text:
What to do when one my co-authors is openly insulting me but the others remain silent?
I previously asked this question Senior co-author is jeopardizing two years of work.
I have been trying to address my senior co-author's concerns. However, he is still not happy, and has now started to openly insult me in the group email discussions among all co-authors.
What should I do? My supervisors and other co-authors appear to choose to remain silent. I will be soon applying elsewhere, so I would like to have good recommendation letters. It is becoming difficult to care what happens to the paper, since it would be in preparation anyway while I am applying elsewhere.
Academia is a small world, so I would like to remain on as good terms as possible with everyone, including the difficult co-author.
(PS. I would accept the highest voted answer in the other question but I lost my login)

Regarding your PS: Please take a look at I accidentally created two accounts; how do I merge them?

What is your advisor doing? This question should go to him and preferably in person.

You don't provide any information about the nature of the insults.  That's understandable, but on the other hand it might be helpful to know in order to properly respond.  E.g. "You're an idiot" and "You obviously don't understand Bayesian statistics" are both insults but merit different responses.

As the others said, you can seek support from your advisors, by approaching one or more of them on an individual basis.  But there's one other thing you can do: you can stand up to the person who's behaving like a jerk.  Here's a standard formula that can help you: "Bob, I am not accustomed to being spoken to that way."  This works best if you say it in person, and look him/her in the eye.  You don't need to frown -- a neutral tone and expression give it more strength.  If that doesn't do the trick, you may need to do some targeted ignoring.  Over email, this might be to respond to ...

everyone in the group except the jerk.  Hopefully it will be sufficient to do this at most a handful of times.  //  There are some arrogant a___s in Academia.  Those who behave that way tend to do it because people around them let them get away with it.  //  Just to reassure you -- often, the bystanders remain silent because they feel embarrassed by the unpleasant behavior.  Don't take their silence personally.

Things have gotten personal, it is best if you remove yourself from the fight. Anything you say, no matter how sensible or innocent, is likely to be poorly received.
Instead, talk with your most trusted collaborator and ask them to defuse the situation (and follow up, to make sure they do!), preferably someone who has received the insulting emails first hand. Once your difficult collaborator has calmed down, you can all meet and discuss the paper. (NB: it is possible that some have already started to talk to him about this in private, or they are just waiting to see what on Earth is happening with you two, so silence doesn't necessarily mean inaction).
I'd say it is rather unusual for someone to snap at you, so there may be something else going on here, and perhaps you should look into it. On the other hand, some people are plain rude. In any case, personal insults are not acceptable, and this behaviour should not be tolerated.

The best thing to do now would be to consult your supervisor/advisor in person.
You might also consider a relook at the insults to see if you could get anything constructive from it.
If the criticisms are not constructive; the case in which the motive is to purely do harm, then plainly ignore them as your supervisors do. In the world of research you should be able to bear with such situations. Not all would favour your outcomes or ideals (or even your success for that matter).
IMHO, if such criticisms are really destructive and hence affecting your research performance and focus, consider not to coauthor with those people in future.


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Cite a paper currently under review
I wrote a paper a few months ago, which I submitted to a journal and is currently under review. My field is mathematics.
Lately I have been thinking about a few things with a colleague and we came up with a small project which uses the results of my paper. The new paper is already written, and we are planning to submit it to a journal (not the same one).
The results from my paper, while obviously original, are not unexpected, and they extend previous (published) results to more general situations. This means that, at least for experts, the results themselves should be correct, so it's not something suspicious.
Is it acceptable to submit our new paper and cite the relevant results from my previous, still under review, paper? I don't think I want to wait for acceptance since it could still take a few more months and job application time is getting closer.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that my paper is available online, both on my home page and the arXiv.
EDIT: In Citing a paper under review in 2 different conferences there is a somewhat similar situation. I think mine is different in two aspects:
1) the fields, and hence the common practices, are generally different.
2) the second paper in question is with a second coauthor. It's out of the question to consider merging both papers into one, for example.

A common way to handle such a previous submission that is still under review is to create a technical report out of the previous submission, publish this report on your home page or on arxiv.org, and cite this technical report in your new paper.
In this way, reviewers can take into account the previous results without needing to have this paper published formally.
In case your previous paper gets accepted while your new paper is still under revision, you could update your new paper in a revised version.

Oh I forgot to mention, the paper is available both on my homepage and in the arXiv (not as a technical report, however; there is no such thing in my field).

I think in this case, you can cite directly the paper in the arXiv, maybe including a direct link to the pdf.

Yes, just cite the arXiv version. Probably, by the time your new paper is accepted, the older paper will have been, too, so you can update the citation to the published (or to-appear) version.

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How can I find the original article of an often-plagiarised work?
I am currently trying to read an article on a particular topic. I really want to read and reference the proper original article, and attribute the work to the ones who deserve it; however, I'm finding it hard to determine just who that is.
I have found articles, all of which seem to be ripped off from the same source. It could be that one of them is the original, or none of them are. (Some of them are obviously fake.)
I'm inclined to believe a particular one is legitimate. It's the one with the earliest date, which admittedly can be faked, but it's also in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library, which I trust.
However, I'm not even sure how much I can trust any digital source now, because one of the other articles turns up in search results from my own institute's digital library! It seems they're indexing a particular journal that is not trustworthy.
So how do I determine the original authors of the work, or who can I trust to tell me?

