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Is it unethical to ask for homework help on StackExchange?
Sometimes when I have been struggling on a problem set for a while, I'll post a question on StackExchange, openly acknowledge that it's homework, and ask for hints (not the full solution).  Typically people give good advice and help me think about the problem in several different ways, and I end up learning a lot by asking the question.
Now the thing is, we are probably not supposed to ask the Internet for homework help.  But in my classes it is perfectly acceptable to go to TA office hours, where most of them will tell me the entire answer instead of giving hints.  Often I've seen TAs present the solution on the blackboard in front of about 20 students (because all the students need help on the same question).  We're also encouraged to "collaborate" with other students, who will usually tell you the entire answer instead of giving minimal hints to help you along.
Is it unethical to ask for homework help on StackExchange given that I learn a lot more than I would using officially sanctioned methods?
(If it matters, I post on math.stackexchange, and this is for classes like real analysis and abstract algebra.)

Are you hoping someone will tell you it's OK to do this even if your professor doesn't allow it?  You make a reasonable case that what you're doing is no more harmful in practice than things that are in fact allowed.  However, it's still cheating if the rules don't permit it.  You should first find out exactly what is allowed (the "probably not supposed to" part sounds a little vague), and then consider asking for changes.  I think you could make a good argument that asking for hints online with proper attribution should be allowed, but it's up to your professor.

Well, one could argue that the problem is with the TAs and the collaboration policy, not with the ban on outside sources.  In theory, if the TAs and the other students gave (uniformly) minimal hints, the ban on outside sources would make sense, because at least the professor would know what hints the students were being given, and he'd know that all the students were being given the same hints, etc.  We wouldn't want to be in a situation where students were literally downloading solution manuals (even if they cited them on their sets!)

Maybe the problem is not so much that I'm depriving myself of the problem-solving experience, as that if we all used different online sources, it would be easy for some people to have an unfair advantage over others.  (This still happens with in-class collaboration since some students have smarter friends, and some students don't have friends.  But in most cases, the knowledge you'll get from a fellow student is a subset of what's taught in the class.)

I hope this is not  a homework question from your ethics lecture :)

Haha it's just a question that's been bugging me for a while :) What actually happened IRL was I asked StackExchange about things unquestioningly for about two years.  Then I switched majors, and in my new department TAs actually did give hints instead of answers, and we were supposed to write down the names of the people we worked with on sets.  That's when I started worrying about these ethical questions, and stopped asking about homework on the site.  But I was interested in knowing what other people think about this issue.

Let me echo @AnonymousMathematician in different words: Whether asking for help online is ethical or not, you can still be punished for violating your instructor's collaboration policies.  (Asking for help online and then lying about it to avoid punishment would be unethical.)

That's a good point.

There is a question on meta.Mathematics.SE which I think may help this question too: How to ask a homework question?

You do of course realise that any advantage gained in your degree is entirely ephemeral (unless you plan on staying in academia forever). What matters is getting really good at the skills you will need in your future career.

Is homework graded? In my case, it was almost always not, just meant as practice. I think this changes the question substantially.

This might depend on your university's policy on cheating and plagiarism.
For our university (though the precise details may vary from course to course), you are allowed to use StackExchange to help you to understand concepts, but you are not supposed to use it to help you solve assignment questions.
We tell the students that if there is any risk that they may have read an answer or some code or whatever that might have influenced their answer, then they need to cite it. With a proper citation, they cannot be accused of plagiarism. We may, however, ask the student to answer extra questions in such a case, in order to demonstrate their knowledge.

Where should we draw the line between understanding concepts and helping solve assignment questions?  To give a minimal example, suppose I was trying to solve a problem in a discrete math class, and it turned out my approach would work perfectly if the statement $$\overline{A \cap B} = \overline{A} \cup \overline{B}$$ was true.  Would it be okay to ask if that statement was true and/or how to go about proving it?  If so, how could a student reasonably distinguish between a lemma like this (which was certainly covered in class) and a trickier lemma specific to their problem set?

From my answer, if you did ask whether this were true, you should cite the corresponding stack exchange question to avoid the risk of being accused of plagiarism.

What if you asked the same question two days before the homework was assigned?

You sound just like our students. When in doubt, point "it" out.

@user24384:  If you asked the question before the homework was assigned, you still have to cite the response, just like you have to cite a book written before you were born.

Downvoted.  University policy affects whether this practice is allowed, but it has no bearing whatsoever on whether it is ethical.

There has to be a limit to this, though.  What if you asked the question before taking the class?  What if you asked the question such a long time ago that you don't remember asking the question?  What if you took discrete math prior to attending college, and the professor used the exact same problems that your teacher did in high school (and you still remembered the solutions to the problems)?

@JeffE, the thing is, as a student you have agreed to adhere to those rules, in other words, not following those rules is a valid way of proving something to be unethical (at least under the larger majority of ethical systems).

@DaveClarke At the risk of going off topic: when university policy says you must cite "anything that influenced your answer," that places an enormous burden on students. Every interaction that I have had in my life will influence my responses to new situations. This in mind, I need to cite all books I've ever read (since they shape my thinking), any remotely related article on the internet, etc. (E.g. I'd need to cite the Bible for giving me the ethical foundation to prevent cheating.) If the university requires citation of everything, don't be surprised when people complain.

@anorton: One would imagine, as with most laws, that a notion of reasonableness comes in. You'd have to look at our university regulations to find the precise formulation of the guidelines.

Asking for help is ethical, asking for solutions isn't.
The entire goal of homework is to increase your understanding of new material you've been presented with, usually by using the theory in practical examples. Discussing material with others and "thinking out loud" are time-proven practices to help in grasping new concepts and techniques and as such it's perfectly ethical to process your homework in a way that most efficiently helps you to understand the exercises. As you say your university explicitly supports 2 classic methods help you on difficult assignments: TA assistance and collaboration.
Regardless of the method you employ, as long as your goal is to increase your understanding, and not to get out of doing the work at all, you're ethically in the clear.
Three caveats to this:

Graded homework: it's my belief that grading homework is a way to enforce students to keep up with coursework and ensure that their understanding of the material is at the required levels to eventually complete the course. Seeking help, no matter the source, should not be frowned upon here since you're still accomplishing the majority of the work (i.e. learning it) yourself. Ethical.
Assignments: coursework that is a sufficiently large part of your grade as to move beyond simple homework and into assignment territory is different. Seeking assistance about the general concepts involved is ethical, asking help on the details of the assignment itself most likely isn't.
Legality: as some of the other answers and the comments mention, whether or not your university allows you to seek help from online resources is an altogether different question and it's sensible to check your university and course regulations on this or ask for confirmation from the professor or TA.

Is it unethical to ask for homework help on StackExchange given that I learn a lot more than I would using officially sanctioned methods?

Deliberating over the ethicality of the situation is frivolous. You know that StackExchange helps you to learn. So use it. Do not allow your school to restrict your ability to learn. Clearly the school would be bad, and not you, if its policies prevented you from learning.

Fine, but be aware of the possible consequences if you violate your instructor's collaboration policies.  The school may or may not be bad, but the F will still be on your transcript.

The ethical solution here depends completely on the context. If you're using that information to complete an ungraded assignment there is absolutely no ethical gray area. Any information (tutor/book/the internet/study group) is an entirely valid resource.
However if you're turning it in for a grade the gray area immediately becomes black as you are passing off someone else's work as your own.
I would question the structure of a class that forces you into a situation where you're stuck solely with the text book but I have seen it. Talk to the professor, but if there's no grade seeking knowledge isn't an ethical violation.

Personally, I don't feel there's anything unethical about it. Sure, you might be breaking your university's honor code, but I think the only ethical conflict there is that you are breaking a code you at least implicitly agreed to, not in the act itself. That is, your ethics or ethical principles in general do not necessarily align with the honor code, and I would say in this case they most certainly don't.
I namely think that the stock standard honor code imposed by universities is a dinosaur that needs to revised, and I think many professors are recognizing that. For example, one of mine mentioned explicitly that he realizes that students use the internet for solutions, and that we should just reference the source when doing so. On one of our homework problems, he also gave us a hint in his office hours and then just added "or just look up a proof on the internet", saying either way is going to be fine ultimately.
In addition, I do not see a difference between looking something up on the internet and consulting a physical book in your library. I assume no one would take issue with the latter, would they? After all, the goal is to learn the material.
Plus, research shows immediate feedback is necessary for learning, and by not asking for help on homework (be it your friends, your professor, or "the internet") you're only hurting yourself. You probably have to at least attempt the problem in earnest to get something out of it, but if you can't get it, you gain nothing by puzzling over it without success. On the other hand, if you do stumble upon a solution on the internet, you might find a new trick or a new way of thinking about it, since you'll have to interpret it on your own. Often, answers here are also given by people with a different background, so you don't get the answer served on a platter, but, instead, you have to really look into it and interpret it so that it fits with your specific background and the tools you are allowed to use.
So, basically, I don't think that there is anything, and I mean anything, unethical about asking for help on SE in and of itself. It just might be against the honor code. And as I mentioned earlier, the only unethical thing then is that you're breaking an agreement, which I think is an obsolete one anyway.

