text:
Can I mention that the article is extremely short in a query to the editor?
Every advice on query letters to editors on the status of a manuscript after months of silence says not to sound demanding, impatient, not to give the editor motive for disliking you, etc.
I’ve got a manuscript on logic that’s barely over 2000 words, takes 25 minutes to read, and has supposedly been under review for 3 months. Is it ok if I mention how short the article is and how long it takes to read it in my query to the editor? If so, how would you phrase it?

Three months is not that long, be patient.

@AzorAhai-him- So, not even A letter?

I would not send a letter after three months, no. But, I'm not in logic.

I'm in math (not logic), and I wouldn't send a message checking on even the shortest manuscript until at least six months.

takes 25 minutes to read Does it also take 25 minutes to understand? If yes, then could it be too simple to publish? If no, then taking longer to review seems more plausible.

@Allure Could be, but if it’s too simple to publish you would get to that conclusion in less than 3 months.

I wouldn't do that. The editor has seen the article and isn't under any misconceptions. Three months isn't actually very long for some things and there might be complexities that require deep understanding as there can be in math.
There are lots of reasons for delay, including finding suitable reviewers as well as the workload of those reviewers.
I'd suggest you relax for a while or make a query about progress without saying things that might seem offensive.

The 3 months are under review, so after they found reviewers.

Maybe. Don't depend too much on the specific semantics of what a web process page means. Some reviewers might have later declined, some might have disagreed. The article is still in the system and not rejected. That is the important part.

Ok, thanks. I knew it wasn’t mainstream to do what I asked about, but now you are both telling me not to even send A letter after 3 months, which I thought was customary. What should I do then for an article 20,000 words long? Wait for years?

Some things take years, yes, though it isn't the norm. Reviewers do it as a service to the profession, so they need to fit it into their normal work.

I know, I’m a reviewer for several journals. That’s how I know that it can’t take more than a few days to review a 2000 word manuscript…

@user354948 I'm not in logic, but in my experience the time and effort it takes to review a paper is a complicated function that depends on whatever else I have going on, complexity of the paper, my familiarity with specifics of the topic, whether things are made explicit or left for me to work out, etc. Point is, it is far from simply proportional to the length.

@Anyon That’s a great point. I think mine is pretty straightforward, though. So how long before querying, four months?

You can make a query, just don't say things that might antagonize the editor. They might be as frustrated as you are, in fact.

I would, however, only make a query if there is some deadline that is important. Losing papers in the system is pretty rare and queries aren't going to speed things up.

@user354948 I'd hope it's straightforward to you if you wrote it, but that isn't the same thing as straightforward to someone else - maybe you've inadvertently used non-standard terminology, referred to something obliquely, written a step incorrectly yet each time you read it your mind substitutes the correct version. All of these things could make sometime take additional time to puzzle over something. Additionally, you cannot assume that any reviewer has nothing on their plate besides your paper, or that they give your paper the same priority you do.

@user354948 Also, it's very hard to find reviewers right now as people are getting fed up doing it for free.

@BryantKrause I never write steps incorrectly

@AzorAhai-him- I hope it starts getting payed as soon as possible! I would earn some…

@user354948 I review for quite a number of journals. I will tend to accept a review request if I know I will be able to complete a review within the deadline, even after dealing with any other reviews I already have to do and taking into account busy periods where I won't have any time free for reviewing. So even if reviewing the article will only take a few days, it will probably be several weeks before I am ready to spend those few days on it.

@EspeciallyLime Exactly my point, several weeks is less than three months. 9 weeks is many weeks, not several.

@user354948 I would think of 9 as still "several", and "many" as more like 15. My point was, if a journal gives me a deadline of 3 months (which is normal) then I will usually accept if I know I can deliver a report within 3 months. It may well be that I wouldn't have accepted a deadline of 2 months, and won't submit a report by then, even if the paper is short.

@EspeciallyLime Well, apparently I suck at math, since 3 months is 12 weeks, not just 9.


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Can I post on Arxiv a final paper published on PLOS ONE?
Can I post on Arxiv a final paper published on PLOS ONE? I would like to put on Arxiv the final edited paper, replacing the old pre-print. Can I do that?
I am wondering if this violates any rule of either PLOS or Arxiv, or is OK.
On the PLOS website it says:

All content published by PLOS is Open Access and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. You should credit the appropriate PLOS journal in your coverage and provide a link to the freely available article in any online coverage.

I also saw other answers to this question, but nothing specific for PLOS: Can I submit published articles to arXiv as well?
Which license should I choose?

If it is published at PLOS under CC BY, then literally anyone can upload it anywhere they want, as long as the authors are properly credited and the license is mentioned. Since arxiv even allows you to select the same license I see no problem there.

Yes, you can.
Read the CCBY license: you are allowed to share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the material
for any purpose, even commercially) the material as long as you attribute (you must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made). So you can put the paper on arXiv, as long as you attribute.

Thanks! Attributing on Arxiv means that I post the paper as the author right? Also the authors are in the pdf itself, so I think that would an attribution, right?

@Forinstance I'm not a lawyer, but I imagine yes.

@Forinstance: Make sure to list the other authors in the arxiv metadata as well, not only in the PDF itself.

Just got a confirmation via email by PLOS (they took some time :) ), here is the answer that confirms yours: PLOS ONE publishes all of the content in the articles under an open access license called “CC-BY.” [...] Additional permissions are not required. You can read about our open access license here: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright
Therefore, I can confirm you can submit the final version of your manuscript to a preprint server.

source: Stack Exchange

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text:
Research Training Support Grant
I've managed to secure a National Environmental Research Council (NERC) funded PhD project (I'm a UK resident and student), and understand that the funding comprises of:

Tuition fees
Stipend
Research training support grant (composed of research and training budgets)

So the tuition fees and stipend are paid year on year, but there's a single figure associated with the research and training budgets for the duration of the project.
I'm confused as to what the research and training budgets would or could be used for? Also as to whether it is something that is paid to myself, or something to be claimed against? I've tried searching for information specific to NERC or other DTPs, but can't seem to find out any information.
I hope this doesn't come across as dense! Thanks for any help you can offer.

There's some generic information here on page 2 and a little bit more on page 11 of this document.

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text:
What is the purpose of the “Comments only to the editors” section in peer reviews?
What is the purpose of the “Comments only to the editors” section in peer reviews? It seems lack of transparency to me. What couldn’t you possibly tell the authors?

