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How to deal with academic loneliness?
I am 4 months into a PhD program and in general I am very passionate about research and feel like it’s my destiny. However, the research group I got into is not what I expected. In my master degree (3 year program), I worked closely with PhD students and one postdoc, I have seen their passion and we always had discussions about different papers and recent advances in our field. Now the only person that I can discuss anything is my advisor, but obviously he is quite busy. Senior PhD students are either very busy in the lab or not in the office (they never stay in the office). My year PhD students or master students show absolutely no interest in research, especially PhD students. That is very surprising to me, I am really confused. One might say it's not a big deal as long as you are passionate yourself, but I feel like sharing your experience with others is key in research.
Has anyone had the same experience? Or maybe it’s something normal?

Do you mean specifically "academic loneliness" (no one to interact with in field) or general loneliness (feeling of isolation in life)?

Actually both, i am a new student in this school and I only attend my lab and some classes. All the people I interact with are from my lab. And because nobody shares my interests or don’t have time for this, the only friend I have is my supervisor.

What specific domain are you in? I know since very collaborative domains but also some outright cutthroat ones. What’s "normal" is impossible to say in general.

It it correct to say your fellow students aren’t sociable in the way you were expecting them to be? And have you worked through the details of your advisor’s possible misconduct?

I am a chemistry major, doing research highly related to materials and biochemistry.

I wouldn’t say they are not sociable. They just don’t show general interest in research, for example because I am quite familiar with one guy’s research direction (also freshman as me), I used to send him some publications about his topic from top journals. (Our school doesn’t have a subscription to ALL journals, but I found a way to access all of them) and he literally told me that those papers are useless because their research level is too high, so he needs lower level publications. I was puzzled by this. In other aspects of life, he is very sociable.

To be clear, are you four months or three years into your PhD program? https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/209200/my-phd-supervisor-is-doing-nothing-and-is-probably-involved-in-academic-miscondu

Previous question was asked by another student when I was a master degree student. He is a good friend of mine that was working in our lab during my master degree. His English is not very good, so I asked a question for him (of course he agreed for this before)

@nArA, I just want to say that what you are feeling is valid. The need for community and bonding is central to the human condition. Even if you end up going the way of the (unfortunately) accepted answer, I would encourage you to also seek out other avenues for human interaction. Maybe you can start a small reading group with students from other labs or even departments with broadly related interests. As a CS PhD, I took several classes in Mathematics, and found that I had more in common with the Math folk! It is my hope that you are able to find your community too.

" One might say it's not a big deal as long as you are passionate yourself" <- It is actually very important to have colleagues to chat with and bounce ideas off of; without those, many things are harder, especially collaborations and establishing a network of contacts.

I'll offer a few suggestions for each issue separately though there can be a bit of overlap between the two. They might work, or not, but they will take some effort.
One problem is that doctoral research is so narrow and so focused that what you see is fairly natural, so solutions need to break out of that.
For the "academic loneliness", it might be possible, with the permission and even the help of your advisor, to form a study group that periodically (weekly) discusses issues brought up by members on where they are stuck. In a single lab people might be working toward common goals, or toward tightly focused sub-goals. But people should be generally knowledgeable about the focus of the lab and the wider field.
A less formal solution is to have a daily "designated coffee hour" in which people gather and chat about whatever they need to talk about, whether academics or not. This can include both students and faculty. My experience in grad school was that lots of things got cleared up in the department coffee room. It had a black (actually green) board for helping with laying out problems, with a long table in front of it, along with several couches and chairs.
You can also, possibly, have a designated time and place for lunch periodically where various discussions can be held.
It is a bit early (4 months) for this next suggestion, but long term you want to develop a circle of collaborators. One way to do that is with conference attendance, whether you are presenting or not. That takes time and financial support of course, but when you do make contacts, try to keep them alive, both within and outside your own institution.
Some of the above helps a bit for the academic side. But more can be done on the general life front as well.
You say that people don't share your interests. If you mean generally, not the research topic, then one option is to widen your own interests.
At one place I attended there was a continuous Bridge game (a card game) in a large multiple student office. People would leave it for class or whatever and others would take their place, but it was essentially continuous.
I was part of a group of cycling enthusiasts, both students and (mostly) faculty who would take frequent bike rides (25 miles and up). That break for aerobic exercise was good for both mind and body, though not a lot of conversation during a ride.
One place had a weekly Saturday softball game for (mostly) students and faculty along with spouses. It used up a few hours every week, but again, aerobic breaks are a good thing. Other such things are possible for small groups. Most universities have a gym open to students. Even walking can be used to refresh the mind, and it can be done with one or a few others.
But, look around to see what others might be doing and offer to join in. Spending every waking moment with your head deep in research is sub-optimal for most people.
Going a bit farther afield, if you are a person of faith, many places of worship in university towns have student focused groups. Some congregations are actually mostly students and have many social opportunities. Some of these are especially valuable to students  with families.

One other issue you raise is the lack of interest in research in others. I don't know where you are studying, but in the US this would be natural for beginning grad students who need to get advanced coursework an likely comprehensive exams out of the way before they start on research. Most will have started with only a bachelors and little research experience. If you are in such a system then starting with a masters might make you a bit atypical.

"doctoral research is so narrow and so focused that what you see is fairly natural" <- Disagree. Most doctoral research is not that narrow that there is nothing to talk about with your teammates; and remember, it's not talk about the specifics of OP's own proof of some complex theorem - it's even more general talk about their field that's missing.

@einpoklum, field dependent, perhaps. My doctoral institution had more than 50 professors and more than 100 doctoral students. The only one who was knowledgeable enough to discuss my research with was my advisor. Even a highly regarded other faculty member on my committee admitted that they didn't completely follow my arguments and took my advisor's word for it. He was a superstar so that wasn't a hard decision. A very deep dive into a very narrow well. There were about six others in the world who had the knowledge necessary and most were in Japan.

But could you not discuss the subfield in which your advisor (and you) were active, with other Ph. D. candidates in your department? Or the field in general?

@einpoklum, your comment (and and disagreement with mine) were about the research being narrow, not the overall field. I wouldn't have been much use discussing the research of the other hundred students, with one possible exception (same advisor).

Research group dynamics are always just that, dynamic. They can change quickly with outgoing members and incoming ones. Sometimes it will take a while to build the type of professional (and personal) relationships that match what you are looking for. Perhaps you will find them in a different group.
For most of my PhD, I did not build any lasting relationships with my own group members (who as you similarly describe, while being good sociable people, were not into research as much as I was). I made lifelong friendships with other students in my department (and outside of it) though. As long as you focus on your passions, and make efforts to interact with those around you, you will find people who are likeminded, but do not be surprised if they are not directly in your group (or even in your subfield).

Think this could be an issue for two reasons that may be related to your doctoral pursuits.

If there is no sense of collaboration or colleagiality, then this could be a problem with the lab culture. People mostly working independently on projects with minimal interaction could make it hard to foster projects in the future and issues with communication and transparency making it harder to continue projects or co-author.

Technical limitations in entering a new PhD program. If there is no formal training of certain methodologies or techniques, then I believe it could make it harder to advance academically.

Not sure which applies more to you. Of course, my assumption is that this is more for STEM-related field. Nevertheless, the fact that you have a good working relationship with your advisor is a good sign. You may be able to convince them to promote more meetings, journal clubs, and activities that foster collaboration.

Wisdom comes by disillusionment. So congratulations: you're on your way. While you can certainly finds other places/labs that are more interactive - your current experience is actually reflective of the true nature of the field. As someone said, “In Washington, it's dog eat dog. In academia, it's exactly the opposite.” So if you're truly "very passionate about research and feel like it’s my destiny" - stick with it (but don't expect much change). If not completely certain - you may want to look for another field. Good luck.

Heads up that this is very domain dependent. There are some very collaborative and team oriented science domains. What’s indicative of a no-nonsense group in one domain means you have a bunch of backstabbing psychos in another.

I always consider answering the question in the title, not in the text itself. You are answering the question in the text, saying it is normal. But that doesn't mean there is not an answer on how to deal with it.


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For faculty hiring, if the committee requests my references to provide letters (after an interview), can I assume that I am short-listed?
I did an on campus interview, after 2 weeks the department chair emailed me that “We are in final stages of our decision and have requested your references to provide letters. If possible, please prompt them to provide them at their earliest convenience.”
Usually I have communicated with the committee chair during interview processes, but the department chair contacted me this time. Can I assume that I am a top candidate from this email?

It's likely. Do get your references to respond soon.

You can conclude that you are among a small group among which a final decision will (likely) be made, but no more. Don't get complacent at this time and get those letters out.
Rarely, all candidates are rejected, however, and the process starts over. Nothing is certain until it happens. Good luck.