Asking for a direct answer would be unethical. Asking questions to gain knowledge and/or understanding should never be unethical. The goal of any class is to learn the material. Different people learn differently. It’s perfectly understandable for anyone to be stuck or confused on different points. When you need help, you need to ask someone that knows more than you. They can help you understand. Strictly speaking for ethics and knowledge transfer, you’re fine.
Past knowledge transfer it can get grey. Basically, don’t plagiarize and site appropriately. Course and college policies become grey as things like stack exchange aren’t completely adapted into the education system yet. So they don’t always have a clear or accepted fit. Because of that, it may be wrong per their policies. Then ethically, I think their policies aren’t ethical. That’s a whole other debate. However, I believe that if you follow what the point of the policies are you are fine. That’s typically, are you cheating or plagiarizing. As long as you aren’t doing activities down those paths you should be fine.
Think of stack exchange as your instructor. Can you ask these types of questions of your instructor? If you have no ethical problems with asking the same questions of your instructor, then you have nothing to worry about. Is asking questions on stack exchange really any different from asking a friend or colleague? Is it unreasonable to use the friend of colleague as a source of information? No on both. Use every tool to your advantage to learn.

Pretty much what everyone else said.  I dont think there is an ethical issue unless your code of conduct forbids it, and you make it clear that it is homework and you need some guidance versus the whole solution.  However keep in mind that what your prof is looking for in terms of answers may not be what the internet comes up with.  Often your prof is just wrong but good luck trying to get them to accept it (this happens especially in lower level courses).  In higher level courses such as yours I wouldn't worry too much about it, its not like one problem solution from the internet is going to make or break your grade.


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Is it acceptable to use the word "trivial" in lecture?
Suppose you are introducing a new concept, and you start with (what you think is) a toy example.  Is it okay to refer to your example as a "trivial problem?"
Does this depend on the field and/or level of the class you are teaching?

There is a question What does it really mean for something to be "trivial"? on Math SE which is not directly related to your question, but I find it interesting to read myself.

The word 'trivial' also has other meanings in maths.
On a different note, if you're introducing something to a lower level class, they probably won't think it's trivial.

@scaaahu That's a great link which leads to another great link. In short, tt all depends on your audience. If you are not sure it is easy for everyone in your audience, then don't say it is easy simply because it is easy for you.

See also http://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/1896/are-the-words-easy-basic-clearly-obviously-etc-ever-helpful on Math Educators SE.

I didn't see that in any of the answers nor the links, so one more piece: in math (I don't know about other domains) some objects are defined to be trivial, e.g. trivial group or trivial topology, etc. So, if you are teaching group theory and showing the one-element group among your first examples, then you should use the word trivial in that particular case.

To help understand where you are coming from, can you explain why you think it would not be alright to use this word?

@SList Well, I think it's bad manners and demoralizes the students.

It is very likely that this question and answers are region dependent.  Students are not so easily crushed or offended in some countries as in others.

I would worry more about "clearly", and "obviously" which normally mean you can't think of a good way of explaining it.

when I was a student I used to assume that "trivial" meant "will take you several hours to figure out, and will be on the exam". That assumption served me fairly well.

"Trivial" often means "too simple to be a real problem". For example, in an class on optimisation methods years ago, the lecturer said "for our first example, we're going to study the problem of maximising the number of ones in a binary string of length n". My thought for most of the class was "well, that's bloody obvious—you just write n ones in a row—why are we looking at this". I eventually realised that it was being used because it made it easy to describe how the algorithms worked, not because it was a challenging problem in any way.
I think that's a good example of where the word "trivial" is good shorthand—the problem isn't of any importance, but it is being used to illustrate a point. This is similar to how trivial is used in a lot of pure mathematics, where it often means "the simplest example that satisfies the definition" (like "the trivial group"). As with all such jargon, though, it is worth explaining to students what you are going to be meaning by the word "trivial" and why trivial examples are worth looking at at all.

It has importance as a "teaching tool," but is 100% useless in real life. We do this to build to an actual example. I had a math teacher that did that, and his success rate was astounding-- most students picked up a concept in just days instead of weeks.

Context matters.  If you say, "Let's start with a trivial example" and then you do start with a trivial example, that's good.  You've put your class on notice that you starting with something that's stripped down and you're going to build on it.  If you say the same thing but immediately introduce something that's moderately complex (even if it has been simplified as much as possible) then "trivial" was the wrong word.

Sometimes the professor (an expert) might assume something is trivial, but see looks of confusion in the eyes of the students. In that case, yes, perhaps the wrong word was used, but the instructor can easily "recover" by saying something like, "Oh, maybe that's not quite so trivial after all," thereby shifting the blame to himself for using the wrong word, as opposed to on the students for not understanding something so "simple").

I personally would not use the word "trivial" to describe a simple example.  Instead, I would call it a "simple" or "toy" example.
The reason is that, to me at least, calling something trivial means it is not just simple, but degenerate in some way, and that there is therefore no insight to be gained from it.  The examples that one uses in teaching are often very simple, so that they are able to be worked in real-time, but anything but trivial: instead, a good example is typically very carefully crafted to reveal particular interesting aspects of the material from as simple a situation as possible.

It is useful to recall what "trivial" means. It derives from the seven medieval liberal arts, and refers to the Trivium, or the "lower three" arts: grammar, logic and rhetoric. After the Trivium, students would study the Quadrivium, or the "upper four" arts: arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy.
The idea was that the Trivium provided the student with the tools needed to address the Quadrivium.
In this context, calling something "trivial" essentially means that this was either already addressed in a lower-level course, or can easily be understood using tools from that lower-level course. It does not mean that the "trivial" problem is easy, or boring, or useless.
Keeping this bit of etymology in mind, I'll happily call something "trivial" that fits this definition.

No.  The other posters have based their responses primarily on the meaning of the word.  Mine is based on the impact on students.  Students may be offended or hurt if you call something "trivial" which they do not feel is trivial.  Students may not view the word with the connotations you, or other posters on stack exchange, anticipate.  In addition, you cannot anticipate in complete detail what academic backgrounds your students might have.  Maybe they were sick the day they should have learned the basis for your "trivial" concept.  I consider the word unwise to use unless given a specific meaning first.

So true. When I was in undergrad not too long ago, I honestly thought trivial was just a professional and academic way of saying 'stupidly easy'. On the day when the instructor is most likely to use the word trivial --the first day of class-- the students are not used to their tone of voice, their hand writing, and they may be just trying to decide if this class is for them. On top of that, they're still dusting off the cobwebs from the knowledge they required from an earlier term. Then they hear the words 'trivial example' and see the instructor write an equation that spans two boards O.O

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How interchangeable are PhD students to most professors?
Do most professors value their PhD students, or do they see them as easily replaceable by fresh, new blood?  If a PhD student stops working, will the professor try to fix things, or replace him like a cog in his machine?

I do not see why we have downvotes here. This question seems in line with academic life and therefore valid based on the site policies...

I am interested what kind of answers are you looking here? Do you think that any of the professors who are using this site would just tell you "I do not care about my phd students"? Even if they would think so, I highly doubt anyone would write this. So it looks like the only possible answer - "yep we value them, they are important"

@SalvadorDali That's a good point, though it's not just professors who use this site.

In some areas, "replacing" does not really make sense, as the PhD students are not actually doing anything that furthers the work of the advisor (at least in any direct way).

@TobiasKildetoft Then what's the point of advisors having students or students having advisors?

I would assume that the point of the student having an advisor should be clear (to have someone who can advise you). For the other direction, that seems like a good separate question (which I seem to recall has already been asked here, though I can't find it right now).

The answer to this question is almost certainly very culture/area dependent. As Tobias remarked, in some areas, the PhD student isn't directly helping the advisor. In other cases/areas, he may be doing busywork/programming/data collection/data analysis/experiments for the advisor, thus helping his work in more direct ways. Clearly that changes the equation.

How interchangeable are PhD students to most professors? — Consider also that some students carry a majority of the project they are working on (the polar opposite of your example where the student "stops working"). In this case, the student is extremely valuable.

@Tobias: Most of my Doktormutter’s advisees didn’t need any advice. We did need someone to be adviser of record, to write letters, to deal with certain administrative details, to introduce us to other topologists at meetings, etc.

Then what's the point of advisors having students
— Oh, I don't know. Maybe because it's my job?