In case it's not clear from the answers, the box is there just in case you happen to need it. You are correct in assuming things should go in the "to authors" sections by default. The majority of reviews will leave the "to editors" box empty.

@R.M. I knew that from the beginning, I was just asking what a legitimate case could look like.

I am rather ashamed at how often I use this box to apologise for a review arriving well past its deadline!

@Aant You shouldn’t accept if you are going to do that. We authors wait for months and months on end for an article that can be read in two hours.

@user354948 For what it's worth, I'm not talking “months and months” but an extra week on a deadline that is initially only one or two weeks (standard for communications in my field). As an author and as an editor I am much more dismayed by long lists of potential reviewers who decline to do so.

@Aant Oh, you had said “well past” its deadline. A week is a second in journal publishing in my field, not “well past”.

A few examples:

"I happen to know one of the authors personally and I know that they didn't consent to their name on the manuscript."
"Are you sure this topic is within the scope of your special issue?"
"I can't understand the authors. The other reviewers seem able to, however. Send the paper to them, not me. I don't want to see this manuscript again."
"Did you notice that between revisions there is a new author?"
"I'm not an expert on part X of the manuscript, but I'm an expert on part Y, and ..."
"I previously reviewed this manuscript for ____ journal. I attach the review I wrote for that journal, since the authors have not addressed my comments."
"I have reviewed so many papers for this group of authors. They all apply the same method to slightly-different problems. Scientifically, there's nothing wrong with this particular manuscript, but it's salami slicing."

Why wouldn’t you tell the authors  that you know them or that there’s a new author? Or even that you aren’t qualified, if it’s anonymous?

@user354948 yes, peer review is anonymous, so you can't tell the authors that you know them. The third bullet point doesn't mean you aren't qualified, just that you cannot understand what the authors are saying, which could happen if there's a language discrepancy. The authors obviously know if there's a new author, but the editor might not if they're not paying attention, and it's something they'd want to investigate.

To add to the examples, for ACL conferences, the confidential field is for "any information that you want to share with the area chair and other reviewers assigned to this paper. For instance, a very strong (negative) opinion on the paper, which might offend the authors in some way, or something that would expose your identity to the authors"

I don't disagree, but I'd say some of these examples may vary with the individual.  E.g., I would probably put scope, new author (if there were no major revisions), and salami slicing (without using the words "salami slicing") comments in my report for the author's eyes.  Also, some journals request that you place explicit comments about recommendation for acceptance/rejection in a report just for the editors (see user71659's answer).

@Allure “The authors obviously know if there's a new author, but the editor might not if they're not paying attention, and it's something they'd want to investigate.” That wouldn’t be a reason not to include the authors in the correspondence, would it? And telling the authors that you know them doesn’t break anonymity, besides you couldn’t review if you know who the author is, I just had to not do a review because of that.

@user354948 "Did you notice that between revisions there is a new author?" can be easily interpreted as a misconduct allegation, so it's best not to tell the authors directly, especially since they could easily have already explained to the editor (e.g. in the cover letter) why there is an extra author. Telling the authors that you know them doesn't break anonymity per se, but it narrows the range, and there's no advantage gained so there's also no reason to tell them. (But you should tell the editor about the possible COI.)

Or "the three first paragraphs of the introduction are plagiarized from xxx"
"Figure 1 looks like it has been manipulated"

+1 for "I previously reviewed this manuscript for ____ journal. I attach the review I wrote for that journal, since the authors have not addressed my comments." I use that one way too often.

@kmm I once had a variant of that where the authors addressed my comments in a special way: "I previously reviewed this manuscript for journal X. The data in that version contained several outliers that cast doubts on the whole analysis. Those particular data points have magically disappeared from the current version while the rest of the manuscript stayed exactly the same."

You can convey information that would reveal your identity.
E.g., you had already refereed a previous version of the paper for another journal and the authors ignored your feedback. Or: you know that the authors intentionally refuse to cite some existing work.

You can be more direct and blunt.
E.g., if the main result of a paper is roughly at the same level of difficulty as a homework exercise one could assign to a grad student, I might state this bluntly in more or less these words in the private field, but I would phrase it in a more diplomatic way in the report. The reason for doing this is not so that we can have a laugh behind the author's back, but to avoid discouraging and hurting the authors.
This applies especially if the authors are e.g. Ph.D. students, whom you don't want to discourage from pursuing research even if the paper should clearly be rejected.
There is nothing nefarious about this: clearly different norms of respect/politeness apply when talking to vs. when talking about a person. If they did not apply, it would be impossible to have fully honest conversations about other people's research.

You can use it to give a concise informal summary of the report.
"Strong paper. Clear accept." or "Borderline. Either way is fine with me." or "Not a great paper but probably publishable".

You can use it if you are uncertain about what to recommend.
One can choose to write an ambiguous report which the editor can use to justify either decision, and then convey your personal subjective opinion (which you might be uncertain about) privately.

You can use it to convey information that is irrelevant to the author.
E.g., that you might not be able or willing to referee further revisions.

You can use it to address potential conflicts of interest.
E.g., if you ask the authors to cite a number of your papers, you might use this field to reassure the editor that this is a legitimate request and you're not just abusing your position as a referee to get more citations.

Ok, some legitimate cases here in case you were fearful of your identity being disclosed or something.

I typically use it for 2, 3, and 4.

I am also more blunt about the other reviewers in my comments on a revision. If I see another reviewer make comments I vehemently oppose, I would say that in a "politic" way in the comments that other reviewer will see and then be much more blunt in my notes for the editor.

There's differing opinions about this due to transparency, but I have been told by at least two editors (one from a big name journal) that they prefer your suggested disposition of the paper (accept without changes, minor revision, reject, etc.) and your opinions and justification on that matter should go into the editor comments.
This is because the editor makes the final decision, which may differ from the reviewers.
For example, consider the situation where all the reviewers say in the author comments to accept because they focus on the technical aspects. However, the editor is unconvinced that the novelty or interest is sufficient for the journal and rejects the paper. This causes confusion and complaints about why the paper was rejected despite two good reviews.
The other direction occurs too: a reviewer says in the author comments, reject due to novelty, but the editor believes they are unduly harsh and, overrides and accepts the paper. This obviously leads to less author complaints, but is awkward, can lead to some ill will with the reviewer and may give the impression of cheapening the journal.
Some people think that this is unfair due to transparency, but you can also find guides saying you should do this.

