or talent for mathematical research that wouldn't be available in other indicators. So after controlling for these other indicators, a high Putnam score doesn't tell you anything except that someone is a non-URM man, who are many times more likely to have the opportunities necessary to achieve a high Putnam score.

I suspect that being genuinely the close to the best at anything is independently predictive of success.  So I'd be really surprised if say the Putnam top 10 weren't strongly predictive of research success (and I think the lists at the very top bear this out).  That said, I'm not sure whether that'd be more predictive of research success than say a strong math student who'd also been a professional musician or an olympic athlete or a top 10 crossword person.

Here are some things that reference letters provide that cannot be determined from a applicant's "statistics" (i.e. grades, number of publications,  etc.) that would play an important role in their graduate admissions.
Reference letters speak to an applicant's character
In my country (Canada) it is generally expected that for a graduate degree you have informally worked out who your supervisor will be before you complete the grad school application. If you can't find a professor willing to supervise you, you generally won't be accepted.
For a professor, accepting a new student is essentially selecting a new colleague. The student is someone that the professor will have to work with for at least several years, so it is important to have some idea beforehand what kind of person the applicant is, and whether they will be a good fit for your research group. Reference letters from previous supervisors/professors/employers can tell the professor whether the person is reliable, courteous, a good team player, a good communicator, etc. Just because someone is brilliant on paper doesn't mean you would enjoy working with them.
Reference letters can provide context for an applicant's "statistics"
Sometimes, through no fault of their own, a person will have a particularly bad year. Personal tragedy, health issues, etc. can all play a role in reducing an applicant's appearance on paper by affecting the number of publications that they could produce or negatively impacting their grades. On the other hand, a person might have experienced one of the above setbacks and was still able to produce impressive statistics. A good reference letter can frame the applicant's "statistics" in a different light for the person reviewing the application.
Side-note: gain respect, not favour
In my experience it is not necessary to come up with "strategies" to "gain the favour" of respected academics. What you want is respect, not favour. The difference is very meaningful, and will be clear to anyone reading your reference letters. The favour of a narcissist (yeah, they exist in any field) can be gained by giving them compliments, but narcissists aren't good referees. You can gain a person's favour by running errands for them or giving them gifts, but again, they won't be a useful reference because they won't really know you by the qualities that make you a good applicant. Gaining respect is more challenging and it will vary from person to person. Some people respect confidence, some respect humility, some respect raw talent, etc. Everyone respects hard work (everyone worth your time anyway). Gaining respect isn't a game where you need to come up with "strategies".

I agree; the system works best when both objective measures (which are less prone to bias) and subjective measures (like reference letters, which can address the "intangibles") are used in tandem.

"Reference letters speak to an applicant's character": I don't think so: reference letters give the writer's perception of the applicant character, which can be heavily biased by the writer's character.

@MassimoOrtolano While I agree that you will tend to see positive bias in reference letters (the applicant would be silly to pick someone who has a negative opinion of them), a good reference letter provides evidence for the applicants qualities and goes into specifics. When it comes to "character" there really aren't any solid objective measures, which is why I said in my answer that the letter "speaks to" (provides evidence for) the applicant's character. It is up to the reader to judge the objectiveness of the letter and determine how much weight they want to put on it.

These are actually several  questions IMO:

Can we stop looking at recommendation letters [which are subjective and biased?]

Not entirely, but certainly their weight can and often is smaller than you seem to believe is universal.

Is the letter of recommendation really an indispensable part of academic application processes?

Nope. I was accepted to my current post-doc in the Netherlands with no recommendation letter. I was asked to provide references in the form of contact details though. And this way is not entirely uncommon (but I have no statistics).

My question is, Can "objective" things like GPAs, test scores, publications alone provide enough information to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of applicants?

Grade point averages, in my opinion, are definitely not to be relied on heavily - not because of their (better) objectivity, but because they:

Measure something which is not as well-correlated with what you actually want to be assessing
Have non-subjective biases due to institute grading culture, country of origin, etc.
Don't cover people whose background is unusual and who might want to get into research

but for screening the non-exceptional cases, I guess some minimum GPA requirement could be used.
As for relying on publications - either you rely on numbers of publications, which is a bad measure IMHO for multiple reasons which I won't expand on here, or you have to actually look at the contents of the publications, which is probably much better but much more time-consuming.
Bottom line: IMO you can decrease the reliance on recommendation letters but you'll "pay" with an increased effect of other problems and issues.