Most PhD advisors invest a great deal of time, money, and effort in their PhD students. This is a sunk cost.
If the advisor acts as a selfish rational decision maker, he/she would evaluate the prospective (future) costs of continuing to work with the student, the likelihood of the student becoming productive again given some level of intervention on the part of the advisor, and the benefit to the advisor if the student becomes productive again. Other contributing factors may include the cost to the advisor's reputation of having a failed PhD student and the impact of a failed PhD student on the advisor's promotion prospects.
Based on these parameters, a selfish rational player could evaluate whether it is in his/her own best interests to try and "fix things" or whether to cut his/her losses and "replace him like a cog in his machine."
In other words, there is no single action taken by "most" advisors here - the best response of even a purely selfish advisor depends on the parameters of the situation.
Finally, most of the PhD advisors I personally know also feel some level of affection for their students and personal interest in their future, and would not necessarily make the strictly selfish decision described above. Rather, most PhD advisors I know would make an irrational decision that would consider the students' interests in addition to his/her own selfish interests. Depending on the situation, it may or may not be in the student's interests to be "fixed."

I agree, but there are definitely also those advisors that take irrational decisions (out of misplaced hurt feelings) that works against both, their own and the mentee's best interest. This exact situation is currently playing out in my extended circle of academic acquaintances

I have seen it go in both directions, and which way it goes seems to be strongly correlated with theoretical vs. experimental science.  The more that a professor's research requires lots of "lab tech" work, the more likely that a student may find themselves treated as a lab tech rather than an independent researcher in training.  I think that has been significantly driven by the economics of funding, since a) many funding agencies have become progressively less willing to support lab techs, and b) a good lab tech can easily cost 2 to 4 times as much as a student, depending on field, cost of living, and how a university does its accounting.
Another place where I have heard of things going particularly badly is with foreign students (and postdocs) in the US, where an unscrupulous professor can use the delicacy of visas to exploit students.
In the end, however, the strongest determinant is the individual professor: in every field, there are both excellent people to work with and horrible people to work with.

Excellent summary of the situation. It covers the important points succintly. However, computational science, which is closer to experimental science in this respect than it is to theoretical science, also deserves mention. In a similar fashion to how faculty can exploit students as cheap lab techs, they can/may also exploit students as cheap programmers/sysadmins/computer techs. And yes, foreigners are particularly abusable, speaking from personal experience.

@FaheemMitha Computer science (and various "computational X" subfields) are quite broad and can be anywhere on the theoretical/experimental spectrum.  For example, a faculty member is more likely to exploit a student as a tech if they are doing lots of database-wrangling number crunching in a big data project (experimental), and much less so if they are investigating new lower bounds on particular algorithms (theoretical).

Just to be clear, I wrote "computational science", not "computer science". I never used the term "computer science".

@FaheemMitha Computational science is similarly broad.  If you're being abused, it's not because of your field.

As others have mentioned, it is not at all universal that grad students or postdocs are "helping" their faculty advisor. That is, often the relationship is more teacher-student than boss-worker, to say the least. Yes, hopefully the discussion takes place with content at a far more interesting level than absolutely routine teaching might. Yes, such discussion can be stimulating and edifying to the advisor about the advisor's own larger enterprise. The model is that, for example, the advisor has a certain research program, a grad student or postdoc expresses some interest in the content, and the advisor is happy to spend time explaining and talking about it. Grad student or postdoc does a related project, and generates a PhD thesis or paper or...
In such a context, there are at least two relevant sorts of "dysfunction", which I do put in quotes because it's only a very qualified sort. The first, and most relative, is that the student/postdoc (rationally/justifiably or not) loses interest in either their own sub/related-project or in the advisor's larger enterprise. That's fair. This is not a "problem" except in the most practical terms, about whether it is feasible for the student/postdoc to significantly change course given whatever funding-and-time constraints they have.
A very different sort of problem is student/postdoc's personal crisis/situation not generated by the work, such as (mental or physical) health difficulties, living-situation difficulties. Of course, very often such things have a huge impact on the work. Most advisors are not so callous as to be able or inclined to hold the student/postdoc culpable for the vagaries of fortune... So, at least up to a substantial point, I think most advisors try to be sympathetic, indulgent, hoping that things heal up well enough to allow return to a more "normal" role.
There is also a caricatured situation that according to substantial gossip seems to be perceived as relevant by, for example, grad students: the alleged scenario in which grad students are expected/required to be near-geniuses, are gradually discovered not to be, and thus are branded as failures, tossed aside in favor of other genius-contenders. I think this fantasy-scenario is not relevant to actual events, but can play a negative role in the mental-health aspects of students/postdocs... The point is not that the scenario takes place, but that people worry about it: hopefully the advisor offers appropriate reassurances of the irrelevance of that little myth.

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Email from editorial assistant from different journal?
I sent in a Manuscript to a journal apart of the Taylor and Francis group. The manuscript was rejected, but today I received an email from an editorial assistant from another journal associated with the Taylor and Francis group.
The email includes the manuscript number and includes a bit in the email stating that this email is regarding the transfer of your manuscript, with the journal name of the journal that rejected the manuscript initially as well as the title of my manuscript.
I went to the journal from where the editorial assistant emailed me, and the editorial board listing does not include editorial assistants, but the email extension for the editorial office matched hers.
Basically, I have no idea what to think. I have never heard of this happening personally. I don't know what to do, if I should email back, or even if I have anything to worry about. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, Thank you.

Maybe the journal you submitted to has an automatic "if paper is rejected but it's a close call, we submit it to a weaker journal" clause? (I'm not commending or criticizing the practice, but I believe it exists.)

Journals published by the same publisher generally have a shared editorial system.  They may actually share some or all of their editorial staff.  So the second journal's editorial staff may be aware of what has been submitted to the first journal.
Moreover, different journals have different levels of prestige.  A top-tier journal is not going to be able to publish every correct paper they receive, only the most interesting/important ones.  If the same publisher has lower-tier journals in the same area, it often makes the most sense to resubmit papers that are rejected by the top journal to its less prestigious sibling.  The peer review process can be streamlined, since the publisher typically already has access to at least one round of referee reports.  This head start on the review process can speed things up, which is generally advantageous for all concerned.
So if a paper is rejected by a top journal, not because it has serious problems with the content, but because it is deemed to be not important enough, a less-prestigious sibling journal may contact the authors and suggest submitting it to the second journal instead.  Sometimes, depending on the what the referees have already had to say, the lower-tier journal may offer to publish the paper without any further rounds of reviewing.  (I had this happen to me once; and, in fact, I got the offer to publish the paper without change in the lower journal a few hours before I even got the rejection from the better journal.)
In this case, the editorial staff may have jumped the gun by assuming that you are automatically planning to resubmit your paper to the next journal down on the prestige ladder.  However, their is otherwise nothing untoward going on.  Clearly, the lower-level journal is interested in your paper, and there's a good chance that submitting it there will the best course of action to take.

also another question, from what I have described with the knowledge of my manuscript ID and the level of detail known about my manuscript, should I be confident that the email is legitimate?

@EricLawson:  Yes, from what you describe, I see no reason to beieve that the e-mail is not legitimate.


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Using present tense in the evaluation section of a paper
Many scientific papers (at least in computer science) use present tense in the evaluation section to describe the setting of the evaluation (e.g., "In our experiments we use dataset A.)". Wouldn't past tense be more appropriate?

If you think it is better then do it, but I doubt that it matters much or is even noticed by very many people. Use what seems better to your own "ear".

@Buffy I wish that method worked also for us non-native speakers... :)

There are several reasons to use present tense.
1) It is present time for the reader. But everyone understands the work was done before.
2) There are several versions of past tense. It simpler not to have to choose among them by putting everything into present tense.
2) English has become the international language of science. For most non-native speakers, present tense is simpler to read. In a prior era when many must-read papers in my field were written in French and German, I was always glad present tense was standard for scientific papers in those languages.

Suppose we write it in simple past tense:

In our experiments we used dataset A.

Which of the following does it mean?

In our experiments we used dataset A.  In this work, we also use dataset A.
In our experiments we used dataset A.  In this work we do something else.

Simple past tense implies some action is complete, so it's naturally misinterpreted as the latter.  Moreover, throughout a paper, we might use "used" with both of these meanings, whereby each instance needs to be deciphered by the reader.
The other ways of writing past tense have similar issues (and are grammatically more complicated):

In our experiments we were using dataset A.
In our experiments we had used dataset A.
In our experiments we had been using dataset A.

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What is the next step after received acceptance from the Editor
I received an acceptance from the Editor by email, but when I checked the status of my manuscript in the journal website it is "Editor Decision", even after week of receiving the email.
what does that mean? and should I talk to the Editor?

If you got a written email from the editor that you were accepted, then the simplest answer to the discrepancy is that he hasn't updated the website. Maybe he's got a stack of a dozen or so papers he wants to update all at once?

Thank you for the clarification, I will write an email to them and see what is the issue.

"Editor Decision" may also mean that the editor has decided, i.e., to accept.  You got the letter saying you're accepted, you're fine.

