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Should I inform the people that I acknowledged in PhD thesis?
You write a PhD thesis, in the acknowledgments you thank a series of people from collaborators, to friends, to peers, to professors. Many of these people will never read the thesis so what is the point to acknowledge them? It seems more an exercise for myself. This is different than the acknowledgments in a paper because PhD acknowledgments tend to be more personal and might include friends or people with a non-working relationship that helped in a way that it is not strictly related to the thesis.
Should I send them a copy of the thesis AND mention that I have acknowledged them, or simply let them know in some informal way that I acknowledged them, maybe next time I meet them or sending them a quick email?
It seems a pointless message if they don't know they have been thanked.

@NajibIdrissi the search on stack websites is really underwhelming.

I only sent one copy, to my ex-daughter (she divorced me.)  The last acknowledgement said, "Finally, to Gina, who may not remember saying, 'I will when you do!'  You've got a lot of catching up to do, Child."  All the others were people like committee members, who had read the wretched thing until they were sick of it, or groups like friends and colleagues, and so didn't need/want a copy.

While paper acknowledgements may be different than thesis acknowledgements, the answer in both cases is the same: "Yes, why not?"

Ask yourself, which message do you want to send them?
You do not want to simply inform them about the acknowledgment, you want to THANK them! It's not about your thesis, it's about their help!
How you approach them depends on several factors; do whatever you feel is right.
If it is possible to meet people in person, I prefer this, especially if they have contributed much. If they are further away, perhaps do at least a phone call. You should offer to them send your thesis via email or maybe even give them a printed copy.
In my personal experience, people are always very happy about a "thank you" and it also gives you the chance to stay in contact afterwards.

Can you motivate why you need to contact those being acknowledged? (I didn't do that, and I wasn't even remotely motivated to do so.)

@MadJack I read this answer as "you don't have to contact them, but If you do, just say 'thank you' rather than telling them that you formally acknowledged them. After all, that's what acknowledgement means."

@henning Yes, that is exactly what I meant with my answer. Feel free to edit my answer to add this!

I’ve been acknowledged in a few dissertations, and didn’t see until I read their dissertations while looking at format for my own! I wasn’t mad they didn’t tell me, but I wish I could've been able to express my happiness to collaborate with them in person and not a text, since they already have left the institution. I vote you let them know! Maybe email them the page where they’re mentioned.

I had the same experience! Agree with this answer

I handed over a copy of my printed thesis to every friend I mentioned in the acknowledgments. In addition, I wrote a kind of thanking latter or dedication to the recipient thanking for their support or whatever. When handing over the thesis copy, I verbally thanked them and told they were mentioned in the acknowledgments.


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What is the consenus of IntechOpen, open access books, are they predatory?
I have received an unsolicited request to write a chapter for a book relevant to my research. I have searched the current editors and they are actual people but not very well known in the field. On their website they show various logos, including web of science.
They do not seem to ask any money, but I see that sometimes go Intechopen was listed in the predatory editors. Is it still the case? Or is it because it is an open access editor that big publishers are trying to work against it?

From what I heard, Intechopen charge authors for publication. I also receive invitations from they every week.

"I have received an unsolicited request to write a chapter" You have your answer right there.

@NikeyMike That is standard for all gold open access publications and nothing specific to IntechOpen. IEEE, frontiers, PLOS, pick whichever you want, they all charge you to pay for their operations.

I have noticed the " IntechOpen " is in the list of predatory publishers (https://predatory-publishing.com). This publisher has a questionable reputation in the academic world . Therefore, do not waste your time sending them your works or paying them money for publication.

Can a request be solicited? How could I ask someone to ask me for something?

Yes, IntechOpen is a disreputable publisher.  Do not send them your work or pay them money.

Which evidence is this answer based on? I have read quite a few reports of very thorough review and editing processes and rejections. People who actually authored for them generally seem to be happy with the process. I actually have not read a single report of someone who actually worked with them being unhappy with the process, except for people who were surprised that they had to pay something. The fact that they charge money does not make them disreputable or anything, it's a necessary part of open access publishing.

@jhin Extensive experience with colleagues who publish.  I do not have any competent colleagues who are willing to submit work to this publisher.

... but is it because they have had actual bad experiences or because they have heard from yet other colleagues that they consider IntechOpen disreputable? :-) From what I understand, there's also quite a difference between a publisher being predatory and being disreputable, or am I mistaken? I certainly have the impression that Intech has a bad reputation in the community (your answer being a point in case), but I have yet to find out why exactly that is and whether it has anything to do with them being predatory.

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text:
What are the ethical considerations when publishing a cheating technique?
Suppose I have devised a way to cheat at cards, exams or any other situation in which secret communication with other people or machines provides unfair advantage. The method is novel and uses original technology and algorithms such that I think they might be worthy of a scientific publication.
The method is not a mathematical trick to solve a game while sticking to the rules, in which case I would see no ethical issue with publishing it. Think more of a method to remotely stream answers of a test directly into the retina without anyone else noticing.
I wonder if it would be unethical to publish this method in an academic journal. I personally feel strongly against cheating at exams, a little less strongly about cheating at cards but still, I wouldn't like to be making cheaters' life easier.
In their book "Beat the Market" Thorp and Kassouf write about why they published their method to edge their stock market investments. While the situation is different since using maths to make money is neither illegal nor unethical, some of their arguments might hold in my case.
In short, they say that they chose to publish their trick because other people will figure it out eventually, so:

They might as well get credit for it.
If everyone knows the technique, it becomes easier to replicate, detect and prevent.
As Syndrome from The Incredibles would say: "When everyone's super, no one will be."

Any other things I should be considering?
Let's ignore the legal aspects of that process since they are boring and off topic.

I think you'll need to make your question more specific. Cheating at cards and cheating at exams are hugely different: arguably "cheating" at cards (at least certain advantage-gaining techniques that are banned by casinos) is not cheating at all but is simply claimed to be cheating by casinos who want to ensure their games make money for them rather than lose it, and personally I would not consider the use of such techniques to be unethical, nor the advantage that they confer to be unfair - that situation is similar to your stock market example. So, as I said, I think more context is needed.

@DanRomik I wrote that the method allows secret communication with people and computers, that's not akin to counting cards at blackjack.

Okay, got it (sort of). Well, not sure it will help, but here's an example that comes to mind of someone who published techniques that may fit your description. Interesting question btw - +1.

Vaguely related question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/79358/40589

Also closely related/near-duplicate: http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/52/how-to-disclose-a-security-vulnerability-in-an-ethical-fashion. This subject seems to have been thought about quite a lot by the information security community.

They say: do not show magic card tricks to the people you play poker with :-) Apart from that, the usual thing applies: the fact that you make knowledge public doesn't mean that all people will know it. Some people will learn about it, and other's won't. Unless the method becomes universal knowledge, people will get an advantage by it. Though I see the point, I am not entirely convinced by the usual argument that revealing vulnerabilities to a general public makes it general knowledge.

As this is an ethical question I wouldn't expect a single answer to be right. I think maybe reading the physicists by Durrenmatt may help make up your mind on your own point of view. IMO i strongly stand by other people will figure it out eventually.

@DanRomik there is no cross-site duplicate. If it is in another stack, it cannot be a duplicate. You could (if that's the case) apply the cross-posting ban and delete it, but the criteria for cross-posting is very strict.

This this is actually very similar to a software vulnerability. Giving and taking exams is a process. As such they can have holes which can be expoitable.
If everyone knows these holes, they're much harder to execute, and much easier to "patch" than if only a few people knew these holes.

Why is this an ethical consideration exactly? You may call it a cheating technique, your local friendly intelligence bureau/police/military may call it their new MO. The fact you can stab someone with a kitchen knife doesn't necessitate ethical considerations in knife manufacturing.

How about some context reframing? I'll elaborate on what you wrote in the second comment and on the comment of @user25972 above me. The technique is about secret unidirectional visual communication, not about explicit cheating per se. As long as you don't suggest the use case of cheating, you free from its moral implications. And I'm not sure if the inversion holds.

I can’t really tell you what to do with that vague level of detail, but I can give you an example.
There seems to be a team at the Ben-Gurion University in Israel that regularly comes up with obscure ways to transmit data to devices not connected via any network connection.
Stuff like:

DiskFiltration: Data Exfiltration from Speakerless Air-Gapped Computers via Covert Hard Drive Noise,
SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit,
and many many more.

The only uses I see for that stuff is to either help malware authors and intelligence agencies or make people aware of this communication channels to increase security.
If your findings are anything like this, I don’t see a problem.
Update
After you clarified it's about a method to remotely stream answers of a test directly into the retina without anyone else noticing:
There are a lot of uses for such a technique which are not related to cheating. Pick some of them as motivation, and then later in your paper describe how this could also be used for cheating. Maybe give hints what some mitigation measures could be.

There are also groups working on things like cutting keys from long-lens photos and publishing in the literature. And many other fields with security applications.  You (the OP) may want to look at http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/disclosure as well

OP, do you mean "connection" rather than "collection"?