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Advisor in second university in joint PhD not responding to emails
I have a joint PhD between my university and an overseas university, so in total I have around 4 PI's. I usually communicate and give regular updates to the one who is in my institute but to the rest its usually once every month. The issue is regarding the advisors in the overseas university. One of them replies to my emails but only after sending numerous reminders and the other one doesn't even bother to reply. He was there in my confirmation seminar but he never really communicates. I am supposed to be joining there in Feb 2023 but I am not sure how everything will turn out to be. I am a bit scared as they haven't been that responsive or interested over the emails, but since I am already enrolled in the PhD Program, with no option to change my advisors, what should my plan of action be? Should I confront the one who barely replies? Should I talk to the one who does reply, about the involvement of the 4th PI?

What does your primary advisor (the one in your home institution) say about this? At the end of the day they are responsible for you, and if the co-supervision / joint PhD is not working out they should be the first people you ask for help.

You mention 4 PIs. It is not fully clear to me whether all PIs are also advisors? or are they simply co-referent of the project?

When did you start? how far are you into your PhD?

What happens over email is not the same as what happens in person. So your experience with those advisors over email will likely be very different from your experience with those advisors in person.
If multiple people are responsible for the same PhD student without clear agreements about who is responsible for what, then you can quickly end up with a dilution of responsibility. If some are not physically there and there are no such agreements, then you will very likely just fall through the cracks, and you will be just the local PI's responsibility.
That is not nice. It is not professional. It should not have happened. But is not necessarily a disaster either. If this is what is going on, then it is likely that when you show up at the oversees university, you will be seen by the oversees PI as her/his responsibility now (at least for the duration of your stay) and everything will be just fine.
I would just ask your local PI what they think. They know the other PIs better than we do.

I'll give a slightly different answer to supplement what Maarten Buis says. While it is certainly not polite to ignore email from a student advisee, remember that some (a handful) faculty take the "squeaky wheel gets the grease" principle to an extreme. If they feel it's not urgent, or referees / colleagues / students aren't clamoring for it to get done, it just does not get attended to. Your non-responsive advisor might be of that ilk.
From his perspective, you're a co-advised student who is yet to join. He might not have considered your emails to be sufficiently research focused to interest him. He might have assumed that if there are things to discuss, you're likely to do so anyway after you get there. You also have other advisors, so someone else is there to attend to you. Ergo, no reply needed.
Not saying this is the way things should be, but faculty have limited bandwidth and optimize in ways that might surprise students.
Here's a suggestion: Ask for a Teams or Zoom meeting in the subject line of the email, with a research-related proposal or question (which you undoubtedly have) in the body of the email. That might get the guy to take more interest.

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Plots in a paper using different software
Can I provide two plots made using two different softwares in a scientific paper? For example, one is plotted using Origin and another is plotted using Python?

Why do you think that you could not do that?

It is not unusual to have plots created with different software if they are used to display different kind of data. But I would not plot the same kind of data in the same paper once with one software and once with another (unless there is a very convincing reason to do so, in case the reason should also be provided).

Using different applications for different plots is not uncommon, especially when there are collaborations among different groups which are accustomed to  different applications.
For instance, I have a number of papers published with various groups across the world. I'm used to plotting graphs by using the workflow Matlab->matlab2tikz, whereas other coauthors of mine are more confident with Origin. For diagrams, I usually work with Inkscape, but other groups may have other preferences.
Most of the time, we didn't have any issue, but there have been rare occasions in which a reviewer (you know, that reviewer #2, the nitpicking one) asked us to make the diagrams more uniform across a paper. This request was typically not referred to plots but to circuit diagrams, and it was more related to the symbols used rather than the software used, but indeed it's easier to guarantee uniformity when the same software is used (in cases like this one, when I'm the first author, I usually volunteer to redraw everything in a uniform way with the same software).

It will depend on how the journal operates. Many journals will be able to accept images you create. Others will want the data for a graph to typeset it themselves. Others will accept images sometimes for some types of figures, and want to plot the data themselves for others. For images, there will be image file formats they can accept, and others they cannot. They will also have opinions on what format and resolution looks best.
Also, these things may change over time. A journal that acquires new publishing software may find that new sets of restrictions exist.
Contact the journal to find out what they can deal with, and what restrictions there are. They probably have a standard response for such questions, because they probably get it frequently.

Q: Can I provide two plots made using two different softwares in a scientific paper?
A: Unless a publisher (and their review process) tells you otherwise, you can do whatever you want for figures.
Ideally, the plots in your paper will be consistent formatting with each other (e.g., same tick styles, label fonts).
Personally, I have seen papers where plots come from different programs, and I could tell because the figures mismatched each other with style.
As long as the formatting of the plots does not distract from the science you are presenting, I would not be worried about the format.
Thus, I think consistent and readable formatting is more important that the program used for your plots.
I would encourage you to focus on your plotting skills rather than the program used to create your plots.


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Can requesting to correct a minor error after acceptance lead to rejection of the submission?
One of my papers recently got accepted in a journal. While sending me the proof, they mentioned that I can make changes only to the copyedited portions in the manuscript. They also mentioned that extensive changes will be reviewed by the editor and may delay publication.  I noticed a typo error in a different portion of the manuscript than the copyedited portions. I corrected it and sent the proof response. I tried to justify why it is important to rectify the typo.
I am now worried as six days have passed since the proof was submitted and it is not published yet. Is there any chance of rejection ?

Is there any chance of rejection? -> No

Six days and you're already worried? Chill out, people have lives too.

There is a risk they will not accept your typo correction and a risk of added delay if they send to the editor.
They will not go back on the overall acceptance of the manuscript. Congratulations!

Journal publications often go through a series of steps, from an initial acceptance to different rounds of revision. From your text, it apparently seems it has passed initial screening. Maybe in couple of weeks period, you might get email(s) about major/minor revision of the manuscript. Normally, few typos do remain even in the final and published versions, so there is no need to worry about it. Normally, it is the novelty and relevance of the idea and research presented in the manuscript that leads to acceptance in a journal. Regarding, the error you pointed out, I am sure in your revised version whenever it is called, you can rectify that. So, I am quite fixing the errors won't reduce the quality of your manuscript, hence, it will/might not lead to any rejection.
And as a side note, some editors are really slow to respond and often takes months to publish. So, you got to have a lot of patience during this whole process. You are in a hurry to see your research published, but the editors are not!

Actually, the article has been accepted and currently is in the production phase.


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Is it plagiarism to end your paper in a similar way with a similar conclusion?
I am really paranoid/scrupulous about plagiarism and I would like to ask if what I did below counts as some form of plagiarism. A while ago, I wrote a paper and basically I don't know if the very last sentence in my conclusion sounds too much like the very last sentence of somebody else's article. My paper has gone through the plagiarism software, so it isn't like I copied and pasted their sentence; moreover, I did not just go and change a few words in the sentence either.
Here is how the sentences sounded like:
Their final sentence:

His anger did not lessen with age any more than did his habit of
criticizing other composers. As he continued to argue until his
passing in 2002, it was his work.

My final sentence:

What is absolutely certain is that, for Cornelius Pufferfish, his work
remained his work and this was something he never allowed his fellow
composers to forget.

Is it plagiarism to have a similar concluding sentence as somebody else and also have it positioned in a similar place in the paper? Although I cited this person throughout my paper, I didn't think I needed to cite this final sentence in my conclusion because it was just a general observation that could be gleaned/concluded from the argument in the body of my paper.
I mean if you wrote a paper on the causes of WW1 and discussed throughout how the naval arms race was a contributing factor, you wouldn't have to cite the following statement in your conclusion 'Thus, the naval arms race was a significant factor in the cause of WW1' even though many scholars have already said this, right?
I think I am just idiotically overthinking all this, but I am so unsure; I just get so paranoid about accidentally plagiarising and getting in trouble.

Please explain what you mean by "I cited this person throughout my paper".

Is the other paper also referring to Cornelius Pufferfish with "His"?

Yes that paper is also referring to Cornelius Pufferfish with "his." By cited throughout my paper, I mean I referenced his paper as a whole during a lit review in the very beginning and then used some of his examples (with citations) to back up my points.

So, you cited the paper, not the person, right?

I can't answer your question but you could write something like: "As also concluded by [the paper you cited throughout your manuscript], it is absolutely certain that...."

Apologies for any misunderstandings. So to clarify, I  consistently cited the academic's paper (lets call them Marianne Dashwood) about Cornelius Pufferfish (which is just another pseudonym I made up) in various parts of my paper and used her examples to back up my argument (all cited). However, I didn't cite Dr Dashwood in my concluding sentence because I thought I didn't need to cite something that my paper just showed. I am unsure if this is plagiarism of some kind.

I should also add that I did not make the exact same argument as Dr Dashwood's paper did. My argument expanded on some of her work and was more specific than hers, refining her original argument.

@AplombPlum If your argument expands on someone else's work and is more specific, why would it end the same way? Seems like you should be instead emphasizing your specific conclusions. Note that this isn't an issue of plagiarism per se, just about writing a good paper.

Thanks for pointing that out. Well I guess it ended a similar way because I was trying to make some sort of observation (based on my findings) that would sound like a nice weighty ending.

