text:
Can I contact an author I reviewed for a typo in his manuscript without saying I'm his reviewer?
I reviewed a manuscript which used my work. I recommended acceptance with minor revisions. Only after submitting my review, my wife discovered that my name is misspelled once in the manuscript. I'm a young scholar who would very much like to have one more citation. I sent an email to the editorial office about this but they never answered. Question: is it ok if I contact the author via email to tell him that I saw his manuscript -not confirming or denying that I was a reviewer- and ask him to please correct that mistake in proofs? In my experience people not always catch those by themselves, and because I recommended minor revision I don't think I'll see the manuscript again.

"to tell him that I saw his manuscript" Several answers/comments seem to assume that this would somehow reveal that you were the reviewer or otherwise affiliated with the review process. But this is far from clear to me. For instance, in several fields it is quite common to make preprints available on some preprint server. If this is the case for the article you are referring to, this might have an impact on the answers. Could you clarify whether a preprint of the article is publically available?

Is your name misspelled in the text or references section?  If the former, it shouldn't affect citation counts.  Even in the latter case, it probably won't make a difference for bibliographic metrics, unless it's a severe misspelling and the paper is not otherwise easily identifiable by the bib info.

Since the correction of the manuscript at that stage is far more in the control of the editorial office/journal, I would push in that direction. Once the proof is sent out, the authors have few opportunities to correct typos.

That is probably a bad idea.
But you can ask the editor to make the request instead. They won't want typos in the final result.
In general, communication with authors should be through the editor. Not the "editorial office" but the editor who assigned you the paper. An individual.
You are actually owed a response for this since you spent effort on behalf of the journal.

I agree with the other answers that an email, or a followup email to the handling editor is appropriate. Alternatively, if a preprint exists this would offer "plausible deniability" when contacting the author themselves (in case the editor remains incommunicado).
Be advised that a typo in a "citation" in the manuscript text along the lines of "user354948 et al. found that this discombobulation method did not reliably discombobulate" would not generally matter in terms of having your citation counted. Only the reference in the appendix is counted, e.g. by Google Scholar.
As an added point that has not yet been addressed: You mention your wife noticed the typo in the draft for peer review. Since you yourself state you are an early career scientist, I would just note for the future that peer review is generally supposed to happen strictly confidentially. Showing manuscripts you are peer reviewing to other people without the editor's consent is usually inappropriate.

I didn't show it to her, she looked over my shoulder.

Then disregard the last paragraph :) I just stumbled over it while reading the question, is all.

If you saw their manuscript, you either are affiliated with the journal and in a better place to make the correction than they are, you're a reviewer, or a reviewer leaked the paper to you (and therefore they breached confidentiality).
Option one doesn't make much sense and doesn't apply. Option three is a pretty serious accusation that puts your colleagues under suspicion. The author may even feel the need to share this with the editor so they can identify the person responsible. Basically, either the authors should assume you're a reviewer or they should be ticked off.
Go through the journal instead. It seems you've already done this, and though it would be nice for them to have replied I'd note that they don't actually have to reply to you to make the correction. It's probably in their best interests to keep people happy who are willing to review for them. It's probably okay to send a follow-up email if some time has passed.
Note also that a misspelling likely doesn't remove attribution of credit to you; citation information is redundant by design, and your work should be findable with an incorrect or absent name.

I wouldn't do anything. It's just one citation. Remember, the number of citations looks impressive in your CV only when they are many. You shouldn't care much about one citation.
Besides, the typo may be found and corrected in the publication process. I remember receiving an article proof with a reference corrected by the publisher. I guess that publishers routinely check references for correctness and have automated systems for that.
Also, since the typo is only in your name, the reader will be able to find the referenced paper anyway by the bibliographical data provided in the reference (journal name, volume, page number, and publication year).
You say in a comment below, "I emailed the managing editor," so my understanding is that you are considering a further action. I don't think that a further action will really harm, but it may be seen as weird or embarrassing, especially if you contact the author.

My advice is: focus on doing great research. Think how you can advance science by doing something really important and useful. Think how you can write a paper that will be cited hundreds of times. Think big. You shouldn't waste your time and energy worrying about petty things like a single citation. Remember, your success will be determined by your mentality.

It looks like I have to clarify the point of my answer. If you want to become a great scientist, you have to learn one important skill - the skill to ignore unimportant things. Otherwise they will eat up your time and energy. Sure, you can now fix the issue with the citation, but don't become obsessed by fixing things like this.

Yes, I care about every citation. It's about spreading the word. Why would I travel to congresses and give talks if not?

@user354948 You sound like a typical early career researcher—and I was like you :) In 10 years you will have thousands of citations and will laugh about the incident we are talking about :)

Sorry, but this is bad advice. Hoping for the best when a simple email to the editor can solve the issue is suboptimal. Errors in papers, even small ones, are a problem even when unrelated to citations.

@Buffy The OP said, "I sent an email to the editorial office about this but they never answered." That is, the OP has already done what you suggest. My understanding is that the OP is asking as to what to do next. And my advice is, do nothing. It's not worth for the OP to pursue the issue with the reference any further.

@Buffy I emailed the managing editor, is that the correct editor??

And I can see how communication with the "editorial office" can result in no communication. If you have the name of an individual and the email, use that. It is actually their job to keep errors out of papers. It is their specific responsibility. Helping them do their job isn't "weird". Guessing it will work out is suboptimal. Since the OP here spent effort on behalf of the journal, they are owed a response.

@DanielHatton Me too. Sandra sounds highly successful.

@user354948 don't worry - the number of citations varies widely between fields, and even between topics within a field, without saying anything about quality or success. The correct person to contact would be the editor handling the submission and reviews. You can usually find their name in the email where they invited you to review - their "label" depends on the journal...

I agree it’d be nice to correct, but it’s not appropriate to reveal you’ve seen it if reviewing was blind. I do think it’d be ok to ask the editor a second time, however… not weird.

@Sandra OP sent an email to the editorial office, not to the editor they were assigned to. Talking to an individual can make a huge difference.

@Carl-FredrikNybergBrodda OP said in a comment, "I emailed the managing editor"  So the OP did email an individual

@Sandra Sure, but this individual seems to be a different individual from the editor who assigned the paper (otherwise OP would not ask if it is the right person). This makes a big difference (a random managing editor will likely do nothing).

@Carl-FredrikNybergBrodda I am not sure that the managing editor the OP contacted is not the editor assigned to the paper. At any rate, my honest opinion is that one single citation isn't worth pursuing the issue


text:
Is ever answering "No Basis for Judgement" on a reference request a red-flag
I am filling out a reference form for a student I supervised on a medium sized project who is applying for graduate studies.
The student is great, of all that I have supervised in this way they are significantly the best on a number of metrics.
They are also the only student who has ever applied for graduate studies.
It has a bunch of questions where i am ask to rate them on there e.g. analytical ability.
One of the questions on the form is:
"Rank relative to others you have recommended for PhD studies"
with options like To 1%, top 10% etc.
The last option is "No Basis for Judgement".
Since they are the only person I have recommended for a PhD program, that seems like the correct answer.
Since I don't have anyone else to compare them to who I have recommended.
But I am wondering if I am I am interpretting it too literally.
and I should actually be answering this question with my total assessment of them (though there is another field for that); or with comparison to people who could have but didn't ask me for a reference; or to the set of people i expect would exist.
Especially I worry that saying "No Basis For Judgement" might be taken as a red-flag by the program administrator.