It seems most of the answers talk in support of letter of recommendations. I'll put in my views which are against it. It also seems to me that most people do not have alternatives to letter of recommendations, so I'm planning to present some idea I had through my experience with grad school applications.
Let me make one thing clear, I don't agree with the idea that GRE or GPA has good correlation with grad school success. Some studies which are in alignment with my argument are given below:

The Limitations of the GRE in Predicting Success in Biomedical Graduate School - Moneta-Koehler et al.
Multi-institutional study of GRE scores as predictors of STEM PhD degree completion: GRE gets a low mark - Petersen et al.

Of course there are more. I'll also provide one study that has a different take on this:

Can the GRE predict valued outcomes? Dropout and writing skill - Bridgeman et al.

I may add more studies if asked but these will suffice for talking about GRE goes into a tangent.
The primary issue with letter of recommendation is with the recommender and their biases. The country I'm from, finding recommender who's willing to give you a decent letter of recommendation is more difficult that clearing a competitive/standardized test. For example a lot of the senior faculty have an innate picture of what they perceived to be a worthy candidate. And whether you like it or not human biases cannot be removed. On top of that for a student from a rural college it is extremely difficult to network with a professor and impress them enough to get a recommendation letter out of them. A lot of the professors don't reply to emails, a lot of them don't understand the perspectives and struggles of individual students. You can sweep it under the rug saying that they are busy or that one has to be pragmatic about these issues, but then at the end of the day the one who's going to suffer is the student. There are other issues like the affiliation of the recommender. A more prestigious and elite affiliation can have huge impacts on the admission results or at least the notion of how the candidate's worth is seen. As an example from my personal experience, a friend of mine recieved his recommendations from foreign faculties even though they barely knew him and his work. It fetched him admission in some of the top grad programs in Europe. Another friend who had a much better research portfolio was struggling to get admission in Europe and his recommenders were more grounded. I had worked with both of the candidates and I know their potential. I also agree there are many more factors at play here but you have to acknowledge the blatant abuse of the system. Is that not wrong? On top of that it is often the case that when the recommender knows that the student is going to see the letter that they are more lenient while if the student cannot see the letter, they will inevitably be more critical. Some of my arguments are in alignment with the studies:

The Use of Reference Reports in Personnel Selection: A Review and Evaluation - Muchinsky.
Predicting Performance with Letters of Recommendation - Aamodt et al.

In fact there are plenty of issues discussed in these that I haven't even touched upon. The second study here has suggests improvements over the traditional letter of recommendation. My suggestion however is to completely get rid of the recommendation system. Instead I propose the following:

Public Peer Review: Grad school applicants should have a public profile that can be monitored or checked. As an example consider stackexchange. A student who's applying to work on, say, quantum field theory should have a stackexchange portfolio where they could answer non-textbook questions regarding the subject in sufficient detail. It is similar to how some industrial applications look for ranks in coding competitions.
Writing Assignments: Instead of simply relying of GRE the candidate can be given a few months to submit a graduate level essay/research article on a basket of topics pertaining to the subject of interest.
CV and SOP: Where their research experience and role should be emphasized and possible publications should be mentioned.
Interview: Where the candidate should be asked question from their writing assignment and from their research experience. The interview can be as grilling as possible to ascertain that the candidate actually knows what they have written.

As a plagiarism/outsourcing check, extremely non trivial assignment topics have to be given, where only publication (or at least high) quality essays/articles should be entertained.
Another possible alternative is to reduce the number of recommendation from 3 to 2 or 1 and then putting less emphasis on the recommendation letter and more on the interview.