When in doubt, just put everything in quotes - easy. Plagiarsm allegations dodged.

@csstudent1418 that's not how plagiarism works. If your comment is a joke it is not helpful, and if it is not it is flat out misleading.

@FerventHippo It is not entirely a joke. If the original author put the conclusion perfectly already, it may be an option to just quote them directly rather than making it less intelligible by paraphrasing just for the sake of it.

No. it is not plagiarism.
If, in addition to the last sentence, the rest of your paper is just a re-written version of "their" paper, then maybe there is a cause for concern.

If you do a separate, independent, analysis of a situation, cite the original analysis, but come to the same conclusion, it isn't plagiarism. You aren't claiming their ideas as your own. You are just reinforcing their work.
If the analysis is independent then this is especially valuable to scholarship as it supports and reinforces those conclusions. This is how we arrive at something like "truth".

I still think it is prudent to cite that original analysis within the conclusion as well - "The previous analysis shows that, as argued by Dashwood (1943), it is absolutely certain that, for Cornelius Pufferfish, his work remained his work and that this was something he never allowed his fellow composers to forget."

This isn't plagiarism so long as you properly cite the other paper at the appropriate point in your paper.  You stated a fact  -- that means you need to cite where you found the fact.  This is a paraphrase, so you don't need quotation marks.
If you've developed this idea earlier in the paper, properly citing your sources, and you're just putting this last line in as sort of a synopsis, I don't think you'd need to re-cite here.

I did intend for it to be a sort of synopsis. What I wrote was not the main conclusion/argument of the paper, but it was something that could be concluded from my findings which I developed earlier in the body. With my final sentence, I was trying to say those sort of things you say in conclusions when you are trying to conclude and be profound or weighty.

@AplombPlum - it is not necessary to be profound or weighty in the conclusion; in fact, I don't think the paper you are concerned about was trying to be particularly profound or weighty. Have you considered that perhaps you don't need that final sentence in your own work? Seems to me this is not a case of plagiarism - you're just trying to emulate a certain style of writing, but you're not quite understanding what makes the style work. If you removed your final sentence, perhaps the way your previous paragraph ends could serve as a good enough conclusion? Oftentimes, less is more.


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How can I find an old, obscure, or otherwise inaccessible paper when the usual methods fail?
I am trying and failing to find a particular paper. My university's library catalogue, Google Scholar, and Google all came up empty. I even tried the catalogue of the paper's institutional affiliation, but they didn't have it either. It's possible the paper really has been lost forever, but I find this unlikely; it is a significant paper that still gets citations. What other avenues exist for finding this paper?
Note to readers: this is a frequently-asked question and so we have compiled this "canonical" post to amalgamate some of our best answers on this topic (per this meta discussion). Questions requesting individualized help finding a particular source will be closed as a duplicate of this: we hope these "hints" will be helpful, but  tracking down individual papers is not our role.

Your university librarians are MADE for this!  Don't feel ashamed to ask -- there are librarians more into archiving and cataloging, and some more into education and service.
Give as much information as you currently have, and they'll find it for you AND/OR show you how to find it yourself in the future (if it's accessible via a resource like some of those mentioned above.)

+1. I recently did this, but felt a little reluctant to "impose" on someone. However the librarian was fairly adamant that tracking things down was not only part of his job, but also one of the fun parts (at least for him).  He was also crazy good at it--I had a pdf within a few hours, after unsuccessfully trying to track it down for a few weeks on my own.

I am an MLS dropout (I wanted to complete, but depression...argh)  anyway -- there were the stereotypical introverts who wanted to hide -- they go into archival work, or databases, or do lots of essential stuff that dealt more with the materials and processes.  Then there were those of us who wanted to be more focused on Instructional librarianship (I had been an adjunct for ages), or learning commons, or outreach -- we were the front-of-house ones like you encountered, @Matt.  It's like Tech Crew and Actors -- both sides needed to run a show.

Search the web for it: open archives, search engine, authors webpages, whatever (you've probably done that already…)
Ask the contact author for a copy, which she'll usually be very happy to provide. I regularly get such requests from other researchers in my field, and it feels very good to know that people are actually interested in your work.
If the contact author doesn't respond, try the senior author, then other authors.
Try your local library. Look into their database, and also ask the librarian there if the document might be available through loan from other libraries. I've never had much success doing that, but you never know…
Ask a few colleagues at different institutions if they can get it for free (see this question). If you have friends at large/famous/well-funded US universities (Princeton, Harvard, …), they probably have a more comprehensive access than you.
If it's a really important paper, pay for it!

Whatever happens, make sure you make a copy for others in your lab/group, and archive it. When I started my PhD, there was a folder (the heavy paper type, not the computer type) labeled “important but hard to find papers” that the group had accumulated along the years. It was the most treasured object in the whole lab.

Why donʼt you contact the library of the institution who published the paper for advice?
Iʼm sure that the library has a copy of it, and they might have translations as well.

The first point of call should actually be OP's home library - the librarian at OP's home institution should be able to manage procuring the article from the remote library.  That's one of their primary functions.

When doing internet searches, consider using all variants of the author's name. In [one specific case someone asked about], I was able to find the paper by excluding the author's given name; this expands the search to include repositories that only track given names by the first initial.

I do not consent to the significant edit a moderator has forced on this answer. If you don't like the content of an answer downvote it, but do not change 75%(!) of it.

Hi @BrtH - this is a bit of a special case: we turned this question into a "canonical" question per a discussion on meta (linked above). The revised question no longer mentions the helium paper, so an answer providing a link to a paper about helium no longer made sense. I thought the above edit was pretty fair, and your answer will get more attention as a "canonical" answer than it would have before. That said: if you'd rather not have this answer associated with your account, let us know, we should be able to delete this post without penalizing your reputation score.

Assuming your school participates (and most do), you can get scanned copies of articles through interlibrary loan.  You should be able to get access to just about any article ever published in a journal that way.
More generally, talk to your librarian.  It's what they're for.

This is a use-case for Sci-Hub, an open collection of papers from various journals. Note that using Sci-Hub to access copyrighted materials which they do not have permission to give you is illegal in certain jurisdictions. Otherwise, it's legal to download.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

When looking for a paper I first look on line to see if it is available. If it is available for free I download it, if not I then look in my library's on-line catalog. If it is available on-line, but not in my library's catalog I request an inter-library loan (ILL). I have never been unable to obtain an article via ILL that was available on-line, but if I wasn't able, I would just buy the article. If it is in my library's catalog I go to the library and photocopy it.
If the article is not available on-line, I look in my library's on-line catalog. If it is available in the library catalog, I go to the library and photocopy it. If it is not available in the catalog I file an inter-library loan request. The success rate of these requests is lower than I would like.
If the article is not available on-line, in my library, and ILL failed then things get difficult. The first step is to email the authors. The second step is to talk to the reference librarian and see if you can find a library which is not part of the ILL service which has the paper. If you find one, talk to the librarian about how to obtain it.
My field also has a number of email lists where hard to find paper requests are not uncommon, it might be worth trying these. Similarly, you can ask colleagues directly if they have a copy. It might be worth doing a reverse citation lookup to find colleagues who have cited the paper (most people try and read what they cite).

I have had some luck on The Internet Archive (https://archive.org/). If you're familiar with the Wayback Machine (which keeps old web pages), that's one part of the Internet Archive. Another part is a repository of many old books, and some libraries do upload scans of old journals that are out of copyright. I've had roughly a 50-50 hit rate looking for old papers, perhaps a little higher - at least when given several attempted searches in each case, e.g. to allow for issues with different ways of recording journal names and so forth.
[Note that you want the lower of the two search bars -- the top one is for the Wayback Machine. They're clearly labelled but it's easy to miss that you need the lower one. More than once I've caught myself typing a search in the wrong place.]
The quality may be rather mixed, sometimes excellent, sometimes poor -- but you may also get multiple libraries uploading scans of different parts of a journal's run so with a little luck you may have several scans of a given paper to choose from.

The way that is most likely to succeed is to ask a librarian. This means actually asking a librarian, not just searching a library's online catalog yourself.
But sometimes you can figure things out by looking harder on google yourself. For example, google just one element of the citation information, and find where else it appears, or find other citations that include that phrase.
Here is an example from another question on this site:

I'm trying to find the following paper:
R.M. Wilson, “Decomposition of a complete graph into subgraphs isomorphic to a given graph.“ Congressus Numerantium XV (1975), 647-659. MR0396347 (53:214)
Also seen cited as:
R.M. Wilson, “Decomposition of a complete graph into subgraphs isomorphic to a given graph.“ Utilitas Math, Winnipeg (1976)
I cannot find it anywhere, online or offline. How am I supposed to progress here?

And here is my answer (it may be useful to look at all the linked documents in detail):

Based on similar references elsewhere, I think it is in "Proceedings of the Fifth British Combinatorial Conference". https://lccn.loc.gov/77361732
See reference 4 in https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02321683/document
or reference 1 in https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016750600870654X
So now you just have to get this proceedings from a library.
I found this by googling "Congressus Numerantium XV" to find out what that was.