"the set of people i expect would exist"  That's the answer.

It is a full top 1%, if you want. This is overthinking at its summit

I think that this is common enough that it won't raise any flags. But if you have a chance to explain why then it would be better.
Of course, logically, for this particular question, because of the specific wording, Top 1% is actually accurate. But it is a bit misleading.
I think either is honest and that an explanation is warranted if possible.

Usually you can supply context either as comments on the form or as a separate letter.  This is where you can explain you “no basis for judgement”.  It is not uncommon (although maybe so for this specific question): you may simply not have the historical pool of students to make an informed comparison.
You can use comments or a letter to simply restate what you just included in your post, and this should be enough to justify an honest opinion AND provide useful additional information for a committee.

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text:
How should one cite the entirety of a journal?
I want to cite a journal itself, not an article in it, the publication. I think the same would hold for a magazine, not an issue of that magazine. The specific citation information will be enough.
Bonus points for showing how to set this citation information with biber and biblatex, so it displays properly formatted.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because I think it belongs on https://tex.stackexchange.com

Can you give some context about what you want to do?  Normally, the purpose of a citation is to credit the authors of a particular piece of research, or to provide support for a particular assertion.  In either case, you would be pointing to a specific article.  So it's hard for me to imagine a case where it would actually be correct to cite a journal.  But if you would explain why you want to do this, you might get better answers.  Maybe you'll find that you want to handle it some other way.

Why do you want to do this? I usually want people to be a specific with their citations as possible (i.e. specifying a page, section, or numbered statement). Citing an entire journal seems like it conveys too little information to me.

@user2768: Only the side questions fits on [tex.se] and even for this, I would argue that it is on-topic here.

@Wrzlprmft the side question seems like the question, which seems to be a bibtex question. For proceedings, the answer is trivial: you use a bibtex proceedings entry, rather than a inproceedings entry. I don't know whether a similar entry complements article. Perhaps looking into whether article may contain crossref is a good starting point, because crossref allows inproceedings to contain a cross reference to proceedings.

@user2768: Citation style about conventions how to write something. BibTeX is just a technical means to ease adhering to such a convention. The first question is independent of what software you use.

@Wrzlprmft I agree the first question is independent, but it is unclear what the OP is asking. As I mention in my answer (below): The question's title and description are somewhat distinct, in particular, the title broadly asks How should one cite the entirety of a journal?, whereas the description asks how to cite the entirety of a journal using bibtex.

@Wrzlprmft & user2768
Thanks so much for the help. I think wrzlprmft is correctly intuiting what I'm trying to ask. I want to know the general information one would like to capture in a bibliography entry for a journal or magazine itself. cactus_pardner is I think collecting the sorts of things I'd want to use it for. Bonus points for showing me exactly /how/ to do it, but for conveying the exact information I want is enough, I could add my own biblatex/biber entry, and create my own style.

@JasonHemann Perhaps edit your question to match what you wanted. It will then be more useful for others in the future.

There are certainly interesting kinds of research where you would do this, such as bibliometrics, meta-analyses, history of science, intellectual history, or a subject bibliography.
The APA style blog opines that you would not need to make the actual citation for a meta-analysis: rather, you would simply mention the names of the journals (and the time periods you survey) in the text.
However, let's say you're looking at periodicals that are hard to locate today. Then a citation should help the readers find them. If they all came from the same database or archive, then perhaps it would make sense to cite that database or archive itself in the bibliography, with a mention or footnote about which journals were in which database or archive. Here's a page showing how to cite a collection of institutional records.
Or, if you're doing more of an intellectual history, you may be able to mark the beginning of each journal by citing the opening editor's note.
Then again, JSTOR allows people to download some journal information for research purposes. JSTOR's metadata fields for journals are journal-id (along with an identifier of who assigned this unique id), ISSN (possibly more than one if it changed over time), journal title (as of the time period you are discussing), and the publisher (as of the time period you are discussing).
Again, if you're doing a meta-analysis, the journals are part of the methodology but you probably don't need to fully cite them if they are current, modern journals.  If you're doing more of a history or a source bibliography, then you might just have a long "bibliographic note" appendix describing the journals, including where to access each and a history of changes to the names and publishers.
If all else fails, this is quite an ad-hoc citation, but you might try to find (or build) a reference type that uses the following:
Title: journal title
Publisher: publisher (might use organization field for this if there is no publisher field)
Organization: organization creating the journal (if available)
Address: city of publisher
Identifier number: ISSN (if available)
Year: Span of years
Archive: (database or archive info)
Location in archive: URL, shelf number, etc.
Note: How often is/was the periodical published; anything about disruptions to the run.

Update: If the otherwise best format requires an author/editor, you could use the name of the organization that created the journal, which is often promoted to "author" in the absence of a single author or editor. If that is not applicable, you might be able to use the name of chief journal editor(s).  You would want to make a note somewhere that you chose to record the information (editor, publisher, journal title, association, etc.) as of X date (journal founding, first issue in your time period, last issue in your time period, as of a given date across all the journals you're looking at).
Mendeley's Ultimate Citation Cheat Sheet might help you figure out desired formatting for your substituted-in components in the style you're using. It covers MLA8, APA, and Harvard, and if you're using a different style that might help you abstract the principles to that other style, if there is not sufficient documentation on that style's principles.

BibTeX doesn't appear to define an entry that captures a journal (unlike a proceedings, which is captured by proceedings), it does provide:
book
    A book with an explicit publisher.
    Required fields: author/editor, title, publisher, year
    Optional fields: volume/number, series, address, edition, month, note,
                     key, url

booklet
    A work that is printed and bound, but without a named publisher or
    sponsoring institution.
    Required fields: title
    Optional fields: author, howpublished, address, month, year, note, key

I'd suggest using book and listing the title as the journal.

The question's title and description are somewhat distinct, in particular, the title broadly asks How should one cite the entirety of a journal?, whereas the description asks how to cite the entirety of a journal using bibtex. I provide an answer to the latter.

Do you mean title as the journal name? (The publisher is presumably the publisher...) Myself, I'd consider using the misc entry type.

@Anyon, you're right about the journal name, I edited.

@user2768, I think I've modified it to better reflect what I was hoping to get across. But please suggest further edits if this is still vague or ambiguous, or if my edits undermined your changes. Thanks!

Honestly, in most cases I would honestly probably use the book notation. I would see how I could shoehorn in a range of years, rather than one year, and possibly a range of volume numbers.  (For my dissertation, a wonderful friend who works for a university press helped me kludge together the bibtex to include and format a few citations with necessary fields that the required style did not allow for.)

@cactus_pardner You'd probably be using a single year, since that's the year of publication, rather than the years covered by the journal.