I feel that your first example shouldn't ever happen. If the editor is going to reject even if reviewers unanimously think otherwise, then the editor should not waste everyone's time by sending it out for review in the first place.

@EspeciallyLime The editor could be wrong or not absolutely up to date in all aspects of the field. For example, the problem seems not that significant to the editor, but a reviewer says that they were just discussing the same or related problem at a conference, then the article could be very timely. The editor may give the authors the benefit of the doubt and send it to review, but if none of the reviewers says anything about how novel it is, then their opinion holds. It also may not be a complete waste of time, as reviews can often be transferred to another journal.

@EspeciallyLime Editors from top journals in my field tell me that they get far too many positive reviews -- they may still reject because they are not just looking for good papers, but for the best papers of the year. They don't just need positive reviews, they need  borderline rave reviews.

@Dawn if you have very strict requirements for interest level, that can and should be checked at the quick opinion stage by requiring enthusiastic support then. Perhaps this is field-dependent to some extent; I am looking at it from a pure math perspective where a full review round will normally take at least 6 months, and maybe significantly longer. This sort of avoidable delay to resubmitting to a new journal is unacceptable.

Enthusiastic support from whom? How do you propose it be evaluated other than by sending it out for review by experts in the field? Plus, the reviewers comments should be useful, not merely a delay.

@Dawn Like I said, at the quick opinion stage. That is, you ask some experts in the field for their quick opinion on whether the paper, assuming a subsequent full review determines it to be technically sound, would be good enough for the journal. This takes days, rather than months. If these expert opinions are sufficiently positive that you decide to proceed to full review, you can invite the same people as reviewers if you want to (but of course they might decline). Highly-selective math journals essentially always do this, and it means most rejections happen very quickly.

Apart from what others have already said, you can also use the "comment to the editor" function if you are not 100% sure about your asssessment--you can use the comment to tell the editor so and why. When I did my very first peer review, I told the editor that this was my very first review, and although I did feel confident in my review, I was torn between suggesting "reject" and "major revision".

I did this once when the system didn't have a button called "major revision", but options like "borderline". I chose the one I thought would most probably lead to the editor asking for a major revision (and not outright rejecting the paper), then used the "comments" field to state exactly this.

Your report to the authors and your comments to the editor serve two different purposes and should address two different audiences. Your report to the authors should help them improve the paper. When writing these reports, regardless of my opinions of the paper, I maintain a positive tone. I point out problems, areas of concern, etc. and propose ways they could address them.
There are components that feed into my evaluation that are not helpful to include in reports. e.g., my accept/revise/reject recommendation (particularly if it does not agree with the editor's final decision). This is where comments to the editor can be useful.
My comments to the editor are intended to help them make then communicate their decision. In my comments, I clearly state my accept/revise/reject recommendation and summarize the major reasons for that decision. If I worry that my concerns cannot be addressed by revision or I'm on the fence about a decision, I say as much and explain why.  This is never more than a paragraph or two tops, but provides the editor a high-level summary of the thinking behind my recommendation which might otherwise be less clear in my longer report to the authors and whether I am likely to eventually recommend acceptance if revisions are requested.
By revealed preference these comments must at times be useful because I have seen editors closely paraphrase them in their decision letters (particularly when providing guidelines for a successful revision). This may also address OP's concern with transparency. Editors are free to repeat information they receive in the comments if they feel it will be useful to the authors.

Transparency is never about what the obscured side freely decides or chooses to reveal, rather, it is about  not having obscured sides.

I agree. This is what I was taught. In particular, I would never be harshly or bluntly negative to the author, but I would be blunt to the editor. In addition, my reviews are often several pages long, so I highlight my top 3 concerns in the info for the editor.

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text:
University pension in the UK
I started working for a UK uni and they enrolled me into a pension scheme. They say they will contribute “5%”. 5 per cent of what? Is it my gross salary? My net? Also, will I get that if I opt out of the pension scheme? Is that 5% the only reason for being in a pension scheme? I’m sorry, I’m an immigrant an really do not understand why in the world would I give part of my money to someone who won’t give it back to me until I’m old. Why do people do it? Just for that 5%?

What do you plan to live on when you are retired? I plan on living a long time…

Normal university pension schemes in UK are of the form:  if you are paid X gross, then you contribute x% of X [and the tax folk won't charge you tax on that] and the university contributes y% of X (but not taken from your salary); I think usually y=2x approx. If you opt out you don't pay the x% of X but the university doesn't hand over to you another y% of X. But you really need proper financial advice.

Read this for a start: https://www.legalandgeneral.com/retirement/pensions/pensions-explained/

If a pension is properly managed then you have a couple of million pounds sterling when you retire. But that assumes that you also contribute beyond what the institution does (another 5%, say). And some places (US) pension funds aren't taxed until you take them out.

@Oliver882: The website you linked says the pension is esssentially "used up" over time when you are retired. Did I understand this correctly? And if yes, is this common for pension plans in the UK? I find this a bit surprising because it turns the length of one's life into a financial risk. Many pension plans in Germany thus include an insurance component: from the date when you start using the pension, you will get a fixed amount every month until you die. This spreads the risk that you don't know a priori how long you will live, over all people that participate in the pension plan.

You should ask HR for details of your pension scheme. No you don't get the 5%if you opt out. If you don't pay into a pension how will you pay for your retirement? The UK state pension is not enough to live on.

@JochenGlueck I am not an expert so no one should trust my opinion. But I don't think that is right. Firstly the state pension does not get used up. For other types of pension there are several options, listed under How do I take my pension. These include "Get a guaranteed income for life by using your pension pot to purchase an annuity" and "Cash in your pension pot and take all of the money as cash" and several others.

@Oliver882: Thanks a lot for your response! It seems I didn't read carefully enough. What you wrote makes sense to me, and it also provides a good rationale for the OP who is asking "why in the world would I give part of my money to someone who won’t give it back to me until I’m old": For instance, because it might (maybe depending on the contract - please check the details!) give you the option to get a fixed pension during retirement, without having to worry that you might use up your savings because you live "too long".

@Oliver882 That’s written by the guys who are gonna get my money, so why would I trust it?

