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How to receive email notifications of newly accepted papers in a specified set of journals?
Is there some way of arranging that I receive emails whenever selected academic economics journals of interest to me, perhaps published by different publishers, post online a newly accepted paper?

I posted this question in the economics site because, as far as I know, the answer to this question is very different from discipline to discipline. As far as I understand, computer scientists are, for example, in this respect much better organized than economists.

Most journal offer an email alert service for new issues/accepted papers. A couple of examples :

https://www.aeaweb.org/notify/
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291468-0262 (see "Get new content alert")
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-economic-theory/ (see "Stay up to date")

All of ACM.org offers RSS feeds, which you can instrument with IFTTT

Some publishers have a page introducing the ways by which their readers can be informed whenever a new issue of the journal is published, or a new paper is published in a journal. You should seek each journal for such email subscriptions.
Also, some websites of the journals provide RSS links for their users. You can copy the RSS link (news feed) of the journal you want to read in your RSS reader software or related online account. Every time an update (may be a newly published paper or a new journal issue) is posted on the publisher's/ journal's website, you will receive it's news on your RSS account.
As an example, the following links are for email subscription and RSS news feature which is available in arXiv for their readers.

To Subscribe to the E-Mail Alerting Service
RSS news feeds for arXiv updates


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What to do about fee from publisher for withdrawing unpublished accepted manuscript?
I had sent my manuscript mistakenly to two different journals and both journals are ready to publish (not yet published) my work which is not possible. So, after knowing their impact factor I requested one of the journals to withdraw my paper. They had just sent me the review of my paper and for withdrawal they are demanding $500 as a penalty. It is difficult for me to decide what to do.

You made a BIG mistake by sending your manuscript  to two different journals. This is a NO-NO. Have you considered withdrawing the paper from the other journal?

I had send my manuscript mistakenly to two different journals How?!!!

It is difficult for me to decide what to do. Decide on what? Which journal to publish your paper in? Could you please expand your question a little more on what options you have in mind?

They're demanding $500 as a penalty??? For what? Would they pay you a penalty for refusing your paper? Or if you were the reviewer and gave a positive review but they still rejected the paper? I don't think you are obliged to pay something like that and are good off just ignoring them. Of course, then you'll probably be "blacklisted" in that particular journal and may have a hard time getting published there in the future. But that kind of practice would have me seriously considering if I would want ever to cooperate with them again.

To elaborate on @EnthusiasticStudent’s comment: When publishing to most regular journals, you have to explicitly state that you did not submit to another journal and you usually receive at least some communication before your paper gets accepted. If you actually managed to honestly mistakenly submitted to two journals, at least one of the journals is likely to be predatory; otherwise you are missing out some details here. Also, the only publishers I could find with an admittedly brief search that do demand a penalty for withdrawal look rather shady to me at a quick glance.

@EnthusiasticStudent I suspect that "I sent my manuscript mistakenly" means "I sent it and now realise this was a mistake" rather than "I sent it accidentally".

I would email the editor of the journal with the lower impact factor, say your paper was also reviewed and approved by another journal which is your choice, and apologize for your mistake (if you did not fully explain why you are withdrawing, then follow up and do so). Let them decide what to do based on the fact that the article is going to come out in another journal. You would have to sign a copyright agreement before they publish, so tell them you cannot sign. They will likely drop your paper without penalty (they don't have much choice). It makes no sense for them to insist on publishing.

@EnthusiasticStudent I can imagine at least one situation where one accidentally submits the same paper to different journals--if one accidentally uploaded the wrong file to one journal and didn't check the upload before submitting.  However, I'm guessing that's not the case here.

@Kimball I don't think the asker intends "mistakenly" to mean "by accident" but just that it was a mistake (in the sense of something they did deliberately but now realise they shouldn't have done).

@DavidRicherby Yes, I saw your comment and agree (see my last sentence).  I was just trying to say that I can imagine that somewhere someone has done or will do a "double submission" accidentally.  I've certainly sent someone the wrong paper via email accidentally without realizing it.

@JeromyAnglim I think that your title change drops half of the intent of the question; would you consider reverting it?

@jakebeal Of course and feel free to edit further. I removed the bit about submitting a paper to two journals. I think retaining the focus on the "fee" in the title makes sense as that seems to still be the essence of the question.

I still cannot graps this concept of the accidentally/mistakenly etc dual submission. Author guides/instructions ed normaly clearly indicate a manuscript should not be under consideration for an other journal. Has the OP not read this instructions?

There is wrong on every side of this situation.
First, a journal demanding money for withdrawing a paper is suspicious in the extreme. I have never in my life heard of such a practice from a legitimate journal, which means that you were probably duped into submitting to a predatory (junk) publisher.  If this is the case, you should definitely withdraw the paper and refuse to pay the money, but they may not let you: a dishonest publisher may simply publish your paper without your consent and send you a bill.  If this happens, you can try to fight it, but you may end up needing to withdraw from the other journal instead and simply write off the paper and/or the $500 as a learning experience.
And what will you have learned?

Never dual submit a paper: it is scientifically dishonest, wastes everybody's time, and seriously annoys any legitimate journal.
Never submit a paper to a journal that you haven't thoroughly investigated to determine that it is not a shady fly-by-night predatory publisher.

About the fight: commercial publisher claim that, among other thing, their role is to take care of legal issues regarding the papers they submit. If the mistake is explained to the journal chosen by Shravan, and if the journal accepts to forgive the mistake of dual submission and publishes the paper, then the publisher might take legal action against the other publisher. Since publishing without signed copyright transfer agreement or any other legal document from the author blatantly breaks the rules on intellectual property, such a legal action has good chance to succeed.

As already stated in a comment, sending the same paper to two journals is just plain wrong and you are likely violating the journal agreements you agreed to when submitting them. So never ever do this again!
As for picking the journal with highest impact, well that seems like a fair choice but I wonder what the journal editors would say if they knew the manuscript was under consideration also in a second journal. Usually this is a specific question to which you state "the manuscript is not under consideration elsewhere" when you submit. So my guess is that your paper would be refused if they knew and I think you should let them know. Perhaps you did this out of ignorance but I think you should come out and explain your mistake, it is only fair and then your case may also receive a fair treatment.
As for the $500 penalty, you need to check what yo actually agreed to and what the journal states as rules for manuscripts. Clearly your manuscript has taken up a lot of resources unnecessarily. Even though I do not sympathize with your actions, there is an open question based on what the journal asks you to pay. Unless they have this in a clear statement or agreement I cannot see it as a valid request and you likely do not have to pay. However, you may of course become "known" to the journal editors which could harm future submissions to the same journal.
So my advice is, come out clean. Explain to both journals, and by cc to the other, what you have done and make sure you explain why you managed to do such a faux pas. Let the editors decide the outcome, your right to decide has long passed. By coming clean the editors may see leniently on the matter and your "choice".
Editor's can turn to Cope to get feedback on cases such as the one posted above. At COPE's (Committee On Publication Ethics) site it is possible to find their recommendations in similar cases. One that struck me as reasonably similar is the one linked to here, but do look around at their cases for additional impressions of where editors stand on multiple submissions and why being upfront about the issue can be a good idea.

Per your "About me", you are also an editor-in-chief, given the circumstances, how would you proceed if you received such an email? Presuming, of course, that no malicious intent of the author is stated in the email and that yours is the journal that the author intends to publish in (i.e. not the one the paper was withdrawn from).

If he just explains the situation to both journals, I can't see any outcome other than both of them refusing the publication… (not implying this is a good or bad thing, but it should definitely be pointed out clearly)

thank u all but i didn't getting what to do finally...i can not pay such a huge amt...m a student...and editor in chief demanding my reply quickly within a 24-48 hrs...and he warned me "How can submit same article in different Journals, we will take action against you and inform to your College regarding this"

and the authors guidelines are here...    Pre-Review: The author(s) can withdraw their papers at this step without paying any charges and/or posing compelling reasons.
Peer-Review: The authors must have compelling reasons and pay 500 US$ as the withdrawal penalty.
Review-Final Decision: The authors must have compelling reasons and pay 500 US$ as the withdrawal penalty.
Review-Final Decision: The authors must have compelling reasons and pay 500 US$ as the withdrawal penalty.Post-Publication: Withdrawing at this step is not possible at all.

If the author withdraws manuscript any time after the manuscript has been sent to peer-review till the final decision, then unless there are compelling reasons, the request is not entertained without a penalty. This penalty may be in form of payment to journal for its time and resources spent.
In this situation, author(s) needs to pay withdrawal fee of 400 US$.

@shravan it looks like you tried to be "smart" by cheating the system and now you seem to be disappointed with consequences of your "smartness".

