text:
Conference Title - shall abbreviation and year be listed uniformly?
I'm just had a look at my citations and they are in an aweful state. Most conference papers that I imported into my citation manager have different styles, e.g.:
IEEEE Conference on Emerging Txxx Bxxx Qxxxxxxx, 2009 (ETBQ 2009)
IEEEE Conference on Old Wxxx Yxxx Sxxxxxxx (OWYS), 2009
IEEEE Conference on Txxx Txxx Xxxxxxxx, 2009, (TTX 2009)
IEEEE Conference on Gold. 2009 (Chicago)

Am I allowed to bring all conferences into the same format?
What format would you recommend? Should I drop abbreviation, year, or place of the conference as it is repeated? I think the year might have to stay because e.g. a coference might be held in Dec. 2009 and the papers are only published in Feb. 2010, hence the 2009 date would be lost. I also like the abbreviation as it helps my to identify the coferences in one glimps.
Second question: Should I add "Proceeding of the" in front of every conference?

1: Drop an E in IEEEE. 2: Use whatever citation style is required for the paper you are writing. 3: Really. 4: If no style is imposed, put them all into the format you like best.

With everything said in the answers, of course only add "Proceeding of the" (or any of its abbreviations) if the proceedings are actually called like that. The fact that (w.l.o.g.) a book constitutes the proceedings of a conference does not automatically mean that the book title is actually "Proceedings of the ...". Likewise, do not make up any conference abbreviations - for example, by only using the first letter of each word from the full title - unless you can find evidence that it actually is the official conference abbreviation.

There is an important and unfortunate caveat for managing citations that I bring up because this refers to IEEE.  In IEEE, ACM, and many other computer science and electrical engineering venues, it is often the case that there are strict page limits and the citations are counted toward that limit.  This happens mostly with conferences, but sometimes even with journals.
Because of this, I often find it necessary to maintain both a "master" reference database and an ad hoc "abbreviated" copy of the database used for a particular paper.  In the master database, I keep the full everything in all its bibliographic detail to the best of my ability.  In the abbreviated copy, conference and journal names get shortened as necessary to purge the bibliography of widow and orphans
and extract those last few lines necessary to get the text to fit.  It's a nasty, undignified practice, and I consider it the lesser of two evils if it can preserve technical content without decreasing the ability of a reader to locate citations.
The ability to find the citation, though, is sacrosanct.  Authors, title, year (and volume and issue if available), must never be trifled with.  As such, the shortening targets that tend I use, in order, are:

"Proceedings of the..." can always go, as can the location of a conference.
"International Conference on" goes to "Int'l Conf. on" and then vanishes
Most EE/CS conference have acronyms: an exceedingly well-known conference can be entirely replaced by its acronym.

Thus, for example, "Proceedings of the 23rd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Beijing, China" can ablate all the way down to "IJCAI", saving 1-2 lines in typical IEEE format bibliography.  It's an ugly business, and maybe I shouldn't admit to it out loud on the internet, but it's a useful practice that I still find ethical as long as the spirit of readily locatable citation is preserved.

If you're using BibTeX, there's no need to keep separate full databases. You can give a short name to the journal (journal = JournalXY, for instance). Then, you can create two files. In one set of files, you can define string expansions (@string{JournalXY = "Journal of X Y") for long names and another with (@string{JournalXY = "J. X. Y.") for the shortened names.

Ooh... that's an elegant use of macros that I hadn't thought of.  Thank you - I think I may start doing that!

You're welcome. One more thing—don't forget to cite both files in your \bibliography command!

If you are publishing specifically with the IEEE then I would recommend looking at their Citation Reference Guide which also explains the way common words from conferences are abbreviated and what you should include.
For example, the word "Proceedings" is abbreviated to Proc., Conference to Conf. etc and a paper from a conference would look like this:
[1] J. K. Author, “Title of paper,” in Unabbreviated Name of Conf. , City of Conf., Abbrev. State (if given), year, pp. xxx-xxx.

As conferences are very important for computer science, here is this list on wikipedia.
And at the end it also lists conference acronyms from LNCS series published by Springer (LNCS publishes roughly half of CS conferences).
This link lists correct names for IEEE conferences, and this link lists those for ACM conferences.
All-together, those would cover 85% of conferences in Computer Science:)
Personally, I would advise to not go for journal-like shortening of conf names, which is IMHO last century, now we don't have a problem of storing longer strings in the database:)

It is clear that the papers from the same publication should follow the same format. The proceedings or journal should provide a suggested reference format for the papers. This should point you to what is a correct way to reference them and format the entry in your database.
When you enter papers into a data base you should try to follow the suggested reference in terms of what information is suggested to be included. I use bibTeX and enter the full name of the publication. I can also provide the formal abbreviation of the journal since the format for references in journals vary, some use full names some use abbreviations. There is a data base for journal abbreviations established by ISI that should give you the correct abbreviated format for all. I assume many if not all reference managers have ways of handling full and abbreviated names, probably using full names as a standard. With proceedings that are not included in the list you ave to follow the suggestions from the proceedings and also use the correct abbreviations for specific words as suggested in the ISI data base.
Many authors do not know about the correct abbreviations, or do not bother to follow them, which causes confusion in databases. I have papers that occur under up to 4 different posts because of inappropriate journal names, wrong volume or page numbers etc.

There is a data base for journal abbreviations established by ISI that should give you the correct abbreviated format for all. — Not even close. Abbreviations of venues in my research area are way off, and most conference proceedings are not listed at all.

"Am I allowed to bring all conferences into the same format?": Yes, please do it, and please make sure that you always give the abbreviation, because this is the only way to easily recognise the conferences.


text:
Invitation to review for an unknown journal
I recently received the following invitation to act as a reviewer for an unknown journal. Is it ok to just ignore it?

Subject:   Invitation to Review Manuscript for  Asian Journal of
  Current Research
Dear Colleague,

I am approaching you with the peer-review request of the below mentioned manuscript, submitted in  Asian Journal of Current Research
  Title:  X   I would be grateful if you would kindly find some time to
  review the above mentioned manuscript and send your valuable comments
  within 10 calendar days (13 Mar’2017).   Abstract of the manuscript is
  available in this link (http://[]). If you require the file as E-mail
  attachment kindly let us know.   If you accept our invitation, we’ll
  send you the full paper.  Authors’ affiliation will be supplied, if
  requested by the reviewer.
After completion of timely quality peer review, we’ll be pleased to provide you Official   Certificate of peer reviewing from the journal
  (signed PDF copy). You are requested to submit your full affiliation
  in review comments forms to facilitate the preparation of the
  certificate.
Please inform as early as possible if you agree to accept our invitation to review. Would you not be able to find time to act as a
  reviewer this time, please let me know through an email. We hope as
  part of academic community you’ll appreciate our efforts to complete
  quality peer review within stipulated time period. Comments received
  after stipulated time (as mentioned above) may not be utilized. Here
  we politely want to mention that, if we do not receive any
  communication within next 7 calendar days, we’ll be approaching to
  alternative reviewers to complete this peer review.
Useful Links: Journal scope link:    Editorial Policy link:   Thanking you

Mr. Sadek Mallick www.ikpress.org EUROPE: International Knowledge
  Press, S107, 3 Hardman Square, Spinningfields, Manchester, M3 3EB, UK,
  Fax: +44 (0)161 667 4459, Email: contact@ikpress.org ASIA PACIFIC:
  International Knowledge Press, N. S. Road, Tarakeswar, Hooghly,
  PIN-712410, West Bengal, India, Email: contact@ikpress.org (Editorial
  Office)

Predatory journal, politely known here as [tag:disreputable-publishers]. Near-duplicates 1) Why do predatory journals invite people to editorial boards? 2) Should I review papers for a nameless conference?

The title of the journal is very suspicious. You cannot even tell whether the journal is within your area of expertise.
This is probably one in the sea of many worthless journals. I am the editor of the SCI indexed journal and have trouble finding reviewers, so they are probably essentially spamming everyone.

I googled for "Asian Journal of Current Research" and got a website.  When I tried to go to this website from the computer in my university office, I was redirected to this webpage, which contains the following message:

Website Blocked
  The website you tried to reach has been blocked by IT security because this website is known to distribute malicious software.

So that's not a good sign.  Combined with the name of the journal (which makes it hard to believe it's a reputable journal of X for any reasonable value of X), I would myself certainly not agree to referee papers for it.
Should you respond at all?  I don't see the harm in writing a brief reply explaining that you are not interested in refereeing papers for this journal: e.g. it won't take any more time to do that than it did to post the question here.  Based on how they respond to this email you could get a better idea of exactly how disreputable/spammy/predatory they are.  Also, having responded once I think you can send future emails to the spam folder with a clearer conscience.

That level of access control from IT makes me a little uncomfortable.

@FedericoPoloni - Expect an automated detector of known types of malware actually on the page (sometime during the last few hours).  This will filter out journals like Nature or stores like Amazon if their pages get infected or hijacked; and it will not filter out a Journal of Asian if it has been virus-free recently.  At least that's the normal intended "level of access control".

@JirkaHanika I get the idea, but still I'd want a "are you sure you want to browse this page?", not a "you can't browse this page. Because it's evil. Because we say so, no proof needed."

@FedericoPoloni - The choice is available.  Whoever prefers to configure their antivirus protection themselves can use their own computer to browse the same web.  But on my employer's computer I just accept my employer's rules.