For UK workplace pensions you need to first read this: https://www.gov.uk/workplace-pensions
Employers are required by law to provide a pension scheme (and to auto enroll you with an opt out option). This is in addition to the state pension which comes out of your taxes.
The only reason to opt out would be if you plan to leave within the next 3 years or so and to not come back, otherwise you will need that money when you retire. If you are going down that route, you need to make sure that you invest the extra cash (i.e. your part of the pension contribution, you won't get the employer contribution) in whatever country you expect to retire to. Though, as someone who has private (as opposed to state) pensions in three countries, I still plan to get my money out of all of them when I retire, the extra money from the employer easily makes up for the administrative overhead.
University pensions in the UK are usually one of the better schemes (and unlikely to go bust), so opting out would be a mistake in all but the most specialist cases. If you do decide to do this, don't get your advice from random people off the Internet though.

that’s ridiculous, how do you know I’ll need the money when I retire? Not everybody is poor!

If you are independently wealthy why are you bothered about the pension contributions?

I’m not that wealthy. But if I were I would still be bothered because of two reasons: 1) it’s my money. That’s how you get to be wealthy, by bothering about your money. And 2) they enrol you without your consent?


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Is it ethical to get participants' consent for the inclusion of their data in the research after data collection?
Suppose that there's a student who has done a subject-based study with ten participants involved. The research settings required not telling the participants that it has been a research before data collection (they participated in an online job interview, but there was no job in reality for them, so none of them got any job in fact [Attention: This was just an example. In reality, they only took an online translation test, at the time they desired.]). Can the researcher get their participants' consent for the inclusion of their data in the research after data collection? Would it be a problem for publication in journals?

There is a good reason why ethics approval needs to be obtained beforehand. The whole point is to protect the participants (and ultimately you and your institution) from detrimental fallout. What if the participants had forgone another job interview to be able to attend yours? True, it is unlikely, but what if? An ethics approval committee ponders whether the interests of science outweigh the interests of the participants. The way you did it, it is a "candid camera" approach - perhaps acceptable for entertainment, but science should have a higher standard. I think journals may frown on this.

I'm wondering how this was ever done in the first place. It seems incredibly unethical to me. Fraudulent. Asking for permission could, perhaps lead to legal action. Drop it.

@CaptainEmacs Thanks for your enlightening comment. That was an example, of course; I edited with real data. Believe me or not, I insisted my supervisor for changing the approach, but she insisted on not telling the participants beforehand. I was just wondering, what if all of them consent, after all. Would it be okay that way?

@Buffy Thanks. Could you have another look at the edited version and my reply to Captain Emacs question?

@m2004 You need the ethics approval for catching them unexpected. The point is not, I think, that you do not inform them of the experiment - of course you don't - many psychological experiments require distractors to get genuine reaction. The point is that you go through the appropriate procedures that permit you doing so, by vetting the balance between your scientific gain and their disadvantage of being lied to. Just as when you experiment on animals, you probably cut and torture them - ethics approval means their very cruel fate is deemed scientifically justified by a dispassionate board.

As long as the study is IRB approved and the approved procedures are followed, then publication should not be a problem. It seems a little strange, but reasonable, that an IRB would aprove a protocol where minimal risk data collection was kept secret, but require informed consent prior to data analysis. I would have expected consent and debriefing to happen immediately following data collection, but again, if there is a reason to delay it, that seems fine.

Put another way: It depends on your rationale for the deception and the risk to participants. Your local IRB will make this call, and a journal will almost always go with the decision of the IRB.


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How to cite a newspaper article with no author in APA style using MS Word?
I have cited a news story appeared in a newspaper with no author in APA style using MS Word 2013, but I don't know if I have done it in the right way. I classified it as "Article in a Periodical", but the outcome is different from the one I get from this web service (https://www.citethisforme.com/). Can I help me in this case?
MS Word version:
In-text: (Zarif: We’ve never claimed nuclear deal only favors Iran, 2015, p. 1)
In Bibliography: Zarif: We’ve never claimed nuclear deal only favors Iran. (2015, July 22). Tehran TImes(12321), p. 1.
Cite This For Me" version:
In-text: (Tehran Times, 2015)
In Bibliography: Tehran Times,. (2015). Zarif: We’ve never claimed nuclear deal only favors Iran, p. 1.
I feel that MS Word's version is correct, but its in-text citation seems awkward to me.

I'm afraid that we are likely to be unable to help you without knowing what the two citations that you are considering actually look like, to know whether they are reasonable or unreasonable.  Can you please edit the information into your question?

First, I must always advise that you speak to your professor and/or your university librarian as to what the accepted form would be at your University. Both as professors and Universities can vary slightly on the specifics of APA rules and due to the fact that what they say will be accepted. As far as APA 6th is concerned

Title of article. (Year, month day). Title of publication, p. [or pp.]

So:

Zarif: We’ve never claimed nuclear deal only favors Iran. (2015, July 22). Tehran Times, p. 1.

would be the correct Biblio (provided one correctly indents it).
While In-text

"First few words of the title", year, p. [or pp.]

So: ("Zarif: We've never claimed", 2015, p.1)
As confirmed at the University of Melborune, EasyBib, and APAstyle.org

One of those variance, by college and professor, is in-text citations and the use of page numbers. As some schools only require one to cite page numbers on direct quotes while others requires one to add page numbers in all instances
Another variance is with online articles, as online articles may not reference a page number (depends on format) but use the paragraph number or section title in the citation. Further, you would include a "Retrieved from full url here" at the end. (pp.171-172, APA Manual, 6th ed.)

Great answer! One minor addition: If you read the newspaper article online, then (a)  you would not reference a page number, and (b) you would use "Retrieved from [URL]" in the reference (bibliography). Some publications or professors might want you to include both the print cite and the online cite.

@MarkDWorthenPsyD added as another variance at end

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text:
What are the pros and cons of well compensated STEM graduate students joining a union?
Recently, my state has declared graduate students as employees giving them the right to unionize. The students in the Engineering School are very well compensated. The benefits that we get are

Minimum stipend of 29k$ (which was increased ~3 years ago).
Top tier health insurance plan fully paid for by the University and Engineering School
Deans that largely respect student needs and actively address current issues
Plethora of funding for student lead activities
Free services like legal council, psychiatrist, campus clinique, campus shuttle buses, etc.
TA opportunities are always available for those that need them.