@ Salvador Dali...i was really unaware about my smartness what u r talking about. my intention was not to cheat anybody...i m a fresher...and and i do not have sources for proper guidance...so please don't use words like cheating...these words doesn't belongs to me...and never will

@shravan: I see on the journal web page that submission is be e-mail, is that correct? If you submitted by e-mail without attaching a signed document saying that you agreed to their terms, I very much doubt that really you have to pay, and I believe they can take any legal action against you. I you had submitted through a web form, things could be worse because you could have checked a box that implied you agreed with their terms.
You say they threat to do is to inform your institution, probably your best defense strategy is to come clean also with your institution.

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How many hours on an average do academics in business and technology spend consulting for businesses?
Early stage startups and entrepreneurs often look at those with experience and knowledge for help in areas such as finance, management (HR), marketing and technology.
How many hours per week/month on  average does a faculty member spend consulting/advising/coaching businesses?

Hi, and welcome to Academia.SE! Answers to your question will likely vary enormously by field (business school vs. math vs. medicine vs. humanities), possibly also by geography or school type. Could you please edit your question to indicate what specifically you are interested in?

Thanks for your response and advise.  Early stage startups and entrepreneurs often look at those with experience and knowledge for help in areas such as finance, management (HR), marketing and technology.  1) In these areas, how much time do professors spend in consulting/advising/coaching on a weekly/monthly basis?

Welcome to Academia.SE!  Please edit your question to improve it.  Don't just leave clarifications in the comments -- edit the question so it is self-contained.  Readers shouldn't have to read the comments to understand your question.  Comments exist only to help you improve your question.  Also, we have a general expectation that you will flesh out the question more, and that you will do significant research before asking here and show us in the question what research you've done and what you've found.  You might want to peruse our [help] to learn more how the site works.

@HarryGardner I've incorporated your comments into your question

I would say the mean over all of academia is very low, almost zero. I would even go so far as to say that the median amount of time is zero. However, this includes all professors from all fields. It is not impossible for a Professor of German Romantic Poetry to find businesses that need their expertise but I would image them few and far between.
There is also the issue of contractual obligations. My current professorial contract states that during the academic year I cannot work for another institution as more than a "part time job" but during the breaks I could work for someone else full time. While this does not give concrete limits it is presumed here to be about 10 hours per week as a general maximum.
More applied professors I have met were officially funded by outside corporations so their research counted double as both consulting work and as their normal work load. So for them even during the academic year it could be over 40 hours per week.
So what I mean to say is that to get a useful answer you should probably be more specific about which fields you are interested in.

Thank you for the reply.  I was looking at first some general responses and your response of maximum 10 hours per week is helpful.  Thanks again

Bear in mind that that maximum is the informally understood value at one small college in the US. Nothing more than that.

A common policy is "no more than one day a week during the 9 month academic year."  In my experience (at an engineering/science oriented university where there are quite a few opportunities) very few faculty do anything close to this much outside consulting.

I thought this was a rather fascinating question, and it turns out some researchers have agreed - enough to conduct their own studies!
In a paper from 1985, but with too wonderful a title not to note, consider And on the Seventh Day: Faculty Consulting and Supplemental Income
Obviously one will want to review this paper, as it's full of interesting observations, such as on the topic of how much this varies by field and how often/how much they are paid:

Less than 10 percent of college and university faculty employed in
  fields allied with science and engineering report supplemental
  earnings that represent more than one-third of their base academic
  salaries. The comparable figure for faculty employed in the humanities is only 4 percent.

So certainly consulting is much more popular in some fields than others, however also consider:

Sixty to 85 percent of all faculty report receiving some income beyond
  their base academic salaries. Supplemental income results from all
  forms of income-generating activities (for example, research and
  teaching during the summer months as well as consulting) and is earned
  both within and without the institution. The amount represents only
  about 15 percent of average basic academic salaries. About half of all
  college and university faculty report having some form of "outside"
  supplemental income during a given year.

So not only does it vary widely by field, but there is also a considerable amount of variation between individuals.
The bottom-line of the report is that a little consulting is extremely common, but consulting a lot is relatively rare - only 5-6% of faculty report consulting more than 1 day per week on average. This of course also permits variance throughout the year, with more consulting happening when classes are not in session. For non-US natives, it is important to note that in the US the concept of an "academic/9-month year" is common, and students and professors alike can take the summer off or work on their careers, take extra-paid employment (including classes), etc...and some people get stiffed and have to work for no additional pay, but that's unpleasant to think about!
This is certainly an older study, so let's consider some more recent research: Outside Consulting Income by University Faculty in Health Administration
Sadly this is pay-walled, but the abstract has good info that agrees with the older study nicely:

Based on a comprehensive survey of health administration (HA) faculty
  in the US, the current study presents data on the frequency, dollar
  amounts, and determinants of outside consulting income among
  respondents. Approximately three quarters of respondents engage in
  some consulting activities that yield, on average, approximately 25%
  additional income above one's university base salary. However averages
  can be misleading given that substantial variation in earnings exists
  among respondents at each rank. Median consulting incomes were
  approximately 9% of respondents' base salary. Various factors
  including rank, gender, and professional accomplishments were
  associated with engaging in any consulting activities. Among those who
  consult, school of employment, gender, and self-reported expertise are
  associated with the amount of consulting income earned.

In a quick Google Scholar search this question seems to have been highly studied in the 1980's, and so the foundation literature is from this time. More recent studies seem to generally accept the older studies conclusions, and then get ever more specific - examining cultural differences (like attitudes of Arab faculty and how it relates to consulting), individual fields and schools (comparing various law professors and positions in their use of consulting), etc.
If you are interested in this area I'd strongly recommend starting with a full read of "And on the Seventh Day" quoted above, as it also deals with thinks like reasons (which seem not to be strictly economic!), effect on research/teaching, and so on. Then some more specific poking around can narrow down your question, or it might just answer your question entirely!

Thank you very much for taking the time and helping out.  I will certainly read "And on the..."  I was also intrigued to see consulting in Health Administration.  The document is pay-per-view but I am interested if the consulting is onsite or can consulting in that area be virtual / technology based only.  Thank you again.

While you will get better responses if you narrow this down to specifics, I will answer generally for my experience in public health and medicine, as I have experienced it.
Consulting is definitely possible, and many clinical researchers do some consulting on the side, in addition to having grants from industry. Other than that, consulting is something that comes up from time to time, but not enough that I would call it a routine part of anyone's workload. Keep in mind that part of that is because as an academic you don't get much "credit" for consulting - your tenure package isn't improved by it, your chair isn't happy that you're bringing in some big overhead grants, etc. If it's regular work, it should probably be considered for a proper grant.
As for restrictions on it, I haven't encountered any hard limits as much as "This should not interfere with your actual job".

authors: Андрей Шатиловский

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How to download references to database that a paper includes and all articles that cite the paper?
I have some papers for which I want to somehow download an easily manipulated (CSV, Excel) list of references and list of papers which cited the given paper.
On Google Scholar, one can see a "Cited By" option, but there is no way to download this list in bulk. Also, there is no option to get the list of references that the paper made. Although one can look at the paper itself for this information, I'd want a way to get these as a CSV or Excel.
Is there any way to do this?

Cross-link to related question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3078/web-service-to-fetch-article-citations (it deals with the "list of references" part).

Yes, use Web of Science (Thomson Reuter's) database called Cited Reference Searching.  You can download a list of citations, which can be exported as *.csv.  Here is a link showing some of the basic functionalities.

Of course, this will only capture citations in venues indexed by Web of Science (and therefore almost no computer science conferences).

This is a good source, I actually came to the same conclusion. The only problem is that the database is missing many papers. This answer is good in and of itself, though. Thank you!

Enjoy using CitationChaser. Follow these steps to start chasing:

In the "Article input" tab, paste a list of article identifiers (e.g. DOIs)

Check the articles returned are the ones your interested in

If you want to perform backward citation chasing (which articles did my articles reference?) then proceed to the "References" tab and click "Search for all referenced articles in Lens.org"

If you want to perform forward citation chasing (which articles have cited my articles?) then proceed to the "Citations" tab and click "Search for all citing articles in Lens.org"

You can download a list in RIS format of your input articles, referenced articles, and citing articles for easy integration with your reference/review management workflow.

Thank you for the link, it looks like a great ressource for obtaining refernece information.

As far as I know, RIS and BibTeX are the two standard file formats for moving references around. I store my references on Citeulike, which allows me to download them in either format -- I usually use BibTeX since I write my papers in LaTeX, but I know RIS is used to move references from Endnote to Zotero.
ISI Web of Knowledge and other citation trackers do allow you to export both the citations in a particular paper as well as the papers that cite it in RIS, BibTeX and tab-delimited formats (using RIS column names, oddly enough!), but I don't think Google Scholar has this functionality. You may have access to the Web of Knowledge through your institute's library.

Hi! Thanks for the information, but I'm not sure you understand my question. What I'm asking is: given a paper, can I download a file (CSV preferably) which contains a list of the references made in the paper, as well as other papers which cited that paper?

