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Journal paper plagiarism, use of same words
So, I came across this paper in my field (let's call it paper A) and there was a reference for an equation that they had borrowed from another paper (let's call this paper B). Everything well-cited and fine so far. While reading through paper B (the one that they referred to), I noticed that paper A had also copied over the conclusions!
Obviously, it is very common that 2 papers reach to the exact same conclusions, but shouldn't it have been rephrased somehow? I am talking about 3 bullet-points like: "Factor X is proven to be more significant than Y, where the results in tables 6,7 indicate method 1 describes interactions and square terms better than method 2".
Numbers and indices are different, but the words are EXACTLY the same. Is that allowed, am I just being paranoid?
=== Edit ===
To clarify, by "exact same conclusions" I meant to say that both papers study the effect of a set of independent variables on a response variable. Both follow the same methodology and conclude to something like "A affects the response variable Y the most. Using methodology Z proves that the experimental procedure is faster and more accurate than any other algorithm." and so on.
The conclusion is more sort of qualitative discussion of their results, more than quantifying "A affects the response 83%, whereas B only 4%". But this description of the quality of the methodology (which is not novel but well-known by the way) has been copied over word-by-word from paper A.
They have repeated the experimental procedure of paper A slightly modified (because of the different equipment used), so it is normal to report different numbers throughout the paper. My question is whether they should be allowed to use the exact same sentences in the conclusion to describe the very very similar results they came to.

"Obviously, it is very common that 2 papers reach to the exact same conclusions" This is not obvious to me: I have never seen two academic papers reach the exact same conclusions.  "Numbers and indexes are different, but the words are EXACTLY the same." Wait, what?  If the numbers and indices are different, then we certainly have not reached "the exact same conclusions."  Please clarify.  Are you just saying that they describe their different conclusions using very similar words?

Apologies for the confusion. Basically, you got it almost right in your last sentence. See if my edit helps out.

Are the two papers written by different authors, or is there a full/partly overlap? Whereas in that case it would still be plagiarism, I would not care too much as long as the copying is restricted to a sort of summary in a single sentence.

If the conclusions are written in exactly the same manner in both papers, and the conclusions themselves are sufficiently long that there is no way the repetition could be "innocent" (for instance, "X increases with temperature when Y is present" can only be said so many ways!), then plagiarism has occurred.
In such a case, you should report the situation to the journal in which the later paper appeared and indicate that you believe plagiarism has occurred.

Unfortunately, in my area, I have come across similar situations; where there was only slight change but wording and conclusions are same. I have seen this from the same author and different authors. I believe if the author is committing self-plagiarism, this divide-and-publish-many-papers attitude comes from the stress of getting tenure track or being productive within short time; and sometimes honestly it simply comes from the fact that authors think they can use their own work however they please without acknowledging previous study they make. In any case whether self or not, it is plagiarism, and should be avoided at all cost.
Plagiarism is only considered as copying or borrowing another person's work or words, but it actually expands beyond that. It may be stealing the idea and presenting as yours, it may be a total literary theft as far as I understood from your case.
Sometimes, the experiment conducted may be totally the same, or the earlier version may be taken as a baseline model or experiment to introduce and compare the earlier version to the new one. Through this method, the conclusion may be different and contradicting, or may be complementary to each other; and that's where the contribution to the field lies, in my opinion.
If the experiments are same to the smallest point with different equipment, and the conclusions are the same, but they were described by the exact same literary language and sentence flow, then it's a plain plagiarism.

Plagiarism in any form is never encouraged when writing a research paper, therefore it is true that the experiments were same but conclusion cannot be directly cited from any research paper and you are supposed to do your own analysis even if you are at the same conclusion it should be presented in your way


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Why is salary inversion a problem?
I've heard that salary inversion is a problem in academia, and it happens when Universities continue to hire new and highly qualified people at higher and higher salaries, but they don't increase the salaries of the existing faculty at the same rates.
I want to ask - why is this actually a problem?  Shouldn't salary be based on merit and qualifications, not how long you've sat at a particular desk?

In your question you assume that only the new hires are highly qualified. The problem is if that is not the case. If new hires are paid more than existing faculty, and if the existing faculty members are established researchers, better than the new hires, that that is a problem.

FWIW, Salary is rarely bad on merit and qualifications. It's typically based on supply and demand.

I suppose you are in US. In UK this is not a problem. at least for position below "professor". There is a list of grades with salary ranges, e.g. lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, or research assistant, research associate for non-teaching positions. The usual practice is to start from the lower end of the range and increase the salary on regular basis.

@greenfingers, in the UK it is called grade inversion!

The current market conditions in my field seem to be the following: Poor hiring support following the financial crisis (and lagging the recovery since universities budgets lag behind economic conditions) has resulted in a large group of highly qualified individuals to continue to increase their qualifications while they "wait" for the job market to improve. So while the supply of workers is certainly high, departments across the US can now hire much more highly qualified candidates than they could in the past. So it seems new candidates are much better qualified than those 5-10 years "older".

In fact, at one department I interviewed in 2011, the interviewers told me that they themselves would not get an interview at their own department due to high volume of highly qualified applicants, whose credentials and experience were far better than their own. In their case it would seem that salary inversion would be appropriate.

I want to ask - why is this actually a problem? Shouldn't salary be based on merit and qualifications, not how long you've sat at a particular desk?

Yes, it should.  But consider what happens if I've been sitting at a desk for ten years, doing hard work and feeling good about it, and one day you arrive, take the next desk, and have a higher salary than I do.  It is hard for me not to feel:
1) That my employer is less than grateful for my ten years of desk sitting, given that I (apparently; as you point out this does not logically follow) am being paid less than if I hadn't done any of it whatsoever.
2) That maybe I have been sitting at the same desk for too long.  It gives me the idea to follow your lead and earn more money by starting fresh at a new desk.
Thus: although one can say that the market is the market and its invisible hand is totally amoral, in reality this amoral practice is bad for morale.  And if you as an employer do happen to value the person who has been sitting there for ten years as much as the new guy you would hire -- or even if replacing the 10 year veteran would be disruptive to the workforce -- then you may have some interest in pushing back against this market force.  The desk-sitters certainly will, and depending on their mobility, you may want to take their feelings into account.  (In a sufficiently bad economy, maybe you can persuade them that they're looking at it wrong, and that instead they should be very happy about having ten years of steady employment.)

I would also add, in addition to the past ten years of steady employment in favor of the incumbent, the risk to the newcomer who likely has not published enough to earn tenure yet, and being new and more highly paid, is much more likely to be released than the reliable old-guard with established relationships and reputation in the institution. Bad for morale? Only if those who feel unfairly treated don't measure the downside of trading places.

@AaronHall: The current tenure rate in most academic departments is exceedingly high: in my field it is well over 90%.  There have been no tenure-track faculty "released" in my department in the last ten years.  Also, your proposed trade is an uneven one: a successful tenured faculty member will usually look for alternate jobs with tenure.  The point is that the current system encourages very successful faculty not to stay at the same institution for very long.  If this is contrary to the wishes of the faculty and the institution (as is often the case), then it is a problem.