Additionally, my department has a very high standard set forth for us. We have nice offices, the Chair actively addresses our concerns and complaints, funds for student activities and community building, computational resources, and more. The quality of life for students in my department (Applied Math) is quite high.
Lately, we've had outside people dropping by to advise us to join a union. The humanities students are largely in support of this movement since they are not compensated as well as the engineering students. In my point of view, there are very few reasons why I can see joining a union will benefit the Applied Math graduate students. Given how well we, the graduate students in my department, are currently treated, what are the advantages and disadvantages of unionization?
Edit: There is a similar question here, however, does not specifically address STEM students.
I am a naive graduate student and will like to be better informed about the advantages and repercussions of joining a union. Whenever administrative University personnel have approached us to dissuade the effort, their tone has been extremely diplomatic and ambiguous about why they are advising against unionizing.
A brief summary of the responses is as follows.

Advantages of unionizing

Security of current benefits
Bargaining power to timely address current, new, and growing needs of the entire bargaining unit
Guaranteed minimum pay
Improving circumstances of students in other schools who are not as well compensated
Human resources like representation for students facing abuse, harassment, or other adversities from their advisors

Disadvantages of unionizing

Partisan representation
Clarifying the distinction between student and employee (though some may argue that this is an advantage)
Paying dues (though contracts usually negotiate higher stipends to offset this amount)
Deterioration of student/administrative relationship

Additional STEM specific points that I'd like to add are

Advantages

Incentives to address issues such as a single student having to monitor experiments running for 8+ hours
For international students, alleviating fears of not being able to find an advisor which prevents them for settling to the 1st person that says yes regardless of their interest
Some departments in the Engineering school offer things like funds for all students in their 3rd year to purchase a new laptop. Adapting this or similar policies universally would be appreciated.
Guaranteed funding beyond X years as set forth by the School, especially when the average is just slightly below X.

Disadvantages

As funds are rerouted into increased stipends, there may be

Decreased support for professional development (conferences, workshops, etc.)
Decreased supplemental resources (rented compute nodes and hours, new lab equipment, etc.)
Fewer graduate student and postdoc hires

Thank you all for your comments; it is all very much insightful. I'll continue to look out for new responses.

What happens when you have a change in chancellor and they decide these benefits are just too straining on the budget? Poof, all gone.

In my opinion, one should always avoid the "I've got mine, Jack" mentality. E.g., the fact that I might "luckily" not find myself in a randomly/historically disadvantaged group is not a reason to passively advocate continuation of any such disadvantage ... privately thinking that to do otherwise might diminish my (accidental) advantage.

I tend to think of it as insurance or health care. Sure, you may not feel you need it... But if push comes to shove and you end up in a situation where you do, then?

One possible disadvantage is that unions can be political and side with the side you are against.

Welcome to the free market. Consider auditing an economics class.

@paulgarrett Of course, if the only reasons you succeed is luck then you might feel that way.  If you succeed because of hard work, effort and investment then there is less incentive to gift the profits of that to others.  For example, OP could 'protect' his position by joining a union, or he could simply protect himself by keeping an eye on the job market and moving on should a better offer come along.  This strategy could also be applicable to the humanities students who seem dissatisfied with the current arrangement.

@Nij Perhaps poof, all gone, but STEM grad students aren't exactly people looking for somewhere to fund their fingerpainting for three years. Poor compensation will generally mean that poof - all the good graduate students will be gone too; off to somewhere that will give them better opportunities.  And perhaps top professors will also go poof - to somewhere where they can attract better students.

@J..., this is most certainly true in my Engineering School. 1st year stipends (when students do not yet have advisors) are quite generous and have even more than generous sign on bonuses that can be as high as a third of their annual pay. The School setting the minimum pay is also a sign of making sure that students are well compensated. We are competing against many other great institutions and incentives are needed to draw students to us. Humanities professors aren't bringing in grant money to fund their students, thus the differences in compensation.

Without commenting on the good or bad aspects of unionizing, I offer a side effect.  Once a union starts a card-check process, the school will be forced to just about shut down all discussion/process for changing anything having to do with student conditions or contracts until the process is over for fear of violating Fair Labor Laws.  If good or bad changes are in the works, they will be placed on hold.

"Lately, we've had outside people dropping by to advise us to join a union" - this is very different from my own experience being involved in the formation of a graduate student union. There was exactly one outside person sent from the parent union as a resource for us, by our request. He was experienced and helpful. Many graduate students were involved in the unionization drive. We went around in pairs, dropping into offices and labs, talking to interested fellow students about the drive, explaining the labor relations board decision that had made our drive possible, answering questions....

@aparente001, we had several outside people knock on offices, both from AFW and another union. There are a few students that are working more closely with the union workers and further spreading the word to students.

@namu - Is that Adjunct Faculty Union?  (Ours was affiliated with the Communication Workers of America.)

@aparente001, no, I don't believe it is Adjunct Faculty Union.

@namu - So what is AFW?

@aparente001, I typed the wrong acronym. AFT, the American Federation of Teachers, (not AFW) has been knocking on our doors. The other group is SEIU, Service Employees International Union.

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) of 2016 set a minimum salary of $47,476 for professional employees to be exempt from paid overtime. in response to this, the NIH changed its postdoctoral salaries.
While the NIH says

NIH is fully supportive of increased pay for postdoctoral researchers and has proposed to increase the NRSA postdoctoral stipends to levels above the threshold

their behavior suggests otherwise. What they did is simple increase all postdoctoral salaries below the minimum to slightly higher than the minimum. While historically a year 1 post doc made 4% more than a year 0 postdoc, after the adjustment they made the same. There was no increase in the predoctoral salaries. In FY 2016 the NIH predoctoral salary was $23,376 so slightly less than what you are currently being paid.
While you may believe you are well compensated, some would argue that $29,000 a year is not a fair salary if you are expected to perform unpaid overtime (and what graduate student doesn't work overtime). A union can help fight for things like fair salaries.

Technically, at most universities, graduate students are actually classified as 50% employees, the idea being that they only spend 50% of their time on work for the university and the other 50% on their own education. The $23k or $29k would then come out to be $46k or $58k as a full-time salary. I don't find that inappropriately low.

@WolfgangBangerth then a union can help fight for being classified as a full time employee and not a 50% time employee. Imagine if a company said we only pay for half time employees because the rest of the time is spent learning skills to enhance their CV.