As an example of what I'm talking about, here's what I'm witnessing:

IBC Secured Key Partition for A Peer-To-Peer
Network in Delivery of Message
Implementing a Secure Key Issuing Scheme for Communication in P2P Networks
IBC Secured Key Partition for A Peer-To-Peer Network
SKIP: A Secure Key Issuing Scheme for Peer-to-Peer Networks

The third article is the one that is returned by my library's journal index. The last one is the one I believe to be original.

Difficult to say without seeing. Are they word-for-word copies with different authors and no citation?

Would you feel comfortable providing links to the articles?  One can speculate about what might distinguish between them, but that's not necessarily fruitful.

@PhilipGibbs Yes, they are "word-for-word" with about 95% accuracy. Either rewritten by hand or by machine. They don't reference the original authors and they present the ideas as their own.

@AnonymousMathematician I've edited the question to include examples.

That's quite a list that you have uncovered here. I also assume that the last paper is the original one, but the fact being that ICNS is a very bad conference itself, I would not be surprised if there is another ancestor that you simply have not found yet. The other papers are clearly plagiarized (1,2) or just plain terrible (3).

This is disturbing; even after using the tools that are supposed to be trustworthy, I still can't be certain that what I'm reading is original.

For more sad stories see Andrew Gelman's blog at http://andrewgelman.com/?s=plagiarism

Unfortunately, there's no completely reliable way to determine whether a paper is plagiarized, but I think you're right in this case.
The 2012 IJWMN paper and 2014 IJLTET paper are pretty clearly plagiarized.  Of course I can't prove anything, and one of them could in principle be the original, but it would take quite a story to explain how the same text was stolen and published by someone else three to five years earlier.  A one-year delay might be due to refereeing or a conference rejection, but three to five years is a very long delay for CS.
The 2013 AJER paper is a strange case.  It does copy some text without attribution, both from the 2009 paper and from the Wikipedia article on software design, but it has worse problems than that: the paper seems to have virtually no content beyond mock ups of what the user interface might look like, with messages such as "Your Secret Key is: 1004".  Even aside from the plagiarism, it's safe to ignore this article as having essentially no research content.
The 2009 ICNS paper looks to me like the original.  There are several tests one can do to try to gauge this:

You can do web searches for sentence fragments, such as "vulnerable to a large spectrum of attacks" or "introducing IBC into P2P".  If you do a reasonable job of guessing distinctive phrases, you'll find a short list of potential word-for-word plagiarized papers.  (Annoyingly, search engines will sometimes miss matches due to not parsing PDF files well, so there's a random element to this.)  In this case, searches show that the 2009 paper took some wording from a 2008 paper by other authors, such as the bit about vulnerability, but seems not to have copied the whole paper.  The borrowed wording is objectionable, but it doesn't invalidate any originality in content.

You can investigate the prestige of the journal/conference.  Plagiarists are less likely to get away with publishing in high-prestige venues, because their theft is more likely to be noticed.  I don't think ICNS is particularly prestigious, though, so this criterion doesn't help.  The papers from 2009 are archived by the IEEE, but the IEEE archives a lot of junk on behalf of other conference organizers, so the IEEE archiving shouldn't be viewed as indicating high quality.  It's very different from journals or conferences run by the IEEE.

You can see whether there are a lot of citations.  That wouldn't prove anything, but it would suggest that people citing the paper weren't aware of plagiarism allegations.  In this case, Google Scholar finds only four citations, so we don't learn much.

So in summary, it looks likely that the 2009 paper is the original (although I've only looked briefly, so it would be worth doing a few more searches).  That's a remarkable collection of plagiarism you've uncovered, and I can see how it would be unsettling, but I think this is an unusual case.

I think that this example, sadly, is anything but unusual. The number of fake pay-for-publish 'journals' that will accept anything without even reading it, and publish it with a science-ish look skyrocketed in the last couple of years. Now the readers have to do the editorial work, something that theoretically the authors already paid for.

+1 for a good all round answer, but this is probably more common than any of us would like to believe. Just last week I found 2 identical journal papers with different authors, 5 years apart when preparing a plagiarism case against a student. I had a similar experience last year as well.

One approach is to filter by journal.

The so-called 'American Journal of Engineering Research' (article 1)
The 'Academy & Industry Research Collaboration Center' (AIRCC,
publisher of the 'International journal of wireless & mobile
networks', article 2)
The 'Association of Computer Electronics and
Electrical Engineers' (ACEEE, publisher of the 'International Journal
of Latest Trends in Engineering and Technology', article 3)

are all fake journals and 'predatory publishers' as listed by Jeffrey Beall's list.
This means that no scrutiny was applied in the publishing process, in fact there was no editorial process whatsoever, and thus instances of plagiarism are to be expected. I would recommend not to cite anything found in these pseudo-journals.
The other clue is the publication date obviously. The IEEE mark does not constitute an insurance of quality in itself, as pointed out by Anonymous Math. but I would say that it is your best shot in this case.