@JirkaHanika Read the title of that webpage: this filtering is done at the DNS level. They don't care whose computer it is.

Do note that many highly reputable websites have been hacked, often without the site owners even knowing that anything has happened. Hosting malware is less a sign of a disreputable site and more a sign that some webmaster is using an outdated piece of software to run the site.

I recently received the following invitation to act as a reviewer for an unknown journal. Is it ok to just ignore it?

It's always "ok" (i.e., ethical and socially acceptable) not to respond to unsolicited email from anyone you are not officially required to provide service to as part of your job. So the answer is yes. But a less obvious question is: what are some reasons why it would be good to ignore the request, and what are reasons why it would be good to not ignore it. The ones I can think of are:
Reasons why you should ignore the request:

You will avoid wasting your time responding to what is obviously spam.
Conversely, you incur a cost to the spammer of waiting for an answer from you, making their operations less efficient and reducing their incentives to spam. If everyone ignored reviewing requests from such spammers, they might go out of business.
You will get a good feeling (assuming that's the case) that you are helping fight spammers and in a small way retaliating against people who annoyed you.

Reasons why you should answer the request:

You are a person who really hates making people angry or upset (if that's the case) and can't fathom the thought of ignoring an email from someone. To clarify, I don't think that would be a good reason to answer, but it's a reason.
You are worried that by not replying and annoying the senders, you might hurt your career in some way. Given that these are obvious spammers who have no real connection to academia, that is not a real concern, so you can safely ignore it.

" you incur a cost to the spammer of waiting for an answer from you" - since when did spammers bother about concepts like "truth"? They won't tell you if 100 other people were dumb enough to waste their time reviewing the same paper!

It is perfectly reasonable not to respond this request. As the email says, if no response is received within seven days, they will approach other potential reviewers.
The journal itself does not seem to have a specific focus area. They seem to accept manuscripts in sciences, arts and technology!!

In the last few days I have received three invitations to review papers in the physical-computer sciences (3 different journals) (out of my field).
      When I checked a link to "decline" after the third contact I was returned tinstantly to an old version of Yahoo mail (inbox page with the questioned letter), asked to sign up for the new Yahoo Mail (using my android cell phone). I was not certain that pressing the link did not open access to my Yahoo Mail and quickly changed my password and signed out.

Do you imply it was phishing?

Not sure if phishing.How did link on letter affect my Yahoo mail layout? I myself though have had good experience with new unknown journal, now has earned impact factor and I am pleased with two journals I published in though they were on suspect list.  But there is opportunity for phishing whenever using link in email. I think is good to have reviewer experience though at graduate student level maybe best to have cultivated your pursuits, hands on experience?

If I had been using a laptop instead of my cell phone I might never notice someone into my Yahoo mail account.  Normally would not suspect journals seeking reviewers as a mechanism for ID fraud, would be something new, but the possibility exists (recently found a whole issue of a journal I published in copied verbatum under a new title) so I thought to alert others just in case.

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text:
Would it be well-received to ask for the LaTeX source of a textbook?
My screen reader has a hard time with PDF documents. As I delve into more niche textbooks, I increasingly find them only in print/PDF rather than EPUB.
This makes it difficult to learn when the screen reader's OCR is not good. Would it be fruitful to ask people for LaTeX versions of their textbooks or would this be poorly received? I write LaTeX content fairly often, so I think this should be easily comprehensible if I listen to it in bulk.
The issue may also be related to using scihub/libgen, which may have worse prints of the books/papers (although I've seen this in my purchased PDFs as well).

Can't you get a better screen reader?

If you are looking at scientific papers on arxiv.org the standard option is downloading a pdf but you can select getting the raw tex file as well. For general pdf there is also pdf to latex software but I have no experience in how good it is.

I am on the whole enthusiastic for the desire for "source-available" documents. But it seems like you would be happy with an epub. Have you considered asking for that instead?

@preferred_anon Why are you so enthusiastic? It facilitates copy-pasting. What is so good about that?

@yarchik Essentially, for the same reason the OP wants the source. I think people have a right to read and use the document the way they see fit. That includes increasing print size, changing colour and font, converting to other formats, reading aloud, correcting typos, adding marginal notes, copying text for legitimate purposes (i.e. with attribution), learning the typesetting language... The list goes on. Copy-pasting (with attribution, where appropriate) is a good thing.

@preferred_anon Some points are good, any pdf document supports adjustment of the visual presentation, but learning the typesetting from a published book is a bit ridiculous.

@NickS Better Screen Reader for math? OP, which niche of the arcana are you studying?

I published several books written using latex. In all cases, I do not even have a TeX file of a final version, it is with the publisher. And my last TeX file differs substantially from the final version.

@NickS - Not really? I have tried many and all seem to run into problems, either with reading PDFs with multiple lines or textbooks (this post was spurred by me trying to read a PDF where each screen reader spent ~3 minutes just saying "dot dot dot ..." in what seems to be an empty page)

@user121330 - math

PDF is designed initially for print, so it doesn't (by default) contain semantic information like "this is a header": it's just larger text. That kind of stuff can be added to a PDF, but it's often missing. Any complex formatting (pull quotes, sidebar boxes, equations, diagrams) can often be stored in a manner which will very much confuse screen readers and other assistive software.

Isn't it possibly to compile LaTeX to EPUB instead of PDF? Or to some format easily converted to EPUB? If so, you could ask for that instead.

Niche textbooks at the university level may be self-published by the university, and the author and who is helping him may not be aware of the accessibility requirements.

@PabloH Nothing is easily converted to EPUB.  I know because I'm struggling with that very problem. Also note that, since many EPUB readers do not support MathML, equations in EPUB are as likely to be images as in PDF.

Slight frame challenge: Instead of just asking for a LaTeX source, which might indeed come across very strange, tell the author what you told us: Your screen reader is struggling with the PDF, and you're looking for a better way, for example the source. The author might be more likely to give you the source if they understand your reason, or maybe they know how to get an epub or other format from the publisher (or they might even go through the trouble of compiling the source into an epub).

I would say this is a more useful answer to the OP than the one by @DCTLib, but the points about why an author might not even have the source or be allowed to give it away are good ones.
Asking the publisher might be a better way to go.

Would I need to have bought the textbook for this? I generally use scihub/libgen for exploratory reading

It is certainly uncommon to ask for LaTeX sources of textbooks, and while some authors may provide them for you, it is fair to expect that this will rarely work out, for a variety of reasons.

The author of the text book may suspect that you need the LaTeX code for another reason, e.g., for including a part in a thesis document or so.
The copyright of textbooks often/normally lie with the publishers, who may not like it if an author gives out the source for something they legally own.
LaTeX code that you did not write yourself is rarely easy to read. It's often full of macros for injecting key words, equation symbols, and the like.
In the disciplines that don't use equations a lot, it's quite likely that only the publisher has the LaTeX code (or the source file for any other software they may have used instead) for a book, because the author actually wrote it in a different format and then professionals formatted the whole thing.

Because of reasons 1 and 2, I would find such a request very strange as an author, but probably not strange enough to try to remember your name when receiving your e-mail.

For point 4, depending on the publisher the book might be more likely to have been formatted in some other software like InDesign.

Re point 4 - I would say it's more likely that the author used LaTeX and the publisher converted, than the other way round, at least in physics

All points are quite valid, especially point 3. Much better to ask for ePub.

@Anyon Thanks, I've added that possibility to the answer.

(keywords?)

@yarchik: I wouldn’t suggest just asking for an epub, since if one doesn’t already exist, preparing one is a fair bit of work, so most authors are likely to say no.  I’d rather suggest asking for “an epub if you have one, or the source so I can make an epub myself for personal use”.

There is no guarantee that the source is in LaTeX
LaTeX is a pain to write, but we all love its output. There are several tools that generate output that looks like LaTeX's from documents that weren't written in it. For example, I am an enjoyer of Pandoc. I write all of my work in Markdown, but Pandoc makes it look like I wrote LaTeX. Similarly, I know of people who use LyX which is not LaTeX but generates output indistinguishable from it.
I do not know how common such non-LaTeX approaches are, but in such cases, you're doomed.

You don't need to use the largest possible heading font to preface your barely-two-paragraph answer.

@user1271772 Fair point. I've reduced it.

Thanks, I'd still recommend just using bold font in this case (or maybe ### or #### if you really want it to be bigger), but your newer version is already significantly looking significantly better in my opinion.

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text:
Possible to use exchange semester credits for master's degree at exchange university?
I am an undergraduate student from South Africa about to enter my fourth year of study in economics. Key to what you should know is that our (in South Africa) academic year starts at the beginning of the calendar year. So my home institution's first semester is at the same time as European second semesters. As part of my degree I have to complete an exchange semester abroad. This typically happens in the second semester of third year. However, due to COVID, things have been shuffled around and I will now be doing my exchange in the second half of 2021, my final semester of undergrad (second half of fourth year).
My ultimate goal is to get a master's degree from the exchange institution in Europe. My exchange semester will be after I have completed all my home institution credits, and it will be a first semester at the home institution. By virtue of my already completed credits, I am eligible to register for all the required subjects (minus thesis) for the first semester of the master's degree during my exchange. Thus, my plan is to do the first half of the master's degree (1 year programme) on my exchange. Then, I want to use those classes as credits towards a master's degree, and finish the second half in the semester immediately after my graduation from my home university.
In principle, I have the support from the head of department for economics from my home university and that of my degree programme head. I have also finished with undergraduate economics (my major) early, and will be starting with postgraduate economics as an extra in the semester between now and my exchange (only possible due to special permissions).
My contact person at my home institution's international office is not entirely supportive of the idea, and is worried that there may be an issue with using the same credits for two degrees.
My grades are excellent, and my extra-curricular experience is also very good. Based on the requirements, I suspect I would be very eligible for the master's programme at the exchange institution.
How doable is this? And what would be the best course of action?

