text:
Can a student seek redress for the administration neglecting their paperwork?
(Breakdown of a larger issue - full story here)
Following the (delayed) approval of my thesis paperwork by my professor, the review staff of my small (~20 grad students?) department took weeks to give me each round of revisions. After the second revision, having already had my thesis for nearly the entire semester, the reviewer admitted to "forgetting" about my paperwork for over a month. She followed that up by telling me she was shelving my paperwork to "focus on other students who still have a chance of graduation this semester." Even though I should have graduated the semester previous, and had been waiting months for her to finish the review so I could get my thesis bound (required by the graduation process).
The reviewer was fired shortly after the end of that semester, the new reviewer and I got it finished up in just over a week, and the dean of the college wrote a letter to the graduate school requesting my graduation be back-dated. This was refused with only blanket statements about 'policy'. Obviously I should have escalated the issue much sooner, but I wasn't world-weary enough to realize that "the people in charge" were being so negligent and unprofessional, or to realize that I could do anything about it. I think students in general are often too intimidated by the people in the 'ivory tower' to speak out and ask for better treatment.
How can students know when they are being treated unfairly? How can they get their complaints taken seriously and appropriately escalate issues through their department/college without being ignored? Is there any recourse for them - a way to get the school to correct the issue?

Does your university have an ombudsman?

Can your supervisor help? Or perhaps a student representative?

Could you say a bit more about the reviewer that "got fired"?  Was the reviewer a tenured faculty member?  If so, getting fired is very serious and unusual, and I can imagine the "blame buck" stopping at that faculty member.  On the other hand, if that faculty member got fired for issues having anything to do with your case, that certainly strengthens the position that there is some real grievance on your part to be redressed.

@PeteL.Clark The reviewer was department office staff, not a faculty member. So far as I know, her only duties were to assist with student records and paperwork.

@mkennedy No ombudsman that I am (or was) aware of. After doing some quick research on the definition, it sounds like an ombudsman would have been the person to talk to. There was an attorney retained by the school for students to consult with for free, but he only came in once a month. Plus I had already moved out of town before all this really got rolling, and almost no one would work with me via email or over the phone.

@JamesBarrett My supervisor/professor was actually part of the initial problem, and had left for a position at another university before I even defended my thesis (there was special permission for the situation - see the links at the beginning of the question). I did try working with the student representatives, but they never returned my emails/calls and I was unable to make time to attend any council meeting.

@PeteL.Clark, My guess is that the univ employee that was reviewing the theses was doing a format/style review, not a technical information one. If your margins aren't right, no acceptance of the manuscript.

@mkennedy: Yes, maybe.  Still, holding up a thesis for up to a semester for these reasons is terrible...maybe terrible enough for the employee to get fired.

@mkennedy yes it was only a format/style review - and it was actually just an internal department review that was required before the grad school would look at it. I know several other students experienced delays around this same time, although I don't know to what extent, which I expect contributed to the reviewer being let go.

I didn't have to go through that (I took the non-thesis option 20 yrs ago) but the rumors about the grad school reviewers were to put in some easily fixable errors for them to find or they might find something that would take forever to fix.

Downvoters - any explanation or just here to criticize? I assure you this is a legitimate question that is of serious concern to many in academia, even if they are the ones on the other side of the desk.

Did this situation cause you to have to pay tuition and fees for extra semesters that you otherwise would not have? Did it prevent you from continuing to the next level of your education or career?  If so, there may be some financial recourse you could seek.

@CSGal yes, I had to pay some extra fees for late graduation. Had I been pursuing another higher degree in the same field, it likely would have preventing me from admittance.

Well in that case you could at least file a complaint and recoup your tuition and theoretical lost wages.

You're not at the end of the line yet.  Getting the date changed may be not be an option, but there are still steps you can take before going full Edmond Dantes.  First, I'll try to answer the more general questions.

How can students know when they are being treated unfairly?

You usually know at a base level when you're being wronged.  You clearly were on multiple occasions.

How can they get their complaints taken seriously and appropriately escalate issues through their department/college without being ignored?

Being respectful and professional is key.  The second you "rage," you will no longer be taken seriously.  Avoid personal attacks at all costs and always check yourself before you go forward.  Assume that people are reasonable and willing to help, even when they seem otherwise.  Communication is about the message that's received, not the one that's sent.
Carefully measured accusations of impropriety can sometimes help, but be cautious, they will also burn bridges.  I had a strong disagreement with a professor where at one point he refused to discuss the topic further. In turn, I summarized our interaction and accused him of being unprofessional. When he defended himself, he included a restating of his understanding of my goal. At that point, it became clear he mistook my request for my objective. What seemed like arrogance and dismissiveness were really misunderstanding. We were able to resolve the matter and are now on good terms.
Judicious use of carbon-copying.  CCing the wrong person at the wrong point will actively work against you on the points of both respect and professionalism.  That said, there is a role for it when transitioning between administrative levels. When you CC someone in on an ongoing conversation, they can see the back and forth history.
If you are:

Clearly conducting yourself properly and respectfully
Being treated unfairly
Have a concrete goal they can do something about (simply complaining won't cut it)

then you can attempt to escalate the matter to the person's direct superior by CCing them instead of generating a new e-mail chain.  You should be immediately switching the direction of your conversation to the new person at the same time, referencing the fact that your are doing this because you are out of options, and be in the right. You will be very, very heavily implying misconduct on behalf of the previous person in this case, but will want them to come to that conclusion on their own.  One could make an exception on this in extreme cases regarding ethics, safety, etc.
I think you are past the point where you can begin to CC someone's superior before taking it to them directly, as that requires some degree of personal familiarity. That does remain a potential, if very risky, option in other situations.

Is there any recourse for them - a way to get the school to correct the issue?

There are three further levels you can take this.

The President of the College. The individual College Deans still have to report to someone.  You do not want to telegraph your moves anymore at this stage. I don't have a good suggestion for the best way to frame your request for an appointment, but you can't afford them asking the Graduate College Dean for details prior to the meeting if they've already been compromised. Here are some more important tips for this:

You will also have some serious convincing to do that you're an adult. Be wearing a suit/dress and be immaculately groomed.
Have your greeting and synopsis rehearsed.
Lead with the impact this has had on you, not the history; your career and licensing is also their primary method of exposure to the working world.
Have every single piece of documentation you can scan or print, and have it ordered chronologically and separable by party at fault, if possible. Chronology is more important, as it shows your body of support and could reveal any collusion against you.
The copy of documentation you bring with you needs to be something they can keep then and there.

The Accrediting Agency.  This is no longer about degrees at this point, and it will do nothing for you directly.  I'm not even sure the issues at hand are relevant to them.  But they do vouch for the integrity of the school.  You will really just be filing an official report against the college at best, but if your degree dates remain changeable by College policy and they refuse to do so, it could be considered a form of academic misconduct.
Legal Recourse. (Disclaimer: I Am Not A Lawyer) You could go the legal route, as suggested.  They are damaging your ability to earn income in an easily quantifiable way.  Legal fees, lost wages, and maybe some psychiatric care may be able to be recouped, but you will certainly be paying up front for this. This will probably cost you more money overall, not to mention the time and stress dealing with the court proceedings.

As you take this matter to increasing levels of aggressiveness, you will find your support waning.  People don't like to get involved with other people's problems, especially when it ceases to benefit them.  I personally recommend stopping after the President regardless of the outcome.  Your health and happiness are the most important things you have, and this is already taking a sizeable toll.  You really have to ask yourself, in twenty years, will you be happier that justice was exacted or that the whole thing is a distant memory?
Finally, find a good therapist.  If nothing else, it's a place you can vent where the negativity won't linger.  Your home should be where your soul can heal and rest, not where you dump the wastewater from washing the wound.  I hope something in here is helpful, and wish you the best of luck.

+1, but steps #2 and #3 do constitute "going full Edmond Dantes" and John is right to caution against them. Whatever income you may have lost from a two-semester (three-semester?) delay in your thesis approval pales in comparison to the harm these would do to your professional reputation even if you are right. Regrettably, the terms "graduate student," "university staff" (up to and probably including your reviewer), and "treated unfairly" are all near-synonyms.

@ChristopherHarwood fully agree - ultimately I chose years ago not to pursue this to the full extent. Even though the delay (3 semesters) easily could have cost me a full year's wages (plus 10-20% wage difference of another full year by delaying licensure), the effects did not reach that extent. Mostly because I moved to another field for a few years to avoid the fallout. The main reason I decided to post the questions on my situation now is that the prevalent injustice you refer to still appalls me, and I thought having some concrete insights might help other students in similar situations.