Ah, got it! ISI Web of Knowledge/Science will let you do this (I just tried this and it worked, but you may need to export page-by-page). I've updated my answer to reflect this, but Brian P beat me to Web of Science :)

I am not aware of such functionality in existing online repositories at the present time. However, depending on your needs, skills and willingness to dedicate your time and efforts to such project, you can consider writing custom software, based on natural language processing (NLP) approaches, in particular information extraction, for parsing papers of interest - individually or in bulk - in order to extract their reference list information. I believe that it should be relatively easy to write such software, as the semantic complexity of reference list sections is relatively low. Having said that, I see some potential difficulties, related to the quality (consistency) of listed references in terms of content, formatting and publication style.
I think that using such software would be perfectly legal and ethical, as that part within each paper doesn't really represent an intellectual property or is copyrighted (please correct me, if I'm wrong).

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What is the difference between keynote, invited, and oral conference presentations?
I'm a PhD student, and I'll soon be presenting some of my work at a conference. In the program, my presentation is labeled "invited" while others have "oral" and others "Keynote". I am a bit confused, as I was never invited (maybe one of my professors was) and would like to know the difference between these kind of presentations.

it doesn't help that Apple makes presentation software labeled "Keynote".

related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/15611/258

Having an invited talk and not having been invited is unusual, indeed. Maybe your professor was invited and passed the ball to you; the best thing to do is asking him/her.
"Oral" also is unusual for me (but maybe not in other fields). As noted in the other answer, typically the hierarchy is, from most to least prestigious:

keynote/plenary: people who were invited to participate by the organizers, who may also be paying their expenses. Unlike the rest of the talks, they are not in parallel sessions or have a reduced level of parallelism. Sometimes, when there are no parallel sections, "keynote talks"  are simply longer.
invited: talks given by speakers that were explicitly invited by the organizers. Typically (but not always), the travel and registration expenses of these speakers are paid by the organizers.
contributed: people who applied themselves for participation (and were accepted) and are going to give a talk, usually in parallel.
poster: people who are going to present a poster instead of giving an oral talk. Sometimes people are given the option to present either a contributed talk or a poster.

I assume that "oral" means "contributed" here.

A keynote speech or presentation is a high-profile talk intended to be of interest to everyone at the conference, and is one of the selling points of the conference. Invited speakers are those who have been invited to give a talk by the organisers of the conference. My assumption is that 'oral' is just every other talk, i.e. speakers who applied to the conference and were selected to deliver their presentation.

In conferences where there are multiple presentations going on at once in different rooms, the keynote presentations will typically be "plenary sessions" in a very large room with no other talks going on at the same time.  Keynote or plenary speakers typically have much more time for their presentations (1 hour or 1.5 hours compared with a typical 20 minute or 30 minute slot for an individual invited or submitted presentation.)

Not all plenary talks are "keynote" talks.  I have given the former at a number of conferences, but not the latter.  A conference generally would have no more than one (or maybe two) keynote talks, given by the most featured senior researchers present.  (If the conference has a banquet, it's usually on the same day as the keynote talk.)  Even if there are numerous parallel sessions, there may be two or three plenary talks per day, and they can't all be keynotes.  In fact, at a couple of conferences I attended, each session organizer gave a plenary talk.


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What counts as a "project" when a potential employer asks a graduate about recent projects they have completed?
I recently graduated with a BS degree in Physics and I am looking for a job in the tech industry. A common question I get is talking about recent projects, so in general, what kind of assignments in academia counts as useful projects in industry? I've had the pleasure of going to a private institution with one of best science programs in the country, I managed to get coursework and research work in Physics, E.E, Economics, Computer Science, and Computational Biology.

You will likely get better answers at Workplace.SE than here, unless you are very specifically looking for a research job in industry (if you are, please edit your question to include this). Consider clicking on the "flag" link underneath your question to attract moderator attention, then request that your question be migrated to Workplace. (Please don't simply cross-post.)

Speaking as somebody on the other side of that table, what industry is generally looking for is evidence that you can actually put the knowledge that you've acquired to use.  The sorts of skills that industry are looking for include the abilities to:

prioritize in order to achieve a larger goal, rather than getting bogged down in subproblems along the way.
work well with others as part of a team
follow through a complex piece of work to completion, rather than giving up after the "interesting bits" are complete
understand how your work fits into a larger whole and goals beyond "I was told this was what we were supposed to do"
synthesize together multiple different types of skills
estimate task difficulty, set a schedule, and manage unexpected problems as they arise
ability to understand the needs of the people who will put your work to use (sometimes jargonized as "customer focus")
determine when you need new knowledge or skills and take appropriate self-motivated steps to acquire these

All of these things are important ingredients in somebody who will be a good contributor to a larger organization, especially an R&D organization where you can't afford to be micromanaging a bunch of poor performers.  Somebody who is strong in these abilities but lacks particular technical skills is often much preferable to somebody who has the technical skills but lacks the bigger picture "meta-skills."  That's because technical skills are a rapidly moving target, and a motivated self-starter can generally acquire new technical skills much more easily than a technically skilled person can become a motivated self-starter.
Research projects are often good places to find this, as are large personal hobby projects.  If you don't have any of these, class projects are a reasonable fall-back, though they will often be viewed with more skepticism, since they tend to be small in scope, have no "customers," and are often somewhat "spoon-fed."


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How should I react to seeing another student cheat on an exam?
Today I took my midterm exam for one of my classes.  I saw that a student next to me was using her phone, and as I turned my head she hid it. At the end of the exam I wrote a note to my professor, I didn't mention the person's name, but I said that such type of behavior is not acceptable and that he should notice it next time.
I am kind of nervous that I will get in trouble for it, Did I do the right thing? What if the professor penalizes me?  I studied really hard for this exam and I figured that it wasn't fair for my classmates and I to see a cheater get a good grade, and us a lower grade.

You will not get in trouble with your professor. Demanding that your professor see this next time, on the other hand, is hardly a reasonable request. I can assure you that they tried to spot cheaters. Knowing that cell phones were used might be helpful. I've never cheated and seen plenty of cheating around me. I find it best to just shrug, although others at Acad. SE will or might disagree on this last point.

You should state where this situation happened. Attitude towards cheating is matter of local "unwritten rules" and sometimes even varies from professor to professor. In some places cheating is major offense that may get you expelled. In others it's merely a nuisance and the worst thing that can happen is having another take at the exam.

@Agent_L Sometimes the local rules are completely written, as in the case of University honor codes, etc.

@I think you're completely missing the point. Sure, there may be written rules, but how and if they're applied is completely a matter of local culture and traditions. In many cultures, what's written on paper may be completely orthogonal to what's actually happening. This may be especially unusual for people who come from cultures where the unwritten rule is that written rules are applied.

What was the total potential advantage of a single phone glance? I'm inclined to side with the comments lamenting hyper-vigilance of minor infractions and anonymous accusations. You'd be hard pressed to offer grounds for a reasonable suspicion, let alone probable cause.

Much better to tell this to the professor in person, rather than writing a note. Ask your professor if he thinks you did the right thing in reporting it. You'll see what kind of environment you're in by the reactions. Also, why don't you have a chat with other students about cheating, and see if everyone agrees it should be stopped.

@AndrejaKo However, if an ethics code is written that specifically states that witnessing cheating is to be reported, then the OP would have violated the letter of the law by not reporting. If it does not, nor does it mention what one may witness others do at all, but that cheating is prohibited, then the OP, perhaps, might have violated the spirit of the law by again not reporting... if, on the other hand, there is no ethics code at all (I've attended institutions with all three variants, btw), then the OP would have violated nothing at all, and the only code is personal.

I don't think it's really that unfair to other students. A cheating student can possibly get a better grade, but in the end of the day that's only the grade, not the knowledge. So cheating is unfair to the cheater herself, not to others.

Assume the worst case scenario - that this student is using their phone to cheat and the information in the course is available in some readily usable format. They will still never be as fast in getting the answer as someone who actually studied and knows their stuff, even without having to continually check and hide their phone. They might even do well in the course, but their grade will never be better than someone who actually studied hard. At best, if they're never once caught, they waste years of their life in school without learning anything. They have nothing but a number on a paper.

You were right to inform the professor of cheating, and you shouldn't be penalized for that: your grade in the exam should depend only on what you wrote in your answers and nothing else.
However, I don't understand your motivation in writing the note. You should consider what you were trying to achieve by writing it. The way you describe it, the note sounds like it was lecturing the professor on how to do their job, rather than doing anything about cheating. You describe cheating as "unacceptable" but, by not naming the cheater, you show that you're more willing to accept cheating than the consequences of standing up to it. But, of course, it's your choice and your evaluation of the consequences is the most important.
You should perhaps consider other ways of dealing with the cheating. Other options include writing an anonymous note naming the cheater to the appropriate administrative staff. If you're worried that that would still leave you identifiable because the cheat knows you saw them, you could just start discussing the issue with other people in your class. If it becomes common knowledge that some unnamed person was cheating in the exam, peer pressure might stop that person cheating in the future.