Well, getting a PhD is an education after all. I don't think that classification is unreasonable.

@WolfgangBangerth  -- I haven't encountered any such official classification at my US Univ, or heard of this as an official policy at any.  I'm sure some universities do this, but I doubt that "most universities" do.  Also, from a US government perspective, you're an employee or you're not.

@ScottSeidman That's how we're classified (R1 university in the US). They actually went through and reduced us further to 13 hours/week to make sure they didn't have to provide us with certain things. They also lump our "tuition" into our "total" compensation, and so technically we're paid something like $56k, but only $26k of it is stipend. All the rest of our time -- thesis, classes, etc is considered our own time for education and is "unpaid." All of my friends/family at other universities are classified the same way. It is probably more common than you think.

@ScottSeidman That is exactly how it worked at all five US universities I've either attended or worked at. RAships and TAships are at-most-50% positions, formally limited to 20 hours/week.

@JeffE -- RAships and TAships are a different story -- that's a job that you're compensated for, not a stipend... and yes, those hours are capped, same as for undergrads.

@ScottSeidman But for all practical purposes, RAships and TAships are the only senses in which graduate students are considered university employees.  (My university also has something called "general assistantships", for clerical work and the like, which are also capped at 20 hrs/week.)

Some of the answers already raise good points, but I would like to add something:
Although you feel that the treatment you get is good, perhaps some of your colleagues with different situations or background have issues. For example : Do you have parental leave? Or politics concerning work-family balance?
A union could help represent minorities in their revendications, if there's any. And as someone stated, all this is very dependent on the chair you currently have, which can leave/die/change his mind.
The relation between an union and the university officials does not need to be acrimonius. They can have good relations, working both in the same direction, safeguarding the rights of students.

"A union could help represent minorities in their revendications"  Or in other words, a union allows the OP to gift his own negotiation capital to someone else.  For example, resources that would have gone to his engineering department might instead be redirected to humanities.

@NPSF3000
Thats called empathy and caring for the weaker.

@Leon: It’s also called solidarity and strength in numbers.  OP may not benefit directly now, but they might well benefit a few years down the line.

@Leon It's also called inefficiency.  If OP reduces resources to his department (that may very well merit them, and use them to help millions) and funnels them to a department that does not merit them (and helps only thousands) does that ultimately 'care for the weaker'?
There are pro's and cons to every decision, blindly crying 'empathy' does not necessarily lead to the best outcome for anybody (his department, the humanities department, the university, or humanity as a whole).

... but then that would only happen if the union is dominated by humanist members. So one of the benefits for OP joining is that their field is better represented within the union (though chances are in my experience that in the end humanities will be overrepresented).

@NPSF3000 "does not merit them" ? Did I really just read that ?
We're talking about having a decent work environment. Merit does not come into consideration.

From a practical point of view, you rarely gain anything by joining a union or other similar lobbying organization. You either join if you feel that the cause is right, or you don't if you feel otherwise. Edit: I mean joining a union should be a moral choice, not a choice based on weighing the advantages and disadvantages.
As a member, you have to pay for the lobbying the union does, but the benefits usually go to all employees. Hence it is more cost-effective to just take the benefits and let the others pay. This assumes a legal environment where the employer has no right to know whether an employee is a union member or not. If the employer has the right to know, union members can have higher salaries and better benefits, but their relationship with the employer may suffer.

I'm not going to downvote, since this does answer the question, but there seems to be a bit of a paradox in the answer. You say, "From a pratical point of view, you rarely gain anything...", but then in the next paragraph, you write, "...but the benefits usually go to all employees." Doesn't this imply that you do gain something from joining?

@tonysdg It's just basic game theory, something unions have tried to deal with since the beginning. From any individual's point of view, free-riding is almost always more beneficial than paying the membership fee.

It might be injudicious to advocate that decisions about moral or ethical issues be made on game-theoretic grounds.

Another common structure is that non-union employees of a particular company are required to have fees equivalent to union dues deducted from their paycheck (and sent somewhere besides the union); this is negotiated precisely to combat the free-rider problem.

And in the specific case of graduate workers, at least in my university, once the vote to unionize goes through everyone becomes part of the union.

@paulgarrett I was actually saying the opposite: make a moral choice instead of weighing the advantages and disadvantages. If you look the issue from the union side, it is rather obvious that there is usually no utilitarian reason to join.

@JouniSirén, ah, ok. (These un-inflected internet statements are sometimes difficult to parse...) But/and, yes, there is often certainly an advantage to other peoples' altruistic behaviors if one oneself does the opposite, etc. Yet, then, if too many people behave that way, it wrecks everything, for sure. I worry that many people think that it is "clever" to "play" everyone else in such manner.

@ClementC. Interesting. That would be a blatant violation of the constitution in many European countries. The usual interpretation there is that the freedom of association includes the freedom to refuse to join an association.

@JouniSirén The USA has essentially no specific constitutional rules protecting or empowering unions, or even workers in general, which might not be the case in much of Europe.  All we have is a right to form a union, and a much-contested supreme court ruling saying that taking union fees out of non-union employees is legal (and essentially necessary to ensure the unions can actually have and maintain any power at the bargaining table).

@JouniSirén By "freedom of association" do you mean something specific to unions? Freedom of association in general doesn't mean that someone has to hire you, or cannot be forbidden from hiring you via contracts with third parties.

@prosfilaes It is the general right to form organizations for any legal purpose. By the European interpretation, membership in such organizations has to be voluntary. Also, refusing to hire someone due to (the lack of) union membership is seen as illegal discrimination.

@JouniSirén My bad, I misrepresented it. This is actually what Greg Martin mentioned above: not all joining the union, but all paying a comparable fee. https://columbiagradunion.org/faq/#ac_1411_collapse4

@JouniSirén: for example here in the UK, "closed shops" were banned by legislation in 1990. Apparently though there is such a thing in the US as a "union shop", which is quite limited in what it can do but can legally require employees to pay union dues and become members. But that's all -- employees can't be disciplined for failure to obey any rules the union may or may not make for members, and if the union expels them they can't be fired for non-membership, and no longer have to pay dues. So in effect it means part of your wages are redirected to the union, and apparently that's legal.

Free riding is game-theoretically a good idea IF you ignore the prisoner's paradox.