Cv and SOP are already used (more weighted than rec letters in my experience). In 2, there will be lots of cheating and inequalities of how much help is received. For 4, why would a short interview be better indicator than working with the person for months and giving a recommendation? Seems likely to select for good interviewers, not good students. For 1, this is interesting… seems like working on problems and having results objectively scored is a good goal. Seems like a test or a course! So my instinct is that this would have the exact same issues as the GRE and GPA.

In my experience for any advance topic the only accessible sources are faculties, post docs and PhD candidates from whom the student can ask for help. And a lot of the things in academia simply runs on trust. For example can you verify every point in a CV? Or can you verify everything written in the SOP? How about verifying what's written in the LOR? Or what contribution one had in a publication? I acknowledge that there will be cheating for point 2, but I also believe that if the topic is sufficiently sophisticated there's a possibility that one can reduce cheating. The rest is on interview.

In the interview the student's actual contribution can be probed very deeply. We also need to understand that at the end of the day if the student can comprehend to the required depth the essay in question for the PhD specialization, it should matter less that if he contributed alone to it or got inspired from somewhere else.

Point 1 is not even remotely similar to GPA or GRE where the candidate is judged on basic questions or on standard coursework. In public peer review they have to answer complicated questions where the analysis takes time to develop all the while being judged by the moderators and specialists all over the world on their solution on a given problem. Focus can be put more on what questions are answered and how non trivial the analysis is. A GRE or simple undergrad level question for example is not even entertained in physics stackexchange.

Finally these are just a few of my suggestions put in place to counter the claim that no alternative exists. Of course these are not perfect but I would say many more alternatives can be formulated if we truly care to revamp the system.

The problem becomes clearer when you compare what someone sifting students will probably be looking for.
At postgraduate level, you want to know what their prospects are at research. But many graduates haven't done formal research as such, and is really hard to design a grade system to rate their prospects as a future researcher.
They will also have to move much more to self development and be able to collaborate with others _- the grade system might rate how much they know, but not what kind of person they are like to work with.
Postgrads often do some level of teaching in the field. In an office they might mentor or supervise others (in some cases). Again, grades don't really tell the recruiter how they are likely to be as a person (not just in terms of technical knowledge) at this.
For similar reasons a whole bunch of other skills that are fundamental to deciding who to accept, just cannot be assessed on grading, and even assessing by interview performance is often missing key information.
The same goes for commercial as well as research roles - businesses will want to reduce risks of a problem, and the information let's them improve their chances. So a bias favouring candidates with such information will often exist.
The human perspective, by someone else, independent, who knows the person, is still extremely valuable and key to many decisions of this kind.

The PageRank algorithm ranks a page as more authoritative if many pages link to it, and a page as more relevant if an authoritative page links to it.
On Stackexchange, users earn a reputation from the quality of their answers, as conferred by fellow users, which lends weight to their subsequent answers.
In academia, professors earn respect by the quality of their work, and the testimony of a respected expert in the field transfers respect onto whoever they recommend.
I think it's just human nature to be swayed by anecdotal arguments from authority more than statistical ones.  To wit, an anecdote: I've submitted recommendations to a system where I had to check boxes for how unique an individual was in several criteria.  The levels of uniqueness are based on how frequently I have encountered students at their level ("top 10% each year," or "top 2 or 3 in my career", etc).  The criteria are things like "oral communication," "independent thinking," "personal responsibility", "leadership", etc.  This could result in some statistical measure of the quality of an applicant.
I hate these matrices!  I might have an opinion on a few of the criteria, but on others I really couldn't say.  And I've taught maybe 5000 students in my career; asking me to arrange them in increasing order of ability makes me tired just thinking about it.  So I'd much rather upload a letter, in which I give quantitative data on the student's performance, and personal qualities which show aptitude for whatever they're applying to.

This is an interesting perspective - there can be an unjustified illusion of precision in "objective" quantitative values, which I guess simplifies the selection committee's job (and/or provides a CYA justification for their decisions).


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"other spoken languages" in graduate applications
I am noticing that many graduate applications require a "primary spoken language" and "other spoken language".
For the "other spoken language", do they mean you must be proficient in writing, speaking, and reading? What if you can only do one (and you may not even be great at it...)? Does that count?
EDIT What if I do not know any of the jargons used in my study in that language?