"common knowledge that some unnamed person was cheating" ... I think this lynch mob justice / peer-pressure tactic is an awful way to handle this situation, which may not even be a case of cheating. Maybe the student had an urgent concern (unrelated to the test) that required checking their phone?

@dionys I have not advocated lynching or even threatening anyone. Furthermore, I see no legitimate reason for using a phone in an exam. If you're expecting urgent and extremely important news (for example, if a close relative is gravely ill), arrange in advance that you'll give the phone to the invigilator, who can take the call if it happens during the exam.

Most of your answer is reasonable; my comment is in regard to this advice: "you could just start discussing the issue with other people in your class. If it becomes common knowledge that some unnamed person was cheating in the exam, peer pressure ...". [I can't imagine the 'unnamed' person stays anonymous very long--might even be attributed to an uninvolved third party. So my opinion is this a situation to be avoided.]

I agree with you in principle. But things are often less than ideal in practice. Other than the bit at the end, I quite like your answer.

@DavidRicherby one possible use: if you forgot to turn it off and it suddenly starts sounding in the middle of the exam.

Anonymous letters accusing someone - please no. We had so many of them during the communist regime and their secret police. Too easy to ruin someone's life with fabricated accusations. Anonymous letters belong straight to the bin.

Maybe the student had an urgent concern (unrelated to the test) that required checking their phone? — Then the student should have approached the professor and said, "Excuse me, I have an urgent concern that requires checking my phone."

@VladimirF For those of us who were fortunate enough not to grow up in police states, anonymous tip-offs do not have these connotations. Rather, they're generally treated as a pragmatic (though not ideal) way to deal with exactly this kind of situation: somebody has genuine concerns but is worried about potential reprisals if it becomes known that they were the one who went to the authorities.

This problem is not restricted to police states. How would you react to an anonymous letter stating that your wife is cheating on you? Does someone use a pragmatic way to bring your attention and is just worried to state his name or is somebody trying to ruin your relationship by defamation? You can't trust anonymous letters, they must go straight to the rubbish bin.

Surely, most universities have some kind of liasion that you can non-anonymously report such cases to (for reasons of legitimacy) and who then can take action while protecting your identity? (cc @VladimirF)

@JeffE: If I had an urgent problem, I would be happy if the professor would not tell the whole class about that. In other words, as a student, you cannot know whether or not the student approached the investigator about the phone.

as a student, you cannot know whether or not the student approached the investigator about the phone — That's absolutely right.  Which is why you should tell the professor that you saw someone looking at their phone, and the professor should say "Thank you for letting me know." and nothing else.

Depending on the university, there may be guidelines for what to do. My alma mater has this sentence in its full honor code document:

This includes an obligation to report violations by other students to the Honor Committee.

So at the university I attended, students are expected to report other students to the Honor Committee, not necessarily to a professor or anyone else. It is possible that some institutions or honor committees consider it a violation of the honor or ethics code to not report violations that you witness, although I doubt the punishment for not reporting is severe at all, in those cases.
If you have an honor code and/or ethics code or committee or anything like that at your university, then that's where you should look for next steps.

Great answer.  Your professor needs more institutional support -- more proctors, clear policy and enforcement regarding electronic devices, larger testing location to allow for more space between students and greater mobility of proctors.

First, I'd like to be clear that I agree with your opinion that cheating should not be tolerated; it is unfair to other students, and generally has a negative effect on both learning and motivation in coursework.
I think honestly informing your instructor about observations or experiences in an exam is generally helpful, and we are almost always greatful for the feedback. In general this should not be something you can "get in trouble" with your instructors over.
That said, I'd like to point out that you probably don't have any responsibility (or authority) to make judgements about your classmate, or the gravity of her offence. I know that when you are stressed by time-constraints and a challenging course load it is tempting react strongly to the thought of someone cheating. It appears that your classmate was doing something wrong, but the fact is that you don't know that for sure. If you think about it in that light, you might appreciate that you are relieved of this burden (judging her and deciding her consequences). Hopefully, your professor can look at the incident more objectively and take appropriate action and/or appropriate precautions for the next exam.
Your reaction, accurately reporting what you saw, was the right one. Now you should let the instructor deal with it, and avoid jumping to any undue conclusions.

I can't imagine any legitimate reason for using a mobile phone in an exam but I otherwise agree with your answer.

@DavidRicherby ... It's possible that the student who pulled out her phone was putting it in "silent" mode, or turning it off. "I'll probably get a call in 5 minutes, I don't want it to disrupt my or other students' work on the exam, I'd better turn it off." The student could even have been making sure it was off, although "using" seems to rule that out.

@DavidRicherby There are plenty of (not good yet not cheating) reasons why someone (especially someone with bad phone habits) might use a phone in inappropriate times, and might still hide it after noticing being noticed.

@david If somebody in an exam realises they forgot to put their phone in silent mode or turn it off, they should attract the attention of the invigilator and explain the situation to them.

There may be reasons for using the cell phone during an exam, but none at all for doing so in a stealthy way. If you have a valid problem, you'd speak to the examiner. If you don't, your problem is either invalid in the scope of an exam situation, or you are ... dumb.

@HansAdler Then she should have cleared that with the invigilator before the exam. And checking that your partner still loves you after an argument is emphatically not a legitimate reason to use a phone in an exam.

@HansAdler Non-accomodating examiners aside, that's fine. If you prioritise something else above the exam in this particular moment -- consciously or not -- that's your prerogative. But the rest of the world can't be expected to share these priorities. In particular, it's the examiners' prerogative to enforce the exam-room rules and fail you. So yes: priorities can be set and impulses can be acted upon, but please be prepared to face the consequences.

@HansAdler That said, if you can't make yourself exclusively free for an exam for a few hours, you are probably not in exam-taking condition, anyway, mentally or emotionally. That's a problem known and to be solved before the exam, though. Escalating in-situ is (almost) always bad.

@DavidRicherby Perhaps you can't, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. The point is that the judgement should be made by someone with authority, not a peer.

Your sense of justice is something to be appreciated. I don't see the reason as to why should the professor penalize you for reporting malpractice. But as for 'getting into trouble' part this may cause problems if any of your peers connected to the one you reported about comes to know of this. So best remain discreet about the issue even to your own colleagues.
Although the right thing to do, it is not something for you to get too concerned about; your main concern should be on your future. Initial reporting is good, but better not try to force the professor to take action. Students who do malpractice do not generally go far in course. They usually do this to avoid a fail than to score the top. When it comes to the end, it is the true skills earned that will determine their job. So, if they do cheat, then they are just cheating themselves.

"Students who do malpractice do not generally go far in course." Some of the best cheaters are some of the most successful people in the world. Because they, erm, cheated.

I meant in the course they cheat in. Could you state any examples otherwise, @LightnessRacesinOrbit?

@ÉbeIsaac Schön got his PhD, a job at Bell labs, and several international awards.

@Davidmh: The society is not composed only of outliers (notice I used the word generally). If a few examples can outrule facts then the need for education itself would be questionable as there are quit a few examples of people excelling without it.

You noticed the use of a phone and put your professor's attention to the fact that a phone was used (possibly for cheating). That's good, so next examination phones can be forbidden (or blocked). But you did not tell your professor: "It is your job to notice this. You failed!", did you? This might not be considered as appropriately polite.
Regarding the possible cheating it would be a point to mention whether it might effect you directly, for example if the top x % of a course pass, getting more points (by cheating) than you could result in you failing the exam (while you would have passed with your number of achieved points if the cheater would not have gotten more points than you). And if failing that course means failing your study, well, standing up an yelling "Phone!" pointing at it might be appropriate. (Otherwise this is not appropriate, of course.)

There are many students like you who often see such incidents but prefer not to complain because a cheater can never succeed more than a meritorious/hard working student. If you are studying well and doing hard work, then she can never get better grades than you. Mostly a student starts cheating when he/she loses faith in him/herself to pass the exam.
If you have reported the matter to your professor, then you have done a good job. Usually, professors take those matters easy and never make it complicated. So stop thinking negatively and prepare for your next exams.

I feel you mate, but my advice is - better try living without the need of things to be fair. That's impossible to achieve and you will be happier if you mind your own business without caring what other have and you don't. :) You should be proud of yourself cause you didn't cheat. And also try not to care about grades so much.. they don't matter. What you learn is what matters. As an example my boss now is 2 years younger than me and didn't finish university yet while i have bachelor degree.
Anyways, i wish you good luck, and try staying away of negative thoughts! ^^

"grades don't matter" is true in some contexts, and very false in others. Talking about graduate students, for example, after graduation grades are mostly irrelevant; but during the program, they are generally the only measure to assign funding, so grades can have profound financial implications.

they are generally the only measure to assign funding — This may be true in some fields, but it is certainly not true in mine.

@JeffE Unfortunately, it is also dependent on the university. In Denmark, a big part of what determines the funding for a department is based on how many students pass the various exams (yes, this is as terrible as it sounds).

