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Why is it unethical to share the contents of an exam with students who haven't taken it yet?
Ever since I have known the term academic integrity, I have known that it is bad to breach it––I have known that it is in my best interest to maintain academic integrity and in the best interest of all others. However, recently, I have been wondering why it is so detrimental to break academic integrity though only in the context of assessments. For example, consider the following hypothetical:

Background
Roger is a student in university in History class 1. Jacky is in history class 2. Both classes are of the same curriculum. Roger has a history exam on Monday. He studied hard and took the test. There was one question that he did not know the answer to.
Situation:
During lunch, Roger told Jacky about the test, that it was easy for him but that there was one question that he did not know the answer to. He tells Jacky the question. After lunch, Jacky found the answer to the question that Roger told her about in her notes. On the exam, she got the question right.

Roger's grade was not harmed by Jacky's success. Grades were not determined through a stanine, percentile, etc. In the end, Jacky knew the material needed for the test, even though she was told what to study.
Why is it extremely unethical and considered a breach of academic integrity in almost all cases to share test material with others? What detrimental effects does it have on the person receiving the information/hints?

This is a legitimate question, but it is a broader question of philosophy and is not about academica. If you substitute "cheating on taxes", "stealing from work" and various other topics, the answer would be the same.

Even if the test itself is not graded on a curve, if Jacky would not have gotten an A in the course without cheating, then it affects her GPA, and that effects competition for all kinds of things, including everything based on class rank. So potentially every other student at the university is a victim.

@user6726: How does this equate to stealing from work or from the government?  Theft requires loss; what has been stolen from the school here?

If it becomes easy for a student at an institution to get a good grade in the class without knowing the material, what would happen to that institution's reputation? how would one distinguish between someone who has learned the materials vs another who has not, when both have the same grade/GPA/etc.?

@user2813274: In theory, the job interview would be where that is distinguished.  But in practice, I agree with your thoughts.

One thing that I have not seen mentioned is: why do these two different courses have the same question on their exams? I would normally expect examiners to produce new questions for each exam, so that students can learn from old questions. Expecting students not to talk to each other seems quite unrealistic and accusing students of being unethical after the lecturer was lazy does not seem like a good solution. Any system where people talking to each other confers an unfair advantage is a bad system IMHO.

@MasonWheeler, the school and Roger both have reputations which they earned: Jacky has a reputation that he has not earned. Since reality of Jacky's qualifications do not match his assessment by the institution, the university's reputation suffers, and with it, that of honest students. Jacky has taken reputation that he has no right to.

Unless I'm missing something, what the question describes is not a breach of academic integrity.  Are we supposed to believe that Roger's professor requested students not to share information about the exam after taking it?  Or that Roger knew that the same test would be used in Jacky's class?  If so, I think that one of these assumptions should be added to the question explicitly; otherwise, I don't see what the "breach" is.

I think the answers make it pretty clear that the answers would not be the same if the question was about "cheating on taxes" etc. - the question, and answers, address a scenario that is very specific to academia. I am voting to reopen.

Why is that cheating? Why is it not cheating for students to see exams from years ago?

Possible duplicate of When is it wrong to look at previous exams?

"Roger's grade is not harmed by Jackie's success" but next time they apply to a scholarship, Jackie might get it just because of this better grade.....Or when both apply to the same job, if their grades in the other courses are the same or similar, this extra question harmed Roger....Not to mention that Jackie might have an unfair advantage over the people in Jackie's class.....

Why do you think that cheating, or more generally any breach of academic integrity, has to be of direct and immediate detriment to each involved person? The basic idea, to my understanding, of academic integrity is that by violating it, the system as a whole suffers, which is clearly not the same as there are direct negative consequences for each involved individual.
In your example, cheating on a test* can easily be very positive for the individual that is cheating (assuming (s)he is not caught, and also ignoring that (s)he probably did not learn what (s)he was supposed to learn, which may lead to trouble down the road). Of course, for the academic system in total, cheating students are pretty bad, as they severely undermine the value of examinations.
Similar arguments can also be made for other cases of academic honesty - as a young researcher, it may be quite positive for me to build a great career on manipulated data and forged experiments, but for science as a whole this would clearly be terrible.
This of course leads to the question what incentives rational individuals have to not act against academic honesty. Those fall into two basic categories: fear of repercussion and ethics. Both categories are easy to understand. Clearly, it may work out great for me to cheat on tests and forge my data, but it may also easily be discovered and backfire on me - and if it happens, the consequences are typically dire enough that overall it is not worth the risk for most. Further, as academics we are nurtured in the thought that academic honesty is the foundation of science. Hence, many (most?) academics would not want to violate academic honesty for personal advantage even if they knew for sure that they would not get caught. It is simply our understanding that the entire system is based on academic honesty.

*By the way, your scenario would not ubiquitously be considered cheating. For instance, in my old alma mater in central Europe, sharing test questions with the next year of students is completely normal and a widely accepted practice among faculty and students. Goes to show that what is considered ethical also differs among regions and institutions.

+1 For the last paragraph. I'm constantly baffled by the "tests are secret" mentality here.

I wonder if test-secrecy is correlated with use of multiple-choice exams? The latter is both relatively harder to create, and more likely to be used as a standardized instrument for many people, classes, and possibly institutions. The effort in constructing it only pays off if it can be reused across time, and that requires secrecy. To my understanding this is more common in the U.S. (with standardized testing, larger class sizes, and somewhat less professionalized/empowered teaching staff).

Indeed, there is a difference between sharing a test with someone who will take a different test on the same material vs. the exact same test.

@DanielR.Collins: not sure - but I'm from central Europe as well, and I had a series of exams (9 during 1 semester IIRC) where we were positively encouraged to use the old exam questions (no multiple-choice, though) that were collected for about 30 years. The teacher even used the very same questions, but doing 9 exams over the semester he asked so many questions that there was basically no possibility for luck in which topic was asked: they were all asked, and we knew that.  And working through the exams of the last 10 years or so, you cannot help actually learning the stuff.

I find the sentence "as they severely undermine the value of examinations." It assumes that exam have value and b) even if they do, we care about them having this value. Assessment is useful because it helps a student judge what they need to focus their efforts on and judge their mastery. But under this the cheat hurts only themselves. It is only a problem if we see the job of university as credentialing rather than education. For more on that i was taken with this article: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/education-and-grades-are-often-direct-conflict-its-time-messy-divorce

Assessments are only meaningful if their results correlate with the underlying quantity they seek to probe. In the case of graded coursework, the intent is to educate; to leave the students with more knowledge and ability in the course's subject than before. If someone cheats on a test, then the test is not measuring what it is supposed to measure. In the extreme case, someone could learn the answers to a short test by memorization, and have no ability in the course's subject.
The problem with the way you have posed your question is the assumption that the students are simply supposed to know what is on the test, which is false. They are supposed to learn much more than that, and the test is supposed to be a fair way of measuring progress (and encouraging review of all the course material). Cheating on tests destroys their usefulness. They are no longer measuring and encouraging the learning that they are intended to.
This is a deep problem, related to Goodhart's Law in economics (when a metric becomes an objective, it ceases to be a good metric).
In your example, Jacky suffers because she has not been motivated correctly to learn. The other students, who didn't cheat, suffer because their grades are now less representative of having learned well in the course.

See my comment on xLeitix answer, there are also teachers who assume that they should test pretty much all the students are supposed to learn. The conflict arises if the exam tests only a small fraction of what the students are supposed to learn. From a statistics point of view, that means too small a sample of the students abilities is taken, and then the  problem that the the mark may not be representative for the student's abilities (here: too good) is more general: not only is there a risk that one student is lucky, other students may be unlucky.

This answer reads to me as more an indictment of the same test being offered in two classes than of the students’ behavior.

The answer isn't intended as an indictment of anything, just an explanation as to why cheating, as described in the question, is considered unethical. The general question of how to preserve the effectiveness of tests is interesting as well, of course.