I guess it asks for what other languages you can speak

Well for one thing, I assume if the university's language of instruction isn't somewhere on at least one of the lists, that's a quick rejection.

In many forms I saw this question followed by "Choose your level of proficiency" with the options ranging from "can translate with a dictionary" to "fluent". I surmise that even if a formal request like that is absent in your application form, you still can list all languages you know to some reasonable extent and put your estimate of your current level in parentheses after each. This will be both honest and comprehensive.

@Nate Not necessarily. If we have a good applicant who doesn't speak English reasonably well, he is just obliged to take the ESL (English as a second language) courses for a year or so and cannot hold a TA position before completing them. Other universities may have different policies, of course.

The application to my program explicitly asks candidates to list the language the foreign languages they know, as well as identify their skills in speaking, writing, and reading those languages on a poor/fair/good/very good/excellent basis. We also ask them to identify how long they've been learning the language. (The disconnect between how people evaluate themselves—particularly in writing—and the quality of their written statements of purpose is at times quite jarring, as you can imagine.)
However, I'd say that the purposes of such questions are the same: to see how well you are able to communicate in languages other than your "native tongue," or to see how proficient you are in the working language of the program, if you're attending an international program.
If they only ask about speaking, then they only want to know about speaking and oral comprehension; writing and reading don't enter into the equation. The same is true if they ask about "reading knowledge" of a language: if you can read it, they're not necessarily concerned about your ability to speak it. Requiring reading knowledge used to be the case, and often still is, in fields such as mathematics and chemistry, where much of the "classic" literature in the fields were in languages such as French, German, and Russian. Therefore, the ability to be able to read and understand papers in at least one of those languages was considered a necessary skill for doctoral students to acquire.

If they ask about "spoken" languages then it is about speaking, not about writing and reading.
This should not be a surprise depending on the area of research you are studying. It could impact those you will be working with or it could involve your research subjects. For example, if you want to study cross-cultural team dynamics specifically between fracophones and anglophones and you only speak English and you cannot communicate at all in French, then you are going to have some difficulty with your research.
If they do not ask you to qualify your speaking ability, then do not worry about it. If they do, then answer appropriately.
So, in short, yes, if you can speak one other language even if not well, it does count.
As a side note, I know plenty of people who speak zero other languages.

Hmmm... Isn't the meaning of the standard phrase "Do you speak English?" just "Is there any hope I can communicate with you using English?" I wouldn't take the word "spoken" so literally here. However, you may be right and I may be wrong.

How fluent should I be in that language? What if I don't know the jargons used in my study in that language?

@sidht I would hope they would include a way for you rate your level of proficiency but if they don't then I would say if you could carry on even a basic conversation I would include it. However, if they ask you to rank it (basic, intermediate, advanced, fluent, native) then use their ranking system.

@fedja, I agree on the meaning of the phrase, but I don't take the meaning in the original question the same way - I read "spoken" literally here.

@Chris H Certainly. That's why my last sentence is there. :-)


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Is it possible to ask offers of admission to extend the deadline?
I was offered an admission of offer (math) today and I found out that I have till Feb 15th to accept the offer. Most schools in my country (Canada) actually send out offers during Feb, and there is a low probability that I will get an offer then, is it okay to ask schools to extend the offer date?
Note I am Canadian. Schools in Canada don't generally give out scholarships until NSERC hands out theirs. My school gives entrance scholarships after you get NSERC, in which case, they announce it in March, wayyy past the deadline.

Yes, it's definitely okay to ask.  They're certainly not going to rescind the offer because you ask for more time.  Depending on the school, their applicant pool, how bad they want you, and (probably) how rigid their administrative structure is, they may grant or refuse your request.
You should, of course, word your request very politely and recognize that they have the right to say "no".

How about something like ""Dear [Name of Grad coordinator]",
I was recently fortunate enough to receive an offer of admission from University of X and I have till [date] to give my answer, I am wondering if the deadline for the offer could be extended please?
Thank you for reading"

If they ask, is it a bad idea to tell them that "because I want to see what other schools' responses'

I would just tell them that you need time to consider all your options.

