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Social etiquette for interacting with PhD peers who complain *a lot*
People in my program complain a lot and usually not in good humor. How can I handle this socially and professionally?
Some of these people are my friends and some are no more than peers. In general I want to be respectful but not allow them to harangue me with complaints. Generally, much of this advice does not help.
For now, I try to avoid social gatherings with a high concentration of people from my program. When they get together, the complaints take over conversation. At the department, I can spot someone (or a group) having a stress crisis from a distance, and I keep my distance.
I certainly hope that this climate does not continue into faculty life.
[Migrated from other question here. There were some useful pieces of advice, so I hope that respondents will move their points]

Complaining is very natural. Even this question is a complaint (which is not a bad thing). But of course everyone has their limit to what they can take.

disagree blanket statement "complaining is very natural"... it is natural & human nature but can reach unnatural levels at which point it affects overall morale (but it may also be justified or unjustified by the environment). wonder, is there any evidence that there is more griping in academia? there is Sayres law... this does sound more like a positive psychology question... there is a lot written/research on that subj

"... it is natural & human nature but can reach unnatural levels" is an oxymoron, by definition.

Agree with @vzn. If we just remove the word "unnatural" then vzn's comment makes perfect sense. Plenty of "natural" things can lead to undesirable outcomes socially and professionally. E.g., anger and sexual desire are both natural, but people generally try to control those impulses to some extent, especially in the workplace.

Wearing glasses and not worrying about being eaten by leopards are also unnatural; what is "natural" is not really relevant to this question.

agreed "natural" is a tricky term here. psychological terms may be more relevant such as "maladjustment" and "dysfunctional". eg psychology makes a distinction between healthy and unhealthy anger, similarly with criticism/complaining. etc. here is a brief article "why some ppl complain about everything" touching on psychological distinctions etc

(as suggested by jabberwocky, I have moved the last part of my answer from here to this question)
Kvetching is a perfectly normal part of mental and social hygiene, but to what extent depends on the person. It is also a self-affirming activity: If complaining leads to positive social experiences (people you talk to relate to your experiences and opinions and share them), you will do this more often. If unchecked, this vicious circle can easily cross your tolerance threshold for complaining (which is different for each person). So, first of all you should keep in mind that "too much complaining" is your subjective view, not an objective truth (absent a concrete case of someone spending the day complaining instead of working and then failing to meet a deadline). Of course, if you'd rather have less complaining around you, it's perfectly legitimate to try to break that circle.
The best strategy (outside of avoiding complaining peers, which you apparently now follow) is often to lead by example: Do not respond to complaining with your own complaints (especially not with ones about their complaining), but try to steer the conversation to happier grounds by

getting them to relate positive experiences about their PhD;
mentioning ones you might have had (without showing off -- this one can be tricky);
taking an interest in their lives outside of academia.

In short, show them that they can have positive social interactions without complaining. If enough people around you feel the same way as you do, this usually works.
To your final remark: This is by no means limited to PhD students (or even academia) -- you get similar "hot spots" among early-career faculty simultaneously applying for permanent positions (in Europe) or trying to get tenure (in the US), or among tenured faculty of any seniority any time a major evaluation (of a grant or institute) or reaccreditation is imminent.

+1 for taking an interest in their lives outside of academia. This by itself can be a great release of stress for both parties.

+1 Good point to recognize that every person and career has "hot spots" when they will need to vent more than usual.

As a PhD student who like to complain (partly as a PhD student, partly as a Slav) and work/live in such environment: it's not much about etiquette (at worst, they will complain about your behavior), but about social contacts.
If your goal is to avoid complaints (especially non-productive ones):

DO steer away from sensitive topics (especially if it is not a new topic, e.g. "We already had a discussion about the odds of getting tenure; if we have nothing more to add, let's talk about X..."); some people have their weak points you don't want to touch,
DO try to focus on something positive (sometimes non academia-related topics can be the best/safest),
DON'T try to persuade that they don't have a problem (it's like persuading someone that (s)he is not feeling pain),
DON'T start complaining by yourself (it is a positive feedback mechanism),
DON'T start conversations with "how is your thesis?", or in tougher cases, not even "how are you?",
DON'T talk that other have worse (not many people are happy when hearing about others being unemployed or anything),
DO focus on their opportunities (in academia, science, non-academic job market, seeing an cool city while on a conference, etc),
DO try to focus on facts and actions rather than pointless complaints (see below).

Some people complain no matter what and no matter what is the topic - then you can't help.
With respect to complaints, PhD students are often smart and analytical. Saying that complaints never solve anything but one should focus on cold diagnosis and action often helps (or at least - halts some complaints). See (a bit different context, but somewhat related):

[...] People who struggle against the system (in this case, national education, but you can insert here any academic or political institution you don't like), or try to reform the system from the inside, often end up bitter and frustrated. Large institutions evolve at glacial speed, so whatever aspects one might want to reform, instead of fighting the resistance of matter it seems more fruitful to find a niche and expand from there. [...] We’d have got nowhere if we simply complained about the Polish education system and stopped at that.

from my text An independent camp for high school geeks, emphasis mine

+1 Great to read the perspective and advice of a self-proclaimed complainer.

As I said in the other question, you can avoid some of this, but shared suffering is a bonding experience - you and your cohorts will have the experience of having been "in the trenches" together, and this can be a fairly powerful bond with people who will be your colleagues in the future. Especially for those who are "just" your peers, those kinds of links can be important.
I think there's also a reason people complain in social settings in academia - some amount of stress and suffering is universal, but success is largely personal. Everyone can commiserate about quals, or NIH pay lines, or how brutal a particular class was, but at any given moment far fewer people are riding the high of getting a paper accepted, going to a conference they're looking forward to, landing that prestigious postdoc, etc. Focusing on that also highlights those people who aren't experiencing that. When I was in graduate school, the complaining was about things that happened to you because you were a graduate student not because they were your fault - everyone was stressed, everyone was poor, etc.
Some thoughts of mine on dealing with it:

Don't dismiss the complaints. A lot of people want to know they're not alone, and just writing off their problems - however trivial or annoying you might find them - isn't going to make the social situation better.
Refocus the conversation on shared experiences that are funny or odd or some how enjoyable, rather than just complaints. The professor with the oddball anecdotes, the antics of the students you are supervising, etc.
Know things about your cohort's lives outside of school. It's a lot easier to not complain about school if you have something else to talk about.
As @PiotrMigdal said, put the brakes on a little harder when things turn to sensitive topics - that doesn't go good places.

+1 especially for knowing (and caring) about people's lives outside of school.

+1 You've clarified for me that it's too vague to just refer to "complaining" and seek advice. It depends on content and context of so-called complaints. The "complaints" might be a genuine request for support. Or it might just be a means for social bonding since grad school is the central shared experience among us (and sitting around praising our jobs just isn't very fun/funny). And sometimes complaints are simply unhealthy and one should know when the "put on the brakes."

+1 for "Don't dismiss the complaint." I know a lot of people who were relieved by reading PhD comics ("I am alone, or crazy." vs "People typically experience such problems." changes a lot).

(as suggested by jabberwocky, I have moved the last part of my answer from here to this question)

People in my program complain a lot and usually not in good humor. How can I handle this socially and professionally?

I have experienced that "dissatisfaction" can also be very infectious. Dissatisfied people often and strongly complain to their co-workers and co-students, which, over time, gives those people the same sense of dissatisfaction. For instance, in my old lab, we had one office room of people that were constantly dissatisfied about our work environment (all the other students in other rooms felt differently). Any new student that would be seated in this office would, within weeks, also start to complain a lot. As such, I think your goal

In general I want to be respectful but not allow them to harangue me with complaints.

is very good. Try not to let other people convince you that life is terrible.
I am not sure whether entirely avoiding social outings is the right strategy, though. This will make you an outsider of your cohort, and you will have to spend a lot of time with these people in the next years. At parties, a usual strategy to avoid any topic that you do not want to talk about (politics, sports, or whether your life is terrible) is to avoid the groups that are currently talking about the annoying topics and focus your attention to people that are discussing something more interesting.
Sometimes, people will come directly to you to complain one-on-one about their problems. In such cases, one strategy is to acknowledge that they are feeling bad, but provide a more positive light on their case. When you do that regularly, two things may happen. In the best case, the complainer actually takes your words to heart and starts seeing things a bit brighter. If that does not happen, he will at least stop complaining to you specifically, because he is actually looking for somebody who echoes his feelings.