As noted on http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17555/, @John Neuhaus' answer is the best response to both that question and this one. My answer there was, at best, an annotation to his answer here. Further discussion with the OP on that question also revealed that my answer there, while useful in many cases, was a bit off the mark in that particular case. I was going to place a bounty on another interesting question, but I see that John still has "beginner's" rep and his answer deserves the bounty for both questions. So he gets the bounty from both questions.

@brichins I'm glad you didn't, and glad you asked this for others.  You seem to have a strong drive for justice, concern for others, and a nice dash of humility given the situation.  That's an excellent character combination; the world will most likely be a better place for you having saved your energy for another fight.

@ChristopherHarwood That was a great answer and added a lot to the topic that wasn't elsewhere, fully deserving of the bounty IMO.  I think between the three of us, we gave the standard Q&A format a pretty good workout!

@JohnNeuhaus I appreciate the kind words. I'm certainly not completely above the frustration though - I shred the alumni solicitation letters with a lot more pleasure than I ought. :)


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Should I mention studying during high school in academic CV?
I am a postdoc, applying for tenure track jobs in mathematics.
I did my bachelor degree as a kid (was 14 when started).
I wonder if I should/could mention this in my academic CV?

It is your CV, you can do what you like with it.

Of course I can do what I want, my question is it is advisible to do that.

That all depends on who is reading it. The answer is simple: if you are proud of it, mention it. If not, don't. There are no rules for a CV: it is your personal CV so do what you like.

I'm not sure I understand the question.  Do you mean that you did high school and college concurrently?

I wouldn't do this in the US, for the simple reason that age discrimination is illegal. Formally, I'm not allowed to care how old you are, or how old you were when you got whatever degree; I'm only allowed to care about what you've done.

You should clarify the title, since I think everyone "studied" in high school (at least a little bit)

In my academic CV, I have included all my university education, which naturally includes my undergraduate degree.
I don't think it makes any difference that you started when you were 14. You came out with the same piece of paper as everyone else in the end up.

I am fairly sure that the question is about whether to just mention the BSc, or whether to also mention that it was obtained in parallel to attending highschool.

It possibly depends on where you are sending the CV. For a research position, it clearly indicates intelligence and thus probably would help or at least not hurt (as long as you don't overplay it). For more of a teaching job (e.g. at a 4-year college) I could see how it might potentially hurt: if you didn't have the typical high school math background you might have difficulty teaching students who have just come from that (with all of the gaps and weaknesses such a background so often entails).
Perhaps you can prepare two different versions of your CV, one that contains the parenthetical (started at age 14) and one that doesn't. For each job you apply to, make a judgment call about which one to send, taking into account both the job description and the nature of the school.

I was in a very similar situation: Started my BSc with 13, got it with 16 and was looking for a faculty level position in Math or CS [plenty of other things happened in between].
My CV does mention this. It never came up during an interview, or informal feedback, neither in a positive or negative way. I got a position.
Of course, this is just a single data point, but maybe it helps.

This is a good thing though. It is indeed an achievement in starting Bachelor study at the age of 13 (or 14). In my country, it is not allowed. It should definitely be mentioned. I don't know how much it is normal it is in other countries.

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How should I tell my PhD advisor that I want join a PhD program at a different university abroad?
I began my PhD in October 2016 following my master's degree. I have been progressing quite well in terms of the work but I want to address and take up some other (but related) problems for my PhD. Unfortunately, the curriculum of my PhD is such that I ain't allowed to do what I want to do fully! This makes me dissatisfied at times. I have read several papers in the area of my interest and I always felt that I would be more suited to "that" kind of work instead of the one I am currently doing. Besides, another important aspect is I come from a not very sound financial background. I have to take care of my parents as well with whatever little salary I get as a PhD student (India). Besides, I also need to pay for my Bachelor's educational loan from this money itself.
So the situation right now is as follows--1. I have applied and also received a fully funded PhD offer from a prestigious research group at the University of Oslo in the field of my choice (that I always wanted to work on). This would have immediate positive impact on my personal life because I would be more stable financially (I already how much would it cost and how much I would be paid) and besides I would be happy with my work. 2. This would also mean that I have to speak to my present supervisor about it who doesn't know much details. I have spoken to him about this many times in the past. At least I guess he understands my financial constraints. He himself asked and suggested me to move into jobs (if I get any with my master's) or PhD abroad. But, I guess he never took it very seriously that I would think of leaving one day! Now, I do not know what will be his reaction. He seems to be a nice and friendly guy and quite motivated regarding my work here. However, I do not exactly share his sentiments mainly because of the above two reasons.
I wish I could have put it in a simpler form but I would appreciate if anyone can kindly suggest me what should I say to my advisor? I want to do it as early as possible.
PS- I am from a reputed research institute in India.

Sounds like you have decided to go. What, exactly, is the question? Go in, tell them you are leaving. What else is there to do?

Hi. I understand the plight you are having right now. I used to be in your shoes when I first started PhD study 4 years ago. It wasn't easy when you had financial problem  and at the same time you needed to support your family financially. I also received a better offer to study abroad but I decided to decline because I didn't get used to be apart with my family. My advice is to follow whatever you think is right. Explain to your supervisor about your condition. I bet he'll understand. Remember that you always deserve a better opportunity in life. Goodluck

Hi. Thank you Alex for your comment.  I understand your situation too. But for me, even if I stay in my country, I am 3000 Kms apart from them. So it doesn't matter much. Besides, my parents are encouraging but if I decide to stay back I am pretty sure that my situation won't improve financially.

Hello @JonCuster. Thank you for your comment. My question is in what way should I speak about this to my supervisor? I do not know in what sense he would take it.

If you've decided to leave, he'll have to accept your decision. You're not responsible for his feelings on the matter. Prioritise your own life, especially if the move is going to improve your financial situation. Just break the news to him politely, thank him for his supervision and move on.

Thank you @astronat. I feel the same. He should accept the decision no matter what. And one must not be forced into anything. But I keep thinking about the same thing over and over again and end up confused about what and how to say.

You have already decided what to do. Time to tell your supervisor. Man up and be brave. Tell him as it is.  Best of luck.

I have had many good students leave for better universities or opportunities.  We know good/competent students have many options.  They are hard to retain.  I am happy for them to go.  My only ask is that they remember their 'poor' professor when they start the next Google.

Hello Prof. @santa Claus. I understand your sentiment. I would never forget them who once helped me in some way. However, I would like to move on and opt for better opportunities.

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Can the graduate school administration change graduation dates?
(Breakdown of a larger issue - full story here)
Following the deliberate delay my thesis paperwork by my professor, and after my department ignored my thesis revision requests for over 6 months, I finally got my graduation paperwork completed (with a $200 late fee) just after the start of the 3rd semester after my thesis defense. My official graduation was therefore graduated a full year after my defense. Due to the concurrent program I was in, this meant my undergraduate degree also did not post until that date - 2.5 years after I finished my undergraduate classes. As my profession requires 4 years of post-degree training for licensing, this has significantly delayed my professional career. If not for delays beyond my control by school personnel, I would have had time to complete the graduation paperwork and finish my degree a full year earlier.
I went the the director of my program and was kicked out before I could do more than state my problem - "I don't believe the department could have held you up; students just don't know how to be responsible." I finally got issues escalated to the dean of the college, and he agreed that the department had grossly mishandled things. He contacted the dean of the graduate school, who refused to even hear the case - all that he or I ever got back from the graduate school was blanket statements about 'policy', which I presume meant their own and not some oversight body. Even when I (repeatedly) went to the graduate office in person, the (brand new) graduate dean refused meet with me. I suspect that the program director (a very aggressive personality) had preemptively contacted him to ask him to ignore me; the dean of my college was retiring that semester and presumably carried very little weight in department politics. However that is purely conjecture.

Why would the graduate dean refuse to talk to me? Liability concerns? Or just pure pomp and disregard for the woes of a lowly student?
Is there a valid reason the graduate school would be unable to back-date my degree to the semester I had completed all my coursework and successfully defended my thesis?

Did you have an appointment to meet with the graduate dean, or just show up?  Making an appointment and then refusing to meet when you showed up would be weird, but refusing to meet without an appointment would be pretty standard at many places (and there's no obligation for the dean to make an appointment with you if the dean believes longstanding policy would rule out your request).