I think there are several issues.
You might argue that salary "should" be based on merit and qualifications, but these are highly subjective and often evaluated by people within the university who have other vested interests, so there's a substantial risk that internal politics or other factors may not measure merit in a fair way.  Given this, existing faculty may prefer a system that puts more weight on objective measures like seniority, and faculty have a lot of say in the administration of a university.
On the other hand, new hires are not really paid based on their merit and qualifications either: they're paid their market price.  The dean may not think that Assistant Professor A's qualifications really "deserve" a salary of $X, but if the job market is strong and that's what other institutions are paying similar candidates, she either pays him $X or she doesn't get to hire anyone this year.
Then, suppose
Assistant Professor B has been with the department for 3 years.  Her qualifications are comparable to those of A, but she was hired in a year when the job market was weak, so she accepted a low salary offer $Y < $X.  Since then has received a standard raise of a few percent per year, so her salary is still below A's.  She could probably go back on the job market and find a job paying $X, but here she is well on her way to tenure, she has settled in the city with her family, her spouse has a job in the area, and they are disinclined to make another (possibly long-distance) move.  Moreover, changing tenure-track jobs is always challenging (she would have to get letters from within her department, but if too many colleagues find out she is thinking about leaving, it will hurt her standing within the department).  So she has limited mobility and no real leverage to negotiate for a higher salary.
If she finds out A is making more than her, despite being similarly qualified, she will not be happy.  Unhappy faculty who nonetheless have no interest in leaving is not a recipe for a well-functioning institution.  And a dean who's in favor of correcting salary inversions will probably get Professor B's vote.

+1. Good point about the lingering effects of job markets at hiring time. This affects not only faculty. AFAIR, B-school graduates' salaries depend on the state of the economy at their graduation, and the effect persists over decades. Can't find a source, though.

I wonder why B, who is underpaid compared to market value, really needs actively go back on the job market. Why isn't B continually receiving job offers from other universities, who observe that they can offer her a substantial pay increase, still be paying the same or less than a fresh hire, and get a slightly more experienced professor and proven quantity into the bargain? Is this a professional courtesy in academia, that you don't head-hunt? An academic mindset that once you're tenure track, you don't leave that institution for any money?

... disinclination to move cities explains some degree of inertia, sure, but we don't see the same complaints of salary inversion everywhere, so there must be something specific to academia. If universities are wasting money hiring high-price newbies instead of cheaper oldbies simply because they require oldbies to take a huge risk (gathering letters) in order to move, then that looks like that requirement might be a seriously suboptimal recruiting practice.

@SteveJessop, it is often seen in IT, in a lot of companies the only way to get a big pay increase is to get a job offer from elsewhere.

@Ian: yeah, especially if the company doesn't let you apply internally for open positions. So the question reduces to: why is it IT professionals do move and academics don't? Nate provides one factor (because you can't apply for a tenure-track job without seriously jeopardising the one you have) and hints at another (few academic employers in your city). I'll grant the latter is what it is, but to me the former seems like something the recruitment process would benefit from changing, since it could hire from a bigger pool that way.

@SteveJessop How would other universities know that B is being paid less than the current going rate? Also, with an IT job you might often reasonably expect to find another job in the same city. For academia you would usually be talking about moving cities, often moving continent.

@JessicaB: they'd take a reasonable guess since they'd know she's been in post for 3 years and that there is (per the assumptions of the question, anyway) widespread salary inversion in academia due to (per this answer) very predictable factors. This would be confirmed if she responded to their enquiry saying, "you're willing to pay HOW MUCH?!" ;-)

@JessicaB, many academic salaries are public due to local laws that require government employee salaries to be published or discoverable.

@SteveJessop: These are great questions: I started to answer, but it was becoming a multi-page primer on academic hiring practices.  I think at the root is the fact that academic hiring is much more risky than in industry.  You can't hire someone at the start of a semester and then fire her in 2 weeks if she's bad - for one thing, it would be extremely challenging for someone to smoothly take over the classes that she designed and is solely in charge of.  And research productivity, the other main qualification, is measured over years, not days.

@SteveJessop: It may be helpful to keep in mind that a faculty post has a very high degree of individual responsibility. Despite the technical skills required, faculty are in many ways much more like managers than engineers.

Salary inversions are mostly a problem at public schools, where the state budget situation and state legislature have some control over whether there will be any raises at all.  Due to inflation, this means that often all state employee salaries are shrinking in real terms.  So, the longer you have the job the less you're paid no matter how much merit your work has.  Hence salary inversions are not typically a result of younger profs having more merit, but rather the budget realities of working for a state government.  Of course, there are other affects that can counteract this: many schools have funds specifically intended for reversing inversions, and many schools have automatic raises at tenure and/or promotion so that there are at least some raises that the state can't block.
To summarize: salary inversions are a problem precisely because "salary [should] be based on merit and qualifications, not how long you've sat at a particular desk."  Inversions happen because given equal qualifications the person who has been at the job less time will be paid more.

I think the main issue in that is that you will drive your talent away and keep the left over if you do not make the correction.
If the market is higher than a few years ago, if you do not correct the salaries, basically you encourage all the one that have salaries below market to look for new position. The best ones will succeed while the less good ones will fail. Results: you lose your best element and keeps the less good.
Since academia has very little 'fixed' position the phenomena is less striking, but in a company (particularly in country where laying off is frowned upon) you get a concentration of some 'that cannot go somewhere else'. This is definitely not what you want.

Do you mean "salaries below market"?

Yes I will edit

Besides all the other great answers here, there is another reason that merit does not entirely govern salaries. Many universities have an annual period for "merit" raises which require little justification, saving raises for "equity" reasons for special cases. Since everyone is eligible for these so-called merit raises, almost everyone gets one (management being what it is). As such, institutions impose caps on departments that may limit merit raises to 2-3% per year over the department. Coupling that to the public nature of government employee salaries, you can see how these raises become little more than cost-of-living adjustments. On the other hand, departments have to recruit new hires against a competitive background market that may cause a new salary to be higher than a 2% annually compounded salary from 10 years ago. Thus, an inversion.

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What proportion of course material mastery should we consider is "passing?"
What proportion of course material mastery should we consider is "passing?"
In the US a typical grading rubric is
A = 90%-100%
B = 80%-89%
C = 70%-79%
D = 60%-69%
F = below 59%
As a professor I often curve the numerical range of grades in my course, and depending on the class, the raw score for a passing grade might end up being even lower than 50%. My question is, at what point does this stop?
A professor could decide that mastery of only 15% of the course material is "passing" because a curve can make 15% into any number. If the professor writes and grades the test he or she could also just decide to only teach and test over 15% of the actual syllabus. In each case students are happy, administrators are happy, etc. because of the "nice grade distribution." But it seems a bit disingenuous to say that a student who learned only 15% of the course material actually passed.
I've heard that accreditation boards have various requirements for a university to maintain its accreditation. For instance, students have to pass enough courses or their major. But is there any accountability for the students to actually learn a minimum amount of material? It seems that everyone in a university could agree that the only requirement to pass a class and graduate is that the student pays tuition. Obviously this is would be big disservice to society.  But what incentives do professors have (other than moral ones) not just teach less, and pass more students?

You're assuming that a grad of 15% represents a mastery of only 15% of the material. In my experience, the two are often not that related.

Elaboration of previous comment: At one extreme, you could have your exam consist purely of Putnam (NB: a national math contest on which the median score is 1/120) style questions based on the material in your class.  Someone who manages a grade of 5% has probably (though not certainly) mastered 95% of the class material.  At the other extreme, your exam questions might only ask students to recall the simplest facts in the subject, and 100% on the exam might only reflect mastery of the easiest 5% of the material.