Consider an oversimplified situation where the course covers 10 simple facts. Time only permits the instructor to ask 6 questions on the test. We can hope that, on average, a student who knows only 5 of the 10 facts will get 3 of the 6 questions right, and earn a score of 50%, which accurately reflects that student's knowledge.
But if someone tells the student what the 6 questions are, they can focus their remaining study time on memorizing just what they know they will be asked, ignoring the other material. They can now get 5 out of 6, or 83%, on the test, which does not reflect their true knowledge of the material.
Ask yourself this: If Jacky in your story was capable of learning the way to answer question 4 between the lunch and the test, why wouldn't she just do that anyway? Because knowing what the questions will be allows you to focus limited learning time on just what will be asked. The assumption that your mark on the test matches your overall abilities is broken.
If asked to predict which group is larger:

people who know more after the exam than they otherwise would have, because they were motivated to study part of the course material (your description of Jacky)
people whose mark on the exam is higher than their mastery of the material overall, because they could focus their studying on what would be asked

I would say the second group is far larger, and the existence of the first group does not make it ok to create even a single instance of the second group.

Why is it extremely unethical and considered a breach of academic integrity in almost all cases to share test material with others?

It's not a a breach of academic integrity when the students share test material. It's their job to gather knowledge. Questions do not have a label on them if they were ever asked in some test or exam. So what if Jacky read about the question in a book while preparing for the test? Or she was clever/distracted enough to flick through a related history magazine and saw the question there, which is the same source the creator of the test got the idea for the question from?
It's a breach of academic integrity when lecturers/professors/... are asking the same question in two different tests in a row, because of the possibility that it could be shared. It doesn't matter what the reasons for this behaviour are (for example, if it's difficult to come up with new questions/laziness/whatever). One shouldn't actively hide information related to the subject from the students. Hiding the information goes against the job: to teach. I recommend the exact opposite: make previous tests available to all students. This way students know what kind of questions to expect, have more material for preparation and it guarantees that there are always new questions in tests (to compensate for knowing about questions in previous tests).

I agree that it's better for tests to be different when they are administered at different times. At the same time, I disagree that the situation described is not a breach of integrity. To me it's like saying that if a homeowner leaves their door unlocked, then it's ok to take their posessions from their home.

@ToddWilcox That analogy is a common one used in ethics questions and it is apples to oranges.

I'm pretty sure if you read through a random sampling of honor codes, you'd be hard pressed to find one that didn't mention sharing of actual test questions as a violation. Just a quick web search yields an example on the very first hit: http://www.bioscience.utah.edu/documents/first-year/Honor%20Code%20Statement.pdf

@ToddWilcox in the situation mentioned above, we taught everybody to look for open doors, trained them on how find the most valuable possessions, showed them how to take those possessions in the quickest way (etc.) and we made it clear that this set of abilities is extremely important and now we should be surprised to find that our own possessions were stolen from our home which door we left open? You starved a pack of wolves almost to death for the only purpose of making them hungry and you are now surprised that they attack and eat you? Seriously?

Your examples of innocently running across the question in another source are misleading, since the entire point of a test is that the study material already contains all that's needed. Therefore, the only advantage to be gained is knowing precisely which questions are actually on the test, which is not knowledge available by any such means as reading a magazine or book. This unfair narrowing of attention from "subject of the course" to "exactly what's on the test" is precisely the ethical issue.

@NathanTuggy the point of the magazine example was to show that attention to a specific part of the topic can be gained by other means than students who wrote the test before. For a more concrete example the question could be to put current developments or statements into perspective to the course material (not uncommon in history), which means that merely watching the news might give an advantage to a student who then already has everything that currently happens in his mind, possibly thought about how it relates to his studied topic already.

@chalkchewer: And why would they know to put any special weight on that particular question, in order to be sure to remember it? They either a) learned it legitimately or b) forgot it legitimately. Either way, the volume they have to go through to be sure to get even one more question right on the test is enough that that's not a shortcut: that's simply testing a fair sample of what they have actually learned, the totality of which is impractical to test in full.

@NathanTuggy in my example(s), they don't have to know it, they don't even have to consider this special or particular in any way. They just watch the news and one particular story might be related to what they study, (sub-) consciously they think about it and make connections (or not, but they still think about it). The creator of the test watches the news as well and thinks that this could be a good question for the test. The student has an advantage in that test.

@chalkchewer: Again, they either remembered it (in the usual way you learn everything) or forgot it (because they had no particular reason to think about that). Everything on the test is drawn from the course in some fashion, so they should already be exposed to precisely this sort of random, undifferentiated learning opportunity. Finally, some small random variation is expected, but knowing previous questions allows systematic violation of that statistical variation.

@NathanTuggy and eliminating statistical variation of students' knowledge is a bad thing? I'd say mission efffing accomplished! I bet teachers would pay good money to know a way to pretty much mindcontrol their students to research certain questions. Turns out that giving them the questions of previous tests comes very close to that.

@chalkchewer: If all they know is what's on the test? Yes, that is incontrovertibly a very bad thing. (See other answers for fuller explanation.)

@NathanTuggy not just what's on the test, but what was on every previous test.

@chalkchewer: You're arguing two different things here. If they're informed of what's on every previous test (but not exactly what's on this test), I have no problems with that. That's not at all a justification for cheating to find out what's on the current test, though, or for teaching only to that.

@NathanTuggy yup, that's what I tried to express with my answer. It's somewhat moot to discuss the legitimacy of the source of knowledge of a student when the core problem is that the test got repeated with the same questions. Making previous tests available makes it clearly illegitimate for the creator to reuse them in another test (or he could reuse one old question as a bonus question) It's a more open, transparent and sharing learning environment than letting people sign honor codes with their own blood, which evidently doesn't work.

the entire point of a test is that the study material already contains all that's needed — [citation needed]

@ToddWilcox At the university I studied the relevant student organization had folders of old exams with answers. The lecturers were advised on how to send their exams there, so that they would have high quality electronic versions, rather than poorer quality scanned versions of exams with possible extra notes.

Any grading system that relies in tens to hundreds of students keeping a common secret is a failure and pretending it will work is somewhere between wishful thinking and unethical. In fact, business models based on hundreds of customers keeping a secret don't even work in fiction.
In other words, if you communicate the content of a test to whole classes, you are not sharing a secret with them: you are publishing it, and talking about it is not lack of integrity, it's just talking about public domain facts.
Reusing tests is possible, and it may have some (debatable) advantages, but it's up to faculty organizing the test to prevent flow of information to harm fairness for some students. For example, an institution I worked at prevented students to take away statements or any paper while ensuring that remembered and spoken information was not enough to noticeably affect grades.
Please remember that the way we evaluate students leads the way they learn.  If we grade them with a test where the only thing preventing them to cheat is a completely unrealistic integrity goal, we just teach them to break our rules. In fact, they will be thinking that we are just pretending to hide our incompetence or laziness behind an integrity curtain.
And just a final example: Would you tell your students "please answer the test without looking at the formulas in the blackboard" or would you clean the blackboard before handing the statements? And if you leaved the formulas in the blackboard, whose fault of integrity would be that?
Please accept my excuses if I'm offending somebody for being too direct. My English vocabulary falls too short to express those ideas with nice words.

Countries rely on thousands of people keeping secrets and while it does not work 100% of the time, it works often enough. Two reasons why people actually keep national secrets: Patriotism, and the threat of incarceration. Two reasons why students actually abide by honor codes: To preserve the integrity of their degree, and the threat of academic consequences. In my experience, there's nothing unrealistic about integrity goals.

It was unethical of Roger to tell Jacky about the question. If she answers it right in the test, there will be suspicion that she only knew the answer because Roger told her about the question. Which may be true, or may be false, but the suspicion is there.
Imagine Jacky had made a list of items to study each day, and this question was on her list for the last afternoon before the exam. She didn't know the answer when Roger asked. She would have learned the answer in that afternoon. So now she has the dilemma that if she follows her list and learns the item Roger told her about, and answers the test correctly, there will be suspicion of cheating. So what is she going to do? Putting Jacky into that situation is unethical.
In reality, I would be surprised if the exact same exam questions would be used on two tests at different dates at the same university.

I think it is very natural for students to discuss exam questions. But obviously a student who knows the paper in advance has an advantage, and therefore a student who know one question has a fraction of that advantage. If there were subgroups taking the same test at different times, I (as exam setter and marker) have always had them sign a form promising they would not discuss the test until the final tranche had taken it. I did not really police this vigorously, I just wanted them to be aware of the problem.