There are several huge disadvantages you missed.
Because student employment is not like a normal employer/employee relationship, the benefits of unions are diminished.  The employment relationship is by nature limited in duration so long term contract changes not only don't benefit you, they don't benefit any of the students in the union.
But it's worse than that, with special consequences for several STEM fields.  Power is placed in the hands of representatives who have no obligation to your academic progress, only to your employment.  If you are in a field where experiments must go uninterrupted (monitoring disease states in virology and immunology, growing cell cultures in microbiology, and note that work in these fields is not limited to majors -- statisticians may be studying effects of drugs, mechanical engineers may be doing tissue engineering, etc) then having the union call a mandatory strike may ruin your ongoing projects and set research back half a year.  Even when the projects aren't as long term, you can be forced to miss submission deadlines for conferences and journals.
It just isn't worth putting your education -- which is the primary form of compensation you are receiving -- at risk for some employment terms that may never benefit anyone but the union itself.  How much would your salary have to increase to counteract the opportunity cost of a one-year delay in graduation (not only you lose the real world salary for that year, but you have a year less experience for the rest of your career)?  The same moral argument that you need to subjugate your own needs to the best interests of the whole group, demands that you not place all the students who could suffer ruined projects at the mercy of the union, even if your own projects don't need that intradaily care.
In your case the decision seems especially simple: you (and the larger group of students you are most obligated to) already have the lion's share of everything the union could possibly negotiate for on your behalf.

I've never heard of mandatory strikes. In blue collar sectors, Union reps might try to prevent you from breaking the picket line, but even there they can't force you not work. This might be country specific, but I feel you are describing an edge case.

@henning your comment applies to the UK too (though some reasonably polite attempts to persuade you to stay outside the picket line may be expected even in academia; this often isn't a problem unless you work in the same building as the executives). The US  is rather different on labour matters.

This is a common straw man argument against unionization.  But in fact, there is no simple syllogism if union ==> there will be strikes.

@aparente001: Your observation is correct, but dismissing my point as a strawman is just your failure to examine the situation in depth; I've already considered that fact.  "There will be strikes" is advertised as an advantage of a union (see https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/90000/8705 for just one example).  And the fact that a union might not do harmful things is not a rationale for giving it the authority to do those harmful things in the first place.

Once you begin logical reduction of the predicates involved, you find that the case "union without possibility of strikes" is just not an interesting case, its cost and benefit are both close enough to zero that it doesn't affect the expected overall utility.

@BenVoigt - There are sectors in the U.S. that are not legally permitted to strike, such as AFSCME.  Yet, that union is able to accomplish a lot. // Please: I did not say that a union possibly not doing harmful things is a rationale for giving it authority. // The answer you linked to, which spoke positively of the effectiveness of the strike option, is one person's remark, not an advertised advantage of a union.  I cannot speak for the unionization effort going on at OP's university at present, but I can say that in the unionization effort I was part of, there were no such advertisements.

@aparente001: If the choice were to provide students with advice and mediation in employment disputes, with no ability to strike, my thoughts would definitely be different.  But as long as creating a union with the ability to strike is envisioned, it is because the proposal views that ability as beneficial.  Which it isn't, not for graduate students.  The union can never rationally exercise that power because doing so would harm its own cause more than the university.  So to prevent irrational exercise (power trip) by union officials, best to deny the strike option ab initio.

@aparente001: Essentially, the problem is that the employment relationship is already slanted in favor of the students, because the institution desires to see them succeed (and has a vested interest in graduating students, it's not pure altruism).  Bargaining changes the discussion from "What the university wants to do to help its students" to "What the university is forced to give its students", and collectivization introduces the maximum harm into every discussion of a strike, even those about benefits for students who could take a couple weeks off with no long-term harm to projects.

@BenVoigt - I do not wish to discuss the to-strike-or-not-to-strike issue.  I explained why.  If you want to discuss some other aspect with me, I am open to that.

Another advantage: A union can help your department extract more funding from your university, or your university extract more funds from your legislature (if you are at a public school). "We would like to pay our TA's better" is less persuasive than "If we don't raise TA pay, they'll strike!".

How does department specific funding work? I thought that majority of the funding always comes through from overheads on grants.

@namu My understanding is that RA's (research assistants) are mostly paid by grants but TA's (teaching assistants) are usually from the departmental budget. I'd be glad to hear from someone more knowledgeable.

Instead of a direct answer to your question about unions and as to why supporting the "plebs" from human resources is to your best interest even though you re already far ahead from them, here is  a quote from a poem that suits your "predicament" perfectly

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I
  was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
  Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was
  not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Haha, I'm speechless.

This argument cuts both ways.  You also have an obligation to all the other STEM students whose benefits the union would bargain away in exchange for "equality".

@BenVoigt
Equity and equality are two strategies we can use in an effort to produce fairness. Equity is giving everyone what they need to be successful. Equality is treating everyone the same. Equality aims to promote fairness, but it can only work if everyone starts from the same place and needs the same help. Talking about equity  here.

Pros:

It is harder for lazy workers to be fired, so if this is your goal
in life union is good
Much more effective to get more money from employer if 1000x people are
negotiating with the employer than if you do it personally.

Cons:

Morality (this depends on you personally so this could go into pros
also), but for example some capitalists would say that it is unfair that employees can organize to fix wages while it is illegal for employers to do that.
Union leaders are like politicians - they do not care about
long term problems caused by popular short term actions or about
non voters(non union members). For example unions preventing people
from getting fired seems nice, until you realize that there is a guy
that works 12h/week and he can not be fired, although there are 5
qualified candidates for his place.
As mentioned in 2. Union leaders are populists, so for example they might pursue policies that would make salaries of STEM and gender studies employees equal if the number of gender studies employees is 4x STEM employees even if the private sector salaries would justify the discrepancy.
Unions can make work atmosphere toxic: like politicians they need to energize the voters/members and they do that by appealing to emotions so after a while part of the voting/union population really believes that other candidate is Literally Hitler/ or that employer is evil exploitative...

note that I know this A will be downvoted due to political bias of academia.

I'm sorry, but this is an unhelpfully superficial appraisal of these situations. Yes, if one grants certain ideological/political assumptions, then it is "canon". But it is not explanatory, since it only reiterates canon/mythology.

Employers don't have to organize to bargain lower wages, the 'market' works in their favor by producing unemployment and giving them a bargaining advantage over the employees even without having to organize. Moreover, what you call 'lazy', I call a decent work-life balance.

