text:
Plagiarized programming assignment - How to proceed
I'm a fourth year student earning a degree in computer science. I have a fairly high gpa, completed two research projects, and have conducted myself honestly through my entire career. A few weeks ago, we received an assignment comprised of 3 sections. My class partner and I decided to work separately on a single module and then collaborate on the last section. After a few days, my partner brought it to my attention that he had found the entire assignment on Github. This bothered me, but I ultimately made the decision to not back out if he decided to plagiarize his section. After completing both of our sections(I did mine honestly) we began collaboration on the final part. At this point, I made the regrettable decision to mimic a significant portion of the other programs structure.
I feel incredibly guilty about this. If this were an individual project, I would fess up to the professor and accept whatever consequences. However, since my partner(who I also consider a friend) is graduating, and starting a well paying job in a nearby city, I feel obliged to hope for the best and see things through.
I do not consider myself to be an unethical person, but high levels of stress and a bad influence caused me to make a bad decision. This I realize is my own fault.
We have not yet received a grade for the assignment, but I'm expecting the worst. How should I proceed? If I do get caught, what will the consequences be? If I don't get caught, is there anything I can do to relieve myself of guilt without ruining my partners career?

What does "mimic a significant portion of the other programs structure" mean?  Because if you're not copying code, I don't think mimicking a program's structure constitutes plagiarism.  At the most it makes the source deserving of a citation.

If you follow our code step by step you will find that it's almost identical to the other program. Initially going into it, I was hoping to just use the other program as a reference, but when I look back at both programs I can't help but feel as though they're essentially the same.

I should mention that the solution from Github was from a previous student.

You should provide a bit more detail as to what you mean by "structure." Are we talking algorithmic, architectural, or something else?

As far as "copying" structure, give credit where credit is due, in your code, input //original source by authors name

It's hard to judge whether your specific situation constitutes plagiarism, since copying "structure" has room for a gray area.
From what you've said though, I personally would take it to the professor.  As someone who has graded student coding work many times in the past, I can say I've definitely developed a feel for when code is copied, and it's usually very easy to check.  Every individual has a signature way of doing things that emerges when enough time is spent looking at their work.
Go in and say you intended to use it as a reference, but upon reflection without the looming deadline you feel like you overdid it, to the point of the work being too close to unoriginal.  Offer to redo it, but be prepared to accept whatever the professor says.  Personally, I can say I would be totally receptive to a student who owned up like that, but obviously there are no guarantees.
Unequivocally though, the worst-case scenario is that the professor figures it out on their own and agrees that it's plagiarism.  The fact that it's a previous student just ups the chances of that.  Plus your own gut is telling you you did something wrong, or you wouldn't be here asking us about it.
Good luck!
Edit: It's also worth consulting your syllabus.  It's possible there are explicit guidelines laid out for dealing with outside code that you should be very aware of before deciding and/or talking to your professor.

Although it depends on the university in which you study, the university at which I currently work very clearly spells out that there is a case of academic dishonesty going on here.  Plagiarism is just one type of academic dishonesty.  One particularly good example would be this:
Assume that Alice printed her assignment at a common printer, in another room, and is on her way to pick it up.  Bob, who printed on the same printer, gets there first and searches through the papers at the printer to find his own.  As he does so, he finds Alice's work and notices that she handled a problem far more elegantly than Bob did.
Now, Bob has a choice.  He could do nothing (no dishonesty), he could copy/use Alice's work as inspiration to fix his own and cite her (no dishonesty), or he could do all of that and not cite her (this is the dishonest option).
What happens if he chooses the second option?  Well, it's up to the instructor at my institution.  If the instructor chooses to give Bob a zero anyway (it's not his work, after all) then that is the instructor's choice.  But the instructor would have no grounds for academic discipline if Bob cites Alice.
Let's assume that Bob chooses option 3 and is therefore acting dishonestly. If he's caught, then discipline procedures can commence, even if there was no direct copying involved.
It is also important to note that, typically, group work means that all members of the group agree that the work was conducted honestly.  As a result, even though it was your partner's dishonest actions that ultimately lead to copying, you are responsible as well.
My advice to you is: speak with your professor, clearly explain what happened, and submit a citation of the original code.  It is better to confront the situation than it is to let it be discovered by accident.

About the Alice-Bob example: If I get a homework paper from Bob acknowledging inspiration from Alice, I usually assume that Alice voluntarily provided that inspiration. That's no problem if I allow (as I usually do) such cooperation between students. But if a professor prohibits that sort of cooperation, then Bob's acknowledgement could get Alice into trouble. In that situation, option 2 would require Bob to not only cite Alice but also indicate that he got the inspiration without Alice's knowledge or consent.

Either the grader knows that he is not capable of doing such assignment, he/she will suspect and run a simple google search to find that he plagiarized, or he/she already knows that such code exists on Internet.
In these cases, your colleauge will be punished.
If none, then don't worry because him cheating will not do any better. Unless this is a matter of getting a higher grade, you might not want to interfere if you are not involved in this matter.
At the end, he will be the one who does not understand the subject despite the fact that he passes the course. Detecting and punishing the plagiarisms is grader's job.

That is not universally true.  I don't know where @ddruck goes to school, but at my institution anyone who has their name on a plagiarized assignment is committing an act of academic dishonesty regardless of whether they were the person who plagiarized in the first place.  In essence, signing your name means that you endorse the work in its entirety.  I suggest that the original poster learn the exact policies at the school in which s/he studies.

Ask yourself the questions:

Is there a textbook which would contain the program structure (e.g. in pseudocode) in a similar depth as the github project? If yes, then your teacher should have been aware of it when giving the assignment. Also: textbook knowledge doesn't need to be cited
Was it more of an "algorithmic idea" of an "clean execution" (i.e. system programming) project. In the latter it would not mater so much if you copied some structure

Related to that: did this save you a lot of time/thinking/attempts (if yes, then it is likely that it was clear case of plagiarism.

If you quote or use the ideas in a textbook it should be cited if used in an assignment or report. If you use a theory to build something for a car then citing is not necessary.

Depends on the level and specific situation. I for sure would not see a "i use the product rule to take the derivative", but i would find a citation in the code useful. but its a gray area, i admit


text:
Can you be a good PhD student if you hate reading literature?
I am a PhD student in computer science.  My advisor keeps telling me I need to read papers, but I find most of them really long and boring, no matter what field they are in (but especially if there are a lot of math equations).  Usually my mind starts wandering after one or two pages.
My advisor thinks I should read one or two papers a day (apparently he does this himself), but if I followed his instructions (and yes, I've tried doing that), I would literally spend the whole day reading papers, or 20% reading papers and 80% procrastinating.
I am perfectly capable of reading papers if there's something specific I want to gain from the paper (like if the paper is really relevant to my project, or if I need to implement an algorithm from the paper).  But I have a hard time doing broad literature reviews and getting to know a field if I don't have a specific problem in mind.  A lot of times I just end up not doing them.
Does this automatically make me a bad researcher, and what are some ways I can compensate for my short attention span?

You haven't yet found a need to read; keep looking.

See if there are any seminars that cover related topics, or if you and a group of students could do one yourselves. Sometimes it's a lot easier to tackle material together, and thinking about how you would explain the material to someone else forces you to approach the material differently.

Reading a paper does not necessarily mean reading it thoroughly. Most of the times a short glance would suffice, because most of them are essentially similar. There are a few original papers in every field and the rest are just some minor modifications

"Two months of research can save two hours in the library." (Frank Westheimer)

My advisor thinks I should read one or two papers a day — Then he doesn't mean "read"; he means "skim".  Actually reading a paper can take days.

Your supervisor sounds like me!  I do say two papers a day and I do not mean 'skim'!  However, I do ask my students to focus only on certain parts, depending on their research stage.  In general, my philosophy is, if you don't read, you are not learning via osmosis, and hence, it will hurt your research career.