The breach is obvious -- there's an unfair advantage.  Even if the Bell curve isn't used, it harms the reputation of the Institution or the pedagogy of your professor.
It's as simple as that.  Now if you didn't want to live up to the rules given by your Institution, then you shouldn't have enrolled.
There are nearly zero exceptions.

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Why would a journal accept my previous paper for publication, but reject latest manuscript due to being "outside of the journal's scope?"
I submitted a manuscript last year to an IEEE journal, and the paper was accepted for publication. I recently submitted a new manuscript to the same journal, but, this time, the paper was rejected, and I was told that I should submit to another journal since my paper was not within the journal's scope. The two papers both target similar applications. Furthermore, the second paper uses some work in the first paper, making substantial improvements at solving a much more difficult problem. Based on the reviewer's comments (and my own personal assessment), I do not believe that the work presented in the second paper was "incremental" in nature. Far from it. Two of the three reviewers gave positive reviews. The third reviewer, however, mentioned the "outside of journal's scope" issue and the associate editor and editor-in-chief both sided with the 3rd reviewer, and the paper was stopped dead in its tracks.
I'm scratching my head trying to come to terms with how in the world my first paper could be accepted by this journal, but the second paper focused on the same application space and achieving substantial improvements on a much more difficult problem (backed up with measured results) could be rejected. Any ideas?

I'm not familiar with this situation, but is this something you could ask the editor? Not in a confrontational "I think you made a mistake" way, but more along the lines of "Could you explain the rationale to me, so that I can avoid this situation in the future?"

Could it be that "the scope of the journal" requires a certain amount of novelty?

@EnthusiasticStudent I kept your addition of the "rejection" tag, but I prefer the format of my original title.

@MadJack It's all up to you. Just to mention, you could also roll-back to your original edition.

@Ri49 Yes, indeed. (The above paper was eventually accepted by another top journal in my field.)

Four ideas:

It was really out of scope last time, but they either

didn't notice and mistakenly accepted it, or
didn't have enough in-scope papers to fill the issue, so they accepted yours even though it was slightly out of scope.

They made a mistake and your new paper is actually in-scope. However, you won't win any friends or improve your chances by trying to convince them of this.
The journal has changed scope slightly in the last year, or is trying to change scope slightly now, or different editors have different ideas of what the scope is (as suggested by NateEldredge)
There was some small detail about the first paper that made it in-scope which the second paper lacks, which we couldn't possibly identify for you.

can publication at the journal have gotten more competitive this year? I've seen cases where journals that used to be less restrictive become more selective after they experience sudden increase in submission (especially if they only have limited slots).

@socialsciencedoc Certainly, this is what I meant when I said that last time they "didn't have enough in-scope papers to fill the issue."

A variation on 3: Your last paper was handled by a different associate editor, who has different ideas about what the scope of the journal should be.

@NateEldredge This could very well be the case. Thanks.

@NateEldredge a very likely possibility, I added it to #3 per your suggestion :)

The question and most comments assume that the publication process is more rational than it really is. This happened to me very recently: journals A and B rejected my paper one after the other; in both cases the editor and/or referee said that I should submit it to journal C. So I did, and now journal C tells me (with reports from two referees) that my paper is interesting and technically correct,  but not a good fit for their journal.

I see no irrationality here. Journals A and B were simply mistaken in their assessment of how much Journal C would like your paper. That's not a huge suprise: Journal C knows itself much better than A and B know it.

Some irrationality (or randomness) definitely enter the publication process but the situation you describe is not an example.

There could be any number of reasons. Ultimately, since your two papers were different, it's perfectly possible that one was within scope and the other wasn't.
Perhaps your first paper was on the borderline of the journal's scope. Even if it wasn't, perhaps the extra analysis you had to do for the second paper was outside the journal's scope. For example, the people at CERN had to develop some serious computer systems to process all the data coming from the Large Hadron Collider. Those systems were completely necessary to solve the harder problems resulting from experiments with the LHC, compared to those done before the LHC was built. However, a detailed description of those computer systems would, I assume, be off-topic in a physics journal.
Also, remember that there are some papers that everybody will agree are within the journal's scope, and there are many papers that everyone will agree are out of scope (e.g., political history in a biology journal). Everything else is subjective: some people will say it's in-scope, some people out. Some people will say it's in scope today but, if you ask them again in a year's time, they'll say it's out.

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Responsibility to new PhD students regarding bad environments
(Given that the question was put on hold, I try to ask the question differently. If it is still off-topic I vote for deletion. Still having trouble grasping the question.)
If you know that an institute/department/adviser is looking for new PhD students, but you also know that this institute/department/adviser is really bad for a scientific career (e.g., high attrition rates, few if any get tenure) — what do you do?
On the one hand, no one likes a snitch, people who complain are often seen as bitter and as lacking loyalty. And it might be a question of fit.
On the other hand, there is responsibility to future PhD students (their careers and the other damage bad environments inflict).
There are guidelines for actual scientific misconduct (like plagiarism, fabrication, falsification), but is there anything for this kind of situation?

What does this situation have to do with critizing one's advisor?

You can run. Far far away. Now.

Re criticizing one's advisor — this person is part of the problem (and judging by other blogs, problems with advisers aren't rare). Thing is, if you criticize the institute, you also criticize the person who advised the thesis.

Re running away — yeah. My view is that if you are in a bad environment and cannot change it, get out as quickly as you can. But what is the responsibility to other PhD students here? After all, that institute is very good in presenting itself and attracting very good people.

I think your question is clear, but answers will consist mostly of opinions, so I won't vote to reopen. You're saying yourself that it might be a matter of personal preferences or fit. It's very unlikely that anyone here can give you the right answer. As a side note, what you described in your initial post didn't sound exceptional to me, I have heard about and seen many such academic hellholes.

@Cape Code Hmmm, it wasn't the only time I've encountered it either. I think these 'hellholes' are an issue that deserves attention, and I was hoping for some ideas on what to do in these cases — given that they aren't that rare.

I see no ethical quandary whatsoever in revealing your own negative experience / suspicions of systemic problems within an academic department.  It would be easier to argue that some ethical obligation cuts in the other direction: i.e.,
people should be informed about what they're getting into.
You don't discuss your current status in the academic community. Of course complaining about people who are in a network of your peers and superiors could have some risk to you.  (That's basically always the case.)  But that's not an ethical concern.  The need to be "loyal" seems a bit misplaced here.  Yes, loyalty is good, but it cuts both ways.  Some people / an institution had a chance to treat you well, and apparently they really blew it.  They can't reasonably ask you to deny or minimize it.
I will say though that complaining is tricky.  The problem with people who are bitter enough to complain is that...well, they sound bitter.  In particular, your description of this nameless department sounds a bit cartoonishly bad to me: I couldn't recognize it in the context of any of the academic skullduggery I have seen in real life.  For one thing, you almost seem to be saying that the
department faculty takes an active interest in crushing the dreams of students and postdocs.  To be honest, I am skeptical: crushing students' dreams can be hard work, and we are terribly busy.  For another, you imply that this department is viewed as exemplary and the terrible treatment and terrible placement of graduate students is totally ignored by your academic community.  Really?  In my circles (mathematics, US) departments are ranked in large part on how how well they service their graduate students: percentage of students who get through, time to degree, good placements.  Some places have a reputation for being "nicer" than others, but even a "not nice" top department does a better job of placing its students than a mediocre one.  Or so it seems to me, anyway.
So if you really want to complain effectively, I suggest you take the time to make your complaints factually based.  Can you assemble (in a solid, honest way) statistics to show that the department you talk about is bad for students?  People will take that a lot more seriously.

+1. If you follow the link, then this is actually 3rd party grieving: the snippet is what OP was told...and he reacted, apparently, not entirely dissimilarly from what you point out here ("maybe a bad fit?"). Hence, I don't think OP can elaborate. My hunch is that this was hyperbolic complaining to someone (OP) who wouldn't do that, but who takes others' words maybe a bit too much at face value.

Good points — and yep, the sounding bitter is a problem. And yeah, it was written in a hyperbolic way, among others, because it is also an emotional thing. I could have written it more neutral, but it would have missed some of the aspects of the problem. As for fact-based — having a look at the PhD students (attrition rates, tenure) is a way to evaluate institutes, something I'd recommend to all prospective PhD students. That would be a general recommendation. But what about making it more specific? (Can't put it better, still conflicted about the right course of action here.)