I am not in SA or Europe, so I won't answer, but I sincerely doubt this is possible. However, the master's degree may later waive classes you took, if appropriate.

@AzorAhai-him- Thanks for your comment. Could you elaborate a bit perhaps on why you think it would not be possible? To clarify, perhaps, the idea is not that I would be registered for two degrees at once, but rather that I be register for the master's degree midway into the academic year (begin 2022) because I'd have already completed all the required classes up to that point.

Probably the agreement between the university only lets the classes taken count toward the host institution. Usually classes used for one degree can't be used for another, but the master's program may waive it's required classes if you've already taken them. You should get in touch with someone at the master's program and ask them if you could skip any required classes under your scheme.

You may not be enrolled as a "matriculating" student at the exchange university. Matriculating means working towards graduation. If you're enrolled as a visiting/exchange student, they likely won't allow those courses for the master's.

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text:
How to tactfully refuse to be listed as a co-author
I was involved with a research project with a group of people. Eventually, a paper was written and was accepted by a journal. I did not agree with the content of the paper and I didn't want to be listed as a co-author, but I did not want to create bad feelings between myself and the rest of the group.
The journal has a policy where every co-author has to turn in a signed agreement that they substantially contributed to the work. I refused to sign that document I thought that by refusing to sign that document, I would be left off the co-authors list.
However, the journal went ahead and included me without me signing the form. It is not going to ruin my reputation to have my name on this paper, but I didn't want my name on the paper and I am just wondering what I should have done differently to resolve this problem.

Has the article been published? What is your goal? Remove your name from the paper?

Too late.  Most journals have a policy where you cannot change the list of authors during the submission/review/acceptance process.   During submission, journals usually ask the submitting author to confirm that all authors have met significant contributions.

@Prof.SantaClaus I am not so sure it is too late. To me it looks like a mistake on the side of the journal (because OP did not sign the form). They may correct it as it goes against their own policies.

How can one not agree with the content of a published paper?  Is it not the case that you provide some sort of proof/argument for the content, which is reviewed by your peers?

@CaptainCodeman There are lots of good reasons to oppose a paper that is published. For example, if you have qualms about how data were obtained or analyzed, if you think the conclusions overstep what they should be, if you think important caveats are covered up or left out, or even just if you weren't close enough to the bulk of the work done to trust it all enough to have your name permanently adhered to it in a form that implies your personal endorsement.

Endorsing a paper as an author is a much higher bar than accepting one as a peer reviewer.

You can email the journal of your feelings. They can add a note, NB, to the published piece as errata or correction to say your name was "misstated" as co-author. If they do nothing, you have at least documented your position.

Sometimes as a matter of integrity we have to stand up and put our names on a paper even though it may be unfashionable and uncomfortable to do so.

In the future you should be open about your reservations. Few colleagues will think that your passive aggressive non-action here is 'tactful'.

To be clear: You never explicitly told the others that you would prefer not to be a co-author?

@user151413 correct

@JohnL Maybe it would help if you would make this crystal clear in your question.  And maybe add why you did not feel this was extremely unfair towards your coauthors.  I would be seriously pissed had you done this to me.  I can't see how you would have even remotely imagined that this would be the best way to proceed.  Imagine the others had submitted with you as a coauthor, and then the editors learned that you wanted to be removed: Your coauthors would have stood there as complete idiots.

"I did not agree with the content of the paper" Isn't this essential part of the critical reasoning? Did you guys have a debate about this? Did you challenge the content? How they defended their position? Taking credit is another question altogether. I am more interested in what happened to the argument made in the paper after you apparently had a different view. I think that is important in non-fiction writing.

The question title mismatches the events: are you asking how you should have refused when the coauthors asked you, or how to now tell the journal you didn't want to be a coauthor, or how to refuse in future? And the word 'tactfully' is kind of red-herring since you never responded to say you refused, when you were asked.

If the journal went ahead and listed you, with or without your consent, the Question can't be "How to tactfully refuse to be listed…" nor anything like that.
If you want to Ask how to get your name removed, or how to sue the journal, those are different Questions.

Well, there were a lot of mistaken decisions here, including by the journal to list your name.
To answer your title question, you should have, before the paper was submitted, told the group you didn't want to be involved, whether you said something like "I disagree with the conclusions of this paper, and don't want to be an author," or a white lie like "I don't feel I contributed enough to be an author."

You can also offer to be happy to be acknowledged; I find this is an option for authors who do not wish to hide an unwilling collaborator's contribution without making them co-responsible for the publication. This can soften the blow of disagreement without requiring to lie. - Captain Emacs

Upon getting the form, you shouldn't have silently declined, you should have talked with the other authors and informed the journal you were included accidentally. With everyone's consent, they would have taken  you off.

Better to give no reason than to lie.

@AnonymousPhysicist Perhaps. Depends on the personalities involved.

@AnonymousPhysicist I agree if the "white lie" is literally a misstatement of fact, i.e. OP is confident they contributed enough to be a coauthor. But in truth, this is so much a matter of opinion that it's hard to lie about. If OP contributed to everything except the conclusions, but disagrees vehemently with the conclusions, it's completely reasonable to espouse a belief that a co-author should contribute to the conclusions. The OP would simply be witholding detail. Regardless, OP - let your conscience be your guide.

If the co-authors find out later that you disagree with the conclusions of the paper, I suspect they won't take it as a complement that you were afraid to say so at the time (I'd agree it is doing the co-authors a disservice - nobody should be happy publishing work that is potentially wrong)

@AzorAhai-him- Since others are undoubtedly aware of the OP's contributions and their significance, the "white lie" falls flat on its face. They might reasonably assume OP is simply shy or overly-modest --- and insist that the OP's name be listed, despite their objections. It's far better to say, "Don't list me as a co-author," without going into why.

@jpaugh Well, yes, that white lie would only work if the contribution was plausibly low enough to get away with it. I can't endorse saying "don't list me" without going giving a reason.

@AzorAhai-him- That makes sense. However, if someone else contributed less than the OP (in their own view), they would still be self-interested in changing the OP's mind about whether OP's contribution was noteworthy. It could have a chance of working.

@jpaugh We could come up with all sorts of hypotheticals and combinations - but my advice is simple: either tell them you don't agree and want to be taken off, or come up with a plausible reason to be removed.

or put up with having your name on the paper as the price paid for not lying to your collaborators and/or not accepting your academic duty to express your disagreement (if you collaborate with someone, then I'd say you had an obligation to say so if you though the work was flawed, whether you were an author or not - it is one of the costs of collaboration that go with the benefits).  If they found out later that you had disagreed, but hadn't been honest with them about it, I suspect that wouldn't go down well either.

You should have asked the co-authors not to be included up front. Leaving it until the journal asks to confirm your authorship is a lot more rude to your co-authors than just communicating with them. It makes them look dishonest or disorganized to the journal if you later ask to not be included.
However, if you got to the point you did, you should have explicitly asked to be removed from the list rather than hoping your non-response would give you the same result.

"It makes them look dishonest to the journal " - Is inferring deception really warranted? Miscommunications happen all the time, and there are plausible reasons besides deception that the author list might be in error. If anything I'd infer the team might be a bit disorganized or uncommunicative, which is obviously another kind of impression you don't want to leave, but that's a cursory guess that I'd keep to myself as an editor.

@Philip Yes you are correct; edited.

@Philip I don't see any plausible reason why an author list should be wrong. Either someone didn't say they wanted to be a coauthor, or the others ignored them.

@user151413 Have you ever tried working with multiple teams spread across multiple sites? I've had to track down ~15 authors on four campuses -- including MDs who are terrible to collaborate with -- sometimes asking whoever I got in touch with who at their campus should be on the paper. I think it's plausible something gets lost in one of those big games of email telephone.

@Azor I was under the impression it was a smaller team of authors, but indeed, there is no mention on that in the question.  I guess you would agree if you have a paper with 4 authors and later one of them informs the editor that they do not want to be an author, this reflects badly on the 3 others, the fourth, or all of them?

@user151413 All of them - that stage of submission isn't where authorship is supposed to be worked out.

@Azor I'm just saying that at least in the case of a small author list, there should be no reason why the author list could be accidencally wrong.  And you seem to confirm that this is always wrong, even in the (probably painful) case of having to work with 15 coauthors.

@user151413 no, I am not claiming that a short author list could never be wrong. You said you couldn't see a plausible reason why any author list could be wrong. I gave an example.

@Azor I was claiming it couldn't be wrong accidentally, without same malvolence/negligience/(put proper word here) from from some side.  But I guess that's what you mean as well.  But would you really saying that for 3 or 4 authors, it could still be that someone is on the paper because they could not be reached by the others and the others just put them on the paper, without finding this odd?