To pick up on David's answer -- UK (and the Commonwealth legacy counties like ANZ) have zero administrative wiggle room. US admission committees may be more lenient (I was asked once by our grad admissions director if I knew of any good applicants that they could get a couple of weeks past the deadline), but you need to have a strong case to have any leverage in deadline extension negotiations -- i.e., to be sure you are on the top of their pool (e.g., offered a good competitive scholarship). If you are not, you will hardly get your date extended. In most programs, there are dozens of applicants with a continuum of qualifications and a handful of places to offer, so if you can't commit to taking the spot, it is way too easy for the admissions committee to extend the offer to the next person in line. If you think you have a low probability in your own country, where your credentials are easier to evaluate than in a foreign country, you should seriously consider accepting with gratitude.

I am from Canada and the deadline for the application is supposed to be Feb 1st. The school I go to only gives their internal scholarships after NSERC gives me one (which they don't reveal until March, past the offer deadline). I don't think my application was stellar, but this was a top program in my country.

I am Canadian by the way

To be clear, are you saying that the applicant may lose the offer just by asking for an extension?  Or do you mean that he may lose the offer if he doesn't accept by the deadline?  I think the latter is obviously true, but your answer seems to imply the former, which is confusing (unless that's what you meant).


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How to reference confidential data in reference list
I'm writing my BA thesis in computer science at a larger company and need to reference a confidential statistics report that has been made available to me in my reference list.
So my question is, how does one normally cite a confidential source? I assume you would somehow include the contact details of someone at the company with access to the material?
I'm using the Vancouver reference style by the way. Cheers!
Edit: I should clarify that the confidential "report" that was made available to me really isn't a report, but rather just raw data. It doesn't have an author or even a title, only site visitor statistics, thereby my confusion on how to reference it.

Before you do anything with the confidential data, you should have cleared its use with the company in question. Giving away the data in any form without their express permission could get you into a lot of trouble.
That said, if the report containing the data is a internal company technical report, it should be cited as such in a bibliography. This provides enough information for a person to track it down, although you may want to state that it is not available to the general public.

Thanks, that's what I thought. How would the actual reference list element look though, could you give me an example?

In journals I would submit to, it would probably be something like: "Author. Technical Report No. XX-YYYY. City: Company, Year." Don't know the Vancouver style, so you'd have to adapt it to that format.

It doesn't really have a report number or even an author, it's just raw data, see my edit. I apologise for not being clear from the beginning. Any ideas?

Well, now it becomes the dreaded "Personal Communication." You cite the sender, and the date of the communication. Obviously, someone might ask for this, in which case you will need to redact the data, but show that the correspondence took place. (Unless you can't even do that—in which case that data probably shouldn't be in the thesis in the first place!)

Thanks, this is a great help. The work I'm doing is in web optimisation and about finding ways to optimise the company's web site. The data was given me in a personal meeting and was a csv file detailing site statistics, which  I use to decide in which browsers to test the optimisations. I'm not allowed to directly quote the data in the thesis, but instead make statemenets like "IE9, Firefox and Chrome are the three most common browsers used to access the site and therefore the ones that will be tested". So what information do I give in the references, the person in question's name and email?

Normally, it's just the name of the individual and the date of the communication. But that depends on the bibliography style.

It may be best to just cite the source as if it were any other reference, then include in your acknowledgements and/or a footnote more details on how you acquired the data and who to contact if it is indeed available to others.

I have two answers to this.
Once, as a researcher, I had the pleasure to use some unpublished data in my forecast. (My paper was about the forecast method itself.) I wrote something along 42. John Doe. In private communication. 1899, also citing a report that was partially based on the same data. John Doe was the person, who gave me the data. (Thanks, "John"!)
On the other hand, as a supervisor to some BSc-theses that are written at commercial companies, the students are conflicted with internal data all the time. It is hard to cite internal data, esp. in a public thesis. The current way of doing it is to perform an "expert interview". You talk with some higher-ups at the company, they provide you both with data and with interpretations of the data.
Then you put the final interview in the appendix of the thesis, it is the primary information source, to which you can refer in other parts of your thesis.