In general I want to be respectful but not allow them to harangue me with complaints

Good answers so far. I would add that I have found that different complainers have different goals for their complaining. Compare and contrast these two conversations:

Professor Bedfellow is always on my case to get the grading done faster, it's driving me crazy how awful people are here.
Have you tried talking to the professor about it?
Yes, but prof just says "I'm busy!" and I should come back later. It's awful!
Have you tried asking the admin to schedule a short meeting?
Yes, but the admin hates me. People in this department are awful!
Surely the admin will do their job even if they dislike you.
Yes, but by the time I get a meeting it'll be too late! Everything is awful!
AAARGH YOU ARE IMPOSSIBLE TO DEAL WITH.

vs

Professor Bedfellow is always on my case to get the grading done faster, it's driving me crazy how awful people are here.
That's terrible.
The prof just says "I'm busy!" and I should come back later. It's awful!
How irritating that must be for you.
And the admin hates me. People in this department are awful!
How vexing.
By the time I get a meeting it'll be too late! Everything is awful!
Boy, that must be frustrating.

In the first conversation the joy of complaining is secondary to the actual goal of the conversation, which is to infuriate the person trying in vain to solve their friend's problem. This is a Why-don't-you-Yes-but conversation and the first person to get frustrated loses.
The second conversation seems exactly the same, but the friend this time is commiserating rather than playing Why-don't-you-Yes-but.
My point is: if the complainer is looking for people to have a game of why-don't-you-yes-but, and you play that game, they'll keep on coming back to you if you play. If that's what they're looking for and you just nod and say "You're right, everything is awful" over and over again, they'll get bored and look for someone else to frustrate.
Now, if the person is genuinely just looking for someone to say "yes, that's awful", then you deal with that by not saying that more than once. Let them get in one complaint and then change the subject until they get the hint.

May not apply, but: There are regional variations in how complaining is used socially. New Yorkers, for example, tend to see it as an opportunity for bonding (sharing complaints about something else implies you don't have complaints about the person you're sharing them with), whereas midwesterners tend to hear that kind of complaint as general annoyance which could be directed against them in the next breath.
Understanding the subtext may help with finding ways to either deal with the complainers or explain to them why they're making you uncomfortable.
(Recommended reading: Deborah Tannen's books analyzing variations in conversational styles, specifically That's Not What I Meant!)


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Quotation/reference manager for print books
What is an effective and efficient system for storing quotes and notes from print books to be retrieved later?
When we read books and articles in electronic format there are easy ways to mark quotes for future reference -- as discussed in the SE posts linked below. Although I read most articles on my computer or a tablet, I still prefer to read books in print format. I am looking for an efficient method for electronically storing quotes and notes from documents I am reading in print.
A brute-force method would be to read books with my computer at my side, and manually transcribe and tag all quotes I like from the book, electronically linked to the book's citation information. I'm hoping there's a better way -- this method might simply be too slow to be feasible.
There are good answers to related questions, but their discussion of quote-tagging and referencing is for electronic documents. The good SE posts out there cover:
i) Why one should use a reference manager: Should I use reference manager software?
ii) Using Sente or LaTeX+JabRef to store electronic quotes, or summaries/notes on books: Reference manager with note-taking/quote-storing capabilities
iii) using TextCite or Citavi for the same purposes: Searching for a quotation manager

A few notes before I make a suggestion: I don't usually volunteer answers unless I have a very clear, reliable workflow in mind. In this case, it's a bit more of a "workaround", and as such, it's not perfect. It's not going to work 100% of the time. But I do hope that it saves you a few minutes of typing here and there - it all adds up in the long run.
This is a modification of my workflow in undergrad, where I (regrettably) mostly just skimmed books without taking notes and had to track down quotes based on a very limited set of information.
It requires use of Chrome, a Google account, and a Doc designated for taking notes.
Here's how the workflow breaks down:

Search Google Scholar for your print material of choice.
Use the "search inside" function of Google Books to locate your particular quote. Usually just an uncommon word, phrase, or name will suffice. Be forewarned that the part of the book you're looking for will sometimes be withheld due to copyright.
If the book permits highlighting, you're good to go. Just copy the text you need. Unfortunately, it probably won't, so screen capture is your best workaround. I use Fireshot to take screenshots right within my browser without downloading them locally.
Take a screenshot using your preferred method of the paragraph or part of a paragraph that you need.
Now you have an image to work with. If you have the means, invest in an app that will do the OCR (optical character recognition) for you. That way, if you need to use the quote in your next paper, it's ready for you without having to type it all out yourself. Kami comes recommended and integrates with Google Drive, but I don't have any personal experience with it.
If you don't need OCR at the moment and just want to hold on to the quote for future reference, keep the image. You can opt to save it directly to Google Drive OR you can copy and paste it into a Google Doc from your browser.
Take notes, add context, jot down ideas, add more quotes, etc. directly in your Google Doc.

Optional
Use Paperpile to manage your citation information in Google Docs. I started using Paperpile while writing my Masters thesis and become rather enamored with it, despite never having used a reference manager before. Full disclosure: I now work for Paperpile as their Marketing & Community Manager.
From your Google Doc, you can add your own notes and context for the quote along with an in-text citation that links directly to your research library. Paperpile can pull the citation info directly from your Google Scholar search in Step 1. If you don't want to take notes in Google Docs, you can add them directly to the reference itself in the form of a note or attachment. And when you're ready to start writing your next paper, the reference is ready without any additional work on your part.

It appears from your profile that your are affiliated with Paperpile: there's nothing wrong with this, but in such cases it is much better to disclose the affiliation in the answer.

Noted and edited.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Can a roundtable chair not liking my research influence my chances of having a submission accepted?
I believe that a roundtable chair at an upcoming conference does not like my research. I would like to submit an abstract in response to the call for papers.
Does the roundtable chair play a part in the selection process, or is it solely the task of the conference committee?

I've given the question a big overhaul to focus on what I think is the essence of your question, but removes the stuff that was probably going to get it closed. Feel free to edit further

To the OP: You should thank @JeromyAnglim. I was going to vote to close this question  because It had too much personal offence in it. Now, I vote to "Leave Open".

I will accept the changes but to clarify, the issue is that my research treads on the chair's turf.

Upon some reflection, you are both right. Neutrality and clarity: my weaknesses; hence, status as an "emerging scholar".

Some conferences accept all submissions.

Can you please specify your field? There may be a considerable difference between fields where conferences are the main publication venue (such as computer science) and others. For example, I never encountered the term roundtable chair so far.

I am in the arts and humanities (history)

There is no way to anticipate if a roundtable chair will be on the conference's program committee without more information.  Most conferences list their program committee on the conference website.

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


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I included some results in my thesis that some other PhD students included in theirs. Is this plagiarism?
I would like to ask you a question about my PhD thesis, which has already been defended.
Part of my results were obtained in a university in another country. During my work, two of the PhD students there helped me and they have included these results in their theses. The problem is that I have also included these results in my PhD thesis, which was defended after theirs.
These results (included in my thesis, part of them in the thesis of one of the students and the other part in the thesis of the other student) are included in two publications. I am the first author of both of them, but I am given as equally contributed with one of the other PhD students in one of the paper and with the other PhD student in the other paper.
Do you think that I can be accused in plagiarism or be in authorship conflict?

in two publications, Did you cite these two publications in your thesis?

You should cite the other publications, your authorship involvement and your noted contribution status.
You should also note that you are presenting the complete result set while the cited publications each contain a part thereof. You should informally notify the other authors of your intentions - this may not change your course of action but it would be useful to know that they don't intend to contest any of your work.

Most PhD theses I have seen so far included a sentence along the lines of the following somewhere:

This thesis contains material already published in the following publications: …

This applies to compilation theses as well as to monographs. My faculty’s PhD rules require such a sentence.

If your thesis does not contain such a sentence, you have problems with self-plagiarism anyway.
If your thesis does contain such a sentence, you properly informed the reader about the fact that those results were published elsewhere and reasonable accusations of plagiarism should not happen.

With respect to authorship conflicts, your PhD guidelines probably require that you contributed to all presented results to a certain extent or, if applicable, explicitly say to which results you did not comply to this extent. The latter is for example relevant if you have to present somebody else’s part of a colaborative work as a prerequisite for your work or in a compilation thesis. You have to decide yourself whether you adhered to this.

My thesis does not contain the info that the material within it is from publications of which I am the first author, because it is given within other documents related with my PhD

You should also explicitly state it in the thesis, since that should be a standalone document.

You should find out your school's policy.  In addition to citing the previous work, you may need to fill out some additional paperwork.  If I remember correctly, at my school using previously published results required written permission of the advisor and the journal, while using cowritten results required written permission from the coauthors.

If you haven't cited the other two theses, you would be committing plagiarism. You might not really be "accused" of plagiarism if you are just circulating your thesis internally and not publishing it as a book or parts of it as a journal paper. However, whether or not you are accused, you should follow academic best practices and cite the other two theses.

authors: محمد عبده محمد الحداد


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Obligation to quote source of grammatical knowledge
Do I need to name a source (a website for example), which lists grammar rules for a language? I would like to know if this is considered one of these goods, which cannot be owned and thus needs no quotation.
For example a website lists prepositions, which cause a specific casus in a language. If I take those prepositions and list them in a document for that casus, do I then have reference a source, or can I assume this to be something not owned by anyone?
What about example phrases? They're also part of daily language and should not be owned by anyone.
Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with having to quote, but I'd probably prefer inventing my own example phrases and such. I don't lack the creativity.