You know it is really depends on class and professor if they think cheating is serious professor will do something about it. My classmate caught somebody looked up cell phone while doing the exam. It is a moral issue. Cheating is cheating I told my classmate. That person will not have any proud of in their life. How can you have life and will be able to tell other or their child about moral that make me sick to the stomach.

I understand you could feel angry seeing someone cheating and getting away with that, but I don't think reporting it to a teacher, professor or any board would be good. I believe it's good you didn't tell the professor which student had done it. To me naming such a cheater and reporting them to anyone would sound like informing. It's the person's responsibility and matter of conscience. If you are sure they cheated and are really angry about it, you could always tell the person you didn't like it. However, the person might just reply that it was not your business. Also, if it was a single occassion and the person just glanced at a phone once, I really wouldn't make fuss about it.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
Can a professor force me to submit my incomplete paper to a journal?
I am taking a graduate class requiring that I submit a paper to a journal at the end of the semester.  The professor sent out an email informing us that we can either hand off a copy of the paper in an addressed envelope to her, which she will then mail, or email her a copy of the submission receipt if we submit the paper electronically.
I feel uncomfortable submitting my paper at this time, and I intended to work on this paper with my advisor over the summer before submitting it to a journal.
My advisor told me that I should report this situation to the Chair and I did, but my complaint was passed off to the Director of Grad Student Services within my department.  The Director informed me that she had talked with the professor, that the professor would not change the requirement, and proposed that I submit it to a journal and then just immediately withdraw the submission.  That has been the plan, but I feel like my right to determine what happens to something that I wrote, my intellectual property, is being infringed upon by this professor.
Can my professor force me to submit my paper to a journal anyway?

I'm fairly sure that if you've gone that high up the chain and the answer they gave you was "Yes, he can", then the only answer we can give you is "Yes, he can".  Possibly if someone who read this knew your jurisdiction and was familiar with applicable laws they may disagree, but I don't think we have very many (actual) lawyers that frequent the site.  You could try going even further up, to a dean, but at that point you run the risk of burning bridges (whether your objection is upheld or not).  Perhaps you should view this as a lesson in "publish or perish"...

You should submit to the Journal of Universal Rejection (www.universalrejection.org). They promise to reject your paper :)

Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a snail mail address for the Journal of Universal Rejection, and their process does not indicate any receipts.

Can you drop the class?

I'm not sure who you talked to has the most authority, was it "the Chair," the Director of Grad Student Services in your dept, your advisor? If it's "the Chair" and they already said it's OK to publish later, then you may want to talk to them again & get some clarification. Or if it's the Director, maybe your complaint was not passed off with all it's details, and talking to them for clarification would help. And what did your advisor say about this decision?

I asked a very similar question a few years ago that might help you: Professor withholding course grade until submission of conference paper. A few important details were different in my case (the paper was only produced in the class and was not really my research or my advisors)

@PatriciaShanahan: That page does say "Submissions should be emailed to j.universal.rejection@gmail.com." A more telling problem might be no visible activity since early 2014.

@DanielR.Collins The class rules require "either hand off a copy of the paper in an addressed envelope to her, which she will then mail, or email her a copy of the submission receipt if we submit the paper electronically.". I don't think either can be done with the JUR, unfortunately. Otherwise, it seems the ideal venue for a paper that is only being submitted because of a class requirement.

This sounds like a very unreasonable request.  But let me ask: did you know about the required submission when you enrolled in the course?  Is it in the syllabus?  It would also be helpful to know your academic field: in my own (mathematics), a paper is a very serious thing -- often the work of one or more years by a single researcher -- and this request would be horrible but also a bit ridiculous.  Perhaps there are academic fields in which it is relatively common for "term papers" to be submitted for publication.  (Which is not at all to justify the practice, just to get context.)

By the way, if I were in your situation, I would seriously consider simply refusing to comply, stating your reasons, and taking it from there.  If you turn in your final paper to the professor along with a one page letter signed by you and your advisor explaining that you feel the request is unethical and therefore you will not be following it, then what is going to happen?  You are not doing any less academic work than the DGS's ridiculous hack of a suggested solution, but you are doing the right thing rather than the wrong thing.  You would have a great case for a grade appeal...obviously.

I see a couple of options if you conclude that not only can the professor do that, you must also submit your paper in the spirit of the class (i.e. not for immediate withdrawal). You could choose a journal with fast turnaround that is not your target venue, which will provide you some reviews that might help you during the summer. Or you could work hard to get the paper to a state of weak rejection or better. Submitting it to the journal of choice in this second condition might just help kickstart the process of revision that leads to eventual acceptance.

"The Director ... proposed that I submit it to a journal and then just immediately withdraw the submission" - That's ridiculous. Not only does it waste everybody's time, I think the professor could (and probably would) argue that submission followed by immediate withdrawal doesn't really count.

Submit it to wherever you hope to submit it at the end of the summer, and explain the situation in the cover letter.  Make it short and funny: editors are busy, but how often do they get submissions that ask to be rejected?  Then you should get a really quick rejection with encouraged resubmission. =)

@PatriciaShanahan what is so special about the journal of universal rejection? OP can create his/her own journal - the InterGalactic Journal of Pointless Paperwork with a postal address:  InterGalactic Journal of Pointless Paperwork / care of OP / {OP's street address} / {OP's city, state, postal code} {OP's nation}.  As editor, OP can accept or reject OP's submission at OP's discretion.

Having forced submission as part of a course requirement is idiotic. Even the brightest researchers need more than 4 months to do enough quality research, and to write a quality paper. I would expect far less from graduate students, so the timeframe itself is unreasonable; I don't see how anyone could get something journal-ready in 4 months. If the goal is to get students familiar with how journals work by actually doing it, it would be a much better idea for the professor herself to mock the journal process for the students.

A quick note: it's not really your intellectual property that's really at stake here (though there is some damage if the journal will require you to transfer copyright in the piece to them), but rather your moral rights to the integrity of your work. These rights also matter! They're part of the foundation stone of academia, and you should consider pitching your case (at least partly) in those terms.

@DanielR.Collins: that the last activity is from 2014 is not worrying IMO. They say on the webpage that they've switched to yearly publication. Many journals backdate their issues, so it's not too late still for them to publish a 2015 issue.

This sounds like a professor that used to make ESL students practice ordering pizza here on campus by requiring them to call a real pizza place--then end the conversation by canceling the order.  Neither my wife nor I could convince her that this was both rude and abusive of her students.  She only fixated on the idea that since the students canceled the order they were not out any money, so no harm no foul.

@mmh - JUR - what a timesaver!

Stick up for yourself! If you don't want to do it, don't do it. Explain politely but firmly why.

I find this highly annoying that a professor would assign something like this. Submissions take time, time the editors invest, time the reviewers invest. To have student papers submitted that are perhaps not exactly the highest quality is a waste of resources. Journals should record only the best science, not be considered a machine. Did the professor stipulate the journal? There are many journals out there that offer pay-to-publish, and then there is another potentially sub-standard non-peer-reviewed paper out there for search machines to find. I would submit a written complaint about this to the dean.

This. It's irresponsible to have this as a requirement. Submitting papers that aren't ready is not only a waste of the editors' and reviewers' time, but if it does get published it ends up permanently attached to the student's name. And from the question, "the professor ... proposed that I submit it to a journal and then just immediately withdraw the submission," which is an even more pointless waste of people's time, and damages the student's relationship with the editor while accomplishing exactly nothing. Not publishing prematurely is the right thing to do and should not be penalised.

...and not only that but submitting an incomplete version will make it harder to get the final version published if the student does spend the summer working on it. There's just no sense in this at all.

The professor's requirement that you submit for publication a paper you do not want to submit, and the advice from the Grad Studies director to submit and then immediately withdraw your paper, are both unethical, harmful, and -- for lack of a better word -- idiotic. They are asking you to:

Use false pretexts to waste the time of busy professionals who have no connection to your course or to your university; and
Risk seriously damaging your own scientific credibility by submitting for publication a work that does not live up to what you consider appropriate standards, and (if you follow the suggestion to immediately withdraw the submission) professing to do so out of a dishonest motivation.