Interesting question, I have thought about this alot both during my PhD studies and afterwards...
There are some answers and comments touching upon the aspects like why you should be reading, or what it means to read. I will try to give my two cents on the question title, which I assume is what's really on your mind, that is whether or not you're suitable for doing research if you don't like reading literature.
Short answer: It depends...
There's no way of knowing, or objectively guessing, whether or not it will work out fine for you. There are way too many parameters to consider
Long answer: It depends...
I'm sure you've heard, and will hear and see, people reading constantly. They will be telling you what you should read, how much you should read. I know I have...
While I don't doubt the sincerity or the good intentions behind these sentiments I am not sure how accurate or helpful they actually are. Hearing and reading those kind of comments have demotivated me at best, and pushed me further and further away from pursuing a career in academia at worst.
I was super ambitious in the beginning; I highlighted numerous journals that I deemed important in my field, signed up for their eTOC alerts. Read the short abstracts of anything that got published there. I had email alerts for a bunch of keywords, that were relevant for my work. Those articles that matched any one of those would be labeled in my inbox, I'd make sure to go through the whole article, albeit quickly...
About half way into my PhD studies (which is in bioinformatics, for the record) I've realized that there is quite literally no way for me to stay on top of literature, to a satisfactory degree. There is just too many people out there, doing way too many experiments that may be relevant somehow to my work. Also around the same time I started to look at publishing a bit more critically. The way funding and career options look these days, there is tremendous pressure on people to publish.
That has several significant implications, two really significant ones are:

there's an increasing number of publications (and the rate of increase is also increasing, although I dare not say exponentially)
a significant portion of the articles are written to secure research funds, deliver results for a received grant or secure the next position; as opposed to being written to be read and understood easily
stuff that wouldn't normally be published gets published. this could happen for a number of different reasons like the group that wrote the paper is too influential to get rejected or objectively critiqued, or the reviewers are too busy to give a proper review of the work, or the in the worst case of all, there is data forgery committed

So at the end of the day, you start doubting what's actually on the paper, and start wondering about what's been omitted, or how the article was framed in order to get it published.
Added on top of that is the fact that a significant portion of the articles are not read and an overwhelming majority of the articles are never cited. The exact numbers have been a matter of debate (here's one link there are many more) however the fact remains that a significant portion of the literature is ignored at best, treated as garbage at worst.
All of these reasons give birth to a skepticism that is hard to ignore. A lot of my colleagues and friends who've been through my phd studies with me essentially agree. I have yet to meet a PhD student who get invigorated and excited by a pile of articles that s/he needs to read... (Interesting side note here is how majority of the people that will typically talk about how much one needs to read are senior scientists.)
Finally the matter of work-life separation. Many academics would go around saying that being a scientist is a lifestyle not a profession. I have this very close to heart where many PIs I personally know well (including my brother) spend a significant amount of their free time reading articles. For the life of me, I have no idea why... The last thing I want to do when I get home is to read research articles. I think it's healthy to separate work and life beyond work, but I haven't gotten so far into my career, so take that with a pinch of salt.
So, as you can see, I share the same worry (unless I misunderstood the origin of the question) that OP does. I have been worried about this for several years now, am I a bad scientist because I am not interested in reading literature?
I am not sure, I have been getting pretty much only positive feedback on my work and skills, so I am not entirely sure it's that bad as it might appear. While I agree that one cannot completely shut out reading altogether and ignore literature, I don't think one needs to obssess about reading constantly.
I honestly think it's a matter of etiquette, or an ambition to strive towards, even though most sensible people realize that it's not really feasible to constantly stay on top of literature.
I say: do read, at least as much as you need to, about the subjects you need to know about, the rest is optional. Don't worry about keeping statistics or meeting thresholds, just try to stay well-informed about your field.

"So at the end of the day, you start doubting what's actually on the paper, and start wondering about what's been omitted, or how the article was framed in order to get it published." ... in other words, you develop a critical mind. Is it a bad thing?

@T.Verron not at all.. I am just trying to express that it's a process

My advice is mostly on why I think you should read, but I will also say why you might be having difficulty.
It sounds like you are in Computer Science or a related area. There are, in my mind, three reasons to read a lot of papers during your PhD.
The first is to understand the existing techniques that are available to you. For example, the different dominant formalisms, especially those often used in your area, and the differences between them. If there is an over-arching framework that links them, then it is also useful to know that. By reading a lot, when you actually do research you will have in your head a wide range of possibilities.
The second is simply so that you know what you should research. What has been done, what are open problems and what problems could be made more interesting. Imagine working on a problem that has been solved, but you didn't know (whilst everyone else does) - that will feel frustrating and I have seen it happen even when the problem was well-known.
The third, is simply so you can work with others in the area! You need to get a good idea of who you would like to collaborate with and also, when you are at conferences, if you don't know people's work well enough how will you build a potential working relationship? I have had colleagues who did not read much and it was detrimental to everyone. There was no common ground on which to discuss ideas, they might have an idea and describe it only for it to turn be a well-known problem already solved a decade ago (for example).
In terms of why you are having difficulty, it's not unusual. From what I have seen it is simply that the person is not interested in the area. You say it doesn't matter what area you are looking at, you find it uninteresting. Perhaps the area does not matter to you, but you really like to solve problems. In this case, maybe view each paper as a way to understand the problem and - as you read - also think of different solutions, how you would do it better and related problems. This would perhaps help maintain the excitement and it's something you should do anyway (to get an idea of who's work is actually great and who is just hiding an easy problem under a complex solution). Be an active reader is what I am saying (in contrast to those saying you should skim), don't just read but also - do - work out how a formalism or algorithm works, what could be improved, any properties that might be there the authors have not mentioned etc. More generally, perhaps try and think of why you like research and see if you can incorporate that into your paper reading.

You'll find that broadening your knowledge base to include material even tangentially related to your main research focus will help with the generation of novel research questions, novel methodologies, or insights that can help fill the gaps in your current area. Expertise isn't just about depth of knowledge, so try to incorporate related material into your reading list, even if you don't have a specific problem you're trying to solve. The background knowledge will be helpful when you sit down to write up your dissertation or other research papers.

It seems like you are a "doer" rather than a philosopher. So in your shoes, I would start by "doing" computer science.
I would "consult" rather than "read" literature. Basically, you have to know the literature just well enough to use it to justify what you are doing, as opposed to "getting ideas" from the literature.

My suggestion would be that for the time being, you take a different approach to looking at papers.  Skim a couple per week without reading the whole thing carefully beginning to end.  Make yourself a list of questions and have those in front of you or in mind while you are spending 30-45 minutes skimming a paper.  Read the abstract and the conclusion.  Form an idea what the paper is intended to accomplish.  Skim the whole thing enough to be able to make yourself a mental table of contents of the paper.  Pick one section of the core of the paper to read carefully.  Pick one table or graph to read carefully.  See if you are interested in taking a look at one of the references.
Try to strike a happy medium between your advisor's concept of a paper reading program and your own natural instinct.
One other idea -- you might find a thesis easier reading than a journal article.  However, it will be longer.  Take that into account.  (You might spend a week gradually getting through a thesis.)

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
What do I do if my supervisor insists that the classical CLT is false and wants me to write that in my paper?
We are in a physics department. My supervisor, upon reading a Physical Review Letters (PRL) paper, concludes (and claims that the paper also concludes) that the classical central limit theorem (CLT) is false under the (usual) assumptions stated. He insists on this result and wants me to say/imply that in my manuscript because he finds fault with me making use of the classical CLT in a few statistical tests that I have utilized in the paper.
Question:
(1) Would you say that my supervisor is scientifically incompetent?
(2) How should I handle such a situation?
The paper is single-authored by me but he says that the university requires him to vet journal submissions (for quality) even though he is not a co-author which I accept.
(EDIT) More info regarding the context:
Just to clarify further, copied from my comment below: In my paper, I was simply stating the assumptions of classical CLT so that I could make use of the resulting normal distributions for some statistical tests. It was not a particular usage/application of classical CLT but simply a statement of the assumptions that would need to be held to recover normal distributions for the application of statistical tests I was using.

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

(1) Would you say that my supervisor is scientifically incompetent?

If he says the CLT as stated and proved in textbooks is false, he is obviously wrong. "Scientifically incompetent" sounds like a very sweeping statement that I would avoid endorsing given the information currently available. He could simply be misunderstanding something in the language of the paper, or his knowledge of rigorous math could have an embarrassing gap (wouldn't be the first time), or it could be a failure of communication between you where you have a subtle misunderstanding of his position.
In any case, textbook CLT is correct, no question about it.

(2) How should I handle such a situation?

An honest intellectual dialogue with him to clarify the issue would be ideal, if he is the kind of person who can have such a dialogue when he is in the wrong and not back himself into an emotional corner and become upset and unable to reason. If you think that's risky, try to find another professor you trust and can consult about the issue, and if they agree with you, ask them to participate in a discussion with the advisor to make him understand your point. And try approaching any discussions with an open mind, in case it's you who are in error about what his position is exactly.
Finally, it's possible that your advisor really is scientifically incompetent, so if you are unable to make him come around to your view and conclude that he is intellectually unsuited to be your advisor, you should probably switch advisors. In any case, under no circumstance should you concede to his demand to deny the truth of a standard formulation of CLT in your paper. Good luck!

I feel that your suggestions are measured and entirely appropriate given the information available. The situation I described actually happened a while ago. I resolved it by pretending he was right and fed his ego such that I could come to a compromise where I wouldn't have to write something that is so obviously wrong in my paper. But I can't help but feel that I have debased myself in the process. That my supervisor is incompetent is also not a conclusion I would come to lightly but I would say that this situation contributed significantly to that conclusion.

Also, OP could be misunderstanding the exact point of the supervisor. Honest intellectual dialogues require both sides to honestly consider the possibility of being wrong. In addition, statistics questions and questions about how to approximate something in my experience offer lots of possibilities for honest misunderstandings (right answers to the wrong question).

"My supervisor, upon reading a Physical Review Letters (PRL) paper, concludes (and claims that the paper also concludes) that the classical central limit theorem (CLT) is false under the (usual) assumptions stated." -- WHY???  It appears he has/had a bone to pick with this particular usage/application, and you should have gotten to the root cause.

@railsdog well, OP's speculation that the advisor may be scientifically incompetent would be one possible answer to the WHY question.