The relationship between grades and mastery is really much, much weaker than the one you're assuming. And, as odd as it seems, even professors, in most --if not all -- cases, don't have a 100% mastery of what they're teaching.

As an undergrad I had a 30% average for an honors physics course. That was an A - the professor intentionally set very hard problems, since the value was in seeing how students wrestled with them rather than getting a correct final answer.

My PhD supervisor always liked to quip that the best way to learn a subject was to teach it.

TL;DR: As much as a student would need to know in order to succeed in their career.
I think part of this answer will be subjective - does a student even need to master course material to pass, or do they need to be familiar enough with it to know how to re-learn it later in their career?  I come from a STEM background - I know how to do calculus, but if you asked me to come up with a Taylor polynomial right now off the top of my head, I'd give you a blank stare.
In my opinion, the goal of any class is to teach familiarity with the subject at hand.  No student will ever use 100% of what is taught in a given class - their career will dictate what they need to know.  As they spend more and more time working in a particular field, the knowledge that is important will stay with them, and the knowledge that isn't important will be set aside - not entirely forgotten, but not readily accessible without review.  The point is - they still know how to re-learn the material; they just don't know it off the top of their head.
With that in mind, I argue that the proportion of course material mastery that we should consider as "passing" is however much is needed to ensure that a student could, given a reasonable amount of preparation, re-learn the material at any point later in their career.  That amount will vary from class to class, and it's worth remembering that some skills will carry over and be reinforced from class to class.  To my mind, this means that fundamental skills - calculus, introductory classes, writing courses - need to be held to a higher standard.
As for incentives for professors - there's a variety.  For one, if you want to work at a high-caliber institution, you're going to want high-caliber students.  This means pushing them to learn and master more of the material than perhaps a professor at a not-so-high-caliber institution might care.  For another, there's an element of peer pressure involved: if I teach my students poorly, and don't require them to learn enough of the material, then my peers will have to pick up the slack in later courses.  That reflects poorly on my teaching, and it means that I may have to do the same thing with these students in later courses that I teach.
So what proportion of course material mastery should we consider is "passing?"  Whatever is necessary for a student to (1) be able to relearn the material in a reasonable amount of time and (2) be able to retain the core concepts for use in later courses.

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Does the Math GRE allow a calculator?
I can't seem to find the answer online.
If no, can I assume no one would ever need to? I haven't looked at sample GREs yet because I haven't tried any yet, and I don't want these exams compromised when I take it in the future. I tried a 10-number GRE and thought it would be helpful to have a calculator for
$$\binom{5}{3}$$

You may want to put your calculator away while studying for the GRE if you think $$\binom{5}{3}$$ ("5 choose 3") suggests calculator usage. You should know how to expand this as (5)(4)(3)/(1)(2)(3) = 10 (cancel 4's, divide denominator 2 into numerator 4). In fact, I suspect the problem was designed to slightly reward those who know "n choose k" equals "n choose n-k", and so it's the same as $$\binom{5}{2}$$, which expands to (5)(4)/(1)(2) = 10.

@DaveLRenfro Thanks :) I can't think of a better example right now, and I haven't seen math GRE samples yet, but what if there's something like 11/17-5/9? What a hassle.

If you have scrap paper, Pascal's triangle is another quick, easy way to calculate small binomial coefficients. That said, should the test be rewarding skills like knowing how to cancel out factorials quickly?

Something I didn't have time yesterday to mention is that the questions are VERY CAREFULLY scrutinized to eliminate unnecessary computational tasks, and if you find yourself having to rewrite 11/17 - 5/9 as a single reduced fraction, you are probably overlooking a "higher order thinking" approach that is probably intended. For example, this is a positive number because (11)(9) = 99 is greater than (17)(5) (and you don't need to multiply 17 and 5 to see this, as 17 times 5 is clearly more than one unit below 20 times 5). It's thinking and "algebraic numeric" skills that you want to work on.

@DaveLRenfro "the questions are VERY CAREFULLY scrutinized to eliminate unnecessary computational tasks" thank you for the advice but how do you know that?

This is a well known fact among mathematics teachers who write math problems for testing companies. See this document and this other document. Although these two documents are not entirely specific to math, their descriptions of the amount of care in designing problems should be very suggestive of what I said. Also, search for "excessive computation" here.

@DaveLRenfro Are those for the GRE subject test in math and not the math parts of the general GRE?

I don't know much about the math subject test -- I took it in Fall 1980 without looking at anything but the 4 or 5 sample problems that came with my registration ticket and I haven't looked at anything related to it since then -- but my guess is that it would require even less numerical computation since you aren't going to be inundated with percents, circle graphs, basic descriptive statistics (mean, median, mode), and other such things that appear on the general GRE test.

I believe the answer is No.
From GRE Subject Test Web Page

Dismissal from a Test Center
◾Using any aids in connection with the test, including, without limitation: mechanical pencils, mechanical erasers, pens, pagers, beepers, digital watches, calculator, ...

@NajibIdrissi My guess is someone wrapped a cheat sheet tightly in the hollow barrel of a mechanical pencil and ruined it for everyone.

It depends on which test you are taking. If you take revised general test it will allow onscreen calculator. But personal calculators are not allowed.
Source

The GRE allows you to use an on-screen calculator during the math sections. It only allows for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square root functions. Source

The information at the link you gave appears to only say that there is an on-screen calculator for the math sections of the General Test, and it does not say anything about what is available for the math subject area test, which is what I assume Jack Bauer meant by "Math GRE" (although I could be mistaken on this point).

@DaveLRenfro I meant gre subject test in math :)


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Advice wanted concerning students who have had run ins with the law.
I am a first year grad student with an expunged felony in the state of Arkansas. I am looking for advice on if and how I should communicate this with my adviser. The felony is due to a drug crime and took place ~decade ago. I ask this because through out my academic career I may need to go to conferences in other countries and this may affect my ability to get through customs and enter those countries hosting the conference.
I am looking for other students who were in the same boat, professors who have dealt with similar situations, and in general opinions from advisers on how they would like to be approached in situations such as this.
Thanks for the communities knowledge in advance.

When you filled out your graduate school application, there was probably a note about what type of criminal convictions you were required to report. What did the application state concerning expunged convictions?

There were no questions regarding criminal convictions for any of the paperwork that I have filled out for grad school.

I am not an expert, but doesn't "expunged" mean your record is sealed and effectively "erased from time"?

Given that your conviction was expunged, I would highly recommend that you TALK TO AN ATTORNEY about the issues that you may have to deal with. Like David above, I think you may not have to worry much about international travel, but only an attorney can tell you what you have to share, and what may be known, by foreign governments.

The charge will still come up on federal databases but will be marked as expunged. Some countries will take that into account and some will not.

I guess it's not the case in the US, but I know many countries where it would be illegal for anyone else than a judge to ask you about your criminal records. This being said, there are hundreds of academics who can't travel for a variety of reasons (mostly visa related) and still do perfectly fine. This is a private matter and should not concern your grad school/advisor in any way.

@aaronburns According to some random info on the internet, you probably won't have problems entering the EU, that is the most frequent destination. You should confirm it with a lawyer, but if it is true; you are good to go.