@Josef Regarding your update: as I read the question, it's not necessarily about a method to remotely stream answers of a test directly to the retina, the OP was only offering that as an example of the sort of thing they're talking about. So I don't think we should assume that is actually what they're asking about. (Though I think the point you edited in still makes sense)

I'd go by precedents set by large companies such as Google. If you know of specific companies/organisations who would be affected by it, give them a notice period before you publish. After that, publish as you normally would.
Problems don't get resolved unless people are aware of them. If your cheat comes from the actual process, then the process needs to be changed. If it's not, then you've invented a valuable new technique.

In your example, Google are following "responsible disclosure" protocol which is expected behaviour from all those working in information security.

Every research that contains some information can both help and be abused. It's not the research author, but rather the research user who can misuse the research.
I would just say that you shall try to present the findings in an unbiased way. I mean, what you find seems to be about secret communication between a computer and human, and not a priori about cheating. So just write the paper in this way.

Are there any less ethically dubious applications of your algorithm? I take it this is an incidental finding if you find cheating so unethical. If your main intention is to publish the method, perhaps it world be better to emphasise these other applications?
Either way, I'd recommend publishing anyway. Aside from prescedence and contributing to the literature being good for your career, it may also benefit those working to detect and reduce such unethical conduct. As you say, it's very possible someone less hesitant to use it will discover it so people who could prevent it being misused may as well be aware of it too.

You have created a novel method is that uses original technology and algorithms for secret communication with other people or machines.
The uses are not limited to cheating.
Someone that may use it to cheat has chosen to cheat.
If there are legitimate uses then focus on them and publish or sell it.
If the only use is to cheat then follow your ethics.  And check with a lawyer.  You may have created a method that is against some law - but I doubt it.
As far as poker pretty much any information sharing would be cheating. No coaching when the player is in a hand (one player to a hand) and no collusion.  In most (if not all jurisdictions) even use of a computer or calculator is not allowed. Even compiling of advanced statistics can be against the rules. For even online play the analytics are limited. It is typically limited to raw data with very limited statistics and cannot recommend a play or give outcome of a line of play. If a good player had access to analytics available in tools today it would be a big difference. The tools alone are not illegal - using them during play is.

Say you have found an undocumented hole in https protocol. Are you sure that you are the only one ever before and ever after who found that hole? No, you aren't!
Now you have three options.

Exploit it for your personal benefit.
Leave it as is and wait for someone else to decide on their own.
Describe the hole and make it public.

Option one is unethical. Option two is alibism.
In optin three anyone, who read the documentation, can exploit the hole you have found. But https devs can read it as well and have the chance to fix that hole.
The ones that do not use fixed protocol can be exploited and it is their problem, they were warned. And exploits will be succesfull only when obsolete version is used.
Back to your actual question: Describe the method you have found. Describe many uses of it including the cheating. I can assure you that there is someone (including you) that will find ways how to prevent such method for cheating or making it useless.
When grading, the examiner can allow this method and expect students to use it. Then accomodate the test to this new options.

"Cheating" does not warrant a scientific publication, because cheating only works in the dark. Once people know, they disqualify you if you try it, and what's good in a publication that makes itself obsolete the second it is online? Other (non-scientific) magazines might of course like to tell their readers.
(I'm not talking about a cheat that is not really about a specific game, but includes the discovery  of a more general human trait or similar.)
If your trick is NOT against the current rules, but you just have understood something about the game that noone else has, then of course it's worth publishing. If the game does have some reputation among academics, that is. Chess, checkers, roulette are fine, some esoteric role-play game from last year probably not. ;-) But if your trick is sufficiently new and scientific, you should be able to transfer the principle.
That's of course generally necessary: You have to show how the principle of your trick is something new and undiscovered, or how it is a transfer from an unrelated subject. If it is bound to the special (faulty) rules of "Monopoly", it's not going to get a lot of scientific interest, and should go to a journal for professional gamblers or similar.
(Ethics is totally irrelavant. Someone else will have the same idea, and use it. It might be ethical to give some people advance notice, but that's hard to decide, as they could also make illegitimate profit with it. Same problem as with security leaks in software.)
(After reading the update to the question: Write the paper about the general technique, and put a notice in it how it could be abused.)

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Nature Communications and Nature subject journal differences from Nature
The recent branching of Nature in Nature Communications and all the Nature subject journals is confusing.
What is the difference between Nature, Nature Communications, etc. The only clear difference I see is that the subject journals are specific while the other two are not and they all have their specific IF and metrics.
Does submission to one of them preclude the submission to the others? And is Nature still seen as the most prestigious of this group or has it lost some of its appeal/importance after the creation of all these new journals. It seems that this branching would lead to 'watering down' what Nature was like.

"And is Nature still seen as the most prestigious..." Nature was never the most prestigious publication venue for many fields. That being said, I am aware of a couple of fields where Nature was (ca. 1990) and still is considered top publication venue, together with Nature Communications, Nature Methods, etc.

@101010111100 I have corrected the wording, that's not what I meant.

It's weird to me that this question has no answers even though it is a bit old now. I have a friend in STEM who talks about these journals in a way that seems fairly straightforward to me.

A publication in Nature itself is obviously the most prestigious and is roughly equivalent with publishing in the most respected journal in your field.
Nature subject journals are a tier below Nature, but are also extremely prestigious and can allow young PhD students and postdocs to break into permanent research positions.
Nature Communications is a respectable "megajournal" a tier below the subject journals. It accepts a larger number of publications.
Scientific Reports accepts a very large number of publications and most any good science can be published there. Its impact factor is half of Nature Communications.

Generally you only submit to one of these tiers, and if you are a student your advisor would be able to tell you which is the correct one to aim for.
Again, I don't do STEM research and this is based purely on the way my friend talks about these journals. If this is wrong or too judgmental please post a comment.

I think that's a good description of the different tiers. Although you can submit to any of them the same paper, often is up to the editor to send it in review.

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Letters in high-end interdisciplinary journals – how much do they weigh in a CV? Are they only for experts?
Some journals, especially some prestigious ones like Science and Nature, have these types of articles called letters which are usually an opinion/argument on a certain topic, e.g., to point out something that has not been discussed or some new research direction to take in a particular field.
How much do these publications matter in a young scientist’s CV? Because they are not really based on a specific study. Or are these mainly for researchers who are considered an expert in their discipline?
Also, I am wondering if PhD students or postdocs are taken into consideration if they submit such letter to a prestigious journal, or if a senior scientist needs to be among the authors.
Example: Bushmeat Hunting As Climate Threat
Jedediah F. Brodie and Holly K. Gibbs

Science 16 October 2009: 364-365. [DOI:10.1126/science.326_364b]

I know publishers that issue Letters in blablabla or something similar, which is then basically a journal with a very low page limit (~4 in my field). Because of the page limit articles are more likely of the form 'we got these preliminary results on this model, a more thorough analysis will appear later'. But not 'we developed this model which we haven't analysed but we think more research will yield this and this result'. I'm curious, is it really that subjective an article you are referring to? Do you have an example?

@ThomasBosman I just added an example

Pretty much anything in a very high-end journal is difficult to get there and reflects a judgement on the part of the editors that your contribution will be of broad interest within the field.  Thus, it is likely to have a significant positive effect on your CV.
Moreover, depending on the journal the difference between "Letter" and "Article" is often of little significance.  For example, in Nature, the difference is that a Letter is 1500 words and an Article is 3000 words.  Since most Nature papers are really just the tip of a much larger iceberg of Supplementary Information in any case, this distinction doesn't really matter all that much, and probably few of your readers will even notice which of the formats your article is in.


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Where can I find a list of Marie Curie fellowship-funded projects?
If such a list does exist, it should since the funding comes from public money. I would like to see as much information as possible. I am interested in the Individual Fellowship but I guess any Marie Curie as this might be useful for people applying for other fellowship types.

I do not know particularly about Marie-Curie (did you check the web-site?) but, unfortunately, there are fellowships in public institutions funded from public money that they provide no info whatsoever (no info about projects, selection criteria, evaluation, statistics, etc)

It's more a question about searching on the Web rather than about academia.

You can find EU funded projects in CORDIS. For example, a list of all Marie Curie individual fellowships funded under the Horizon 2020 programme can be found here.

when I follow that link it takes me to a generic search, and I have no idea how to filter to find fellowships. Maybe somebody can help


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Web of Science advanced search returns papers not matching the search criteria
I am running  an advanced search in WoS but the results don't correspond to my search query, I am getting way too many unrelated the results.
I'm searching in the "Topic" field which includes abstract, title, keywords, and keywords plus. My search is similar to this, the following is just an example but I have multiple AND blocks and then multiple OR within each block:

(apple OR orange OR "banana split") AND ( calories OR protein* ) AND
  (adult OR baby)

But some of the results only contain keywords from one or two of the AND blocks, instead they should contain at least one keyboard for each block. I have tried both the advanced search and the regular search using the "add row" option.
I have also tried the same same on Scopus and it leads to 10x less results.
Am I missing something? Why the results are not what is expected?
EDIT: these are my search words
(Digestibility OR “energy content” OR “Nutritive value” OR “forage quality” OR “nutritional value“ OR “energy intake”)
AND
(flower* OR leaf OR leaves OR litter OR branch OR branches OR twigs OR stem OR stems OR seeds OR seed OR fruit OR fruits)
AND
(“herbivor*” OR “ungulate*” OR “mammals” OR “grazer*” OR “browser*” OR "mix-feeder*” OR “livestock” OR “domestic animals” OR “captive animals”)

Does it take all keywords literally? Or is it more sophisticated, taking synonyms and ideas rather than the literal (unquoted) words? If this is the case, I can propose a possible reason. But it is biased toward false positives, which is good, rather than omitting things that might be relevant. But I don't know the internals of the algorithm.