@railsdog
In my paper, I was simply stating the assumptions of classical CLT so that I could make use of the resulting normal distributions for some statistical tests. It was not a particular usage/application of classical CLT but simply a statement of the assumptions that would need to be held to recover normal distributions for the application of statistical tests I was using. He claimed, based on his understanding of that paper, that it was possible to recover non-normal distributions under the assumptions of classical CLT stated.

Aah, more info leads to different conclusions...  :)

Be absolutely certain about what you both mean here. CLT has a very well established proof.  It is almost inconceivable to think that a disproof of such a fundamental mathematical theorem would ever be published in PRL over a pure mathematics journal.
This leads us to infer, quite justifiably, I think, that the PRL paper must be addressing a popular application of CLT in some field of Physics.  The conclusion here would then be that CLT is an inappropriate tool to analyze the system under study - not that CLT itself is invalid.  It's not uncommon at all for Physics to change its mathematical tools from time to time as more is learned about the systems those tools are meant to model.
I would suggest that you take the time to sit down and discuss this with your supervisor until you both have a clear understanding of each others' ideas.  Confrontation is not going to be productive here.  If you can't clearly express your ideas to each other then the likelihood of producing a quality paper is likewise quite low.  Sorting out this misunderstanding will likely do both of you some good.

I forgot what paper he was referring to. In my paper, I was simply stating the assumptions of classical CLT so that I could make use of the resulting normal distributions for some statistical tests. I specifically asked him if classical CLT is false under the assumptions stated and he insisted it is. He referred me to that paper, said that he did not know how to derive classical CLT, but that we should trust the authors. The immediate conclusion I came to (without bothering to read the paper) was that he had misinterpreted the results of the paper but I refrained from confronting him further.

@Frustrated_Student  Well, as others have said, I wouldn't confront him - but there's nothing wrong with having a discussion to clarify the issue.  If you haven't already, it's probably worth reading the paper he gave you and doing your best to understand it completely.  That will, at least, give you a starting point for discussion.

Upvoted because this is very important. I'm no physicist (I'm an enginer, or "oompa-loompa of science"), but there are quite a number of times where the assumptions/conditions of the mathematical formula are violated by the physical conditions of the experiment. The math is not wrong, it is simply not applicable to the current experiment.

A proof that the CLT is invalid outright is possible, but is no longer plausible. A couple of experiments have been run in base physics that if true would end up proving irrational numbers don't exist as quantities. Unfortunately the result was inconclusive and some outside cases suggest false.

"without bothering to read the paper"...so why not go read the paper, then come back if you still have a question?

I think that some supervisors may try to "teach" you something, which they perceive as passing on some sort of "knowledge" of theirs.
However, it may turn out (as it probably did in your case) that this "knowledge" was simply a hunch, a misunderstanding, or simply an uncompleted thought. Maybe they (half-heartedly) intended for this to start a discussion that would result in a new, revolutionary way of thinking about the CLT. I say half-heartedly, because they didn't even explain their idea.
I think there are many more and better ways to assess the scientific competence of your supervisor, like scientific output, quality/impact of lectures, etc. If he is indeed not suited to be advising students on how to do science, it should be apparent elsewhere (or even everywhere else).

Another approach to the one given by other excellent answers is to avoid the problem altogether!  Do you really need to use the central limit theorem? Maybe not, maybe you could do away with approximations altogether, or switch to some other approximation tool, like some simulations (maybe the bootstrap).
If you want advice about alternative methods, you could ask that as a new question at https://stats.stackexchange.com/

As other commentators have pointed out, it is important to establish exactly what your supervisor is asserting.  It would be somewhat unusual to claim that a well-known and well-vetted mathematical theorem is wrong, without some specific argument constituting a counter-proof.  Before you make any big decisions, make absolutely sure that your supervisor is objecting to the actual theorem (when correctly stated) and does not have an objection merely to a misstatement or misapplication of the theorem.
Now, supposing that he really is objecting to the CLT, as correctly stated, I think the next step is this.  If he is of the view that a well-known mathematical theorem is false, then the onus is on him to clearly and rigorously show his reasoning and establish the correctness of his own view with the mathematical community.  If he is right (he is not) and he can prove it (he can't) then his discovery would be one of the most impressive discoveries in the history of probability theory, and it would win him permanent acclaim in the field.  It is up to him to publish his argument if he has one.  In the meantime, there is a wide literature asserting proofs of the theorem that have been accepted by the mathematical community, with thousands of trained eyes scrutinising it for centuries.  He has no legitimate standing to block your work on the basis that he does not accept the theorem.
I would suggest that you firstly bring the matter up with him in a polite but forceful manner, and insist that you regard the classical CLT to be correct, and you will not say anything to the contrary in your work.  If he is going to use his vetting prerogative to seek to pressure you to say something that you (along with the rest of the mathematical community) regard as untrue, then you should bypass him completely and publish your work without his input.  If necessary you could ask another academic to take over the vetting role, or simply bypass it altogether.
Lastly, I disagree a bit with some other commentators regarding the issue of competence.  Even if your supervisor is wrong on this issue, I wouldn't assume he is incompetent in any broader sense (at least not on this evidence alone).  Mathematical theorems can be hard, and the proof of the CLT is not trivial.  It is entirely possible that your supervisor is a competent physicist in other respects and just has a "blind spot" in this aspect of probability theory (which is not even within his direct field).  If it is remains feasible to work effectively with this supervisor despite your disagreement on this issue, and if that is the only thing you notice where he is in error, there is probably scope to learn plenty of other things from him.

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


text:
Should I include MA theses in my PhD literature review?
I am now writing the literature review of my doctoral thesis and doing an assessment of methodology used in previous studies on the field. I am unsure if I should include and discuss previous MA theses that I've found. While some of the MA theses are relevant to my research, they haven't been peer reviewed and the research methods haven't been validated. Please advise.

The same could be said for your thesis-to-be. Do you want people to ignore it?

@JonCuster, some people don't distinguish between thesis and dissertation. The OP is referring to their doctoral work per the title question.

It would be unusual in my field for an MA thesis to use an unvalidated method.

Be careful not to put too much weight on peer review. Peer review is a tool, but it does not deem results "correct". Flawed results get through peer review. Good results may not.
As a sophisticated reader of work published in your specific field of interest, you have both the power and responsibility to think critically about the work you read and make your own determinations about its suitability. Peer review may be a helpful filter and organize you around a starting point, but you should not take a paper as unimpeachable truth merely because it's been through peer review.
It's certainly reasonable to expect that research methods are validated for them to be useful, but do not mistake peer review for validation of research methods.

I would include them, but have them labelled for what they are. They have, after all, gone through something of a peer review if they have been vetted (read, reviewed, ...) by one or more professors and accepted for the degree.
Omitting them might be problematic, depending on what they contain. Just make it understood that the work hasn't gone through a publishing process.

This 100% comes down to how you're using the Master's Theses in your review.

If you found some idea solely in a thesis and discuss it in your
review, then it's plagiaristic to not cite the review.
If you don't    describe anything having to do with the thesis in your review, then    you have no reason to cite it, and shouldn't.
If the Thesis describes    a non-original idea, and you just used the thesis to track down the    legitimate sources for those ideas,
and you read and cite those, you    don't generally need to cite the
thesis, but there are situations    where you might choose to cite it
anyway (like maybe you found it particularly motivating, or if the thesis posed the discussion in the context of a field close to your own, and the original sources don't).

If the Thesis explains a non-original ideal clearer/better then orginal source then I think it is a service to the reader to say so.

Should "plagiaristic to not cite the review" be "plagiaristic to not cite it in the review"?

I find that a thesis is often the clearest explanation of a person's work. Subsequent peer-reviewed papers and articles are almost always less detailed. There is no problem whatsoever in citing a thesis. The same argument can be made for technical reports, which haven't gone through peer review (perhaps editing my a supervisor/manager), but can contain very useful contributions. There are several examples of this in the world of UAVs, where reports done for NASA were later made public and are cited, but aren't peer-reviewed. If an author has published articles from their thesis, then I will cite the one that I used the most. In short, don't worry about it.

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


text:
How to write a compound name as an author in a scientific paper?
My name is (Basma) (Elamir Alaa)(Ahmed). We can see that my father name is compound of two words . If I want my name and my father name to be both included as  my author name , can I get some help of how I shall write it?!

This is very hard and no guarantee that anyone will get it correct. The problem is caused by computers and has relatively easy solutions, but nobody bothers to implement them. Fifty years ago it wouldn't be a problem. Now it is. We are going backwards on this. What if you also had a two word given name and a middle name?

It isn't a solution, but you probably need an ORCID number associated with your name, especially if you use shortened forms as you do here with your username: https://orcid.org

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


text:
Partially funded PhD in Germany
I have been offered a PhD position in a German institution, however,  it is not a job or fully funded position. While I plan to apply for a full scholarship moving forward,  just in case, is it possible to pursue a PhD besides another part-time job?
Would it be wise to accept the offer regardless? And if otherwise,  what kind of inconveniences one might encounter in this situation?

This needs more detail for us to be able to answer it. What kind of partial funding is this?