You don't need to explain the details.  Here is the most I would do.  If the situation comes up (e.g., your advisor suggests you attend a conference that would require international travel you are not comfortable with), tell your advisor how this will affect your professional work: e.g., you would prefer to publish in domestic conferences, you are not comfortable travelling internationally, or whatever the implication is.  Your advisor doesn't need to know the details of why (e.g., that you had a felony).
Of course, you can always explain these details if you feel comfortable doing so.  That will depend upon the nature of your relationship with your advisor.  But you shouldn't feel like it is mandatory to explain this aspect of your personal history.  This is a professional relationship, and in professional relationships, you only need to provide enough information to allow you to meet your professional obligations and goals.
Basically, think of it this way.  Why does your advisor need to know?  What will the implications be, in terms of how it will affect his advice to you?  Then think about how to convey the implications without the unnecessary details, and whether there is even any need or value in conveying any information at all.  That might help guide you figure out what to explain.  You might find you never need to explain anything related to this to your advisor.

There should be ombudsman or other advocacy services available on campus which should give the poster more specific advice.  While there is a privacy issue here, it is more practical to research the issue and potential problems that might occur, even domestically.  Counseling and advocacy services should protect the posters privacy and recommend how best to share (or not) how much with school officials.  Coming clean is good and respectful; researching the issue with the school's help and coming clean the right way is even better.

Also, while counseling services may provide some of the practical advice needed, asking for legal advice might be even better.  In this case, a paralegal could say what impact an expunged conviction should have practically.  It may be that there is nothing to worry about, and the lawyers should provide the factual reassurance.

Three points:
Don't tell them. Whatever the reason you're thinking of telling them now, their primary interest in you is academic, and yours should be the same. The last thing you want to do is distract them into thinking about you in any other context than your field of study. As much as they're on your side, you would much prefer them to think about you doing research than drugs.
Talk to a lawyer. Just to be safe, because you're venturing into legal territory, and we're not a bunch of lawyers, for the most part.
Your motivation is probably not valid I think the impetus for even suggesting this is unnecessary. I don't know your field, but the likelihood of you needing to travel outside the US is probably not there. Unless your advisor has said something like: "We always go to this convention in Zurich, and you'll be expected to go next year..." in which case, see the prior advice point.

The downside of making it known is you open yourself up to potential discrimination. I think there are 4 categories of people. Those who could care less, those who are going to discriminate no matter what, those who won't spend the time to get to know you because of the issue, but if they already knew you would be fine, and hose who would be fine from the outset, but would be upset because you tried to hide it. I don't really believe you can hide the expunged felony from everyone without hurting personal relationships with your colleagues. Therefore you need to weigh the people who will not give you a chance against those who will be upset by the apparent deceit. To me it is a no brainer. Telling people know will mean a few missed opportunities, but probably not a big deal. If your PhD supervisor or post doc supervisor finds out later and becomes so against you they stop writing letters of reference, then that is a disaster.
I would suggest mentioning it in passing to your supervisor. Then follow it up a few days later more formally asking if he/she thinks it is going to be a problem.


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Do journals hold rejections against authors?
I am BSc student. When I was in the fourth semester (end of the second year), I did my course project and submitted it to my professor. His efforts in order to publish it really shocked me. It was just a course project and I already had a conference paper out of it. I know the article was so foolish and  basic but he is insisting on publishing it. After two rejections he is submitting it to another journal.
Does this journal count this rejections as negative points for the authors? If I am going to submit any paper to this journal in the future do they count this rejections?

The titular question and he question in the body seem unrelated. Both are reasonable questions, although I think the titular question has been asked before.

You make it sound like he tried to get it published without your consent or knowledge. Is that even legal?

actually he did that and added me as a firth author. but I didn't work on it so much because it was a course project. and I feel humiliated every time he submit that rubbish.

Rejections are not necessarily a negative when submitting to a new journal. Of course, it means a careful editor will take an extra careful look at the manuscript before accepting it for review. They key point is, however, that when submitting a previously rejected manuscript it is necessary to, first, be upfront with the rejection and the reasons for it, and, second, to provide clear details on how the previous reviews have been used to improve the manuscript for the current submission. So, clearly, of one simply submit the same manuscript over and over again, yes, there is a chance someone may accept it in the end, but it is very poor work ethics to do so. A manuscript that has been rejected and significantly improved from comments received and additional work done, will have a pretty good chance of being published. As an editor you can then see indications of what may be key issues with the paper. This does not mean, as some seem to think, that submitting half-baked manuscripts and have reviewers beat them into order is the way to write good papers so there are fine lines of good conduct which have to be followed.
As for holding a rejection against you: No, not unless there are repeated sloppy submissions. But even then, every manuscript receives an independent check to see if it is of sufficient quality. A bad reputation just means you will raise flags with editors whenever you submit. And, once will not create a reputation.

I have never heard of a journal holding rejected manuscripts against the authors. Editors likely keep track informally of problem authors such that if an author is consistently submitting low quality work they may be more likely to desk reject the work than bother reviewers with it. That said, one or two low quality submissions would not be problematic.
The UK research councils have started to implement a waiting period for low quality grant submissions. Basically, if you submit two low quality grant applications in a row on sequential deadlines, you will be barred from submitting another application on the next deadline. Once the waiting period is over, the issue is forgotten. The penalty is pretty small since it is pretty hard, if not impossible, to rapidly come up with three good funding proposals. Having a mandated few month break is probably a good thing. This is relatively new and some day publishers may follow suit, but as of now, no publisher imposes such a model.
To summarise, if the PI thinks there is a reasonable chance of publication, then a few rejections (less than a dozen) will not hurt your reputation or future chance of publishing other material.


text:
How to reference organizing conference symposia / panels on CV?
Presentions for papers or posters at conferences are easy to reference, but how do you reference activities such as organizing conference symposia / panels on your CV?

There are, of course, a number of ways to do this, as there is no fixed "CV" format even within a field, let alone across them. I will tell you my own methods for doing this:
Long sessions, such as full or half-day workshops, breakout tracks, etc. go under Teaching Experience, with the conference information placed in lieu of normal course information. For example:

Session Organizer, “An Introduction to Doing Good Research”, Learning Institute, Association for Right Thinking People Annual Conference. October 2011, 2012 and 2014

Smaller sessions get pulled into Invited Talks, which in my CV is actually Invited Talks and Organized Workshops, which then have 'Panel Moderator' or 'Symposium Organizer' instead of an author. For example:

Symposium Organizer, "Novel Methods in Being Unimpeachably Correct". 2016. Society for Doing Science Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL.

Agreed, just that I'd probably gather all such under a heading "Organization of conferences and symposia" at the end of the CV, as far as you are responsible for it in a meaningful way. If no, just leave out. It isn't very relevant for your research potential, anyway.

@vonbrand I'd do the same if I had a fair number of them, but if I'm running under the assumption that there are few enough of them that they would be conspicuously few in their own section. Symposium organization is, at times, a fairly strong signaling mechanism in my field, so they do have a relevant message for your research potential.