Citation is not about ownership.

@JeffE Maybe intellectual property is better?

@Zelphir : Citation isn't about intellectual property either.

@Christian very "informative". Isn't something intellectual property of someone, who came up with it? Isn't that the reason for citing a source? If a source didn't come up with it, but someone else, then I'd rather cite that someone else. But maybe that's the point? That I could also cite secondary sources?

@Zelphir : Intellectual property is a legal norm. For those laws citations don't matter. Academic citation requirements are about academic norms.

A routine list of basic information does not need a citation: for example, you would not need to cite a list of capital cities of US states, nor would you need to cite the source of a simple list of English prepositions. However, if you cited them in order of frequency of use, you would cite the source from which you took that information, since it is likely not to be considered "basic information."
However, citing examples that you have taken from another source is good practice, and something you should probably do. (Again, the exception is something so basic or so short that it can't really be considered plagiarism: for example, you can't really claim plagiarism to not cite "the book is red"; but if you use a hundred such examples from the same source without citing, it gets murkier.)

I would like to know if this is considered one of these goods, which cannot be owned and thus needs no quotation.

Academic citation isn't about ownership. It's not about copyright. It's not about intellectual property. It's about allowing the reader to know where you got your ideas. It's about recognizing other people for their work.
In many cases different people might describe the grammar of a language a bit differently. They might even describe different dialects of the same language. Different dialects of the language might treat the same prepositions as treating a different casus.
Maria Brenda wrote "The Cognitive Perspective on the Polysemy of the English Spatial Preposition Over" – a whole book over a single preposition and what it does in different cases.
If you cite a specific source for your list then a reader can understand of why your list looks the way it does. If the care they can go to the original source to understand how the list got created.

To add to this / boil this down: The grammar of a language is nobody’s intellectual property; descriptions, assessments and systematisations of a grammar are.

Aha, I always thought that by not citing someone and stating ones name as the author of the document, one is claiming to have come up with it oneself, which would be lying and stealing other people's intellectual property, which would be illegal.
So that's not how it is then? It might be a very naive view, but that's how I explained it for myself so far.
So you're saying, that citing is merely 'being nice' to ones readers? If that's so, where does plagiarism start?

@Zelphir : For academic norms it's plagarism if you use a source without citing it. There are cases where legal copyright is violated. There are cases like ghostwriting that are academic plagarism but that aren't violating legal copyright. Academic norms are a distinct category from legal norms. They are based on different values and differently enforced.


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Publisher didn't make change to paper and now the paper still has the error
I recently published a paper with IEEE. During the publishing stage, I had to provide them the figures named [MyName]FigureX_a, [MyName]FigureX_b etc...
By accident, I got two figures wrong and they were named FigureX_b and FigureX_a instead of FigureX_a and FigureX_b. During publishing, I spotted this error and told them to fix the problem. They did fix it at the time and I approved the changes.
However, when I received the final complete PDF, the error was present once again. In the e-mail, it stated that "Please note this is not the final version of the article and corrections will not be reflected in this PDF". I thought that the change would be reflected in the final version so did not bother to e-mail.
I have just seen the final version on the web-site and the error is still present. This error should be pretty evident to anybody reading the paper. The figure is part of many other subfigures so the inconsistency is apparent. The overall message of the figure is not lost and the results are still the same apart from the order being wrong.
I am unsure what to do. On one hand, I want to contact IEEE and complain. I unfortunately do not have the proofs of the pdfs that were provided for review but I have my correspondence saved. On the other hand, I think the error is minor enough that any reader should understand what happened.
The file that will be on PubMed is correct though. I could in theory submit it to ArXiv with the correct ordering, copyright notices and other information required by IEEE(DOI,PMID etc.).
Does this require any drastic actions?

Send the publisher an email mentioning that an error that was detected and discussed during the revision period has crept into paper. Don't attribute blame. Ask politely that the error is fixed.
As noted by C26, errors are common. It doesn't matter if the mistake isn't fixed. But, it will probably bug you if you don't try to get it fixed. (Such issues probably won't bother you after you've published a few more mistakes ;-)

I would add to this that errors are unfortunately an uncommon part of the publishing process. I have had two papers published, and in spite of work from both myself, the peer reviewers and copy editors, I still noticed minor errors in the printed versions. It sounds like the errors in your paper were minor irritants, not massive grievances, fortunately.


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What is the difference between the archives and annals of a conference?
I would like to know, when publishing a paper in a conference, what are the differences between a publication in the annals of the conference and the archives?

Could you give a link to a conference where these two terms are used? (I haven't heard of this before…)

@Dirk here it is https://www.ipi.uni-hannover.de/519.html

it says that full paper will be published in annals and accepted abstract can led to a published paper in the archives

You just answered your own question: A publication in the annals is a full paper, but a publication in the archives is only an abstract.

Actually both publications are full papers, but now the conference is done, I have my answer:
publications in the annals are based on reviewed full paper whereas publications in the archives are based on reviewed abstract OR reviewed full papers that where found not strong enough to be in the annals


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Dealing with dismissive reviews as an editor
I am an editor of an academic journal. If I receive a review that makes valid points but is written in a very dismissive tone, what should I do?

I disagree with @CaptainEmacs 100%.  I think it reflects badly on the journal to have reviews that you know come across in a bad way.  I would rescind the review and ask them to write it better before passing on to authors.  The same would be true if a review were particularly bad.

@FredDouglis Ouch - I read it as a question asked by the author, not the editor. Sorry, you are completely right; the editor should at least prepend the comments with a disclaimer. I removed my comment.

OK, great.  user7289, would you prefer that I make my comment in the form of an answer?

While I would appreciate an editor to distance himself from an aggressive review, I would not expect her to do so. Even an outright stupid review does not change my regard for a journal, as I cannot expect the editor to know the style of every reviewer, and possibly that particular reviewer is usually fast and reasonable. BTW the funniest review I got was essentially "I don't believe the theorem is true. I don't believe the theorem can be proven this way. But if it could, it would be trivial."

I believe that you could: a) Explain to the reviewer that you find his or points valid but would like him or her to rewrite the review so that it is more constructive for the authors and therefore more likely to turn into meaningful edits, or b) find a new reviewer. Either way, I would discourage using this reviewer again, because authors find dismissive reviews discouraging and would especially discourage junior scholars who may have very significant research, but new to writing.


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Paper was rejected for high similarity with parts of my own dissertation
My PhD thesis consisted of two published papers and one submitted paper embedded in some additional framing. For completion of my PhD, I had to upload my thesis to the servers of our academic library, where it is now publicly available.
However, afterwards, the third paper from the thesis was rejected after peer review. I performed substantial changes and submitted the manuscript to another journal. They returned it back to me, stating that I exceeded by far the allowed index of similarity (40 % similarity with 35 % similarity of a single source). I spent $100 for a plagiarism check only to find out that the source from which I was accused to have copied a majority of my work, was my own publicly available thesis.
As my thesis contains my third (unpublished) manuscript, it naturally has a high similarity with the version I was about to submit.
How can I solve this?

What field is this in? In my area, this would be completely outlandish behaviour from that journal. However, some fields have very messed-up notions of prior publications.

Assume ignorance before malice.  Have you informed the reviewers of your investigation and provided details?

@Paul: I do not assume malice but our chairholder disencouraged me to resubmit my paper there even if the issues should be solved. I will, however, still inform the editor just in case some colleagues of mine plan to submit their work any time soon to the same journal.

Did you do something daft, like using a different spelling of your name or leaving out a middle initial? I'd sort of expect the software to notice if the author's name was the same. How many John Smiths can there possibly be?

In my experience, plagiarism detection software generally doesn't bother worrying about things like that, as it is used to search for self-plagiarism as well.

Are you saying that papers with a lot of similar content should be accepted simply because of who wrote them (namely the same person)?

Did you state on the title page that the paper is a re-worked version of part of your dissertation?

Did you try emailing the editor explaining the situation? Namely, that your on-line but not refereed thesis fragment is generating the (false) positive?

@Kaz: no, they're saying (rightly or wrongly) that the fact their thesis is in some sense "published" should not imply that it's somehow bad for the same material also to appear in a journal. And indeed the publisher broadly agrees with that position, even if this editor doesn't. There aren't two similar "papers" unless the thesis is a "paper".