-1 not 'due to political bias of academia' but because this is is just a rant.


text:
Double parenthesis in academic writing
I have the following question. I have a text in which I want to insert a small mathematical formulation, namely between parenthesis. Unfortunately, this mathematical formulation also contains a parenthesis, which would result in a double parenthesis in the text. Is this allowed in academic writing or do I have to formulate it differently?
My text looks like this, for example.

This leads to a function (f(x)), which then...

Why would you put the mathematical expression in brackets?

Assuming there's a good reason to put the function in brackets in the first place, I'd say there's nothing wrong with the double closing )). In the particular example cited though, where there's already a comma, maybe just use another one in front, thus:
This leads to a function, f(x), which then...

@user95861 This is good advice, but write that as an answer, not as a comment!

Putting the general question about double parenthesis aside for this case: Why not just write: “This leads to a function f, which …”? First, f(x) almost certainly is a value, not a function (unless f is a function-valued function). Second, the outer parenthesis seems unnecessary.

Frankly, just to anything that looks good and feels right to you and your coauthors, and count on the copy editing process to make your manuscript conform to a journal's style sheet.  Try not to sweat the small stuff.  The only caveat is to carefully read the Instructions to Authors.

Do you actually need the (x) part? The function is f, not f(x).

Is this allowed in academic writing or do I have to formulate it differently?

There is no Central Committee for Academic Writing issuing decisions on which things are Allowed and which are Not Allowed, so it does not make a lot of sense to formulate the question this way. There are just people with various opinions on what constitutes good writing, with near consensus on some things and violent disagreement on others. So it is really up to you to figure out which principles you want to follow when it comes to parentheses etc.
Accordingly, the question is not can I do this? (yes, you can), it is should I do this? As you yourself have noticed, two consecutive parentheses look a bit awkward, so if there is an obvious way to avoid them, I would say it is probably for the best to do so. For example, you can instead write

This leads to a function f(x), which then ...

This leads to a function f(x). The function f(x) then ...

This leads to a function, which we will call f(x). The function f(x) then ...

This leads to a function, f(x), which then ...

This leads to a function – f(x) – which then ...

or any of a number of other possibilities. If you want to write mathematics well, I recommend that you invest some time into thinking about various different ways you can formulate sentences like this. After some practice your brain will automatically start coming up with a number of alternative ways of phrasing any given sentence, which will pay off handsomely when it comes to avoiding issues of this sort.

I would caution against using dashes immediately before mathematical expressions. Even though in most fonts they are distinct glyphs from minus signs, it can still make it harder to parse.

@ronno Indeed, that's by far the worst option of the ones listed (which why it is the last one, although maybe I should have just omitted it so as not to mislead the OP).

(6) This leads to a function: f(x)

@MikeB I'm not sure about that. Colons separate clauses from subclauses, where the subclause depends on the one before. So "This leads to a function: the map f(x) from the previous chapter" would be fine. I would furrow my brow at your example, were I to read it in a paper.

For the OP: the statement that "invest some time into thinking about various different ways you can formulate sentences like this" leads to a key point about any writing activity (papers, code, anything): the rules being followed are a proxy for clear writing, not an actual indication of clear writing. You need to consider your audience, get inside their heads to a degree so you can view it as they will be viewing it, and then think about which of the many options available to you makes your text more clear. If you're doing that, you don't need to worry so much about rules.

In the example you mention there is little reason to enclose f(x) within parentheses in the first place. As pointed out in the comments and another answer, writing, for example,

This leads to a function, f(x), which then ...

is likely preferable.
In other cases, I tend to follow the recommendation outlined in the Physical Review Style and Notation Guide, namely

Square brackets enclose a phrase that already contains parentheses.
Form:
Recall that the Brown-Green theory [see Eq. (2)] is still to
be . . .

In my opinion, ending with ")]" looks less awkward than "))" and keeps the syntactical meaning of each bracket clear. Of course, depending on where you're publishing another style guide may dictate another solution.

If you do this, given that in normal prose ( ) are used for parenthetical statements, I would at least do "(see Eq. [2])" instead of having the square brackets on the outside.

@terdon I could see that looking better, but being harder to automate with \eqref{}.

@terdon That would work for general writing purposes, but presumably not with “a function (f[x])”. Certainly in programming terms (and I’m guessing also in mathematics), square and round brackets have different functions, and you can’t simply adjust them to the containing typography for aesthetic purposes – a function with an argument is quite different from an array element, for instance.

In general there is nothing wrong with having a math expression inside a parenthetical comment, even if that math expression itself uses parentheses. So something like "a periodic function (for example, sin(x))" would be fine.
However, I would consider it a bad idea for the math expression to be the only thing inside the parentheses, as in your example, since it creates confusion about whether the outer parentheses are part of the math expression (which can change the meaning). This applies even if there are no inner parentheses.

"bracket space  space bracket" is also a bit clearer

I second this and would suggest adding an extra word to make it clearer if "f(x)" was the only contents of the parenthesis. For instance: "(namely, f(x))".

This is generally permissible. However, consider also adding spaces between the outer parentheses and the inner content, especially if you can use thin spaces or hair spaces. This increases legibility.

I completely agree with the other answers suggesting using commas or other approaches, but if you really want the parentheses, a simple trick to make them look a bit clearer is to use a different font for the f(x), just as I did here. Use a monospaced font for them and that should allow your reader to easily distinguish between the parentheses that are part of the text and those that are part of the mathematical notation. Something like this in LaTeX:
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}

This leads to a function (\texttt{f(x)}), which then ...

\end{document}

Which looks like this:

The change in font, especially to a monospaced font which we are used to seeing used for code in technical documentation, makes it easy for the eye to separate the outer and inner parentheses.

A coma, as opposed to a comma, seems a bit extreme ;) Assuming f(x) shows up in more than one place, I would suggest that it should be written in a consistent font.

lol, thanks @Anyon, coma averted. Yes, I would use the same approach in all cases and clearly indicate what is prose and what is mathematical notation or code with a different font.

This goes against the common conventions in mathematical texts, however. I would consider the tt font appropriate only if you are speaking about the computer implementation of a function in a programming language, not about a mathematical function.

@FedericoPoloni I'm sure you're right, my field isn't mathematics. I did also try with a function ($f(x)$) but that wasn't as clear so I didn't suggest it.