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Editor reviews paper directly
Is it possible for an editor to review the paper directly without inviting another reviewer if the editor feels familiar with the content studied in the paper?

Certainly it happens. Why the question?

@Buffy Since the status of my paper has been "with editor" for quite long time, I suspect that the editor is reviewing the paper directly.

@BenLinowitz Thank you for your suggestion.

Depending on the rules of a given journal, an editor could take on the review task themselves or not. Some will permit it and so some editors will also review. Most will want some independent advice, I think.
I also think that editors are most likely to take on the obvious and simple cases, however. So a long delay is most likely (not necessarily) something else.
There are a lot of reasons for any delay. This could be all sorts of things. The preferred reviewer might be overloaded at the moment. The editor might have been having a hard time finding appropriate reviewers. There might have been fast reviews and it bounced back quickly but the editor hasn't made a decision. The editor may not have found a "suitable" slot for the paper and is holding off sending acceptance. There may be a negative review and the editor is seeking clarification. Lots of possibilities.
And "quite long time" feels different to you than it does to the editor. It can be frustrating. Either ask for a status update or be patient. But "weeks" is not very long. For some journals "months" isn't excessive.

Yes, the editor can review a paper directly without inviting another reviewer. It's possible journal policies can require at least two reviewers, in which case the editor would have to get a second reviewer; however it's also possible the editor can ignore this policy if they feel it's justified.
To answer the situation in your comment: "With editor" doesn't mean the editor is reviewing the paper. In my experience it's much more common the editor is simply not very active (or very busy) and isn't inviting reviewers. If it's been a long time I would suggest asking for a status update.


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Is there a term for completing graduation and post-graduation degree from the same college?
I have done my graduation from a college in India and I am pursuing my M. Tech from the same college. When I get my degree will I be a "double alumnus" of the institution? Or is the term something else? Please help.

Still only alumnus, it does not stack.

A less-PC, colourful term also used is "academic incest."


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What is the limit for needs for citations when it comes to well known facts?
I am aware that this question is quite broad, but I am curious about what the limits are here. Probably the answer is a "It depends", but I am still eager to hear what other people thing about this.
I have recently started to write my final thesis. In the section I am currently writing I discuss a number of file formats provided by Autodesk, a company in the CAD sector. I am including a related factoid about Adobe, another company, because their business behaviour is very similar to the behaviour of Autodesk.
This is the segment of text that I am concerned about:

In our case we would need to use the NWD format, that does not only save references to other model files, but also stores geometry data \cite{NWF_BaseInformation}. Here again we find a repeating pattern: The usage of the format itself it bound to a license, but viewing and reviewing the files is available easily. This was already seen in \ref{sec:dwfdwfx}. This repeating pattern is an indicator that structures like this are part of the business model of Autodesk. Similar structures are found across the industry with Adobe being well known for having very similar approaches concerning Adobe Acrobat Pro and the Adobe Acrobat Reader when it comes to PDF files.

The question is: What can I assume the reader of my thesis already knows? The difference between Adobe Pro and Adobe Reader is known to everyone in my professional network, including my professor. Is that enough for me to not have put a citation for this (and other similar) factoids?

Sorry for the frame challenge, but is the business model of either company really relevant for a scientific work?

I am considering different 3D model formats provided by Autodesk. As the thesis is sponsored by a company (and a project that has to be implemented), they also have an interest in the results of my work. Sketchy business models like this are a strong deterrant to using a format, so when it comes to the decision, which format will ultimately be used, I do think it is relevant.

@monamona Are you calling issuing a license "sketchy"?

I would suggest the line for "well-known facts" is closer to "PDF is a file format" than what you're talking about.

No, sketchy might be the wrong word. Perhaps forcibly closed is a better one here. My mistake.

It is almost always better to cite than not to cite. In particular it provides context to a reader. And, you probably don't know all of your readers.
For context, it isn't possible to copyright "common knowledge" and thus, not necessary to cite it. But the tricky part is that "common knowledge" is a judgement call and what might be common in one community may not be in a wider one. And some omissions might be construed by some as plagiarism, though unlikely in this case.
Providing complete context, however, is a very important academic value.