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text:
Students from Country A addressing me only by last name in emails
Question has been rewritten to fit purpose of Academia board
*Country name has been replaced with "Country A", which I should have done from the beginning.
*For anonymity, I will use "John Smith" to refer to myself.
For the past few years, I have noticed that students from Country "A" tend to address me with only my last name or full name without using any titles or honorifics when sending me emails, although they call me "sensei" in person. (It’s a Japanese university.)
The practice of starting an email to someone with "Dear Smith" or "Dear John Smith" with no honorifics (Mr./Ms. etc.) would be considered disrespectful in their language, and Japanese as well, so I am not sure where they picked up this habit, but they need to know that it is also not acceptable email etiquette in English either. These are law school students, and it would not reflect well if they were to send emails addressed in such a fashion to, say, a contact person at a major corporation who is working with us to organize a career seminar/symposium, or a client should they become lawyers in the future.
Now, it is not my job to teach students about proper English email-writing etiquette. However, the Japanese Ministry of Education has taken an interest in our program, and we already have a few alumni working in government positions related to international education and diplomatic affairs, so I'd really like to avoid getting a phone call from MEXT, or god forbid Country A's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and getting chewed out for hours for not training students in proper email etiquette ahead of time since they won't care who's in charge of what.
The problem here is that the professor in charge of the entire program simply doesn't care. He actively avoids doing anything if he can avoid it and relegates everything to me, which means he is often not available for phone calls and doesn't respond to emails. So I can't depend on him for any solutions, meaning I must make a decision as to how to handle this situation. I have thought of a few options:

Mass email to only students from Country A
Mass email to all students
Consult with the Academic Writing Center and arrange for a 1~2 hour seminar on proper business communication etiquette open to all students (I can't have it just for my students since the funding would have to come from the general education department) and tell all my students to attend, which would be a huge hassle and requires bickering and negotiating with several departments.

What do you think is the best solution?

This is an issue of language and culture, not of academia.

@Nij So you agree that this would be better served posted in the Korean language board?

I don't know where else it would be allowed to go, you need to ask them whether they'd want it.

@Hosea: I think the concern here is for the students. As I read it, OP is concerned on educating the students how to properly address someone in e-mails.

What's wrong with Dear John Smith?

I’m voting to close this question as off-topic because the central question (has this become acceptable in Korea?) does not appear to be related to academia at all. Your question may be on-topic on [korean.se] as this problem may be rooted in the Korean language or [ell.se] as this problem may be rooted in the way Koreans learn English. Before you ask on either site, please be sure to make clear what you already know and what you wish to know from the experts on that site.

@Wrzlprmft I've reworded the question to be on-topic.

Mass email to all students.  Pick a couple of other common mistakes.  Highlight what the common mistake is and what the correct expression is.  You may point out that speakers of X language commonly get tripped up on such-and-so expression -- but make sure you're not just picking on one country or language.

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text:
PhD candidate vs PhD student
I see researchers working on their PhD calling themselves PhD Candidates, other call themselves PhD students. What's the difference between a PhD Candidate and a PhD Student?
According to two posters on the WordReferences forums:

This terms vary from university to university, usually a PhD student is granted the candidate status after completion of a “comprehensive examination”, which occurs sometime after the first year.

and

Here in the U.S., a “Ph.D. Candidate” is a student who has completed all of the academic requirements for their degree, except their dissertation.

So this works in the USA and Canada I presume, because they have structured PhD programs where you attend courses as part of your PhD. Unlike most of the universities in Europe where a PhD student starts off directly with his/her PhD thesis. (Europe does have structured programs as well, but they are not as widely spread yet).

Every department is different.

In some countries (e.g. The Netherlands where I obtained my PhD degree) you are not considered a student but a paid employee (staff) with the university. To discern between these, people sometimes translate their status to English using term "PhD candidate". Btw, this has nothing to do with the length of the program or your progress.

It is also good to note that the salary a Dutch PhD receives is competitive with entry level jobs at say a consultancy or programming company, assuming of course there is funding to begin with.

@PaulHiemstra broadly speaking :) I would say there is at least a 500 euro gap. Especially after four years, the PhD salary is considerably below what a programmer or consultant with 4 years experience could expect. It's the same general range, but I wouldn't call it competitive.

@Peter The pay and working conditions are certainly near the top of the scale when you compare it to what PhD students in other countries get.

@Peter, here in Brazil this gap varies a lot. A trainee in a small company usually makes less than a PhD student\candidate. So small companies rarely get the brightest people. OTOH, big companies easily pay entry salaries equivalent to the double of what a PhD candidate makes (triple if the applicant is a good interviewer). And excluding the IT field, the extra income from 4 years of experience is negligible. So it all depends of vacancies on the big companies of your city.

I have typically seen a PhD candidate in the Netherlands be someone who has completed their 4 year PhD contract but has yet to defend their thesis or someone who has submitted their thesis for defense but the defense has not yet happened. In other words, it is consistent with the English language usage.

There is also a political component to it, because there are some politicians who want to change the status of PhD candidates from being an employee to being a receiver of a grant. Therefore, when I was still doing my PhD, I was emphasizing a lot that I was not a student, and I tell that to the current PhD candidates as well.

What's the difference between a PhD Candidate and a PhD Student?

To someone outside your department, there is very little difference since people (i.e., prospective employers) just don't care about the terms. they want to know what you have accomplished so far.
To someone in a finite duration PhD (e.g., a "typical" 3-year UK PhD program), there is very little difference. It is simpler to just list your year.
To someone in a indeterminate length PhD (e.g., a "typical" US PhD program), it provides a nice milestone.
As other have said, the requirements to achieve candidacy vary widely between countries, universities, and even departments. That said, I think it is nearly universal (and that is going out on a huge limb in academia) that candidacy implies that the next "evaluation" will be on your thesis and apart from time limits or extraordinary circumstances that as long as you are willing to pay your tuition and fees the department will let you be a PhD Candidate.

At my institution (in the U.S.A.), you are  considered a PhD student until you pass your qualifying exams. After passing, you are considered a PhD candidate.
The qualifying exam is usually taken around 2 years in the program, or after you have completed any required or recommended coursework. It consists of a written exam, which can be one or more questions from each of your committee members. The written exam at my institution is left up to the committee members discretion (the major adviser in reality), it can be open or closed book, very detailed, or more theoretical, 24 hour time period or maybe 1 month, even proctored by the committee member. The oral examination can also be anything. Committee members can ask very detailed questions or more theoretical questions. Preparing for the oral exam can be difficult, especially if you have members from other departments and backgrounds. For example, I have a Soil Scientist, Biologist, Fire Ecologist, Landscape Modeler, and Remote Sensing Specialist on my committee. They all asked very different question specific to their fields.
Three of my written exams consisted of about 8 questions and I was given 8 hours to complete. It was open book and not proctored. I took the exam from home. One exam was 12 questions and I was given a month (yes I sweated for a month!). They all asked very broad questions for the written exam to figure out which areas I had a solid understanding in, and which areas I needed improvement. The oral exam was basically 4 PhD's questioning (read interrogating!) me. They started with a few easy questions, but then asked more difficult questions from the areas I was not as knowledgeable in.

I think Jaap's reply is pretty much spot on, i.e. paid staff (as in the Netherlands, Germany...) vs. student status (as in the UK, for example).
Personally, I prefer "PhD candidate" because people here are massively prejudiced against "students" (young, irresponsible, constantly partying...) despite the fact that I'm officially registered as a student rather than staff.
Just to make it clear that people are not obliged to use one thing or the other.

Do you have qualifying exams?

It can be different depend on region, country, university or even department.
In my department in a university in Taiwan, we need to finish all required credit course and submit one international journal as milestone to be qualified as PhD Candidate.

At the university I attended in the UK, one was considered to be on provisional status until passing the viva, which was not only an oral "interview" but also included a thorough review of all research completed at that point, a 20,000 word critical paper, and a detailed thesis plan.  After that point, the successful student was advanced to candidacy, while the unsuccessful student was awarded an M.Phil.and dismissed from the program. This procedure was standardized throughout the university graduate school regardless of department. For candidates, the only obstacle left was the defense of the thesis.