Am I getting this right? The article was basically accepted, and the reviewers now worked for nothing just because you don´t want to write the editor to straighten out a mistake (likely yours, not citing your dissertation, and not writing in the accompanying letter that this is 1/3 of your recently finished thesis? Because you´re huffy over your waste of 100$?

@Karl: From what do you deduce this? The journal that peer-reviewed it rejected it regularly after peer review. The asker then made changes and submitted it to another journal, which desk-rejected it due to (self)plagiarism. Also, please be nice.

@Karl, I think Wrzlprmft wasn't clear enough, so I'll say it: No, you're not getting this right at all.  Everything you said was wrong, and came off as quite rude.

Publishing your thesis is fine (and I've done it), the paper should just cite the thesis properly as @Jim suggested.

I understand that the matter is complicated. Wrzprmft summed up the situation correctly. As for what @Jim asks, I'll have to admit that in the cover letter I did not mention that the study had been submitted to another journal (and rejected after peer-review), because it underwent substantial changes and I only kept the wording for the introduction and some little parts of the discussion. Nor did I mention that the rejected form of the manuscript is publicly available in my thesis. It is, in fact, a different paper but with high similarity.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2937/can-i-publish-parts-of-the-ph-d-thesis-as-a-paper-in-a-journal

Most publishers I know explicitly permit (pre)publication of papers as part of a thesis. For example the copyright policy of Elsevier (the publisher you used as a tag) states:

Authors can use their articles, in full or in part, for […] [i]nclusion in a thesis or dissertation (provided that this is not to be published commercially)

Going by this, everything is fine with your submission.
More generally, you did not attempt to sell a work previously published in another journal (or parts thereof) as a new publication, which would be the typical case of self-plagiarism.
For all of this, it does not matter whether you modified the respective chapter or included parts of the frame, as long as you stayed away from the already published chapters.
However, the rejection of your paper may not have taken this into account, either because it was automatic or somebody did not connect the dots.
I thus advise to consider the rejection to be an unintentional error or their side.
I would therefore simply write to the journal explaining that you suspect that your paper was mistakenly identified as plagiarism due to similarity with your thesis, which is fine as per the above rules.
In general, it is a good idea to mention upon submission that parts of your paper have been previously published, be it as a preprint or thesis to avoid exactly this as well as potential clashes with journal policy.
Finally, to address some of your concerns:

I feel like [writing to the editor] may be conceived as begging for permission to be allowed into a reviewing process

I would not worry about this.
First, what you are challenging is not a judgement call (e.g., a desk rejection due to lack of relevance).
The journal stated a very objective argument for rejection (plagiarism) and you have very objective arguments that this argument is erroneous.
It’s a simple mistake; it can happen; you are asking for it to be fixed.
Furthermore, even if this should be considered begging, you have little to lose: Right now the journal considers you a plagiarist (which you might want to set straight even if you decide to submit to another journal).

The copyrights of Elsevier allow me to use articles published under their flag in my thesis. My case, however, is the other way round: I want to publish something that has been part of my thesis in very similar form. The thesis is published, but it contains a part that is not peer-reviewed and has not been published as an article.

Copyright transfer to journal exists because the journal’s business model is selling your paper and they want to have some exclusivity on this.
For this, the order of events doesn’t matter.
My point with linking these policies is to demonstrate that Elsevier is generally fine with papers that are available as a thesis.

Send them your so-called plagiarism report as well.  Who knows, maybe they used the wrong report?

Thank you for this link! I know for a fact that they used the exact same software for plagiarism detection and I obtained the exact same similarity-index which leads me to believe that the check was fine but the conclusion was not. I think I will write to the editor, even if I feel like this may be conceived as begging for permission to be allowed into a reviewing process

The copyrights of Elsevier allow me to use articles published under their flag in my thesis. My case, however, is the other way round: I want to publish something that has been part of my thesis in very similar form. The thesis is published, but it contains a part that is not peer-reviewed and has not been published as an article.

@offeltoffel: Please see my edit.

Thank you for caring to explain your thoughts in such detail. I have asked the journal to inform the editor-in-chief to contact me and I will try to make my point there as well! I will keep you updated on the situation!

I'm inexperienced.. assuming that at least parts of the text appear word for word in both publications--why would this not be considered self-plagiarism?

@smcs: the frame thesis consists of a copy of my three publications and additional text "framing" the articles. The third "publication", however, never got published. It was still under review at that time and let down later. I "recycled" lots of this stuff, though, for a proper new publication

@smcs: As opposed to plagiarism, self-plagiarism is not bad per se, but only when it is used to trick others into thinking that you did some new work when you actually recycled your old work. This is bad if you publish the same paper twice or use the same material to obtain two degrees (because those are expected to be independent). Nobody expect PhD theses to contain exclusive work – in fact this would be usually a bad thing as it would mean good work being obscured instead of being broadly visible to the research community.

@Wrzlprmft Your last comment makes a very good point since many people are confused about self-plagiarism. I wonder if it should be mentioned in the answer.

@Wrzlprmft: I agree with all your points, but still I think I need to emphasize something: the presumable self-plagiarism did not concern the actual "framework chapters", but the chapters with the 1:1 copies of my three publications. Only that one publication actually never got published (which I am trying to make good for with my new submission). But I see how the journal could think that it has. The concept of a framework thesis seems to be different around the globe, that's why I am stressing this point.

@offeltoffel: Actually, I don’t see any peculiarities in your framework thesis. Except for the name matches what is usually called sandwich thesis or cumulative thesis. Either way, it does not matter whether the alleged (self)-plagiarism is with the frame or an included paper or whether you modified that content or not: Your paper was rejected on false premises and a simple clarification mail should solve this. It might be that your modifying the chapter made the journal not look closer when it should have (so your plagiarism scores were actually too low), but that’s still not your fault.

@Wrzlprmft Thanks. I understand that a PhD thesis does not have to contain exclusive work, but a publication in a journal has to, right? From the standpoint of the journal, why does it matter whether I sent them copy & pasted parts from a previously published paper or a previously published PhD thesis?

@smcs: Peer-reviewed papers as an academic currency work because you cannot (ethically) get two for the price of one. Part of the academic legitimisation of journals is based on providing the backbone for this system. The other half is disseminating research with copy-editing, typesetting, etc., which also provides the revenue for the journals, whether paid for by the authors or the viewers (whether that’s worth it, is another discussion). Previously published thesis undermine this model, but so do pre-prints, but not enough that libraries stop buying them (mostly, for now).

In case you are interested in an update of the situation: the editor has responded that "[if the similarity occured from [my] thesis, it may not count as plagiarism". I think they are now checking the details and will inform me any time soon.

Find a better journal.  A large portion of papers published in journals were previously published in dissertations.  A competent editor would have checked to see if the similar document was your dissertation.  This is a mistake, but an unreasonable one.
I have never seen a decision letter that involved an automated check of similarity.  In good journals, plagiarism is determined by humans, not computers, though computers do assist.

I have my doubts that a publisher even bothers academic editors with something they determined to be blatant plagiarism. And except for false positives, this makes total sense. Of course there still would be some incompetency involved at the non-academic handling, but the actual journal is not to be blamed for this (except for their choice of publisher).

@Wrzlprmft A simpler explanation would be that the academic editors do not exist.

The journal is considered (one of) the highest ranked and most esteemed journals in the field of my research. I would rather say that "worse journals" put more effort into winning authors for their issues, whereas the higher ranked do not want to waste time with presumable plagiarism.

The decision letter stated that most (if not all) [sic] journals use this kind of software. I would find it strange if good journals were able to perform plagiarism detection on their own...

That is disappointing.  In that case, follow Wrzlprmft's suggestion, and hope that it doesn't become the formerly most esteemed journal.

@AnonymousPhysicist: Why? Unless there is evidence to believe that the journal ought to be "most esteemed", there is no reason to hope that it is so or remains so.

@user21820 The evidence is offeltoffel said so.

I've never heard of this happening.  Since it was possible to do so, I imagine everyone who now writes a thesis or dissertation is required to upload it to the library.  I had to turn in two copies of each (before the internet).  And many if not most of us go on to publish it or parts of it So I don't know if it's something unique to your field or the journals you are submitting to.  Technically, copying your own work is still considered plagiarism, and I'm not sure how library copies are viewed - since people are able to presumably download them I don't know if this is considered being published.  I guess for some journals perhaps it is. First, make sure to look very carefully at all the submission information for the journal.  It that's a policy it would be mentioned. If you don't find anything there, I would politely write to the editor explaining the situation and see what they say.  Truthfully, I'd be surprised if they didn't the exact same thing with their own thesis or dissertation, though perhaps before the internet.

Yes, it's commonly required to upload the thesis to the university library. However, it's usually possible to ask for a publication embargo, to keep it non-public for some period of time to handle e.g. the publication process and potential patent applications.