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Is it hard to start a PhD programme after leaving to work in industry?
Currently I'm finishing my master program in computing. I need to decide between going to industry and starting a PhD programme. Having worked a bit with research and industry I prefer the former so far, however I wouldn't like to close my career paths.
Is it hard to resume education after working in industry (assuming 'ideal' conditions such as work related to chosen field, good master project from good university etc.)?

Are you asking about your chances of being admitted to a PhD program, or about the emotional/financial difficulty of becoming a student again?

@JeffE: chances of being admitted, although any input about emotional difficulties would be appreciated (I am more aware about financial aspect of academic carrier).

Is it hard to resume education after working in industry (assuming 'ideal' conditions such as work related to chosen field, good master project from good university etc.)?

In short: NO.
I did exactly that and I think that was a great thing. Being in computer science, this gave me solid experience in software engineering and pragmatics of "real-world" solutions. The benefits I feel till now (after completing my doctoral studies and working as a relatively senior post-doc (3+ years after thesis defence) are these: 1) good feeling for what "societal" problems are and how does my research translate to practice (at least hypothetically, but in a plausible way) and 2) allows me to be involved in applied projects in any role from low-level programmer, through technical lead to project manager. All this is vital in writing project proposals and project execution. In a nutshell: experience in industry, when used wisely, can give you an "entrepreneurial" attitude, which definitely is an advantage over students who plunge to doctoral studies right after completing their master's degree. The only slight downside is that you might end up as one of the oldest PhD students in the group. But I never perceived it as a problem.
Finally, all the above applies to experience in European context (in particular: DE, NL, BE). I have no clue about the cultural issues regarding your question in other parts of the world.
Later edit:
When it comes to the emotional and lifestyle part of the decision, of course there are issues to consider. Going from an industrial position to doctoral studies is almost always a financial downgrade. Perhaps more in countries where a PhD student has a student status (US, UK), than in places which treat PhD students as university (public) employees (DE, NL), salaries tend to be higher in the latter. My own attitude, however, was this: since at that point I did not have kids yet, I always thought that should the life demand more money, or when I won't like the academic life, with the sound experience from industry I shouldn't have a problem going back any time. This definitely took a huge amount of pressure from my shoulders while pursuing my PhD, since I did not worry about my future (in career, or financial terms) - unlike my "purely academic" peers. Even till now, I feel confident (perhaps I fool myself) that should the academic path not work out in the next few years, it's not going to be the end of the world for me (again unlike for some of my peers). To sum up: with the confidence that I am fit for industrial career, I can pursue my passion in academia, rather being under pressure to produce. So I would add this as yet another benefit.
P.S.
To a more extreme note: I can point fingers to at least two people who after a long career in industry embarked on doctoral studies in their 50s and became successful researchers in their fields afterwards. Similarly, there are many people who after completing their PhD went to industry for awhile (5-10 years) and later came back to academia - though that feat seems to be harder to manage than the previous one. So everything is possible...

Even later edit (8 years later): I do no longer work in academia, at certain point 1) my family had enough of moving, 2) I ended up in a region with very competitive universities, 3) since I probably did not belong to the top notch, but let's say just slightly below, at certain point my funding dried out and I did not get a suitable professorship in that region. This led me to first seek job in industry again and later to start my own company/start-up trying to capitalize on all the scientific knowledge I collected. Retrospectively, my career as an engineer before joining academia turned out to be a great asset once again. I could claim very solid history in my CV and I was immediately hired to senior positions. Also, the academic training in research creativity turned out to be a very useful asset when I started my own company later on. All in all, I am happy about this career path. Maybe this later edit will inspire others too... Good luck!

I'm interested in US/UK universities so I would assume relatively similar cultural context (especially in UK, which roughly follows Bologna Accords).

Did you mean "everything is possible" in the end?

Did you have any kind of research experience when you applied for a phd after having worked in the industry for these years?

@Niko not really. You have to start somewhere :-).

From an admissions standpoint getting into graduate school after a few years in industry is not much harder than going straight from undergraduate. Some undergraduate programs in the US offer 4+1 programs which make getting into a Masters program much easier, which in turn makes getting into a PhD program easier.
Becoming a student again after working in industry can be a hard emotional and psychological shift. Your pay will be cut in around half (maybe even more). In the US you will likely be expected to complete some more coursework. For some it is hard to get back into the coursework mindset after a few years absence: Assuming a linear scale, it is the difficulties you face every fall as a returning student multiplied by 10 (or so). It might even be an exponential scale. It can be hard. Being a grad student is nothing like being an undergraduate student nor is it like working in industry. The job of a grad student definitely doesn't end at 5 pm and tends not to have 2+ weeks of vacation. There is also considerable uncertainty associated with long term job prospects that are absent in industry work.
That said, those who love academics often find them selves out of sorts when working outside of academia and relish returning "home".