PhD students should complete all the coursework before becoming PhD Candidate. After completing all the coursework, PhD students have to pass the comprehensive written exam (and comprehensive oral exam) to become PhD Candidate. The amount of rigor of comprehensive exam depends on department to department. Some department requires that you pass the comprehensive exam on all the four (or five) seminar areas plus the methods that you have taken. Others require that you declare your major area and pass the comprehensive area on only that major area plus the methods.
Department may also require you to come up with a framework for your dissertation topic before they grant you the candidacy status. Again, the variation exists between department in how they grant the candidacy.
Once your status change from PhD Student to PhD Candidate, you are no longer required to take courseworks. However, you should be enrolled in the pre-dissertation and dissertation hours (normally 24 hrs; 6 hours per semester to maintain full-time status) to continue your dissertation. You work with your dissertation chair and committee after comprehensive exam.
PhD candidate are also called Doctoral candidate, and ABD - All But Dissertation.

PhD students should complete all the coursework before becoming PhD Candidate - this is not generally true (i.e., not in all fields/all departments).

I downvoted this for being specific to a very limited area without specifying that area or even mentioning this fact.

When you see PhD CANDIDATE think he/she is a CANDIDATE for a job in their field.
Versus PhD student they are still a student learning their field of study.
In Texas public University you are a candidate when you pass all of your doctoral exams. Usually at this point you have already completed all of your course work. You are wrapping up your research projects, writing papers to be published, writing dissertation and looking for a job.
-Nick, Chemistry PhD candidate


text:
Can grant money be spent on travel to program committee meetings?
Many research conferences hold an in-person program committee meeting for all of the members of the program committee, where the PC members make the final decisions about which papers to accept or reject.  (At least, that's how it tends to work in computer science; I don't know about other fields.)
Can program committee members use federal grants to pay for their travel costs to attend a program committee meeting, for conferences where they are on the program committee?  Generally speaking, what funding sources do professors tend to use, to pay for travel to these meetings?

Surely this is a question for your funding agency?

I would expect the conference to pay this.

@DanielE.Shub: In CS (in my experience), conferences do not pay for this.

The grant proposal financial section should have addressed travel expenses clearly, and the sponsor should have made the decision before the award. Otherwise, you should assume the answer is "no." My proposals always included travel funds for a reasonable (small) number of PC meetings.

For each grant, or type of grant, there are rules specifying what it can be used for. You should follow these rules and, unless you ask us about a specific funding program or agency, it's impossible to give more specific advice.

And we can't give binding advise. you'd have to ask for a final answer from the founding agency in case of doubt.


text:
Ethics of scraping "public" data sources to obtain email addresses
I am wondering whether the following research practice is ethical.
A software engineering researcher downloads source code repositories from Github, a large source of publicly available open source code.  The researcher searches the git commit logs to find email addresses of software developers who have committed to a project, and uses these email addresses to send them an email asking them to participate in a survey.  If the recipient clicks on the link to the survey, the survey contains an appropriate briefing and obtains informed consent.  The researcher follows all institutional and legal requirements related to human subjects research.  The researcher limits the number of emails sent to only the number of participants they think they will need to test their hypotheses.  However, at least one recipient of this email is annoyed that the researcher obtained their email address in this fashion and sent them unsolicited email.
Is this an ethical research practice?  In particular, what would be the relevant ethical principles or ethical framework for analyzing this question?  I've read a bunch of papers and backgrounders on ethics in human subject research and in engineering research, but they seem focused on other issues.  Are there accepted norms or guidelines relating to this sort of situation?  Has it been considered in other fields, such as the social sciences?
A possible argument that the practice is ethical: The data source is publicly available, and the email addresses were collected from this publicly available data.  Developers chose to make their software repository publicly available, and they should assume that any information contained in it are public.  Developers who don't want to be contacted could have configured their git client specially to use a different email address.  The research will benefit our understanding of the science of software development.  Subjects have an opportunity to decide whether or not to participate in the survey.  Participant confidentiality will be protected, and all responses will be treated anonymously.  The research complies with all legal and compliance requirements.  From a legal perspective, the emails are not "spam", since the unsolicited email was not sent for a commercial purpose.
A possible argument that the practice is unethical: Software developers probably would not expect someone to scrape email addresses from the git commit logs.  Their email address might be contained in a publicly available data set, but some developers might expect/consider the information private, or at least not public and free for unrestricted use.  Some developers might object that it is one thing to use email addresses that are publicly listed on their Github profile page, but it is another thing to extract private email addresses that are provided as part of their git configuration, and that their understanding of social norms is that the email addresses automatically inserted into the commit logs by their git client were not intended for this purpose.  Some software developers might object to having an unwanted email message in their inbox or find the practices "creepy".

Please note: I am not asking about IRBs, legal requirements, or compliance.  I am super-familiar with those considerations.  Assume that the researcher has complied faithfully with all of those requirements that are applicable in their country.  I'm not asking about that aspect.  In my view, researchers have an independent obligation to conduct research in an ethical manner, and to exercise their own judgement in avoiding unethical behavior, even if is legally permitted or approved by an IRB.

In addition to being unethical according to the guidelines in ff524's answer, this also appears to violate GitHub's ToS and, thus, is not legal. See section G.10, which explicitly bans transmitting unsolicited e-mail. Also, according to section F.3, if someone were to sue GitHub over this, you agree to indemnify GitHub for any awarded damages and for attorney's fees.

@reirab I don't think this applies, as the OP is not using GitHub means to upload, post, host, or transmit unsolicited email, SMSs, or "spam" messages. Technicalities matter in questions of law.

We have done this, once, ourselves as it is not an uncommon method in our field. We now rather stay away from it. While the response rate was good (indicating that plenty of people where indeed ok with our unsolicited mail), there are most definitely a non-trivial amount of people that are very annoyed by this spam. Let's be clear - if you do this, you are in for some pissed-off mailing, and that fact alone already tells you quite a bit about the ethicality of the whole endeavour.

Your idea of what spam is appears to be too narrow. Any mass mailing to people who didn't sign up for it in the first place could reasonably be considered to be spam.

@kasperd If this was meant in response to my comment - I agree that it can be considered spam, and it most definitely is "unsolicited email". However, the OP is not using Github to "upload, host, or transmit" this mailing, but rather just extracts a list of recipients. From a legal point of view, this matters. As I said, when it comes to ToS and such things, technicalities are important.

@xLeitix I assumed the meaning was that you would not spam other GitHub users via e-mail, SMS, etc., not just that you wouldn't do it directly through GitHub's servers (if that's even possible.) The language there is admittedly a bit ambiguous, but there's no qualification that it's only banning doing so directly through GitHub. It just says "You must not upload, post, host, or transmit unsolicited e-mail, SMS, or 'spam' messages."

@xLeitix G.6 also says "You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any portion of the Service, use of the Service, or access to the Service without the express written permission by GitHub." Scraping for e-mail addresses certainly seems like exploitation of the service to me, but, again, it's sufficiently ambiguous that I suppose an argument could be made either way.

@xLeitix I was referring to the question, which assumes that only emails send for a commercial purpose can be considered spam.

Software developers probably would not expect someone to scrape email addresses from the git commit logs. It's been a long time since I've associated with any software developers who would not expect that.