@Anyon: It is possible to restrain the publication of the thesis but it will delay the conferment of the doctoral. Frankly, I would not want to wait until all content of my thesis is published although it is considered the most sincere way. But I agree that this is the only way if the journals do treat my thesis as a previous publication and thus accuse me of self-plagiarism

@offeltoffel It's indeed unfortunate if an embargo leads to a delay in degree conferral at your institution. I don't think I would want to wait either in that situation.

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text:
Citing, Secondary Source
My question is about citing. I found two sectences that were cited in a review article (first sentence[1], extra information about it[2]. Second sentence [3]). And after that i found the original references and read them. (I didn't need ref [2], i just remove it and didn't talk about it)
At the end, i changed the places of them (flipped...1-3 to 3-1). Also i paraphrase them and added some words on them. Because in review article some parts of them were missing. But i gave reference to the original sources not to review article. So, is it considered to be plagiarism in introduction part?
Note: The primary sources are not previous studies on my local research area. They are like descriptions on that field. One of them is reasons of illness and the other one is statistical numbers of sport. Actually i gave the statistical number a bit different like "more than 150 m" instead of "180 m" and I was specific like "who are older than 20 years old". And also for reasons of illness, i gave different reference for ref1 but ref3 kept constant. To be specific; reasons of illness can be described by a doctor easly.
Here, total number of sentences is two.
For example in following link; we see that APA style says that we need to give original reference.
https://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/cite-another-source murdoch university; https://libguides.murdoch.edu.au/APA/secondary apa style blog; https://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/05/secondary-sources-aka-how-to-cite-a-source-you-found-in-another-source.html
So what about my question's answer? I just obeyed to rule of APA and after i finished my thesis, i learnt that my situation might be considered as plagiarism for 2 citationss? and my M.Sc. degree can be revoked later?

Check out all the answers on that question; rarely are questions absolutely perfect duplicates, and there's nothing wrong with your question being a duplicate, it's just that it's already been answered here.

From where did you learn that your degree could be revoked?  Was this from an official pr professor at your school, or is it a somewhat vague worry?  (If I've read your question correctly, I believe you're safe.  You read everything you cited and cited everything you used.)

Please do not deface your question just because they have been closed. In particular questions closed as a duplicate still hold some value as they can point others in the right direction.

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text:
Do my country and the standard of my supervisor affect the quality of my PhD?
I'm almost going to start my PhD. Out of curiosity, I searched for several effective researchers in several fields over the internet. Most of the common property among almost of them are
1) Working under the supervision of another effective researcher.
2) Not doing PhD in my country.
The second rule fails if and only if his/her supervisor satisfies both rules.
I considered some other factors such as time of spending, passion on the subject. Although many people I saw in my colleagues, friends, seniors etc., have these qualities are not as successful as the people who have the above two points (country, supervisor).
In this context, even I have so much aspiration, the two factors are pushing me back due to this empirical evidence.
Thus, my question is, whether the country and the standard of the supervisor affects my PhD quality and hence my career?
Note: I was neither a child prodigy nor an exceptional person but an average student. Hence please answer realistically.

The first point: working under the supervision of an effective researcher, is certainly one of the most important criteria, if not the most important criterion.
The second point, about the country where you work, is one that many people would like to discard. However, the following points need to be taken into consideration (especially since you have given the tag of "developing-countries"):

The quality of research facilities available. This is more important for some areas of research, like experimental sciences. There is no doubt that the developed world has, on average, much better facilties.
The quality of your co-students and general research atmosphere at the probable place of work in your country. This is actually quite important as you learn a lot from other young researchers, seniors and juniors. A good university will have a better atmosphere and such universities are most often in the developed world.
The extent to which your research will get global visibility. Some areas of research are not "global" as they tackle local problems. However, many scientific areas are "global". In such a case, it is unfortunate, but true, that the country of origin of your research does make a difference to the visibility it gets.

Having made all these points, there are plus points about carrying out research in your own country.

If you do well, it brings credit to the society which you are a part of and which had a big hand in making you who you are.
Research is difficult enough without adding the burden of finding your feet in a different culture and society.

Ultimately, you will have to weigh all these factors against the quality of research positions that you have available once the application process is complete. All the best.

Unless you are much more self motivated with many more ideas than the average beginning doctoral student, you will depend on your advisor/supervisor for both research ideas and guidance. So, the "quality" (whatever that means) of your supervisor has quite a lot to do with your success initially. That, along with a supervisor who can connect you to other researchers via collaborations he/she has can be important. Collaboration and synergy are very important, especially when you get started.
I doubt that country has much to do with anything if you find a good supervisor. Most of the world is not where you are, of course. That is even true in China. Great research gets done most everywhere, though not all academics move to The US or EU which gets a lot of "press". Of course, you will find a lot of research in large universities, wherever they are.

I think there are two perspectives on the choice of advisor and country.

Machiavellian Perspective: Being in science is sadly a career and, as such, not fully determined by quality and content of your research work. Instead good PR and smart career moves do make a big difference. Superstars will always appear effective as good students will join them and maintain their top standing (even if they have dwindled or are never around to even talk to these students). If you join a superstar and do good work on currently hot topics, you are more likely to be superstar yourself. If you go to a country which is great at PR (e.g., the USA), your results are more likely to be read even if someone in another country (frequently in Japan) has published them twenty years ago. If you know what you want (e.g., already know a topic that intrinsically motivates you and some good research questions), it makes complete sense to join the superstar of your field in the most famous place. If not, the long duration of US PhD programs and frequently high concentration of superstars in the top programs, would also make a choice clear. Thus, by this perspective you are badly advised to go anywhere but a few select top advisors at top universities with big PR departments in the USA.
Idealistic Perspective: When your core goal is idealistic, i.e., you want (A) to do great research and (B) learn how to develop your research skills, you need someone who (1) does great research but also (2) cares & has time for you and (3) with whom you will get along well. Clearly, a superstar rarely fulfills these points. Such advisors have little time due to their success payoff (the number of opportunities grows with your fame), too many students (superstars are a fatal attraction), will not help you grow at all nor find your path to research. They will discern a good idea and maintain a set of PhD students who are supporting their status while removing the ones who have not proposed great ideas to them (survival of the fittest; a friend of mine who is currently a superstar himself compare the lab of his superstar advisor at Stanford to a gulag). While that algorithm is good for them, it works against you. Thus, choose someone whose research and personality you like. As good research always is successful on the long run, he will be successful and so will you. You may even have a good feeling by having done it with more honest means.

When I was at your stage nearly twenty years ago, I had the choice between many advisors (both stars and nobodies), many schools (no names and two of the top three in my field) and many countries (CH, DE, JP and USA). I chose an advisor whom I really liked but had a suboptimal standing in the community (good researcher but not a star) but at a top 10 place in my field in the USA (but not one of the top two schools). All of my advisor's students and postdocs including me (I got tenure fours after my PhD) and him had the best careers which we ever expected. I recently looked at the students of all the advisors who had made me competing offers, and I can just say: I did the right choice for me.
I hope this helps?

Both while I was doing my masters and, moreso, in my current, unrelated to my masters, job, I have been told to disregard research papers from China in particular. It produces a lot of research but there are certainly tales of data being manipulated or outright falsified to get it to publishing. So I am sorry to say that the country that you do research in does make a difference.
Afraid my answer is only word of mouth. I am not a scientist as such but I work with them.


text:
Is novelty requirement for PhD restricts the selection of research question?
From the answers to this question. We can clearly know that novelty is a basic requirement for a PhD degree.
Now, consider the following statements:
1) Is Goldbach conjecture true?
2) Is P = NP?
etc.,
All the questions have a lot of attention in that particular field and are not easy to get answers for them. But we cannot say it is impossible to get answers.
Suppose I'm a student and my PhD thesis should be novel. I am highly interested in solving one such question.
In this case, either my supervisor will forbid me in doing research on such question or there are more chances that I may not get PhD because of the sole reason of novelty.
Hence, to the best of my knowledge, either directly or indirectly, the PhD is narrowing down to the topics of recent origin, relatively easily publishable, less saturated etc.,
Isn't it true that the research question has been influenced by novelty aspect of PhD?

@corey979 I asked this to know whether there is any gap between my thoughts and the actual academic community....  I am coming to know that most of the  people are doing PhD with a bias towards publishing rather than substantial contribution. I generally think that PhD is for some substantial contribution, not for publishing some papers that contribute less to that field.

What is unclear in the question? My doubt is simple Does the novelty parameter for PhD restrict the research question we want to solve or not!!!

either my supervisor will forbid me in doing research on such question or there are more chances that I may not get PhD because of the sole reason of novelty. This is a false dichotomy. There are many novel topics besides solving famous and very hard problems.

@hanugm Perhaps it would help to narrow down your post to your actual question, then. Also, I would rephrase "novelty parameter", because it's not a word that's commonly used.