Becoming a student again after working in industry is a hard emotional and psychological shift. — Not necessarily.  For me, returning to academia after four years in industry was more a relief than anything else.

@JeffE you are right. I have edited in attempt to make it a little less universal.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned in the answers to this question pertain to recommendation letters, which are a key and important part of the application process. If you decide to leave academia for an extended period (more than a year or two), it would be wise to keep in touch with your advisor and some other professors so you don't surprise them with a "could write me a letter of recommendation for a PhD program" many years down the road. They need to be able to comment explicitly on your potential to do research, and (for U.S. universities) you'll need three solid letters to be competitive.
I might suggest asking for letters of recommendation now, and plan on contacting your letter-writers later to ask them to look back over the letters, and update if necessary. This way they aren't scratching their heads trying to (1) remember you, and (2) write a quality letter a few years after they knew you and your research.
By the way, I started a Master's/PhD program about 15 years after I got my Bachelor's (and another Master's in a different field), and finding appropriate and relevant letter-writers did prove a bit challenging. I ended up getting a letter from my then-boss (science department chair at the high school where I taught physics), a professor of education from my previous Master's degree, and a physics professor with whom I had been taking some "physics pedagogy" classes (and all for degree programs in computer engineering!).  In the end, I successfully got accepted into many of the schools I applied to, but I'm sure my case would have been helped if I had letters that commented more specifically on my ability to research.

Great point. These days I am having a similar situation ever after 5 years gap...


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Does a significant participation weight on the final grade increase classroom discussion?
Currently at the institution that I study, we have class participation which is enforced (more or less) by making it a significant percentage of the final grade.
For instance, one of my classes has participation as 20% of the final grade. We are marked on the basis of how much we participate each class on a scale of 1 - 5.

Question: Are there any research papers which show (or don't) that having a high participation weight causes a majority of the class to repeatedly participate?

My Observations.
Based on the two classes I have been in where the participation weight has a significant impact on the final grade (>20%), I have noticed that the same people (more or less) talk each class; the majority of the class does not participate at all. Furthermore, the "discussion" is not a discussion but rather a question and answer with very few follow ups.
Thanks for your time!

I'd be really annoyed by such an enforcement...

Do you want to know if it increases discussion, or if it increases productive discussion?

@ff524 Ideally, I would like to know if increases productive discussion.

@MassimoOrtolano: Pretty much every non-technical course I took at my undergrad in here in the U.S. had some form of participation grade. To be honest, it's less annoying than it first sounds -- the courses I took that had it were by design discussion-based courses, so if you didn't want to talk you didn't bother taking it in the first place.

@tonysdg When I was a student, in my country, there was no such thing as a non-technical course in the curriculum of an engineer. Nowadays there are a few (luckily not too many).

It is of course difficult to judge objectively whether a discussion is productive, but there is some literature on the subject.
A 2010 review [1] on classroom participation in college says about graded participation:

Course policies on participation as set by the instructor also impact student participation. Berdine (1986) and Smith (1992) suggested that whether or not students participate depends on how much their participation counts toward their final grades. The “pearls of wisdom” approach where students record their participation each day to count toward their end of semester grades was found to be effective in increasing participation in the assessed course and reported to increase participation in other courses (Junn, 1994). Fassinger (1995a, 2000) suggested that students should earn extra credit rather than counting participation as part of a student's grade, and Boniecki and Moore (2003) and Smith (1992) found that rewarding students with extra credit did increase participation.

and

Mandatory participation (Dallimore, Hertenstein, & Platt, 2004) and calling on students, even when they have not volunteered (Auster & MacRone, 1994; Dallimore et al., 2004) can both be effective practices for encouraging participation. However, Moguel (2004) noted mixed perceptions of cold-calling, and Karp and Yoels (1976) noted that this happens in only about 10% of classroom participation.

The paper by Dallimore, Hertenstein, & Platt [2] mentioned above uses a student survey, and asks students what they thought was effective at improving classroom discussion:

A questionnaire was administered to students on the last day of the course. We asked students to respond to questions regarding what professors do or say that: (a) increases student participation and (b) either increases or decreases the effectiveness of the discussion.

Some students cited graded participation as increasing student participation:

(This is part of "Table 1 Student Responses Regarding Quality of Participation and Effective Discussion Factors")
However, they used cold-calling alongside grading participation, which students seemed to find important:

Notable in Table 1 is the fact that graded and required participation is a major category that emerged for both quality and effectiveness. Respondents repeatedly identified the importance of graded participation, suggesting that instructors should "make it a significant part of our grade." When asked what a professor says or does to increase the quality of student participation, grading and requiring participation were regularly mentioned (including responses which would be considered cold calling according to our definition). For example, one student observed, "the fact that professors call on most students to answer a question increases my incentive to prepare [thus enhancing discussion quality]."

A more recent study [3], also using a student survey, found that in a survey before the course,

43% of students surveyed indicate they participate more when participation is graded.