It is fairly common to offer a part-time position (50% to 60%) for a PhD student. The (unfair) idea is that you do paid work for 50% to 60% of the week on some project, maybe some teaching, and you use the remainder of the week to work on your dissertation. If you are lucky those paid tasks align well with your dissertation project. The idea is definitely not that you do a part-time job for the remaining 40% to 50%. If you don't like that, and I can see why you would not, then don't take that job.

Maarten Buis is right - the idea of a "part time position" is that you get a part of the money you get for a 100% position, and you have the guarantee that in the remaining fraction, you can work in a concentrated way on your PhD. But there is the expectation that also a good part of the actual working hours you can spend on activities related to your PhD. However, there is also grant acquisition, teaching, and the like to be done while holding these positions. Doing another part time job on the side is normally unrealistic and may be against the visa terms anyway.

are you an EU citizen? do you need a visa to live or to live and work in Germany?)

Please give much more information. This is hugely dependent on the field. For instance, in psychology it is extremely common to have 50% positions, but the expectation is that you indeed work full time. (And while the 50% salary is not something to get rich off, you can live on it without going into debt as a single person. If you have dependents, this is another important piece of information.) In contrast, fewer positions in computer science are less than 100%, because people have more other options. This is just supply and demand in action. Please give more details.

If you get a scolarship (it seems so, since you mention it is not a job) you are considered a student and finding a job can be hard (do you need a visa to work in Germany? with the scolarship you may get a student visa, then you cannot legally work).
The ugly part of the scolarship is thay it is not a working contract. So you still have to figure out all the bureaucracy for the health insurance (tedious and potentially very expensive), to figure out how to get reductions and what and how are you effectively covered for (yes, everyone will tell you it is quite standard, that there are laws etcetc ... usually no one "local" of them had no first-hand nor even second-hand experience of things gone wrong, which happens especially among people not speaking german and not having any friends speaking german).
Additionally, the scolarship does not allow you to enter into the unemployment system when the scolarship runs out. Please remember that is socially accepted and absolutely the norm to think that the last 3 months of your PhD can be performed while on unemployment money... and usually the last 3 months turn out in being 9 months or even 1/1.5 years. Yes, people do that much of their PhD while on unemployment money: the average (not-existing) german will tell you that those are still public money, like research money, but with a different label, so it is totally ok to be on the social insurance money while performing research that benefits your supervisor's CV.
All in all, I would rationally consider the scolarship good as a bridge solution for 3/6 months, if you have no relocation expenses, if you consider and use it as "seed-money" to be paid while working from home and trying to a secure position.
Otherwise a german scholarship is just a joke, used by institutions and professors to have skilled people cheaply (and if they pay them low, they will show equal consideration for them ...).

I think you do have a good point that scholarships in Germany have many disadvantage and that positions as an employee are certainly preferrable. But the following points don't match my experience: "Please remember that is socially accepted and absolutely the norm to think that the last 3 months of your PhD can be performed while on unemployment money" In my experience, thinking this is not the norm. [...]

"Otherwise a german scholarship is just a joke, used by institutions and professors to have skilled people cheaply (and if they pay them low, they will show equal consideration for them ...)" I received a scholarship during my PhD (but admittedly I got a 25% position in addition to that for most of the time, which made things much easier) and my PhD advisor was extremely considerate and supportive throughout my PhD (and many years after it, until today).

@JochenGlueck yes, given the nature of this site, we tend to collect all the horror stories, but it is good to remember that by far the most advisors take their job seriously and advice and support their PhD students.

@JochenGlueck good you had a caring supervisor. Did you ever wonder why you got a 25% position instead of a 30-35% higher scolarship? for the uni/research centre it would have costed the same ...

@EarlGrey: No, I did not wonder, because the amount of the scholarship was similar as for most PhD scholarships in Germany at that time. The 25% position was unrelated to the scholarship (and came from a different funding source). My advisor had a number of positions allocated for his group (as is common for professors in Germany), and from those he gave me a 25% position. A department can't (or at least shouldn't) arbitrarily reallocate funding from positions to scholarships, because those positions exist to ensure that a certain amount of teaching is done. [...]

[...] But you seem to indicate that heaving a 35% higher scholarship would have been preferrable to having the 25% position. May I ask why? From a financial point of view the difference would have been rather small (as the 25% position was advantageous regarding the cost of health insurance). Regarding the work load, the position came with a small amount of teaching duty - which I found to be a good thing because it was a nice change from research now and then, because I consider teaching to be quite beneficial for research, and because it gave me teaching practice which was good careerwise.

So yes, I was indeed really happy with how my PhD went. I had a really good time regarding both research and teaching, I liked my colleagues and my advisor, and my finanical situation was also completely fine. And no, I did not feel exploited or treated badly in any way. (As @MaartenBuis said, there is a lot of selection bias on this website, so I think it's important that we also tell the positive stories.)

@JochenGlueck "heaving a 35% higher scholarship would have been preferrable to having the 25% position"
I consider it detrimental. But some people sells them as advantageous "look, the PhD candidate gets more money, and the university needs to spend less money!".
I think scolarships are an unethical way to provide cheap workforce to research, especially in comparison with a proper PhD contract.

These kind of positions do not exist to give you a poor job as a PhD researcher. They exist to give you an academic job in addition to you being a PhD researcher.
The expectation here is that working on your PhD happens in the time not covered by the job itself. Any overlap between the work and the PhD is your institution being generous, not anything you should count on. Even for the few jobs that have no obligations besides your PhD, the expectation is that you pour at least 100% of your (working?) day into academia.
So while it is formally possible to pursue another part-time job, this will cut into the time you spend on your PhD! The primary inconvenience here is that you will have less time for your PhD, which should be the only reason why you would accept such a low-paying job in the first place.
Plus, your institution (i.e. supervisor) has to agree to any side jobs. If they have the choice between someone working only on their PhD versus someone working a sidejob as well, guess who they will prefer?
So make sure the job itself is sufficient for you. However, there are many kinds of part-time positions so this really depends on what exactly you are offered.
The base pay for PhD is not all that bad and even at 50% you should be able to easily cover living costs for yourself. However, the 25% and lower offered in some domains are usually only feasible with another source of income, such as family supporting you.
If you are not familiar with the German work system, make sure what you have is an offer for actual employment and not a scholarship. The former gives you health insurance and some other important perks; the latter requires jumping some bureaucratic hoops to turn into a benefit and has a lot of downsides otherwise.
Definitely make sure to find out the norm in your domain. While there are no fixed rules, most domains have a de-facto standard since funding comes from similar sources and institutions compete at least somewhat. This usually means a set work fraction and specific duties (e.g. CS has 100% with teaching duties or 75% without). Finding this out let's you gauge whether you are being ripped off and if there is any point in looking for a better offer in the first place.

"The expectation here is that working on your PhD happens in the time not covered by the job itself. Any overlap between the work and the PhD is your institution being generous" This is certainly not the standard in my field (pure math).


text:
To be unemployed for the RTDa in Italy
I'm Research assistant in Turkey, I'll apply for RTDa position in Italy. I will try to take sabbatical and then unpaid leave from my university in Turkey to apply for RTDa but i heard that Italy does not accept that,the position is not compatible with any other position as employee of any other university, in Italy or abroad. It is my first working experience in abroad and RTDA conntract is only for 3 years, so I'm not sure about resigning. Is that information true? SO do i have to resign to apply for rtda according to Italian laws?

See: https://internationaltalents.art-er.it/researchers/moving-to/career-paths-italian-research

When you're on unpaid leave, are you an employee?

Yes but when I take unpaid leave, I will not have any duties related to the university, even though I am a university employee.

Just to be sure I understand what you are asking, you want to take unpaid leave for 3 years from you university while working in Italy?

I have no idea about what RTDa actually is, but would imagine that what they care about is whether or not you are an "active employee", i.e., whether you are drawing two salaries. I can't imagine they'd care if you had an inactive position somewhere.

@JackRed sabbatical leave for the first year, unpaid leaves for other years. İn saabbatical leave, i can take my salary from my uni., but i will not have any responsibility. Because this is type of leave for academic research in abroad.

@WolfgangBangerth i thought the same like you. I will be inactive employee for 3 years.


text:
How to deal with unruly, unengaged students who complain about me?
I got a job 6 months ago as a university lecturer. I was assigned two subjects with the same students. Due to COVID-19, classes are online and lectures are recorded.
From the beginning, the majority of the class was ill-mannered. They would make noise by opening microphones, opening cameras, removing other students, muting my mic.  When I threatened to involve the chairman, they said "he is our buddy."
So I made some rules, threatening to mark students absent if this continued. The whole class then requested a meeting and asked me to discard these rules. I agreed. Since then, the students have largely stopped their shenanigans with the microphone and camera. But only a few are engaging with the material and answering or asking questions during lecture.
I try calling on them one by one, to ask if there is any confusion, and they always say they don't understand anything. This hurt my feelings. So I said them that tell me that will they be responsive in my class or I will talk to chairman. No one replied except one student, who said "as you wish."
I called chairman I was about to start my point but before that he told me: be soft with your class, they have issues with you, they have complained to me and sent me a recording. He said that he didn't watch the recording, but I should be careful.
I asked one student (the one who instigated the discussion about the rules) whether they still have an issue with me, and she said no. I said asked why she complained about me when issues were resolved among us. She denied making the complaint. But clearly someone has a grudge against me.
I am really hurt by these allegations. The situation is getting worse day by day.
Did I do something wrong? What should I do differently? Should I be worried about losing my job?