@user151413 I'm not trying to make any specific claims

A colleague and I once had to deal with a very similar situation: after telling our then-boss that we disagreed with his interpretations, he went ahead and presented them at a conference, listing us as co-authors.
In that case, there was no paperwork to confirm co-authorship permission. We ended up sending a letter along the following lines:

We note that we have been listed as co-authors for presentation X and poster Y. We feel that our involvement in this work does not meet the requirements for listing as co-authors, and therefore we request that the proceedings be amended not to list us.

In your case, you should also note that you didn't submit the paperwork to be listed as a co-author.
If you want to soothe your colleagues' feelings, you might also suggest that a "with thanks to..." would be appropriate in place of a co-author credit. This allows them to acknowledge your contribution to the work, without implying that you endorse the paper.
Lesson for next time: people don't always check the paperwork closely, so if you don't want to be listed as a co-author, it's best to say so explicitly.
If they had checked the paperwork, the most likely outcome here is not that they'd have gone ahead and published without your name included. Rather, they'd have told you and your colleagues that they couldn't publish until you'd submitted the form, so this wouldn't have escaped the need to have that uncomfortable conversation with them.

The "Golden Rule" is a good start for most academic ethics questions.  Treat other people the way you would want to be treated.  I would hope that if your co-authors disagreed with the paper that you were working on that you would want them to tell you and that you would not want them to want to avoid disagreeing with you on research matters (which wouldn't reflect well on you).  None of us really wants to publish work that isn't solid - it isn't in our long term interests, and we should have our collaborators best interests in mind as well as our own.
At this stage it is a bit late, but if you want your name taken off the paper, then I would suggest being open and straightforward about the reasons.

Send a request for retraction to the journal.
You're listed as a coauthor on the paper. This was against your consent, but you are still listed as a coauthor, and that gives you the right to write to the journal to request retraction. If you strongly disagree with the results of the paper, and you did not consent for it to be published with your name on it, I would suggest that you might wish to write to the journal to explain the situation and ask that the paper be retracted.
This will likely hurt your relationship with the group who wrote it, but they shouldn't have published something with your name on it without your permission. That's a big breach of academic ethics.

Step one: Tell your coauthors that you made a huge mistake?  Note that from the question and comments, it is not clear that the group did not have permission: Sending a paper around and everyone saying "Yes, this looks fine" is clearly permission.


text:
How to be honest with my second option for a project?
I will try to briefly summarize my dilemma.
I'm a master's student and we have the option to do "Guided Research", which is a module worth some credit points and requires us to conduct research in some area, possibly with a publication as a result.
For this, I have contacted a PhD student A at my uni and asked him to supervise me. I thought he wouldn't reply and contacted another PhD student B (from a different uni, that's possible here) and approached him with my idea. B replied and we have already discussed a bit. The topic for this, however, has a few risks which might result in an infeasible project scope.
Now, contrary to my expectations, A has replied and suggested two topics of which I find one interesting. My priority is working with B because he's a member of the group I wish to join after my master's, and the field is more interesting to me. A's work is a great opportunity but only if "Plan B" fails. I am currently investing time in B but don't want to reject A completely, in case B fails.
How do I make sure "I am cool" with A while not stalling the situation and annoying him unnecessarily? Preferably being honest, I would like to say something along the lines of "I like your project, but have another one as priority, and would like to resort to your project in case the other fails." There is no time pressure yet, but I am assuming A wants to finalize things in the coming weeks.

I like being honest and not wanting to lead A on, but I wouldn’t formulate it as you write it here - that you’d like to work with him in case another project fails. Keep in mind too that it will take probably some time before you know if B fails. One option is to tell A that you contacted someone else too who also wants to work with you, and if you could have a little time to decide what to pursue, and reasonably until when. I’d add that whichever of his two suggestions you found interesting is an exciting idea (pfundig, host mi?, to stay local).


text:
Attitudes towards self-plagiarism
I am planning to write several papers exploring various aspects of the same scientific question. Each of these papers must have an introduction which motivates it and explains the relationship between the problem and what others have studied in the past.
It would be fantastic if I could simply copy-and-paste the same introduction, or, at least, 90% of it.  This seems to me to be ethically unproblematic. After all, I need to say the exact same things every time, and I certainly don't mind the self-plagiarism. Am I hurting the reader in any way? I suppose I might be, if the reader desired an introduction which consists of original material, but that is an odd desire, isn't it? Its the research, the stuff that follows the intro, that is original.
Sadly, I have gotten wind that the majority of the research community apparently does not agree with the sentiments expressed in the previous paragraph. This leads me here to ask a series of related questions:

To what extent is self-plagiarism in non-technical bits considered acceptable? I often see authors recycle paragraphs but I have never seen anyone cut-and-paste the entire section outright.
I'd be particularly interested in learning whether norms on this vary across different scientific communities.

How often do scholars find themselves trying to same the same thing in different words to avoid self-plagiarism?

Supposing I insert a sentence to the effect of: "The introductory section 1.2 is taken verbatim from the author's earlier paper [1]." How likely are journal editors and reviewers to complain about this?

By the way, I am fairly certain they would be very likely to complain about a sentence to the effect of "We refer the reader to [1] for motivation to study this problem and a discussion of its relation to prior work."

Why not put all various aspects of the same question together into one paper? Can they fit?

They sort-of fit, in that they are asking different questions about the same model. However, it would end up being a very, very long paper that, as a result, would likely go unread. More importantly, I am probably going to be thinking about these questions for years, so I'll have to face up to the dilemma in this question one way or another.

I've always wondered about this regarding my posters which all look the same.

I tend to agree with the comment about citing earlier uses. I'm curious what people think of the influence of "double-blind reviewing" where if you use a lot of earlier text and cite it you are also un-blinding yourself to the reviewers.

If we weren't in the entirely artificial game of "peer-reviewed [sic] publication" as the only operationally viable sense of "publication" (e.g., literal publication=making-public on the internet doesn't count? Crazy sense of "publication"...), then we'd not find ourselves discussion "self-plagiarization", which, as a deleted answer observes, is semantic nonsense. While "semantic nonsense" is not a fatal judgement, it is certainly a sign that something's been perverted... as I strongly believe it has if/when there is any point in discussing "self-plagiarism" ... [cont'd]

[cont'd] ... beyond issues about students re-using essays from prior coursework... and, even there, srsly, folks, don't the kids own their own creations, similar to what we'd feel about our "research"? My very-serious conclusion is that this is a bad concept. As is paper-counting, and many related things. So, at the very least, no one should be surprised to discover inherent nuttiness in elaboration of this alleged principle!!! Like the set of sets that don't include themselves: the real point is not the seeming paradox, but that one should not pretend to form such a set.

I was always wondering about it in terms of mathematics, especially the definitions and theorems. It's usually different while talking about a proof of something, but combinatorically there is a quite small number of ways to write down a theorem of definition of something, especially if everyone uses exactly the same roman or greek letters to mark something, like random variable X, angle alpha, some theta, 0<epsilon etc. Plus, you want definition or theorem to be written in a general, short and neat way, with barely any way to rephrase, so you practically have to copy something existing.

@paulgarrett "Self-plagiarism" is "semantic nonsense" only to those who don't understand how English, and human languages in general, work. "Self-plagiarism" is a separate word from "plagairism" and has come to have a separate and distinct meaning. You might as well complain that when someone says, "This food tastes awesome" they're using that word wrong, becuase they mean it's supurb, rather than that it's inspiring awe.

@cjs, ok, yes, I do understand that viewpoint... but I think I am talking about a more tangible thing. Namely, that if I've highly refined a way of describing something, and I use that highly refined version again, it should not be any sort of problem. So far as I can tell, the notion of "self-plagiarism" only makes sense either in not allowing undergrads to re-use ideas they've already developed... (which is bizarre)... and paper-counting stuff. Years ago, there was no such concept, no such issue. Peopld were allowed to repeat their insights! :)

@paulgarrett No, self-plagiarism (in the sense it's mostly been used today) has long been a concept (though perhaps not under that name) and an issue. Submitting a recycled paper to a journal without making it clear that it's recycling your previous work was just as much a no-no fifty years ago as it is now. I think there's room for disagreement in how acceptable it is and how it should be referenced; I personally think that, "This section is a slightly edited version of §1 from [1], as also used in [2] and [3]" is usually acceptable, though others may not. But the key is that I made it clear.

@paulgarrett: "not allowing undergrads to re-use ideas they've already developed... (which is bizarre)" - if we are implying undergrads have no rights to use their previous ideas, that is indeed bizarre. But is that really anyone's goal who forbids self-plagiarism in undergrad assignments? I'd expect the background of any such restriction is to ensure separate exercises actually receive separately created answers. And I am not talking about cleverly extending last week's programming assigment for this week's problem (totally fine IMHO), but something like "pick three topics and write ...

... an essay on each of them", and the student picks three topics that are so overlapping that they end up just writing one essay and hand it in three times (not ok, if the goal of the exercise was to ensure the student has the experience of having written (at least) three essays, rather than just one).

@O.R.Mapper, I think I do understand your point, but I do not intend to be addressing kids trying to fudge things. I do mean to address (the possibility of) (perhaps-exceptional) kids who have read and thought about lots of things on their own, and are not exclusively interested in playing by the rules of coursework. True, this is not a statistically group.