@AnonymousMathematician The dean refused to give me an appointment, in spite of multiple requests via phone, email, and in person (with staff who recognized my name) at the office. As I mentioned, the dean was new to the position - I'm not sure how familiar he was with policy, long-standing or otherwise. However given that my situation was unusual and was backed by the dean of my college, it seems like he should have at least been willing to hear the details.

Isn't there any way to complain formally to an independent inside your university. Otherwise, you can contact OIA if you're in the UK. My only advice I can give is that verbal promises, phone calls and informal meetings buys you nothing -keep things documented.

@Ans No independent entity I could uncover; very few US institutions have an ombudsman (or equivalent). I talked to every authority I could find that would listen (except the president of the university) - they were sympathetic but had no direct way to help. I have some documentation, but the truly critical interactions were in person and the parties involved refused to put anything in writing. If I did pursue legal action perhaps internal communications could be subpoenaed, but I can't imagine they kept any of the 'unofficial' stuff like inter-department emails.

Welcome to my life! :( short answer: yes, grad school can advance or delay the date of degree if they so wish. Will need some effort from your adviser/department chair/graduate chair/department administration along the lines of "playing one's rank".

John Nauhaus' extensive comments in response to your related question apply here as well. However, there is a direct question that needs a direct answer and an emotional core to your posts that deserves more direct attention as well:

[Could] the graduate school administration change [my] graduation dates?
Is there a valid reason the graduate school would be unable to back-date my degree?

Your graduate school's administration cannot and will not change your graduate date if your request does not come with the support of your advisor and your department. The graduate school and the university may be "higher ups" in terms of a traditional administrative hierarchy, but in academic and curricular matters your department has absolute primacy. Any effort by the administration to "force" a graduation date on your department would be seen as an encroachment on their academic freedom, and that would get the attention of outside faculty and peer institutions in a tremendously negative way.
This may be unrelated to the harm that has occurred to you, but it is a valid reason for the graduate school to deny your specific request. If you still have any credibility within your university's administration, you could get more traction seeking other forms of redress.

Subtext: Does the department get away scot free?

You will not get what you decided to ask for. This does not mean that your efforts have had no impact. They have cost your department in at least two ways: First, to the extent that you still have the sympathy of anyone in the administration the dispute has cost your department credibility and administrative reputation. As you press the matter in increasingly intrusive ways, this cost will decline and eventually flip into sympathy. No program wants to be pitied, but it's better than being disliked. Second, if you've reached the point where a dean refuses to meet with you then you've earned the "problem child" achievement regardless of the merit of your complaint. Your graduate program admitted you, and will therefore be seen as bringing a "problem" (that would be you) to the university's doorstep. The administration—even the sympathetic administration—will call your department's judgement into question because they vouched for you.
Your department has paid and will continue to pay for what you went through.
None of this will be visible to you. That is what professionalism looks like from the outside: calm seas and a gentle wind, nothing happening here.

More subtext: Why should the department's error cost me?

This is the most important part of your question. As a student and teacher (can't and won't speak to this as an administrator), I have seen graduate students throw away their professional futures over pride and pocket change. It may not look like pocket change from the perspective of a graduate student's meager income, but you need to review your relative costs in terms of a tenured professor's considerable income.
Based on what you have written here, it looks like you are burning your professional future to ash over four years of lost pay. That "problem child" tag you've earned is sticky, and it will follow you. No faculty wants to hire a colleague that brings trouble, and no faculty wants to hire a colleague that escalates trouble.
Here are two ways to overcome this tag that I am aware of:

Be at the very top of your field. If your scholarly stature outweighs your immaturity, some good university will accept the latter's cost. This is emotionally easy—everyone would happily be the best at what they do—but it is intellectually difficult. Are you capable of being that good? What would achieving this cost you elsewhere? (It will cost you a lot. For example: Ever looked at the divorce rate for professors?)

Demonstrate a "newfound" maturity. If it looks like you learned from the experience, this will slowly offset the negative reputation you've acquired and allow faculty search committees to review your applications on scholarly merit. This is easier intellectually, you just need to be an employably strong scholar. This is very difficult emotionally because it requires an extraordinary humility. That's uncommon in academia; it can work against the strength of will and self-confidence needed to succeed as a professional scholar.

Deans, directors, and other professors may sometimes look like colonoscopy bags full of "pomp and disregard," but the attitudes that give you this impression are the same ones that got them through a dissertation, tenure probation, and other indignities of the profession. You seem to have that attitude in larval form, and it seems to be acting out. These "dismissive" deans and directors have learned to channel their attitudes into socially acceptable forms, and search committees will be looking to hire only those professional scholars who have learned to do the same.
John Nauhaus' comments elsewhere are going to be more valuable overall. The answer to your question about what the graduate school can do is little more than a footnote to his discussion of what you can do, and of what you need to do to recover personally.

Thanks for addressing the question (and subtext) directly - I think this answer has the most value for the general user and awarded the bounty/acceptance accordingly, although I do chafe a bit at your assumptions on my role/attitude. In my particular case, I had the full support of my department head and dean of my college (advisor was part of the problem and had left the school regardless), but the graduate school still refused all requests point blank. It seemed the graduate school had the final say, not my college; your answer infers that this is not usually the case?

I immediately retract the assumptions that made you chafe! Rote dismissals from the graduate school dean suggested that you had pushed your case too far. You may have pushed it too far with him/her, but my assumptions are clearly oversimplifying the situation. The fact that there was disagreement within the department (advisor vs. director) suggests much more complexity than my answer had allowed for. I'll watch for opportunities to "donate" the add'l 50 rep to another question that looks interesting.

Sorry, I didn't answer your last question: I think that in most cases the GS would defer to the department (not the college) if it argued for a change in the graduation date. This argument would usually include an admission of error, asking that the GS not penalize you for a department mistake.
What you describe is very different from that: An internal disagreement (advisor disagrees with dept. head, are one of them also the "program director" you mentioned?) that was taken outside the department. Plus your advisor left the school. There is no "good response" for the GS in that situation.

By all means, keep the rep - it's a solid answer that covers what I wanted to know and covers the situation well for most users. (Although I fully support boosting worthy questions if you decide to do so.) Thanks for the follow-up answer as well - it is certainly a complicated situation, there was a lot of upheaval at the time and most of the administrators involved retired or left during the relevant time span - I'm sure this contributed to the poor response I received. ---p.s. yes I mixed terms; dept head was the program director in my case.

I hadn't considered official hierarchy vs informal hierarchy, and you're spot on with people disliking interference from "outside" or "up top."  I also liked the advice on the "problem child" topic.  That's an easy label to get by accident in so many settings, so prevention is even more important.  Great points!

I sympathize with your plight.  I'm lucky to have not had such a long-lasting and impactful academic misfortune, but have been in some similar situations.

It's more likely ignorance/miscommunication, but it is
very probable that the graduate dean doesn't know the truth.
Observation bias alone would make it easy to assume you shared the
burden somewhat, and you can be sure your issue was trivialized and
persistence cast negatively if they spoke at all.
Accreditation may play a role in the college's ability to back-date a degree.  I can see how that could be a very slippery slope.  That said, "a matter of policy" is a rather dismissive reason and sounds more like he simply was trying to avoid the problem.  You should investigate both graduate college and institution-wide policies on changing degree dates to rule out a high-level ban.

I've offered some suggestions on actions you can still take in your question here.  If it's impossible to change the degree dates, then his reason for not talking to you is moot at this point.  However, it could still be relevant if you go down the legal path.

Appreciate your insights on both questions. I hadn't considered the accreditation angle while this was going on - this is probably the only valid reason I've ever been presented.


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Are there any ethical or legal issues when printing large texts from primary sources?
I am writing a secondary History textbook. It is quite nearly done, but I am required to integrate some primary source materials, such as diaries, log entries, letters, etc.

The textbook spans the 1200s to the 1920s, so I believe any primary source materials should be free of copyright. The texts would be published in either the USA or Mexico most often.
Since primary sources can be difficult to find, often being in rare, really old books in far-away libraries, or being they are written in an ancient form of a language I cannot read, I'll rely on modern translations and academic books containing excerpts and mentions of these primary sources to help track down suitable example passages.
Since the recent books have copyright, I won't copy from their verbatim quotes. Instead these modern books will just serve to help me track down the original sources, from which I can directly copy, or use a translation service. So the text isn't at all copies from the modern source.

Given the above steps, are there any professional or legal concerns?
Is there a need to cite the modern books even I went direct to the original source for the actual excerpt?

You are asking for legal advice about copyright. This is outside the scope of this forum. You need to talk to the publisher or your textbook and, potentially, their lawyers.