I see this as analogous to a criminology professor making it a grade requirement for their students to call 911 and report a fictitious serious crime as a way of learning about how the criminal justice system works. This is obviously wrong, and arguably asking you to be complicit in outright fraud. In academia, your reputation and credibility as a researcher are among your most prized possessions, and I would strongly advise you to not take any action that you perceive as risking those assets, whether it's by publishing a paper you are not satisfied with, or annoying a journal editor who is a fellow member of your scientific community with spurious article submissions and withdrawals.
My recommendation is to ask for a meeting with your department chair and go carefully over the situation and the implications of what you are being asked to do, and ask them to intervene. Another option is to enlist the help of your advisor who could help you argue your case. Much would depend on whether your advisor feels comfortable intervening, on local power politics within the department, the precise level of seniority and personalities of the people involved, etc.
Another insight I can offer is a guess about the human dynamics at play here. My experience is that when the system fails to correct bad decisions of this type, the way it happens is often something along the following lines:

Your professor is a (probably senior) person with a somewhat stern personality and rigid views about education of graduate students. She is well-intentioned, but on this issue she is simply wrong.
Your department chair is extremely busy and doesn't always have the time to deal in detail with any complaint from a student, so passed the problem on to the grad studies director. However, if you insist on escalating the issue the chair may have to (perhaps reluctantly) take the time to look more into this issue and possibly intervene.
Your director of graduate studies may be a sensible person, but like many academics may be a non-confrontational person who doesn't like getting in nasty arguments with colleagues, and was reluctant to force the issue even if she disagreed with the other professor, and came up with the "submit-and-then-withdraw" proposal as a kind of cop-out solution.

I'm assuming that the people involved are mostly reasonable people who have good intentions but need a bit of help reaching the right decision. I can't guarantee that this advice will work, and it's possible that you are in a dysfunctional department where unreasonable decisions of this sort cannot be corrected very easily, but I think it's worth a try.

Now I understand where I get all these papers from to review which look as if the supervisor didn't do a proper job - this is called "outsourcing". The OP should be careful not to reveal the identity of the institution, or it should get a warning that it is going to go straight onto the "reject on sight"-lists.

There are two parts to consider:

Your professor can very well make "have a submission ready paper" a criterion for passing a class. She can not force you to submit it, since you could just accept not passing the class. It has nothing to do with "but I feel like my right to determine what happens to something that I wrote, my intellectual property, is being infringed upon by this professor.". I am pretty sure if you tell her that you don't do it, she will say "ok, you dont pass the class" and you can just repeat it.

but

The Director informed me that she had talked with the professor, that the
  professor would not change the requirement, and proposed that I submit it to
  a journal and then just immediately withdraw the submission.

Frustrating that this should be the solution. I think that one should inform the journals in question so that they should just ban all submissions in this context. Institutions which, despite obvious and known severe problems with a paper encourage theirs students to send these papers are behaving unethical.
What your professor should do is check the quality, and judge the quality of your work, and if it's appropriate, give you more time, or fail you if your work (or project duration) is sub-standard in comparison to your peers. Pressing submit buttons is not an academic achievement.

My advisor told me that I should report this situation to the Chair
  and I did, but my complaint was passed off to the Director of Grad
  Student Services within my department.

Try it again. But this time, if they recall your first attempt, tell them that you made a mistake, and that you shouldn't have asked for a special dispensation.
By asking for special treatment for yourself, you may have indirectly implied that you were ok with the other students still making bogus submissions.
The fact is, this assignment not only has the potential to tarnish your own reputation, the reputation of those other students taking the class, but also the reputation of any student from the same school (not taking the class) that may submit legitimate papers to those same journals.

A little math-guy-in-a-math-ed-setting moment...file this as a "WLOG" confirmation for the OP, perhaps: not only was I made to do this same thing, but (to raise the pot) it was 1) meant as merely an exercise in the preparatory work needed to prepare a manuscript for publication, most specifically transforming the dissertation into a journal-ready edition (but not at all worth hitting the brakes at the last second, oh no); and 2) it was required of the entire class in question, the penultimate course prior to the actual dissertation itself.  Thus (3. corollary) it was true for every student in this penultimate course taught by this veteran professor, and since she was the only person who ever taught it (4. extension) it was required of every student who pursued a Ph.D. in this field at this particular school.  Talk about a shotgun blast of uninteresting, unpolished, nowhere-near-finished (hardly begun, to be precise) theses for those poor, hapless saps at the journals in question to have to field (slash, redirect to the circular file). Oy vey!

This does not really answer the question. If you have a different question, you can ask it by clicking Ask Question. You can also add a bounty to draw more attention to this question. - From Review

How does this not answer the question? OP asked if a professor was allowed to force students to submit their incomplete paper to a journal. I gave a specific (personal) example of a professor doing so not only for myself, but for an entire classroom. How is that not precisely what was asked for?

Just that the same thing happened to you does not imply the validity of the process.

Answering a question with "hey dude, it happened to me" isn't answering the question; when someone asks "can a professor do this to me" they're really asking "if they ask me for this, can I challenge it and have a leg to stand on?" Ranting about your situation for catharsis' sake doesn't really help the OP's case. I would also suggest breaking up your text a little bit and perhaps meandering a little less, which would help the quality of your answers.

If that is the stipulation of the class, then the best thing to do is to comply with the stipulation whether you feel like the paper is ready for submission or not. Treat this as an academic exercise. Should you refuse (which you have a right to do), but that will probably earn you an failing grade on that assignment. This request for submitting a paper to a journal appears to be common as it teaches students the process preparing a document and submitting to a journal. Another thing this type activity does is encourages students to write at a higher level. During my first graduate class, I had to do a book review and submit it to a journal.
Administratively, professors have deadlines of their own and have a timetable as when to submit grades. In this case, what does the professor do with your grade? Is your grade for the class marked as an incomplete? Can a grade be changed in the system after a certain date? The professor’s decision likely goes beyond that of wanting to see you have a published paper.
If your paper fails to meet the quality criteria of the journal or loses to the competition, it is likely that the journal will not accept it. Given this scenario, you can still work on the paper and bring it to a publishable state. One condition is that most journals will not accept a submission if the article is being considered for another journal. This can take anywhere to several weeks to several months.

+1 For the "incomplete" grade suggestion. OP should negotiate for an incomplete and plan to submit at the end of the summer.

-1: "If that is the stipulation of the class, then the best thing to do is to comply with the stipulation whether you feel like the paper is ready for submission or not." It is not at all clear that this is the best thing, as the OP already explained.  For instance, a silly publication could hurt his professional reputation, and a premature publication of work which is being done with / assisted by his thesis advisor sounds even worse.  "Should you refuse (which is in your right)" Yes.  "[T]he professor can always refuse you a passing grade (which is in his or her right)." Not at all clear.

Per you comment:  "[T]he professor can always refuse you a passing grade (which is in his or her right)." Not at all clear. I added a clarification that the failing grade is for the assignment. That is if the student fails to submit an assignment, then the logical result is an F/0 for that assignment..

It is not at all clear that an F would be justified even granted your premises. If a student only writes 2/3 of an essay, I would not be justified in giving it a 0 or, even, automatically failing it. No more than it would be justified to assign an F to an exam script which answered only 3 rather than 4 questions or whatever. Presumably submission to the journal is not the entire assignment - even if this is admitted as a legitimate part of it. [Also, if the practice is widespread in some disciplines, that doesn't make it any less unethical. So much the worse for those disciplines.]

@TonyH: Your response only make sense in the most narrow sense: the professor can say that the student got a failing grade on the assignment, but she may well be wrong to say that in a way that will get overturned via an appeal.  University professors are simply not authorized to require students to follow all their whims in order to get passing (or whatever) grades.  If the assignment is to kiss the university president on the nose and the student refuses, then in your sense "the logical result is an F/0 for that assignment"...not a very useful sense.

"This request for submitting a paper to a journal appears to be common..." Appears to whom?  I and many other lifetime academics are indicating that we've never heard of the practice and find it somewhere between outrageous and ridiculous.  Knowing that parts of academia can differ widely from other parts of academia, I am willing to countenance the idea that there is a branch of academia in which this practice is common...but your answer is not a contribution until you provide information about this part of academia, in particular explaining how the ethical problems get resolved.


text:
Can authors from certain origins really not know about the gravity of plagiarism?
With respect to some cultures, in particular Asian ones, one often hears statements such as the following:

In this country, copying is regarded as flattery and thus people do not know the evils of plagiarism.

or (taken from here):

In some traditional cultures in Asia and the Middle East, for example, college students are expected to quote or paraphrase the best known political or religious authorities without attribution because readers, especially professors, are expected to know what texts are being circulated. Indeed, it might be a serious insult to the teacher if the student writer formally cites the text being borrowed.

Such statements may nourish prejudices or lead to it being considered an extenuating circumstance that a plagiarist comes from a such a country (see, e.g., this answer or this case).
I wonder whether this phenomenon really has the extents that would justify the latter, more specifically: Is it conceivable that somebody makes it to the point where they author a paper or a PhD thesis without knowing that they must not plagiarise? Or: Can authors really commit plagiarism out of inexperience on this level?
Note:

I am primarily interested in anything going beyond personal experience (there are individual statements in this article). A scientific study would be ideal, but is probably not the only possible way to fulfill this criterion.
This is not directly about how the respective academic cultures nourish plagiarism and what aspect of the culture is behind this.

As all the answers so far have ignored this: I am not asking whether cultures differ in their attitude towards plagiarism – they clearly do. I am asking whether these differences reach a certain level.