Here is the original answer: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/185701/

Some countries have library networks with a common catalogue that you can search to find out which libraries have it. This is what your favorite librarian uses to get the paper for you. However, it could also tell you, which friend or friendly lab you could ask.

E.g. the German and Austrian libraries' journal data base will tell you which 6 libraries have the 1930 "Sprawozdania z posiedzeń Towarzystwa Naukowego Warszawskiego" where Łukasiewicz and Tarski published the "Untersuchungen über den Aussagenkalkül" and whether it is available via inter-library loan.
A similar catalogue exists for books

(feel free to edit and add more such catalogue links)

Kindly ask all the authors that recently cited that paper ... at least one of them must have a printed copy or a pdf that can be shared privately with you.

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


text:
Professor falsely accusing me of cheating in a class he does not teach, two months after end of the class. What precautions should I take?
I'm a domestic student in the US at a medium-sized state school. Despite my poor English, it's my first language.
A few months ago, I finished a class on web development.
My final submission was a simple but fully functional web app.
The professor of the that class seemed happy with my work (and the work of my classmates) and gave positive feedback. No one was accused of plagiarism. It was a small class with only five people, we all know each other fairly well and I don't think anyone cheated. I know I certainly didn't.
This summer I am taking another class, which is co-taught by Prof X, who has made it clear that he thinks I am an idiot. Prof X is also one of the co-chairs of my program, but not the department chair.
Last week, I asked Prof X a question. Without going into too much detail, the question had to do with presentation skills. He scoffed at me and asked me how I completed the web-development class if I didn't already know the answer to the question (Prof X is, by his own admission, not much of a web developer).
I told him I had completed it just fine. Then he told me I couldn't possibly have completed the final project. I told him I did. I asked him the question again.
Then he asked me what my grade was in the web development class. I got an A, so I told him that. Normally I wouldn't get into it but I was happy with the grade.
I was not able to get an answer to my question.
This week I found out that Prof X is starting a formal university disciplinary process against me.
I didn't cheat and I can prove it. I have all the code I wrote for the project and it's in my GitHub in a private repo so it was all version-controlled. I also have the presentations I gave to the class that show the work in progress. The web-development class's professor would vouch for me if needed, I'm sure of that.
While I think this is likely to blow over and not result in any problems for me, what are some precautions I should take just in case?
Clarification / Updates:

Prof X has never criticized my coding skills, only my ability to pass the web development class based on my question about giving presentations.
I can't drop the course as it is past the drop date now. But regardless, Prof X is one of three professors teaching this class and the other two seem to think highly of me so far, so I am less concerned about the grading.

How are you aware that there the formal disciplinary process has started? Did he tell you? Were you contacted by your university?

Answers in comments and side discussions moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

So ... the question you asked that triggered this was about your presenting skills? I'm having a lot of trouble understanding how one could possibly cheat on a presentation (as opposed to the preparation for the presentation, or the work being presented). If you pretend to be a good presenter well enough that you give a good presentation, that's not cheating, it's just being a good presenter. That's like "cheating" on getting an Oscar for Best Actor by pretending to act really well in your movie.

There have been several times over my career where a student wildly overinterpreted a simple question or comment I made as some kind of personal attack. It might be worth confirming the prof meant it the way you took it. It's unlikely you are wrong if there is disciplinary action involved, but it feels like there's another side to this story.

@JeffE recommends in a comment:

Discuss your situation with the department chair and your previous instructor, and keep careful documentation of everything.

Just in case it wasn't clear too, document your side of the conversation you had with him.  As soon as possible, and as verbatim as possible.

For a few dollars (or less) you can get it notarized. This proves (by the notary's signature and date) when you had the notary sign it.  The closer the notarization is to the date of the conversation the better. Keep it until you need it. If he says you said something, you can then produce the transcript showed that as of (earlier date) you didn't.

Notarization only authenticates the signature on the document. It has no weight towards the content of the document, i.e. it still is going to be someone's recollection of the events, not true transcript of the conversation.

The professor is going to have a really hard time proving you cheated in a class he didn't teach, provided your documentation is in place.  In short, the most prepared will win.  If he's arguing "you should have known / told me" you're counter is that "in the heat of him getting more aggressive with me, I couldn't find the right words under that pressure, but here's ample proof I did what I did."  If you feel you can do it without weakening your case, then offer to answer questions verbally, or describe the difficulties of the assignment, and how you overcame them.

At this point, you should treat the situation as if you were sued for committing a crime. The stakes are very high: at worst you risk being expelled from the university, which would leave a permanent scar on your CV and significantly mess up your life on the short term. You might think that I am exaggerating, but in your situation, you cannot be too careful. Some people, perhaps on this website too, will try to convince you that if you appear defensive, or uncooperative, then you are going to garner ill will. But ill will is immaterial, while being convicted of academic fraud is very real.
You should of course refrain from talking (especially orally) with your accuser. You should be extremely cautious in what you say to the authorities (the representatives from the department or the university). You should restrict yourself to denying the allegations, and only answer questions submitted in writing. You should seek help, at the very least from your friends/family (this is a stressful time), from your student union, from a trusted advisor at your university if you have one; perhaps even consult a professional lawyer who is used to dealing with university matters if you think the situation deserves it.
If you are afraid of how your department's chair / former instructor will react because of these actions, you can send them a letter/email explaining your motivations: a formal disciplinary process was launched against you, and while you are innocent, you are also afraid of what might happen if you do not take this seriously.
If you have not left anything out of your question, then your chances are good. People are not convicted based on lack of proof, in your case, lack of proof that you are good enough to have coded the web app that you have submitted. If this is all the other prof has against you, then he will be laughed out of the disciplinary process... unless you do something wrong.
I would strongly advise that you do not follow the advice given in Michael Kay's answer. You should obviously not admit that you do not master such and such fundamental notion, or that you had "good luck" when coding your webapp. This can only hurt you and introduce doubt about your abilities. You submitted your work, there is no material evidence that you cheated, and you got an A for it: this means that your instructor thinks that you actually master what was required for the class. Stick to this.

Consider also: At my institution, it is explicitly allowed for a student to bring an attorney to represent them at disciplinary hearings.

If you can afford it, you might additionally consider consulting a lawyer, who might be able to write a nice C&D letter in regards to the prof's act of slander.

I’ll be the pedant: Normally one is indicted for a crime and sued for a tort.

There are more types of civil wrongs than just torts :)

Since you guys are talking about lawyers... could OP sue Prof. X for all costs that OP pays in his defense from this disciplinary action, for damages, for harassment, or anything of the sorts? I ask because I'm not familiar with the US legal system

Involving a lawyer seems like an unnecessary expense.  Also, "student union" often means a building, not an organization, in the U.S.

'Sud fi committing a crime' is a contradiction in terms. You can be sued in a civil-law matter, or prosecuted for commting a crime, which is normally reserved to the police or a state's attorney. Please clarify your answer.

@anonymousphysicist In the US a student Union is indeed an organization. One of their responsibilities is managing a building that is called the student Union. Though you are correct in that a student union is not a labor union.

I'm really guessing here, so I might be completely way out, but my guess would be that you wrote the code and got it working despite not understanding some fundamental concept of WHY it worked; and the Prof, having a more theoretical mind-set than yours, can't imagine the possibility that people can get code working without understanding the theory.
It would help to know exactly what the question was.
So my answer to your question would be: try to engage in dialogue. Ask why the Prof thinks it would be impossible to get the code working when lacking the relevant knowledge; explain how you got it working despite not knowing the answer to the question. Perhaps be prepared to concede that there was an element of "good luck" in the process, and that the reason you asked the question was because you were seeking a deeper understanding of why your solution worked.
I have to say that after years of answering coding questions on SO, I am amazed how many programmers seem to operate quite successfully without having any real knowledge of the theory of what they are doing: you can get a long way by trial and error, and perhaps your Prof doesn't realise that.

I wouldn't disagree in principle, but the professor seems to have nuked the possibility of dialogue by starting a formal disciplinary process.

No, do NOT engage in dialogue with the prof! Nothing you say can improve your position against him,  but anything you say can make things worse for you.  Go find your Ombudsman and talk to him instead.

The discussion about programming skills and computer science has been moved to chat.

Your Github commit history is sufficient to demonstrate that you did not cheat.  Show that to the appropriate authorities and they should decide in your favor.
However, I guess you have misunderstood the situation (assuming you have stated the facts accurately).  I suspect there is a conflict between Prof. X and the professor who gave you an A.  Prof. X is attempting to make the other professor look bad in front of his colleagues by presenting evidence that his teaching is not good.
Most likely the end result will be harm to Prof. X's reputation, if he has one.

Interesting view, however you could add something to your answer based on your hypothesis of conflicts between profesors. For instance, OP could have a discussion about what could be the motive of Prof. X with him and eventually let this prof consider if this is an attack toward him.