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Database of funded US Department of Defense (DoD) component grant proposals with abstracts: Does it exist?
I'm looking for a database of funded grant proposals with abstracts for various DoD components (e.g., DARPA, AFRL, etc.), similar to the one for the NSF.
The Federal Business Opportunities (a.k.a. FedBizOpps) website exists, but it doesn't list the abstracts, the information it does give is not really useful, and the search capabilities on that site are kind of clunky.
Does such a database of funded grant proposals with abstracts for
US DoD components exist?

For most DoD contracts, there is no database or similar system that allows you to get any sort of abstract.  I know this because our research librarians, who track this sort of thing and are quite good at their jobs, have told me definitively that this is the case.
If you really want information about specific projects, you could file a FOIA request, using something like the USA Spending site referenced in Aleksandr Blekh's post.  Note, however, that the intricacies of DoD contracting mean that it may be rather difficult to actually tell which contracts are associated with which programs: for example, many DARPA contracts are actually not concluded by DARPA, but by other DoD organizations acting on their behalf.  FFRDCs and other sorts of special cases further complicate matters.

You can search https://dodgrantawards.dtic.mil/grants/#/home and find DoD awards from 2014 to current.
"This website contains publicly-searchable descriptive abstracts of DoD grant awards from December 9, 2014 (the date of passage of the Act), along with other grant award information. Members of the public may conduct searches using a variety of fields and/or keywords, and view or download the results. For more information on the DoD grant award data available from this website, please see the frequently asked questions (FAQ) section under the Help menu."

I recommend you to review the following two databases (other sources might be available as well):

Federal grants, affiliated with US Department of Defense (DoD) (I see only posted and closed grant opportunities, but couldn't find how to get the funded ones - see the other source below.)
USA Spending Map (Here you definitely can get funded grant opportunities - just select Agency: DoD, Award Type: Grants, Fiscal Year and other parameters, if any. This database is also nice, because it offers options to either download data sets, or use its RESTful APIs.)

P.S. Should you become interested in DoD contracts, that information is available on their website.

The middle link is broken but here it is in the wayback machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20160404174019/https://www.usaspending.gov/transparency/Pages/SpendingMap.aspx

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No students show up to class -- what should an instructor do?
Suppose an instructor shows up to teach a class and no students are present. Assuming that the instructor's institution has no formal policy on such matters, how should an instructor proceed in such a situation?
If it helps to narrow down the question a bit, assume that the enrollment is no larger than ~20 students or so.
I am in the US, but responses tailored for other physical locations are welcome, too.
The above question was inspired by the following related one: Is it okay for a professor to leave the classroom only 5 min past the class start if nobody has shown up?

If the class is supposed to have 300 students in it, I would wonder about my watch. If it is supposed to have 3 students in it, I would wonder what happened, hang around a bit, and figure they knew where my office was. A wide range of possibilities in between. Isn't this too broad?

The official policy at my university is that attendance is required, except for documented emergencies. Following this policy to the letter suggests a draconian response to nobody showing up: Fail the entire class!

Bring a novel, and maybe a glass of wine, and enjoy the class your way!

I would teach the tables and the chairs.. it's like net practice in cricket.

At my former institution the rule of thumb was a lecturer waited 15 minutes and if no one turned up then the he/she was free to leave (this was common when the period was devoted to a problems class). However, even if one student out of the class turned up then we were expected to present the lecture.
The only case where I didn't follow this was one time out of a class of approximately 30 students one solitary student turned up. This was rather extreme so I checked and found that the students were on a field trip that day (I hadn't been informed which was rather bad) and the student who had turned up often missed lectures and had, apparently, missed the lecture when the field trip was discussed.
Because of this, the majority of students had good reason to be away I decided not to take the class since, effectively, the students on the field trip would have been at a disadvantaged through no fault of their own.

The following is a comment made on the related question by @JakubKonieczny (the comment has since been moved to chat, but I think it deserves to be included as an answer here):
"I used to be taught by a professor who had a clever solution for situations like that. Whenever nobody showed up, he would just... go ahead with the lecture as usual, thus lecturing to the empty room. To make things more amusing, because (as any mathematician will tell you) any member of an empty audience is a genius, he was able to speed up the lecture considerably. Of course, at the final exam all students were expected to know all the lectured material. Consequently, we were very careful to always have at least one student present at each lecture. [...]"

I disagree with the genius. Obviously, a member of an empty audience will have IQ 0.

I'm very glad to comment was of some use, thanks for keeping me in the loop! :)

@silvado: In fact, anything is vacuously true about a member of an empty audience. Equally well it could be said that everyone in the audience was an idiot. Or an emperor of China.
Wikipedia gives an example I found amusing:
"All my children are cats" is a vacuous truth when spoken by someone without children.

@JakubKonieczny I disagree. We can actually test that. If I put an IQ test in front of an empty audience to have them solve it as a team I presume the result will be 0. In any case, the result is an upper bound for the IQ of any individual member of the audience.

@silvado: In turn, I disagree. You are right in saying that the total result is an upper bound for any individual result; or to be more precise, for any member of the audience, their score is less or equal to the total score (which is zero). On the other hand, it is true that for any member of the empty audience, their score is both less than 0 and more than 0. A possible source of confusion is that if X is the empty set then (forall x in X, S holds true) does not imply (there exists x in X such that S holds true).

I'm assuming the professor has already checked they're in the right place, and they haven't got the time/date wrong, etc.
I would say as a good rule of thumb it would be acceptable to leave after 10-15 minutes if no one has shown up. While they wait, they can try to find out what's going on, e.g. check email/text messages to see if a notification has gone out that might cancel or reschedule/relocate things, or if several students are reporting an issue, such as a clash with an exam or field trip, or delay due to something running overtime, bad weather, traffic accident, etc. If the professor can determine what's going on, they can better judge whether it would be appropriate to wait a little longer for people to turn up, or leave immediately and cancel/reschedule the class entirely.
If they do leave, it may be a good idea for the professor to contact the students in some way to let them know what's happening, such as informing them of when the rescheduled class is, or redirecting any late arrivals to their office, either to fetch them for the class, or to replace the class with general homework help/questions/etc. A note on the board or door could be sufficient for the latter.

I do think that contexts for to this will vary so greatly that there can't be any one consistent answer. Obviously it depends on existing institutional culture and policies. And also number of students in the class (3, 30, or 300?) and duration of the class (1 hour, 2 or 4?). And level of the class (intro freshmen or graduate seminar?). And proximity of other resources like department or lecturer's office, so as to possibly direct students there (maybe you're at a foreign location where that's not possible). And availability of other work the lecturer can do (e.g., Sascha's answer about work via laptop).
Here's just one example for me: I'm in a pretty traditional math department in the northeast U.S. where almost everyone still lectures with chalk. A few years back when I did the same, I had a trigonometry class during a winter module at 8 AM (think: snowy January, not a residential campus, everyone's on the road, need to leave home before sunrise). Several mornings no one was there at the class start time; and yes, I did start writing the presentation on the board as usual. I figured students could show up and copy what was on the board, which was the only way they could get those notes (and that's what did in fact occur).
Now I've switched my method to use projected digital slides, which are all available for download off the school's learning management system any time at a student's convenience (for which I've had to request room changes outside our usual math department lecture wing). So there isn't the same motivation to mime-out the lecture in students' absence. This semester I had an intro programming course which several times had no students present at the 9 AM start time. In this case I just waited and did some reading until the first student showed up, and commenced a one-on-one conversation about questions or difficulties. Once there were 2 or 3 there I started the normal presentation.
In short: Good responses to this question will vary without bound, depending on context (e.g., even depending on the lecture format itself).

Thanks for your answer (+1). Good point about taking the lecture format into account.

Take out you laptop and:
a) check your emails (and if you have a mailing list, possibly mail the students)
b) assuming that your laptop is enough to work and there is wifi: start to work there (e.g. by checking and answering your other emails)

Assumes (a) One has a laptop, (b) one has legitimate work to be done that way.

Yes, if that is not the case, then waiting 10 min should do it.