After the course (which had required, graded participation), a little over 40% of students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement "I participated more in this class because participation was graded":

(Table 5)
and roughly 30% of students said they participated more than in other courses:

(Table 6: Participation Comparison: Current Course to Prior Courses)

[1] Rocca, K.A., 2010. Student participation in the college classroom: An extended multidisciplinary literature review. Communication Education, 59(2), pp.185-213.
[2] Dallimore, E.J., Hertenstein, J.H. and Platt, M.B., 2004. Classroom participation and discussion effectiveness: Student-generated strategies. Communication Education, 53(1).
[3] Paff, L.A., 2015. Does Grading Encourage Participation? Evidence & Implications. College Teaching, 63(4), pp.135-145.

Does any of those studies asked the students if they considered useful for their learning being "encouraged" to participate through grading?

@Massimo I don't remember whether this was in response to a specific question or an open-ended question, but students did say they prepared more for class because of required participation in class. (I'm not a social scientist, but to me, "Was this useful for your learning" doesn't sound like the kind of question they ask on such surveys.)


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How should 'van'-names be ordered in a bibliography?
How would names with 'van', written in the Dutch style - e.g. van Beukering, J., be ordered in a  bibliography?
Do we count the 'van' element so that e.g. van Beukering, J. would be some point after Campbell, S. - or do ignore the 'van' element so that the first letter is  and would therefore come before Campbell in a bibliography?
Does this depend on whether the author uses the Dutch 'van X' style or the American 'Van X'? Obviously concatenated forms such as Vancouver, C. would be counted as .

Whatever you do, please, please, do not put "Hendrik Frans van Lint" under "L" and "Louis Van Lint" under "V".

The rule I learned: for multiple-word surnames, use the first capitalized word.

There is an anecdote about mathematician John von Neumann.  He and his two brothers emigrated to the US at different times.  Their new surnames became: "von Neumann", "Vonneumann", and "Neumann".

This depends on the specific style or country. In the Netherlands, surnames are sorted by the "main" part, so van Beukering would come before Campbell. On the other hand, in Belgium it is sorted by the first letter of the surname. There capitalization is also dependent on how the name is registered in the passport. In the Netherlands, one would write "Van Beukering" if the first name is omitted, and "J. van Beukering" if the initials or first name is there.
In short, it may be difficult to tell if you are not a native speaker. It is probably best to just pick one of the alternatives and stick with that.

Unless he's citing almost only dutch authors I'd avoid it, as it would be inconsistent with the bastardized dutch surnames that there are in the US and France (e.g. Vandermonde in France, the matrix guy) that would end up under V.
It's not like dutch surnames come up that often anyway, and in other languages these von/de/di/da particles aren't so frequent.

The authoritative reference for this type of question (for librarians, at least) would be the publication "Names of Persons" by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, which is available for download here:
http://www.ifla.org/files/assets/cataloguing/pubs/names-of-persons_1996.pdf
Here's what it says about 'van':

If the person is Dutch, "van Beukering" should be sorted under B
If he or she is Belgian, sort it under V (but note the small print that says Belgian libraries aren't consistent across the country)
If they're from the US, sort it under V

The problem is that following these rules strictly is rather likely to confuse your readers, so I wouldn't actually recommend using different formats for people of different origin (though you will find this in library catalogues!). Instead, I suggest you pick one style and stick to it, as suggested by the other answers. Nonetheless, I think "Names of Persons" is worth consulting if you encounter name formats you're unfamiliar with.

There are varying conventions, obviously. Pick one, and you might have biblio entries "van B (see B... van)" or vice-versa, especially if you have a large bibliography. That way you serve everyone. (I don't know whether automated biblio software can be immediately configured to do this automatically, but there are obviously work-arounds.) That is, functionality trumps everything else.

You might be right about the automated software, but I imagine something like BibTeX would count it as a V and not a B.

Bibtex is aware of this, and you can choose to sort on the "von" part or not. This depends on the specific style you choose. At least I remember it is one of the options if you want to make your own .bst style with makebst.

Biblatex+biber, which is the modern alternative to bibtex, supports sorting in different languages fully according to the Unicode standards. Just use \usepackage[backend=biber,sortlocale=de]{biblatex}, or omit the sortlocale and have it automatically picked up from the babel language.


text:
How to choose participants for a study?
I want to know how can I get some participants for an empirical research study I would be conducting. Does universities have systems in place to call/recruit participants or do I have to find them myself?

You've mentioned elsewhere that you're a Masters student moving into a Ph d program.
As far as I know, universities do not make arrangements for this kind of work(recruiting from other universities/asking other Professors to collaborate). Lecturers can however, put up a notice asking students to register for an independent study under them.
Alternatively you could look for online collaborators. However, this can be an extremely time-consuming thing to do.

What do you mean by "participants"? If it is about a psychological experiment, try asking on http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/.