@jonathon Did you consent to being recorded? And where are you based. Might be a good opportunity to talk to students about eavesdropping laws in your jurisdiction. In a lot parts of the world recording someone without consent is illegal.

This was extremely difficult to parse -- I and others took a stab at editing it; please feel free to edit further if we introduced any errors.

On a related note -- are you teaching in English, or in your native language? I ask because your difficulty in formulating this question suggests that the real issue is that your lectures are similarly unclear and confusing (which leads to disgruntled students). But if you are giving lectures in your native language, then I'm less confident in my diagnosis.

If you don't speak fluently in the same language as the students do, then maybe you can try to write many more examples in a clear and simple manner on the blackboard or computer notes to illustrate your lectures. Excellent visual examples can compensate very well for the less-than-perfect verbal communication skills. Don't let the students' reactions hurt your feelings. Good luck.

Punishing an entire group for something clearly due to actions of a minority is something I've only seen work in movies about military training.  And even then it only works because, well, it's military training.  (I'm referring to your comments before they got edited / deleted).  You also turned their feedback, which you solicited, into a new way of punishing them, by making rules about participation.  I would ask another faculty member to observe your class for a while and take their recommendations for fixing the situation.

Do you have friends who teach in high school? They should have probably learned about how to cope with this problem. Talk to them.

Who exactly is this chairman?

This is truly bizarre; the question would benefit from more information on the cultural context. I'm particularly perplexed by the sentence: "They would make noise by opening microphones, opening cameras, removing other students (...)". The OP should elaborate on how the said students were, supposedly, removing other students, by physically dragging them outside? The situation fits more of a borstal not a university setting.

Advising on what I think is a key point here.

So I made some rules, threatening to mark students absent if this
continued. The whole class then requested a meeting and asked me to
discard these rules. I agreed.

This is the kiss of death. It's a common mistake for first-time teachers. I made the same mistake in my first semester.
You need to signal that your standards, rules, decisions, and adjudications are firm and basically not subject to retraction later. There's a "blood in the water" aspect that once a cohort of students have learned that they can control you... they will control you. They've learned that your rules are not really rules and they will ignore any kind of further demands you try to make on them.
You've compounded this with entirely empty threats about having the chairperson get involved. Now the students have a rather lengthy body of data that your rules and threats are simply not to be believed.
Frankly, there is no recovering from this for your first semester. You just need to take your lumps and survive the semester as well as you can. Next semester you need to come in with well-thought-out, clearly communicated protocols and stick to them. If you have a rule then you need to enforce it to build credibility and trust. I did much better starting in my second semester regarding this.
I hesitate to bring this up, but in the U.S. there's an idiom about entry to a prison where you need to expect to fight the first person who crosses you to prove your credibility. As a broad allegory I've found this to be helpful. A sharp, clear, confident "No" to the first student who asks (esp. publicly) for you to retract or waive a rule does wonders in communicating credibility and trustworthiness.
My overall strategy is to be very strict at the start of a term, and then in some cases later in the term be a bit more generous in terms of allowances (esp. with students who have themselves established credibility with me). I guess this also echoes some aspects of U.S. boot camp strategy -- one student of mine from Pakistan, who said his father was a general in the military there, made a guess that I'd been in the military myself. There are some lessons one can take for a situation like the OP is in.

Thanks. Finally someone understood me. Can I control the same students in next semester? Or can I face them after pandemic? Won't they laugh at me?

@jonathon: Maybe. Hopefully there won't be many in that category.

Your answer is not clear to me, can you explain?

Is asking class representative student about my teaching way, will be appropriate? That "do they still have complaints about me which they had in the strat of semester"?

@jonathon: I'm not familiar with the concept of a class representative student, so I couldn't say.

Class representative:that student who mentioned all the issues while representing the whole class?

To sum up, the three magic ingredients to respect are: fairness, consistency and (initial) strictness. You do not make unreasonable preconditions that are unfair; rules need a reason, the reason needs an explanation and it must be realistically possible to uphold it. Once established, you keep the contract from your side and expect maintenance from theirs. Then you stay strict. Only when students have earned your trust, you can start relaxing some of the rules. But do not be cajoled in doing so. This must happen on your initiative, not as consequence of their manipulation.

From the beginning, the majority of the class was ill-mannered. They would make noise by opening microphones, opening cameras, removing other students, muting my mic.

This seems like a technical problem; I really can't believe any modern software wouldn't have a way to disallow this behavior. I would start by investigating this.

When I threatened to involve the chairman, they said "he is our
buddy."

This seems like a bit of an illogical response on your part. Classroom control is your responsibility. What do you expect the chairman to do?

So I made some rules, threatening to mark students absent if this continued. The whole class then requested a meeting and asked me to discard these rules. I agreed.  Since then, the students have largely stopped their shenanigans with
the microphone and camera. But only a few are engaging with the
material and answering or asking questions during lecture.

In general, setting draconian rules and then repealing them entirely will make you seem erratic. In this case, it is true that students muting your microphone and expelling each other during lecture is a serious problem that you have to solve "at any cost." Still, it seems like there had to have been a better option. Do your colleagues have this problem? How have they dealt with it?

I try calling on them one by one, to ask if there is any confusion, and they always say they don't understand anything.

So, this is the crux of the matter: I suspect your lectures are completely incomprehensible. Reasons I suspect this:

Your students are outright telling you "I don't understand anything."
It would explain your students' antics with the microphone.
You had extreme difficulty in formulating your question here -- both language-agnostic skills (filtering the important information, organizing it, even breaking into paragraphs) and English-specific syntax.

Now I could be wrong, so I suggest you start by getting a colleague to sit in on your lecture and give you some honest feedback. If I am right, I can't tell you how to improve your teaching, but I think you need to take drastic action -- anything from getting better teaching mentorship to signing up for education classes could be worth trying.

This hurt my feelings. So I said them that tell me that will they be responsive in my class or I will talk to chairman. No one replied except one student, who said "as you wish."
I called chairman I was about to start my point but before that he told me: be soft with your class, they have issues with you, they have complained to me and sent me a recording. He said that he didn't watch the recording, but I should be careful.

Yeah, two issues here:

You can't force student engagement. Chastising them will only make matters worse. You could try making participation part of their grade; however, I would first make sure your lectures are good, otherwise students will be rightfully angry that you are forcing them to participate in incomprehensible lectures. You may be better off just working with the students who do engage and allowing the others to sit in silence (which is what the chairman suggested).
Threatening to go to the chairman clearly has no effect -- the students don't seem to care and the chairman does not seem to be on your side.

I asked one student (the one who instigated the discussion about the rules) whether they still have an issue with me, and she said no. I said asked why she complained about me when issues were resolved among us. She denied making the complaint. But clearly someone has a grudge against me.

Major mistake -- this will give the impression that you are angry with the students for going to the chairman. Further, due to the power imbalance, it is inappropriate to single out a student in the way that you did. While it would be nice if students resolved their complaints with you rather than going to the chairman, students do have the right to complain about you, and the optics of chastising students for doing so are horrible.

I am really hurt by these allegations. The situation is getting worse day by day.
Did I do something wrong? What should I do differently? Should I be worried about losing my job?

A good rule of thumb is that it's normal for a few students to be unhappy with you (maybe even more than a few, under certain circumstances), but a serious problem if the majority of the students are unhappy with you. Since the class seems to be pretty unanimously against you, I think you need to make some changes.
My recommendations:

Solve your technical problems with the online system.
Get a colleague to give you some honest feedback about the quality of your lectures. If they are bad, take drastic action to improve them (note, this could take years).
Stop trying to control the students' behavior. Focus your energies on giving good lectures and assessing their learning fairly.

First be kind to yourself:

You started only 6 months ago, it's normal to have difficulties at the beginning, especially if the students are not motivated.
The Covid19 lockdown measures made it harder for everybody. Even experienced teachers struggled to adapt, so as an inexperienced teacher it was especially difficult.

It seems to me that you didn't have any support from your institution and/or colleagues. In normal times teachers can discuss together informally and occasionally share tips, but you didn't have this opportunity.
It is a common issue for young teachers to try "too hard" to establish their authority, and as a result to end up in a confrontational relation with the students. There are other, better ways.
As usual, communication is key: in order to progress, you need to talk to the chair and to any other colleague who can help you. Don't be afraid to talk about your difficulties and to ask for advice, there's no shame in trying to improve.