I feel it is okay for the teacher to leave should there be no students showing up.  Almost every class has at least 1 person who shows up early.  For no one to show up after waiting x period of time, I would put a note on my door saying class has been cancelled due to no attendance.  Please see me in my office / faculty dept for notes.  This way, anyone who does show up late can still contact the teacher.
A teacher's time is valuable.  They have multiple classes to go through content and grade.  Multiple classes to prepare for.  Emails from 3-4 classes worth of students and class preparation.  To have no one show up is frankly insulting to a teacher no matter what kind of justification you make for why you showed up late or feel entitled to him having to sit and wait for 2 hours.
The best thing a teacher can do is post on the boards/door before leaving the class that it has been cancelled and that each student needs to find a way to make up the missing notes on their own time.  I say this because if you provide students with a way to just pick up lecture notes in your office or at a different time, you are reinforcing the notion that the students can skip class and just take the 5 minutes to get notes from your office and taking away accountability.  You can also set up a mutual block where you can teach the class again as a make up class depending on what the reason is for half the class not showing up.
To comment about the original question, weather is provided multiple times a day on tv, your phone provides weather forecasts for a week at a time as well.  A quick glance at tomorrow's weather will tell you if you need to wake up earlier or not due to weather.  Accidents are a bit harder to plan around but that is still not an excuse.  You should never plan to arrive where you are going within 5 minutes of that start time.  It leaves very little room for issues.  I feel in the original thread of this question, there seems to be a failure to communicate tardiness to professor as well as didn't do their due diligence to make sure they will arrive on time regardless of issues.


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Describing figures vs letting figures speak for themselves
I'm writing a journal article that involves many comparisons within and across groups. Visually, these comparisons are quite easily understood. However, describing them in text requires the use of long sentences with several acronyms and numerous references back to sub-parts of the figures.
In general is it acceptable in academic writing to simply say a couple of high-level sentences (and maybe point out some nuance that a reader might miss) about a complex figure and allow the reader to absorb the bulk of the information by viewing the figure?

... what about blind and color-blind researchers?

My university required alt-text descriptions in the final PDFs for all figures that would allow someone using a screen reader to understand the content as well as a sighted person.

It depends, if the figures are clear interpreted and if the paper draw the conclusions clear from the figures. To be sure, you can ask a researcher who has published papers in this field before on the clarity of the manuscript.

It is evidently true that figures/images can convey things difficult to convey in words (e.g., see Edward Tufte's The Visual Display of Quantitative Information).
On the other hand, the exercise of verbally approximating what may be visually apparent is in itself highly informative in various ways. Among others, your verbal approximation of the visual will partly explain to your readers your own interpretation of it, to which they can add or contrast their own. Or, they might otherwise fail to see in it what you see.
That is, with regard to the latter point, it is often good to "state the obvious", because the notion of "obvious" turns out to be subjective.

Another way to look at it is that if you do not give the 'verbal' (in writing) interpretations leading the reader through the figures, then it is equivalent to expecting the random reader to 'read your mind'.

Depends a bit on your field.
But, in general, I'd wager that it is a good idea to guide the reader through the image, towards the information you want to convey with the image. Not only by explaining, but also by annotating the image, exactly to ease such explanations. It is easier to reference/identify "the region denoted by (a)" than "the third peak from the left", for instance.
update (to clear editing confusion): What I said applies not only to the text that cites the image, but to the caption, and the image itself. Whenever you can make the image "tell a story", with a clear sequence of points of interest (guiding the reader through the image), it should improve the understanding of what you are trying to show.
An example of this idea:
https://www.computer.org/csdl/trans/tg/preprint/07192717.pdf

The point is to be as clear to the reader as possible, yet as succinct as possible, especially when there are limits to the number of pages or words or figures you are allowed to use in the paper. In general, however, it is not a bad idea to repeat the same idea both in figure and text. Bear in mind that many of your readers may not be familiar with the specialised subject of your paper. Also the journal might have some guidelines on the matter.

A good diagram is like a well-made comic. It's a balance: The picture explains those things which it does best, the caption those which it does best and (here the comparison ends) the text explains the details too long for the caption. Redundancy is ok where it supports understanding. Keep in mind: nothing is more frustrating than a picture with unexplained features, especially if the paper is interesting.

I was told that article shall be written in the way that all readers, listed below, won't lose the take-home message I want to give. There are ones that:

read abstract only (they who are behind paywall);
read abstract, conclusions and introduction only;
read text only;
read figures and their captions only.

On the other hand, the figures are supporting the claims you are writing in the body; you don't need to describe the figures fully but you should write what the reader is supposed to see in it - even if it may seem dumb or overkill to you.

It is possible to define a diagrammatic terminology and then use it, as long as the translation is deterministic and unambiguous. See for example how the proofs on pages 14, 19, etc. are done in this reference.


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Bare bones undergrad coursework, lack of experience in highly competitive subfield
I finished my 3rd year at a US public research university; however, since I switched majors 2.5 years into my studies (engineering to physics), I still have 2 more years to go. Because of this, I will only have the core undergrad classes under my belt (classical, stat., and quantum mech., as well as E&M with some relativistic treatments).
I would like to apply to high energy theory groups, but I get the impression that successful applicants all have had multiple years of graduate coursework in physics and mathematics at their undergrad institutions. Of course, I understand that research experience is far more important (and I think I do well in that aspect), but there's no doubt that the other highly qualified applicants have stellar research experiences as well -- with work in topics relevant to hep-th, no less.
My question, then, is whether this impression is realistic, or if I'm totally off-base and misguided here. My biggest concern is that, from what I have been told, a PhD in HET is not worth it unless it comes from one of the top 10 programs (due to the scarcity of positions and lack of funding afterwards). Again, this may be a total misconception on my part, but the prospects do seem rough (more so than other academic positions, I should say).
P.S.: FWIW, my interest in HET and cosmology grew from going through Anthony Zee's books on QFT and gravity (having self-studied the prereqs through a mix of Shankar and Griffiths), so I believe I have some idea of the actual nature/mathematics of the topics. However, I'm sure that saying something along these lines in my application, or how I go through the arXiv looking for papers I don't understand, is nothing short of pettiness. It would certainly be strange for someone with no formal experience in the subjects to profess deep interests in doing research in said field.

Too long. If you wish to be considered for a response, I recommend tightening and shortening your question to the point; I was lost in details and could not really see what you are asking.

@CaptainEmacs got it; I'll read Mad Jack's link again, and if I still have questions I'll edit/shorten my post appropriately.

A general comment: unless pursuing your goals would by chance be an irresponsible neglect of other responsibilities (family? etc.), and if the attempt would be what you'd prefer more than anything else, why not try? However rough the job market is, your chances are definitely worse if you don't try at all! But, indeed, these are not really "career choices", but choices based on passion. The attempt itself had better be interesting and fun, or the whole enterprise will not be rewarding...

@paulgarrett, My main concern is that it will be a waste of money (fees) and time if, as knzhou says, the there are certain tacit expectations that I simply do not meet. I would hate "losing" another year and putting off (the training towards) doctoral-level research just because I entertained some grandiose dreams. On the other hand, I accept that I might just be overly naive (or cautious) about this; one option is applying only to a few programs as HET, but whether that's a good idea I haven't heard many opinions about yet.

@knzhou, Thanks for the suggestion, I'll keep it in mind once I acquire enough rep.

Based on analogous possible issue in mathematics (my field): yes, if one wants any chance for admission to top-10-type places, minimalist undergrad coursework is likely a fatal problem. If one insists on top-10, then, more coursework is inescapable. (And the cost may simply be worth the gamble? Will it matter in 10 years?) But/and, then does one "need" top-10? Such credentials don't promise anything in themselves, in any case. And the dichotomy between doctoral-level training and taking more grad courses as an undergrad is mostly an illusion... Confusing premises, to me...

@paulgarrett, I mentioned the top 10 thing because I've heard such statements thrown around often; whether or not it is accurate is part of the reason for this question, but as mentioned by knzhou, it seems it would be better suited for a more specific audience. As for the last bit, when I said the bit about "doctoral training" I simply meant starting my PhD asap, nothing more (rather than getting rejected everywhere and having to apply next cycle, for instance).

Ah! In response to your last comment, @Banachspacefan, I might suggest/speculate that the (understandable) impulse to start a (hard science...) PhD sooner rather than later may lead to some failure-due-to-premature-attempt, which might be avoided without_loss by filling out pre-PhD prep better. But, yes, many factors to consider...