Maybe try asking here? https://law.stackexchange.com/

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How to read 2 academic papers a day without confusion?
Assume you are reading two academic papers every day. What strategies can I use to decrease the possibility of confusion between the two?

why would you be confused?

because I'm not a native speaker and I feel when I read 2 papers that I could mix between them

Read one in the morning and one in the afternoon/evening?

If you have problems reading two papers a day without confusion, do not go to conferences where you can hear 20 talks a day :)

Have a look at _How to Read a Paper by Keshav. (The URL is pointing to a copy as the original URL seems to be broken.)

The only way to thoroughly read two papers a day without confusion is to read the same two papers every day.  Confusion is normal, healthy, and arguably necessary.

I was going to post what @MarcvanDongen said, but I see he beat me to it.

Working and updated (2016 version) link for the reference given by @MarcvanDongen: How to Read a Paper by Keshav.

I do of course not know what your current work strategy looks like so I can only provide what I think are generally helpful tools.
Note-taking should be a priority, not only to avoid confusion but also to help you get an overview. set a target to summarize the paper in a about a page and try to capture the following:

What is the major question covered by the paper?
Why is it important?
What was done (experiments observations data)?
What are the major conclusions of the paper?
Did you find any new information of particular interest to you?

You may come up with similar or different key questions depending on th epurpose of your reading. The point is to make such short summaries of the papers.
Once you have the summaries you could consider organizing them in some fashion. There is no exclusive model to use and in fact the organization may depend on the purpose of your reading. You may find that after reading a number of papers a possible way to organize them can become clear. The main  purpose of this step is to bundle papers that have specific points in common.
You should also sort your papers (printouts or files) with your notes. There are many ways of doing this rom the analogue to data bases. Try to use a free reference data base system to get everything organized.

As JeffE has suggested, some confusion with reading papers is both expected and desirable -
I can always tell which paper's I've read closely, versus skimmed for a little bit of information, because they've got scribbles in the margins.
And therein lies my recommendation: Thoroughly, carefully interact with each paper. You're not just "reading" them in the same way one reads a good novel. Annotate. Take notes. Find places where the author seems to have taken a leap and make sure you agree with them. If they don't show the steps for something, see if you can puzzle them out for yourself. If you don't understand a bit of math, etc. work it out until you do.
It may also help to read from two related but distinct fields, so that your papers don't feel "the same". For example, one empirical and one theoretical paper. Or a wide scale review and a single study.


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How to organize my papers and notes from the beginning of my PhD?
I'm a first year PhD student.
I'm in my first stage (doing a literature review) but I face problem in organizing the papers I read and the notes I take for all papers. Should I put all that in one MS Word file for example, or different MS word files, or maybe use a different software?
I don't want to come after month from now and get confused about the way I organize my papers and notes in.
So, any helpful ideas?

Evernote + Mendeley works for me.

But how do you organize your notes in Evernote if you have many many papers to take notes of?

There is also some mind map software that lets you create nice graphs/trees so you can nicely group ideas and notes from papers. I never used those though. I use Evernote where I tag every post I make. Then I search through the tags to retrieve stuff.

You might want to take a look at this question

Very broad and subjective/open-ended. There are lots of different ways of organizing papers and notes, but we can hardly know what is best for you.

See also answers to How to manage theorist's labbook.

First of all, a graduate school is a learning process so finding what is perfect from you from the start is a valiant endeavour but not necessarily sure fire.
You should start to use a data base system, some (mentioned in comments) that come to mind are Mendeley (free), EndNote (commercial), RefBase (free) to mention a few. If you consider going into LateX (which many of us swear by) then I can recommend JabRef (free; BibTeX format). There is also a Wikipedia comparison page that can be of assistance.
To sort your references concerns managing some form of structure where you  group or "mind map your articles. In the old days you simply kept them in piles. With a data base software you can start providing key words in the data base and also keep some short notes for each paper which makes everything searchable and ready for sorting. I think the process or sorting articles is one that changes with different tasks and also persons so you are best of taking some advice from others and looking into it. Hopefully you also have peers around who can provide their insights. In the end you will develop your own set of tools that suit your needs and to keep trying different ones at an early stage, and discarding many of them, is far better than trying to do it later when the mass of information is much larger. Another option is to simply start using something and sticking with it regardless of weaknesses.
The bottom line is that with experience you will rely less and less on note-taking and be more efficient at seeing structure in what you read and so keeping a reference database is the main tool you will use. Even if this may not sound very constructive, I also say that the time you spend now on testing different solutions will pay back later, putting it off is only pushing problems forward.
A final personal note. If you want a free, platform independent, and completely versatile way to author documents you should look into LaTeX-writing (for example through TeX.stackexchange). I recommend it to everyone unless you are in a complete Word-environment, being alone with a different system can be hard. You should nevertheless look into it.

Love the LaTeX recommendation.

I'm a first year myself, so I can't say "this works" so much as "this is what I'm trying"... But what I'm trying is using Zotero & Zotfile to hold notes on individual papers, and after reading each one I to try to fit it into a structure in a mind map (I use X-Mind).

I used to use a journal to keep track of my readings as I could take the journal to the library with me. If I were doing a similar thing today, I'd use a wiki to keep track of my notes and research as that would let me re-organize things as needed, host PDFs of the journal articles when available and allow for searching.

Ooh, I like the wiki idea...

I electronically highlight and comment my papers in the program Xournal. I used to then organize them somewhat in a program called Zotero (in some ways similar to the Mendeley mentioned above I believe). However, I recently stopped using Zotero because it was an additional hassle.
So currently I just mark up papers in Xournal and then organize them into different directories within my Dropbox account. I'm happy with this, and have been doing it for about 4 years now.


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Conducting a systematic literature review and paywalls
I am writing a systematic literature review but I was wondering how to handle  papers which fit the inclusion criteria but are hidden behind paywalls.
Is it ok to exclude them and state as an exclusion criterion in the methodology section "works that are not freely available are excluded."? Also some papers are accessible from my University without me noticing the paywall so should I rewrite the criterion to "... that are not freely available or included in the authors university contract"?

Are they available in paper format from your library, what about via ILL?

I hope you have a librarian/information expert collaborating with you. There are plenty of evidence that systematic reviews done in collaboration with them are of higher quality. :)

I don't think that either of these strategies is likely to be appreciated much by reviewers.
Very few papers are actually entirely unobtainable to researchers. Most papers are either part of a university subscription, available as preprint from e.g., the author's website, or at the very least most authors forward you a preprint on personal request via mail. The purpose of a scientific review is to review, to the largest extent possible, everything that is out there.
Limiting yourself to only Open Access material, while morally commendable, means that you are not surveying the state of research, but only the state of what's available easily. This will make your literature review significantly less appealing to reviewers.
Further, I would definitely not go for

Also some papers are accessible from my University without me noticing the paywall so should I rewrite the criterion to "... that are not freely available or included in the authors university contract"?

That just seems like a lazy excuse for not finding out what licence the used papers fall under. Even if the paywall is hidden to you, you can certainly figure out whether the paper would be available without subscription.

Some old papers can be quite hard to come by.  They might also be in foreign languages.  I've once referred to a paper in Japanese, but with an English abstract, as the Japanese note by Author et al., which, judging from the abstract, appears to describe....

@gerrit ... that's why I said few and not no above (and you will agree that we are talking about corner cases here)

Thanks for the advice! Following it, we included all papers, even those that are only available inside a university subscription. The survey was accepted and, if someone is interested, is freely available at http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/content/survey-challenges-question-answering-semantic-web.

@KonradHöffner, Congrats on the paper, and on actually using Acadamia SE for peer review in the study design process!

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


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Unexpected email from Computational and Applied Mathematics registering me as an editor and then sending me a paper to review - thoughts?
A few days ago I received an email from the journal Computational and Applied Mathematics

Please be informed you have been registered by our editorial team as a user on the Editorial Manager site for Computational and Applied Mathematics.  Information about Computational and Applied Mathematics can be found on the journal website, or by selecting Journal Overview from the top navigation bar at https://www.editorialmanager.com/coam/.
Editorial Manager is the manuscript submission and peer-review tracking system through which individuals are invited to review, to write articles for the journal, or to process submissions.

And this was followed by another email where they requested me to review a paper of someone I personally know!
Now, I've a PhD in math but I've been outside academia for a while now (but actively trying to get back to mainstream research, while having a teaching position at an engineering college), so I've nothing against reviewing the paper - indeed it falls within my area of expertise. But I still found the whole thing a bit strange - I mean my registration in the editorial team without any prior discussion and then requesting me to review a paper. Also the work email they sent it to has never really been used much, so I wonder how they accessed that in the first place. It certainly doesn't look scammy, the paper is legit, and it came from this email: em@editorialmanager.com, which also seems legit.
Any thoughts on this? Once again, I'd be happy to review the paper, but the whole thing just strikes me as strange.