@kasperd, please read the question more carefully.  I worded it quite carefully, since I anticipated exactly such a reaction.  As I wrote: "A possible argument that the practice is ethical: [...] From a legal perspective, the emails are not "spam", since [...]"  I am putting the parts you might have overlooked in italics.  Your comment is responding to a straw man: it is not responding to any argument that was described in the question. If you would like to contribute a full answer, I'd love to see it -- but comments are only for clarification or to suggest improvements to the question.

the OP is not using GitHub means to...transmit unsolicited email — Unless the GitHub users explicitly agreed to be contacted, this is precisely what OP is proposing.  Unsolicited email is still unsolicited, even if it isn't for commercial purposes.

Related question on Meta Stack Exchange: Does this email I've received go against any of Stack Exchange's policies?

Not cool, no. Be more above-board, especially if you want to have long-term credibility...

@paulgarrett, this is an ancient question - and it's not a practice that I want to do; it's something I observed someone else do and I wanted to know if it should be considered unethical.

by now, it can also be illegal in a lot of countries (e.g. due to european GDPR law) to send bulk messages like this, without a prior opt-in of the recipient :)

A relevant guideline from the Council of American Survey Research Organizations' Code of Standards and Ethics for Survey Research:

Research Organizations are required to verify that individuals contacted for research by email have
  a reasonable expectation that they will receive email contact for research. Such agreement can be
  assumed when ALL of the following conditions exist:

A substantive pre-existing relationship exists between the individuals contacted and the
  Research Organization, the Client supplying email addresses, or the Internet Sample Providers
  supplying the email addresses (the latter being so identified in the email invitation);
Survey email invitees have a reasonable expectation, based on the pre-existing relationship
  where survey email invitees have specifically opted in for Internet research with the research
  company or Sample Provider, or in the case of Client-supplied lists that they may be contacted
  for research and invitees have not opted out of email communications;
Survey email invitations clearly communicate the name of the sample provider, the relationship
  of the individual to that provider, and clearly offer the choice to be removed from future email
  contact.
The email sample list excludes all individuals who have previously requested removal from
  future email contact in an appropriate and timely manner.
Participants in the email sample were not recruited via unsolicited email invitations.

It would seem here that GitHub users do not have a reasonable expectation that they will be contacted for research.

By agreeing to receive communication related to open source from SourceForge, I have always expected that these communications include information on particular open source tools, tips on how to conduct and publish open source projects, and general information on the open source world (all of which may or may not be interactive). I don't think that expectation is particularly unreasonable, or would be fundamentally different on Github. It might make a difference, however, that the invitation in question was not sent by Github on behalf of the researchers, but by the researchers themselves.

@O.R.Mapper Also, afaik, you can choose what types of e-mail you want SourceForge/GitHub/etc. to send you. At least in the U.S., I'm fairly certain that their are laws requiring them to at least let you opt out. At any rate, the first point in the above says that there's a substantive pre-existing relationship between the individuals and the research organization, not between the individuals and the website the RO scraped their address from. It's also quite likely that this violates the terms of service of GitHub.

@reirab: "he Research Organization, the Client supplying email addresses, or the Internet Sample Providers supplying the email addresses"

@O.R.Mapper True, but the point remains that none of those is the case here, at least insomuch as that 'supplying' seems to imply that the supplying was intentional, rather than having scraped their website in what seems to be a violation of their ToS.

That's an interesting guideline. I wonder how many actual survey studies really follow all of that. Based on my experience in Software Engineering, I would wager less than 50%. Specifically the OP's approach of mining GitHub repos of addresses of potential invitees is not at all uncommon, although I agree that this practice already leans very strongly towards "spam".

It would seem here that GitHub users do not have a reasonable expectation that they will be contacted for research... ... by a member of CASRO.

Once you do this often enough, they should have reasonable expectation that they will be contacted :D

Don't agree with this guideline. In some cases it is a bit too strict.

Being curious about this question, I asked GitHub about such uses. Here was their response:

Thanks for reaching out! We always encourage users who have questions about our Terms to contact GitHub Support directly, so we can learn more about their specific situation.
In the meantime, I'll be happy to point you to GitHub's Terms of Service and address the general issue of sending unsolicited emails.
Section G10 of our terms states:

You must not upload, post, host, or transmit unsolicited email, SMSs, or "spam" messages.

So, it appears that they also interpret section G.10 as banning this practice, though they encourage anyone with a question about what uses of their service are allowed to contact them directly.

April 2022 update:
As polm23 pointed out in a comment, Github's terms have been updated since my answer was originally written. This concern is now addressed in section 7 of Github's Acceptable Use Policy, which includes the following (emphasis mine):

You may not use information from the Service (whether scraped, collected through our API, or obtained otherwise) for spamming purposes, including for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails to users or selling User Personal Information (as defined in the GitHub Privacy Statement), such as to recruiters, headhunters, and job boards.

So, sending unsolicited e-mails to users is still banned, just under a different section of their policies.

This is now in section C5 or section H for API usage.

It's now in a different place in their Acceptable Use Policies. https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/acceptable-use-policies/github-acceptable-use-policies#7-information-usage-restrictions

In my opinion, the specific case you described is ethical with the following qualification:

It depends on what the survey is about and what it is for.
It must be the case that the scraper allows for easy opting-out of any further email from them.
This is a bit into the ethical "gray area" and a slight changes of circumstances of the scraping and its use might put it past the line of acceptability.

When I put my name and email as a contributor in a file on some public repository (ignoring the case of the email getting in thee against my wishes), I am making myself somewhat available, to be reached for issues regarding that source file. Now, it's true that a survey about developers' habits is not something I had in mind; but if it's for an arguably-socially-beneficial cause - I don't believe it's an abuse of my putting my email there in the file.

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


text:
Can I copy an image from another paper (that I am citing)?
I am in the process of writing a paper on the results I have obtained recently. One of the steps where I have innovated is extracted from a paper published some years ago.
My idea for the paper was to compare the original method with my modifications and thus present the different results.
Is it generally accepted practice to simply copy the "results" image from the original paper (that I am extensively citing and discussing in mine)? Or should I somehow recreate it? (this last option is presenting some difficulties, as some implementation details* are not explicitely stated in the original paper and thus I cannot be 100% sure that my reproduction would be actually representative of what the authors originally did)
*: yes, we are speaking (also) about code

Read from here as an example.

You have two different questions: one in your title, regarding coping an image, and another regarding the results.
Copying a figure:
It depends on the license of the paper. If it is appropriately licensed (as with a Creative Commons Attribution license), you generally can, as long as you indicate it. If it is copyrighted, you are in the grey area of possible fair use. In these cases, the safest option is to contact the copyright holders (usually the publisher) and ask for permission.
Another option is to contact the authors and ask them for the raw data itself, so you can plot it yourself (so you keep a constant style across the paper), or ask them to regenerate it for you.
Using results:
The results are not copyrightable, so you can freely use them. If Smith et al, 2007 report an accuracy of 91%, and you get a 97%, you can freely put the numbers next to each other.

maybe is not clear from my question, but the image in question contains the results (stated otherwise, it is a graphical representation of the results)

@Roland hence the grey area.

@Federico the question is, do you want to put the image itself, or replot the numbers?

If possible, put the image itself; if not possible, I will attempt at recreating the method. Should all else fail, I will simply cite the significant values from the image, redirecting the readers to the original paper.

I don't think there's a grey area for fair use -- I think it's not allowed unless you get permission from the copyright holder.

@ScottSeidman it can be argued that that would be a small quote or a criticism, so falling within fair use. But IANAL, and the publisher will likely want a safer standard.