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Refworks Bibliography Output Style Choice, for Springer?
Refworks.com can output a bibliography, based on an output style list, which includes several hundred different output style choices.  Refworks Output Style List
However, the list does specifically include "Springer": see i.e.  Springer Bibliography Requirements
What is a similar Refworks output style choice/item, which is similar to the Springer requirements?

Sorry, I browsed the list and I'm confused: are you worried that the list DOES NOT explicitly mentions Springer?

I had not realized that "Lecture Notes in Computer Science" implicitly refers to Springer, so the Answer worked perfect for me.

The "Springer" document that you linked contains specific instructions for how to contribute to Springer Computer Science Proceedings. It also says:

You will find here Springer’s guidelines for the preparation of
  proceedings papers to be published in one of the following series, in
  printed and electronic form

That means that those instructions are valid for all the journals and publications listed below.
So try to look for one of those style (i.e.: Lecture Notes in Computer Science) and it should work.

Yes, Refworks did list "Lecture Notes in Computer Science" (which I had not seen), thx!!!


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How to find possible donors?
In the US universities, many positions are endowed by donors. Is it possible/common for individual academics to directly contact possible donors with some plans? If so, how one can find possible donors?
For instance, an academic can propose a plan to university officials for establishing an innovative research center. University officials check if they can raise fund for the plan or not. In parallel, the person can individually find donors to raise the necessary funds.

How this is handled probably varies between universities, so you should check what is considered customary or acceptable at yours.  I don't think there would be any explicit rules against contacting potential donors yourself, but it could antagonize the administration.  Securing a large donation is often a lengthy process of building a long-term relationship with the donor, identifying shared goals, and convincing the donor that this would be the best use of their money.  U.S. universities have special staff who are (or at least should be) skilled at handling this, and they would probably not appreciate individual faculty members interfering.  Working with them would probably be more effective and would keep the university administration on your side.
A further issue is that it's not good for anyone if competing faculty members try to convince the same donor to support their project instead of the competition.  It's better to sort this out at the university level, rather than undermining each other.
The best case scenario for fundraising by an individual faculty member is if they already have a personal connection with a potential donor who is not otherwise being asked for funding.  If you are not in this position, then it will be difficult to identify the right people, and you are better off seeking professional advice from the administration.

I totally agree with everything above. I would add the caveat that if one does have a personal relationship with a potential donor, it may be advantageous to keep the university development / advancement / today's-euphemism-for-fundraising office at arms length until one is fairly far along in the process. They may be eager to cut you out as "middleman" and that may not be in your best interest either because of their differing motives or because of how this will feel to the donor.

You need about 30x the funding in the bank that you expect to need to run your research center per year. I.e. endowments often run assuming ~3% returns. If you want to endow a $100k professorship, then you need about $3.3M in your endowment. If you think you can raise that much, I'm sure your university would be happy to set up an endowed chair, endowed research center, or other named entity for your center's benefit. That being said, they might want to have solid pledges for at least half of the money handled quietly behind the scenes before they make a public announcement that they are raising funds for this purpose. Nothing is worse than announcing a big fund-raising drive and missing by a mile.

I wonder if Kickstarter is a possibility for smaller research efforts...

If you don't care about an endowment, you can eat the principle. Then you only need the cash you need to pay the people to do the work, etc. But many donors at this level want to see a legacy, though, so you'd be drawing from a different pool.


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Should a CV for a fellowship application ever include test scores even if these scores are not requested?
I did quite well on my GREs -- perfect scores on all three sections of the general test, and a result in the 98th percentile on the relevant subject GRE test. I'm applying for Ph.D. programs in a STEM field and will naturally submit these scores as part of my application.
However, I'll also be applying for fellowships like the NSF graduate fellowship and the Hertz. It's my understanding that these fellowships do not require the GRE, but I would assume these strong scores might work in my favor if the relevant committees were to know about them. Can/should I include these scores on the CV I submit with my application, or is doing so always considered gauche?

You can/should include anything that works in your favour. A good GRE result will not, in my mind, ever be e negative. If it is not there (when not rrequired), most will probably not wonder why.

I don't think the NSF GRFP application asks for a free-form CV, does it?

@NateEldredge: That's correct; it doesn't.  See my description of the selection process here.

If you are going to cite your scores, then you should check to see if there is a reporting mechanism from ETS that will allow you to send official copies of the scores to the recipients. For instance, NSF had a "college code" so that you could send a report directly to them. Other fellowships may be similar.
One caveat that should be mentioned: if a university or fellowship specifically instructs you not to send something, don't send it. I know that some schools do not want and will not accept additional letters of reference, award citations, publications, and so on. If this is the case for the specific application you're completing, then you'll want to find some other way to provide the information. This might be in the form of a mention in one of your essays (if appropriate!), or in a "supporting information" box in the application.


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A student who asked me to write a rec letter seems to have committed academic dishonesty in my class, what do I do?
A student (let's call them A) in my class that I just finished teaching asked me to write them a recommendation letter. I said yes, and the first deadline is Dec 15, as they often are (FYI, I'm writing this post on the very early morning of Dec 14).
Unfortunately for the student, as I was grading the final exam, I noticed that A and another student (call them B) seem to have exactly the same wrong answers (their wrong answer was pretty unusual, and in my class of 100, they were the only ones to have these wrong answers).
I've actually been suspicious of B for a while, as B kept coming up with the correct answers without actually being able to justify their steps, and in fact, their work was often wrong up until the final answer.
Upon comparing A and B's exam papers, A's solutions were more or less clear, and I'm sure that A worked it out themselves. B, on the other hand, has solutions that are more or less like A's solutions, but there are so many critical typos and mistakes in notation (showing that B has no idea what is going on in the course) that it should be impossible for B to arrive at the correct answer. I think the errors were introduced because B was sneakily trying to change some letters and such to a different letter, and changing a sentence structure here and there, etc.
So, I suspect that A is actually a decent student, but for whatever reason, A let B copy their answers for the exams in the course (there were 3, all 3 exams were strikingly similar).
I'm planning to submit this case for an investigation, but this takes a while, possibly longer than a semester. My questions are:

Should I still write the recommendation letter? On one hand, if A turns out to be innocent (not possible in my heart, but innocent until proven guilty) then I'm screwing them over by declining to write a letter so close to the deadline. On the other hand, if A cheated, then since I was aware of this before writing this letter, I don't want to not mention it.
How would you confront the student?

Is there reason to believe B could not copy A without A's knowledge?  Perhaps exams are being taken remotely?

"innocent until proven guilty" Clearly that's your answer.

@AnonymousPhysicist Yes, they were being taken remotely, and I'm sure that A participated in the academic dishonesty. I'm obviously going to treat them as innocent for now, but some action needs to be taken right now for the letter writing portion. Should I encourage A to find another letter writer, or should I write a letter now and deal with the consequences later?

This happened to me at university many moons ago. A "friend" asked me to lend him my solution to a question to see what I had done but then proceeded to hand in an exact copy. Give A the benefit of the doubt but speak to both about the situation and find out what actually happened.

@camden_kid Although to be honest the teacher should've clarified that zero collaboration is allowed in exams. It makes no sense to reference another student's answer even if there was no copying.

@user10408: If you are sure that A consciously participated in the dishonesty, in my opinion it would be unethical for you to proceed with the recommendation as if no dishonesty was found. After all, it is only ethical to have unwritten moral conditions on recommendations. There is nothing unethical about withdrawing your offer of any kind of help in a situation where you feel that help is no longer deserved. However, of course you must be 100% sure that A had in fact consciously supported the dishonesty.

Even if A is guilty, he's still a good student and only guilty of helping a friend (he didn't hurt nor betrayed anyone). Is it that bad ?

@MorganRodgers Following all the rules isn't always the moral choice and punishing such a minor crime isn't benefiting anyone. (A) is a competent student either way and OP won't suffer from recommanding him.

@user10408: Honestly, "this guy shares his exam responses" (which seems to be all you have evidence of right now) is bad, but not exactly the harshest indictment you can have of someone's character. Some honest and competent students just feel sorry for struggling students and try to help them out of generally good-faith (albeit misguided) beliefs that said students might be so far behind that their gain would outweigh any loss that others might incur. Even with a confession, should their future get destroyed over this? I mean, maybe the answer is still yes, but it's a non-obvious one to me.