You will almost certainly have to recruit study participants yourself. As others have suggested, speak with your advisor to out whether there are any participant pools he's used in the past. If you find others that he hasn't used before it's a good idea to make sure he's OK with the pool before you dive in, so to speak.
Note that, in some fields, the pool of participants can be a significant limiting factor to the generalizability of the study results. Think very carefully about exclusionary criterion before settling on something. Note also that your IRB may require you to provide justification for exclusion/inclusion of certain populations (i.e., children, pregnant women, drug users). Try to make sure your population sample is as inclusive as possible.

“he's OK with the pool before you dive in” — we see what you did there!

I am not aware of any university run participant pools. I am aware of many departmental run and research group run participant pools. Some charities and companies also run participant pools.
It is quite possible that you will not have to recruit the participants yourself. Your supervisor and/or colleagues would be a good place to start asking about participant pools. Failing that, all universities have an institutional review board (IRB) or independent ethics committee that might be aware of participant pools in your research area.

At the universities I've worked in North America, human-subject studies (esp. those funded by taxpayer-funded research) must be approved by a research ethics committee. The ways to recruit participants is something that must be stated and approved. Over the years, committee members have offered lots of advice about how to recruit subjects, as they have seen many projects and many experiments. A professor has to submit a project for approval, so you'd have to coordinate it with an adviser. You can probably consult with committee members before you submit the request.
The studies I've managed have recruited participants in simple and effective ways: e-mail lists, university newspapers, facebook, flyers posted on campus, etc. As others have pointed out, the means of recruitment will affect the generalizability of the study results.
I saw one project that had trouble finding enough participants via the declared means (flyers), but it was not possible (because of the ethics committee re-approval) to use another means to recruit (e.g., last-minute facebook campaign) to try to find more participants. Be careful not to lock yourself into a way that's too limited.


text:
How to improve myself as a lecturer?
I am a new lecturer in the field of Computer Science. I got my MSc and I would like to go for a PhD. However, I would like to improve my teaching methods and way of thinking before I pursue this goal. Any recommended books or articles?

Take a pedagogy course?

"Practice makes perfect". I was never trained to be a teacher but during the course of my PhD, teaching a couple of courses over and over again helped me develop oratorical fireworks relevant to the course material.

@drN I’m not so sure practice (by itself) makes perfect. Pedagogy is a field of research, and rediscovering all by yourself what others have discovered in decades of research might take more time than your career's length :)

I recommend reading Dave Clarke's answer to the following question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/3575/how-to-evaluate-students-resources-on-educational-assessment-for-higher-educati

My suggestion: don't lecture. Humans weren't designed to learn sitting in a chair for hours listening to someone else.

@F'x Agreed, however one cannot teach "how to teach". It is an aptitude that is honed. Yes, pedagogy would perhaps give you terms and definitions of the various methods of teaching etc but wouldn't adhering to a log book of rules, in a way, constrain the teacher?

Having recently done pedagogic training, after teaching for 4 years, I found it to be an eye-opening experience. One can optimise one's own teaching method, but by learning about what else is out there, one can potentially find better teaching methods. Most  of these methods go beyond the delivery of lectures – lectures are but a small part of the whole picture.

@JoshRagem: Your suggestion is rather empty. What should  be done in lieu of lectures?

I recommend this video podcast entitled Teaching College-Level Science and Engineering by Sanjoy Mahajan.

I agree with @JoshRagem. Lecturing in the traditional sense is ineffective. Use other techniques to teach. E.g., http://cte.uwaterloo.ca/teaching_resources/tips/varying_your_teaching_activities.html

@Fuhrmanator: Thanks for providing concrete suggestions of what to do instead of lectures. Why not post as summary of this page as an answer, as you are essentially saying that one way to improve oneself as a lecturer is to use techniques other than lectures.

@DaveClarke done!

OP: Didn't you offer a bounty because: Authoritative reference needed - Looking for an answer drawing from credible and/or official sources.? It seems odd that you award the bounty to an answer that has no references cited. Not saying it is a bad answer, but you don't seem consistent with your bounty request/reward.

Don't be disorganized and do everything way earlier than is necessary/required of you.

The way I learned how to lecture was just drawing on things other professors did that were beneficial to me.  If you are going to get a PhD however, teaching will be secondary.  The focus on the program you go in will be teaching you how to conduct research and write papers for publications.
That being said the best way to improve, in my opinion, is to record yourself giving a lecture.  Just audio is fine, make sure you are covering the context... Every lecture I give I make sure I have the following components in it:

I get to class early to talk to students as they come in and make sure I have all of the equipment ready to go.
I bring some anecdotal humor into the lecture. I don't sit there and tell knock knock jokes, but I make it relevant to them.
Use previous material to frame the new material.
Let them go early if I finish early.

In addition to that I use an Audience Response System, or clicker, and that helps keep the students actively engaged (class of 350 freshmen).

How does that clicker works?

The clickers are great, you have 2 options with it.  the first is to create a word document and show each question individually, the second is to incorporate it directly into your powerpoint slides.  I use the former as my lectures dont use powerpoint, I teach Excel and Access and find it better to just work through stuff on stage and have the clicker questions reinforce theories or practices.  The beauty of it is that it can port directly into blackboard or you can have it output the results as a spreadsheet so you can track student participation.