Firstly, quoting any work, including your own, without explicit attribution of the quote, is going to earn you a very bad reputation for plagiarism sooner or later. Just say no.
Secondly, and to state the obvious, the introduction is there to introduce the rest of the paper. As each paper will be unique, so should the introduction be: the point is to lead the user into the paper, rather than to give a grounding in the whole subject area.
Thirdly, why not wrap up all of the things you want to say in all of the papers' introductions, into a single review paper?  It would contain all of the literature review, motivations, unsolved problems, areas for future research, that you want to reference in your other papers. And then, those other papers can just briefly & concisely properly reference and quote the relevant bits of that review paper in their introduction. It won't be as brief as "for review and motivation, see my paper DOI:ABC.DEF.GHI", but you should be able to distil the review paper down to a paragraph or two for each subsequent paper, and those words will be unique for each subsequent paper, drawing only on the elements you need for that paper.

I agree with this sentiment. While I don't think there's anything wrong with self-plagiarism per se, I have come across a set of papers written in this way, and as a reader it was pretty annoying to find the same text in each introduction. It meant I had to skip through stuff I'd already read to figure out what new stuff was being presented in the current paper. Having a unique and to-the-point introduction for each paper makes it easier for the reader to differentiate them. It should be done not for ethical reasons but because it's better writing.

I have seen papers whose introduction was (almost) a subsequence of the rest of the paper. Would the same apply here? I know it's annoying, but I don't see anything wrong.

I have to disagree with your first paragraph.  Plagiarism means taking others ideas and/or words and passing them off as one's own.  It follows that it is not possible to plagiarize oneself.  Multiply publishing one's own ideas, words or work can be problematic, but I think it is confusing and unhelpful to call it plagiarism.  Repeating yourself too much is inadvisable, but the repetition of one's own words and ideas is not inherently unethical or problematic.

Let me expand a little bit on the "problematic" part above: very occasionally in my field we discover that someone has published essentially the identical paper in two different journals.  This is very bad: first, it causes a loss of esteem in the community.  Second, every journal I am familiar with has a policy about not sending work to them which has also been sent elsewhere.  If you do so, you are breaking a contract, so you may (and should, in my opinion) get in some real trouble.

But here the trouble is the specific broken contract.  If I publish a paper and then later write a chapter in a book based on that paper, I'll be okay unless I've signed some insane contract with the paper's publisher.  If I get suitable permission I can even include the paper in its entirety in a text.  However, suppose I got permission from some publisher to include someone else's paper in my text and found that it was okay with them if I removed the author's name and replaced it with my own.  I'm still committing the grave sin of plagiarism: no one party can excuse me of that.

I agree with "As each paper will be unique, so should the introduction be". However, parts of the intro might be similar. I do find it annoying to rephrase perfectly good sentences simply because it appears in an earlier paper of mine. (Maybe I'm being overly scrupulous about this.)

I completely disagree with the philosophy of encouraging somebody to shove everything into a single paper. Each paper should tell a story. Maybe the OP has three different stories.

@PeteL.Clark You misunderstand plagiarism, which is about not providing accurate attribution of a creative work. Plagiarizing others' creative work is one way to to do that. Writing a paper, and having someone else publish it (without attributing you) is yet another way to do that (e.g., the tobacco industry does this). Republishing your own work in part or in whole is still another.

@Alexis: Over the course of my lifelong academic career I have checked my definition of plagiarism against the one provided by standard sources (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism) and the definitions given by the various institutions I've attended as a student or worked for as a faculty member.  I have always found confluence.  I suppose you could claim that we are all misunderstanding plagiarism, and since it's just a definition I don't know how to refute you...but I don't see this as a very helpful claim.

Typically, you will not write all of these papers simultaneously in parallel, but one after another. And each time you write a new paper related to the topic, you will have a learned a lot more, and you will have a much better idea of how to explain the setting, what are the right definitions, etc.
Therefore you have a very good reason to re-write your introduction for each paper, and tailor it for the specific question studied in this particular paper. And this way there is no risk of anyone accusing you of self-plagiarism.
Incidentally, this way you can even go as far as experiment with different ways of explaining the basic setting of your work, and see if you get different feedback... After all, your introduction is the most important part of your work from the marketing perspective, and it is not easy to get it right.

That is true. But it may be that even as your understanding of the technical parts evolves, your reasons for studying it do not. Moreover, you still need to cover your bases by saying "A similar question was studying 30 years ago in the paper [1]..." in the same way.
So even while there is good reasons to rewrite a portion of your intro, copy-and-pasting a substantial portion of it would still be tempting (provided it were acceptable).

$+1$ for this. It is easy to say "I already know how to motivate it, and I motivated it perfectly before, let me just reuse that". But it is very unlikely that the way it was motivated before was actually perfect. There must be many ways to improve the motivation, in light of more recent work in the field, and in light of the new approach of the new paper.

A paper which has the exact same introduction as previous papers will cause people to wonder: "then why is this paper any different than the other ones? Why should I read them and not this one?" It is a red flag which suggests that your paper's introduction and motivation is not unique enough to justify the research that you did.

There is a very dangerous (for your career) issue here.  If your papers are so similar that the same introduction could be repeated almost verbatim in each, it may be that the content of the individual papers don't represent a truly significant advance.  As an obvious example, if you are just changing one parameter in your code and running it again, with no new analysis or insight, you will run into trouble and may even get banned from submitting to offended journals.
I realize this is not a direct answer to the question, but I think it may be useful to people interested in this question.

I agree that this may be the case, but it isn't necessarily going to be the case.

As a referee, I would not have problems with either way of referencing your previous paper. I would be more pissed off if I checked one of your earlier papers and found that a section was ripped off that without notice.

Even if the section had no technical content?

Yes, even if the section had no technical content.  (But then I'd already be miffed that you included a section with no technical content; even a discussion of motivation and previous results needs some technical detail.)

@JeffE , you took my meaning too literally here; every section in a technical paper will have some technical content, of course. My meaning was that the section would not have any theorems, proofs, or technical arguments - just summaries of what other people have done as well as references to where, in practice, the problem under the question has come up. Apologies for stating my meaning imprecisely.

You should definitely cite everything you copy verbatim, no matter what.  (I.e., you should say something like "the following background information is repeated nearly verbatim from Section 2 of BLAH", so the situation is unambiguous.  It's not enough to cite the source without making the copying clear.)
To see why, note that there are four possible types of people:

People who think it is OK to copy your own text without citation, and think it is OK with citation.
People who think it is not OK without citation, but is OK with citation.
People who think it is not OK in either case.
People who think it is OK without citation and in fact you must not cite it.

I don't believe people of type 4 exist.  This means you should always cite any text you copy (even if you wrote it in the first place).  There's no way you can lose: people of type 2 require the citation, people of type 1 don't mind, and people of type 3 are a moot point since they don't want you to copy it in the first place.
In practice, I think a large majority of academics are type 2, but it really doesn't matter.

Imo self plagiarism is an absurd concept. Because the very name implies that you have stolen your own ideas. Which is impossible.
A lot of if not all of what gets labelled as self plagiarism should really be called academic dishonesty.
There is also a huge cultural divide here. In some countries/cultures reusing your own work is not only acceptable but is in fact encouraged. After all if I have already written an image manipulation library that utilises the gpu writing it again from scratch is absurd but updating it to support new gpu features, fixing bugs and releasing it under the gplv3 licese is of course very desirable.
If everything is properly cited (what constitutes a proper citation is again a cultural issue) I really don't see any issue with using this code for several courses if it is applicable to them.
Also if an academic institution allows students to take courses similar enough that copy&pasting things between them is viable such an institution is at least partially at fault too.
And then there is the whole semantic issue since self plagiarism is in many languages similar to theft from oneself or to self victimisation (how exactly am I a victim if I take some lsd (well eth-lad since it's better but whatever) and have a nice 10 hour long trip with some nice sensory and mental effects).

Recently, we submitted a paper to an IEEE Journal, the student in charge, apparently copied large parts of the text from a previous article we had in an IEEE conference.
We got a response letter from the editor that said something like this:

Every IEEE paper is checked for instances of plagiarism (including self-plagiarism), and we found that you made extensive use of copy-paste from your previous article BLA to write the current article BLA.
  I'm afraid I can't accept the paper with so much previously Published text.

Just a word of caution for these practices in IEEE Journals and Conferences

In these days, checking copy-paste is easy. I am not surprised at all.

Indeed, just wanted to help OP before he entertained the idea

"the student in charge" NO, that would be the authors. Signing on as an author means you take full responsibility for the work getting credit when it is deserved and taking blame when necessary.