For help debugging search results, you should probably give the resulting search string that WoS generates (something that looks like "TS=(Mono* OR Species) AND TS= (Digest* OR OMD OR Carboh* OR Fibre* OR Fiber*)". That information might help people identify possible causes of your difficulty.

I would agree with @Tripartio that if you're happy sharing your actual search, it might be easier to work out what's going on. I can't immediately see a reason it's doing this from your example, but it's possible something weird is happening with eg one of your real search terms being something WoS thinks is an operator

@Buffy I have read the documentation and at times it can take synonyms but I don't know which of my keywords might have synonyms attached to them.

@Tripartio added my exact search terms.

@Andrew thanks, see above.

Again, I don't know the algorithm, but your second part (after AND) may be so broad if synonyms are used that it is useless for exclusion and so is ignored. If the union of all the papers satisfying the OR conditions is the entire universe it isn't exclusionary. For example, the others there are subsets of "mammal", more or less.

@Buffy I don't think that WoS is aware of the taxonomy of animals, so this could apply to many other fields. It seems to specific of a meta-keyword. But you are right that mammals might pull in all sorts of other stuff, but then why Scopus gives a more focused list of articles? EDIT: mammals only add about 100 papers.

Ok more testing, I was using before the "all databases" then I tried to switch to "WoS core collections" and I am now getting more reasonable results similar to scopus. maybe these other databases are searched in a slightly different way?

As an experiment, you could try your first OR grouping and AND that with a single one of your second and see what happens.

@HermanToothrot I think "All Databases" is definitely the key here. I'll write up an answer below explaining why.

Right, so there are three elements here (let's call them #1, energy, #2, plants, #3, animals)

TS=(Digestibility OR “energy content” OR “Nutritive value” OR “forage quality” OR “nutritional value“ OR “energy intake”)
AND
TS=(flower* OR leaf OR leaves OR litter OR branch OR branches OR twigs OR stem OR stems OR seeds OR seed OR fruit OR fruits)
AND
TS=(“herbivor*” OR “ungulate*” OR “mammals” OR “grazer*” OR “browser*” OR "mix-feeder*” OR “livestock” OR “domestic animals” OR “captive animals”)

With no filters, in WoS Core Collection, I get 107k results for #1, 3023k results for #2, 270k results for #3. (Yours may differ depending on exactly which bits of the Core Collection your institution subscribes to).
Combined - #1 AND #2 AND #3 - I only get 1245, which is much more reasonable. But not the same as you were getting - why? You mentioned in the comments that you were searching All Databases rather than Core Collection.
Trying again in All Databases, I get 265k results for #1, 8490k for #2, 19019k(!!) for #3. And combined, 22532 results. So, we can see the problem here is driven by using All Databases. But why?
Normally, when you search a single database like Core Collection, you are only searching the Core Collection metadata for each article. This is not always as useful as you will find in other databases - eg MEDLINE might have really rich and detailed subject headings, but Core Collection will just have a few keywords.
An "all databases" search will search the metadata in all of them - MEDLINE, BIOSIS, Core Collection, and so on. It thus leverages metadata that only exists in one database even if the paper is found in several different ones - which can be really powerful, or can be really treacherous.
In this case, it's treacherous. You'll note that we get 2.5x as many for "energy", 2.5x as many for "plants", but 70x as many for "animals". So what's up with "animals"?
Web of Science "all databases" includes BIOSIS (if you have a subscription to it). If you open up a paper's record in BIOSIS, you'll see that it includes extensive keyword/subject heading data. This is from the first paper I picked out which matches the "animal" part of your query - it's about congestion charging in China.

Because BIOSIS is structured in a very logical taxonomic way, this paper - and millions like it - will be returned by any search for animals, primates, vertebrates, mammals, etc. And your search includes the keyword "mammals". Bingo. That keyword is massively inflating the results for your third section, and as a result a lot of papers that match parts #1 and #2 but you would not expect to match #3 are showing up as valid matches for all sections.
Drop out "mammals" and we go down to 473k results for that part in all databases, final results 3395 - much more reasonable and in line with the other results. The Core Collection search gives us 145k results for the animals search without "mammals", 1139 overall.

Thanks Andrew! Fantastic answer and very good detective work! Now I see why I got that many results with "all databases".


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Is it a good idea to continue a PhD with an advisor who doesn't really know your field?
Some background:

I started my PhD in Machine Learning in April this year.
My PhD is fully funded for 3 years, I earn around 2000€/month after tax, working only on research and not doing any teaching.
I'm paid by the grant that my advisor got for his project. This grant his paid by the state.
My current advisor is a world expert in Machine Learning
I already submitted 2 papers with him and most likely submit a third one in a couple of months.

The problem: My advisor just got an offer from one of the biggest company you can think of, to do a machine learning project with lots of different world experts newly hired by the said company. It means that he is going to leave his current position at my university in 4 months.
I can't blame him to take this position because I would have done the same. It's an offer that nobody can refuse.
So in 4 months, I'll have to make a choice.

leave my position and look for a position elsewhere but I doubt I'll find something as interesting and well paid. (My advisor can write recommendation letter for me.)
to stay at the university and choose a new advisor -> the problem is that my current research is highly technical and nobody except my current advisor (and I) have knowledge about it (he was a new junior professor and the university wanted to expand the CS department). The rest of my group is working on a totally different subject and I know nobody will be able to help me for the rest of my PhD.

My advisor told me that the university will find me a new advisor if I choose to stay but warned me that my topic will most likely shift to adapt to the domain knowledge of this new advisor. It means that I'll have to give up my current topic and to tell you the truth, I prefer to quit my PhD than to continue on something that I don't like.
For info, I read this post how-to-cope-when-phd-advisor-quits-midway but I think my problem is slightly different.
tldr: Is it possible to do a PhD with an advisor that can't help you? Or is it better to just go somewhere else?

my current research is highly technical and nobody except my current advisor have knowledge about it — Nobody except your current advisor and you, right?

Yes of course, I quitted my last job and relocated to this university for this specific PhD because of him and the topic. I edited, thx

Is there any way your current advisor might consent to staying on your committee until you are done? He could still review your work at his new job.

He told me that he will stay as an extern in my committee and I could still send him email if I have any problem. My concerns are more in knowing if I'll be able to conduct research on my topic with a new 'random' advisor that will only help me for administrative concerns. If it's a bad idea because I'll have to argue with him to adapt my research. I'm looking for experience/advice from other people.

Are you sure you won't lose the grant money anyway once your advisor leaves? Is another professor going to take over the project and grant?

@mkennedy yeah there is no problem here. I have a 3 years contract. I think the problem will be after the 3 years because I'll not have any possible extension.

judging nobody knows the area except you and your advisor seems
a strong statement to me specially if you just started doing research
(this April ).
I am quite sure there are other folks working on the same topic or
something really close to it. Those are your potential advisors.
Taking into account that you just started and he's a world class
expert, I believe the best thing is to approach your advisor asking
for help. Ask him to suggest some names to you.  He certainly
knows other academics and can even approach them asking for a PhD
position for you (have you looked to his co-authors list in DBLP for
example? ). I have heard several cases where advisors help their
students secure PhD positions in other institutions.
Take a breadth view over other's research. Attend their seminars. You
might see their work interesting as well.
DO NOT LOSE YOUR ADVISOR. keep in touch with him and try to be his student even outside academia!

Well I began my PhD in April but I was already following my advisor research for the past year. Like I said he was hired to expand the CS department in a specific domain of Machine Learning. Let's say that the rest of the CS department are in HCI and graph so he was the only one doing research in ML. I'm not saying that other professors are not good, it's just that nobody really do Machine Learning. Second thing, my grant is dependent of the uni. I know that my advisor can recommend me to other labs but then I'll be without any grant if I leave my current uni.

@Kalmos - If you've published papers, you know exactly who (and where) the other experts in your field are. If you are set on continuing your research in this specific sub-field, you may want to consider investigating whether you could switch universities and join their labs.

So the consensus is to start looking at the other labs (even if it means losing my grant) and to not stay with a 'random' advisor. I insist on the money part because I have loan to pay back and I don't want to be crush by debt. I guess I'll stay with my current situation until I find a good lab/grant somewhere else to transfer and continue my research after my advisor leave.