I found that the best way is to send email to the Editor. and I did. he replied that there are some difficulties on the website. Thank to all of you for advices, suggestions, and comments.

If the editor emails you an acceptance, the paper is accepted.  Don't worry about the website not updating.
The acceptance email should contain instructions as to what you have to do next: presumably, make any changes suggested by the reviewers and submit a final version of your manuscript.  If it doesn't, wait another week or so to see if you get an email that does have the instructions (this might be sent automatically by the management system when the editor updates it). If not, email the editor then.

I just received an email told me that "your revised version of your paper  has now been accepted for publication in (Journal name)" without any further instructions. is this is the official acceptance?

@Hugo: That certainly looks like an acceptance to me.  It's possible that the version you submitted is already suitable as a final version for typesetting.  In that case, all you need to do is wait for them to send the typeset proofs after the paper is assigned to an issue.  If you are unsure, it is fine to ask the editor, but again I would wait a week or so in case they are already planning to send you something else.

Yes. Talk to them. Hanging out fretting about it only causes yourself undue stress. I would simply write an email to them... It sounds like the "switch" may be a manual one on their web site? Perhaps the programmer/designer is on holiday break?
Remember... the individual maintaining the status or entries themselves may not be the actual web master in charge of the programming and edits on the site. It's probably an entirely different department and the batch of edit tickets to the site have yet to process.
Still, even if the individual who sent the email IS the one in charge of the web site...I'd trust the letter over the web site any day.

Thank you for the advice, I will write an email to them and see what is the issue.

why the DV? Seems same concept as the accepted answer... web site isn't updated. Emailing them to verify is not a bad thing to do.

@Jukka: An hour before the accepted answer posted = "...I'd trust the letter over the web site any day."


text:
How to make a mathematical text more concise?
My PhD thesis has 175 pages A4 and I shall provide also a compilation that will summarize the main results on 20 pages A5. My thesis contains algorithms and theorems examining their properties.
After ignoring figures, proofs, illustrative examples, chapter-motivation-paragraph, and major part of introduction and conclusion I have still 48 pages.
Any idea or guidance how to present the results on a very limited space? How to balance the readability (towards marketing) and the scientific strength of the content (towards technical documentation)?

Why are you doing this?  Assuming the full text will still be available, I would keep the readable stuff and point out the technical stuff is in the full text.

In writing a summary of a thesis, I would actually go about this the opposite way.  Don't start with 175 pages and try to cut it down to 20.  Instead, start from 0 and try to write a document that will be useful to a reader who wants to know whether to pick up the entire thesis.
I would probably do something like this:

Background description that explains why your problem is interesting.  2-3 pages maximum.
General description of what your algorithm achieves, why it is useful, and how it improves on the previous state of the art.  Don't try to explain the details of how the algorithm works.  Consider including a brief illustrative example if space permits at all; that will be very helpful to the reader who wants to know what the heck you are doing.
If space remains, state main theorem(s), preceded by any definitions needed for them to make sense.  If necessary, gloss over the less interesting parts of those theorems.  E.g. a complicated set of conditions can be encapsulated in "under mild assumptions" (assuming they are mild), a complicated formula could be replaced by "there exists a constant".
If space still remains, consider including a very high-level overview of your methods.  Specifically mention any parts that you think are especially interesting or novel.

This isn't my field, but I gather that in computer science it is pretty common to publish results first as relatively short conference papers, and then to give more complete details in follow-up papers in journals.  You might try reading such conference papers (and compare them with their extended versions) to see what details people focus on.  Writing this summary will also be good practice for eventually producing page-limited papers based on your work.


text:
Moving away from academia? How to get contacts and create your opportunity
I have always worked with academia and have recently started thinking about leaving it.
Background
I have done a PhD and after that a post-doc, and am now about 2 years after my postdoc working as senior researcher in a permanent staff position. This amounts to about 4 years after PhD.
However, I feel that I'd enjoy going to industry as it would not be working just to get papers. My hope is that I could work with others with a more applied focus (in the sense of working on a product for instance). I have currently no issues in my job, and still find it exciting as I'm learning a lot. But in the long term, I feel that the lack of career progression and that working only to get papers will be motivation to move away from academia.
I'm aware that I currently have a good number of good publications and desirable skillset - for the time being, at least. I have no time constraints that would make me have to rush this.
The problem
I have identified a few companies that I see as good targets for me, but don't know who to approach to create an opportunity. I have perhaps 1 contact in 3 of the companies, but even this is more of an acquaintance in a low level position. I'm wondering what are your suggestions in how to get contacts or get the first step in moving. I feel that in academia this is very straightforward, in the sense that you can just email people and introduce yourself (this worked well before). These companies occasionally have openings, but I feel that creating my own opportunity would be more helpful to find a better fit.


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Omitting part of a word to syntactically fit it in a sentence
How do I make an in-text citation in APA for a quote which I need to syntactically fit it in a sentence. If, for instance, the original words are "explains how it works", what change(s) do I need make, if I want to remove the 3rd person -s in "explains"?

Not really an academia question. More a language question.

I believe you'd use brackets. For example, this resource can "[explain] how it works (LastName, Year, p. ##).

Thanks for replying. In the source you mentioned, it specifies that we "enclose material such as an addition or explanation" in square brackets but here we I am just removing part of a word. I am not sure if that rule can be applied in this case too.

For my field in Sociology using ASA, the brackets can indicate any type of change you've made to the original quote. I'd like to think it also applies for APA as well. I see your point as to what is outlined in the APA resource there. I think seeing how you're planning to use the quote in your writing could be helpful to see how exactly   this rule should be applied. You mentioned removing the 3rd person -s, but are you talking about the work or the author in your manuscript?

Well, in fact, I am quoting part of a writer's argument. I could use another verb, of course, to avoid the complication altogether, but I just needed to know if APA has a solution for such a situation if a writer wills to kind of change a word's part of speech in a quote.

I found another source from a university site specifically addressing a change like this. It appears for MLA style you'd use brackets [] where you are removing the -s. Based on APA's site, they do not seem to address this case specifically. I'm not sure if that means it is discouraged or overlooked as a case by APA, as this case is outlined for other citation styles.


text:
Should I add a bibliography for this?
While writing up my introduction for my transfer report (first year exam of the PhD in the UK) I want to give importance to the topic saying something like:

It lead to huge research, being N amount of papers published between
  2005-2015 in high-end publications.

I will look at this in Nature database. Should I add a bibliography to this? In the affirmative case, what format should the bibliography item have? In the negative case, I shouldn't add a bibliography, but is it OK to put an statement like this one in a report/thesis?
I am using bibtex but just the output format will do.

It is a non obvious claim, so it should be cited. An alternative would be to give a few examples of high impact papers on the field.
The style should be as any other database, if your style manual specifies it, or as an online resource.


text:
Career options for an astronomer outside of academia?
I know there are similar questions addressed on this site, but the answers are geared to a different skill set to what (I suspect) most astronomers/astrophysicist will have.
I'm currently halfway through a PhD in radio astrophysics (in India) and I'm not too sure that I want to stay in academics, so I'd like to explore what options I have outside of academics.
So my PhD is geared more toward data analysis, so I have a fair knowledge of C & Python for numerical processing but not for more general purpose computing (but I am trying to teach myself some of that).
I'm aware that this is a vague question, but what options do I have if I choose to leave? I understand that data analysis skills are quite valuable, and it would be nice to continue in a research-like climate because I really do enjoy research.

Of course you are hoping for responses from people already in such situations; I'm not.  However, doing a web search might prove fruitful.  Off the top of my head, people developing plans for space travel may need some of your skills.  So would science centers and others who wish to "bring radio astronomy to the public"; having a professional help with the development of the material would ensure its integrity/propriety for the purpose.  Surprisingly, game designers might also incorporate a simulated version of radio astronomy for their products.

@NotQuiteAnOutsider - Thanks! I should have specified I'm not looking specifically to stay in radio astronomy, but if I could choose I'd like to stay in data analysis.

Here is a site with lots of useful anecdotes from others.

I moved from a PhD in Astrophysics to an industry job some years ago, so I can share my experience, as well as the experience that a number of my fellow grad students had.  This was in the United States, so things may be different in other countries.
The basic idea is that as far as most industry is concerned, a PhD in astronomy/astrophysics is the same as physics, so any job looking for a physics background will do.  Jobs looking for a mathematics/statistics background are probably close enough as well, and worth applying to.
Your most marketable skills are your ability to code and do math/statistics while working with data.  This is EXTREMELY valuable in industry.  Your knowledge of astronomy and physics is likely not very valuable except in some very specific jobs.
Some specific fields that aggressively hire people with PhDs in astronomy in large amounts:
1) Quantitative Finance - The financial world hires a lot of people with PhDs in math/physics/stats to be quants.  There are a lot of pros/cons to this field, but it pays well at least.
2) Defense Contractors - This is very much a research type environment.  However, this almost always requires that the applicant have US citizenship in the United States in order to obtain security clearance.
3) Software Engineering - A background in coding, data analysis, and mathematics is very desirable. You will likely want to brush up on your programming since scientific programming is not usually software engineering, as well as your statistics.
You can try for more specialized fields like medical imaging, but it is often difficult to compete with the physicists with specialized backgrounds in that specific niche in my experience.