I recommend including a section at the end of your CV entitled "Service", where you list things like conference/panel organization, committee memberships, refereeing activities, and the like.  Initially you may have only one or two items, but the list will grow over time.  As this list grows, organize it into subsections (University service vs Professional service, for example) and subsubsections (editorial boards, program committees, workshop organization, proposal reviews, refereeing, ...).
(I'm assuming that you mean the American Academic CV, which includes everything, and not the UK Professional CV, which is just a two-page sketch.)

authors: Ирина Желтышева


text:
Ethics and legality of scraping (and ultimately publishing about) publicly available information from journal websites
I'm interested in scraping publicly available information from journal websites (such as article titles, authors, abstracts, and keywords).
After scraping the data, I'm interested in analyzing the data and possibly publishing the findings.
Apart from open access journals for which this is likely less of (or not) an issue, what are the ethics and legality of scraping publicly available information from journal websites?

I don't see any ethical issue whatsoever.  In terms of legal issues: you could look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping#Legal_issues.  The laws are just emerging here but very roughly, if you are not damaging the scrapee (either through implementing extracted information in a way that is detrimental to their business or significantly slowing down the running of their site), it seems to be okay.  In the case at hand, it sounds like you want information other third parties already collect and post.  This makes me think it would not be a problem (but I certainly don't know).

In general, the legality will be covered by the terms of use on the websites from which you are scraping. If they forbid scraping, I suppose you might be legally required not to. I say might, because as a non-lawyer I don't know whether such terms are legally permissible and therefore binding.

Hi Josua. I'm interested in doing this kind of analysis too. Would be great to share my ideas with you, so we can mine papers for different purposes, but using similar tools, including the ones you are developing. Let me know, we can have a private conversation about that.

That would be good. I'm at jrosen@msu.edu, send me a note!

@PeteL.Clark Can you please turn your comment into an answer so that I can vote for it?


text:
How common are recruitment fellowships for students accepted to PhD programs?
When I was applying for PhD programs, only one offered a recruitment fellowship, a small (but more than $1,000) fellowship to be disbursed in the August before the initial semester began. This turned out to be the program I joined, and as I now am beginning to look for positions, I realized this could perhaps be listed as a fellowship on my CV.
How common are recruitment fellowships for students accepted to PhD programs? Would it be appropriate to list on one's CV as "[University] Fellowship" or something to that effect?

It's pretty common in my field, amounts of $2000-5000 are generally given as fellowships for dissertation completion for top students.

You could, without any ethical pangs, but please realize that it will not carry much weight with hiring committees. Overall, it's a feather in the cap, as they say.


text:
Journal papers starting with a famous quotation
I was reading a paper in which a famous quotation appears just after the author name. The paper is: Willems, Jan C. "Paradigms and puzzles in the theory of dynamical systems." Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on 36.3 (1991): 259-294 [link], and the quotation (in german) is taken from Wittgenstein's "Tractatus".
I found it quite surprising, since it was actually the first time that I saw a famous quotation at the beginning of a technical journal paper.
Out of curiosity, I would like to know if starting with a famous quotation is a reasonably accepted practice in scientific publications. In particular, I'm interested in papers published in technical/mathematical journals.

I've done this at least once. I don't think it's all that uncommon. I'd guess I see a paper with a leading quotation every month or two.

@DavidRicherby I have modified it to be about the practice in general rather than lists of examples, which I think remedies this defect.

I would guess this depends on subject. I've never see that in maths.

I did this in a math journal recently: [published] [preprint]

@shane Also, it should be "den Anspruch" rather than "die Anspruch".

Starting with 'big words' from a quotation of a famous person (or a movie or a song or whatever) is ambivalent. Some might think you show off ('oh I read -- and understood -- Wittgenstein! Look at me!). Others simply skip initial quotations. I myself use them only when they fit to the specific thesis or argument I am trying to make -- and always refer to the quote in the introduction of the article. Only then an initial quote is justified. If it stands there alone with no reference in the text it should be deleted (and from my experiences journal referees do suggest deletion).
So: Quotations are ok. But make sure they fit and add to your point you want to make. And: Write the author's name and the quotation correctly. The mistakes in name and text of the quote you linked to are embarassing.


text:
Should one take a 2:1 Bsc or a 2:2 MSci?
I know someone doing an MSci in Computer Science—an MSci being an integrated (undergraduate) Master's degree, so equivalent in the UK to an MSc—and as such achieved all the credits required for a BSc but did not graduate last year. All the way through this year, they have had the option to drop out of the MSci course and graduate with their BSc qualification, which they got a 2:1 in.
Note: I am referring to the UK system: in this case, a 2:1 refers to upper second-class honours and 2:2 refers to lower second-class honours.
Now, with less than two weeks to go, they are concerned about their exams and dissertation and so on, and are worried that they will get a 2:2 at the Master's level. As a result, they are considering dropping out last minute and just taking the BSc 2:1.
Now I am advising against this, as for one thing it just makes this whole last year a waste of time and I reckon they're quite solidly in the 2:1 bracket for MSci anyway, but I also think that a 2:2 Master's is still considered better than a 2:1 BSc.
I'm also thinking that within 5 years or so of industry work (this person has already secured a long-term position based on an internship) the degree, and much less the classification, become less significant compared with the person's industry record. In 5 years time, I expect a future employer to be looking at the employment and project record and possibly be interested the degree achieved, but not the degree classification, in which case an MSci is better than a BSc. This is just anecdotal though, I am by no means an expert on how people look at CVs in later stages of employment in industry.
So I already have quite a clear opinion on this, but I'd like to hear what professionals think about it. Thinking objectively, which is likely to be better: a 2:1 BSc in Computer Science, or a 2:2 MSci in Computer Science?

Can you edit the question to mention the schooling system/region you're talking about? I'm not sure if 2:1 and 2:2 need to be explained within your region, but they are not common terms in the U.S. and the options are not at all clear in that context.

It sounds like the UK system. Our degrees are graded (from best to worst) as "first" "2-1" "2-2" third and "pass".

@cactus_pardner I've attempted to clear this up, but still not sure if it's clear enough to an international audience - please let me know if you have further suggestions

@JackParkinson Thanks for the edit! Your passing reference originally ("equivalent to MSc in UK") made it sound like you were in a different system but just referencing the UK. I think others will know what you're talking about, but you might also add a UK tag.

It really does depend on what the short- and long-term career objectives are.

@aeismail an expansion on this would be very helpful

See my answer below.

Going by the 2015 distribution figures from Wikipedia, it looks like "2:1" basically means a median GPA while a "2:2" basically means a lower-quartile GPA (average of 17th percentile).  Would that be an accurate perspective on 2:1-vs.-2:2 for international readers?

If you take the 2:1 Bsc degree wont it be obvious that you didn’t complete the MSci?  Having the MSci would almost certainly look better than having dropped out of the MSci....

@BrianBorchers I suppose the mentality is that anyone looking at the CV would never know about the Master's attempt

Questions about academia specific to other countries aren't met with this insistence on explaining the system to USA-based users. Why the comments here in particular? Someone who doesn't know the difference between a 2:1 and a 2:2 either won't need to know exactly what it means or won't be able to give helpful advice anyway.

Does the degree certificate include the class? What documentation does your friend have which could support a claim in a future interview that he would have had a 2.1 BSc if he dropped out of the master?