The whole area of Fair Use, though codified in US copyright law, is gray. Unless you (or the publisher) get sued and successfully defend the suit, there's no telling what might happen. Better to avoid the suit and get a license to reproduce from the original publisher and/or current copyright holder. Almost every legitimate publisher has a page for asking for this kind of permission.

The most likely outcome is that if you try to publish the copied image without permission, the page editor would flag it, and the publisher would hold up publication until permissions were arranged.

"Fair Use" is often used inappropriately.  In my university's checklist/flow chart for fair use determination, anything "commercial" ends up right away in the "seek permission" category.  Barring a situation where the publisher of the journal you seek to publish in is a non-commercial entity, you should seek and get permission, or recreate and modify the image, and attribute it properly

@Davidmh If the results are in a form of a figure, can I copy that figure and cite the source in the caption?

@Diaa if you are copying the figure, depends on the license of the paper. What the answer says.

@Davidmh So, how can I know the paper license, for example, some journal at Elsevier?

@Diaa it will be somewhere pretty visible. But unless you see otherwise, you have to assume is copyrighted. You'd have to ask the journal you are going to publish.


text:
How do I cite a quote in the title of a paper
I have written a paper (only internally marked) and I have a title:
"GCR2: A Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma".
This was initially a Winston Churchill quote about Russia (after the colon anyway). However, it seems silly to reference it directly in the title and I have been looking around on the web and cannot find how to reference something that only appears in the title.
Any guidance or links to websites will be very helpful (although I couldn't find any!)

No-one would expect a reference in the title. There are a few alternatives you can consider.
The simple one would be to add "(Winston Churchill)" after the quote in the title.
A better option in my opinion, is to start the introduction with the same quote built into an explanatory sentence and then add the reference there. After all, the quote must have a significant meaning for your work, otherwise it would not form the title. I am not sure what the "GCR2" stands for but in general one should avoid abbreviations in the title.
A third possibility is to rewrite the title to something more explicit. you can have the quote as the main title followed by a subtitle that explains the significance. Different field have different ways of handling such titles so I cannot say what would be suitable for you. The title should draw attention to your work and make readers decide whether the work is worth reading. For me it has no meaning and although I am in a different field, I think that is a sign that the construct is not optimal.

Oh GCR2 is a name of protein, and usually they are abbreviated in the title. Okay, cool I'll change the title and use the reference in the introduction. Thankyou!

Thanks for the clarification, then clearly the title make more sense in your field than for me. My brother worked with NPY and I had similar problems understanding his titles :-) Clearly, my expertise is in a different field.

I'd personally like more the other way round: make an explanatory title, and keep the witty quote as a subtitle.

I don't like at all the suggestion of adding the words (Winston Churchill) to the title. Think about people citing your work: with the wrong reference style, the citation could look like it refers to a paper written by Churchill.

@FedericoPoloni Good points but, as I stated, how to best handle the title will vary between fields so it is difficult to provide any patented general solution.

Leave the title as you suggest,

GCR2: A Riddle, Wrapped in a Mystery, Inside an Enigma

without any citations or quotation marks, or any mention to Churchill or any of it. In the introduction of the paper, however, make sure to mention where appropriate the quote, and to give the appropriate reference(s) to it.
In particular, do not try to add footnotes, or references to the title. Any of it would result in turning a clever choice of title into something very confusing, which may further lead to unintentional mistakes when others try to reference your paper.
(Truth be told, I imagine --hope-- a referee would ask you to change the title if you tried to include footnotes or the like.)
If you are worried that you are not giving due credit to Churchill (hehe) or somesuch, don't. Your introduction will hopefully clarify all of it.
In fact, if your title were something like "To be or not to be. Of proteins and men", where what you quote or reference is essentially universally known, I would suggest not to bother explaining it anywhere, as it could be perceived as you suggesting your readers would not understand it otherwise, and they in turn may react negatively to such a suggestion.

This is not unheard of, though it's fairly uncommon.
My favorite example, which may give you some insights on how others have handled their desire to use a reference for a title (especially if you can access the published version):
One Ring to Rule Them All ... and in the Darkness Bind Them?
The authors quickly explain why the plain meaning of the two references are relevant (they were studying "black rings", and there was "one" that basically governed things; and black holes and bound states were discussed, hence the second part), and there's a footnote in the acknowledgments/funding disavowing any association with the Tolkien estate.

I think that phrase is so trite that it almost doesn't need a citation.
All that said, if you want to avoid the ugly of an endnote in the title, you could use the phrase in the first para or so of the intro (not the abstract) and then put an endnote citation on that first usage.  This also has the benefit of cluing in the unwashed towards the beginning of your paper (and making the smarty pants pat themselves on the back).
For example:  "In 1952, Winston Churchill penned the famous quote "blabla" to describe the secretive Soviet Union.(endnote number1)  In recent years, GCR2 has drawn the interest, and frustration, of researchers trying to understand how it [does whatever it does]. This review will describe the major recent findings and remaining questions for this critical protein [or whatever it is]."
In some other case, I could even imagine just adding the citation number superscript to the title.
I advise not to weight a title down with (Winston Churchill).  Titles should be strong and brief.  Don't weigh a title down with a parenthetical.  That's worse than the ugly superscript number.
While I love the quote, you could also consider to kill it in the title.  There is a point of view in science writing (and all writing) that you should find whatever you did that you think is cute and kill it.  Note, I'm not endorsing this...I like a little "juice".  But it is an option.  However, it does work very well for the title of an oral talk (where a little "tease" is helpful).


text:
What is behind the "Indian Undergrad Research Experience"-spam?
Every now and then I receive an email claiming to be from some undergrad student in Math or Computer Science at an Indian university asking for a summer research experience in "my research group" (there is no such thing).
These emails all have a very formulaic structure. There always is a claim that the student read and very much enjoyed some paper of mine, but never any indication that this actually happened (ie no reference to stuff in the paper). In particular, these emails look like they could have been sent to dozens of people with a little bit of copy&paste. Attached are real-looking CV's.
Are these real students or this is some elaborate scam? If these are from real students, why do they think this could potentially work? Why India?
Edit: While I have only received emails like this from India, in the comments Tom Curch mentions having received some from China, too.

Has happened to me a couple of times, so it would be interesting to see the answer to this question (if there is one).

For what it's worth, I've received dozens of these, and I haven't been in academia for almost five years. These emails are sent out en masse to anyone who has published anything, ever.

The Google summer of code and PhpMyAdmin get a lot of these, but they seem to be genuine people who seem VERY competitive, If one says "I know something" another chips in with "me too", it's also for really trivial things, like adding a print view. it'd be easy to do and not take a summer.

I didn't realize until now that the originators of the spam, in some sense, are the Indian universities themselves.  I find this surprising and a bit distressing.  If faculty members really wanted their students to do internships abroad, why aren't they helping them out in some way?  Certainly many faculty members at IITs and similar places are internationally renowned in their fields and have a network of connections they could exploit. Why do they leave it to their students to become spammers?

I graduated from IIT-Delhi 15 years ago. We had to do compulsory industry internships, never an academic one. I suspect some of these could be scams.

@uday - There would be a difference between Engineering and Sciences. Doesn't have to be compulsory, but everyone wants an impressive (fat) CV to improve their future avenues.

It is possible that lot of desperate students just trying the number game. If there is a formulaic email one uses they may give it to each other, and use with small customization.