@Walfrat It's better to stay out of it.

Then you might want to add it to your answer something alongthe line "if what I said is true, don't meddle in the problem between them, just prove your innoncence and move on". I think it will make it more complete.

The first sentence is totally wrong of course.  GitHub commit logs do not prove who actually wrote the code that OP checked in.

@BenVoigt well if the initial commits do not resemble any other student's code, and are in a private repository controlled by OP's access credentials, the safe assumption is that it was checked in by OP. Prof X is making a spectacular show of completely forgetting Hanlon's Razor (though I think "innocent ignorance" is more apt here than "stupidity" -- the point is, OP more likely arrived at a valid solution through an unexpected means, inadvertently bypassing a lesson objective).

Additionally, I'd even venture that Prof A might've awarded the "A" grade precisely because OP found a novel and unique approach to the problem (which also further suggests OP's own work, as another student forging the work for them or allowing OP to copy would more likely have taken the "textbook" approach).

@DoktorJ: There are two broad swathes of cheating on such projects.  One is copying existing work.  The other is hiring someone more experienced to ghostwrite the project, in which case arranging that commits use the student's GitHub account is trivial to accomplish -- the ghostwriter generates a keypair and sends the public key to the student to add to the SSH keys list.  If by "novel and unique" you actually mean "not taught in class", that is consistent either with the student coming in with previous experience, but it is also consistent with ghostwriting.

@DoktorJ. That goes well with my knee-jerk response that Prof. X was most likely trying to steal OP's work.

@DoktorJ It the commits could've been made by a different student who understands the matter, with simply the timestamps moved a bit to the past. OP could've told him to and paid him after learning about the investigation.

I'd probably get my latest commit hash timestamped somewhere asap to be as convincing as possible that there was too little time to pull this off after learning about the investigation.

@MadPhysicist You definitely do not want to make any unverifiable claims about X. Hurting his career is something both him and the institution that will be acting as your judge and jury will not like.
Proving through digital means is near impossible. Without directly contacting GitHub for input, you cannot completely prove anything. Hanlons Razor does not apply here: Google + help exist.
You will need to make sure you do is completely study and understand your code. Your testimony is going to have far more weight on the outcome than your proofs. You have to know the code inside out.

@user1901982. I totally agree. My suggestion was not that I would ever make such an unverifiable accusation, but just be aware of the possibility and act to make it impossible, as you suggest.

@BenVoigt your theory is implausible.  If you are going to do things carefully, you're not going to cheat.

@AnonymousPhysicist: There's evidence that not everyone thinks that way: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/86279/8705 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/67568/8705 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/72103/8705 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/18157/8705

Another possibility:  It's mostly his code but someone helped with one aspect (or possibly he found something on the web that did it) and he doesn't understand the code.

GitHub commit logs can be easily faked. You can even upload the fake log to GitHub.

@BenVoigt You're right, someone else could have been doing the commits under the author's name, using their account.  What that someone else cannot typically do is put their ideas into the student's head, or create the story line on which parts of the assignment were easy, which ones gave the student problems, and what the "eureka" moments were that culminated in the solution, described from memory.  If the student can describe how they developed the solution, they had the skill to develop the solution, and the odds are slim that the student would hire another to do what they can do.

@EdwinBuck: Yes, an oral examination covering the design and structure of the submitted code will be far more informative than the git logs.  The problem is that the person demanding the review apparently does not have the technical skills to conduct or even understand such an exam.

@BenVoigt If it goes to academic review, the professor making the accusation shouldn't be the professor deciding if the answers were sufficient.  The professor who taught the class would be the most likely choice.  Remember, this professor wasn't party to what happened in the class, it should be trivial to ask for a qualified (because he was the teacher) professor to assess your responses.

@EdwinBuck: Indeed, a robust academic ethics system will get to the bottom of this without relying on authorship found in Git history.

In addition the other answers,

document every interaction you have with Prof X.

keep communications to a minimum, your discussions will not convince him of anything and he will be looking for ways of incriminating you. The more you talk, the more opportunities you have to put your foot in your mouth (e.g. telling him you got an A in a subject which you don't 100% understand, which started this whole thing)
communicate with Prof X through email, rather than orally. This is probably the best method to keep record of who said what.
write down your oral conversations after they happen (remain factual)
record the lectures, many apps on your phone can do this.
make extra sure that nothing you submit for this class could be suspected of being plagiarized

Additionally, in regard to your academic performance overall rather than to the accusations in the other class

look at ways of getting out of Prof. X's class. He will most likely not be a fair grader.

Look at whether or not it's possible to take this class with a different professor, either by switching section or taking it at another university and getting the credit transferred. Given your username and your mention that the web course you just finished had 5 students, I would imagine this might not be possible... but worth looking into
If the course is not a prerequisite for upcoming courses in your program (and if you think that next year's instructor will not be Prof. X), look at the deadline to drop the course, and take it in the future with another professor who will most likely be fairer towards you.

If you can't find a way to get out of Prof X's class that won't affect your GPA (such as dropping a class after the deadline would) or delaying your graduation (if it's a prerequisite) make sure to do everything you can to be the "perfect student".

This week I found out that Prof X is starting a formal university
  disciplinary process against me.

You were asked in comments how you were notified about this, and I haven't seen an answer.
Unless you have heard about this in some official capacity, my advice would be to

make sure your process in the web-development course is as well-documented as it can be
Think about how best  you can present your github history in a manner that a hearing panel can understand it
check your code against plagiarism detection tools to make sure there isn't a real problem
simply forget about the whole thing until you have an official notification.

The reason why I suggest this is because it feels like you're missing something.  It is pretty unlikely that Prof X would launch an academic honesty case for a course he did not teach.  He may well be encouraging the other prof to do so, or he may even be filing a case FOR THE SUMMER COURSE YOU'RE IN RIGHT NOW -- in which case you should consider whether all of the work you're claiming credit for is your own.
When (and if!!!) you get notification of an accusation of academic dishonesty, you'll be presented with what substantiates the accusation.  Deny it and request a hearing.  At the hearing, (assuming you're right about it being about the earlier course) explain that you are having a disagreeable misunderstanding with X, that you don't know what he's talking about, and walk the panel through your github record and show that your code passes plagiarism detection software (assuming that it does).  The standard such boards use is usually not unreasonable doubt.  My instructions, serving on such a board, is "halfway plus  a hair" -- so if plagiarism detection software shows a problem, there is high likelihood of penalty -- assuming the board will even hear a case from one prof about another prof's class.  That feels highly irregular.
Of course, the standard caveat is that I've only heard your side of the story. The prof may have a perfectly reasonable case against you.
If you're presented with some plagiarism detection output that shows copied code, and it does go to hearing, you will likely be found responsible.  If this is the case, you might consider waiving the hearing and accepting the offered penalty, if you find it reasonable.  It sounds like prof X might have a hair up his butt about you, and you might get a more just penalty from a hearing board.
If you do get a responsible finding, it's not the end of the world, and likely not even something that anybody important will ever find out about down the road, if this is a first offense.  Try to learn whatever lesson is there to be learned, and move on.

Is there any reasonable plagiarism checker for code? There are usually just a few common ways to accomplish something so code tends to be similar very often.
Besides, copying code snippets is usually part of the work, you are not supposed to write every line from scratch unless the task explicitly says that.

@Džuris  code isn't my thing, but some free tools are listed at https://elearningindustry.com/top-10-free-plagiarism-detection-tools-for-teachers.  It's also worth reading any academic honesty statements in the syllabi of the two courses to see if profs specified what's allowable and what's not -- though they probably didn't.

All of those seem for checking texts in a natural language. I found this one https://codequiry.com/code-plagiarism but I wouldn't use it. The example of plagiarism there is an example that would be allowed in most classes. Students are not supposed to invent algorithms or new conventions... Plagiarism in coding is like plagiarism in maths - you can only prove it if someone has copied the errors.

@Džuris In programming, there is often a very simple way of solving most problems.  A good "code" plagiarism checker would not be fooled by a variable rename, or a method rename (and often there are generally accepted good standards for generating such names).  Because of this, it's highly unlikely that the content will vary enough to keep false positives down.  Instead the better solution is to teach students to commit their work often, and then to compare commit logs against each other.  It is rare for two students to arrive along the exact same path, and lack of the work log is a fail.