It really does depend on what the short- and long-term career objectives are. If someone really has no desire to continue on to a PhD, then it probably doesn't make too much of a difference—they're being hired based on what they can do with the master's, rather than the grade, and only a handful of employers will care about the difference between a 2:1 and 2:2.
On the other hand, if at some point, someone wants to go back to graduate school for further training, a 2:2 master's may not be the most useful credential to have on one's record.


text:
How do PhD admissions look at A- grades from a Master's student in Math?
I'm currently graduating with a M.S degree in Mathematics and looking into applying to PhD programs in Mathematics this Fall.
My GPA overall is in the 3.90+ range. Course grades are either A- or A. About 30% of them are A- with two or three courses I would assume to be critical.
I was wondering how PhD admissions view these A- in general. Talking with some of my professors and adviser, either admission committees would take A- as an A (not care) or have some concern, especially in those critical courses. Within the department, A- is more of "you did what you're supposed to, but you could've done better".
Overall, I think I have a strong application (great recommendations, high Subject Math GRE score, some experience in research), so I'm not too concerned, but how concerned should I be?
I will admit I'm being nit-picky, pedantic, and need to worry about more important things in life.

You have the grades that you have.  Worrying about them is completely pointless.

If the mentality "you could have done better" was applied at many admissions committees, then so many people would not have made it to graduate school. You're fine.

Your letters of recommendation will be much, much more important than the difference between an A- and an A. Spend your time on getting the strongest letters you can (and learning how to do this, if necessary).
Source: I have served on grad admissions for a top math department.

You could take a small hit on them, but I suspect it will not be a huge issue, especially if it's really true that you have great recommendations and high subject scores.  Those will likely be seen as more important, and I think the grades would only hurt you if they seemed to confirm some worrying sign from those other materials.  Grades between different schools are so variable that admissions committees can't really worry about a point or two on your GPA.  It could also depend on the type school you're attending and what lead you to a master's program.  A few A-'s could tell many different stories depending on the context.


text:
How to identify predatory publishers/journals
What are the best strategies for assessing if a journal is a "vanity" or "predatory" journal that should be avoided (both for publishing in and reviewing for)? For example, how would one go about determining if a journal/publisher belongs on Beall’s List of Predatory Open-Access Publishers?

In mathematics at least, simply refusing to ever pay anything to get your work published should do the trick.  I gather that trying this strategy in certain other fields (e.g. biology?) may weed out some legitimate -- and even prestigious -- journals.

Beall's answer is up now, here: http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/08/04/criteria-for-determining-predatory-open-access-publishers/

Many of the criteria in this answer also apply for more general fields.

The original list of predatory publishers went offline. Here is an archived copy.

Possible duplicate of With Beall's List gone, how can I tell if a journal is spam? (Yes, it’s newer, but it also has better answers, not that the answer to this is bad.)

Check out the blog Flaky Academic Journals. Interesting read.

I am not sure if this is the right call but you can simply look at who publishes in the journal in question. If there are some well-established researchers who publish, there are little chances that the journal is a predatory one.

@Wrzlprmft you're a mod now, you can merge these two questions.

First, you should probably publish in the same venues that you read and cite.  Presumably those are reputable.
Now to describe low-quality vanity publishers.  Two essential characteristics are:

The publication of very low quality material.  This is usually immediately recognizable to any expert.  Sometimes it's obvious to anyone; for example, read this abstract.
A business model in which the author (rather than the reader) pays the publisher.  Of course, this by itself isn't necessarily indicative of a low-quality publisher (think PLoS).   But low-quality publishers can't make money off of subscriptions, since they provide no content of value.

Additional common characteristics of such publishers are:

Mass e-mails (spam) to academics, especially when the recipients include researchers in unrelated fields.  These e-mails may request submission of conference presentations, papers, or book manuscripts, or may contain invitations to journal editorial boards.
A high number of prominent typographical errors in text attributable to the publisher.  For instance, at the beginning of this article "abstract" is mistakenly spelled "abstarct".

I love the example in your point 1! What a headache!

Elsevier is known to send such unsolicited an irrelevant mass emails: https://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/2012/03/elsevier-bringing-us-conference-spam.html Does it fit your criteria?

In addition to the answer already offered, you can use a tool such as the one developed by ULiège Library to help you in your decision.
Their tool, Compass to Publish,  "uses a criteria-based evaluation to quantify the degree of authenticity of open access journals requiring or hiding article processing charges."
Even if you don't use their plat-form, their set of criteria / tests can be extremely useful to guide your judgment.

What are the criteria?
Compass to Publish uses an evaluation method based on 26 criteria which take the form of questions. These criteria and questions are the
result of the critical and analytical work of the team
behind
Compass to Publish,
who have* *examined the practices of a significant number of predatory
journals and publishers. This examination was then followed by a
qualitative survey and selection of criteria developed by trusted
lists and directories, as well as checklists for the identification of
predatory journals, including:

the "Transparency and best practice" checklist of the Directory
of Open Access Journals
(DOAJ) and the basic criteria for inclusion in the
DOAJ
the list of criteria for the identification of predatory journals
developed by Eriksson &
Helgesson (2016)
the v.1.1 criteria version for the identification of predatory
journals developed by Cabells (a for-profit
company)

Looking at the full range of these criteria, we only retained those
that are:

truly incriminating and easy to check to ensure user-friendliness;
sufficiently relevant and clear;
easy to use and check for users.

Some information regarding journal policies and procedures can be very
hard and/or time-consuming to verify. We deliberately decided not to
include this type of criteria in the evaluation process in an effort
to ensure user-friendliness.

+1 This looks very useful, not only for assessing a specific journal, but also to learn about potential red flags.

I suggest another approach: You have already performed a literature review for your introduction. What journals are your references published in? Have you ever cited a paper in the journal you are thinking about submitting to?

There is an established framework for researchers: Think. Check. Submit.

Think: Are you submitting your research to a trusted journal? Is it the right journal for your work?
Check: Use our check list to assess the journal.
Submit Only if you can answer "yes" to the questions on our check list.

The resource is available in over 40 languages as of 2018. If you want a more personal summary of such criteria, see qsp on why you don't need a list.
Note that an analysis of the numbers shows that The "problem" of predatory publishing remains a relatively small one and should not be allowed to defame open access. Researchers are generally smart enough to not fall in obvious traps; what's left is mostly problems with peer review which exist anywhere, but mostly in journals with scarce transparency.

Right now this is essentially a link only answer to your checklist. Can you list some of the categories or key stumbling blocks?

I think it's better to refer to the checklists hosted there, so that the information does not get stale. We could quote the titles of the sub-lists from http://thinkchecksubmit.org/check/ but I personally don't see a usefulness in that. I don't oppose someone editing my answer that way.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
How good is the International Journal of Pure and Applied Mathematics? (http://www.ijpam.eu/)
I had recently submitted my paper to this journal on the advise of my guide and quite fortunately, I received an email a few days back saying that the paper had been accepted for publication. So before I pay the requisite fee of $165 (what is your opinion? is this too much?) I just wanted to know how good the journal was (the website says it has an impact factor of 2.13) and how much value such a publication will have. Would be really nice if someone could guide me on this. (This would be my first publication and I'm an undergraduate student)
This is the journal's website link: https://ijpam.eu/

IJPAM is published by Academic Publications Ltd which is on Beall's list of potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers

@DanielE.Shub much thanks for that. I guess I should immediately withdraw the article then.

May I ask how long it took for you to receive the answer? If acceptance is very fast, this is an indicator (not a proof) that the journal does not take peer review seriously. In a good journal, each review cycle tends to take a couple of weeks at least. Also, initial acceptance after the first (apparent) review round is very uncommon in all fields that I know.

Also see How can I tell whether a mathematics journal seems reputable?