@user10408 so what did you do?

If you submit the case for investigation, you could just rest assured that whatever remedy is due, will be enforced upon the conclusion of that investigation. You do not want a "single mistake" to be punished multiple times, nor do you want a whole career torpedoed on such an assumption.

While I am impressed by the number of merciful remarks, can't you trust yourself to rely on your conclusion of cheating? Yes, check your facts, but you are human, not a court of law waiting for proven guilty.

Man, if an investigation of this sort takes longer than a semester I am appalled! That's the first thing that needs fixing at the University!

You agreed to write this letter, and it is due tomorrow (!). Reneging on your promise would effectively torpedo the student's applications, as they are very unlikely to find another recommender on one day's notice. Given that you haven't even confronted them yet (much less convicted them), this would be altogether unjust. (Clearly, your dilemma would be very different if this incident had come to light a month ago.)
Given this timescale, I suggest the following:

Write the letter without any mention of your unproven suspicions.
Confront the student.
If the student confesses or is convicted, you could then consider contacting the programs to withdraw or amend your letter. This is a natural, just, and foreseeable consequence of A's decision to cheat in a class taught by their recommender.

One other thought: consider doing #2 ASAP -- you could ask the student if they are available for an urgent, important call regarding your letter of recommendation (that should get their attention). You can then confront them and also explain how this will (not) affect your letter. This conversation has a few possible outcomes:

You proceed as above. Indeed, I recommend writing the letter before having this conversation precisely so that your letter is not (even unconsciously) affected (as even innocent students may react poorly to serious accusations).
They withdraw their request for a letter. You certainly shouldn't pressure the student to go this route -- I wouldn't even bring it up. But it's possible the student will say that they prefer not to use your letter given the accusation; in this case, you should respect this.
They confess to cheating, at which point you can either rescind your offer to write the letter, or you can agree to write a letter that reflects this incident.

Note, if you do confront the student ASAP, you must be careful not to pre-empt the judicial process, nor to create an abusive, blackmail-like situation. Assure them that you have written a positive letter that does not mention your suspicions, and that you will not rescind or amend your letter until/unless they are formally convicted. Despite your best efforts, A will doubtless still be stressed; accusations of cheating are always stressful. But being transparent and giving A as much agency as possible is the best one can reasonably do under the circumstances.

Very tough situation, but I think "consider doing #2 ASAP" best covers the bases of moral responsibility. Great answer.

I disagree strongly with doing #2 before writing the letter. It's rusing a process and creating an extremely stressful (I would say abusive) dynamic over the urgency of the timing for the letter. Send the letter as promised, presuming innocence as you should, and follow the normal schedule for investigation. You can rescind the letter later if needed.

Thanks for the comments. While I share your concerns about "rushing the process," I think the most important thing is to let A decide how to proceed. For example, A may have another recommender they can easily substitute for the OP; if A is innocent, affording them the opportunity to make this substitution (and lower the stakes of their trial) would be fairest. Still, I added a paragraph to my answer that warns against going too far in this meeting and creating an "abusive dynamic"; that is a legitimate concern.

"A may have another recommender they can easily substitute for the OP". On ~36 hours notice?? That seems highly unlikely. Do you write letters on such short notice? I would require a very compelling explanation of why the notice was so short before agreeing to do so.

We're getting into the weeds a bit; the point was simply that A should be informed of the allegation so they can choose how to proceed. But to the question: my thought was that such a letter might already exist. For example, some schools accept an optional, fourth letter -- promoting this to the "third" letter might be doable; OP would only have to ask that additional copies be uploaded (even this is a significant request on short notice, but I would probably agree unless I legitimately didn't have time on that day).

If you go with #2 (which I think is not a good option at all), I think it'd only make sense if you fully write the letter without letting the suspicion affect how positive the letter is. Have that positive letter ready, assuming complete innocence, then talk to A. Unless something dramatic (e.g. confession to cheating) happens, don't modify the letter (unless you want to make it even more positive). I'm saying this because the reaction of A to the "confrontation", which almost certainly would take place in very poor conditions unfair to A, might leave a negative impression on you.

I just want to add to what R..GitHubSTOPHELPINGICE pointed out again about #2: The student might be completely innocent (and frankly, no matter how certain you think your suspicions are, as long as it's not proven or confessed, A is innocent and the suspicions MUST NOT negatively impact the letter you write for them and your help with their application!).
Keep in mind that many students already go through a lot applying for grad schools. In this situation, even having that conversation with them in the nicest way might be detrimental to their mental health (as well as their career).

@Araucaria: First, I would ask you not to make personal attacks. I certainly do not think it is fair to say that I have "no regard for the well being or mental health of the student." Second, while situations like this are always stressful for the accused, the alternative is saying "I submitted a glowing recommendation as you requested, but I will revoke it if you are convicted" - to me, that seems just as stressful, and it does not allow the student to consider other options (though I admit their options are limited). Finally, if you disagree with my answer, you are welcome to write your own.

-1 for the Zoom reference. It doesn't even need to be a video call. Just say "urgent, important call". Even better, remove step 2 entirely. I think the answer itself, plus the comments above, provide compelling reasons to do so.

@Brian - fair enough, I removed the Zoom reference (not sure why it matters so much to you, but I agree, no need to specify a particular software). As for "step 2", I am going to stick by my answer there; I never once referred a case to the dean without first meeting with the student (usually, these meetings went well, and we were able to agree on a grade-related penalty + official warning [in case it happened again in a different class] rather than referring the matter to a formal trial...though I recognize OP may have less discretion depending on their local rules).

Ironically this answer would penalize a cheater who came clean and reward a cheater who doubled down.

Hmmm....I do not see how; if a cheater doubles down and is convicted, the professor will tell the school that they are revoking their letter due to the student's academic dishonesty....it is hard to think of a more serious penalty (indeed, the seriousness of this penalty is why I am so convinced that OP should consider all other options, including meeting with the student, before committing to the "send-now-and-rescind-if-convicted" plan that many commenters seem to favor).

As for the third bullet at the end (cheater confesses and write a letter reflecting the incident), if you cannot write a positive letter of rec it is (somewhat) unethical the write a letter of rec.  Agreeing to write the letter implies it will be positive (how positive and personal obviously vary), but unless you plan to convey some aspect of what they did here in a positive light you should not mention it.

Well, I think it would be unethical to "not mention" a major incident of proven academic misconduct. Normally, one would simply tell the student "in light of this, it's probably best for you to seek another recommender." The trouble here is that the letter is due in 48 hours, so it's unlikely that another recommender can be found. Hence, my suggestion to give the a student who confesses the option of either (a) no letter, or (b) a mixed letter that mentions the incident (personally, I think either of these is better for the student than a glowing letter that gets rescinded after the trial).

I am going to speak as one who was the student in a sort-of-similar situation. I was a 2nd-time-around undergrad in a linear algebra class. I had written up some proofs for a homework assignment. A guy I knew in class asked for help, and it being late at night and me being tired (I am not in my 20s anymore and can't handle this as I once did) I emailed him what I had typed up (my handwriting is pretty atrocious) and said "Here's what I did, and lord knows if you find mistakes tell me, I am going to bed."
Well, this guy passed in my work as his, without even bothering to copy it onto another sheet of paper. (I was the only student who tended to type up responses). The prof (a grad student) calls us over and says this was pretty dishonest, I was a little shocked myself. I even asked the other dude "what the hell were you thinking?" Instructor said it was trivial, ultimately, and didn't go I-will-report-you on us.
I am sure as hell glad that didn't happen to be an exam or something like it. And I would say to you that an online exam can be collaborated on in many ways, I assign take-home work that I want my [high school] students to work together on. (I try to make it unique enough that the usual internet searches will do little good - but working together will!)
All this is to say that your student may well be the one who was taken advantage of, or didn't know, or whatever. Often I find in copying situations among my own students the copier is more dishonest than the one being copied from.
To address the OP specifically and now that the deadline has clearly passed, it seems... I hope you chose write the letter, send it and treat student A as innocent in this, and then confront them later. In fact I would first go to the student B who you know copied stuff and say to them, "hey could you explain this bit..." and see what happens then.
My two cents as a relatively inexperienced high school teacher but with long experience as a reporter who had to separate truth from lies on a regular basis.