I'm guessing that's how you knew about 'a real quant position would generally require some kind of graduate degree' ? :P http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/28349/in-hong-kong-do-highschool-teachers-make-more-than-quants-financial-analysts#comment107824_28349


text:
Is there any option to defer the admission if accepted at a grad school?
I'm a sophomore in masters in chemical engineering and I wanted to apply to grad schools in USA and Canada for PhD. The thing is, my program here for masters is not time bound. It may take me between 1 to 2 years more to complete and this can't be predicted as it all depends on various factors like how fast the research project goes and how good is the funding this year etc.
I wanted to know if universities provide you right to defer the admission (if they accept the application in the first place) for a semester or two.

My sense is that this is generally not allowed (but my experience is in the humanities), because admissions is done on a yearly basis. But rather than depending on strangers on the internet, why not check with schools you are interested in?

@xLeitix, Although the question you are directing me to is on the similar grounds but my situation is lot more different. See, I'd still be working on my current degree if and when I'm accepted for a PhD program. If I apply late (say,next year), I run the risk of waiting for 6 months before I start the doctoral program. Even for the safer side, if I apply after 6 months from now for spring semester admissions, my scope will be limited as not many universities have a spring intake. All these things in mind compelled me to put the question as I believe that it is not redundant.

Your personal situation is kind of irrelevant, as your question is really quite straight-forward: do universities allow deferring? I feel the answers in the linked question actually answer your question pretty well (e.g., @Suresh: "You could defer admission, but it's a little unusual to defer for a year.").

I don't know how it works elsewhere, but my department (a large mathematics department) seems to have no difficulty allowing grad students to defer their admission for a year. Longer deferments are problematic because of uncertainties about future funding. A shorter deferment, for one semester, is not an administrative problem but an educational one: Several of the standard courses for new Ph.D. students are two-semester sequences, and the first half of the sequence is offered only in the fall term.


text:
Tuition to transfer to massachusetts during a degree
My husband is currently in the middle of his degree in chemistry (we are both independent adults without links or support to parents/family). I am the main wage earner for our household and we currently live in Colorado.
I want to move to Massachusetts for a new job and my husband wishes to come with me. He had good luck so far talking to a number of schools there about transfering.
However we are struggling to find out if he will have to pay in or out of state tuition after we move as the difference in cost is very substantial. Does this depend on the school or just on the state? Unfortunately we have got mixed and ambiguous information from the schools in question so are extremely unsure on how this works.

@cag51 umass has in state rates for graduate students. It is possible that a first year transfer student might not have full funding, especially if it is a masters student or non sciences.

Is this for an undergraduate program? It's very rare to achieve residency for tuition purposes while a student, otherwise everyone would quickly become a resident past their first year. It's possible that if you are not a student of any kind then being a spouse of a non-student resident would work after a year (the answer by Van suggests so). For graduate students, it often matters a lot less due to tuition remission (though depending on the source of remission, may matter for internal accounting).

@EdV To answer your questions. I am askng regarding masters programs, not a PHD. He also does not currently have any funding source or scholarships other then his savings, my income, and intermittent part time work he does out of academia. I can do some further research on our options but I expected it wasnt the first time folks here would have seen a situation so may be able to point me in the right direction.

@BryanKrause Please see my comment above re program. I am not a student (I graduated from my masters program years ago and am now working full time). We primarily want to relocate due to a substantially better job opertunity in my field but are trying to figure out how the financial situation would be effected for him.

@Vality Ok, I had assumed you were most likely not a student though that wasn't clear; I was not sure about your husband. If your husband is a masters student, you should make that clear. "My husband is currently in the middle of his degree in chemistry" gives no information about what level of degree he is enrolled in. It is best if you edit your original question, because comments on StackExchange are subject to disappearing into arbitrary phases of matter.

@EdV Thank you so much for all your help. I have made a copy of the comments and other information. I really appreciate everyone helping me look into this.

Based on this document, I see a chance (slim, but not zero) that you could move to MA together, he would pay out-of-state tuition for a year, and then he could apply for reclassification.  (Please keep in mind I am NOT a lawyer, nor anyone in the college admission pipeline; I am hoping to provide you with a question you can ask of someone who is one of the two.)  Here's my reasoning:
From part 2, section 2

Physical presence for this entire twelve-month or six-month period need not be required as long as the conduct of an individual, taken in total, manifests an intention to make Massachusetts his or her permanent dwelling place. However, residency is not acquired by mere physical presence in Massachusetts while the person is enrolled in an institution of higher education.

and from part 3, section 2

The spouse of any person who is classified or is eligible for classification
  as a Massachusetts resident is likewise eligible for classification as a
  Massachusetts resident.

Your husband would be able to make the case to be reclassified after 12 months on the basis of "he followed you for your job."  I think that, even if he took classes full time, he could still apply for the reclassification, but that reclassification will not be retroactive to the year paid as out-of-state.  (section 4.4)
Here's the catch: If I am right, it's not a guarantee that he'd be reclassified; it's a thing he can apply for.  So, by continuing classes in that 12 month period, he is not only going to be paying full out-of-state tuition, but he runs the risk of being 'locked in' as an out-of-state student for the duration of his program.
The other option, which is much more of a certainty, is that he puts his education on hold for a year to let the residency sort itself out.
I strongly suggest that you just ask the folks at the college he is trying to transfer to.  Certainly the admission people have had to deal with this before.

...and, while I was typing this up, Ed V (as one of those knowledgeable people I am not) asked a very good question.

I don't think the OP ever mentioned a graduate program specifically. Based on that I'd assume an undergraduate program unless OP clarifies.

Thank you, please see my comments on the question for any clarification. Otherwise I will see if I can use the info you have given to ask better questions to the colleges in question. Thank you so much.


text:
What is the "initial screen" for displaying a journal's copyright?
I submitted my first journal paper to IEEE today, and when I considered posting it on ArXiv just to be safe from scooping, I noticed that IEEE has a policy for submitted content, which does not mention anything about the paper being allowed on ArXiv after it has been submitted to IEEE.
But, since IEEE allows posting a submitted paper on institutional repositories etc. as long as the copyright notice is displayed, I'm assuming I can publish it on ArXiv too, since they may have accidentally ommitted mentioning it, thinking that everyone would first put their pre-print on ArXiv and only then submit to IEEE. They didn't expect someone like me to submit to IEEE and then put it on ArXiv. Even TechRxiv's FAQ is ambiguous. Although IEEE's manual on page 88 states:

IEEE does not restrict the rights of authors to use their
  IEEEcopyrighted articles in their own teaching, training, or work
  responsibilities, or those of their institutions or employers. In any
  preprint version archived by the author after submission, IEEE
  requires that IEEE will be credited as copyright holder. Upon
  publication of the work, authors are asked to include the article’s
  Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

To put my paper on ArXiv or TechRxiv now, I'll have to follow IEEE's policy of "IEEE must be credited as the copyright holder with the following statement included on the initial screen displaying IEEE-copyrighted material:". I don't understand what this "initial screen" is. Should I mention the copyright below the title of my paper or anywhere on the paper, as long as it is on the first page of the paper?
ps: TechRxiv mentions "Includes permission to reuse previously published or copyrighted material, if applicable". Again, I'm assuming I can submit to TechRxiv if I mention the copyright on the first page?

Side note: IEEE does not have the copyright till it is transferred when the paper is accepted, right?

I think you've figured it out as well as it can be figured out.

@GoodDeeds That's the case in ComSoc, not sure about the rest of them though.

IEEE support mentioned that the paper can be uploaded to arXiv even after submitting to IEEE as long as this information is added to the first page of the article:
“© 20XX IEEE.  Personal use of this material is permitted.  Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.”
By "initial screen" they meant for it to appear on the first page someplace. They didn't want to require it to appear "bottom of the left column" or "under the byline" because different repositories can have different displays. They just need it to be at the beginning of the article.


text:
Can the integrity of research be affected if the publisher has rights to create derivative works without the author's permission?
This is for a research paper that's presented in a conference and to be published in a book chapter. From an excerpt of the publishing agreement shown below, since the Publisher has the right to edit, alter, adapt, and prepare derivative works based on the Contribution, couldn't it impact the integrity of my original work? There's one such example here.
"Rights Granted:
The above rights are granted in relation to the Contribution as a whole or any part and with or in relation to any other works. Without limitation, the above grant includes: (a) the right to edit, alter, adapt, adjust and prepare derivative works; (b) all advertising and marketing rights including without limitation in relation to social media; (c) rights for any training, educational and/or instructional purposes; and (d) the right to add and/or remove links or combinations with other media/works. The Author hereby grants to the Publisher the right to create, use and/or license and/or sub-license content data or metadata of any kind in relation to the Contribution or parts thereof (including abstracts and summaries) without restriction. The copyright in the Contribution shall be vested in the name of the Author. The Author has asserted their right(s) to be identified as the originator of the Contribution in all editions and versions, published in all forms and media. The Author agrees that all editing, alterations or amendments to the Contribution made by or on behalf of the Publisher or its licensees for the purpose of fulfilling this Agreement or as otherwise allowed by the above rights shall not require the approval of the Author and will not infringe the Author's "moral rights" (or any equivalent rights). This includes changes made in the course of dealing with retractions or other legal issues."