Such "practices in IEEE Journals and Conferences" need no "word of caution", in my view, but rather some applause.

iThenticate has a white paper called The Ethics of Self Plagiarism.  Within it are reasons not so self-plagiarise, namely copyright issues and the fact that some definitions of plagiarism include copying one's own work (which is contrary to other definitions).
They also go on to give guidelines on how to avoid self-plagiarism, which are helpful:

• Guideline 10: Authors who submit a manuscript for publication containing data, reviews, conclusions,
  etc., that have already been disseminated in some significant manner (e.g., published as an article in
  another journal, presented at a conference, posted on the internet) must clearly indicate to the editors
  and readers the nature of the previous dissemination.
• Guideline 11: Authors of complex studies should heed the advice previously put forth by Angell &
  Relman (1989). If the results of a single complex study are best presented as a ‘cohesive’ single whole,
  they should not be partitioned into individual papers. Furthermore, if there is any doubt as to whether
  a paper submitted for publication represents fragmented data, authors should enclose other papers
  (published or unpublished) that might be part of the paper under consideration (Kassirer & Angell, 1995).
  Similarly, old data that has been merely augmented with additional data points and that is subsequently
  presented as a new study is an equally serious ethical breach.
• Guideline 12: Because some instances of plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and even some writing practices
  that might otherwise be acceptable (e.g., extensive paraphrasing or quoting of key elements of a book)
  can constitute copyright infringement, authors are strongly encouraged to become familiar with basic
  elements of copyright law.
• Guideline 13: While there are some situations where text recycling is an acceptable practice, it may not
  be so in other situations. Authors are urged to adhere to the spirit of ethical writing and avoid reusing
  their own previously published text, unless it is done in a manner consistent with standard scholarly
  conventions (e.g., by using of quotations and proper paraphrasing) (pg. 19-25).

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


text:
What can I do when my transcripts have mistakes?
My transcripts contain a mistake on the grade I took for a course. I applied before two months to change me the grade but the process is slow. Until now nothing has changed and I need to apply for graduate programs. What should I do? How should I inform them that this grade is wrong and the official transcripts will contain the appropriate number. What GPA should I write in the online form? This with the wrong grade or the right one (calculated by me).

More information:
This mistake was not my fault, it was the professor who accidentally wrote a "D" instead of an "A-". I have contacted him after I noticed it on the online system, but it is a long process to change a grade in my university. Two months have passed already and they told my that the grade will be changed before Christmas, but the deadlines are soon and I need to find a way to inform them. The case is that, in most courses, I have "A" and,  in a few of them,  "B". I am applying to very competitive courses and this might ruin my chances of getting admitted.

Fixing a typo in a database doesn't take two months.

It is not a value assignment either. There are some processes that need to be followed. And in my country there is a substantial degradation of the university's facilities altogether. Even taking official transcripts takes a week. It shouldn't be that long, but it is.

Have you tried going up the chain of command? When the Dean orders something to be done, it usually goes quicker.

@Davidmh No, I have not tried it yet, because I thought the problem was easy to fix.

One (reputable) university answered my e-mail and told me that I should get a letter from the professor that explains the situation and that I should upload it in the "additional information section" of the application. Nevertheless, if this happens to anyone, it is best to ask the specific university/department.

If you can't wait for the school, and the professor agrees that this was his error, ask him for a letter saying so (on school letterhead) which you can attach to the transcript. Ditto for the school itself. If employers have some evidence of the error, and have someone they can contact to confirm the correction, this should be manageable.

Perhaps contacting the dept you are applying to as well, letting them know of the discrepancy and offering to send new transcripts once fixed.

Personal experience at the infamous university of Zurich: Get as many people involved as possible. This is a shame for a university, they don't want people to know.
I had a mistake in my transcript (they misspelled a course which was substantial for my further studies). I went there, talked a bit louder than usual and suddenly had a bunch of other students supporting my cause. It took them less than an hour and I had a correct transcript.

In my own experience, you may very well find that the people that can fix it do not care at all about the university's reputation.

You're absolutely right and in such a case I strongly suggest to change and, if need be, get the transcripts corrected by court rule.


text:
Difference between official and unofficial transcripts
What is the difference between the official and the unofficial transcripts that are required for graduate studies?
I assume that both documents should be in English (if you study in a foreign university). Thus, unofficial means that you can make the translation yourself whereas official means that the translation is being made by an authorized person?

If I want a copy of my records, I have two options: one, is to log in to the university website and generate a up to date PDF; or I can pay the university for a signed copy, that consists on a copy printed by them, signed by two or three officials, and rubber stamped. The reason admissions usually want the second, as it is more difficult to forge, but it usually takes time (from a week to more than a month).
I want to bring attention to the Stockholm University system. Whenever you generate a transcript, it includes a code and a website. Anyone receiving that transcript can verify its authenticity easily. Reliable, fast, and free.
Depending on the university, they may want a translation, a certified translation (made and stamped by some official translator, usually expensive), or nothing at all. In my experience in Europe, in most cases, they only need a certified version for making things official when they have decided to hire you -if any. I know for a fact that my supervisor has not ever looked at my transcript, and they never requested a translated version.

You can also generally have official copies delivered directly to the recipient without going through your own hands.

The system you describe in Stockholm is used in a few places I know of as well.  It is a pleasure to use

@dmckee I believe that is a common requirement in the USA. My former university only sends things upon request of the other institution, so my friends applying for the States had to rely on some people at the administration to be nice.


text:
How to submit code (visual studio projects, C#, OpenCL) with my IEEE paper submission
I am trying to submit a paper to IEEE (transactions on signal processing). Along with my paper I have written some code (Visual studio projects, C#, OpenCL and accompanying dlls and exes).
The software is about 25MB in size (once compressed to zip). While I can submit the code text files with my submission very easily, the full working solution is not easy to submit with my paper. The IEEE submission system does not appear to like zip files. I would like to submit my code to the journal in a form that is easy for them to run so easily see how I produced my results.
What options do I have for doing this?
In future I would like to put the code on github as well but I am not sure what stage in the process is best for this.

I was also wondering if I could use research gate or something similar for this purpose

Why do not just put the code on GitHub and put a link inside your paper?

I actually intend to put the code up on GitHub after publishing, but I was concerned that the Journal might not like me doing this before publishing. Are my worries about this unfounded?

I guess, only if the journal's staff inadequate; rough, but true. How a proper link to a related external published source (my, or my colleagues) could be a problem? You may want to ask them, just for sure or read their terms. Nevertheless, such policies will be appeared as strange terms. Author should give them an unique decent article, not an exclusive access and rights to all related staff.

I'd suggest to publish it on Zenodo. That is persistent storage, unlike the GitHub repository, and there is a convenient way to archive a release made from the GitHub repository on Zenodo: https://guides.github.com/activities/citable-code/. In which form does the software exist now, and under which license it is available?

@AlexanderKonovalov The software is just a zip file with all my code and data sets. I was thinking maybe BSD 3 clause .

I ended up using code ocean
I can run my program in a docker container so others can see my results and reproduce them. It also allows me to choose between sharing publicly and with specific people.


text:
What are the consequences of not disclosing all Conflicts of Interests (COI)?
This is in follow-up with this question:
Clear explanation of Conflict of Interest with examples in journal articles
Apart from what it really is, it keeps me thinking why should authors disclose possible conflict of interests (for the publications that require them)?
To be clear, what could happen if they don't? Is it anything to do with unethical conduct or does stating them support the authors in any way?

According to the Committee on Publication Ethics, retraction is a possibility.  See their Retraction Guidelines, page 2:

Retractions are also used to alert readers to [...] failure to disclose a major competing interest likely to influence
  interpretations or recommendations.

The Retraction Watch blog has questioned how often this is carried out in practice.

So who would be the one to file the claim in the first place? Could you give a brief example?

@ÉbeIsaac: Presumably it could be anybody who was aware of the competing interest.


text:
About majoring in psychology
Is it possible to pursue a Masters in Psychology in USA after completing Bachelors in Social Work in Nepal?

Short Answer: Yes, it's technically possible.
Long Answer:
It should technically be possible, but will depend on a variety of factors, although the country in which you received the degree shouldn't be an issue in your case.
*Does your coursework satisfy the requirements of the specific graduate school you are applying to?
*Does your academic performance meet the requirements of the specific graduate school you are applying to?
*Does your GRE score meet the requirements of the specific graduate school you are applying to, if required?
*Are your English proficiency test scores at the level required by the graduate school you are applying to, if required?
*Are you in a financial situation that will allow you to study in the US?
Depending on your situation, you may have to take additional courses at another institution, i.e. a community college, to satisfy basic requirements before being eligible to apply for certain graduate schools.
You will probably also need to have your transcript translated in to English, if your school does not provide it for you. Your recommendation letters will also need to be in English.
As far as for the costs of tuition, your graduate school may or may not provide financial assistance in various forms, including TA/RA positions or straight up stipends. Costs of living, on the other hand, are much less frequently provided for although they do still exist, and more often than not only for doctoral students as funding is limited. Be prepared to have to cover some, if not most or even all of the costs associated with studying in the US.
Remember that schools will differ in what they are looking for in potential applicants, especially international. I strongly recommend that you contact the specific graduate schools you are interested in and inquire directly, to see if they can help you figure things out.

Great answer, +1, I would only add the caveat that most psych master's programs will provide tuition remission and a reasonable stipend to admitted students, including international students--lest, the OP think that they have to pay for entire cost.