Did a friend/colleague recommend you to them? Have you recently publish with them?

@Buffy I know one of the authors in the paper but he never told me that he recommended me: maybe he did. I never published in this journal, but I know this journal.

Some journals ask authors to recommend reviewers. That might be why you got the "invitation". It compromises blind reviewing a bit. Journals are always looking to expand their reviewer stable.

@ScienceMan Usually, an author who suggests reviewers doesn’t warn them of the fact.

It's also possible that the editor found your name in a published paper; don't assume it was one of the authors suggesting your name.

You (almost certainly) haven't been added as a member of the editorial team. You have simply been added to their database as a potential reviewer - an email like this is sent automatically when this happens. "Editorial Manager" is the name of the software product used by the journal.
An editor has decided that you would be a good reviewer for a paper (possibly on the recommendation of someone else). They have found you are not registered in the journal database, and so they have created a minimal record for you. Once this is done, they can link you to the paper as a potential reviewer and generate the invitation you have received.
So, nothing to worry about here - feel free to accept or reject the review invitation as you see fit.

They have found you are not registered in the journal database, and so they have created a minimal record for you - Yes, and sometimes they will even do this if you do have an account, but with a different e-mail. The number of accounts with editorialmanager I got this way is insane.

I want to echo what avid said but also emphasize that, in my experience in a different academic area, this is very normal. I would estimate I get an email like this one preceding a review request in 1/3 of review requests from journals I haven't reviewed for in the past (and sometimes I get them from journals I've reviewed for because they somehow fail to connect my identity to the existing account).
I suspect many of the decisionmakers are not expert in the software they are using and may not realize the way these messages appear to their prospective reviewers. On the other hand, they may just not care because many are habituated to such messages. You can find examples [2] of academics joking about this very thing: the ambiguous account creation email that precedes a quasi-obligation. (Of course, not everyone feels negatively about reviewing...it probably depends on how often you are asked to do it.)

As far as I understand, you have not been registered as an editor:

[...] you have been registered by our editorial team as a user on the Editorial Manager site [...]

They wanted to send a paper to you with a review request and had to have you as a "user" in their system to be able to do so. And following this user registration, they sent an automated e-mail to let you know. It would be worse if they did this secretly, would it not?
It can be assumed that your contact data were provided by one of the authors of the paper. It is customary to suggest suitable reviewers to the editor during the submission process. If you do not want the journal to keep this information about you in their system, let them know and they probably will delete the record.

As I do not know the journal, I will leave it to you to assess if it is a reputable journal.

It would be worse if they did this secretly, would it not? No, it wouldn't, in my opinion. :) OP got the review request e-mail, and that's all they need. The other e-mail just add a possible source of confusion, in my view.

@FedericoPoloni If somebody creates an account in my name, I'd want to know. Sure, the email might have been worded better, but it's still a good thing.

@HiddenWindshield Back when I used Editorial Manager for this kind of thing, I actually registered reviewers without emailing them, because all the details are in the other reviewer invitation email already and I'd rather not spam the reviewer.

Also if the editor enters the email address of a person they want to ask for a review, the account info gets sent to this person (unless the editor does it "silently" like @Allure), so it should not be taken as a sign that this reviewer was suggested by the authors.

Nobody seems to point to the automation logic behind this procedure.
Suppose that you were not registered as a potential reviewer in the system. The editor sends you an invitation to review. Say you accept. Then the editor, assuming that they keep good track of their e-mail correspondence, should go into the system and insert manually the fact that you are now a reviewer for the specific paper. Then they should send you some password to gain access to the submission. Etc
By registering you in their database, they can then send you an e-mail with an acceptance link, which if you hit, you are automatically linked to the paper and have access to the submission.
There is a net gain (reduction) in time spent, mistakes made, correspondence overlooked.
In the future, if another editor searches for you for some other paper, they will find you in the database, along side a track record of you, which is again automatically created: yours truly has been sent 10 invitations and refused all of them. Or yours truly B has accepted all 3 invitations and submitted the review on time. And so forth.


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Pages and lines in a paper. What does the reviewer mean?
Recently the editor of the American Mathematical Monthly informed me that I should revise my paper according to suggestions of the reviewers.
The problem is that the second reviewer suggests something like

(2) p. 1, l. 12: it would be good to explain the notation Z_n.
(3) p. 1, l. -6: add the information that n and k are fixed.

The problem is that I cannot understand what he means.
(2) page 1, line 12?
(3) page 1, line -6?
This does not make sense, since Z_n does not appear in line 12 and what is line -6?

LIne $-6$ is $6$ lines from the bottom of the page.

About the other comment: I don't really see how anyone here can tell you what the reviewer means, but one thing you can do is look for the notation Z_n in lines around line 12: if your file does not have line numbers it may be that the reviewer counts headings, displayed equations etc. differently than you do.

You could ask the editor to send you the manuscript formatted the way the reviewers received it so that the line numbers are more likely to match (they still may not depending on how the reviewer viewed it), but it seems like if you know your manuscript well the line numbers are not needed. You need to look where Z_n is used and explain the notation. You need to look where n and k are used for fixed variables and explain there that they are fixed. These seem like very clear comments, not something vague without line numbers like "please rewrite the sentence on page 8 line 6".

Not an answer. I'm surprised that a reviewer would think a Monthly reader would need Z_n defined, unless it appears far from any number theory context. And congratulations on such a positive review. The Monthly is hard to publish in.

Often the journal submission software adds its own page and line numbering to the document - which does not always match the 'obvious' numbering. Log in to the submission system and look for the automatically-generated pdf.

As a statistical reviewer, I can affirm that what I get often has a variety of page and line numbers. I often see two sets and sometimes three!  I thought this problem was mostly from the journal I do most of my reviews for, sad to see that it seem to affect other journals too.

@EthanBolker The notation Z_n can mean different things in different contexts/countries: the cyclic group of order n, the set of n-adic integers, or even sometimes the localization of the ring Z at the element n. That's probably what the reviewer means; say explicit what notation you're using.

As a mathematician, I get referee reports like this a lot. As the comments have noted, "line -6" means six lines from the bottom of the page. Another point is to make sure you are looking at exactly the same PDF that the referee was looking at. This is why version control is so essential. If you are going to make any modifications after submitting the paper but before getting the referee report, it's essential to keep an untouched copy of the version that was submitted, to make sense of the referee report.
When I write referee reports, I try to avoid the line number approach to giving feedback, unless there are literally line numbers in the margins, because I think there's ambiguity as to how to count lines. This seems especially true when there are displayed math lines.
In your case, it's clear what to do. Find the very first place in the paper that the notation Z_n appears, and then add a sentence explaining that notation. Note that referees are humans too and can make mistakes. Maybe they wrote down the wrong line or page number. If it's clear what they meant, you can ignore the line number business. If it's not clear, then in the response to the referee document you could write "(2) We searched, but were unable to find what the referee was referring to. Can you please clarify?" Note that this will drag the process out, but sometimes it's necessary if you just can't figure out what the referee was talking about.


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Emphasizing in paper: italic or bold?
I am preparing a paper for a conference in EECS field. (Generic suggestions are also welcomed!)
What should one do when they want to emphasize one particular word?
Should that word to be emphasized be in italic or bold?
I myself rarely see text in bold, which makes me wonder whether bold should only be used in section or subsection headings?

If you are lucky enough to use LaTeX, \emph all the way and let the conference template decide.

@FedericoPoloni I am indeed using LaTeX, but do not know there is such a function! So it will automatically choose the style according to the template I am using? Wow!

Tried, seems that in my template, it is in italic. So I guess I will go with \emph. Thanks a lot! @FedericoPoloni

Yes, there is. Incidentally, if you learnt LaTeX from a source that still suggests the (old and deprecated) commands \bf, \it (or $$...$$ for that matter), I urge you to look for something more modern.

@FedericoPoloni  Indeed. Nice advice! :)

And another advanage: even if your style does not specify what "emph" is, you can easily change it all at once if you find out that some other type/font is required.