We use TurningPoint technologies for our clickers.  They are much better, IMO, than other systems we have tried

I was hoping for a device that gives the lecturer a mild electrical shock whenever the audience is lost...

@FedericoPoloni  I wish that was the case, keeping the attention of 350 freshmen engaged in an auditorium is tough work.  I have asked for them to wire the seats, so I can just push a button and zap whoever is in the chair to wake em up, but administration didn't find the idea as amusing as I did.
That being said, the clickers do wonders for student engagement and active learning.  Also eliminates the know-it-alls from constantly raising their hand, and gives the less confident student a chance to check themselves.  I am actually waiting for IRB approval so I can do research on clickers.

Informal feedback at my university suggests that students hate clickers.

In http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/teaching-college-level-science/id385156658 the author states clickers don't work. He prefers voting and group discussion to then change votes. There are some great examples in the podcast.

Maybe it is the type of clicker you are using, I am doing research for publication on student views of clickers and all of my preliminary data suggests that the students find them as a valuable instruction tool for reinforcing lecture.

@Fuhrmanator While the podcast does give great examples and interesting points, I would like to see some solid academic research that states they don't work... I have not been able to find any, and it would greatly help me with my own research.

@JohnnyB Clickers have the following disadvantages: Prep time to distribute/collect clickers every class, software configuration, vandalism (students give the most ridiculous answer to make the class laugh - it's anonymous), plus the arguments stated by Mahajan in the podcast. I Googled use of clickers in the classroom and found several scholarly articles. Some of them go so far as to say that clickers are not better than other forms of interactive learning.

@Fuhrmanator in my situation, and most I have seen, the students own their own clickers, they are used for class participation, so if a student answers something silly to make the class laugh, they hurt their own grade.  Clickers are, IMHO, the best way to keep a large lecture engaged.

@JohnnyB Ah. The non-anonymous aspect is precisely the complaint of Mahajan (he feels students think we're spying on them). So, it seems like you use it as a quiz mechanism (it counts for a grade). At my uni, the clickers are handed out every course if an instructor wants to use them, and must be returned at the end. No easy way to do grades based on them. I also tried vote.rs (mentimeter) which only requires a PC or cell phone, but also ran into the vandalism problem. I have classes of 40+

@Fuhrmanator ahhhh that makes sense, yea we use them for "class participation" points, and if they answer wrong they miss that point, we drop 10% of the incorrect responses.  The way you would have to do it sounds like a chore and a half and I would not want to use them either.

"The way I learned how to lecture was just drawing on things other professors did that were beneficial to me. " -- in a pedagogical workshop, I was told that you'll connect with only 10% of your students if you do this. It's because what we (instructors who've finished a PhD) found beneficial is because of our personality/values/priorities. Less than 10% of students (in an undergrad class) will go on to do a PhD, so they won't connect with those "beneficial" things. It's not to say they're bad, but if you want to connect to the others, you have do try other things.

It may work very differently depending on the group size, their skills and engagement. My only experience (when it comes to lecturing, not - giving a talk) is with teaching gifted high-school students, for other cases (less skilled or less motivated students, or stricter plan) it may not hold.
Never assume that students follow you, just because they are silent, nodding agreeably, saying that they follow you or even (especially?) repeating your phrases. By interaction see if they get the idea, sort of get the idea, or don't get it at all.
(And "make it slower" is not an universal remedy, because either they may be totally lost at this point, or they may not follow because it is already to slow to keep them awake.)
After giving a course ask a few students is person to name 3 strongest and 3 weakest points of it. (It's important to do it, i.e. to force to give 3 weak points, because otherwise they may be not that willing to do so. All courses have >=3 flaws. The questions is if they are minor or serious. And beware that a mean grade of a course (e.g. student gave you on average 7.6/10) is almost meaningless, even if split into categories; only text based comments make sense.)
Be inviting so they ask questions (compare: "exams are a sick thing, when the more knowledgeable person asks question the less knowledgeable one". ) Don't kill the natural curiosity. And remember, if they knew everything, then it would be not point fort them to attend your course.
(BTW: One of my friend was giving a candy for every student asking a valid question, regardless if simple or hard.)
If the material goes slower that you want, never (once again: never):

cut breaks (without a break many could leave the other part, learning not less),
just run faster (it makes it even more incomprehensible).

Just plan better the next one, given you have some feedback. Writing a lot of stuff on a whiteboard may trick you into believing that you explained them, but in fact you did a chaotic, unpleasant lesson. Compare (excuse me for an entropy joke):

Efficiency of teaching is measured by mutual information between you and your audience.
Not by entropy of your blackboard nor entropy your created in their minds.
Both are poor upper bounds.

Other things:

watch others giving a lecture,
record yourself giving a lecture.

I still have a hard time believing there were that many good points in that post. Very nice answer.