@kindredChords Most reputable graduate schools would, yes, but that also strongly depends, especially for-profit universities like Argosy. Plus, living costs will probably be higher than it is in Nepal, including housing, utilities, daily necessities, etc. I do see your point though, I will add it to my answer. Thanks!


text:
In-class, allowing students to address professor informally ('tutoyer' / 'tutear')
Supposing that Dr. A is teaching an undergraduate-level course, what would be the pros and cons for Dr. A to allow students to address himself in an "informal" manner?
By "informal" here I mean using what is employed in a number of languages for informal conversation. For example, this would be tutoyer in French or tutear in Spanish. (Hence, the question does not apply for an English-speaking classroom, but does apply for a French or Spanish-speaking one).
EDIT (clarification, thanks j91): In Spanish, French, German and other languages, the second person singular has two versions: "Tú", "Tu" and "Du" are the informal versions in Spanish, French and German, respectively, and "Usted", "vous" and "Sie" are the formal ones in the same order. "Tutear" is the act of using systematicaly the informal version and, in theory, should be avoided when speaking to a person in a position of authority.

Do you mean something similar to addressing a person with given name rather than family name, or family name with titles like Prof., Dr. ...

The OP is referring, for example, to the distinction between "tu" and "vous" in French, or the distinction between "tú" and "usted" in Spanish.

I think it would make this person appear more approachable e.g. for questions. On the other hand it might lead to problems when grading students, esp. in oral exams.

I cannot edit the question, but "tutoier" should be written like this: "tutoyer".

I can only speak for French, but it also depends heavily in the context. In Canada, using "tu" when speaking to a professor can be considered correct in some contexts (especially since some professors will ask to be spoken to in an informal way), whereas in France that could considered a "faux pas". Usually when I teach I let students decide how they want to call me, but I always speak to them using "vousvoiement", thus remaining more formal. This eases up tensions and to be honest, it does not matter. As long as you remain the figure of authority...

The answer depends heavily on culture. In some cultures (or subcultures of those) the "tu" would be normal/standard, in others it would be offensive.

Note that the reverse question makes sense, too: which language-dependent level of formality should a teacher use to address their students? Is tu/tú/du ok, or should one use vous/usted/Sie?

You should specify which country/culture you are talking about. For instance, the implications (and the frequency with which both models are used) differ highly between Dutch and German.

This question could certainly also apply to English-speaking environments; pronouns are not the only way to differentiate formal and informal speech.

I'm voting to close this as too broad. Many languages maintain the formal/informal "you" distinction and it seems unlikely that the answer would be the same for all of them, or even for all the different cultures using one of them.

The effects of the decision to invite your students to address you informally, and whether this is considered appropriate at all, are very culture-dependent. In general there are several trade-offs. How you balance them depends on your personal judgement. My experience is that of a German who has worked both in Germany and Austria.
Possible upsides of having the students address you in an informal manner (tutoyer/tutear/duzen) include:

Students may be less concerned about perhaps embarrassing themselves in front of the "authority figure"; they may be more inclined to participate in class discussions and ask ("stupid") questions.
Less perceived role conflict on your side, if you are a very junior lecturer and empathize more strongly with the student side than more senior staff.
A more relaxed and friendly atmosphere in general

Possible downsides:

Students may be more willing to negotiate about grades etc.; and less distance between you and the students can make it hard to say "no"
Politely ignoring each other can be harder if you encounter students in a different social setting
Explaining or even just giving a disappointing grade feels more personal and unpleasant when you have crossed the line between you (tu, Du) and "You" (vous, Sie).

I would add that your decision can impact on how students behave around other members of staff.

Your question is completely subjective and context dependent. It adresses the balance between formal and informal, which depends on culture, personality traits, position in the academic hierarchy, etc. It's like asking, which are the pros and cons of teaching in full business suit vs Hawaiian shirt?
Some students will feel more confident if the class environment is informal. Some won't. Some won't see the difference. You (assuming you are the Professor) may feel at ease being talked in an informal tone, or maybe not. If you are in a new country or university and need to figure out your way, attend some classes and check which is the standard. Nonetheless, whatever you chose, don't withdraw your authority as Professor.

The same is in Italian, tu is the informal version. I've never heard a student in classroom addressing a professor with tu, unless the student was already familiar with the professor for other reasons. I would not allow a generic student to use tu with me and I wouldn't use tu with a student who is not specifically an advisee of mine.

I have lived in Mexico, Denmark and France, and made many extended visits to Germany.  I have lived in the midwestern part of the U.S., where I called all my professors "Professor Jones," and I have lived in the northeast of the U.S., where all the younger professors went by their first names.  Currently, I see my spouse's students creatively combining "Dr." with my spouse's first name.  That's what seems to make them comfortable.
Based on these experiences, I would say, mode of address doesn't really matter one way or another.  Respect for the professor comes (or doesn't come) from more substantive things than mode of address.

@NajibIdrissi - My instructor in France made it clear that she expected the formal mode of address.  It was not negotiable.  However, if she had done otherwise, I doubt the sky would have fallen.

@NajibIdrissi I meant the opposite of what you appear to have understood.  I meant: if my instructor had put things on an informal footing with me, the sky would not have fallen.  I did not mean: if I (the student) had attempted to put things on an informal footing with my instructor, the sky would not have fallen.  In fact, if I had, she would gently and firmly have corrected me.  Please note, OP's question asks about the professor's point of view.


text:
How to manage new ideas coming at late stages of PhD
I have started writing my thesis, to be finished in the next coming months. Basically, I am revisiting my early papers and reviewing the problems that I solved three years ago to put in my paper. However, I come across some of new ideas, which I did not have before, because my knowledge was very limited. For instance, I recently solved a problem that I had struggled with for a few weeks, back in my first year. Is it wise to make an attempt to publish these ideas, while I am writing my thesis or I should just stop everything and focus on the thesis first?
The reason that I am thinking too much about it, is a particular alumni of our school, who was working on lots of different ideas while writing the thesis and ended up with rescheduling his thesis submission several times.
To be pragmatic, it is very unlikely that I get these results to appear in my thesis, as the whole process of experimenting, writing and peer-review process might take a while.

In short, better finish the thesis first, then start with the new ideas and papers. Unless, you found some mistakes in your earlier work which need correcting

In my experience supervisors mostly want almost exclusively published stuff in the thesis and it can often be enough load of work to manage get the manuscript ready with all the already done work right and not have to juggle with new stuff you are unsure if it works the way you think it does - not to speak of getting it accepted in a journal. Also even if you could you should not show off all your cards at once, it's usually rather untactical to do so (unless you are required to publish more to graduate).

Sounds like you have a good head start on the next stage of your career!

In my experience, learning to rule off is one of the most important things to learn during the final phase of a PhD thesis.

The situation you are describing is very usual. As one's knowledge and understanding of the field grows, it is only natural that you start getting new research ideas. Also, the research approach keeps getting more evolved and sharper, so it is perfectly plausible that you

... recently solved a problem that I had struggled with for a few weeks, back in my first year.

As far as this much part goes, all that you need to say to yourself is - congratulations, you have progressed significantly along the learning curve, from a complete greenhorn researcher to a more polished, groomed researcher.
However,

Is it wise to make an attempt to publish these ideas?

I would advice against it, and would collect my arguments as follows:

If you have got to the thesis stage, invariably there must be a preliminary stamp of approval already for the work from your department or the "student-research-committee". While marginally field-specific, this is generally in the form of an open departmental presentation, where all critique and suggestions are completely welcome. So, even in the present form, the work must be PhD-worthy.
While it is great that you are getting good ideas, implementing those ideas would come at a time-cost. So you have to ask yourself, whether you can actually afford it?
(Again, marginal field dependence here, in many places and fields, there are some stringent deadlines at play, e.g. you get only maximum N months between the preliminary-PhD presentation and the final thesis submission.)
There is no upper limit to perfection. After you have implemented the ideas you are getting on date, by the time you put it all together, there would be still more ideas, and the process can continue further too. Beyond a certain stage, the process will only drag on for longer and longer, it will frustrate you, and cause you to lose interest beyond a stage.
Please remember that there is life after PhD too. When you wrap up your thesis, you can move on to more independent research/other research projects which may or may not be related to your PhD work. The longer you drag your thesis, the longer it will take you to get there.
(My main point) All researchers are invariably familiar with something like a personal "Back-of-the-register-list". (More evolved form - something like a document entitled "Ideas" located somewhere in the research folder in the computer.) This is the holy place where all these subsequent ideas land up in some kind of list! Then, this list is revisited at various times in the future, and ideas are picked up, improved on and implemented. That's the way to go about it!

Please remember that PhD thesis submission requirement is merely a comma, not a full stop for research. Perhaps it is a full stop for guided research, but bracing oneself for the afterlife as an independent researcher, I would advise you to just get with the formal requirement of thesis, and there would be ample amount of excitement looking towards the horizon!

All this comes with one caveat, as I later realized, reading the comment by Yuri Y below the post: In case you have found some error somewhere in you earlier work, which is making up the thesis, revising everything and setting it right IS the right course of action. In that case, priorities reverse - you would want to fix this work before advancing further on, if not for anything more, also for preserving your research credentials!

I would say based on my opinions and experience that no-one cares about the Thesis.
The Thesis is a set of publications that must be about the same topic. Your publications will be the ones cited, not the Thesis. The Thesis will be only found somewhere in the university archives, while the publications will the visible part of your work you are evaluated upon.
Thus I think that the Thesis should be pushed to the finish line.
EDIT: The form of Thesis may vary, so it is noteworthy that especially in arts and humanities, the Thesis may be a coherent piece of work. Then the Thesis can be evaluated as a whole.

What a thesis is can be very different based on the field and location, so I would not assume that every thesis is just a set of publications on the same topic.