I believe the most common code plagiarism detector is MOSS: https://theory.stanford.edu/~aiken/moss/

You need to get advice from someone local who knows Prof. X.  You might start with a departmental academic advisor or to the director of undergraduate studies (or some similar position).  This situation is so truly bizarre, and it's difficult as an outsider to work out whether Prof. X is experiencing a serious psychological break, whether Prof. X is a blowhard who makes a lot of idle threats, whether this is about internal politics between X and the other professor, or whether you've completely misunderstood the situation.  But at any rate this is not normal.  As everyone else has said document everything, and you might also look into whether there are "student advocates" or similar people to help you navigate the disciplinary procedures.


text:
What do I do when a student working in my lab "ghosts" me?
I am in my first PhD year and have some teaching duties -- assisting my supervisor with his lectures and also advising students. At the beginning of the semester, a student started working on his Bachelor's thesis and initially everything was fine.
However, for several weeks now I have not received any response from him. I wrote him mails on a weekly basis asking for a status update and inquiring whether he was stuck. Now the deadline is getting closer and while he could make some progress during the first weeks, I am afraid it is too little to pass. On the other hand, I saw a quite familiar post on SE recently and I believe it is actually him, as the topic is quite specific. Therefore I assume he actually is still working on his thesis.
I already have escalated the issue to my supervisor and he told me to let it student fail if required. I am not too satisfied with this way of dealing with the situation. Are there other options for me?

Don't you have his phone number?

No, we have only communicated via e-mail so far. I guess the university must have it, but then I think this way is blocked as my supervisor does not want to invest extra time with this issue.

Did you reply to the SE post? Did he reply to you?

@SolarMike No, I have not replied yet. I am not sure whether to bring up any mention of the thesis or not. What do you think?

Just reply to the post... don’t add a huge amount of questions about thesis, family or social life like has he received your emails...

Are you sure he/she can see your mails ? Just talking from experience,  I once had a teacher that gmail considered as 'spam'. That did lead to a quiproquo that was solved only when luckily, we met in a corridor and realized what the issue was.

@SolarMike Thanks, I'll try that!

@m.raynal Thanks, I'll keep that in the back of my head. Maybe I can establish contact by another means of communication.

Sometimes during the writing of my thesis, I did the same thing as your advisee. I was behind my schedule, and that I would disappoint my advisor. In my head the plan was: "I'll work extra hard on the next wkd and get up to speed, then contact him". I was mostly ashamed.
It would go as far as actually hiding form his field of view if I saw him on campus.
Although not an answer, if you think your advisee may be in such situation, you could try to approach him with this in mind.
Maybe tell him it's okay if he's got issues, remind him it's not the end of the world, and you're there to help.

As per Buffy's answer.
I was struggling with personal mental-health, and it was such a relief when he was very understanding and told me 'it's okay, happens to anyone' and such. After that I made a new commitment, and my work turned out great and highly praised at the end. Just an idea =]

Who is officially the faculty member to whom this student is responsible for this thesis? Is it you? Your supervisor? Your question really doesn't make that clear...I think there's room to wonder if the student is actually liaising normally with an appropriate person and just doesn't feel they need your involvement.

I wrote him mails on a weekly basis asking for a status update and inquiring whether he was stuck.

It seems that you are completing your duties as an advisor well. You can and should continue to offer help and suggestions in accordance with your duties. Perhaps this student is too busy or too anxious to respond to your emails. In that case, you could provide links to resources that might benefit them without the necessity of responding (if you feel that they need more advising).
While I personally try to respond to emails in a timely fashion, I often work better independently and only reach out when I am in need of assistance; this student might function the same way.

I already have escalated the issue to my supervisor

Great, this means that your supervisor is aware of the issue and is likely to be understanding in the event that your student does not do well.

he told me to let it student fail if required

This is also fine. If the student does not adequately complete their work, this is the expected outcome. If you are concerned that the student is unaware of this, you could send an email letting them know (or possibly reminding them of policies in the syllabus regarding this).

Are there other options for me?

You cannot force the student to respond or work on their project. You should continue to advise this student to the best of your ability, but beyond that it is their responsibility to follow through.

Great answer (+1), but I disagree with the last sentence of your third point.  No student is unaware that you fail if you don't complete the work.  The assessment structure and requirements of the thesis should already be set out clearly in their course outline (even for the thesis).  It is not necessary to warn the student of the obvious, and doing so sets a bad precedent by adding an additional warning to a process where it is not needed.  Take this as a minor quibble in an otherwise excellent answer.

@Ben: Risking infinite regress, a minor quibble to your minor quibble: Where I am, I've had to deal with students surprised that failing for not doing work is possible, multiple times (some instructors in other departments guarantee passing simply for attendance, setting the expectation). I agree that assuming the syllabus is coherent, further warning/notifications shouldn't be needed.

@DanielR.Collins: I'm trying to find a spelling error in your comment, so that I can make a minor quibble to your minor quibble to my minor quibble.  But everything you've said is sensible, and spelled correctly, so I guess our regress ends here!

To aid in your squabble about quibbles, let me remark that  the assumption that students read and fully understand the syllabus is a bold one.

I think the idea that it's a bad assumption that students read the syllabus is right but misses the mark - it's really more about the overall learning experience of the student. Will they learn that it's okay to skim the syllabus and miss things, or will they learn that inattention to detail leads to failure? They'll learn that sooner or later, hopefully, but will it be from failing a class or losing a job? They're a student to learn, not just the material, but how to achieve successful outcomes when there's no one there to hold their hand.

I think "let the student fail" is terrible advice, but that is not your problem - you've raised the concern with your supervisor, and he has taken responsibility. I think he is doing a bad job in this case, but there's nothing else that you could reasonably do.

I honestly can't see how not acknowledging your advisor is in any way excusable if the communication channel is working regardless of your preference. No amount of busy work/anxiety keeps one from taking 5 minutes to reply with "Received, thanks". Look at the issue we're having because of this. That's just plain neglect and goes beyond what an advisor can do to assist, as he's not there to teach manners.

FWIW, while the student should know they'll fail if they don't finish the thesis, they might think they can pass by working in complete isolation. That's usually a fallacy for an undergrad, and might be worth correcting.

Your supervisor is correct. Let the student fail.
I'm shocked the existing answers are so lenient. You have given the student an amazing opportunity to work with your group, and from the tone of your question, I assume you have been providing adequate guidance and support. In response, the student has "ghosted" you. This is unacceptable.
If you have not already done so, I would send a much more blunt message to the student. "Regular check-ins with me are required for all undergraduates in the lab. Please schedule an appointment for within the next week. If I do not hear from you, I will assume you are not interested in continuing with your thesis."
After that, the ball is in the student's court:

If they do make an appointment, I would have a discussion about what happened. Based on the student's tone in this discussion, I would decide whether to proceed (in consultation with the advisor, in your case).
Otherwise, no further action is needed from you. Either they'll show up with a completed thesis -- which your advisor will have to deal with -- or they'll never be heard from again.

Judging by the tone of the original questions, regular check-ins were not part of the policy in the lucky_luke's institution. Is it reasonable to introduce them, aiming at a very specific student because he went missing?

All research positions have implicit or explicit policies such as "don't ignore multiple mails from your supervisor" and "don't disappear for months at a time." But my point was just that lucky_luke should be crystal clear about requirements and possible consequences (if he hasn't already) and then wash his hands of the matter.

Doing more hand-holding is the opposite of letting the student fail (on their own). In a sense, this is one of the most lenient answer, because you're asking the OP go beyond their own responsibility and take responsibility for the student's issue. Granted, this may be the most effective way to actually help the student in the short term.

I think you're conflating two separate issues. Novice researchers are usually on a pretty short leash, and the real responsibility lies with a grad student. So yes, I would expect OP to regularly do quite a bit of hand-holding. I guess you might say that's lenient, but that's how it goes with undergraduates. The issue in question, however, is separate -- this student has vanished and is not responding to e-mails. OP has already made several attempts to reach out and gotten nowhere. So, I would not be lenient here at all -- OP should probably cut this student loose.

I am not that old :-) Though yes, I am not known for my leniency, perhaps I am an outlier.....

An alternate approach, not of the "sink or swim" school, is to see what office in your university provides student services. In the US, a college or university will normally have a Dean of Students, part of whose job is to look after student interests and well-being.
There may or may not be anything they can do, but if you have any suspicion that the student is suffering from depression, you can contact them. They may be limited in their ability to approach a student, but it might be worth talking to that office.
There is, by the way, the concept of self-defeating behavior and even self-defeating personality behavior that might require professional assistance.
You and your department head or supervisor are not the right people to deal with such situations, of course.

Yes, at many schools all students have an academic advisor. When a student isn't making progress or there are other red flags, that person is a point of contact. This is pretty important as seemingly minor issues in several classes can signal a substantial issue in the student's life.

Put this in perspective: if you stick with an academic career, you will interact with many students who fail one of your courses. Likely hundreds, possibly thousands. You need to set some boundaries for how much time (and emotional energy) you spend on each, so it doesn't interfere with your ability to get other work done.
I think many faculty would say that you've done your job at the point when you wrote that first email that went unanswered; at that point it's in the student's court to respond. You won't have time to chase after every student who ghosts you in the future.
There are some tools built into online course management software (e.g., Blackboard's "Retention Center") to attempt assisting with this. However, in my experience the lowest-performing students don't respond to more requests for discussions or to get extra help.
(You may run into some administrators who either don't teach, or teach a single course per year, who will argue it is legitimate to chase after all failing students without limit. Easy to say, but not feasible to do in practice.)