It's a matter of style: both bold and italic are typographically acceptable ways to emphasize part of your text, as are small caps, use of a different typeface or point size. (And, if you wonder: no, underlining is not considered good practice in modern printed text).
However, you are right that using bold is usually reserved for headings or very strong emphasis (think things like “Danger of electrocution — do not use under water” is an appliance user’s manual). The reason it is not commonly used inside running text is that it disrupts the overall level of gray of the page, drawing the eye from too far away: you want emphasis to make certain words stand out in the sentence, but you do not want the reader to skip directly to these words as soon as they set their eyes on the page.
There are, of course, always exceptions… like when you use bold (or color, or any other device that disrupt the grayness of the text), to emphasize a few stand-alone “take home messages” from a longer text, as I've done above!


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How to make good use of compulsory study plans in connection with PhD studies?
I am not sure if this concept sounds familiar to you but in Sweden PhD students are expected to have a study plan, which is revised every year, in connection with a meeting between the student, the primary and secondary supervisor(s). It's the closest thing I have to a contract actually.
Theoretically the concept is great, there's a formal demand to plan and revise the projects, so that things don't get out of hand. The study plan typically defines:

the nature and title of graduate studies
an expected time of dissertation
the responsibilities the student has towards the department (teaching, lab/IT responsibilities etc)
the extent of research/course ratio per semester
courses taken/planned
the project that planned to/will be a part of the thesis

Then comes a series of so-called "lärandemål" which I could possibly translate as "learning goals" mandated/advised by the board of higher education services (Högskoleverket) and what is planned/completed to achieve these goals. This piece constitutes a majority of the study plan essentially.
So far so good... I think conceptually it's a great idea. In practice, the part regarding learning goals becomes a whole bunch of formal gibberish that does not reflect reality but looks fancy on paper. My supervisor does not really care much about the plan, at least not in the format it's forced on both of us. I am not sure if this is the impostor syndrome speaking, but I feel like it's essentially an annoying piece of paperwork, on which I am forced to write what I am doing/have done in rather exaggerated fluffy words. I have also considered the possibility that I perceive it thus because even though I am very fluent, Swedish is not my first language. I could not say for sure...
I am trying to force myself to see the benefit in having and updating such a study plan. I could just do the minimal amount of work and get it over with, but seeing that this is actually my chance and legal right to influence the development of my graduate studies, I feel it'd be a waste of opportunity if I did not take the chance to make the best out of it.
Any ideas as to how I can make better use of these study plans and study plan meetings that go along with it? Likewise any plans as to how I can avoid seeing it as an annoying piece of work that has to be done and have no practical meaning?

I can sympathise with your sentiment about the study plan. The idea is generally good but it will only be as good as one makes it. In my department we started with study plans long before it became a mandatory requirement. The reason was mainly to establish a contract (although strictly speaking it has no legal meaning) where student and advisor agree to the terms of the work. We had instances where both students and advisers were not doing their part and lacking a paper trail made discussions difficult, usually both parties blaming each others for the catastrophe that emerged when it was too late.
So, I still look at the study plan as a tool when things go wrong, actually to identify when things start to diverge and nip it in the bud. There are students who do no appreciate the plan but as subject responsible (and in our case the discussion involves also me) I try to make it a good and reflective discussion. I do believe it is good to take the opportunity to reflect upon what has been done so far and try to lay out the plans for the next year because in a PhD project the nose is often close to the work and perspective may be difficult to get. Providing an opportunity to express the plans can therefore be enlightening for all parties.
I must, however, add that the bad cases which the study plan is supposed to reduce, still are very difficult and the study plan is not enough to resolve such cases. So my recommendation is to try to find a format for the discussions so that they become useful and positive for you. I would not expect everyone to experience these discussions the same way so in the worst case, try to make it as pleasant as possible.
EDIT in response to comment.
As with most things that are forced into action from "above", the way to handle study plans and how to relate to them has become unclear. I can personally see that different departments view the document differently and although the Science faculty of my University has issued guidelines, my suspicion is that they have no clue what they are trying to say. So it is all confusing.
Now, recently I heard a lecture by Bob Harris at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm which concerned the so-called Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs; another fancy term). You can listen to a talk similar to the one I attended on BrainShark, however, a warning is issued for the poor sound quality. The talk was for director's of graduate studies and the Faculty. The point made here is that we need to decide what it is that we do during a PhD and it is only then [my interpretation] that we can make use of the study plan to see if we meet the expectation from the side of the Higher Education Act as well as from our personal viewpoints. All of this becomes very involved and I am myself in the process of changing the way we look at the study plan to also include the goals of the research education as formulated in the Swedish Higher Education Act.
A problem with study plans as they stand now is that everyone must be involved in the process and as with everything else, they are not necessarily so and opinions will vary. Some will find it very useful and some will not. If a study plan is merely a meeting where one says 'done that; will do this' then its use is very limited. At best it is a time to actually reflect upon the progress or lack thereof. In the end, I think we have all lost track of the purpose of a PhD, we do not see the forest for all the trees. Publish has become the (only?) goal but all the other skills are not highlighted well or even considered. Integrating the wider goals with the study plan to record and view progress, could in my opinion be a useful tool but it requires more or less reorganisation and additional adaptation by many.

As I was re-reading this answer I came to notice why I didn't tick it in the first place; could you elaborate abit about the 3rd and the 4th paragraph (on learning goals and big fancy words that don't always reflect the reality of the situation)

I am not sure I have succeeded in making things more clear but I have given it a go.

thanks! I guess the bottomline is "the idea was good but didn't quite pan out as we had hoped"?

Kort sagt: Yes.


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Can I adapt to learning Artificial intelligence in MS easily
I am applying for my Masters in CS in US universities. I am very much interested in Artificial Intelligence, but some of my friends said that it would be very difficult for me to learn AI as I have no overview about the course in my undergraduate degree.
Can anyone tell me if I can easily learn by putting some effort on learning AI. I am very much interested in that course.

If you've never had a course in , how do you know that you're actually interested in ?

I might have not studied AI in my UG but I have surely watched video courses on udacity.com where Google employees teach about AI. I got interested in AI. I am a computer science student in UG so I thought I would go with AI specialization in my graduation.

Sorry, let me be more clear.  If you've never actually done , how do you know you're interested in or good at doing ?  Watching videos doesn't count as "doing".

well, yes you can adapt - but will you "like" to adapt? this is the question! - that is, take "real courses" then see if you like it or not.

@JeffE: sorry, I don't understand the meaning of your comments: do you want to say that the OP should apply for a AI course during his masters in order to find out how much interest he actually has?  Or are you questioning whether anyone can know his interest (as opposed to: abilities and possible abilities) before a course? - that is IMHO nonsense: you'll find out your abilities and limitations because interest leads you to explore them. And a course is IMHO one way to find out whether can get good in this particular field.

@cbeleites I'm suggesting that applying for a research degree in any topic, when you have not actually done any work in that topic, is risky.  I don't doubt his interest in the topic; I question his interest in doing research on that topic, when he hasn't even done homework on that topic yet.

I don't know about the US, but in some schools in Canada you can be admitted to a CS Graduate degree without prior background in an interest area. You'd have to take background courses to get yourself up to speed, possibly in excess of the bare-minimum program requirements, but it should be doable.
For AI specifically, ensure that the schools you're applying to have enough background in the topic, and that there are supervisors and supervisory capacity for you. Look for undergraduate courses in topics that interest you, as they may form part of your background studies.

From my experience, many graduate courses do not require prior knowledge about the specific subject being taught, only background knowledge. Alternatively, they may require only minimal knowledge that you could teach yourself very quickly. But it is worth checking specific courses - naturally some would be more advanced.
For something like machine learning, the relevant background would probably be algorithms, probability, linear algebra and maybe some calculus/optimization.


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"Withdrawn" grade as a graduate student
I am in a situation that I would like some input on.
I am currently a 2nd year MS student.  I took a class last semester that resulted in a C+. The final project was worth 40% of the grade, and I received a 70% on it (I disagree with the grade, but that is for another discussion).  I, stupidly, signed up for the advanced class on that same subject because I knew that I could get a grade better than a C+; I thought that this would erase any questions about the previous grade.
The problem is that this added class (I don't need this class to fulfill my requirements for my degree) is turning into a lot of extra work that is cutting into time for me to be working on my thesis.  The drop date has already passed, so I would be taking a W ("Withdrawn") if I drop.
My question: How bad does it look when I apply for employment with this on my record?  If it was just the withdrawn grade, I would have no problem with it. The previous C+ is what concerns me more than anything.  Thoughts?

Employers like people to finish things.Employers place much more emphasis on the course and the university than on grades .If your university is a decent one and you pass that is much better than honours from a diploma mill.I have only been hassled about grades by one prospective employer in 30 years .I have BE + research position .I got all the grades ! .If your university is good then dont worry.