@skymningen, the OP was talking about papers, so I decided to leave that out, but it is noteworthy that especially in arts and humanities, the Thesis may be a coherent piece of work. The hard science does seldom work out nicely enough for this to be the case and because we want those PhD to graduate that condition is relaxed.

@user3644640 I wouldn't think of this as a condition being relaxed for STEM PhDs. STEM PhD candidates will usually have multiple distinct projects during their graduate career, which are published separately. This inherently allows them to address a variety of potentially-very-distinct questions in their research. It is rare for humanities graduate student to publish parts of their dissertation before completing it, so it's more of a deep-dive into question(s) that span the entire dissertation. I think it's a difference in program structure, not one group getting a break on the requirements.

"no-one cares about the Thesis"? What? In my field, good theses are often read because they're excellent introductions to research topics. Many people upload their theses on their personal webpages, and they are cited.

@NMJD I think that because the objective of coherence is acknowledged in STEM, it is relaxed. It is thrived for but seldom achieved.

@Turion Bachelor and Master's Thesis yes, but PhD needs to contribute something new. Thus they are a package of often four articles about the similar topics.

I just need to add a comment that I have a limited time. If I don't finish my thesis soon, I won't have any financial support and I will be struggling to write a thesis worrying about money. However, if I finish the thesis first, then I can publish those results with more peace of mind (because thesis is done and I will publish as much as possible).

@user3644640 At least in my program, there is no importance at all placed on coherence of the dissertation. It's actually an advantage if you have cut your teeth with significantly different projects. Sure, every thesis has some thread, but that thread can be very vague, like: I look at the behavior of particles. In one case, how they cluster in low gravity, in another case, how they flow in solution under shear stress.  If you want to call that coherence, then sure all STEM theses have coherence. But if that's too vague, then I'd say coherence is unimportant in my department, at least.

It depends:

What are your career plans after your PhD? Could you possibly work on these problems during the next stage, maybe as a post-doc? In your field, is there a time limit on how long one can be a post-doc? Would working on these problems be a time drain in your next position or nice continuation of your line of research?
What are the cons of delaying your PhD in your specific situation? Have you already accepted a position? When is your start date? Do you have to financially support dependents while you write your dissertation?
Could your new ideas be easily scooped? If yes, publishing on these should take priority over getting your PhD 3-6 months earlier.
Objectively, how novel are the new ideas? Would they possibly lead to a major publication? Or are we just talking about things you could have done slightly differently if you had your current level of expertise? Delaying your dissertation to pursue a major publication is easy to justify. Pursuing "perfection" in your dissertation just for the sake of it is futile.
In your field/country/institution, is there any chance of your dissertation not being accepted? If yes, there might be merit in strengthening for dissertation with new research. In my area/country (biomedical research in the US), once you have published and are given the green light by your thesis committee, the dissertation is a mere formality, nobody even reads it!
What does your thesis adviser think? He/She is likely more knowledgeable about the field than any of us here. Do you risk earning his/her ire if you do not take her advice? That would be a bad move early in one's career. This may come down to what your adviser recommends!

Good answer.  I would just add, make sure you keep a physical or electronic notebook where you list Ideas for Future Work.  And if you can minimize the risk of getting derailed, you might allow yourself a couple of hours per week to work on something unrelated to the thesis, as a small reward for your week of hard work.


text:
Knowing a lecturer from a previous course of study, would it have an impact?
I am a final year honours student (UK) who has come across a little bit of a predicament. About eight years ago when I was a teenager, I was undertaking a University course that I did not complete because of personal related issues. There was a lecturer that I did not get on very well with at the time because of this who I knew both from that and also from my previous school days. We had an argument once or twice; I was fairly young at the time.
When I started this new course a few years ago, (which is at a different University) I committed to achieving as much as possible, and I have managed to get a 'first' overall in terms of averages for years one and two. However in my final year it turns out that one of the examiners for my final year project is the same lecturer that I described above in the first paragraph (even though it is a different establishment).
So the question really is, should I have a reason to worry? Would under-performance as a teenager result in an unsettling experience or a bias of marks when it comes to the day when the viva is to be presented? My friends tell me that my worries are irrational as eight years is a long time and teenagers often under perform, but when I started to see if anyone else had this problem, I could not find any existing questions, and everyone on this community looked to be helpful in providing advice. If you could share any enlightening thoughts, it would be very much appreciated!

I highly doubt the professor has been holding a grudge against you for eight years, ruminating the day when he will get his revenge on user3149699. This really sounds like an irrational fear that you just have to accept as irrational.

Do you have any reason to believe the lecturer even remembers you? It's a hard truth, but what you remember as a bad fight in your teenage years was for the lecturer probably just job routine, a discussion of which every lecturer has plenty each academic year. As long as you did not run over his cat or set his office on fire, I think you will be fine.

Anybody who has taught and likes teaching knows that one of the biggest rewards is seeing your students grow.  From your description, it sounds like your only problems in your previous encounter were age-typical lack of focus and brattiness. If you are now a much more mature and polished student, then more likely than not, if the lecturer remembers you at all, it will be to your advantage when they compare with the kid they taught so many years ago.

Yes, you are probably correct there. The lack of focus that I did have when I was younger has been removed and I now have a vision of where I would like to be in the future. I think my irrationality is derived from the amount of effort that I have put in to making this degree work out and realising that I might have to face the past by explaining/defending my previous behaviour. I was probably incorrect to believe that penalisations can occur as a result of this, and the scenario you provided is very likely to be more accurate as an outcome.

When I was in my first year of university, as an unruly teen, our department had a welcome barbeque for all the students, with free sausages and beer.  As the event progressed it got pretty rowdy, and I got so drunk with my friends that ---on a dare--- I moonwalked through the faculty area with my bum exposed, making the beeping noise of a truck backing up.  My friends thought it was hilarious.  Anyway, those faculty taught me throughout my undergraduate degree, and some of them later ended up being on my supervisory panel for my PhD candidature years later.  One of them recently gave me a positive reference for an academic position.  So given that they had the forbearance to ignore that, I don't think you have anything to worry about.

I think your anxiety might be causing you to over-inflate the significance of the historical incidents (unless, of course, the nature of the arguments was deeply personal, for example). Eight years is a long time, and that person will have seen a lot of students come and go in the intervening period. It's perfectly possible that they won't even remember you; if they do, you might even find that you have a good laugh together at (a) how bratty you were back then, and (b) how pompous they were back then.


text:
What can I do about newspaper with poor referencing?
Newspapers often like to report on new scientific advancements.
They often do a terrible job.
They may sensationalise the story.
Or confuse a project proposal/preliminary study with a result.
We can perhaps forgive them, and take the blame on ourselves for not making papers clear enough for them to understand.
Or not. This question is not about inaccuracies in reporting however.
This question is about poor referencing of the scientific article they are talking about -- making it hard to track down the original source.
Because of the often low quality of the newspaper reporting, it is important to be able to find and read the original scientific article.
When you tell a fellow about a new paper that came out,
you are bare minimum include the title, and the names of the authors,
and generally the year, and publication venue too.
Recently I have seen major newspapers failing to do this.
For example
The news paper article:

John Ross, "Anxiety epidemic hits the rich and the young", The Australian, 6 june 2016

Is talking about:

Olivia Remes, Carol Brayne, Rianne van der Linde and Louise Lafortune, "A systematic review of reviews on the prevalence of anxiety disorders in adult populations", Brain and Behavior 2016

But all it mentions is the name and affiliation of the first author, and the name of the journal -- an even these are hidden in the text, rather than in a nice block.
We can compare this against a specialized scientific news source:

unknown author, "Women and people under the age of 35 at greatest risk of anxiety", Science Bulletin, 6 June 2016

Which gives full detail, including a DOI, in a nice source block at the end.
I've also seen this sometimes in newspapers, but it is not ubiquitous.
Sadly, the newspaper I mention above (The Australian) is probably the most reputable mainstream newspapers in my country (if you know a better one I'm interested).

What can I, as a concerned (read: busybody) academic, with no affilation to the article being written about, do to work towards countering the poor practices of these newspapers?
Right now, what I am doing is everytime someone links to a news report on social media I hunt down the original paper, and link them to it by commenting on there post.
This solves the problem for one person, and for people who follow them.
But can I be countering it overall?
Is it worth writing to the newspaper, providing a request that the clean up there act?
Should I perhaps contact the authors of the paper, informing them of the (petty)  injustice the paper is doing to their work, by not referencing it correctly?

Perhaps a follow up question  might be worth having with regard to blogs.

In my experience, newspapers hardly ever list the title of a paper they mention; this isn't new.  Good ones will usually give the author and the name of the journal, and perhaps the publication date ("appearing in the current issue of Nature").

Indeed it is not new, but long term bad practices is still bad practices.

Given that most newspapers don't have their own "on-staff" technical writers to handle such articles, I doubt that writing a newspaper and pleading with them to include more information about the publication will be very helpful. More importantly, providing large amounts of technical detail is frankly not what a newspaper is meant for. The best you could reasonably expect is that the web page for the article might include a link to the journal page. But you should probably not expect full details of the publication on the web page itself.
For sites and publications like Ars Technica, the situation is different, since they're much more science-oriented. Then it would be reasonable to politely email the author of the article you're interested and request that the additional information be added.

... or post a comment asking for the info to be added to the article, if it's posted online.