At my university, the supervisor should contact student affairs.  Student affairs will perform a welfare check to make sure the student is okay.

Disclaimer:  I am not a psychologist nor am I trained in psychology.
Preface:  I write this not necessarily for the benefit of the student described in the question, but for a general audience of academics and students, who may encounter such social situations in the course of their studies or careers, in the hopes that it may lead to an improved understanding and ability to prevent such problems from escalating.

Many students, at some point in their academic careers, engage in avoidant behavior in response to academic stress.  This of course is not productive in the long term, but in the short term, it provides some measure of relief from what they feel is an overwhelming burden they perceive they cannot overcome no matter the amount of effort spent.  This eventually can lead to fatalistic attitudes toward academics and the self-fulfillment of failure.
This type of response, avoidance coping, is also associated with depression, low self-esteem, and impostor syndrome, both as causes and as effect; however, addressing such a relationship is not in the scope of this discussion.  More importantly for the advisor to understand is that avoidance coping frequently occurs on a spectrum of degrees and not only at the extreme:  students may continue to make some effort, such as seeking help from peers, but a sense of embarrassment or shame over struggling or feeling as if they have let their advisors and mentors down, may be precisely the reason why they do not seek help from those who are objectively the most qualified and able to provide it.  Advisors are often perplexed by what they observe as sudden loss of communication ("ghosting" in the parlance of the day), and may attempt to compensate by what they believe is the most logical response, which is to confront the student and try to reopen a dialogue.  However, once this pattern of avoidance emerges, such efforts can actually be counterproductive, because it not only serves as a reminder of the stressors the student is trying to avoid, but it now compounds the stress because the student is interpreting the advisor's inquiry as a demand for contact, rather than an offer for help.  As a result, the student merely digs in further, feeling as if they have doubly failed--academically and interpersonally.
With this context in mind, sometimes it is not possible for advisors or mentors to "rescue" the student, especially if this avoidance behavior builds up prior to an important milestone, such as a thesis defense.  In my experience, what seems to work best is showing that the student's perceptions of futility and incompetence are distorted, and that success remains within reach--if accommodations can be made to make it so.  Relieving the perceived burden, breaking it down into smaller, more manageable tasks, and reinforcing positive, approaching behaviors through rewards and encouragement, is necessary in order to build a student's self-confidence.
So, what does an advisor or mentor do?  First, I believe it is crucial to identify early signs of avoidance coping before it becomes entrenched, and to keep students motivated by reminding them that they are making progress.  If the coursework or research is too copious or difficult, help them break it down into smaller problems.  Explain to them that this is an essential life skill to learn, more so than the actual work itself.
If, however, a student has already "ghosted" you, then you need to step back a bit in your role as advisor.  Rather than trying to remind them of their academic duties, you might ask them to come see you during office hours, and have a face-to-face interaction in which you would ask about how they feel about their academic situation.  If they acknowledge being overwhelmed, suggest they look into student counseling.  If you are able, offer to postpone upcoming due dates or modify the structure of their curriculum or research, or terms of their academic progress, but only conditional upon their agreement to recommit themselves.  They need to be able to speak to someone with the power to make such adjustments.  If the institution is not willing or able to do so, then the intervention was already too late.
Again, not all students behave this way, and not all students who do behave this way are doing so for the reasons I described.  And not all students can be "rescued," nor is it anyone's obligation to do so.  But for some, it is absolutely worthwhile, because they can and do respond remarkably well once they are given the right framework to learn how to apply positive coping mechanisms.  Some students never learned how to cope with overwhelming pressure, and if they are not taught, they merely grow up into adults who still do not know how, and in my mind, that is far worse an outcome than not completing a degree.

"The student merely digs in further, feeling as if they have doubly failed--academically and interpersonally" - I mean, that's simply what happened. Failing from time to time is fine, but how do you plan on arranging a face to face meeting if they don't respond, or if they are to "recoil" further because of the request?

@lucasgcb: As someone prone to such avoidant behaviour, I’ve certainly had times when I had great difficulty responding to emails asking for a status update on work, but had no trouble replying to an email saying “Hey, could we meet to talk about things?” instead, and then was quite able to discuss problems frankly at the meeting.  This answer makes an excellent and important point — the OP should consider the psychology of why the student may be not responding, and based on that, can try to write emails that are more likely to get the student to respond.

[cont’d] Of course, one can’t predict human behaviour and know exactly what will work — but thinking about this point seems significantly more likely to help than being unaware or ignoring it.

Your question seems to include the most important points for an answer:

You offer support, when needed
He seems to be still working on the thesis
Your supervisor said let him fail, when he does not complete the thesis

So you should continue to be available and maybe mail from time to time (not too often!), so you fulfill your duties.
When the student has questions, he can ask. When he prefers to work quietly and submit his thesis without your help, he may do it. When he stopped working on it (maybe he even left university and you do not know it?), he will fail.
I do not see any problem for you here and you seem motivated to help, when needed.
Side note: He may have things in his personal life, that require his attention. It would be good, when he would tell his supervisor and the university office, so they may for example redact the thesis and allow him to write another one, when it is sorted out, but these things are nothing of your business, as long as he does not talk about it himself.


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Should I include documents (letters of recommendation and SOP) that is not required for PhD admission?
I am applying for a PhD position.
The interesting thing is that the department does not require an SOP and letters of recommendation. There is no place I can upload my SOP, and they are very clear that letters of recommendation are not required, for there is a place where I can upload the letters.
The problem is, I have never asked my professors for an open recommendation letter. I think it is quite weird to ask them to send the letter to me so that I can upload on the system. It is always that I give their emails and the system automatically sends the request and they themselves upload their letters.
My question is, should I ask my professors for a letter of recommendation and upload it to the system?

If they don't require this, why do you think it would be helpful?


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In google scholar my book and its 2.5k citations is assigned to the wrong author: what can I do?
In 2008, myself, Bill Langdon and Nic McPhee wrote a book entitled "A field guide to genetic programming". We made it freely available on the internet so as to maximally benefit the field of genetic programming, an area which we collectively had spent something like 50 years researching.
Unfortunately, at some point, in Google Scholar the book has been assigned to a colleague (Michael O'Neill) who kindly wrote a book review for us in the journal of Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines back in 2009.
Because the book review article was entitled "Riccardo Poli, William B. Langdon, Nicholas F. McPhee: A Field Guide to Genetic Programming" and Michael was listed as the author (of the review article), Google Scholar thinks he is the author of the book and it assigns the 2500+ citations of the book to his profile, bundling all its different citation-versions with the review article.
Michael has been very helpful and has tried twice (once last year, once a week or so ago) to edit the Google Scholar entry for the book (only he can do it, as he believed to be the author), removing/unmerging the book entries from the book review entry. However, nothing seems to happen.
I've tried to find a way to provide feedback to the team in charge of google scholar, but I cannot find how I can inform them of this issue.
So, I am unable to get the book back into my google scholar profile.
Can anyone help?
Many thanks!

Did you try adding the merged version to your profile (using "Add articles"), and then trying to unmerge it within your profile?

Many thanks. This fixed the problem

The comment above and the answer below suggest two different solutions. It would help future readers if you could clarify which worked for you.

Hi @GoodDeeds, the first part of your answer (Add articles) and the + icon suggested by lordy below (which does the same function) worked. I did not need to unmerge. Many thanks once again.

Have you tried to add the book manually to your profile? Use the "+"-symbol between "TITLE" and the three dots in the header and then click "Add article manually". Might take a few days until the book shows up in your list.

Many thanks! This was the solution

@RiccardoPoli please accept the answer :)


text:
What do you look for in a methodology section of masters thesis vs. PhD thesis, respective academic paper?
My field of research is finance. The methodology I apply, however, is much closer to economics.
Research papers tend to be very brief when introducing the methodology. That is, they often assume a high level of prior knowledge of their readership.
In my thesis, I'd like to stay concise (or "crisp", for that matter) yet, I have much higher page number requirements to fulfill.
So my question: how would you say introducing the methodology in a masters section should differ from a PhD thesis respective a journal article?
Is it okey for me to introduce the methodology more extensive but so that most people could more intuitively grasp the concept? (such as introducing a simplistic example -> I've actually even seen that in research papers).
Note: I'm not seeking a "cookie-cutter" kind of tutorial to write the section. I'm much more interested how more experienced people in academia would think about that issue.
In general I'm still quite unsure what differentiates a journal article from a masters thesis.
I am nearly doing the same as has been laid out in a prior article (with a few extensions) yet I am required to write 3x more pages.

The reason that the methodology section is short in the papers of many fields is that the methodology is standard. The innovation and interest is in the question asked and the implications that follow from the answers. In pure math for example, there is no methodology section at all in the vast majority of papers.
If you try to "pad" methodology to reach a certain page count it is very likely to be recognized as padding, to your almost certain detriment. Write a longer section only if your methodology is innovative in some way and the question at hand is otherwise difficult to approach.
Spend your words/pages on things that are more interesting. If you don't have that, you may not be ready to write as yet.