I talked to my chair, and asked her to investigate students whats the problem. He said" If 4 students are responding teach them, leave others they will never respond"

Teaching is not an easy job and you are on a learning curve. This has been made more difficult due to present circumstances arising due to the pandemic.
I wonder how students can expel others when you are the admin. What kind of software are you using? I believe there must be a way for you to avoid that.
A suggestion: Is it possible to divide the class into two and take two separate sessions. This way you will have more control and students will get divided.
Talk to fellow teachers and create a class leader among students for you to open a channel with students. Communication is the key as mentioned above. Tell the class leader to communicate to you any problems the students are having so that you can address it. You can also communicate your issues to him to be passed on to students.
Make class more engaging. Maybe start with a youtube video and use more engaging content.
Most importantly, do not lose your nerve under any circumstance and everything will be fine.


text:
Does *co-authorship as professional courtesy* extend to bare bones proofreading?
Clarification: The proposed duplicate is about a different situation from what I'm describing.  In that situation, someone contributed by assisting tangibly with the write-up, after not having contributed to the research.  In this case, someone is claiming co-authorship, carte blanche, even for papers where he has had no tangible contribution beyond simple proofreading that could be done by someone outside our field.
Unlike the other question, here, the person claiming co-authorship is not offering to work in exchange for getting credit as a co-author.
Originally, he stated he expected to be listed as a co-author regardless of whether he contributes in any way.  Subsequently, he back-pedaled slightly, feeling that perhaps his demands had been too extreme, so he provided the rationalization that he would be proofreading the manuscript.  These services are neither required nor desired by the younger authors. He has been installed as an intermediate, and is termed our "immediate superior."  As such, he has the right to view the paper and, whether we want it or not, he can claim he proofread it and thus deserves authorship. He doesn't want to deny his boss of a co-authorship opportunity, and so he is actually demanding two tag-along co-authorships -- one for himself and one for his boss. So the question is: how many levels up the chain of command is one expected to offer free co-authorship out of professional courtesy? I am used to giving one, listed in last position, to the person who is recognized as having created the opportunity for the other author(s), and the opportunity creation is considered the contribution resulting in being included as a co-author.
My previous practice was that anyone farther removed from that should not be entitled to a co-authorship, which I saw as reserved for actual contributions.
This question is a reality check.  I'm not asking what to do about the situation, I'm just asking whether the extension to an additional level of co-authorship as professional courtesy is standard, acceptable practice.
--------- Original question below ---------
We are a very small group that received a research grant approximately three years ago.  For roughly the first year and a half no relevant paper was generated.  I joined about a year ago and published the first paper aligned with our grant and I have a few more manuscripts in review so I've been somewhat productive.  The other two postdocs (one hired a year before me and the other a couple of months after me) haven't published any relevant work and don't have anything relevant in the immediate timeline and so there is concern that our grant may be in danger of being terminated.
To address this concern, the group director hired someone from a lab who agreed to visit on a part-time basis to lead the research effort since we are actually part of a teaching institution with little mandate or infrastructure for research.  Because I actually have a steady stream of submissions in the pipeline and am actually generating output -- and possibly because he is seeking to build his resume -- he wanted to be included in my submissions even if he didn't contribute in any way.  His argument was that:

As a rule...you should add XXX (as the director of YYY) and myself (as Scientific Advisor and your supervisor) as co-authors on all your papers. The feedback and review on the paper (as proofreader or otherwise) and the comments provided constitute enough of a scientific contribution to warrant authorship, not to mention quality control, accurate acknowledgment of the work & grants, proper framing of the story, and relevant missing citations.

I tend to be fairly nice about including folks in my manuscripts: I've included folks either because (1) they've earned it (by making some substantive contribution) or (2) I felt generous and wanted to give them some exposure.  What I feel a bit queasy about is when someone demands authorship for what amounts to non-scientific help, such as proofreading, quality control, etc.  Sure, those things can be substantial but they can also be negligible.  My experience has been that those sort of help would happen in an exchange sort of way ("I'll proof your paper if you'll proof mine.").  I'm good with adding on the funding author as last author -- as is the convention in my discipline -- but, adding an author who doesn't contribute any substance yet feels entitled, is a bit difficult...not to mention possibly unethical.
Any thoughts on this?

It would be helpful if you edit this to provide a more specific question. Just asking whether proofreading is enough for authorship seems to be answered already. Perhaps you can ask a specific question about potential courses of action.

I understand what's bothering you, what's making you feel uncomfortable, but I don't know what you're asking.  Perhaps: "Is it okay to assert oneself and say no to co-authorship in the following situation" -- note, "any thoughts on this" isn't on topic here because it's so vague.  But I think your question can be made to be on topic.

Oops, I just read the question cactus_pardner cited.  Great find.  Postdoc, if that answers your question, I'd encourage you to delete this; if that doesn't answer your question, I hope you'll clarify how your question is different.

Discuss with your team leader, maybe a mediator (if your university/institute has something like that). If you can't find a solution together with them, your options boil down to grind your teeth while putting him as author, or not publish the paper at all (at least not in this form and not while part of this research group). The fact that you are the only one doing any publishing and that they need you to publish for funding might be a strong argument for your position, but full out going to war with your boss might not make the for the best work environment...

@aparente001 - the link found by cactus_pardner does not answer my question. Please read my added comment: this is not about a quid pro quo--which is what the cited link is--but about an unethical demand disguised as one. Apparently, the disguise works quite well. I would ask that you unmarked this as a duplicate.

Are you asking whether to object, or how?  Or do you just want validation that this isn't the way things are supposed to work, so that you can grin and bear it?

@aparente001 - I am looking for validation: Is this acceptable? Is considered standard practice?  As for whether or how to object, I expect that those would be situation dependent and would require a lot more context.

Okay, Postdoc, thanks for explaining.  I compare the two questions and gave it some thought.  You've convinced me they're different.  I've tried to make the difference super-clear since re-opening questions is sometimes a bit of an uphill climb.  Please check my edits and make sure I haven't inadvertently distorted anything -- at the end of the day, the question still has to be about you and your situation. I will wait to vote to reopen until I've heard back from you about my edits.

Any “extending coauthorship as a professional courtesy” is unethical, at least according to the Vancouver Protocol.

@JeffE - Thanks for bringing that up.  Silly Postdoc, here's an answer that, if it were posted here, I would upvote: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/29202/32436

There is no "coauthorship as professional courtesy" (see duplicate question), and therefore neither for proofreading.

Thanks for the edits, @aparente001 - they reflect my situation more closely than my original post.  The posted answer you referenced from JeffE is closer but still somewhat different: the potential co-authors were invited initially but then subsequently faced removal.  In my situation, they were not invited but demanded inclusion and, due to the power imbalance, difficult to exclude.  If you would upvote to reopen, I'd appreciate it.

@SillyPostdoc - Glad my edits were along the right lines.  // You say that the difference with the duplicate I linked to yesterday is that your two co-authors were imposed on you without them ever having been invited.  How does that change the answer?
The comments here say a categorical no to co-authorship as professional courtesy.  What does that leave unanswered or blurry for your situation?  Help me understand.

This seems like a clear cut transaction. They are offering their proofreading and editing services in exchange for co-authorship.
You are free to decline and you are free to accept. What you shouldn’t do is leave the person in an ambiguous state. If you wish to decline, then tell them explicitly no and don’t use their services.
If you aren’t able to make or convey this decision, then ask your supervisor to do so for you.

I might've explained poorly because it's actually anything but...I've added a comment at the top to explain.

This might be field specific. In my field, journals often require explicitly that all listed authors made significant scientific contributions. So nobody has the right to simply offer co-authorship to others.

@MichaelGreinecker But does anyone ever check that?

@DirkLiebhold No, but there can be some reputational damage if this get's known.


text:
Should I include volunteer work in my SOP and/or CV?
I have been involved in two volunteering groups for the past two years and I'm not sure If I should ever mention it in the SOP/CV.
Should I mention it in one or both my SOP and CV? Also, how detailed should I write on the type of activity/nature of the work/vision/reasoning/accomplishments, etc.
Note: I'm applying for Electrical and Computer Engineering for a master's degree.
The volunteering work is totally unrelated to the degree. The activities are focused on aiding homeless and abused animals

I feel that it would be worth adding a couple lines in your CV, just to account for what you were doing during that time.  In your SOP, it is definitely worth mentioning especially if you can somehow connect it to why you now want to pursue EE/CE.

Personally, I look favorably on long-term volunteering when deciding whether I'm willing to supervise a student for research. It shows some willingness to commit to and stick to something that may not have immediate tangible benefit, an important quality in research. But I've never been on an admissions committee so can't comment on how it would play over there.

I would recommend against mentioning unrelated volunteer work in one's statement of purpose---after all, you have said that it is unrelated to the career that you are intending to pursue.  If it were directly linked, then of course it would be useful to mention it.
Likewise, there is no space for this type of work in any of the main sections of an academic CV: this isn't like applying to college, where you are encouraged to list a bunch of extracurricular activities to show your breadth and interesting personality.  Graduate admissions is instead more typically about showing that you have the mix of skills, drive, and focus necessary to succeed in you intended program.
It is often the case, however, that people will have some sort of "other significant experiences" section at the very end of their CV in which they put miscellaneous things that they think are important.  If you feel that your volunteer work is an important ingredient in understanding you as a potential professional, then this is the appropriate place to include a brief note.  It may help you if it catches the eye of somebody who finds it significant, and it is unlikely to hurt you.

Should I mention it in one or both my SOP and CV?