If the conference chose to make substantial changes (other than formatting and trimming to fit in available space), then that would affect their integrity and how people chose to interact with them in the future. They have better things to do than twist your work.

In theory, yes, such things could happen, but not in practice. Or, more accurately, only rarely in practice.
Note first that the right to make derivative works is part of copyright itself, not a separate requirement of publishers. If an author gives up copyright they give up all the attendant rights, though normally with a returned license for certain things.
Don't confuse "derived works" with extended works. Anyone, including the original author, can extend a published work, independent of copyright.
Derived works, however, include translations to other languages and to other formats. I doubt that spelling and grammar corrections, often made by publishers, are "derived" works, and usually made with the permission of authors in any case. But, a publisher might want to make, for example, an online version or a graphic version of some work and the original author might not have the interest or skills to add much to such a thing.
But there are a number of factors that suggest it would be bad corporate policy to go too far outside what authors accept. First is the journal's reputation. I doubt that it would last long if the journal regularly abused authors. It wouldn't be invisible to the wider community and it would lessen the likelihood that people would want to publish there. Journals and their publishers have a vested interest in good author relationships. It is also not usually likely that the journal would have more expertise in the topic than the author, so it is difficult to find many cases when such a derived work is an enhancement.
I suspect, also, that most publisher demands for changes come while the author still holds copyright, not afterwards. In those cases the author can take the work elsewhere. Giving up copyright is late enough in the process that the parties have already come to an agreement about what will be published.
The issue of retractions is sensitive, but also related to journal reputation and the validity of scholarship. If something is found to be false, or damaging, after publication, the journal may have an obligation to retract it, even when the author disagrees. Publishing reputable scholarship is more than a "vanity" project to boost author's ego, or even reputation. It is an attempt to add to human knowledge.
There is one aspect of this that is sensitive to some. If a textbook is popular and makes a lot of money for a publisher (and for the author), then the publisher will want future editions. Some books have a long lifetime for the original edition, but many, especially elementary, textbooks require new editions, sometimes just to replace the set of exercises. An author will often find this "need" listed in a publishing contract. If the author is willing to update the book every few (two or three, perhaps) years then the publisher is happy. But otherwise the publisher claims (legally, since they hold copyright) to be able to have others do the update, usually by adding a new author, even when the original author does little for the new edition. Personally, I never liked such clauses, but understand their purpose. If a textbook isn't upgraded it will often (usually?) disappear after only a few years.


text:
Journal refuses to call near verbatim copies plagiarism
Recently I came across a paper on a topic I'm interested in. I started reading the paper and realized this was a later version of a paper I reviewed roughly 6 months prior. That paper was rejected then due to a large amount of plagiarism that I identified, mostly in the introductory sections.
Despite the plagiarism, I tried to be as helpful as possible to the authors, recommending a different approach than what they used. Turns out that they quite liked parts of my approach as they made many of my recommended changes to their paper. They even liked how I described it, because roughly 3 sentences were copied nearly verbatim from my review. There was no mention of the help of an anonymous reviewer either.
I contacted the journal, who so far has refused to acknowledge that plagiarism occurred. I've received two somewhat contradictory responses (paraphrasing the journal staff):

Plagiarism can only occur if the copying was from a published source. As my review was not published, the alleged copying can not be plagiarism.
The passages I highlight are not similar.

Point 1 is absurd. A student would fail an assignment if they tried that one. Point 2 is also absurd as the sentences I highlighted are near verbatim copies, and there are many ways the same points could be made. I was really surprised when they made that argument.
What are my options at this point? I'd like for the plagiarized passages to be rewritten, but the journal staff refuses to bulge on that.
It's worth noting that this was published in a reputable journal. The paper is outside of the field of the journal in my view, but the reputation of the journal in general is good.

somehow reminds me of the prisoner's dilemma, only that the journal's reputation vs. your integrity is at stake if both don't want/allow cooperation...

I tried cooperating with them. They offered to let me write a reply to the article since I had technical problems with it too, which I think benefits them a lot more than me. I said sure, if the plagiarism is removed first. That wasn't acceptable to them.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13489/what-to-do-when-a-journal-publishes-a-paper-plagiarizing-ones-work-but-doesnt

@Allure, nice find, might make this question redundant. Though in contrast to that one I have had responses from the journal here, the journal is reputable, and the journal is located in the US (where I live).

While it can certainly be plagiarism regardless of the source, I can understand the journal being reluctant pulling a paper for plagiarism from anonymous peer review comments.

Copying sentences from a referee report is a gray area — referee reports are not meant to be published, but to help the authors revise their paper, so plagiarizing a referee report, while it might be unethical, is not actually doing any harm to the referee.

Thought about this. Regardless of whether directly copying from reviews is kosher, I have changed my personal policy in reviews to immediately reject a paper at the first sign of plagiarism, and remove all technical evaluations of the work from the review. I won't be writing papers for free for verified plagiarists. Knowingly doing so seems unethical to me.

Can you clarify if the authors cut all the plagiarised content from the previous version, and now the issue is only with copying parts of your review? Also (forgive me if I'm asking the obvious) did you disclose your (timestamped) correspondence with the editor of the journal where the previous submission took place? Both should have made a difference when you contacted the EiC.

The authors removed almost all of the plagiarized content from the previous article, but not all. I provided the journal/EIC a list of plagiarized passages including a plagiarized sentence from earlier and the new plagiarized sentences from my review. I attached a copy of my previous review. I did not forward correspondence with the editor. To their credit, the journal staff did modify the article in response to some of the plagiarism from earlier, but they seemed unwilling to acknowledge the new plagiarism. I left these details out for simplicity.

Contact the editorial board. It sounds like the journal's staff aren't very familiar with academic norms, so they don't know what to do; besides they likely won't do anything without the editorial board's approval. So approach the editorial board, probably the editor-in-chief, with evidence of the plagiarism.
I should say it further sounds like the paper has been published, which narrows the options available. They can't send the paper back to the author for revision; they can't recall the copies that have already been sent to subscribers and/or printed. If the editors agree with you that the paper is plagiarized, their most likely action is to retract the paper.

I have been in contact with the journal staff and editor-in-chief. Any advice for contacting the editorial board members? Is it okay to start with a random member? I don't know any of them. Also, the paper was published online but has not been printed yet to my knowledge.

If the editor-in-chief isn't helping I think you're at a dead end unfortunately: editorial board members are not likely to want to go against the EiC. Being published online is almost equivalent to being published: the articles have been copyedit, typeset, author changes implemented, etc, with the only thing still left to do is to assign an issue. I'd still say retraction is the most likely outcome if the editors agree with you.

@Allure: If I was a member of the editorial board, and somebody contacted me about a paper in the journal that had blatant plagiarism in it, which the editor-in-chief had dismissed as unimportant, I would consider resigning. (It would have to be blatant and substantial plagiarism, though). Editorial boards have been known to threaten to resign en masse because of an unethical EIC.

I think this actually falls into a bit of a gray area.
Attributing things to (anonymous) referees is a more modern practice. I personally vary rarely see such things in papers from several decades ago, while it's extremely common to see in papers from the last few years. I doubt reviewers have become radically more helpful; rather the culture has changed. I think to a lot of people, reviewers are (still) presumed to be voluntarily offering up what they say for direct use (in a way, that's one of their functions), and the authors only have to recognize their assistance if they choose to do so.  And with doing so being a professional courtesy to avoid awkward feelings and reactions, such as your own, or feeling compelled to acknowledge a very significant contribution (e.g. providing a proof of a significant new theorem).
The exact culture here will also vary between fields, which may be relevant to your situation as you say the paper is "outside the field" of the journal. It's not quite clear if you feel the paper and authors are well within your field.  But if not, the authors may come from an academic sub-culture where the attributions you seek are abnormal.
On the other hand, the legal reality is perhaps a bit more clear.  Unless the journal had you submit a transfer of copyright form along with your review, then you both have and retain the copyright on your review. Whether or not it was published is irrelevant. The acquisition of the copyright is immediate upon the works creation and does not require you to disseminate or share it in any way, nor is it necessarily lost by doing so.
So you could in principle elevate this to the legal theater, though this would be a drastic move that is likely to burn a lot of bridges. You'll have to ask yourself if a fight over this is worth that. And as with most legal matters, it can be difficult to predict the outcome: if there's a jury involved then that's always got a random element, or a judge might rule that your work is not adequately original, etc.
You mention in some comments you have contacted the Editor in Chief (EiC). If you've provided your review and journal it was provided for, and he does not take action you find favorable, then there's not much more you can do, beyond the aforementioned elevation to the legal theater. The offer to submit and publish a response to the paper may be worth seriously considering. Some people even go to the lengths of talking about such issues on social media. Though note this may carry some bridge-burning risks, too.
If these risks aren't acceptable to you, the best thing you might do is make a note of who the authors are and decline to review papers for them again in the future (you generally do not have to specify why you decline to do a review, and it is generally wise to not specify). You may also opt to stop reviewing for this journal, if you are convinced this is a serious issue with the journal itself.