I happened to come across an article in this journal just now, and for this particular journal this to me is the easiest and rather definitive test (cf @ff524's link): it is not indexed by Mathematical Reviews (MathSciNet), though it was until 2011 (and even then, many of the articles were only indexed and not reviewed), which means it is not considered a quality math journal.

To try to make this answer generalizable, here's how one can investigate in general:
The first thing to do is to ask more experienced researchers for their opinions, which is exactly what you've done here.  But you may run into the problem that you can't find people who know the journal.  For example, I don't recall having heard of IJPAM before, but it's not clear what that means.  IJPAM is certainly not a famous or prestigious journal, but there are a lot of journals out there and nobody has heard of all of them.
Beall's list is a list of "potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers."  The publisher of IJPAM (Academic Publications, Ltd.) appears on this list, which is a bad sign.  You have to decide how to interpret it - maybe Beall has made a mistake, or maybe your criteria are different from his - but it's an important sign that you should investigate further.
You can then take a look at the actual papers and see what you think of them (or ask faculty members at your university).  In the case of IJPAM, I found it quite worrisome.  I looked at the most recent issue and found several papers that don't look like research papers at all: Sudoko: the new smash hit puzzle game and Odd and even number cultures.  This suggests IJPAM will publish nearly anything.  If you've written a research paper, having it appear next to papers with no research content would look bad, so I recommend against publishing in IJPAM.

Thanks a ton for that. I guess I have to withdraw my article from them.
And to do so, would sending an email to the editor suffice? Please guide me on this.
And also, how do you think one can actually zero in on a journal to publish any work?

Yup, an email to the editor should suffice.

@AnonymousMathematician those are some eye-opening examples of poor scholarship

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Improve paper during revision process
I wrote a paper that is a literature review. It has been accepted with minor revisions. However, I when I read it again - 3 months after submitting it, and thus, 3 months without thinking about it - I noticed passages that could still be improved. I know that a paper is never perfect, but I am itching to add some enhancement...
So I wonder how much it is acceptable to improve it now, beyond modifications pointed out by reviewers’ comments (i.e. on parts that are already ok according to reviewers).
I can think of 3 types of improvements:

Fixing typos, that had also been missed by reviewers,
Style, phrasing improvements,
Adding new information (e.g. a paper that I’ve discovered since I’ve submitted my paper).

Since it is my first paper, I do not want to give the impression of having submitted an unfinished work the first time.

If you have to make all 3 types of improvements, go ahead and revise it..

Since it is not the final accepted version, you ca do all of these. Also, you should point the changes in the manuscript. For a clear answer to the referee suggestions, you can extract and cite all the changes in your work.

@NVZ I only have minor revisions to do. My question is more focused on parts of my paper that -- according to reviewers -- do not require modification, but that I still would like to improve.

authors: Дана Макоева


text:
Conjugation: Do we cite authors or papers?
When referencing to another work in a scientific paper, do we cite the paper or its author(s)?
This question is intended to clarify the conjugation of the verb that follows the reference -- especially in these cases:

One author, two papers:

Jane Doe (2015a, 2015b) list-s the very specific conditions under which...

-> lists (singular: referencing to Jane Doe) or list (plural: referencing to both papers)
Several authors, one paper:

John Doe, et al. (2015) claim-s this and that.

-> claim (plural: referencing to the multiple authors of the paper) or claims (singular: referencing to the single paper).

I've never seen any discussion of this, so I'll leave it as a comment rather than an answer, but given that citing the paper, rather than authors, can lead to text which is ungrammatical, I would always cite the author. Scientific papers should be as clear as possible, and littering them with (number) agreement errors seems to run counter to this ambition.

@Ian_Fin: "citing the paper, rather than authors, can lead to text which is ungrammatical" - how so? Doesn't it completely depend on how you read out the sentence?

@O.R.Mapper If read out as written then it seems ungrammatical to me. Perhaps inserting "and" between the years reduces the effect, but the citation style that the OP uses in the question doesn't do that.

@Ian_Fin: In that case, I guess it comes down to whether you perceive "2015, 2016 are good years." as ungrammatical (leaving aside the stylistic issue that the last two elements of an enumeration are indeed typically separated by "and"), implying that "2015, 2016 is a good year." would be less ungrammatical.

@O.R.Mapper In that case I find the plural verb to be more grammatical, but in the citation the years are parenthetical, giving it less prominence to me than the singular name and verb. Regardless, the issue of grammaticality is less black and white, and more subjective, than my original comment suggests. Thanks for pointing this out!

At least as far as the APA goes, the suggestion seems to be to cite the author. Note the tenth comment on this APA blog post

In your example I would say Jane Doe (2015a, 2015b) lists because as the papers are in brackets I would interpret the meaning as 'Jane Doe (in her papers 2015a and 2015 b)'... so she is the subject of the sentence.  In the second example, for the same reason I would select the plural, claim.

I don't know about anyone else, but I definitely cite authors.  Doe et al. [1] list.  Doe [3,4,5] lists.

I would say that it depends of the citation format, and the point is to look what is the subject of the sentence. In the examples you present, the conjugacy would be with the authors and the parenthesis only provides a precision about which paper is concerned.
In math we usually cite like that:

It is proved in [Doe15] that ...

References
[Doe15] Jane Doe, "paper name" Journal name, 2015

Therefore, we tend to cite the papers. However I often write

In [Doe15], Jane Doe proves that...

where the conjugacy is obvious.

I too cite the paper, e.g. "The method improved in Doe (2015) and follow-on papers.", "the smoothing term of Doe (2015).", or "the alternative term, expression (30) in Doe (2015),...".  However, wouldn't that mean verbs conjugate with "the paper" unless one explicitly makes the author the subject (as you did)?

Personally, I would always cite the paper, for two reasons:

If a paper was written by 5 people and you only reference 1 of them (First Author et al., Last Author et al.) then I feel that is somewhat unethical. You cannot possibly know which author deserves to be named specifically, so there is no fair way to do this. It is particularly upsetting when people reference the last author because they are somewhat famous in the field. Many papers are conceived, carried out and written up by PhD students who had little to no help from their supervisor over a 4+ year period. To cite the supervisor in that instance could do significant damage to the perceived fairness of Science as a whole in the mind of that young scientist.
Following on from point 1, people often cite an author rather than the paper itself as a (typically) subconscious appeal to authority, and again this is particularly true for papers published by big names in the field. This is obviously not what Science stands for. Point to the paper, the work, the methods, the result. Not the fleshy sacks of carbohydrate and protein that claim they knew it first.

If you have a citation with many authors you don't choose to do First Author et al. because you think the first author is the most important. You do it because that's what the style guide tells you to do. And if you cite the author then in the et al. case you'd be treating them as a group, so nobody would be being ignored.

If there was only 1 style guide allowed and it dictated what the OP must do, then this question would not exist as the OP has no choice. You cannot be ethical without free choice. As the question assumes a choice exists, some outcomes of that choice can be more ethical than others.

I see nothing in the question to suggest that the author has one style guide saying "cite the author" and another saying "cite the paper", and they're in a moral quandary over which to follow.

I see nothing in the question to suggest a style guide at all.

people often cite an author rather than the paper itself as a (typically) subconscious appeal to authority — That's funny.  I think people cite papers as mere appeal to authority ("It's published, so it must be good"), and cite authors to give proper credit.  Yes, point to the result above all else, but give the ugly bags of mostly water the credit they deserve.  Also, unless you're referring to the tabloid, "science" is spelled with a small s.