To simply echo the question: yes, based on considerable personal experience (dozens of cases), for some students it is essentially inconceivable not to copy verbatim, and typically without attribution, apparently not at all understanding that (in my context, U.S., ...) this is a serious no-no. In discussions with the people in these cases, it was very difficult for me to get through to them: they were convinced that I was speaking figuratively or had misunderstood their intent (which was to quote the most authoritative sources, etc.).  ... [cont'd]

... That's why I started having "draft submission" so I could detect this and tell them that it's against the rules before they committed to the final copy of a writing project... After all, the notion of plagiarism is "a social construct", not an absolute. I think in the vast majority of the cases I dealt with, the kids (many grad students in CompSci...) were acting in good faith, and thought "research" meant ferreting out sources other people hadn't seen, or were older or... something. But no bibliography...? It did surprise me greatly at the time.

@paulgarrett: Interesting (in particular as it clearly contradicts the quotes from the link that I mentioned). However, if I understand correctly, this is for student work, not on the PhD thesis or paper level, right?

Right, yes, I've not witnessed this quite at Ph.D. level.

This is not from a study, just my experience (in central-eastern Asia). I have see many, many cases of plagiarism. In every case, the student admits that they knew it is wrong but they did not have time to do it right. I believe the issue implied by GKS in the answer: Many teachers here do not do authenticity checks and, therefore, students get in to bad habits. I have seen this at the undergrad level and also in master-level classes. I have not seen a single student claim it was culturally acceptable (and I have asked hundreds of good and bad students).

Maybe they just don't have a key for western style quotation marks on their keyboards?

The only unintentional plagiarism I can think of is the kind where you've cited a work and lifted a passage without using quotes or without appropriately linking the two (e.g. citing a work in a bibliography but not a footnote). That really could be poor instruction. But that's a mistake that should only be forgiveable once...

The OP seems to potentially be confusing himself between two very different questions: "Can they write a thesis and not know they must not plagiarize" is actually very different from "Can they write a thesis and not know Western views on plagiarism"?  The former is rather easily established positively, as it is very strongly tied into the relevant culture.  If it's okay in their culture, then they will definitely not know they "must not" plagiarize: they are likely to know that they must plagiarize!  The other one is less clear.  The internet can provide that information with a random click.

@zibadawatimmy: Those questions are only different if there are actually universities or publishers out there, which do not even condemn plagiarism in their rules (even if the culture is totally against this), which my research to this question did not make seem very likely (if you have contradicting evidence, let me know). — What information can the Internet provide with one random click?

@Wrzlprmft Virtually any information whatsoever.  Click random page on wikipedia and boom, random info on a wide variety of topics.  Plus the usual cornucopia of links you can find on websites and social media.  I've been given the understanding that not all Japanese universities formally distribute a policy against plagiarism, but don't have a link.  It's hearsay from students in Japan, which may not be reliable.

@zibadawatimmy: But what do you conclude from that? You can easily find that a rainbow does not have seven colours, yet I strongly assume that that’s what most people think.

I'd say this: In general, yes, people from a culture with one set of norms or mores going to another culture in which they are not aware of the latter's norms and mores, in which the latter conflict with the former, run the risk of breaching them. Moreover, if the practices which conflict are so habituated, then this risk may be substantial even if informed, due to nothing more than sheer habit.

Does that mean it should be given a "pass" in your own country? Of course not, but it does mean, I think, that one should exercise a bit of understanding during the process of actually handling any infractions that arise.

I am not here to create or perpetuate stereotypes. I just want to make an attempt to explain it.
Yes, in my personal experience, in Asian countries, scholars fail to understand the basic concept of plagiarism. Let me give a background of myself, I finished my undergraduate in India and currently a graduate student in USA.
In almost every American University, there are clear rules imposed on assignments and laboratories. There are certain honor codes and honor committees which oversee the description and prevention of plagiarism. Plagiarism check software are utilized too.
However, in India, howsoever unbelievable it is, there is no concept of weekly assignments in most (just a qualifier) of the Indian universities. At most, students are required to complete one (or two) assignment in a semester. The assignments also happens to be most boring ones. For example, "write report on recent trends in "Biomedical Instrumentation"". Unfortunately, even in those assignments, the grading patterns are usually (again, just a qualifier) binary, i.e. you get full credit if you submit the assignment and zero credits if you fail to do so. Thus, there is no mechanism to evaluate the thought process, the research skills and plagiarism related issues.
However, the concern is, when even most of the professors fail to adhere to plagiarism rules. The reason being the professor evaluation schemes utilized in most (you know, it is a qualifier) of the universities. You are supposed to come up with these many conference papers and these many journal papers for doing fairly well in yearly evaluation. No emphasis on the quality of publications is established. To take advantages of such a sad situation, several conferences pop up from nowhere giving professors opportunity to meet the evaluation requirements. Some of these conferences are pathetic. How pathetic? You can submit a single page paper, for starter; You can submit paper as late as just a week before the conference. And what else is incredible, the conferences bear tags like "IEEE International Conference on _______ _______ and ______". Really? Yes, I know it's sad, but it's true.
These are what I believe the main reasons of why Indian scholars are so much at risk of plagiarism.

This isn't really related to the issue of plagiarism, but not having weekly assignments is not at all specific to India, in my native France also (at least in universities, as opposed to prépas and grandes écoles which I do not know well), weekly homework is rarely assigned, and even when it is assigned it is rarely graded. The attitude is that if you don't want to work, more power to you, you will probably fail the midterm/final exam and that's your problem.

This explores the culture behind the plagiarism and the prevalence of plagiarism in these countries, but what about my central question: Can they really not even know, when they are at the level where they publish a thesis or a paper?

@Wrzlprmft Think about it for a minute. How do you acquire the knowledge of ethics (or basically any knowledge)? Primarily by conditioning through your environment (social pressure), secondarily by thinking long and hard about the good and bad and maybe arriving at the right conclusion. If you don't have time to think about ethics and there was no necessity to do so in the past you will most probably not know what is right and what is wrong.

@Nox: I am aware of this. However, there is a big difference between growing up in a culture that nurtures plagiarism and not even knowing what the Western academic culture considers wrong in this respect.

@Wrzlprmft "Do they really not know?" would be difficult to answer.  If these students have had reasonable access to the internet for many years, one would imagine not. If by nothing else but chance they would have likely stumbled upon this concept.  Do we believe they've all had access to the internet for a long enough period of time?  And even if they have, and did encounter this notion, how much did it really register?  Did they think it some antiquated relic that nobody really pays attention to?  And if they have no aspirations outside their country, would they care to even remember?

@zibadawatimmy: "Do they really not know?" would be difficult to answer. – Make a survey among such students and ask their opinion on a typical case of plagiarism. I am no expert in designing surveys and do not have the funds, but apart from this is feels pretty straightforward to me and I would not be surprised if this had already been done (hence the question).

Lack of the concept of plagiarism isn't just limited to Middle Eastern and Asian countries. I had a Portuguese teacher who caught essentially an entire class cheating. She said next time if we wanted an A without doing the work to just tell her - that grades weren't that big of a deal in Brazil. To clarify, she wasn't mad that cheating occurred - she just didn't want to grade copied assignments. This teacher was also the recipient of a prestigious international scholarship.

Some people have low standards. No culture forces you to copy-and-paste.
And although the stereotype is of a Chinese student copying full pages into his essay, the most  horrifying cases of concrete plagiarism that I known are from Germany, where several high-profile cases of literally copy-and-paste (not only paraphrasing a source) were found in doctoral theses works.
Most of these German academics defended their actions when they were caught. I don't know of any single case of someone admitting his wrong-doing. Somehow a scientific work for them was a patch work of other's works. The fact that they didn't cite the original work were for them a minor issue.

I fail to see how this answers my question. (Also, the popular German plagiarisers were politicians or similar and thus belonged to a group of people that is known for never admitting mistakes.)

@Wrzlprmft: most of those with low standards were not politicians. Some were politicians. And some were students that became politicians some years down the road. But the biggest group among those with low standards were the doctoral advisors, the assistants of the advisors, and the thesis committees. These all think that it's OK to have low standards.

+1 for challenging OP's stereotypes. Ironically, the OP seems to be German himself.

@PierreB: Please enlighten me about my stereotypes – where do I write anything that assumes a stereotype (other than about politicians)?

I don't know of systematic published studies of the problem, but I do know from having had students write essays on the topic that even American students have significant problems in correctly identify instances of plagiarism. So while they all understand that you should not plagiarize, they often do not understand what that entails. They best understand the requirement to set off verbatim copying in quotes and to pair the quote with a reference, and worst understand the requirement to not represent as your own something that you did not create. My opinion is that universities have made the situation worse by plagiarizing statements and policies about plagiarism (implying that no attribution is necessary in advancing an idea about what constitutes plagiarism, or how to avoid plagiarism). For example, dozens of people have committed plagiarism in talking about plagiarism, as this google search reveals. I have actually encountered foreign students who did not understand the word "plagiarism", everybody at the PhD level in the west almost certainly knows the word and knows that it is bad, but there is still a problem with not knowing what it actually is.