Technically, the copyright for the review might belong to his employer rather than himself, depending on his local laws and the wording of his employment contract.

Beyond what was mentioned in the other answers, here's what I did:

I sent a DMCA take down notice to the host of the journal. zibadawa timmy suggested legal action would burn my bridges with the journal, but as far as I'm concerned the journal staff and editor burned the bridges. While they did not capitulate entirely on this, they were now willing to get the authors to acknowledge the contributions of an anonymous reviewer. I'd recommend this in the future if someone in a similar situation finds a journal to be stubborn on plagiarism.
The journal staff had earlier suggested that I write a reply to the article since I also had technical issues with it. I said I'd be willing to do that if they removed the plagiarized passages. That wasn't acceptable to them. It seems the best I'll be able to get at the moment is the acknowledgement, so I'll take the additional opportunity to criticize the article. I'm not doing this as revenge. The plagiarism is really just the tip of the iceberg. The technical problems are not as obvious.

Update: I've been periodically checking the article for the changes I requested, and so far I haven't seen the plagiarized passages removed. However, as of today (2019-04-26) the article was removed entirely. (404 error.) It's still listed on the journal's website, but the abstract and PDF file links from before do not work. I'm not sure what to make of this. I don't think that it's a response to my DMCA request as I sent a followup saying to cancel the DMCA request and never received a reply, but perhaps they are particularly slow and never read my followup message?

I know of one reviewer who convinced an editor to force some authors to acknowledge in a paper he was reviewing that the core idea for a paper came from a conference conversation they'd had with him, the reviewer. I think whether you can do this sort of thing obviously depends on your standing with the editors and the editors' attitudes, but more concretely that there needs to be a specific suggestion about a way forward. Why waste your review and the authors' efforts? Think of a way to make the improved paper publishable. They should at least acknowledge an anonymous reviewer, and possibly you could reveal your identity (or suggest a relevant citation) if you really think that makes the situation better.


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Do I have to be concerned about self-plagiarism in a short accessible methods description?
I published a methods paper about a data analysis method (in cognitive neuroscience), and I'm now working as a co-author with colleagues on two experimental papers using that method. Since the main audience of these papers will be much less technically inclined than that of my own, I have been asked to provide a concise (1 paragraph, about 300 words) summary of the method which explains its logic and workings as precisely as possible for that less technical audience. In one case the need for such a paragraph has been stated also by a reviewer, explicitly writing that just referring the reader to the methods paper is not sufficient.
My question is: Since the requirements of this paragraph for these two papers are identical, it would make sense to use the same text for both – but would this be considered as a case of self-plagiarism? And if yes, what can I do to avoid that?
Options I have considered:
– Include the text in one paper (likely to be published first) as-is, and then quote it in the other paper. However, explicit quotations either in quotation marks or as an indented block are extremely uncommon in (at least my) science. So would a footnote like "this paragraph has been copied verbatim from XYZ" be the right thing to do to mark it as a quotation?
– Slightly change the wording, sentence structure, etc. – In my understanding this is worse, because it just adds an attempt to disguise on top of the self-plagiarism.
– Just write a separate text for each. But because the requirements are identical and I'm writing them both within a matter of days, it his highly likely that I'll end up with near-identical text anyway, and that any differences would be artificial, just like in the last option. There are only so many ways one can explain a technical matter in a concise, clear, and accessible way.
In each case the paragraph is embedded in a longer passage that details how the method is applied to the specific experimental design of each study. In one case the text is going to go into the supplementary material, while in the other it will be part of a regular methods section.
Morally speaking I don't see any concern here, because this text in no way claims to be original anyway, but just paraphrases a paper which is of course properly cited. But should I be concerned about others seeing this as a case of self-plagiarism?
I'm interested in your personal evaluations of this matter, but if possible also in some "official" references.

My personal belief is that it's fine to duplicate the text with a reference to the original methods paper and a statement that this is a short summary of that work. Unfortunately, you will find people in the world who think you should be drawn and quartered for doing this, so your best bet is to write two different descriptions lest you get "caught" by a pedant. Worries about self-plagiarism for methodology sections, in my opinion, are vastly overblown, but not everyone agrees with me, so you have to be careful who you work ends up in front of. You never know who is going to run your papers through plagiarism detection software and reject your work because of one paragraph.

Bill, thanks for the answer. What are thoughts on the problem that rewriting the text with the exact same goal does likely result in the a very similar text anyway, which might still be considered self-plagiarism by the draw-and-quarter crowd? Do you think quotation marks or a footnote would be a good way around this problem?

In particular, many publishers find this kind of text reuse unacceptable, at least in part because they could be help liable for copyright infringement if they published the text again.

@BrianBorchers, a reproduction license for that text should be easily obtainable given how freely many publishers are willing to give to others for figures and such. We're talking about 2 paragraphs here, but I do see your point.

@A.Donda, just do your best. If you cite yourself, then it's not plagiarism, and if you reword, it's probably not copyright infringement. If you submit one article before the other, then cite the future one as "submitted" and explain yourself in the cover letter or response to reviewers. Cross-cite your two pending articles if you have to. This is a pretty rare situation, but you should be able to work it out with your editors. A journal would be pretty stupid to sue its competition or a submitter over this kind of piddly "infringement" which is almost certainly Fair Use in the US.

Downvoter care to comment?

+1. While dual publication is obviously not OK, I find it ridiculous when the self-plagiarism hysteria expands to include small parts of a methods section with a citation to the original.

Pedant here -- you need to be very clear about the fact that copying the text could have serious implications. Many publishers today use plagiarism detection software (that doesn't work as they expect it to, but that's a different topic) so your text may come back as "plagiarized" when it is submitted. Even if you are summarizing, give a reference to where the original methods section is given. Never copy text, even if you wrote it, into another paper. As a commenter has said: there could be copyright restrictions!
And maybe you can start to get your field to accept indentations or quotation marks for methods sections by showing how elegantly you can do this.

Hi, thanks, but I'm a bit confused as to what you are actually saying. I'm aware of the issues, otherwise I wouldn't have asked the question. And I would always reference the original paper, as I wrote (and I would hurt myself if I didn't – it's my paper). So what do you recommend: Quoting using quotation marks?

I would either quote using quotation marks, or use indirect quotation and a paraphrase, if that is possible.


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Oral vs written exam - from a lecturers point of view?
We are free to grade our students in oral or written exams. Obviously, if only 1 or 2 students take the course, oral exams (~15-30 mins) are the way to go from an effort minimization perspective (no exam creation, room reservation, grading, post-exam inspection/review), as well as written exams for like 1000 students.
Can anyone provide experience on the effort/benefits of oral vs written exams? Is there a magic number of students where this changes?

Giving good, relevant oral exams is an art form in and of itself, which also has to factor in to the equation.

Are you a professor or a TA? Tenured?

@Buffy Why does it matter?

If you think preparing a written exam is onerous, then double it for oral... and consider that you need a large number of questions because students talk to each other !

@FedericoPoloni, there is risk in oral exams unless you have a way to keep a record. If you are tenured you can weather accusations. Otherwise it can get sticky.

@Buffy interesting point. Could that risk be mitigated by recording? Or are there other concerns about that (eg making the student more nervous)? Perhaps this is a different question... ;-)

@Flyto, something to consider is to give the student a sheet at the end of the exam that contains the grade assigned as well as signatures from both, and retaining a signed copy as well. Even better if you can put some feedback on the student's sheet. The implication, perhaps unstated, is that agreement has been reached on the performance.

@Buffy Generally, this type of risk is mitigated by having a committee composed of 2-3 professors (in some countries this is mandatory even though not always actually done... ehm... for lack of manpower). But it also depends on whether a professor is trusted by the students and how much they are capable of explaining the grading. I've never had any problem (a few obligatory curses, yes, indeed...).

You should also take into account the class you are teaching. For example, for a beginner math course, it is easy to get exam questions (just change the numbers in the matrix/function/etc. and you are good to go). On the other hand, for a really deep graduate level class, it might be hard to find exam questions that are both challenging and solvable in a few hours (and the few that exist might be well known or already in the textbook).