Yes, in the CV (shows you're well rounded and well enough organized to keep up with a commitment outside of school), but not in the SOP (because it's unrelated) -- unless this particular experience was fundamental in motivating you to want to go to grad school.

Also, how detailed should I write on the type of activity/nature of the work/vision/reasoning/accomplishments, etc.

The whole thing should fit on two (maximum three) lines.
If you have ever done any other volunteer work, you can make a whole section for Volunteer Work.
Alternatively you could include it under Work Experience, and then in the description make it clear that it was a volunteer position.

I see nothing wrong in mentioning that on your resume even if it is unrelated. If you have enough place on your 1-2 page resume, you can put it.
In my eyes, It shows that you are a passionate, social and informed person and not just a (sitting in front of the computer) geek.

A CV for graduate admissions is not the same thing as a 1-2 page resume, FYI.

@ff524 - can you be more specific about the differences?


text:
Found better technique just before publishing old, but still good technique – can the old one still be published?
In our lab, we hypothesized that a technique T1 should be able to solve some problem with high performance. As per our hypothesis, we got an excellent result. We started writing a short paper to be submitted to a conference for the last date is due in four days. The paper is complete except for some proof-reading. We have not yet submitted the results.
Yesterday, just for fun, I was applying a different technique T2 to the same problem. Surprisingly it achieved an even better performance than T1.
We were wondering, is it okay to write a “failure” paper stating the hypothesis failed because of so and so [which is tough to analyze given the time constraint on deadline.]? Some of my colleague suggested to not disclose the performance of T2 until T1 is published, so that later I could do a comparative study between T1 and T2. Will it be okay?
Note: T1 and T2 are very different and it does not make any sense to write on both techniques in the same paper. Plus, rewriting the paper now is also difficult.
Update After going through answers, comments and suggestions, we are submitting T1 paper. Thank you very much all the learned academicians here on academia.SE.

I am not sure why you say that T1 'failed'. You got excellent results, you just got even better results using T2.

@xLeitix It is a pessimistic side of me. Because, it failed as compared to T1.

T1 happened to be on a path of work which lead you to discover T2. Sometimes the path or method of work is more interesting than the results. Many types of work in this world are incremental and research is too. Publish the first one first, start working on the other one as fast as first is done. Or at least write down the ideas clearly enough so you can easily pick it up later.

You can get at least three papers out of this: (1) T1, (2) T2, (3) a comparative study. Most people would count that as success, not failure! Of course, your comparative study might show that T1 and T2 are "best" for different sub-types of problems - but you haven't done that research yet!

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30995/what-to-do-when-you-spend-several-months-working-on-an-idea-that-fails-in-a-mast/31082#31082

@EthanBolker I have gone through this sir. It is different yet somewhat related.

Coder - When someone posts a link saying "here's a related link," that's not the same as saying, "voting to close as duplicate of the following link."  Generally a related link is posted to assist the OP in exploring his issue further.

In addition to the arguments made in the two good answers here, I'll add that the good results you have so far with T2 probably still need to be corroborated with more thorough testing.

Although "sir" might seem like a natural way to refer to someone respectfully, remember that not everyone on the internet is a man.

@StellaBiderman - Well put.

Publish T1. Later, when you have time to write a whole new paper, publish T2. Doing a comparative study between the two sounds like an excellent follow-up decision as well. I'm not sure why you classify T1 as a failure... it sounds like both work and one works better.
That said, yes, it is okay to publish "failure papers." Depending on the field it might be harder to get it approved by a journal because it's less sexy to find a negative result than to find a result. This causes a measurable bias in some fields and depending on the field can be a major problem, because failed research is just as important as successful research epistemically speaking.

The paper is in Computer Science. Thank you for your answer. But, somehow, we are reluctant to go with just T1. We feel like we are hiding something to get published. Is it a natural thought?

@Coder You are not hiding anything; you found a technique that works and obviously felt was worth publishing. Preparing a second paper with the new technique, demonstrating its superiority and making comparisons would then be a separate contribution to your field. I think there would be more to learn from that, than simply publishing the second technique.

@Coder First of all, I don't think it's misleading at all to publish the result even if you know another one is coming down the line. You found that result first. Maybe if you found T2 first, then tried to make it worse so you could write two papers that would be sketchy, but what you're doing is totally above board. Second of all, if you don't publish T1, if I come across the same problem in two years I might try T1. By putting that method out there, I would not only know that someone else has tried it and what happened, but I'm also more likely to find T2.

I am assuming you frame the second paper as describing a rejected (failed) hypothesis, because your theoretically informed expectation (=hypothesis) was that T2 shouldn't perform as well as it did.
Negative findings (rejected  hypothesis) can be as interesting and publication-worthy as positive findings (confirmed hypothesis). What matters is how strong the underlying theory/model is and whether your research is designed in a way that a negative finding is a good test for a theory/model and not just straw moving in the wind. If the rejected hypothesis is strong and the research casts doubt on a model/theory that is generally believed to be true, than this negative finding is much more important than the umpteenth corroboration.
Even better if your research design aids in explaining where exactly the model/theory fails. And yet more publication-worthy if T2 not only challenges a mainstream theory/model but also performs better than a more standard technique.
Pragmatically I agree with the strategy to publish T1 first, and then T2 after spending some time exploring why T2 performs as it does. To increase chances of acceptance, stress how the 'negative' finding challenges conventional wisdom and emphasize the unexpected and strong performance of T2.


text:
University website says "when such conduct [unauthorized collaboration] is common, it becomes acceptable" - does this mean plagiarism is allowed?
I have been accused of plagiarism from my prof, since I have an answer from a Facebook page based on our course, and a lot of students got their answers from there. The Facebook page has previous labs and assignments from graduate students or senior students who have already done the course, thus there were around 14 students with the same mistake including me. But I went through my university web site and it states for the TEACHING ASSISTANT (TA) that:

Academic Dishonesty in Laboratory Environments
Academic dishonesty is a serious problem in undergraduate labs. This
  is partly because the culture of lab courses sometimes fosters
  plagiarism. Lab exercises may remain unchanged for years, making it
  relatively easy to obtain lab reports from previous students. Since
  students generally work in pairs, the distinction between acceptable
  and unacceptable collaboration can become blurred. And sometimes lab
  work is simply not taken as seriously as other scholarly work. The
  main forms of academic dishonesty in laboratory classes are:
Plagiarism in laboratory assignments and reports
Among some students there is an academic culture that accepts a
  certain degree of academic dishonesty in labs. Students buy and sell
  lab reports from the previous year and some try to "help" junior students
  by "handing down" lab material. When such conduct is common, it
  becomes acceptable, and many students may not realize the element of
  dishonesty involved. In addition, in most cases the entire class is
  writing up the same report, so there is bound to be an enormous
  exchange of information.

I think the paragraph above says that at this point this academic dishonesty becomes acceptable. Does that sort my issue at any point?

It means that students believe this is acceptable, not that the university policy considers it acceptable. The page you took this from is giving advice to TAs on how to disabuse students of this notion.

disabuse to students? would this keep on a safer side if there are also 12 to 15 students with the same mistake since they all got the answer from uploaded labs on facebook page and coursehero.

You are misreading that passage.
"It becomes acceptable" is intended to mean "acceptable to the students".  To rephrase:

When such conduct is common, students come to believe that it is acceptable.

But such students would be mistaken in that belief, from the institution's point of view.  I think the clear meaning of the passage is that such conduct is not acceptable to the institution and is considered plagiarism and academic dishonesty.

The text that you quote is written a bit confusingly: I think that it is trying to say that even if students view a behavior as acceptable "because everyone is doing it", that behavior is still not acceptable.
In the end, dishonesty is dishonesty.  If you claim to have done a piece of work, but you did not do that work, then you are being dishonest.  When that work is a creative effort, we call it plagiarism.
Even if somehow your institution had a policy that allowed such dishonesty, it would still be dishonest.  When you progress further in academia or industry, if you continue to engage in such behavior, it can end your career in an instant when it is discovered.

yes i fully understand, and i was honest to my professor that i got it from the stundents facebook page and he himself said that i was being honest and true but i still have to meet the dean regarding this, i really dont know how to handle this at this moment since this is my last semester

i also asked a lawyer and he said that the school accepts this kind of plaigarism at some extend since this kind of act is un stoppable and students will always buy and sell labs and thus it can never be stopped

@wessamshaukat I think you're going to need to meet with the dean and keep being honest.  If you try to lawyer your way out, it is likely that things will go worse for you.

yes sir, i will have to do that , but apparently there are 14 other students who have the same mistake since they got it from the facebook page, i wont be including any lawyer , i just went to get an advice over that paragraph as stated above. i dont know what kind of words or statement i should use to mellow his thoughts on imposing a penalty over a 4th year student.