I generally assume that if I see a "W" grade on a transcript that the student withdrew from the course because they were failing or doing badly.  Some institutions have separate withdraw passing (WP) and withdraw failing (WF) grades that are easier to interpret.  You'll also sometimes see withdraw without prejudice (e.g. due to some non academic reason) with a corresponding (WO) grade.

When I see a W on a transcript, I equate it with an F. That perception is open to change if you explain it well, but you'll be better off sticking it out and getting another C+.

Finish it because they are scanning the transcript for red flags and you can't have a complicated story every time you interview. You cannot escape that transcript. Think about that at night when doing homework.


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Quitting a job after spending ahead on a grant
Let's say that I take a position at a university, and the university gives me a grant of $X for 2 years. I use the grant to buy a bunch of equipment and make some international trips, which costs me three quarters of $X. After one year, I decide to quit to take another job elsewhere, and I cannot take the grant with me as it was from the university.
What typically happens in this situation? Is it possible for the grant to get prorated ($X/2 per year), in which case I would have overspent my budget by a quarter of $X? If not, are there any other repercussions?

I assume this depends on local law and custom, but I doubt there would be any issue. The university keeps the equipment, for example. They might not be happy, of course. Not spending grant funds at a constant, even, rate is the norm, I think.

Most grants are not given in a lump sum, but in a sequence of increments---typically 12-months increments, but sometimes shorter or longer.
It is true that when you get a chunk of money for a increment, there is typically quite a bit of flexibility in how you spend it within a phase (though some funder require notification if you go significantly "off plan").  You cannot spend more than you've been allocated, however, and asking for an increment in advance is typically either impossible or else requires negotiation and approvals from the funder.
In your hypothetical situation, then, if the funder (university or external) gave all of the money up front, and the spend plan was within contractual bounds, they really have no place to object if you happened to spend it faster than anticipated (assuming no other regulations were violated).
However... the money was never actually yours. It belongs to your institution in some way (probably via your department via appropriate contracting and accounting personnel), and you probably never even had the right to sign for the money.  You were just given authority over allocating its expenditure.  As such, when you leave, the remaining money (and any tangible assets, like equipment) stay in place.  The money will likely go away, since the terms of the grant specified key personnel (you) who are no longer available, but if the parting is friendly enough it may be possible for somebody else to take responsibility and the project to continue with you as a subcontract or consultant.
Reputational consequences based on the particulars of how you quit, of course, are another matter entirely.

The situation you describe is a risk that all universities take when they hire faculty and give them startup packages/grants. Yes, sometimes it happens that people leave after only a year or two after having spent some of their startup money. Well, that’s just life. If your university gave you funds to use and you used them, and did so in good faith, the people at your university will just have to suck it up, though it’s quite possible they will be upset, and their level of upsetness will be correlated with how much money you spent, and, especially, how much money you spent when you already knew you would be leaving. E.g., being seen to spend a lot of money on frivolous things right before announcing your departure will be an obvious bad look, and a sign of bad faith and dishonesty. It is likely that you will suffer potentially significant reputational damage in such a scenario.
As for your arithmetic exercise of comparing $X/2 with three quarters of $X, I’d say it’s irrelevant. Unless explicitly stipulated otherwise, “grant for two years” (in the context of internal funding from your own university, at least in the US) generally means “here’s $x, you have two years to spend it”. There is simply no expectation that you only “earn” $X/2 with each year of work. In fact, if you leave after two years after spending all of the $X, and $X is a large number, then the university will likely still be somewhat upset about this, even though the arithmetic suggests this is “fair”.
Finally, one important caveat is that you should carefully read your offer letter and related documents you signed when joining and see whether there are any conditions attached to the $X grant. Sometimes startup packages have explicit conditions that you have to return part or all of the money if you leave the institution after less than a certain number of years.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and your question may have aspects that only a lawyer can answer authoritatively.


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Getting the results of an arXiv keyword search in my email
I'm not sure if this question would be more appropriate here or on SO. My hope is that someone has already had this need and found a solution.
Periodically, I search for a specific research topic on arXiv. Unfortunately it doesn't correspond to a specific arXiv subject: papers of interest can be found under very different subjects, since it's somewhat multidisciplinary. Currently, arXiv only supports sending periodic emails concerning either an entire archive, or one or more subjects inside an archive. There's no way I know of to receive only the results of a specific keyword search. However, I've heard of someone who has been able to get that, but I couldn't get them to explain me what they did.
Have you ever had this need? Did you find a solution?

@NajibIdrissi, thanks, but I need the source to be arXiv. I already have a fairly comprehensive list of journals in my feed reader, which keeps me updated on published papers. However my sector is very competitive/rapidly evolving, and to keep up with the competition one needs to know about the good ideas as soon as possible. The average time to publication is between 1 and 2 years (!!!). Since all the good stuff (and most of the crappy stuff, too) is preprinted on arXiv, I need to keep abreast of those preprints!

ah, a Google Scholar alert! Ok. I thought you were referring to standard Google alerts, which I tried already with poor results. I think it will still index too much stuff (including stuff I already know about), but I'll give it a try.

It's slightly more involved, but you can use the the API to set up a script that does it for you. I recently asked a question trying to do something similar; I ended up going with a Python script that scraped the API and dumped the result to a local web page, stuck on a daily chron job. You could also set it to email the results to yourself (always be careful with how you set up the credentials!) You can find my code, as well as an outline of how to email it to yourself, in my answer to the above question.

Hey, apologies for forgetting to accept your answer! I had to toil quite a bit, but in the end I managed to make it work thanks to this manual. It's fantastic! Precisely what I needed.

No worries; glad I could help!


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Asking another professor about a research idea
I am working as an undergraduate research assistant for a professor in the mathematics department, on a specific project. Looking at the project I realized that there may be connections to a different area of mathematics that my supervisor doesn't specialize in, that could provide a potentially new research direction. I have previously met another professor who specializes in the connected research area, and he told me to stay in touch. Would it be appropriate for me to tell the other professor about my idea, and ask him if he is aware of any research papers on the topic? He is quite busy as it is so I don't think he would be interested in joining in on the project, I more just wanted his advice about whether this idea makes sense and if there is any previous research about it. A google search did not reveal any related papers, but I am wondering if there may be some papers out there with a more niche title that I wouldn't think to search.
Would this be appropriate? I am very new to researching and academia so I am not too sure about the politics of it all and would greatly appreciate some advice.
Thanks!

I would talk to my current supervisor first.

Don't assume the professor is busy, and has no time for you.  Personally, if an interesting idea pops up that is worth my time, I'll drop everything. :)

Yes, I think it is totally appropriate to seek ideas and guidance from wherever you find it. Don't put yourself in a box.
Your current advisor should readily accept this and they don't have an "ownership" over you in any sense. If for any reason they don't accept your inquiries to others then they have a problem.
At some point mention to each that you are talking to the other, but you don't need permission to seek help or information.


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Should sources of sample sentences be shown in (computational) linguistics research?
What would be best practice in indicating the source of text samples used to illustrate some concept or analysis result in linguistics or computational linguistics?
For example, I might want to use the sentence

If you had told someone in 2012 that in just two years hence, the eurozone would remain bonded together but the United Kingdom might not, they would have thought you insane.

from a recent The New York Times article (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/10/upshot/why-does-scotland-want-independence-its-culture-vs-economics.html?abt=0002&abg=0), augmented with some annotation, in order to illustrate how different anaphora resolution methods would work or fail for this real life example. Copyright fair use policies allow to use such limited extracts without any permission, and using them is common practice, but the attribution and quoting seems unclear.
How, and if, should I quote the source of that sentence within a paper?
Would publication style (say, short paper vs. a dissertation) affect it?
Would density of examples (2 examples in whole paper vs 20 different examples in a single page) matter?
Would indirect sources change it? E.g. if the sentences are taken from, say, British National Corpus - but, naturally, they originally come from some different publication.
Language utterance sources are different from other references
At least in computational linguistics, general practice clearly is to not include the source of language utterance or sentence examples together with normal references. There are various approaches seen in practice among respectable publications: no referencing at all, a footnote reference for the sentence, a mention in article text, a single reference to a whole corpus (by referencing not the source but some authoritative paper about the corpus), etc.  I'm wondering about those options, which would be preferable and which should be avoided.
Avoiding the whole problem by using sentences made up by myself is not a good solution - artificial examples are biased towards using constructions that behave in the same way as you and your tools expect, so real life examples of natural language from domain-representative sources are strictly preferred.