This is why assignments should come with explicit statements about what sort of collaboration is and is not okay. For exams, I would recommend something like "you may not distribute the questions or answers to any other person, through the internet or in person, until 24 hours after the exam." And then get the solution set up much sooner than that, so that students who honestly just want to see a solution to a certain problem have an honest way to do it.

@DavidESpeyer yeah you need to be explicit. For HW assignments I just assume that students work together anyway -- few people attempt problems completely alone, I know I sure as hell didn't. And there is a difference between say, high school and college, clearly. (I learned that the hard way as a teacher). My go-to question is: does punishing a student do any good? (For example, will they benefit by failing a class/test? What will they learn?) If the answer is "don't get caught next time" we as educators are not doing our jobs correctly.

@DavidESpeyer also to explicit-ness: so much of academic dishonesty policy is really not clear. Would it be academic dishonesty to have another student read my exam essay to check if it sounds good/reads well? A lot of instructors would say no, but the letter of the policy (if not the spirit) says yes, and if you need a freaking lawyer to figure it out you haven't written a clear policy.

If you are asking my opinion then yes, I would say this is dishonesty. Exams should be your own work!

But is is one's own work. I've been writer for 20+ years and very few write their best without an editor. Every academic writer has an editor (or should have one). And no editor would say that their suggestions make the work someone else's. If you did a PhD I suspect you didn't write your dissertation fully formed and perfect the first time, with no edits. There's a huge difference between, "Hey pal, is this essay grammatically correct, and does it make sense" and "could you write this for me" and a lot of academic honesty policies miss that.

Given the time frame and the fact that you made a commitment you should write the letter in spite of suspicions of cheating.
When students ask me if I'll write a letter of recommendation for them, I usually ask them to come meet me in my office.  This helps a lot for tailoring the letter to the specific program or job they are applying for.  I also try to give them pointers on their resumes.  It's a win-win.  The student's own part of the application is better.  And the more cohesive a letter I can write for their application package.
As much as I like to write personalized letters of recommendation, there comes a point where it's not feasible. You develop generic boiler plate for when students aren't the easiest to write for to begin with. Given a situation like this, I'd just use the boiler plate and move on.
Per dealing with the specific situation outside of the letter. It's hard for me to give advice without knowing the temperament of students A & B. And what their relationship is like. Perhaps A feels they are being taken advantage of and it's a teachable moment about standing up for yourself.  They just needed to be coached on it a bit.
In situations where I suspect cheating I try to approach students honestly, but without accusing them of anything or being confrontational.  Something along the lines of "I'm not sure how to grade this for partial credit because it doesn't make sense to me.  Can you explain it to me?" Depending on your poker game and how guilty the student feels in the first place a lot of times they will just confess.
P.S. When you suspect cheating, document everything and make a file. It comes in handy if for instance you had the file before you were asked for the letter. Or at the very least it's good water cooler talk for "you wouldn't believe what these kids thought they could get away with"

I think the challenge is the third paragraph. If they are innocent, writing a boiler plate letter is unjust (especially if the student would otherwise deserve a glowing letter). If they are guilty, then OP might not be comfortable even with a boilerplate letter (which presumably says "I am pleased to recommend the student...").

Ideally you wouldn't need boilerplate at all, but between not knowing students very well and having large classes (200 students for 2-3 sections + labs) makes that more difficult.  When I write letters I don't typically talk about how I feel about the students.  I usually talk about what they did and why those skills are applicable to what they are applying to.  There is a list of things students will do in a class that lend itself to that kind of recommendation.  Like asking questions out of curiosity and not because it's on an exam or guiding discussions with other students.

Talk to the student, and ask how and why the copying happened. It's important to identify the motivations behind plagiarism - research has shown that some students view plagiarism as morally acceptable, and quoting an unattributed author's words can even be viewed as an act of  respect. This is, of course, not shared by the traditional academic viewpoint, and hence can be a source of  conflict.
Examples:

"The student did not think it was correct to rewrite an author‘s words
since the author was well known and respected. Hence he/she included
it in his/her text. This reverence for authority clearly comes from a
cultural worldview where respect for betters and elders is paramount."

"he/she felt that his/her English was not sufficiently proficient to explain the point clearly enough. He/she felt that the original author‘s English was better."

"His/her interpretation was that copying from textbook was wrong, but that copying from the Internet was acceptable."

"what he/she had written was apparently acceptable in other academic circles."

"he was shocked as he had written as he would have done in his home institution. In (his) academic culture plagiarism is not considered wrong, but is widely accepted."

And:

"Students may believe that knowledge belongs to society as a whole, not
to the individual. In other words, international students are taught
that there is a right answer, and nobody owns it.
Ownership, or rather non-ownership of ideas, also have philosophical
foundations in the teachings of Confucius. Students may think that it
is disrespectful to their teachers or readers if they cite their
sources, as this may imply that they did not already know the source."

"it may be frequently regarded as acceptable in their home
countries. Students in most cases are not attempting to deceive their
teachers but may not understand what they are supposed to do or why
plagiarism is considered wrong."

This is a good point in the Age of the Internet especially, where copying stuff has been less frowned on (it's hard sometimes for me to get across to students that I want them to word things in their own words for their benefit, to be sure they understand what they are reading).

You need to confront A.
Do not threaten 'recommendation removal', but do point out that you would actively withdraw this recommendation on investigation being negative.
If on confronting A is convincingly unaware, then I would ignore it. B is the real issue here. Either not doing the work, or trying to coast through on someone elses.

How do you even know for sure that A was even aware that his work was being copied?
In the past, where two students have had the same answers, and it was clear that there was copying going on, I have on occasion emailed both students and told them that if they would both email me in agreement an explanation about whose work it actually was, I would give that student 50% credit. The other would get zero. This has stopped copying in courses every time I used it, and in every case there was an admission and apology by both students for their part. But we should also recognize the distinction between students' academic and industrial realms.
The student may not be well as well suited for academia as he is for industry. This sort of "helping" others may be what an employer wants, by getting the job done and not worrying about who does it. But in academia the student needs to be accountable for each person doing their own work. They are very different environments. In industry the employee would be commended for helping his colleagues by providing information to them, and if that is a basic character trait of his, limit his punishment to the academic realm.
I'd go ahead and write a positive letter, maybe even hinting that he seems to like to help his colleagues even when it might cost him personally. But follow through with the investigation and handle it separately. Who knows? Even if he drops out of school for troubles with academic dishonesty, he may find success in the business world where sharing work with colleagues can be a very good thing. There are many successful dropouts (founders of Microsoft, Google, etc.), and if that's where he's headed, help him find success there.

-1 There's a massive difference between helping another student cheat and helping a colleague. The former is explicitely against the rules and unethical, the latter is not. Obviously, some employers might disagree, but if I was in their place, I would NOT consider it a positive thing.

@JS Lavertu: Certainly. If he was the one doing the work, his academic penalties are sufficient. Pursue a thorough investigation and strictly apply the academic dishonesty policy in addition to providing the letter as promised. In high school there was a mean kid who always copied. I would have been afraid at the time to stop him. In the end he found me on FB one day and apologized about how he'd treated me in school. I ended up teaching around the world and doing cool R&D projects while he eventually became a mechanic after trouble with the law. Who knows what pressures the student had?

http://www.brightfutura.com/20-billionaire-college-dropouts/
I hope the teachers of Bill Gates before he dropped out of college are proud of him.

@TedShaneyfelt worth noting that OP wrote the original post with all but one pronoun gender-neutral, and changed that one missed pronoun to be gender neutral. Clearly their intent was to make the post neutral. Additionally, there is zero issue with "agreement of number" when using neutral pronouns (unless thou would also complain about agreement of number when using "you" as a singular pronoun). "They" is perfectly correct when used in the singular.

Translate to Spanish what you just wrote while keeping it gender neutral. My mother told me when this first came up that it was silly to change mailman to mailperson and such because man is a gender neutral term when used like one. In your style of writing, they would not agree with you even though I'm only counting one person. That is awkward and unnecessary, and to me feels like it's bullying and overly legalistic - after changing the rules to be legalistic about. That's the sort of English with which Winston Churchill said he shall not put.

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