I graduated from a premier Indian university more than a decade ago and have sent out such emails. Let me try to put this practice in context.
Like many universities around the world, Indian universities have a semester system and a three to four month summer break in-between. Many Indian universities (but not the IITs) have a compulsory summer internship that must be completed in the summer before the final year. These internships can be done either in industry or academia. Therefore, it is common for Indian students to apply for internships. Until the late 1990s, most students used to apply for such internships within India.
The situation changed in the late 1990s because a couple of European universities (EPFL for sure, but I think that there were others as well) started a summer internship program for Indian students (almost exclusively from the IITs). The primary reason was to attract Indian students for graduate studies; at that time most Indian students went to English speaking countries. I participated in such a program in the early 2000s.
These programs did not result in any mass emails. The department of the Indian university used to send a list of student CVs, and the department at the European school would select from that list.
However, once students realized that European universities accept students for internships, they started applying en mass. And most, if not all, of them got offers, typically from universities in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Spain, and Singapore; but also occasionally from the US and UK. (At least, this was the situation at my time). Initially, only IIT students were doing this; slowly everyone else also started applying.
At our time, some of us applied because we wanted to experience the research environment in Europe, others applied because they wanted a paid vacation. Some were meticulous in their search and wrote personalized letters; others simply sent out a form letter to everyone. My understanding is that most students (at least from IITs) still get such internships, so the practice continues.
Note that the universities which started this practice to attract Indian students were successful. They saw an increase in the number of students from IITs who applied for graduate studies. I have friends who went to study in a non-anglophone European country because someone had gone to the same university for an internship and had had a positive experience.
I don't know if more European universities have started this practice or not; but I know that recently Canadian universities (rather a Canadian funding agency) started a university internship program for international students from India, China, and Brazil.

Just for clarification: You are saying that (some/many) students successfully find interships using the (minimally - "insert paper title here") customized form letters? I'd love to know more about how this works out...

@Arno: No. Typically, those who send out form letters have a harder time finding internships. But some of them still do! (at least, they did when I was a student)

This is very interesting. That being said, while I am sure that the great students from the IITs find something, I am convinced that many applications I regularly get (from other Indian universities) will not lead to an internship in Europe, ever. Some of those are just unspeakably bad, including sometimes applying for entirely wrong areas of science. So I highly doubt that, overall, most of these people find positions.

@xLeitix: My anecdotal evidence is only based on my undergraduate institute (one of the IITs), where significant percentage of the students got summer positions in Europe. I agree with you that it is unlikely that students from other Indian universities get summer positions (but that doesn't stop them from applying). However, I have no first hand knowledge of that, and that is why I limited my answer to what I had experienced.

@xLeitix, the cost to send a letter out is microscopic, so if even a minimal proportion do net an internship, the payoff is huge. Standard spam economics. Unfortunately.

@vonbrand The cost to send out an additional letter is tiny, but there is some non-trivial effort in compiling the application material in the first place. And even that seems like a waste of time for many of the applications I receive.

It is like a job search: even if your resume is poor, even if your approach is bad, you still keep doing it ( "you" is a general person here). Successful? Rarely, yet people keep looking for job...

I believe these are genuine requests for internships.  They almost all appear to be mass e-mails.  Even the personalized ones usually involve just a few "fill in the blank" additions, and it's clear that applicants sometimes share templates because I've received nearly identical e-mails from different applicants.
As far as I can tell, it's a vicious cycle.  It's difficult to judge these applications, and most of them are wildly ill-matched or inappropriate, so recipients usually don't even reply.  (I've found that replying is viewed by some applicants as a strong form of encouragement, even if I just say something like "Sorry, I never have any interns and I don't work in area X in any case."  I feel bad about it, but this is a powerful motivation not to reply.)  The lack of replies pushes desperate students to send out huge numbers of e-mails, and this drives the response rate even lower.  The net effect is that everyone ends up unhappy with the status quo.  For example, see the comments here, which feature discussion from both faculty and internship applicants.

If these are from real students, why do they think this could potentially work?

It seems to have degenerated into a lottery, in which a few students succeed in getting an attractive internship and that motivates many others to try.

Why India?

One partial explanation is that there are enormous numbers of English-speaking students in India who would be willing to consider studying abroad and would like to get an international experience as undergraduates.  I've also heard that the IITs encourage students to do internships, but I don't know the details.

I agree with the interpretation insofar as the senders genuinely want to come for an internship. I disagree because I don't believe that they are genuinely interested in the internship itself. And I don't think one should feel guilty about ignoring these emails. If someone so clearly demonstrates a lack of interest while still trying to use someone elses time and resources, I think ignoring them is actually undeservedly polite.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was someone somewhere profiting from software which mass-spams these emails.

I'd like to thank you for the answer, and point out that I upvoted it. I've accepted Aditya's due to the first-hand knowledge imparted there.

Some of the comments to this blog post by Jeffrey Shallit written in January 2010 appear to be from students from India.
Comment 1:

Not really. Most of the email soliciting these internships come from students who are looking for a free vacation in a foreign land, to make a bit of money and to get laid. The trend was started a few years ago, when some actually talented individuals were invited to universities abroad. Since then, these IITians seem to think that they are entitled to free lunches. My advice to you would be to install a spam filter that identifies these types of mail. If not, you can write a mail to the director of the institute or the dean of UG studies at "deanac@hijli.iitkgp.ernet.in" requesting them to forward a circular banning students from spamming international academicians.
However keep in mind that some of the students are actually very talented, so to weed out the hacks, you can post some instructions that applicants must follow (many professors in major US universities have already done so).
I hope these emails do not create a bad impression of IIT grads in your mind.
I should hope so, considering I am one myself :)

Comment 2:

this is an Indian student of the college in discussion. We Indians are basically opportunists who have little to do with research when we say 'we study in premier institutes of India'
Mass mailing is a fad amongst iit students, most of whom look for a paid vacation in your project. But iitians provide economic labor and some of them work above expectations(some...mind you). Next time, try negotiating with the guys, and i am pretty sure you would save by outsourcing to the brown :D
regards

Comment 3:

I too am a student in the mentioned institute, and like the guy who sent this mail, I have been applying to various professors in my field of interest.
Of course, the sad truth is that most of us write a template mail and send it to a group of 100 odd professors. These are generally the ones who want to have a "free lunch".
There are, though, certain very talented applicants who actually read your papers and are interested in working with you.
It is very sad that these students are screwed because of the spammers, but such is the reality.

Comment 4:

Intern Mail Spamming has always been a nettling issue for the Professors of foreign universities.
It is agreed that most students mail for the sake of getting an internship rather than having a keen and genuine interest towards the work. Yet, its a perpetuating fact that the Indian Institutes of Technolgy produce the best academicians.
Thus, its a request to all the Professors o kindly keep their mind casual in this regard as they can be assured of really talented students whose mails are on the way.

There are more comments, but they seem similar to these.

I'd like to thank you for the answer, and point out that I upvoted it. I've accepted Aditya's due to the first-hand knowledge imparted there.

You should properly acknowledge the source of the text you quote.

The source is in the link I provided, but I edited the text to make it clear who the author of the blog is.

Tl;dr: Few people genuinely want to do research internships at universities unless they are academically oriented. Successful students’ stories spread around. Juniors under pressure to land an internship emulate/copy templates. Despite sound advice from seniors, a lot of undergraduates send spam.