Your question sounds very western-centric. As if plagiarism was an obvious bad thing worldwide. No it isn't.
Is it obvious for you that you mustn't hand people anything with only one hand? It's known to be very rude, one need to always hand things with both hands. I learned this was important for Japanese people. I didn't know it. Other cultures don't know US or western Europe attitude as well.
For example in Poland one is not frowned upon when they plagiarize [or cheat or something], but only when they get caught [you can't even cheat? What kind of a student you are?]. We have special words for different kinds of cheating and you don't even have a word for cheating at school [to differ it from cheating on your spouse or something]. So yes, cultural thing.

While my question is asked from a Western point of view, I do not deny the fact that other cultures have different attitudes towards plagiarism. But as I already said elsewhere, there is a big difference between coming from a culture of plagiarism and and arriving at the stage of writing papers and not having even heard about the gravity of plagiarism in the global academic world. And the latter is what my question is about.


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NSF sponsoring scientist already having postdocs under their supervision
This question seems reasonably focused and of interest, but is perhaps unanswerable. I'm a mathematics student graduating and would like to apply for the NSF postdoctoral fellowship. I wanted to know whether choosing an NSF sponsoring scientist who already has postdocs under their supervision damages one's chances of obtaining the fellowship. I'm not as interested in the question of whether such a sponsor will do as good a job in their role. I'm especially interested in answers which provide some evidence which bears on the matter. This seems slightly(very?) field specific, so answers from people with experience in mathematics or related fields are preferred.
Thank you!

You could ask the people in charge of the program directly.  They have no reason not to give you a straight answer.

I am not directly familiar with the NSF scheme, but for the NIH NRSA scheme choosing a PI with previous post docs is a huge benefit. In fact, from what I have heard from young colleagues, if the PI does not have current or previous post docs, the NIH likes to see a more experienced co-supervisor listed.


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What do co-supervisors get out of a PhD?
PhD supervisors usually get paid to supervise. They also have the prestige of having lots of students under their belt.
It's common to also have co-supervisor (I think it's mandatory in many fields, in Australia at least). What do these people get in return for their services? Put another way: if I'm asking someone to be my PhD supervisor, expecting them to help me out a whole lot for the next 3-4 years, what do I have to offer them?

Ph.D supervisors don't get paid to supervise in the US. They get paid to teach and do research.

Lots of students ≠ prestige.

We don't get paid to supervise. We have to find money to pay students.

I thought everyone made their students pay back 1/2 of the stipend in cash.

@DanielE.Shub sssh!

Lots of students doesn't imply prestige but it helps. And if they spread your ideas there's an indirect prestige gain.

Dave's remark on switching to the student's shoes and contemplating what you can get out of a co-supervisor is, in my opinion, a very useful one and should be of primary concern to students.
Let me put some personal perspective on this. I, as a senior post-doc, act as a co-supervisor of two PhD students (with some international twist to it within the EU context) and have colleagues who do the same, hence my observations below. Of course my view is one of a junior researcher, so take it with a grain of salt.
My benefits from being a co-supervisor are the following, in the order of subjective importance:

new horizons: the students act as drivers and catalysts of research topics I do not necessarily care for in a very personal and deep manner. It means  that I can broaden my horizons and get somebody pushing me towards learning something new. That is a good thing for me as a curious person, as well as for my career.
publication record: given the first point, obviously, if the students work well and our collaboration works well too, since I get as much influence on their work as they allow me, or ask me to, we get together some useful stuff done and get papers published. I would stress the word "together", where I rather take the passenger's seat and try to help wherever necessary, but the crucial decisions are student's. The finished and delivered projects, as well as papers are obviously a good thing for both of us, too.
project leadership experience: often the collaboration is in a context of a project, where, as the more senior guy,I would take the role of a project manager, or a team leader. Of course this gives me plus points to the CV as well, not speaking about learning how to do this kind of work. Another good thing for my career.
soft skills: by doing the above and by that closely collaborating with people with whom my bond is tighter than just a joint interest (as it would be with a member of my community from a different institution), in a way, we are supposed to work out our ways along each other. At least for me, that is a good training too and good for my life and career, whatever twist should it take in the future.
should the collaborating partner become a friend of mine during the process, I would add it as a benefit too. But obviously this one is not everybody's piece of cake.

All in all, the points above boil down to a single one: being a co-supervisor means for me to become and act as a senior buddy to the student and prepares me for running my own lab/group, should it become reality one day.

Co-supervisors play different roles, which may vary from individual to individual. Sometimes they are there as a backup, either in case things go wrong with the main supervisor, or if the student needs someone else to talk to. They can read the papers (and eventual thesis) of the student and may even participate in the research, adding a different perspective. In some cases, they can be more active than the supervisor (this is often the case if the co-supervisor is a post doc). Often they will be a part of the committee assessing the thesis in the end.
What does the co-supervisor get out of it? Well, a tick on his/her CV. Publications. Experience dealing with students. Contacts. Ideas. And work. In any case, it is part of what an academic is paid to do.
The real question should be: what do I, as a PhD student, get out of having a co-supervisor?

This is also the case in Australia (I'm assuming the OP is from Australia). They often also add domain specific knowledge, in the case of a cross-discipline PhD. The only notable exception to what has been said is that none of the supervisors (in Australia) assess the thesis, the examiners are all independent. As you noted in other comments as well, no-one gets paid over and above their normal salary to do this either (main or co-supervisor). It is however mandatory to have at least two supervisors in Australia, to be the emergency backup.

I would have thought it obvious what a student gets out of a (co)supervisor...

@naught101: you'd be surprised what is not obvious and what is assumed to be known.


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In conference review process, what do "author response" and "author notification" mean?
I just visited a conference website where organizers, for the submitted paper review process, listed a date for paper submission, a date for "author response", and another date for "author notification".
It's the first time I see this double wording.
I suppose that "author notification" is when they communicate to authors if their papers have been accepted or not, but what does "author response" stand for?
Thanks

actually it's a very interesting feature that some conferences give to authors, but (at least in CS) very few committees use them

It has to be a conference with a rebuttal phase, where the authors can answer the main points raised by the reviewers, who in turn will be able to draw more conclusive remarks on the paper itself
see also here: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/mckinley/notes/blind.html

I assume that during this period you can respond to any questions or criticisms raised during the review of the paper. After this round of feedback the final decisions will be made.


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Why is the city of publication important in most bibliography format?
Most bibliography formats require the city of publication for books. Why? In this digital era, ISBN would be way more important. But even before the digitalization of everything, why was the city of publication important?
I can imagine some purposes:

to distinguish potential same names of different publishers, and
to help book-seekers find the publisher and the book by actually visiting the city or contacting libraries in the city.

I want to know better stories about the 'city of publication'.

ISBN, ISSN or DOI is the accurate reference. Citation styles are somewhat grounded in the tradition and thus  are either holding unnecessary stuff or missing the unambiguous identifier.

Unambiguous identifiers are nice, and we should include them when possible, but they can't replace a clear, redundant, human-readable citation.  Plus identifiers have various limitations (they cost money, so low-cost journals sometimes do not use DOIs, and ISSNs have the irritating feature that every journal has two, one for print and one for electronic - this is sensible if you are using them for library ordering purposes, but it forces anyone else to make an arbitrary choice).

Human readability is nice and useful (and I am not saying that there should be only an identifier!). Also, I like when there are actual titles, not only names, as it makes it easier to guess the content, remember and then search (and also for traditional reasons (saving space on paper) there are often not included, even in e-prints).

Mentioning the city in the bibliography is important because sometimes the same edition published in different cities would have different pagination, and occasionally even redacted content. Therefore when someone wants to look up the original source, they need to have this additional information available to them.
Another important reason to keep the bibliographic information on place of publication is for reasons of style. Many of us might have bibliographies stretching a century or more, and it would look odd to mention place for some and not for others.
But naturally changes in citation styles are continual, and another element of the citation that is of lessening importance is the page number for journal articles. For one of my publications, I was actually required to remove the page numbers in the in text citation, because the relevant information is easier to find using a search engine rather than by leafing to the correct page in a printed copy.

By the way, do you know a good reference for the different pagination/redacted content issues?  I don't know much about early publication practices but would love to learn more.

@AnonymousMathematician A concrete example: Russel and Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (3rd Ed). the US edition is 1152 pages (published 2009), the European edition is 1104 pages (2013); there also seems to be an Indian edition and maybe a Chinese one, too.

In most cases, mentioning the city in the bibliography is not important.  It appears to be largely a legacy of older practices.  For this reason, I usually don't include the name of the city in my references, unless there is some particular reason to include it.

In older practices, why was it important?

Decades ago, it was not the case that there were just a few, multinational conglomerates doing essentially all the mathematical publishing in the world, for example. Thus, there were small publishers who'd be sufficiently not-well-known that their location needed to be specified. Further, there were no search engines, so it was difficult to find an entity if its location were not known.