However, to answer the headline question, assuming you really want to know that, it, again, depends on the field.
In a field in which methodology is standardized, I'd expect that the difference between a masters and doctoral thesis would be minimal in the methodology section.
But in a field in which it is difficult to know how to approach difficult questions, I'd expect a masters thesis to be less sophisticated and more standardized than a doctoral thesis where the deeper questions are addressed, leading to, perhaps, the need for a more sophisticated methodology. It wouldn't be expected that a masters thesis, more time limited, would be able to address such questions and the students in doctoral programs have more insight, one hopes.


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Professor wants master thesis published in journal - impostor syndrome, next steps etc
my professor stated that my thesis has potential to be published in a scientific journal.
I have not come into contact with publishing in journals yet.
He advised me to put my empirical results, which I sent him, into concise writing as is done in journal articles.
Overall, I feel happy to receive such a good feedback. At the same time, however, I do have the feelings of impostor syndrome creeping up. That is:

I personally feel the research that I have done not "that" impressive - I simply extended a model to an empirical question in finance/economics and have new results
I feel a certain sense of pressure that my professor thinks that I am a much "better" (smarter) academic researcher than I actually am

Additionally, I am not one hundred percent sure what I am getting myself into. I've read on other threads that it is extremely rare that the results of one thesis are enough to be published. I went into the writing process of the thesis with the mindset to get done and over with it around a certain date - I don't really see with which resources I could shoulder further review requests down the road, as I am not going to enroll in a PhD program for now.
On the other hand, I feel that my concerns might be exaggerated. In the field of my thesis, my professor is a leading researcher with tons of publications. Following that, I strongly assume that he has the ability to gauge whether it makes sense to submit the piece.
Overall I am elated with the feedback. At the same time much more anxious than before!

"I've read on other threads that it is extremely rare that the results of one thesis are enough to be published" Master's theses differ a huge amount from field to field and country to country. In some places and fields, Master's theses are expected to be publishable research; in others it's less common. It sounds like you have a nice piece of work and you should trust your supervisor's judgement about its worth!

@astronat - thanks. that might be a very good point. I think indeed that the other thread was about computer science (if not mistaken). Some commenters were pointing out that if they even think of publishing a piece, it contains the insights of 4-5 thesis. Which fueled my inadequacy complex even more :D

It does not have to be worthy of some big international prize. It just has to be new and potentially useful to other researchers.
Consider if you were back to the start of your grad work. If your current work were published and available to you, you could have done some other new work. That is, publishing helps other people avoid repeating stuff. If you don't publish then somebody else may have to re-do the work you have just done.
Publishing means you help humanity advance. Maybe only a tiny bit. But "every little helps." (Unless you live in the UK you probably won't get the reference to TESCO adverts.) Or, in the words of Isaac Asimov: There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.
Also, consider the tiny cost to you of publishing, compared to the potential benefit. You work for a few days to tidy up the chapter of your thesis into a journal article. And (maybe) you get to call yourself a published scientist. Even if you don't stay in academia it feels good and looks good on a CV.

Thanks for the answer! Re cost/benefit - that is what I wondered. I've read on other threads that it takes significant amount of additional work. This is what is daunting to me. If it only were a few days of tidying up I would be all in for it. What horrifies me more is that very smart experts in the respective field will review the piece and sure might have a lot of additional requests in order for it to be published. Not sure if I am able to manage that.

Re: prep for a journal article. Probably you want an intro and summary. You might be able to lift those from your intro and summary in your thesis. And probably you want to be somewhat terse relative to the thesis. But most likely the thesis already has most of the words you need, and probably all the equations, graphs, tables, etc.

You said that your professor is a leading researcher with tons of publications. Why then not to trust him?

You are expressing doubts about the value of your research. But expressing these doubts is not your part of the work -- leave this part to the editors and reviewers. They are here to criticise and question. So leave their work to them, and do your work: write a paper.

Do not try to look too far ahead, and do not get scared in advance. Having you paper gone through the refereeing process is not that scary, especially if you have a knowledgeable professor by your side. In the process, though, you will learn a lot -- which by itself is a good reason to take pen to paper.


text:
What advice would you give someone on writing style for a academic paper (vs. thesis)?
I have already written my master thesis. My professor encouraged me to publish the results in a journal. He said I should orient me on some of the articles published in there.
Nonetheless I am curious if more seasoned vets on here could give me some first hand advice on e.g. pitfalls to avoid?
I have never came close to publishing anything. I've also never intended to go into academia so this is quite a new situation to me.

I would recommend reading Steven Pinker's "the sense of style"

He said I should orient me on some of the articles published in there.

This is good advice. You hopefully read a lot of papers to prepare your master's thesis. Pay attention to how they are constructed, and use that to know what a paper should look like and therefore what your paper should look like.
Papers in different fields look quite different, so general advice isn't as helpful as looking at other papers in your field.
Generally, unlike a thesis, papers are more focused on the result at hand. While they may include some background information, they aren't for demonstrating everything you know about the topic. You still want to be informative, but also concise.
Once you have a draft, ask your advisor to help you revise it. Do not take it personally if they have a lot of suggestions for changes.

The penultimate paragraph is very important. Write for your audience.

Besides reading a lot of papers to develop your style/vocabulary, make sure when writing that all of your sentences appear in logical order and make sense for a reader outside of the field. It is much harder to write 2 pages than 5 on a topic that you are familiar with. Focus writing concisely and read (and re-read) your paragraphs again and again. Make sure you express and follow a clear line of thoughts with your arguments. Do not be afraid to restructure and rewrite larger parts of your first draft(s).

Before taking pen to paper, ask yourself what your intended readership should be. For whom are you writing?
A very terse paper providing minimal introduction and using highly specialised knowledge will be understandable only to a narrow circle of the anointed. To broaden your audience, show respect to an average (not super-knowledgeable) reader. That is to say, provide a sufficiently detailed introduction.
On the other hand, if you extend the introduction beyond reasonable, and try to include there all you know about the subject, the editor may rightly remind to you that a research paper is not a review.
So you have to navigate between the two extremities. Ideally, a research paper must be understandable (a) to graduate student working in this field, and (b) to experts working in closely adjacent areas. The latter is needed for cross-pollination.
One possible strategy is to write a very extended, textbook-like introduction -- and then to squeeze it by deleting too trivial things, and by moving some of the remaining stuff to appendices or supplementary electronic materials to be cited in the main text.


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Late email to Professors for a Ph.D. program
I applied for some programs in the USA for a Ph.D. program for the fall semester and was very busy with my academic jobs, resulting in having no time to email the department faculties. So, I applied blindly, mentioning just three of the most related faculties to my interests in my application. Now, it is February, and I have got no admission offer right now. However, nowhere rejected me too.
I still have a hectic work schedule, and searching all the universities' faculties' pages and customizing the email for each cannot be possible. Nevertheless, If I can gather enough time to email them, isn't it inappropriate to email them after a long time after the deadline? For instance, two months after the deadline? Can I email them now, requesting them to look at my application? I am afraid of being neglected by some of those fantastic faculty members who I will fit their research groups.
It would be great if you could provide more advice in your answers.

Are you aware that most US institutions have fall (or so) deadlines for admissions applications to doctoral programs. If you missed the deadlines, you aren't in the pool for this fall. See: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/176908/75368

Thank you @Buffy. It was helpful. I read this answer: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/176909/167992, and there was something a little unusual about the answer. Many professors mentioned on their web pages that if an applicant is interested in working with them, he should email them. Isn't it another form of saying that the committee is not the only decision-maker? I feel the committee is not the main responsible for admission here.

@SorooshNoorzad Typically admissions committees make all final decisions in the US. Someone else asked a question about the influence of potential advisors recently here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/192700/what-impact-does-a-potential-advisor-have-in-phd-admissions/ where I wrote an answer.

Thank you @BryanKrause . So, based on your answer, is it good to stop emailing professors? As Azor Ahai -him- mentioned in his answer, can it act like a backfire?

@SorooshNoorzad I think by far the most likely outcome (in either direction) is "no effect", but yes I suppose it could. More generally, when people say they "have no time for X", what they really communicate is that other things were more important to them than X. Sometimes that's perfectly reasonable, but I don't think you give a good impression if you're too busy with work to write an email to a professor you're interested in spending the next 5 years working with.

Thank you @BryanKrause . But I think you are missing the point. Commitment is the key. If I don't act well with my current professor's tasks, I will never be a good student for my next professor. I think the current professor should be more important. By the way, thank you for your advice.

February is generally past time to email US faculty to try to increase your chances of being admitted. Likely, the committee has already started making offers or interview requests. In fact, emailing now may backfire as it might make you look unfamiliar with the US system.

searching all the universities' faculties' pages and customizing the email for each cannot be possible

You should not be reaching out to so many professors that this isn't possible.