@Kalmos If you are enthusiastic about this particular topic only then stick with it no matter what the price is. But before that make sure you are really interested only in it.


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Ethics of publishing received peer reviews
What are the ethics of publishing (on the web, etc.) peer reviews received for a paper? Does your answer change if the paper was accepted or rejected?
I am specifically interested in the  "one-shot" case typical of computing science conferences, without rebuttals, where there is no or limited dialogue between an author and the reviewers.
This is quite distinct from Can I publish the reviews I write? as here I am talking about reviews I have received, not those I have written - the reviews' authors retain their anonymity, and presumably the paper would be included alongside those reviews.
Vijay's response below includes a summary of much of the other responses and my comments on those.

Very related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/545/what-happens-to-the-reviews-that-people-write-for-journal-articles-after-theyre and http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/647/can-i-publish-the-reviews-i-write

I read both of those before I formulated my question. I am trying to elicit a line of argument to support, for example, this answer - being "frowned upon" is presumably what academics are used to if they're actually exercising their tenure. Why the timidity in revealing the poverty of the anonymous peer review process? (in CS conferences, in my experience)

What are you trying to achieve? Why would you publish the reviews, what would you gain? If you have a certain objective in mind, perhaps it would be better to ask a direct question about how to achieve this objective?

I empathise with the OP. Having received reviews that were incorrect, lazy, territorial, or plain vindictive, I feel frustrated and helplessly trapped in a system which has no incentives to rectify itself and has a dissatisfyingly asymmetric dialogue structure. Publishing reviews are the only outlet I can think of. I can also leave academia, which will mercifully make the problem go away (for me).

@Jukka - I'm trying to understand the ethics of peer review! Read my other comments throughout this page for further context. (Sorry, I'm not used to this stackexchange format of discussion.)

@Peter: This is not a discussion forum, this is a Q&A site. You should have a clear, practical question that can be answered, not an open-ended invitation for opinions and discussions.

@Jukka: Why does my question have to be practical and answerable? I don't follow. This being academia.se, I'd expect the best questions to provoke original research and investigation... Also, am I abusing the comments mechanism by asking each respondent to further justify their response? If so, I apologize. BTW almost every answer on SE seems to have an opinion component; yours is that ethical questions can be annoyingly non-teleological. Oh well. Also my question is not open-ended.

@Peter - Welcome to Academia.SE! I recommend you read the "don't ask" section in Help to get an idea how this community works. While we definitely have more open-ended discussion here than on other Stack Exchange (SE) sites, we still follow the Q-A format common to SE sites. For what it's worth, I feel that this question, as asked, is perfectly fine; reasonably scoped, and definitely answerable.

@Peter, stackexchange convention is to improve your original question following feedback. You could add clarifications about your feeling the review process has flaws or poor quality, that you are from a computer science background, that the reviews you intend to publish are anonymous, etc. Also these sites are for questions that can be answered from existing knowledge, not which require new research and investigation.

Let me add some data points to this discussion. Some items below are about discussing reviews and editors in a public forum and not about publishing reviews.

Jens Teubner makes available the reviews to his papers online. I do not know him but I have heard from someone who does that he said he has not received negative feedback about doing this. Maybe you can ask him for more information.
Doron Zeilberger has published reviews in Opinion 87 and for his paper Automatic CounTiling.
Doron Zeilberger's Opinion 61 is about rejections and accountability (it has a response from Luca Trevisan) and his Opinion 81 is about rejection and snobbery.
Peter Clark's mail to Doron Zeilberger about some material Zeilberger published online. This is only tangential to your question, but I think it's good to keep in mind that when you go down the road of open publication, you should be ready for others publishing material about you or your reviews.
The Writings of Leslie Lamport chronicles in very direct terms the stories behind his papers including some notes about editors and reviewers (for example papers 62, 122,129, ).
In The Writings of Leslie Lamport Paper 132 he talks about having written an 'unkind review'.

I have been meaning to publish my reviews for multiple reasons and I am glad to see that other people have been thinking the same and some have done it. I do not think the result or answer should depend on whether the paper is accepted or rejected. If reviews are published, I believe that one should also publish the version of the article that was used to make the reviews. Otherwise, the reviews are like quotations taken out of context. If there are coauthors, one should obtain their permission first, or at least include a disclaimer that you are publishing your reviews on your behalf only. As an example of a disclaimer, see Lamport's page:

Some of the stories read like complaints of unfair treatment by editors or referees.  Such cases are bound to arise in any activity based on human judgment.  On the whole, I have had little trouble getting my papers published.  In fact, I have profited from the natural tendency of editors and referees to be less critical of the work of established scientists.  But I think it's worth mentioning the cases where the system didn't work as it should.

The notification of acceptance is usually signed by the editor of the venue, even in the case of anonymous review, so one should ideally obtain their permission if you will reveal who the editor is. The same applies for reviewer permission in signed reviews. I cannot tell whether people in the links I give above obtained editor permission first so there may be precedent for not doing so. Publishing reviews intended for private circulation still takes them out of context.  I would add a disclaimer that the reviews and notification letter were written as private communication and if published without permission of named entities, I would note that too. The latter is in case your intention is to protest the status quo by subverting standard conventions.
I haven't answered your question because I don't have a clear answer. Publishing reviews is not conventional academic behaviour. Doing so can be construed as unprofessional depending on how you publish them and what additional commentary you add. Calling it "unethical" seems  a rather heavy handed judgement to make. There are things an anonymous reviewer can do that are clearly unethical (steal research, suppress publication, circulate the manuscript) or questionable depending on context (force citations, comparisons, reject without reading, write ad hominem reviews etc.). There is very little an author can do to wrong a reviewer that is remotely comparable and publishing a review does not seem remotely on that scale to me.
There are multiple reasons to publish reviews including accountability for all parties involved (including authors) and as a form of protest. I believe this intent is important to consider because forms of protest do subvert what may be considered acceptable behaviour. A useful thought exercise might be to put yourself in the reviewer seat and ask if you would be fine with similar treatment. I would not have an issue if the reviews I have written  were made public (even if I knew that stylometric techniques could be used to identify me). I do not think all reviewers feel that way.
Finally, let me point again to Jens Teubner's page, which comes across to me as a model of how to publish reviews while retaining professionalism and dignity.

+1 for the excellent and interesting links to the blog posts!

If it is necessary to ask coauthors of the paper for permission, why do you think it is not necessary to ask the author of the review?

Thanks Vijay. :-) I would be completely happy to have my name publicly associated with the reviews I have written, and for those to be published in any form. This discussion is making me think that such publication is not unethical, merely career-suicidal. @silvado - the reviewer is anonymous and remains so. How do I ask their permission?

@Peter I don't think it is career-suicide if you do it professionally. I haven't done so yet because I cannot stop myself from ranting. If a large group of us did it, it will not be unconventional. Another option is to start a Wikileaks for paper reviews and take joy in each other's pain.

@Peter You can only ask for permission via the editor, but I think it is unlikely that an editor will forward such a request.

In the journals where I have been invloved as editor, author or reviewer (except in ones where the review process is open on the web), the implicit understanding has been that the communication is closed between the author-editor-reviewer. I have not seen any explicit rules stated by these journals to control against any such public dissemination but I have not looked for it either. I think that, particularly in cases where it is not explicitly stated that reviews are public, posting reviews without consent from the reviewer would be similar to publisihing someone private letters wihout consent. It is not illegal but ethically very distasteful. I do not think it matters whether or not the review was anonymous. Whether the paper was accepted or not would not matter either. I would consider posting without consent just as bad under all circumstances.

This is my understanding too, but I fail to see the parallel with private letters when one party is anonymous. How about if the review process does not have a rebuttal or response phase? Is it unreasonable to embarrass a (CS) conference by revealing the poor quality of its reviews? How else can we signal this?

Good points. Usualy poor practises become known without such public exposure. I would start by discussing the matter with peers who may have had similar experiences (same conf). How to later convey it to the conf. is difficult to assess at this stage.

Peter, it may be that poor practices become known within the community of the conference, but it does not make them common knowledge to the field as a whole. See my other remarks for other utilitarian benefits of author-publicised reviews (at least in the case of CS confs without rebuttals etc).

As argued in the answer by Peter Jansson, it is ethically not acceptable to publish peer reviews that you receive for your paper, and I agree with that.
But there is also a legal aspect to it. The review is an intellectual work and as such will typically be subject to copyright. And that holds even if you don't know the author. So publishing a review will be a copyright violation, unless you get permission from the person who wrote the review.
If you want to highlight bad review practices, instead of just publishing the review consider citing from it. The actual difference may be marginal, but from both a legal and an ethical perspective, you should fare much better with this approach.
And my answer doesn't change depending on whether the paper is accepted or not.

I'm still not seeing an argument for why it is unethical. For instance, if the reviewers make false or abusive remarks, and there is no avenue for a rejoinder, then anonymous peer review is already not very ethical. One reason to reveal the entirety of the reviews is to ensure the reader knows I am not cherry picking from them for effect.