I think there is a major misunderstanding here. Those problems are not bad problems for a PhD student due to the requirement of novelty. They are bad problems due to the requirement of actually doing something rather than banging your head against a wall for a couple of years.

Well, it is slightly unlikely that a novel researcher will solve one of the very fundamental problems in their PhD.
But whilst working on a solution, you will most probably find different other intersting problems which are unsolved or novel an those can be published and can be the basis of a PhD thesis.
You will have to convince a supervisor that you

understood the problem well
have some novel ideas which have not been tried before

and with this you may find someone. But be prepared for an intense discussion. It hppens quite often that a student claims to have a solution for a very fundamental problem and after half an hour of discussion the idea is gone with the wind... A good supervisor wants to avoid such a situation during your PhD.

A research contribution doesn't have to be path-breaking to be novel. Incremental contributions count as novel, too. A PhD student is well-advised to set realistic aims and target an incremental contribution at first.

In this case, either my supervisor will forbid me in doing research on such question or there are more chances that I may not get PhD because of the sole reason of novelty.

Absolutely not. What your supervisor may ask you is if you have new ideas, methods or techniques to solve the issue. Plus, if the professor is working on that field, they may be the ones to suggest how to tackle the problem.

Hence, to the best of my knowledge, either directly or indirectly, the PhD is narrowing down to the topics of recent origin, relatively easily publishable, less saturated etc., isn't it true?

This is another problem. Publish or perish is an issue we are facing in academia, but good researchers try to study things that are interesting if not for the present, for a near future.
An additional thing I would like to add is that the two cases you used may not be the perfect examples here. There are many groups that are trying to tackle the problem from different angles at the moment. A PhD in this field would not be called "is P=NP?" but more "CSAT can be reduced to XPROB" (it is totally an example, XPROB is not even a real name and I also would never name a thesis like this). While these field may be saturated, if you have new ways to tackle the problem, or another algorithm that was not yet studied much, nobody will stop you.
Other things can be discouraged because not new. To give an example, in CS, developing a new tool per se it is not a contribution, it is "just" development. What your tool can achieve, find or if it offers something new can be, instead, a contribution.
Overall, while it may seem true that we are narrowing down problems so that they are more publishable, inventing the wheel twice (or trying the same technique multiple times) is not very smart and it is not the idea of academia.

Remember that these big unsolved problems you listed are not easy to solve. Realistically, no student is going to prove the big result. What they can get are partial results.
Here are some examples about the P=NP problem. You can see similar examples for Golbach's Conjecture. Proving one of these results can yield SCI papers, even though they don't decide the problem itself.
Can you (or your supervisor) think of some new method to attack these problems, or maybe prove a lesser result? If so, chances are you can go ahead.


text:
What are modern channels for clarifying student uncertainty online?
One of the primary tasks of professors is communication with their students. Communication typically involves lecturing, clarifying uncertainties, and receiving feedback. Lecturing happens at fixed times, but receiving feedback and clarifying uncertainties are continuous tasks. I am referring to clarifying uncertainties as continuous tasks because students can ask any doubt related to the course at any point before the final exam.
My question is related to clarifying uncertainties. This is an extremely important task. Although a professor resolves some of the student's uncertainties during lectures, students may have questions at any time, so professors need to be available.
In this context, I want to know the modern software followed by top university professors on uncertainty clarification.
Recently I came to know about Piazza, Slack, etc., in which a professor can solve questions of students at any time.
Are there other better websites or software, followed by top-edge professors, to clarify student uncertainty that ensure professors' availability online?

This sense of the phrase "clarifying doubts" seems to be specific to some dialects of English (e.g. Indian), and sounds odd to speakers of other dialects where the word "doubt" has different connotations.   Speakers of other dialects may just call this "answering student questions".

Your question assumes that there are some methods that are inherently "best" in some objective sense.  But I think this is the kind of thing where each professor just finds, through experimentation, some approach that works well for their own teaching style and student population.  And I suspect that tacit assumption makes the question sound weird to people, like asking "What is the best, world-class flavor of pizza?"  So I think that may have something to do with your downvotes.  I would suggest changing it to something like "What are some efficient ways to answer student questions?"

Most of your question asks about using modern technology to make oneself available at the convenience of the student, but your last sentence (the actual question) asks (paraphrasing) "how should I answer questions?" Which are you asking about? (The latter is probably too broad to be answerable here...the former might be okay since we do take academic software recommendation requests).

@cag51 I am asking for common practices followed by top-tier universities for clarifying uncertainties, either software or website or any other in general.

@cag51 Do I need to narrow it down to software only to make it on-topic?

You're still not answering my question. "Software" is not a "practice" for "clarifying uncertainties." You can use software like Piazza or Slack to facilitate interactions, but the general principles of question-answering are the same whether in person or virtual. You seem to be asking "how should I answer student questions and what software should I use to make myself available to students?", which is two questions, the former of which is far too broad for this site.

I would argue that doubt clarification is not a continuous task. Working on a doubt by students is arguably the most important learning experience, regardless whether they finally succeed or not. All too often students just want to know the answer without first seriously trying to find the answer themselves. In my experience being available 24 hours a day 7 days a week just encourages that behavior. Limiting your availability to regular office hours is not popular, but definitely improves the learning experience.
This can be combined with a chat group where students can try to explain problems to each other. Nobody learns as much about a problem as a someone who tries to explain it. So both sides benefit. By keeping this in a chat group, the lecturer can keep an eye on the kinds of problems students are struggling with and spot any wrong explanations.


text:
State-of-the-art writing in machine learning
According to Wikipedia, State-of-the-art is as follows

State-of-the-art (sometimes cutting edge or leading edge) refers to
  the highest level of general development, as of a device, technique,
  or scientific field achieved at a particular time. However, in some
  contexts it can also refer to a level of development reached at any
  particular time as a result of the common methodologies employed at
  the time.

So there are two interpretations for state-of-art: one is general development across time and another one is the  best method available today.
Which interpretation is apt for state-of-the-art writing in machine learning?
For example consider a task Semantic Segmentation on PASCAL VOC 2012 test. There are 34 methods to perform that. Among them DeepLabv3+ (Xception-JFT)
has only the SOTA status. Remember that remaining 33 methods might also have SOTA status at their times.
If I need to write and present State-of-the-art on Semantic Segmentation on PASCAL VOC 2012 test, then is it enough to present DeepLabv3+  and ignore remaining (assume no dependencies) or there is a need to understand remaining also for state-of-the -art?
Context: My University generally follows the interpretation I for state-of-the-art, but popular machine learning website paperswithcode is following interpretation II. So I got confuse and hence asking which one is more apt for state-of-the-art writing. If interpretation II is the actual one,  then there may be possibility for me to convince my guide and act accordingly.

The field of CS is too broad for a general answer to apply to more than a fraction of it. CS is not just one uniform thing.

@Buffy narrowed down and seems clear now.

This seems like an X-Y problem -- you're asking about the nuances in the definition of "state-of-the-art," but what you really want to know is (I assume) whether your literature review needs to cover every method that has ever been state-of-the-art, or just the one method that is currently state-of-the-art. I suspect if you focus on the second question, you may get better answers.

@cag51 how the both are different? Actually literature review for us happens long after state-of-the-art. I got this doubt due to the ambiguity in definition of state-of-the-art. Some are following interpretation I and some are following the interpretation II. For me, it's only one for sure. So there is no doubt personally for me(for my academics). I have doubt only with the actual intention and definition of state-of-the-art.

@cag51 at my college, in general, people follow interpretation I but when I saw website like paperswithcode they are following interpretation II.

I understand that in your mind, that are two clear options, 1 or 2, and you want us to tell you one or the other. My point is that we will likely see it differently, and that may be why your question attracted close votes. If you can tell us what you're trying to do and why it matters, we may be more useful.

@cag51 yeah, I edited accordingly... Please let us know if any issues further ..

If this is about an assignment, then the best person to ask would probably be the one who gave it to you. However, in this context, you're probably expected to talk about the general methods used by the best systems, not about a single specific implementation. - Don't just describe the one highest-scoring system. Look at the top results - what do they have in common? What kind of approaches do they use? (e.g. looking at the names, it seems to mostly involve deep neural networks - what kinds? How are they used? etc...)

Basically, there's state-of-the-art system (e.g. "With their 95% accuracy, the system from Google won the competition.") and state-of-the-art approach (e.g. "Nobody uses HMMs for this anymore, it's all neural networks."). It all depends on the context.

State of the art refers only to the very highest accuracy ever achieved up to the point that you write your paper in computer science (I work in the field).


text:
Does systematic search makes someone a true author for a systematic review?
I have written a systematic review which all words are extremely mine. Another colleague gave me the idea of writing this review and just carried out the systematic search, but did not participate in any other parts, such as design and outline of the study, interpretations, edition or even extracting the results from the reviewed articles.
I would like to know whether his contribution is significant enough to consider him as an author or not.