There's definitely truth to your point that resonates with me Jeff. I don't think it's enough to make me totally change my mind, but I see how I could be tempted to cite a paper's authors rather than the paper for the reasons you mention. I guess there's a time and a place for praising us water-bags, and I think the situation I envisage the OP just isn't one. I could be wrong though. A review paper for example could definitely have more focus on the scientists that made it happen than the papers published. Hero's of CRISPR comes to mind. The S/science thing is just some dumb little thing I do.


text:
Should I apply with a non-subject LoR to a university?
I am applying for a master’s program in computer science. I am using two letters of recommendation from the computer science field and one LoR from the language department where I learned a foreign language. Although the foreign language was part of my undergraduate education, does using a non-department LoR create a problem for graduate admissions?

Do you have an alternative you could use?

Is this for grad study in the US, or elsewhere?

This is for USA and canada @Buffy

No, i couldn't get any other lor due to closure of university in lieu of Covid @AnonymousPhysicist

Your recommenders should be able to vouch for your previous performance in undergrad and explain why you would be successful in a graduate program. A foreign language instructor might be able to provide the first part, but they might have more trouble with the second.
If you believe that your foreign language instructor could write you a strong letter highlighting characteristics that would make you successful in your program, then they might be a good person to ask. It will not necessarily harm your application to have a letter from such a person, but a letter from someone in your area might be stronger.


text:
Dealing with a plagiarized paper with both junior and senior authors
The following didn't directly happen to me, but it came close. I'm using first person anyway for clarity.
A paper is submitted to a journal for which I'm an editor. During review, it's noticed that the paper is plagiarized. The plagiarism is relatively minor and benign: only a few paragraphs are plagiarized, the plagiarized text is in the Introduction and involves only non-crucial background information, and the text was rewritten to the extent that it's not detectable by automated plagiarism checkers. But the text is still plagiarized (see edit below for example).
The paper has several authors, one junior (an undergraduate) and several senior (professors). It's difficult to believe that any of the senior authors would have done this, so a guess is that the junior author wrote the offending text without realizing that this kind of rewriting is still plagiarism, and the senior authors didn't notice.
Clearly the journal should do something, but what? The obvious thing to do is to alert the corresponding author and let them handle it, but 1) there's a nonzero chance that they are the one that is responsible for the plagiarism, and 2) I am concerned about potential damage to the junior author's career, since this will likely alert all the authors to the plagiarism & potentially also trigger institutional academic misconduct policies, and the paper looks like a good piece of work otherwise.
Edit: Here's an example of how the plagiarized text looks. Take this sentence from the above:

The plagiarism is relatively minor and benign: only a few paragraphs are plagiarized, the plagiarized text is in the Introduction and involves only non-crucial background information, and the text was rewritten to the extent that it's not detectable by automated plagiarism checkers.

And the rewrite looks like:

Only a few paragraphs are plagiarized, and in a non-malicious way: the affected text is located in the Introduction, providing background information to the problem, and was paraphrased to the extent that plagiarism detectors are unable to spot it.

The ideas involved are the same, some distinctive phrases are reused, and the text is immediately recognizable if you also have access to the original; but it's substantially rewritten and difficult to detect.

the plagiarized text is in the Introduction and involves only non-crucial background information -- In mathematics papers, especially when about a currently popular niche topic (papers on this topic in the last 10-15 years is a good example), this may look like plagiarism to outsiders when it's actually fairly standard boilerplate stuff. However, given your experience in these matters, I assume you're discussing something well beyond "standard boilerplate stuff" (and also probably not mathematics).

"It's difficult to believe that any of the senior authors would have done this" - I wouldn't be so sure.

I want to highlight, that after reading just 5-10 papers in a topic, it is very hard to write the background info in a way that sounds original. Also, in our case, there are some stuff, that we a struggling to rewrite (probably near impossible) for our new papers, without repeating ourselves. Can it be sth similar?

As other commenters note, this is a borderline case, somewhere between boilerplate background and failure to cite a reference (which would correctly acknowledge the paraphrased ideas). To get more help here you need to be more specific about "came close".

@aqua it's immediately obvious if you compare the text and the source. For example consider this sentence in the OP: The plagiarism is relatively minor and benign: only a few paragraphs are plagiarized, the plagiarized text is in the Introduction and involves only non-crucial background information, and the text was rewritten to the extent that it's not detectable by automated plagiarism checkers. (cont)

Compare that to this sentence: Only a few paragraphs are plagiarized, and in a non-malicious way: the affected text is located in the Introduction, providing background information to the problem, and was paraphrased to the extent that plagiarism detectors are unable to spot it.

As long as previous papers are correctly cited, this sounds like rephrasing of previous knowledge (which is good in an introduction), and not plagiarism (which would be bad). @DaveLRenfro's comment and following are spot on.

-1 Using first-person when you're not the first-person makes the question less clear, not more clear.

I don't see a question here. The corresponding author is, by definition, your only point of contact regarding the paper, what else can you do other than writing them? What does it matter if they are the one who plagiarized or not? And if you believe misconduct happened, why does it worry you that the institutional policies designed exactly for that case are triggered?

It's your call as editor to define what you consider to be plagiarism, but to my mind, if the introduction to a paper gives a summary of previous work in an area, then it's highly likely that this summary will be similar to that given in other papers in the same field and it's not an area where originality is required or even desirable.

My suggestion is that you assume the best and that, assuming it was plagiarized, it may have been unintentional, either because they just missed it, or had a different definition of plagiarism as, sadly, many do.
If the information presented is general knowledge in the field, then it can often be repeated without citation and without plagiarizing. In math, for example, the work of the ancients is general knowledge (among mathematicians), so we don't need to cite Euclid and Pythagoras for everything. Also, the plot of Les Miserables could probably be treated as general knowledge.
However, as an editor, you are correct to take a stricter view. I suggest informing the corresponding author of your concerns with a suggestion that they need more citations (or whatever) to bring the work to your standards. If they object to that, suggest that you will likely desk reject the work as it is.
You don't need to assume that it was intentional and you don't need to make accusations. You may, however, need the paper to be improved.

It seems, also, the editor thinks they know which paper this passage was inspired by plagiarized from. It might be appropriate for the editor to just outright say "The introductory sentences 9-11 of paragraph 4 should be cited from 'Emotional Commitment Of Indeterminate Duration' (Astley R., 1987)", instead of leaving the authors guessing.

@ShernRenTee wow, did this just happen to me on Academia StackExchange? Nowhere is safe apparently.

The journal should have a clear policy for what constitutes plagiarism, and what the consequences should be based on different scenarios.  For example, the IEEE provides a lot of guidance for how such cases should be handled.
https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/plagiarism/index.html
For the IEEE, they offer this guidance concerning paraphrasing:
https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/plagiarism/id-plagiarism.html

Paraphrasing

Paraphrasing will always be a difficult area to adjudicate. Since plagiarism involves not only the unacknowledged reuse of some else's words but also someone's ideas, it is possible to render a properly paraphrased section of text and still be open to a charge of plagiarism if proper credit for the idea has not been given. Even so, we should be able to agree that changing only a few words or phrases or only rearranging the original sentence order of another author's work will be defined as plagiarism.