@Peter - How can there be no avenue unless you know for certain that the people writing the reviews are organizing the conference/in charge of the journal?  There's usually a hierarchy of people to complain to.

@Peter I think I understand your intention. In that case, there may also be ethical arguments for publishing (as there are for keeping the reviews confidential). If it is some sort of "whistle-blowing", that's often a difficult case-by-case decision. If you are specifically interested in that, why not ask a specific question?

If the question is "Should the author publish the reviews he got for his paper(s)?", then I'd say no (maybe with some exceptions, but this would have require a per-case discussion). I believe the other answers have more or less covered that.
But, if the question is "Should the journals publish the reviews?", then I believe it would be both ethical and useful to publish the final positive reviews, and I have several reasons for this.
First, giving a positive review is like giving a positive grade on an exam. The person doing so should stay behind his "verdict" with his professional reputation. The review is one of the results of the work that the researchers do, so publishing positive reviews doesn't seem to me much different from publishing the results of the research in papers.
Second, and quite related to the first, I've read some really crappy papers, with nonsense, obvious errors, misquotes, etc. Reviewer cannot "catch" everything, but some of the papers get bad enough that it is obvious that the reviewer didn't do his job. If the reviewers knew their names would forever be publicly associated with such paper, I believe some of these might actually try to do their job.
As for the negative reviews, I see no point in "shaming" the author if his paper was too bad (in whatever way) to be published. If this was not the case, but the reviewer is to be "blamed" (i.e., for misunderstanding the paper), the issue can be resolved with the editor, or the paper can be submitted elsewhere, again giving no reason to make the negative review public.
One might argue that the negative review is also like publishing the results of the research in papers, but I see it more like a failed research, which is not something that one usually publishes.

Please read my comments to the other responses. I know the protocol; I am not expecting reviewers to shed their anonymity; I am not talking about journals that have a robust rebuttal/response process. If you want a concrete proposal, consider this: the author has the discretion to publish the (anonymous) reviews of their paper, whether it gets accepted or not. What is ethically wrong with this? What would be wrong with publishing failed research anyway? It'd save the rest of us some time, in many cases.

O.K., I have reread them now, and the questions here made some clarification as well. I am probably not the best person to answer the ethical aspects, since I always vote for the transparency and I would be O.K. with this (even with my name included in the review, although I am aware that you are not asking about that). However, I see two practical problems: 1) no one, or at least almost no one, would be interested in reading/analyzing reviews for other people's papers; 2) the purpose, beyond "badmouthing" a paper/conference, eludes me.

If someone chooses bad reviewers, this will be reflected on the quality of the publication, which I'd expect to affect that paper's/conference's reputation far more than publishing some reviews that almost no one would be interested in reading. Also, it would probably be seen as a personal attack on the paper/conference, which may cause you trouble when trying to publish in the future. The research community is not above the petty "common human" flaws. To summarize these two comments: I'd advise against it, but for the practical rather than the ethical reasons.

Vedran - thanks for your comments, but as I've remarked elsewhere, my interest is in an argument for why revealing reviews is not ethical. (The venue need not publish the reviews - I am suggesting that the authors of the paper have the discretion to.) As for utility: it gives some indication of what it takes to get accepted, how friendly and constructive the community is, and so forth. It also encourages civility and defensible criticisms. Etc. etc.

As I said, I agree that it should be perfectly O.K. and I don't see it as unethical, but I also have a feeling you'd get quite a resistance (probably not even the open kind, but the one behind your back). I'd also expect such revealing to be labeled "unethical" by many, but without the answer to your "why is it unethical?". After all, that's what the labels are for: avoiding real arguments.

The ethics are the same as publishing any other communication that is assumed to be in confidence: if the content contains critical information about an illegal activity, you may (depending on the nature/severity) be morally obligated to turn it over as evidence to an appropriate party; if it is otherwise urgent or critical for others to be aware, you may be morally encouraged to find a venue to publicize it (as "whistleblower"), and in pretty much all other cases, you should keep in private.
You can complain to editors and others responsible for the conference or journal; you can commiserate with colleagues and try to find out whether this is systematic or not.  But trying to shame reviewers in public is very unlikely to accomplish any valuable goal.  (It may provide a satisfying revenge at the cost of other of your goals; I encourage you to think very carefully before deciding that this is worth it.)
There are all sorts of reasons you might have a bad review (covered in other answers); assuming one that makes you the most angry and/or feel most self-justified is a very natural reaction, but probably isn't the best way to a productive conclusion.
Instead, when you find things like this, you are probably much better off applying to other conferences, publishing in other journals, and maybe quoting (anonymously) the worst parts of the review in a blog or somesuch explaining why you're no longer going to whichever conference or considering publishing in whatever journal.  There are options in some fields for publishing with open reviews (the Frontiers life science journals, for instance).
Publishing the full review and naming names is a good way to make people angry, make other reviewers not want to review your work, and to not get anything to change.  Adding your voice (and papers!) to existing movements that seek to improve the peer-review process is much more productive, even if it's not as viscerally satisfying.
To be completely clear about the ethical implications: you are breaching the trust of the editor(s)/organizer(s)/reviewer(s) that reviews are confidential information.  Breaching trust makes people less likely to trust you in the future, and is (in most ethical frameworks, including intuitive ones) unethical unless perhaps there is a very compelling case why this must be done.  In your situation you have not articulated such a compelling case, especially given that are a variety of other avenues to take if you're actually concerned with the quality of the reviews.  If you are working in academia, presumably you know how to quote tiny sections of a full work to make your point--that's much more acceptable.

I don't think you have addressed my question. The reviews are anonymous; I cannot name names. I am not looking for advice; I know the protocol is to hold reviews in confidence come what may. I am asking for what the ethical implications would be of violating this protocol. See my other comments for further details. I should add that I am specifically bothered by the low quality of reviews (which I cannot demonstrate to you without violating the protocol!) and not the accept/reject recommendation. It is not helpful to make this an emotional issue.

@Peter - I added another paragraph making explicit the ethical implications that I was implicitly referring to in the rest of the answer.

I'm not convinced by this normative argument - it is just a statement of convention. I expect to be held accountable for the contents of my papers; why should reviewers not be held to the same standard? As I mentioned before, selective quoting of reviews may not be very convincing - of course I'll choose the egregious parts and then be charged with cherry-picking and ignored. Would your answer change if the reviewers knew up-front that their words may be made public by the author? (See my other comments)

@Peter - Ethics in such matters is based on convention (as is what constitutes abusive language, for instance).  If reviews are not confidential information, then you are not breaking convention.  If the reviewers knew you were probably going to break convention and publish the reviews anyway, then no, my answer would not change, just like I wouldn't say that it was ethical of you to steal pies from someone's window where they were cooling just because they knew you might.  To hold reviewers accountable you talk to the editor or organizer.

Sure, ethics have some foundation in convention. I'm wondering if the convention can or should be changed. If the reviewers knew that authors had the discretion to publish reviews (i.e., adopting this as a new convention), what other ethical considerations would stop you from publishing them?

@Peter - You seem to be asking, "If it's okay to publish them, why would it be wrong to publish them"?  I'm sure you can think of special cases (e.g. it would be unfairly injurious to some third party).  Otherwise, you seem to be begging the question.  I'm not sure what you think you're going to learn from my answer.

This might be related to your question: http://www.peerageofscience.org/
The concept is that 1) you peer-review your paper before submitting it to a journal, 2) peer-reviews are peer-reviewed, 3) participating journals send you publication offers if they like your paper, 4) you may submit your peer-reviewed paper to any journal you like
I'm not sure are the reviews public themselves, I did not use the site yet, but at least there are peer-review scores appearing on the main page

If you're a reader of Science, also check this out: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6067/385.1.summary

Why the down-vote?

I just don't see how it answers the question.

Well, maybe you are correct. It does not really answer the question directly. The reason I posted the URL is that the service is taking a step towards what the OP is asking (open peer-review if I see the question correctly)

That would be better suited as a comment then. Or try to relate it to the actual question then.

I am specifically interested in the case (common for CS conferences) where reviews are one-shot and there is no avenue to respond. Given that there is more prestige in conferences than journals in CS, this gives a lot of power to the anonymous reviewers. I'm specifically bothered by reviews of the form "I'm no expert but I'm going to make a string of spurious remarks and give you a strong reject." I find that unethical and wonder what the field will do about it.


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Ph.D. in the space between two fields?
I'm applying to PhD programs in two fields and I am interested in the space between two fields, where one is applied to the other.
In my particular case I'm interested in researching Software Engineering as applied to Robotics. I will use a similar but slightly different case as an illustrative example between the fields of Software Engineering and Machine Learning, which I am also interested in. Software Engineering applied to Machine Learning could incorporate better ways, such as new language syntax, to design and implement Machine Learning Algorithms. The opposite would be using machine learning to solve Software Engineering problems, such as automatically discovering database regularities in a data mining application.
Essentially, I see understanding, researching, and being able to apply software engineering to robotics as an area that will expand enormously in the next 10-15 years, much like how software engineering research has expanded as applied to mobile devices and data centers.
I am very interested in both fields, but ideally I would be studying how to apply software engineering to robotics.