Use your common sense and be generous (believe it or not, the generosity does pay off occasionally). There are no rules set in stone for such things. It is all between you and him, period.


text:
How to cite an ISO standard where I can only get access to the drafts?
I am writing my bachelor thesis and want to cite the ISO C++ standard. However I am unable to get my hands on a copy of the standard, since the library does not have a physical or digital copy. I do get the information I need from the working drafts, and there isn’t much of a change in the chapters I need.
Citing ISO 14882:2014 would be my preferred solution, but since I don’t have the document, should I cite a late working draft of the 2014 standard or even the current working draft?

Have you asked a librarian about access to it?

Not yet, but this is a good idea.

Welcome to Academia SE. I edited your question to focus on the question how to cite as it is most relevant to this site. I would consider asking for ways to obtain ISO standards on-topic since there may be special ways to obtain these. However, to have only one question per question, please ask this separately.

Have you looked here? https://www.iso.org/standard/64029.html

@Buffy you can't get a copy on the iso site. At least not under $300.

Librarians can get a copy of nearly anything via inter library loan. They can probably find it at a good technical university library, for example. Or even, possibly, the Library of Congress.

Related: How do I correctly cite the C++ standard or its drafts?

It sounds like you're at a stage where it is somewhere between important and crucial for your project to have access to the actual standard: if the information you want to cite is in the standard, then that's the core document to cite, and if it didn't make it to the final version, then you may want to revise the text around the citation or even the research or code itself.
ISO standards are indeed not the easiest documents to get ahold of, but that's what libraries and librarians are for. Approach your institution's librarian and tell them that you need access to a document that's not in the library, and they will get it for you (that's their job!) either by purchasing the document for the library, if they consider it a good investment, or via inter-library loan. This can be a lengthy process, so you should approach them as soon as possible, but the upside is that if the standard's text does not change from the draft then all you need is a look at the full standard before you submit, to confirm that your provisional citation is appropriate.
In any case, even if you do get access to the full standard before you submit, I would encourage you to think of readers in your situation, who might have a hard time getting the standard, and I would thus recommend that you cite both the full standard and the working draft:

give the full standard as the main citation, but also
state that the same information is available in a working draft, and give it a separate citation that includes precise information on where it can be obtained.

As to how you actually cite it, that'll depend on the style guide you're following, but you can start with the format in this answer.
If you can't get a copy of the final standard, then it may or may not be appropriate to cite it as-is; for more on that, see Is it unethical to cite a paper or book that you have never looked at?. In that situation, it basically becomes a judgement call between the chance that the information won't be in the document you're citing versus the awkwardness of citing a working draft of a document that's since been Published, and we can't make that call for you.

As people have said in the comments, you should ask your librarian if they can help you obtain the standard.
If they can't, then you should cite the version that you used.


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Is referencing a technical report in an improper format plagiarism?
Suppose someone uses a report such as technical report in an article or school work, but in the references at the end of document they just reference it like:

Author A, Author B, title, year

I.e., they write what google scholar provides and forget to put the institution and mentioning that it is technical report.
Is this plagiarism?
The point is that student already submitted the paper and changing it entails lots of emails and an official process, just want to ensure it is not educational misconduct.

Welcome to Academia SE. You would probably get a better answer if you [edit] your question to elaborate why you would consider this plagiarism. Also please read: I accidentally created two accounts; how do I merge them?.

No.  It's just poor citation writing.
[Assuming this is the only issue.  If I open the report and your paper and see bulk copying of prose, that is plagiarism.  But it still would be even if your endnote was properly written.]


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Is there a better measure of undergraduate academic performance than GPA?
An answer to a recent question about the importance of looking at a student's whole transcript got me thinking.  Is there some other way of summing up a student's academic performance, other than the GPA?  Something that would distinguish among the three types of 3.5 students described in Jake's answer:

This student is pretty steady, but not great, and tends to get an even mix of As and Bs across all of their classes, obtaining a 3.5 GPA.
This student always takes the class with the easiest grading policy whenever they can, and tends to get mostly As in the "easy" classes. When they cannot evade a "hard" class, they get mostly Cs, resulting in a 3.5 GPA.
This student is very strong and gets mostly As, but there was one semester when family problems disrupted their life, and missed assignments caused them to get Bs and two Fs, also ending up with a 3.5 GPA.

In other words, is there a way of summarizing a student's transcript, that doesn't ignore so many important details?
I suspect that incorporating just class rank doesn't help much (an anecdotal, subjective contribution): my high school allowed one to choose to take classes with credit/no credit (C/NC).  I chose to be graded with letter grades for a handful of classes, and received A's in all of those.  I suspect this may have been why I graduated with a laughably high class rank.

I thought this is what letters of recommendation were for. Are you looking for some sort of other statistic?

@chipbuster - Yes.  I wonder if anyone has come up with some other statistic.  As Jake showed, three completely different students can present with an identical gpa.  (Well, there's always class rank, but I don't think that helps much.)

Why should there be? Any statistic will necessarily conflate students with very different academic profiles. You cannot summarize 20 numbers with one number without losing information. In particular, there is no reason to believe in a ground-truth toral ordering of transcripts.

@JeffE - I don't mind using a group of statistical measures.  There is a lot of ground between a full transcript and single-valued gpa.

In my experience, grades are poor indicators of someone's real capacities. Why bothering taking statistics from them then?

Found a possible clue: http://www.k12.wa.us/assessment/GraduationAlternatives/Comparison.aspx

This looks promising -- the midrange: http://statistics.about.com/od/HelpandTutorials/a/Ways-To-Find-The-Average.htm

Better for what?  Also, I'd appreciate it if you'd clarify what level of academia you're talking about (and making sure it's on-topic for this site).

@PeteL.Clark - I confess I began thinking about this problem in the middle school context, but I am not asking about that here.  It's true that in my CS and applied math grad studies, an A- meant, "I would have liked to see you do better," and a B meant something was really wrong, but when sitting on some K-12 hiring committees, I read a lot of non-STEM grad transcripts, and I saw plenty of Bs and even some Cs.  Jake described the problem with GPA quite well.  The question is, is there some set of statistics that would boil down an individual's educational...

...performance better than a gpa does?  The next part is entirely optional reading.  What I decided to do, for my own problem, was: rather than try to explain about outliers and smoothing, I introduced a "core gpa," which in the particular case captured reality quite well, because the outliers were core academic classes.  (The overall gpa was getting buoyed up by two music grades and two P.E. grades.)  So the core gpa revealed the struggles more clearly.  The analogous measure for an undergraduate would be a gpa calculated in just the major classes.

As you say, at least in STEM fields graduate grades are not very meaningful.  (By the way, at the graduate school at UGA, a student who cannot maintain a GPA of at least 3.0 will eventually get dismissed from the program.  This is for all fields.)  I assumed you were talking about undergraduate GPA's, but I would appreciate this being specified in the question.  Then I think you still have to say (i) who is evaluating the student's academic performance, and for what purpose, and (ii) why that person doesn't just look at the entire academic transcript, as e.g. grad admissions committees do.

@PeteL.Clark - Someone could get the odd C and still keep to the 3.0 gpa.  I wonder whether anyone experiences frustration with the gpa when looking at grad studies?  I'm not sure whether the phenomenon Jake Beal pointed out would occur when 3.0 is the threshold to remain in a program.  My impression is that that's a common policy.  What I was describing were the unwritten expectations.  Which weren't really the critical factor anyway.  In CS at UW-Madison, the critical factor was the qualifying exams.  Very, very hard.  One excellent student left the exam and went straight to ...

... the ER with chest pain.  (He stuck out the four hours and did the best he could, but he ended up failing the exam.)

Class ranking? A percentile of their GPA and others who graduated from the same program?

I believe that there cannot be any single numerical statistic or small set of such statistics that summarizes the nature of a student well.
The first reason for my assessment is that there are too many different ways one may wish to use information about a student, and too many ways that a student can have an unusual background that will not fit into those boxes well.  The second reason is that any metric, once established, can (and will) be optimized against, thereby undermining its value.
Summarizing a student on one or a few metrics is no better than the much-bemoaned practices of judging faculty for tenure by a few metrics.