As an undergraduate senior currently studying at IIT Bombay, let me try to add to the already written answers by Aditya etc. with reference to my interaction with my seniors and peers. As has been mentioned in Aditya‘s answer, there are some formal channels to get internships; these are mostly helpful for top-ranking students, whereas the number of students wanting to do internships is much more.
At IIT Bombay, there is no mandatory internship requirement for graduation but I know other universities where this is the case.
As far as I understand, students, especially juniors (and to a lesser extent sophomores) are under quite some pressure to land a "summer internship" and the order of preference is typically as follows: Great company > Average company > Foreign University > Indian University > Current University ≫ Nothing.
For students who are interested in entering the job market after graduating, the order follows naturally, where the last few inequalities stems from peer pressure and the last one from “something is better than nothing”.
For academically-oriented students – primarily aiming to apply to grad schools abroad the next year – the first two options are not relevant. Here, the internship serves three purposes:

Doing decent/good work ensures a letter of recommendation for grad school from a Professor who is not from your current university (the general belief is that such a LOR is likely to be more helpful than a “local” one).
Research experience helpful for deciding fields of interest.
As somebody as already pointed out, free vacation in a foreign country.

Of course, the relative importance of each factor varies from individual to individual.
In the fall semester, there are often short sessions organized by student bodies on “tips on landing an internship” from successful seniors; I have attended a few of these. The common summary usually boils down to: if you are interested in some professor’s research write a short email with:

short introduction;
research you are interested in (after reading papers);
previous research/study experience with linked/attached homepage/CV.

Although all our seniors strongly advise us against writing fake emails (like the ones you’ve mentioned) as it hurts the reputation of the student community and especially affects those who write sincerely, there are inevitably more than a few who feel desperate (because statistics of landing an internship via emailing are so low), skip over the “reading papers” bit and choose to send spam in bulk rather than a few well-thought emails. And inevitably, one “ideal” email gets shared which is copied and edited as a template. This leads to a “race to the bottom” as pointed out in the answer by Anonymous Mathematician.
Apart from the statistical factor, there is an obvious mental cost of writing a genuine email; posting spam takes little to no effort compared to writing a sincere email – I remember having written exactly one email which took me around two weeks including reading papers, references etc.
A short reply to Pete L. Clark’s comment:

If faculty members really wanted their students to do internships abroad, why aren’t they helping them out in some way?

Many students have little to no experience with undergraduate research and are looking to land an internship quickly. Professors do occasionally help students get such an internship abroad; this happens mostly in the case where the student has prior undergraduate research experience and is comfortable talking about the situation with the professor.

Sadly, this trend is exclusive to IIT's either. The number of people wanting to do an undergrad thesis has steadily been the rise in BITS as well, probably more so because of the academic structure.


text:
At what point in the rankings is having a PhD from one university no different than a PhD from another (differently ranked) university?
There are some websites like topuniversities and times higher education that rank universities based on several criteria.
I don't know if the ranking of a university is directly proportional to its actual reputation.
It is obvious that top universities such as MIT, Harvard and Stanford in US or ETH, Uppsala, KTH in Europe should be considered apart from the rest, but at what point is having a PhD from one university no different than having another? Is it after 100? Between 300-400? Or is it due to another criteria than the ranking?

It is really hard for everyone to get a job in top universities

Relevant to your last question: Do universities hire graduates from lesser universities

Your last two questions are addressed in the post linked by Austin Henley and by University rank/stature - How much does it affect one's career post-Ph.D?, so I'm going to edit those out of your post. If that doesn't fully answer those sub-questions, please ask them in a new post. (Also see Write one question per post.)

It's worth keeping in mind that the overall university ranking is not synonymous with how they are regarded in the field.  Even the breakdowns by discipline are not always going to reflect how the university is perceived in a specific field.
For example, a university may not be in the top 10 in these overall rankings or even in a discipline (e.g., Computer Science), but they may be considered in the top 10 or even the top 5 for specific research fields (e.g., Database research).
For a PhD, the ranking in the field will probably carry more weight than the general ranking of the university (depending on the field), as will the overall quality of the research.

@ff524 I disagree; this does answer the question.  Specifically, it gives the answer "You're asking the wrong question."

@JeffE It's an answer to a different question—not the one that was asked. I'd call it a helpful response. :-)

To illustrate this with a few examples, the University of Chicago is one of the top 10 universities in the world, but doesn't have nearly as well-regarded of a computer science program. However, if you're interested in Theoretical Computer Science it's regarded much better. Rutgers University doesn't make the top 50 list of US Universities, but is a top 5 Philosophy university.

For many purposes, it isn't so much about the school that gave you the degree as it is your reputation in the field, which is a function of many things (including your alma mater). This can include your advisor, your graduate work, the number and quality of peer-reviewed publications, patents or copyrights you've generated, your research area, scholarships or grants you've been awarded, and so on--basically all of the things you'd include in your CV. The ranking of your PhD program influences your reputation, but it is still one of many factors. Many successful grad students who were accepted to a more highly-regarded program choose to attend a "lesser" program because they believe they can do better research with a particular advisor, for example.
Rankings are an average of many things and may not reflect the research you performed or the education you received. Different programs are known for different things. Some physics programs, for example, are better at mathematical or theoretical astrophysics. Others are known for their work in quantum mechanics or optics. Still others have an excellent reputation in biophysics—or condensed matter physics, or plasma physics, or a particular type of engineering, etc. If your program you got your degree from excels in your area of research, that can often look better to those who are familiar with your field than if you got a degree from a higher-ranked program that did not specialize in your area of research.
I suspect most of the rankings have quite a bit of variation and unreliability. Aside from the annual changes, most rankings probably vary by 20%: a program ranked 30th could vary by 6 rankings (between 24 and 36). The programs in the top 10 likely only vary by 1-2 rankings. This estimate likely varies with field, the entity publishing the rankings, and sample size.
I doubt there's really a cutoff point, however. Imagine if there are 100 biology programs in your country. Differences between the programs ranked 45th and 48th probably aren't particularly significant, but you should expect differences between a program ranked 45th and another ranked 80th! Or suppose your country has 500 programs in biology. You should expect a difference between one ranked 350th and another ranked 500th! However, I would expect little difference between one ranked 450th and one ranked 490th.

I agree with this.   Where you get your PhD degree is of secondary importance.   Yes, a PhD from a high ranking university will draw attention -- just like any products with a good marketed brand name.  However, 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating', meaning I'll look at the quality of the thesis and publications.  E.g., poorly written, little work, or many second/third/etc authored papers, then I would rank an applicant poorly.  I know of PhD students who graduated from top unis with bugger all publications.  Message: let your work speaks for itself, as opposed the 'brand' of your PhD.

@LittleMouse I think it is a bit naive to offer this optimistic view that anyone can do high quality/high impact/groundbreaking research at a low ranked institution. Sure, it can theoretically happen, but there are external factors to consider here, and thus advising someone to disregard rankings completely is a bit misleading in my opinion. Taking a given student, I would still expect him/her to generally do much better at the better ranked place.

@user8001 It is not naive and definitely not 'theoretical'.  My students regularly outperform those at higher ranked universities.   It is ABSOLUTELY naive to think that only students who go to 'top unis' can do proper research.  This is pure arrogance.

I think @LittleMouse is correct in that student ability and productivity play a major role in shaping a student's reputation. I also agree with user8001 in that better programs often offer more opportunities. I have the honor and privilege of being in arguably the top program in my (small but growing) field. I was previously in a different program that was ranked somewhere between 30-40th in its field, just in the USA. My new program has significantly more funding. There are far more opportunities to travel, network, do outreach, etc. than there were in my old program. It really helps!!!