How do I explain my interests to both Robotics and Software Engineering professors, respectively?
How do I communicate why this matters at all, and more importantly why it matters to them?
Should I focus primarily on Software Engineering programs, Robotics programs, or both to reach my goal?

Answers based on analogous situations from other fields are welcome.

I do not know about robotics, but the combination of Software Engineering and Machine Learning is already pretty well-established in Empirical Software Engineering.

Software engineering + Robotics = Mechatronics = Software Engineering + Electronic Engineering + Mechanical Engineering

@xLeitix I took a look and quickly found information on applying Machine Learning to improve Software Engineering. How much is there on applying Software Engineering to more effectively develop Machine Learning algorithms?

I do not know about any such work ... But is that actually a research topic? Is the development of machine learning algorithms so special that it requires specific engineering support?

@xLeitix Thanks for the great question, you've helped me find the keywords I've been looking for! Algorithm Engineering is what I'm thinking of. I believe that rather than being special, both machine learning and robotics represent typical examples of fields that could benefit from algorithm engineering support.

I know little about either of these fields, but will try to give a generally applicable answer.
I think your best bet is to find an advisor who already has some appreciation for the intersection of these two topics.  Convincing someone who only works on one of them that they are important together -- and that he/she should supervise a thesis involving both -- may be difficult. However, since the fields you mention can often be found within the same university department (computer science), the latter approach is also possible.
To decide which type of programs you should look at, ask yourself in which field will I innovate?  If you will apply standard software engineering techniques to do something new in robotics, focus on robotics.  If you will devise novel software engineering ideas that are useful with respect to existing robotics applications, then focus on software engineering.  Of course, the answer is rarely clear cut.
Important: if you're not substantially innovating within either field, it may be difficult to convince a committee that you deserve a Ph.D. (even though the combination may be innovative).  You can't usually get away with work that is worth half of a Ph.D. in each field.

As David Ketcheson suggested, the ideal scenario would be to find an advisor who works in both fields. But even if you find one, he/she will probably have preferences on one topic or the other. Both fields are extremely wide and highly "trendy".
So, I believe it comes down to which field you would like to go more in-depth. Either find a highly specialized advisor in Robotics with some knowledge/applications in Software Engineering, or the opposite.
From my perspective (as a Mechanical Engineer), I would suggest to go for in-depth research in Robotics, which has quite sophisticated dynamics, control and solid mechanics, and couple your research to Software Engineering, with for example the design of an efficient graphical interfaces for control purposes or advanced image processing techniques for trajectories planning.
These are just examples, as I said before, both fields are extremely wide in terms of possibilities, so it is up to you and your advisor to find a middle-ground that suits you both.

I think David Ketcheson's answer is the right way to approach it.
One thing that I'd like to add to it is that you might not be that original: there are plenty of interdisciplinary programs that do this sort of heavy collaboration between fields, there could already be a program that focuses on what you want (or something close to it).
Example: Machine Learning is the intersection of Statistics and Computer Science. There are Statistics departments that do ML research, there are CS departments that do ML research, and Carnegie Mellon University has and entire Machine Learning department.

Bridging two topics is more complex than a simple PhD devoted to a single topic. You must be lead by a professor who is also highly interested in and actually helps with your research plan, not just "allows". Professor should take care to make a plan of the suitable PhD research project from this idea.
So start from finding such a supervisor and drop the idea if you cannot.


text:
How can PhD student repair relationship with supervisor after PhD student engages in independent research without supervisor?
When I had just started my PhD in Computer Science in Korea, a Physics PhD student in the EU proposed a collaboration. He and I wrote one paper for a conference. I learned last week that the paper was accepted. He is first author. I am second author.
I did not tell my professor about this project even though he was my supervisor then. I mentioned it to my professor recently. He became very angry. He asked me to remove my name from the paper. He said that all my work represents his lab and my university. I shouldn't conduct other work.
My professor's points

The collaboration should be done between supervisors. (My professor's background and interest do not fit with my coauthor.)
Another issue is none of us can present the paper at that time, asking someone for authorship is acceptable for this situation?

My question
How can I mend things with my professor and continue to collaborate with my coauthor?

The main problem is who will provide funding for you to attend the conference, if both of you have not notified your advisors. Obviously you can't go to the conference, since your advisor disagrees. If the situation is the same with your co-author, it does not make sense to submit a paper for a conference, when none of you can attend.

Was your current supervisor your supervisor when you and your friend started the collaboration?

@Alexandros I disagree that funding is the main problem. It seems that the supervisor's expectation of how the student allocates her time is the main problem.

Did your professor mention any objective specific issue with the paper (or possibly the target venue)? I am wondering because of the remark about "representing the lab and the university". If he didn't, you might want to at least think about trying to switch to another supervisor. At latest at the PhD level, you should become able to work on your own, and setting up your own collaboration and managing to submit a paper that gets accepted is actually excellent. A supervisor who goes as far as requiring to take your name off of your own successful work actively hampers that development.

+1 @O.R.Mapper a micromanaging supervisor is not the same as a scientific disagreement

@mac389 The OP changing or not his/her supervisor is one issue. But sending a paper to a conference without attending it, is a) plain stupid and b) gives both students a bad name in the related communities c) It is highly unprofessional. So, It is major issue for the career of the OP, regardless of him/her switching supervisors.

The point of a PhD is to be able to conduct and lead individual research.  I think he is very wrong in his arguments, unless the paper is utter crank, in which case he should explain why. A different and legitimate issue is that he may not be keen on your spending too much time on other things.

Thank  you all for the feedback, @Alexandros: i'm not sure funding is the biggest problem. Since he is going to attend the conference to. And he will be in the author list.

So you added your supervisor as a co-author? This was not in your question.

@Alexandros: Given the effort it takes to get something accepted in the first place, I somehow agree with a), YMMV on c), but I don't see any reason to assume b). The paper won't appear in the proceedings or the program listing unless they hand in the camera-ready version (and, seeing that the acceptance notification has arrived just a week ago, it doesn't seem like they're that far yet), and also, all conferences I've seen so far have invariably made it a condition for inclusion in the program and proceedings that at least one author has registered by the time of the camera-ready deadline.

If you have a job as a Graduate Research Assistant that is entirely funded by a US government or similar grant your professor won, and this work is entirely unrelated to that grant, there may be some trouble about working on things that could not be covered by those funds.

The main problem is he is very angry with me. I cannot explain anything to him at that time. Adding him as a co-author is not the solution as he mentioned. He want to have supervisor - supervisor collaboration which would never happened as I mentioned

@BillBarth Thank you, but I study in Korea,

@Alexandros: since this paper is main topic of my co-author and he is the fist author. this paper is sponsor by his grant as shown in ack section.

@O.R.Mapper: you are right in publishing policy of the conference, at least one author should be registered and present the paper.

@AtenaNguyen, I presume the Korean government has rules about how you can spend their money.

This sounds like much more of a cultural specific issue than academic.  In Korea, your supervisor is most likely looking at you as a student, not a researcher.  Many of the comments here assume the latter.  The best way to find out is to ask any other foreign faculty that have been in Korea a long time if they think it is a cultural issue or academic.

Your adviser is a jerk, regardless of culture. This is 2015, not 1895.

Start looking for a new supervisor!

It is a pretty anti-intellectual opinion on the side of the supervisor and completely against the principles of academic science, but I don't think it is something you can talk out. Most probably your professor has already rock-solid opinion on such "disobedience issues".

Call his bluff. Tell him you're sorry him supervising you didn't work out and you'll switch to a new supervisor as soon as possible.

In Korea, do you work on a PhD as a job (for a salary), or is it more a student-like situation? If your supervisor pays for your time, he gets to decide what you spend it on.

@gnometorule This is a very shallow analysis.

We western people need to stop giving Asian students cultural advice. Many of the suggestions here are sound based on western standards, but sound like horrible mistakes for somebody studying in Asia.

@xLeitix: I think it's a bit more complicated - probably, many of the commenters (without entirely excluding myself here) are assuming (maybe mistakenly so) that the title PhD is not just an arbitrary combination of three letters, but that it carries some meaning, which is, despite considerable differences between countries, somehow internationally agreed upon on a very abstract level - along the lines of "has a very good overview of the research in a particular topic", "can conduct publishable research", "has acquired the skill to act independently and make their own decisions". ...

@xLeitix: ... Of course, much of this is based on implicit, "unwritten rules"; it certainly doesn't help that we are probably doing a bad job distinguishing between "what we think is internationally expected of a PhD holder" and "what may or may not be practically acceptable for a student in the respective culture". The least solution I can think of is to at least make sure we point out which - possibly culture-specific - rationale we see for our suggestions, especially when those suggestions are of a "this is not usually done" general style.