Class rank "doesn't help much":  do you have an empirical basis for saying so?  Let's say you are trying to see how well high school performance predicts college grades.  I think the research shows that class rank and quality of high school program will enhance by a considerable margin whatever predictions you would obtain from GPA alone.
But that presumes that you are looking for a means to predict college grades.  You haven't said why you want to sum up each student's high school performance.  There is, probably fortunately, no single best way to "sum up" anything.  That would turn something arbitrary into something universally right or wrong.  Instead, systematic assessment hinges on the idea that we choose certain indicators because they are useful to predict or explain specific other things that are of primary interest.  Perhaps you want to know how far a student will travel in school;  how much s/he will participate in the civic process;  or how happy s/he will be at your school.  Each of these outcomes figures to have its own best set of indicators, i.e., its own set of factors that will furnish the best explanations or predictions.
Another way to say this is that the validity of an instrument or indicator is, strictly speaking, always described with respect to a specific use that will be made of it.

My question is phrased to encompass university studies.  (I started thinking about it in connection with special education legal arguments -- but you can forget I said that.  Really, if you review Jake's answer, that's enough motivation for the question.)

Disputes about eligibility for special education often center around the degree to which the student's disability has an "adverse effect" on his or her academic performance. Then you may see the parents trying to point to the two Fs, and a general decline from A's to B's and C's, and the school district defending its non-eligible decision on the basis of a gpa that doesn't clearly show the decline. Example: Two PE grades of 100 and two music ensembles of 100 can dilute the effect of the two F's.  (You can forget I said this, too. I'm just explaining how I came to start thinking about the gpa.)

GPA as it is applied at most universities is not a good indicator .There are some things that could make it a better indicator .It will never be a perfect indicator .If there was less emphasis on assignments and more on Exams there would be less scope for cheating .If there were more little Exams the stats would even out more .If the Exams were written in such a way that it was really hard to get an A and really hard to get an E .When you see a class where more than half of the students get A passes how can an employer take things seriously .They should only give A passes to say 5% .Then an A is something .These days it also depends greatly on what university .If there was more moderation between universities this could help things .It has also been said that a lower grade in a harder exam is a better metric .This was the case in the New Zealand Junior scholarship exams .

How does this answer the question?

To do a better method would require radical change which probably would not happen .This is why I suggested tweaks to the entrenched system.

Obviously, and I mean really blatantly obviously, getting published in a top-ranked journal, getting one (or more) patents and then starting your own company, or getting a relevant award, prize, or honor (NAS, Noble, and a couple of hundred others in various disciplines) would serve you far better. Which would you rather have, a Nobel Prize (relevant to your area of academics) and a 1.0 GPA, or a 4.0 GPA and no Nobel? The apex of the academic world is accomplishment, this is either in ideas or leadership. Just so obvious that if you demonstrate mastery of either, preferably both, then nothing else (aside from criminal or 'problematic' behavior) matters.

Those all seem like zero one variables.  All or nothing.  Either you have one of these spectacular results to report, or you don't.  I'm wondering if there's a better way to boil down the grades.  Something in between just reading the gpa, and poring over the whole transcript.


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Is it helpful to get credit for an independent study project?
Suppose a college senior has made arrangements to do an independent study project with a professor, in order to learn more about a particular topic, with guidance.  When it comes to the graduate admissions scrutiny of the transcript, are there any advantages to getting credit for the independent study, as opposed to keeping things informal?  Note that an independent study course would not count toward the gpa.
If you want more context, see this question.


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What is this "can I hire you as a tutor" scam?
From time to time (presumably because I have an academic address, or am listed on a university web site) I get an e-mail like this: "My son will be in your city next month for two weeks.  He is interested in your subject.  I would like to hire you to tutor him.  What are your fees?"  I assume it is some sort of scam, since it does not mention what my city is, or what the subject of the tutoring is.
Does anyone know what happens to the naive academic who responds to this?

As always, if the email contains any sort of link, DON'T CLICK IT.

My department has gotten something like this - and myself personally about three times. Our IT has blocked the sender - I suggest your department do the same.

I tutored privately 4-8 hours a week from 2008 to around 2012, and I often got emails that began "Hello, This is Mr. XXX, I was surfing for a private tutor for my son when I got your email address ...". I replied a few times to the first one, but it seemed to go nowhere (I wasn't looking to tutor someone so frequently as asked), and I never could figure out what they were getting out of it. After the second or third "Mr. XXX" (names varied), I usually just deleted them, but every now and then I'd have fun by sending some weird semi-nonsense reply to see what would happen.

I looked a bit more in my old yahoo emails, and here's an example something I sent in August 2009: "Your latest e-mail is at the bottom of this message. Just below are two e-mails I got last year, the first on 22 April 2008 and the second on 26 April 2008. I would be interested in hearing your explanation for their similarity to your first two e-mails." The sender names were different, incidentally. I'm sure I got a lot more creative in later years, but I don't have time to look anymore (I'm at work).

this got me thinking it would be nice to have a stack exchange just for scams. Then realised it would probably end up getting used for nefarious purposes. Don't have to make up scams anymore, just look at the clever ones other people came up with that got posted on scams stack exchange

@Cruncher: It's not a whole site, but there's http://money.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/scams.

@r, Nope. security.stackexchange.com is a better site.

I get messages like this through my official tutor profile (on care.com).

I am a mod at Money.SE and we answer many scam questions. Most of them are too obvious to me. This one, I'd never heard of. The scammers are always thinking.

This is usually a version of a "babysitting scam", where some generous out-of-town person wants to pay you a royal ransom for some minor errand or babysitting someone you've never met. It goes a few different ways, but it's usually some version of asking for a quote of what it might cost, and then wanting to pay you in advance. They'll usually want to pay with some sketchy method like needing you to sign up for an account on some website (they'll try to steal personal/identity information or give you a virus to steal more info), or Western Union/Money Gram or PayPal.
They will then inevitably try some variety of overpaying you and asking for some bizarre method of returning them a portion of the over-payment, like "oh just send me a money order/check" or asking you to Western Union the money back to them (especially if they paid you by check or some other such method). The key is the money you return is non-refundable, but the method they paid you with can be stolen accounts/funding, or reclaimed/cancelled (bouncing a check or counterfeit check/money order). You end up with less than nothing, because the income is gone and your "refund" to them is gone too.
Sometimes they'll just ask for your banking information to "deposit the money with you", but they will need illegitimate info to do it like your bank account and login, or information that can be used to steal money from you (bank account and routing information that can be used for payments), etc. Sometimes there'll be some crazy reason.
They'll also often have variants where they are out of the country, have some weird imaginary legal issue they try to rope you into, claim they are in the military for similar reasons, etc. They could also try to deposit fake/stolen funds and then try to rope you into an accompanying scam where they try to shake you down as if you violated the law (they'll pretend to be investigators, police, or organized crime, depending on the situation/scammer).
Sometimes they want money, sometimes they just want to steal your personal information so they can steal from you or sell your identity to someone else.
I've seen the same base scam in business, where they instead want a quote for some large order, often with some urgency and willingness to pay a premium, or for hiring a consultant, etc. All the same base methods, just with a different 'hook' to get you in.
Just replying will only waste your time and ensure you get more emails as you'll likely get added to "known potential sucker" lists. The danger is getting drawn in to the web of lies they use to scam - some of which are stupidly obvious, and some of which are really quite clever and drawn out.

For an entertaining (and potentially effective) response to spam and scam emails, consider sending it to the sp@mlooper bot

+1, but to add that ending up to a potential sucker list will increase the likelihood of ending up as a victim to those more clever scams. Some scammer may actually take a look on you, instead of just having you in a spamming list.

@RoseHartman: That bot is so obviously a bot that I have trouble believing that spammers actually were stupid enough to respond to it. However, here's a real human who takes time to personally respond to spam!.

Another version of that scam results in you actually getting paid, but refunding most of the money. Then it turns out you were paid from an account associated with drug trade or the like.

@user21820 +1 for James!

Another variation is they send you a check but it's for the wrong amount and they ask you to send them the balance by buying a prepaid visa card and telling them the number. You check your bank account and you see the check cleared so  you send them the money right? Wrong. It sometimes takes 3 - 4 days for checks to clear so banks pre-authorize the amount. The problem is when the check bounces, takes back the pre-authorized amount - you've been scammed.

@DmitryGrigoryev, That's a mule.

It's a form of the advance fee scam. I handle the e-mail for a martial arts dojo and deal with that style of inquiry often. The scam is that they will be paying you via check and will "accidentally" pay you far too much. They then will ask that you kindly return the excess. What you don't know is that the first check will be bouncing and that because it's on a foreign bank it may take months for it to actually bounce. In the mean time they have already cashed your refund check and disappeared.
My answer to those people has always been is that "I would be delighted to teach their sons (or whoever they wrote about) but that I only deal in cash. Please have your driver bring the cash payment on the first visit. It will be $1000. Thank you."  The scammers never respond back. At times I've been bored and don't ask for the cash right off. I instead string the scammer out a bit before dropping the hammer which is that their payment must be in cash. At that point they vanish.

What if u take the check, and stop all correspondence? :P

@TCSGrad That'll leave you staring at a worthless piece of paper. Bouncing checks are not worth a dime.