@wessamshaukat  .."what kind of words or statement i should use to mellow...". Simple. "I really screwed up. I should not have done such a stupid and dishonest thing. I am really sorry. Is there any way I can make up for my stupid mistake? "


text:
How can a decent student find a doctoral advisor from another faculty?
I am a last year student at the Moscow State University (I study maths). At our university there are two somewhat similar mathematical faculties: Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics (this is where I study at the moment) and the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics - CMC for short.
After almost five years of study, when the time came to think about what will my PhD research topic be and where to apply for PhD study, I started to investigate possible options and eventually found that all the chairs that are close to my interest are of the CMC faculty. So I started contacting professors from CMC, attending their courses, detailing my interests and asking them whether they are interested in teaching me etc.
To my disappointment, all three persons whom I've contacted so far said that my interests are close to theirs, that they may have been interesting in working with me but, unfortunately, they have many students of their own, they have many applications and it would be difficult for me to find a PhD student position at their chair.
I also want to mention that I consider myself a decent student - I have a top mark in absolutely every course I've attended during my 5 - year study. Still, no one seems to want to even bother taking a "foreign" student (or even recommending me to some fellow scientists who may be less busy with students). I don't know what is the reason for this and how to overcome this, and after several refuses I feel demoralised and close to abandoning the very idea of a PhD study. Maybe you can give me some advice on what could help?
Thank you very much in advance.

Have you considered studying at another university, either in Russia or abroad? If you must stay in Moscow for personal reasons, then you are going to have much more limited options.

@Moriarty Well, in theory there's nothing holding me from moving, but if no one wants to engage with a student from a neighbouring faculty, contacting an even more distant person feels even more unlikely...

Finding an advisor from another faculty? That's an indecency! Jokes aside, do research, write papers, prove your skills. You may do many other different things, but none will be as useful as this one IMHO.

@Trylks You're 100% right - the thing that matters is to prove myself. The hard thing is to actually do something worthy without having a person to provide some guidance or to even direct me on what's currently going on in the given area of maths and what problem it may be reasonable to focus on.

@Boris The norm in applying for PhD programs in most countries is to move from your masters/undergraduate institution. Your odds may actually improve, and you would have so many more opportunities to play those odds.

@Moriarty Please excuse me for reanimating a relatively old topic, but I just wanted to say thank you to you, people, who gave advice - after some meetings, research and letters to different labs I was eventually awarded a full scholarship at the University of Sheffield! Seems odd to me that nobody was really interested in me here, but I guess that's just the way my country works...

Congratulations! I wish you an enjoyable and successful time abroad.

@Boris, Great, congrats! Would you mind answering your own question and marking that as answered? Otherwise the question keeps hanging in the unanswered category ;)

@Aymor I wish I could, but it seems that I don't have enough reputation for that. However, I may be missing something obvious so correct me if I'm wrong.

Boris, maybe you didn't when you made that comment, but you should  be able to now--the minimum rep needed is 15: http://academia.stackexchange.com/help/self-answer

Just in order to formally mark this question as resolved:
Thanks a lot to the people that showed concern in the comments! The things have worked out pretty good for me. The thing that I've personally learned from this struggle is that one should explore all the possible options, knock on every possible door and keep trying - if you are really interested in your subject, there will always be somebody who will be ready to share your interest.


text:
How to apply for a post-doc in IHES?
I am a graduating PhD in USA. I am hoping to apply for a post-doc position in IHES, France. However I cannot find an application form any where. What should I do? (I cannot find it on mathjobs website).

https://www.ihes.fr/en/applications/post-docs/ (It looks like they aren't accepting any applications at the moment)

@NajibIdrissi: I know Christopher Soule. But he is a very old (retired) professor. I do not know if he still knew how the system works, or if he is playing golf everyday with his grandchildren. Also, obviously I cannot send an application packet to his email. I am not supposed to know my reference letters. There should be some way to apply officially.


text:
What do you think about citations such as "for more details see e.g. (Authors, et al)
I am currently writing my masters thesis. I'm fully aware of the academic guidelines when it comes to citations.
Yet, I have a more nuanced question that maybe more stylistic in nature: when explaining a general concept, rather than specific research findings, I often use academic books as my source. Based on my understanding, I then introduce the concept in my thesis. When doing this, what do you think about citations such as "for more details see (Author, 1998)" at the end of the concept introduction part? Would you cite this in the text or rather with a footnote? Would you skip the "for more details" completely?
I do realize that a lot of researchers (which I am not, so I might not have this privilege as a masters student) tend to not cite "broader" concepts at all. That is, they introduce it in their own words without citing any sources.
Would you say I could to this as well? Even though I fostered my understanding of a concept from a book, I am able to comprehensively introduce it without looking at the source in my own words.
I know this question might come off as being obsessed with insignificant details, yet I am still wondering what the more senior guys on here think.

I'd agree with the word "insignificant" as in my view it doesn't make a relevant difference. Obviously "introduce in your own words" depends on your ability to choose the words well. Also, always think about what's best for the reader, i.e., ask yourself how you'd like to read it (though of course the readership may be heterogeneous).

Thank you for the answers. Def. helps me out!

qv usually means see another page in the same book

Does this mean I shouldn't use qv in my usecase?

You should look it up in a dictionary and decide for yourself

If the concept is very well known in your field, then it is not essential to cite anything. But in your case, where you are a master's student and learned about it from a book, I think you should cite the book(s).
For your second bullet point, I would cite it in the text, not a footnote, but it probably depends on whether footnotes are commonly used in your field. I would drop "for more details," but it is up to you really.

In a master's thesis there is of course more flexibility around citation styles than for peer-reviewed articles, wherein these are currently quite strict, conservative, brief, specific, and univocal. I would say that the usual practice when writing peer-reviewed papers is to stick with a single in-text citation practice, such as "this is the concept or study - this is the paper containing it". That is not the same as to say that this is the best practice nor the optimal scenario.
In my humble opinion, this -usual- method is quite unfortunate and limiting, because this style is picked out of convenience for the author, and not for the reader. I suppose that in the fields of Humanities it is more common than in Scientific-Technological fields to find different citation styles with embedded instructions for the potential audience, because their narrative styles tend to be more sophisticated and empathic (less "machine-like" so to speak) due to the authors' training in narrative styles, which is not as common in other fields.
Supposedly, when an author provides a reference, it is because they feel that the reader may want to expand information on that particular topic. However, in academic circles nowadays, citations are used for various other purposes, such as demonstrating (or sometimes just showing off) the author's research capabilities, proving that the background literature has been checked, abbreviating otherwise lengthy explanations, computing research interest indexes, etc. All this can be seen as a perversion of the original purpose of a citation, which is indeed a deference of the author towards the reader put in place so to facilitate understanding.
Ideally, whenever a citation is added, the writer could provide a -necessarily brief- guide on its nature, and other metadata, such as the specific section being referred to, or the preferred edition, or the suggested way of browsing the referred material. Thus, is should be common practice (although sadly it is not) to provide various types or references, such as not only peer-reviewed papers, but also books, book chapters, technical manuals, press clippings, magazine articles, lists of authors, websites of various kinds, or multimedia content, preferably with accompanying footnotes. However, in some circles, using references that are not strictly peer-reviewed articles can be perceived as unprofessional, specially in those contexts that monetize scientific research the most, or in those that take great pride in their attention to rigor. There are, nonetheless plenty of examples of horrible papers written in a very rigorous style (e.g., these)
Of course, the most time-saving (some would say "lazy") way to add a reference is to just drop a number in between brackets and then leave the rest of it to the audience. In my view, it should be common practice to provide two or more references per concept, instead of just one per concept, or to provide, for further study, a list of authors who delved deeply into the topic (for instance in the fields of Economics or Philosophy), instead of a narrow selection of their articles.
Furthermore, you must bear in mind that not all readers will read an article in its entirety, and even those who do will usually not check all of the references in detail; this is particularly true for scientific reviewers due to a scarcity of time and/or lack of incentives, although of course some reviewers will not need to run a deep check if the topic is narrow and they are sufficiently well-versed in the field. Sometimes they will not even feel the real need to read an article from a particular author because they have already met the author in person at several conferences, and they can read between the lines through your bibliography.
The truth of the matter is that, when later in your career you are doing cutting-edge science which goes beyond the state-of-the-art (something that everyone claims to be doing), most likely no reviewer will be sufficiently well-versed into what you are writing, so in the long term, it pays off to respect your audience as much as possible and to show off as little as possible.
Unluckily, the pressure that the pay-per-publish paradigm, the rise of predatory journals, and the scarcity of resources for research exert on both authors and reviewers prevents this from happening to a large extent. Some prominent sources are already talking about "the crisis of peer-review" (see this for instance). As a consequence, Research Assessment is a matter that is currently under scrutiny in order to prevent the current drift towards increasingly closed science (as opposed to open science) and hopefully steer it towards more fruitful lands. You will find some more information on these matters in the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment at CoARA (recently signed by the European Commission) or in the San Francisco DORA (also endorsed by the EC).
Notwithstanding all of the above, when citing for a master's thesis you naturally want to be perceived as a professional writer so to earn a good grade and minimize your risks, so it is more likely that you will act more conservatively and less innovatively by strictly following common practice, although that is ultimately a matter for you to decide. Anyway, I would suggest to only provide lists of authors if you know their works well, and not because you just saw them linked in some Wikipedia article, since doing this will stand out to the eyes of the trained researcher. It is also advisable to always study beforehand the preferred citation styles by your educational institution, your teachers, your advisor/s, and your potential audience, and to always stick with them (if, of course, they match your own values).