@BillBarth That is simply not true. "there may be some trouble about working on things that could not be covered by those funds" <-- how about knitting sweaters?  That's also not covered by funds.  A student's life should not be controlled by their advisor to this extent.  After she goes home she should be able to do whatever she pleases to.

@Szabolcs, I meant the work they do in the office, on the job, as covered by their GRA funding, of course. If this student worked on this paper without their advisor's knowledge while funded on an NSF (say) grant and did so during the actual working time of their employment, that could, potentially, cause problems for them if the funded grant and the work done here are not even plausibly related.

@Szabolcs  While you have a strong point, here is a question for you. Lets say that as a supervisor, your student didn't do absolutely any progress on his research for lets say 6 months. Suddenly, you found out that in this time your student was working "after he/she/it went home" on another project or two, completely unrelated to the PhD. Would you be happy with the situation? I am not saying that this is the case here, but if the student had a sudden drop in the production at some point, which can be correlated with this new peoject, I could see the supervisor being unhappy.

... Of course, there is a big difference between being unhappy and overreacting.

@NickS There are many ways to waste time and end up being unproductive at work: her work could be affected because she was dating, because she was playing computer games or because she was doing another research project.  The latter is not any worse than the former.  But this question isn't about not being productive: it's about the supervisor demanding that she takes her name off the paper. The supervisor has no right to do this, or to control what she does in her spare time.  This is like a company claiming rights over any software their programmers wrote, regardless of whether ...

@NickS ... it was done on office hours or at home, using office equipment or a home computer.  It does happens, but it's not right and shouldn't happen.  Of course you're right that writing a paper is a big project and probably does take up a lot of time, also realistically it's very hard to determine how much time she's been spending "on work" or "on personal projects".  So yes, there might be reasons for the supervisor to be upset.  But we're walking a dangerous thin line here when suggesting that if she's being paid to do one research project she cannot also do a different one ...

As with most questions here, we're seeing one side of the story.  It would likely sound very different if it were asked by the supervisor ...

It's reasonable for your professor to want some input as to how you spend your time, and it's customary for students to keep their advisors informed about other things they are working on. You have perhaps committed a slight breach of etiquette by not telling him about this project earlier.
However, in my view, it is deeply inappropriate for him to ask you to take your name off the paper. He is your advisor but he doesn't own your life. You have done the work and as an academic it is your right to publish it. An interaction like this would have me thinking about looking for a new advisor, quick.
If the professor has technical concerns about the quality of the paper itself and thinks that it is not ready to appear in the scientific/academic record, then he should discuss this with you, and you should share those concerns with your coauthor and come to a decision on their merits. But I feel it's not appropriate for your professor's reputation to be part of that conversation - just decide whether the paper is good and publishable or not.
Your second question is unrelated but I'll address it here anyway. Do not add another person as author (your advisor or anyone  else) just so they can present it at the conference. In order to be an author, a person must have made a significant intellectual contribution to the work, and it's unethical to "gift" authorship for any other reason.
In many cases, conferences allow a paper to be presented by someone other than an author. So if you know someone who is attending the conference and willing to present your paper, they may be able to do it without you unethically making them an author. But if the conference really requires one of the authors to attend and neither of you can, then I suppose all you can do is withdraw your paper and resubmit to a conference which you can attend.

It's unclear whether the student was working with this professor when her friend and she submitted the paper.

I'm under his supervisor when I conduct the results with my friend

"it's customary for students to keep their advisors informed about other things they are working on" - and this comes with a great deal of variation. I am used to settings where this information sometimes does happen by telling one's advisor about having successfully submitted a paper the advisor didn't yet know about (and advisors generally being very happy about that kind of own initiative, as well as about touching upon different research topics beside one's current core topic, and about breaking out of the apparent constraints one's grant might officially impose).

@O.R.Mapper. If you look at previous OP's question, 5 months ago she was not even on a PHD program and she was talking about how nice her advisor was. So, I am not 100% sure if we know the whole story about the issue. It is different working on an independent project in your first few months of your PHD and different to have an individual collaboration along with your main body of work of your PHD.

@Alexandros: I don't think I understand the difference between working on an independent project and working on an independent project that involves other people (and with that said, the "main body of work of one's PhD" dynamically emerges based on whatever one does, not the other way round), but I agree we may be lacking some insider knowledge for this particular case.

I may be wrong but it seems that OP was working on the paper in his own time, on his own budget, not using the resources of the professor. Professors/supervisors do not own people like their pet turtle.

I'm sorry, but this is Korea. The professor/student relationship is very different than the one in the west, particularly if the professor is from an older generation or is a reputed researcher.

@Greg You are right as long as this extra work doesn't interfere with the research done in the lab. A student should have a night job, even if that is not time spent at work, it would still interfere a lot with the lab work.

Decode your professor first

If this is a scientific disagreement, then you should try to have a scientific discussion with him and perhaps the other author.
If this is your supervisor's indirect/cryptic way of saying that he cannot pay for this, look for other means of funding. Perhaps your university has a general travel fund. At worst, you may have to sit this conference out. Anecdotally, I have seen many formerly well-funded professors who project their anger at their shrinking budgets onto students in situations like this.
If this is an interpersonal conflict, then you have to decide whether the tension results from miscommunication or deeper differences. As @O.R. Mapper says, a PhD student is learning how to conduct independent research. Shockingly, that involves the student taking initiative.

Tread lightly
We all have to deal with irate superiors from time to time. If you two cannot have a civil conversation about this, work around him until things cool off. (See the general travel fund above.) Is there an ombudsperson? Can someone from your committee who is at your supervisors level mediate?
Mind the politics
Invoking Sayre's law, politics in academia can be stupidly vicious, especially if the issue involves people at different levels in the hierarchy. It is wise to recognize if your supervisor is playing power politics and wiser to recognize if supervisors you might go to tend to do the same thing. You wouldn't want to win the battle but lose the war.

He is your advisor but he doesn't own your life. –  Nate Eldredge
Professors/supervisors do not own people like their pet turtle. –  Greg
Your adviser is a jerk, regardless of culture. This is 2015, not 1895. –  gnometorule

I don't think there is such a thing as "regardless of culture". The world is very diverse and sadly, the English-speaking Internet tends to forget that.

As you may have noticed, the hierarchy is very strong in Korean society. Your professor may not "own" you, but he is both older than you and hierarchically above you. As such, you owe him respect. In theory, if he gives you an order, you have to comply, whether you like it or not. If he asks you to come work on a weekend or late at night, you have to. In practice, rules are more relaxed for foreigners, who are not expected to know all these cultural details, but I suggest you be aware of them to avoid any mistake!
What you really have to remember is that you and your professor are not equal. In all situations, your professor dictates what is right and what is not, what you should do and what you should not.
That being said, there are (mainly) two kind of professors:

Your professor is from an older generation and / or he is a reputed researcher in his field. This kind of individual tends to be very traditional and very finicky on "proper respect". If this is the kind of professor you have, I strongly advise: do not displease him. Just obey. Lie if you have to, but do not go against him in any way, the consequences may get way out of proportion. I am serious!

Your professor is more understanding and used to dealing with foreigners. First, start with an apology and try to explain the situation with him: you didn't know you were not allowed to do what you did, and that you will refrain from doing it without his approval in the future (again, lie if you want to, just try to not offend him). He will probably listen to you (but it's unlikely that he will change his mind anyway) and move on. Perhaps try negotiating a collaboration with him and the other author's supervisor.

So, in short:

How can I mend things with my professor and continue to collaborate with my coauthor?

Make an apology, do (or say you will do) what your professor wants, and continue collaborating discretely. Do not get caught again and do never mention any external research again. If asked about it, feel free to lie if needed. It is OK to say something and do the opposite, the only important thing is to not show disrespect.
This may sound stupid or senseless to foreigners, but this is how things work, whether you like it or not. Hopefully, it will change over time, and in fact, it is already changing, albeit slowly.
Hope that helps.

Lying is stupid, regardless of culture. "Do not get caught again and do never mention any external research again". You do understand that a simple google search will retrieve all published works of the student, right? So, how can it stay hidden? Also, if you start lying to your collaborators (advisor), what will stop you from lying to strangers (peer-review) to fabricate results?

Your first sentence makes me question whether you have read my post at all. Anyway, lying in Korea is common: face and respect are more important than honesty, it is a fact. It is not about fabricating results, it is about preserving a relation of respect with the supervisor. Completely different. The OP can stay hidden by using a nickname, even though I frankly doubt the supervisor will take the time of searching for his name in future publications anyway.

Lying is common in Korea [citation needed]. Do you have any studies on that? And the fact that you may lie in your public interactions, does not mean everybody does it. Also using a nickname for publications? That is another silly idea. The OP will spend all this time for her "hidden" research and then she will get zero attribution for it? And how does that help her in her academic career?

@Alexandros You seem to be surprisingly sure about a culture, that, based on names, is not yours but Park's. And, yes, there are indeed Asian cultures were lying is widely considered more appropriate than truthfully telling that you are not going to do what your superior suggested.