There's really no universal answer, but it depends on the university regulations and on your willingness to listen to students for several hours.
To give a personal example, I've been running oral exams for about 20 years. My exams, which are for undergraduate students (2nd or 3rd year), typically consist of a written test (2-3 hours) plus an oral exam with a duration of about 30 min for the standard exam or 1 hour if the student prepares an optional part (e.g. the presentation of a scientific paper or a presentation on a lab work). If you fail the written test, you cannot take the oral exam. You can be failed also at the oral exam too.
For me, the critical factor is the distance between two exam sessions because, given the rules in my country, the students who failed in one session should be able to retake the exam in the next one. Typically, in my university, the distance between two exam sessions at the end of a course is of a couple of weeks.
So, in my case, the magic number is of about 100 students, 150 maximum. Of 100 students, typically about 70 students come to an exam session. Of these, about 50% fail the written test, which means that I remain with about 35 students for the oral exam. Assuming that 1/4 take the optional part, I need 9+26/2=22 hours for the oral exams, which can be done in one week, leaving some days for grading and for rescheduling students who can have unexpected issues (illness, other exams on the same day etc.).
The benefits of oral exams have been discussed at length in the answers to this question, and I really cannot overestimate their importance in learning. See also this related question.

Wow. Dedication.

Agreed on the dedication. But also, wow, 50% failure rate? ;-)

@Flyto Ha, but that's a low failure rate! In a distant past my bar was quite high and the failure rate was around 80%. Many years ago, after having passed the exam, a student told me: "I've finally passed this exam! This is the 22nd time that I tried it". My answer had been: "It's because you haven't studied the other 21 times" ;-) (regardless the appearances, no student was harmed in the process ;-) )

Note also that such a high failure rate was not so uncommon in my country in the past for certain exams (some professors were eventually lifted from certain courses because they used to fail way too much and the backlog was unsustainable).

@Flyto The Italian system is a bit crazy. In my university, students have 6-7 attempts per year to take each exam separately. A student that takes a 50%-fail exam 6 times has a true failure rate of (50%)^6 = 1.6% (Yes, I know, this is poor statistics, but it gives you a rough idea). It's not clear to me who benefits from this system, but we are stuck with it because any attempt to reduce the number of retakes is fought with fierce opposition by the students.

My personal tipping point is about 30 students. Below that, oral exams are more efficient, above that, a written exam seems to be preferable for me.
Note that this depends a lot on other factors: where I am, there are teaching assistant that help proctoring and grading the exams, so written exams scale well to large sizes. However, we also have a "grade grubbing date" (exam inspection for the students) and this also takes some time. Also, our regulations state that we have oral exams of about 30-35 minutes for a lecture for which the written exam is about 180 minutes.
Regarding other points raised in comments and answers: Where I am we always need two people for an oral exam and one of them needs to write a protocol of the exam which is kept on file. Regarding the time for the preparation of the exam: I feel that preparing a well thought written exam takes a lot more time than doing an oral exam. For oral exams I usually design just a few core question and the rest of the exam flows around these questions. Sometimes I even make a few of these core question available to the students (and still some of them can't answer than properly...). Also, I find it pretty easy to adapt the questions slightly, if I have the feeling that the students know all my questions already.


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Citing work with a publication year in the future
I am citing this publication in my thesis using the author-date citation format. The article is fully accessible, however the Journal apparently placed it into an issue that will appear next year. Therefore, the citation information (BibTex) says that the year of publication is 2017. I find it a bit strange to cite future work.
When citing research articles to which year should the citation refer to? The year it appears in the Journal or the year it appeared (online)?

Incidentally, this is more common than you might think. As of 12 November, Scopus reports 20,881 items with notional publication year of 2017, or about 1% of the items recorded so far in 2016.

You cite it as (in press)

@HEITZ No, that's not the appropriate citation. "In press" is appropriate if the manuscript is accepted but there are no bibliographic details yet, which is not the case here. If the OP feels really uncomfortable they can add [pre-release] or [online preview] or something, if there's a chance that the content will change slightly upon publication, but really, there's no need for it. Just cite it as 2017 and move on.

In press you cite an article (usually your own) which you know it has been accepted, but not published online or printed yet. The in press lag is lower now with the online versions available.

I'm in a similar situation. My paper was released online in 2019 as "in press" with a DOI and complete bibliographic information. It was recently finalized (now 2020) and has a publication date next week. Google Scholar, ResearchGate, and other engines list the date as 2019, but the official date on the manuscript is 2020--as if the DOI info changed. Citing something as "in press" makes sense to me, so it's odd to me that something in press would have a DOI. I wish journals would be more consistent here!

Most journals take as formal publication date the date it appears on their printed version. The online version is considered a pre-publication.
Thus, despite how weird it may look, it is ok to cite an article from the future (as long as it is accepted and in press or the online preview). Journals with only online presence would not have this issue or the time span might be smaller.
What is probably important is to provide the DOI of the article (if available) as this will make it easier for people to find its online version before and after it has been published on paper.
Edit: Just to add that the citation and its details is decided/provided by the journal and not by you.

I agree with @George.  There's no problem at all with citing a publication date in the future.  The more difficult case in when an article is available online now, but there's no publication date yet provided.  Then I believe you should cite the online version, with the date that it appeared online, but change the citation if you can at a later time.  For example, if your paper is finally being prepared for publication, the production staff might ask you to update citations of this kind with actual publication dates.  If they don't, you should do so anyway.
There are some odd cases.  Some books published and available for purchase late in the year may have a copyright date for the following year.  A journal in my field once had editorial delays and ended up not publishing an issue dated one year until several months into the next year.  So in March, you could cite a paper as appearing the preceding year--it was known which articles had been accepted--but you couldn't yet provide page numbers, because the journal issue had not in fact been published and page numbers weren't publicly available.
In all of these cases, you should use as much of the official publication information as possible, I believe, and follow George's other advice.

In decent journals the technical editorial staff will alert you to incomplete references before the manuscript becomes final; it is often to make their job of cross-referencing the citations with other databases easier. So in any case, everyone will be grateful if author finalizes the citation lists before the final version.


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Combinatorics or Linear Algebra for Computer Science/Applied Mathematics Degree?
I'm looking to graduate in the upcoming Spring with a BS in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, and was curious on which of the two courses would be most applicable moving forward. I'm only able to take one of either "Linear Algebra and Matrix Theory" or "Combinatorics and Graph Theory" next semester, given that I'll be entering the field of Software Engineering following graduation.
Certainly, one class won't make or break one's education in the grand scheme of things, but I wanted to know which would serve best moving forward in engineering, or at the least to round out an applied mathematics degree.
Either way, thanks for your consideration with this dilemma of mine.

Did you take any other courses on linear algebra or discrete math? I don't see how you would learn algorithms without some basic graph theory (although it is not that difficult to pick up by yourself).

In terms of previous math courses, I've taken a basic vectors and matrices class, vector calculus (Calculus III), discrete mathematics, and differential equations. Computer Science courses get into various structures as necessary, I've worked more with graphs just by nature of the general problems we solve in those classes (traversal of graphs via adjacency matrices)

ok - given your answer I agree with Dave Clarke.

I suspect this question is off-topic here. (Please see http://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic.)

I'd go for "Linear Algebra and Matrix Theory" as you'll need that if you ever need to do any machine learning or computer graphics, both of which are increasingly common "tools" for modern software systems.
Learning a bit about graphs too wouldn't hurt.

I didn't find this book. Would you please tell its authors or publications. Thank you.


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Greeting in cover letter to journal with 6 editors
I am in the process of submitting a paper to a journal and they require a cover letter to be attached to the submission. There are multiple guides for this online from several publishers, including Springer. The Springer guide suggests that:

If known, address the editor who will be assessing your manuscript by their name. Include the date of submission and the journal you are submitting to.

The journal of my choice has six editors with no one being more senior as far as I can tell from the website information. Looking at the publication lists there are two primary candidates, editors A and B, for handling the paper (or that is my guess).
What do I use for a greeting in my cover letter?
(NB: I'm not asking about the content of such a letter and searching for is:question cover letter [publications] gave me nothing of interest, so I don't think it's a duplicate like other recent cover letter questions have been.)

I think this probably doesn't fall under the "if known" clause, since you don't know which editor should handle it...

@nengel I agree, so then do I just go with a generic "To whom it may concern"? It seems a little detached so I'm wondering if there are other options.

How about "Dear Editor(s)"? (I always have trouble with "dear" but I believe in English it's ok to address strangers this way...)

@hejseb "To whom it may concern" is definitely antiquated. Why not go with the classic "Dear Sir or Madam"?

Since you don't know for sure which of the six editors of the journal will handle the submission, a generic salutation seems most appropriate.
I would go with "Dear Editors", or "Dear Editors of Journal X".