Why not just cite it as you would any other source?

@ff524 edited the question to hopefully make it more clear.

I believe your field is doing itself a disservice by not citing the sources of language utterances. Particularly if direct quotes from published sources are used, the information about the source is important. Did the sentence come from the Los Angeles Times or the neighborhood community newspaper? From a novel written by a Novel Prize winner or a first-time novelist? From a book written in 1879 or 1979?
It feels like an archaeologist writing about a pot without including where it was found, what was found around it, etc.
The field is just not practicing good science.
If you feel that your paper will not be accepted with more complete referencing of the language utterances, try to mitigate the issue by using examples from the fewest references possible or creating your own with the same structure or pattern.
I think you've found a nice hole in the field--can research be done to show that omitting or not studying the sources of the language utterances changes results?

At least in computational linguistics, general practice clearly is to not include the source of language utterance or sentence examples together with normal references.

It seems to me that this general practice is just a sloppy practice. As other people suggested, treat language sources as any other source, and let the journal editor decide whether the reference section is too long and, in case, which action should be taken.
In other words: do what is mostly correct from a scientific point of view and let others decide whether there are any typographical or graphical issues.


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Do I need to search citation sources for a rather generic graphic that I have drawn myself?
I'm about to write up my PhD thesis at the moment and for the theoretical part I have drawn some graphics that are of rather generic type -- crystal structures, crystal lattices and the like, similar to the image below (taken from Wikipedia, just as an example):

This type of image is very well-known in my field and can be found in every type of book about crystallography looking more or less the same. Also I am  100% sure that I have seen any of the features, that I have included in my own graphics, already in other publications, albeit maybe not all in one single graphic. Most of the graphics' properties, such as the atom positions and all the properties derived thereof, are commonly known facts, so only the style of the graphics may be something unique to a special graphic.
As I have seen them so often and worked with them for some years now, I can draw them out of memory without looking them up. Also I draw them with the features that I need to show my point. Therefore it might happen that I am  reproducing someone else's graphics without being aware of it. As the question arose in the comments, in conclusion I draw graphics whose base structure is given by commonly known data using widely employed ways to draw such graphics, which contains the danger that someone could have drawn the same or a very similar graphic before.
Would this be OK or should I dig into literature to find if there are sources that could have been the inspiration for my own graphics?

In my field (CS) it's common to just give "common knowledge" definitions/theorems in your notation and provide some blanket reference like "basic definitions follow [X]". I'm not sure whether this applies to physics and graphics (hence a comment, not an answer), though, but I'd do a similar thing.

I am not sure what is the question. Did you make it by yourself based on other graphics? (Then: is it the question about plotting style/method, or about citing original plot/data for your plot?) If you use graphics from other source how it happens you don't know what is the source?

I interpreted this as, "I myself have drawn a common structure using a common technique, and I am worried the same image exists somewhere else (since it is so common)." OP, is this an accurate interpretation?

@PiotrMigdal I have seen such graphics in dozens of slight variations and work with them nearly daily. Therefore I can draw them out of my memory and could not name a certain reference that was the base source for the drawing.

@ff524 Yes, finally it boils down to that.

If you create an image yourself that is not modeled after/derived from someone else's, you don't have to go out of your way to learn if someone has created a similar image.
For example, if I create a flow diagram of a common process for my paper, it's likely that many other papers have a similar diagram (because the technique of using flow diagrams to illustrate a process is pretty standard). That's perfectly OK as long as I didn't intentionally copy them.
(As always: if the technique of visualization or the data content of the image is not general knowledge, cite it.)

I'd also add, just to be on the safe side, cite the software you used (for instance, cite Avogadro or ChimeraX papers if you used those).

No, it's not ok to use someone else's graphics without checking whether you have the rights to those graphics. That could easily be a breach of copyright. Nor can you reproduce someone else's representation without crediting them: that's plagiarism.
You can either create a novel graphic yourself, or you can find someone else's graphic where you can establish that you, and your publisher, will have the appropriate rights to reproduce it.
If you've reproduced someone else's graphic (that is, both their style and their content), you will need to attribute it. Just having absorbed it and then unknowingly recreated it doesn't stop it being plagiarism.
If it really is a common enough type of image, you shouldn't have any difficulty in finding a citable version of it. You then add a caption, following the publisher's style guide, along the lines of "image source: author's own, after Metebelis (1973, p10)"

I have drawn the graphics myself. But as this type of graphics is omnipresent in the related literature in dozens of slight variations I might have redrawn a graphic that I have seen elsewhere without being aware of it.

Because you've redrawn the figure yourself, that's more or less defense against copyright issues. A crystal structure is not copyrightable; the representation of it is.

The OP didn't "reproduce someone else's graphic." The OP created his/her own representation of a common structure, using a common technique.

@ff524 the OP says explicitly: "So I might be reproducing someone else's graphics without noticing."

@ff524, I also found the Q unclear and did not realize the OP had created his own graphics.

@mkennedy Could you comment on what exactly made the question unclear to you? I will be happy to clarify on those points. But with phrases like "I have drawn" and "Also I am 100% sure that I have seen any of the features, that I have included in my own graphics, already in other publications" I thought to be clear enough about that.

@BenediktBauer, I completely missed "I have drawn"! I think I just glossed right over it. Perhaps something like, "I worry that I have replicated an already published graphic by chance." or something similar.

So you think that if I draw the well-known Fibonacci automaton (recognizing (10+0)*1? -- language of words containing no 11), I need to cite the first person who has ever drawn it? And if I say "Let p be a prime", do I have to cite Euklides?

@tohecz no, that's not what I meant by "someone else's representation". Nor do I refer anywhere to "the first person who has ever drawn" something. I'll try to think of a clearer wording.

Did you not read the question? This is a figure drawn by the OP themselves, for the theory section of their PhD (i.e., no publisher involved). Do you genuinely think that if I were to make a figure of the water molecule myself to put in the introduction to my thesis (or in a journal article, for that matter) I should go looking for a source which did not contribute to my generation of the figure, in any way? And, if you still think that would be necessary, who do you cite? Why should article A get credit and not article B?


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Peer Review, round 1, 6 reviewer reports, what could be the reason?
I have sent a manuscript to Optica, I have published there before and in other high-impact journals. This time my submission was first sent to 5 referees (I listed three names as requested). I thought that is reasonable since some will not be available etc. One ref agreed and the other said they were unavailable. Then the editor sent it again to 6 more referees. Now, 2 months later, I'm expecting to have 6 referee reports (5/6 agreed). This is still round 1.
I have never had this number of reports, including Nature or Science. It was usually 2-4 referees.
Besides the inefficiency and time consuming process for all involved, what's the point? Is there a cap limit on this? Should there be? Has anyone had a similar experience?

I was once a reviewer for an article with 10 reviewers...  the topic was interesting.

Here's a hypothesis that nonetheless explains what you're seeing and fits closely with my experience handling a journal. Your journal has a requirement that there must be at least 2 reviews per paper. Now some invited reviewers will decline, or accept and fail to submit a review. Since you also need to a reasonably short turnaround time, the only option is to invite more than 2 reviewers per paper to start.
In your case the editor invited five reviewers, only one of whom agreed to review. Since one review is not enough (note there is no guarantee that reviewer will actually submit a review as well), the editor invited another batch of reviewers (six of them). This time the editor got lucky, and most of those reviewers agreed to review your paper.
So you end up with 6 reports. Huzzah.
If there was a guarantee that every invited reviewer will submit a review, then this will never happen, but since there is no such guarantee, every now and then what you're seeing will happen. Every now and then there'll be other failures as well, e.g. a paper with only one reviewer report (because the editor judges they can't invite new reviewers from scratch given the average turnaround time of the journal).

I agree, but I think its more as if that was the case the editor could have sent the other referees (after 2-4 reports) an email that their service is no longer needed. that was not the case here, there are 2 weeks between the first of the 6 and the last... here the editor just set a reminder to 1 month or something...

If the other reviewers aren't responding, what's the point of sending them an email to tell them their service is no longer needed? They aren't aren't responding (including to what is presumably automated reminders) so it seems pointless.

Allure in their answer describes exactly a situation I found myself in as an editor recently. I felt sorry for the authors for having to deal with this many reviews, though in practice they ended up being quite similar and pointed out overlapping issues.
In my case, I actually had only 4 reviewers from elsewhere accept, but I had also asked two of my grad students to write reviews because I think that's an important part of their education. So we ended up with six.