@xLeitix You are not Korean either (as far as I can tell). Anyway this is not the Korea.SE and advising the OP to lie, when her hiding the truth from the supervisor until too late,  was already harmful to her, may do further damage. Also, do you like your students to lie to you? Are you happy when you find out? Will it be simply OK, if your student was Korean or Asian? After all, "there are indeed Asian cultures were lying is widely considered more appropriate", so it will not really be their fault.

@Alexandros Will [lying] be simply OK, if your student was Korean or Asian? The way you say this suggests that you think there is some kind of inconsistency to advise that a Western student should fit in with Korean culture when they are in Korea and that a Korean student should fit in with Western culture when they are in a Western country. Please explain the inconsistency, for I fear I am missing it.

@starsplusplus "A Western student should fit in with Korean culture". No, he should not if that means lying to your collaborators or violating his ethical code. E.g., If some weird society expects that women should be obedient to men, that does not mean that a female PHD student there should simply tolerate her bulling by her male coleagues to fit in.

@Alexandros I think you may be startled by my use of the word "lying". Maybe this is not the right word. It is not about fabricating results or cheating on others or violating ethical codes. It has little to no moral significance, it is merely about "saving face", if you will, i.e, avoiding embarrassment of either parties.

@Alexandros You completely missed my point. I didn't make any assertions in either direction. I was pointing out the flaw in your argument. You appeared to be trying to say that because it would be wrong for the Korean student to lie to her supervisor in America, it would be wrong for the American student to lie to her supervisor in Korea. Reread my previous comment for the details. I am criticising your logic, not your viewpoint; defending your viewpoint doesn't prove that your logic is sound.

I don't think there is such a thing as "regardless of culture".  But there is such a thing as the ethical standards of the global academic community.  It is my opinion that for a professor to coerce a student to remove their name from a paper they have already written, for reasons unrelated to the content of the paper, violates those standards as I understand them.  The professor's actions in this case may be culturally acceptable in his culture, but I stand by my assertion that, according to general academic ethics, they are inappropriate.

Well, you are dealing with politics, cultural habits, and Asian values all at the same time.   He is thinking you should be working for him ALL the time.   And having the Asian/Confucian values as their background:   respect for seniors and authority is more important than being right or wrong.   Or whatever...better not to have too much assumptions about others' thinking.
So solution should be quick and easy:   if he want your name removed, either continue with another pseudo-name + email, or retain your name + not using the university email, just your personal email will do.   Since this is done without using any of the University's resources, you have the right to retain your name as well, and remove all obvious link back to the University.   This is not being dishonest, but your right to do things outside your "working hours".
Ok, if you really want to be honest, just follow whatever he said, and showed him nothing has been done externally.   But in the background, just maintained your relationship with your collaborators.   Many times in life, a paper is often read and forgotten - good ones are few and rare.   But your relationship with other people matters most - in future, you may even coauthor many more papers with your existing supervisor + the "illegitimate" partner after you have completed your PhD.
Bottomlines is always:   BRIGHT IDEAS that matters most.   A name (in the paper) is just for eternity sake (or may be not):  it is not as important as the content of the paper.   These contents/bright ideas, are always a result of a cordial collaboration / interaction among people - and you should aim for that, actively working towards perfection.

So solution should be quick and easy: if he want your name removed, either continue with another pseudo-name.... — This is neither quick nor easy. Many academic cultures consider publishing under a psuedonym to be unethical. In particular, once a paper has been accepted, changing the name of one of the authors to a pseudonym may be impossible.

BRIGHT IDEAS that matters most. — Sadly, [citation needed]

I will throw out another opinion here: if your supervisor was paying you to work on his research agenda, it is unethical and unprofessional to instead work on something different without telling him. Likely the money came out of a hard-won research grant that specifically stipulated the type of project you were to work on, and your advisor will be on the hook with the funding agency when the project doesn't deliver.
Even if the supervisor gave up nothing but his time training and mentoring you, there was still an expectation that you would work in good faith on the project the two of you discussed.
That said, what's done is done. Taking your name off of the paper is not an appropriate fix, nor is adding your supervisor's name gratuitously. Have a candid talk with your supervisor, ask him for his specific concerns and how he suggests you make things right, and in the future strive to keep communication more open so that a similar situation does not arise.

I will throw out a strongly dissenting opinion. If you are being paid to do X, then doing Y is neither unethical nor unprofessional. Not doing X is unethical and unprofessional. My paying you to study frogs does not forbid you to study both frogs and trees.

Yes, but I maintain that if I am paying you to study frogs, your secretly publishing a paper on trees represents a very large amount of research whose completion was unlikely to have been compatible with you having spent full time on my research on frogs.

Certainly it will have raised questions, in my mind and others, about whether you were working on the frogs in good faith. Acting in a way that raises these questions is unprofessional, whether you actually committed theft of time or not, and is easily avoided by decent communication.

unlikely to have been compatible — So what?  If you are making good progress on your frog research, why should I care what else you're doing?  On the other hand, if you aren't making good progress on your frog research, why should I care about what else you're doing?  On the gripping hand, if I can't tell whether you're making good progress on your frog research, then we have a very different and much more serious problem.

If I am paying you I expect you to work a certain number of hours (full time) on your frog research. Those don't have to be the 9-5 hours of a typical job, but if you are spending less than full time on frogs because you are caught up on your secret side project, I will be upset and I imagine most professors would be as well.

And if you have some funded students and you don't mind them working on something unrelated to your research agenda, get them in touch with me, I can find them something to do ;)

My students are free to get in touch with you on their own!

Maybe JeffE and all the other people saying similar things are doing a different kind of research than I know about, but I recall that doing academic research involved a lot of time mulling over things at different times.  In-between I'd be doing various things, but thinking over things in the "back of my mind" was very important.  I think it's understandable, even reasonable to be annoyed if a student is obviously working on other projects.  Doing a PhD is not like a 9-5 job where you clock in and clock out.


text:
Can I accept two offers from universities and decide later on
I've received offers from two UK universities (Masters degree), first conditional and second unconditional. There's always a possibility that I won't meet conditions so I'd like to keep the second university as a back-up. Is it possible to do it like this, that I accept both offers and after I meet conditions, I will let the second university know, that I decided not to start studying?

Offers of what? Undergraduate admission? Graduate fellowships? Jobs?

I'm sorry I didn't specify, postgraduate, MSc.

No.
In principle, you could do that, but it's not advisable, for the simple reason that if either school finds out you've accepted another offer, then both schools could end up rescinding their offers, and would be within their rights to do so. (Programs want to know how many spots they have filled, so that they can accept more people if needed to meet their enrollment targets.)
Basically, you need to commit to one school only. If the offer is conditional, then you should weigh the probability of meeting those conditions before accepting the offer.

You can also ask the second school how they would feel about this.  If they are sufficiently interested in you that they are willing to risk your not attending if the conditional acceptance works out at the other university, then you're all set.  If they do not approve of the idea, then you shouldn't do it.

I guess that's probably for the best.

I found this forum http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1833694 that discusses exactly the same question. They say it's quite common that postgraduates accept two or more offers and later on let a university know that they received better offer. What do you think about that? Are there any legal obligations?

Even if it were common, I'd say it isn't ethical.

Yes, for UK undergraduate admissions, you can accept two offers at once - but no more!
One will be your first choice; if you don't meet the conditions, then you have a shot at the second one. So in your case, you would put the conditional offer first, and the unconditional one as your "insurance". (The other way round doesn't make sense, as you can't possibly miss the conditions on the unconditional offer!) You could also just accept one offer.
Make your choices carefully, because the subsequent process is automatic - if you meet the conditions then that's where you're going, unless you manage to convince the university to release you. That is technically possible but should under no circumstances be relied on as a strategy.
For more details, see Replying to your offers on the UCAS website.
I have assumed you are applying to become an undergraduate, as the language of conditional and unconditional offers is particularly associated with this system, and is very standard. If you are applying for a postgraduate position, or for a job, then please disregard this answer.

I've applied for postgraduate so unfortunately, it's not the case.

Oh, OK - then the answer by aeismail is correct, and the comment below by Anonymous Mathematician is also true.

What do you think about this:  thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1833694 They say it's common to accept two or more offers.

@wec - It can be done, in that universities can't literally force you to show up, so if you tell them you've changed your mind then they have to accept that. (Assuming at that point you haven't already signed paperwork, paid fees, etc.) But it is not good to put yourself in a situation where you know you will have to break your word to one of the institutions. Better to follow Anonymous Mathematician's advice and ask directly.

Fundamentally, people in charge of admissions do not like it when applicants try to game the system (and they may well remember it if you later try to apply for a PhD at the same place, for example). They are much happier about answering questions and being kept informed.

I completely agree with you, thank you for valuable info.

You can accept as many offers as you wish, but all your chosen universities can find out about any places you’ve accepted through UKPASS. To be fair to other applicants, when you’ve definitely decided which place to take up, inform the university. They will then change the status of your application to enrolled to tell the other unis  you won’t not be taking up any other places.
See the UCAS website for further details and official information.