I am digging the entropy joke. (though I would have used 'nor' instead of 'or')

As JoshRagem said in the comments of the question, don't lecture. Bloom published it scientifically as "The 2 Sigma problem".
Some ways I found to make a class less of a lecture (items marked with a * are covered in Lecture 6 of Teaching College-Level Science and Engineering):

wait 5 seconds after a question (this is an eternity in front of 30+ students)*
use a feedback sheet every class meeting, to learn about your students*
use conceptual multiple-choice questions (individual or small groups)*
use conceptual multiple-choice with lots of discussion (entire group)*
buzz groups (although not easy to do when you're starting out)
keep traditional "lecturing" to maximum 10-minute bursts, followed up with questions, exercises, etc.

Interactivity Engagement takes time during the course, which takes away from presenting "content." The solution is to not teach all the content during class time. You'll have to expect students to do the reading for the most material, and use lecture time to validate, reinforce, personalize, etc.
Although I'm definitely not the best instructor, I know I have improved a lot thanks to some other points:

Get an evaluation from the "pedagogical resource" person at your institution (hopefully this person exists!). The evaluation was full of small, useful details about teaching. You might want to check your ego at the door, however, when you get the feedback.
Tell your students that standard lecturing is not efficient, and that you want to raise the bar. But to do that you expect them to be prepared (to have done the reading) when they come to course for the interactive part. If I find they've not done the reading, I start to give small quizzes on the reading at the start of every course (I have 3-hour courses, so it's once every 3 courses if you have a 50-minute course period). These quizzes are multiple-choice and the questions can be used as the conceptual questions as above. The value of the quizzes is minimal in their final grade, but it engages the students.
Tell your students that making mistakes is essential when learning. Encourage them to vote on multiple-choice questions. Sanjoy Mahajan states that "clickers" allow anonymous voting, which socially doesn't engage the students. It's important to get them to vote, but also to make them feel that being wrong is "more than OK" (because it's how we learn).
Keep training yourself about pedagogy; try to stay motivated to teach well. Pedagogical patterns may be of interest. My students have often said they can see I'm motivated and find it refreshing. They are generally more forgiving when they know I'm trying.
Relate material being taught to what students have learned before and will learn/use later. Anecdotes based on your real-world experience (if you have it) are useful. My students always ask me for more of that in my evaluations.
Apply the "repeat without repeating" pedagogical pattern (Google fails me on finding a reference). Basically, it means that different learner styles (are more likely in large groups) respond to different examples, so it's helpful to repeat the same concept in multiple examples.

EDIT I recently bought this book and found it very useful because it covers many dimensions of teaching that might not seem obvious to first-time teachers. It's in a kind of check-list style, with references to external sources if you want gory details on certain techniques: Davis, Barbara Gross. Tools for Teaching. 2nd ed. Jossey-Bass, 2009.

There are three books that I found quite useful.

McKeachie's Teaching Tips - this is small but dense, packed with good ideas (good to re-read from time to time)
The Joy of Teaching by Peter Filene - good for new teachers
Teaching Unprepared Students, by Kathleen F. Gabriel - good if you have students who are not really strong academically and you want to help them

Aside from books, you could consider getting a PGCHE (post graduate certificate in higher education) which is normally a 600 hour / one year course specifically on teaching to adults. You can get one via distance learning, if you're not in the UK.

In my University they had a feedback system for every professor at the end of the semester, where you could evaluate their performance through the semester.
I always find that copying is also a good thing, think which teacher do you think were really good or with which teacher did you really learn, and try to figure out what did they have in common.
This is a bit out of the box, but I found that teaching to little kids (5-6) is one of the best ways to learn how to engage an audience, since if they are bored they will tell you on spot and if they don't like you they will tell you as well.

As a beginner lecturer, the University (or other institution) that employs you may offer training courses. In fact, depending on the law of your country, they may even be required to do so. In all cases, it is in their best interest to help you become a better teacher, so they should be able to accommodate requests for such training. Ask your teaching supervisor or head of department. (One might argue that, even if they can't help you, they will appreciate the fact that you voluntarily working on improving your teaching performance.)

I taught high school physics for seven years before heading to PhD school, and the most important method for improving my own teaching was to observe as many other teachers as possible.  In both my teacher education masters program and at the high school where I taught, it was mandatory for new teachers to observe other teachers multiple times per week.  In fact, new teachers were given class observation duties that replaced other duties (e.g., cafeteria or study-hall duty) because it was deemed so important.
I found great value in observing all teachers, from the terrible (I once watched as a teacher ignored all raised hands and simply lectured in monotone for the entire class--the students looked like they wanted to jump out the window because they were so bored) to the outstanding, and everything in between. Obviously, you'll incorporate certain teaching methods into your own teaching based on your own style, but the more you observe, the more you'll see different variations and methods.
By the way, if you do want to figure out who the best teachers are at your school, you just simply have to ask the students.  It isn't a secret, and the students see so many teachers every year that they will gladly tell you who is the best (and worst).
Finally, if you do want to visit other teachers' classes, it is probably best to ask ahead of time.  While I wouldn't say it is rude to show up and ask to observe, it is courteous to do so ahead of time in person.

You may want to take some direction from how education schools teach the art of teaching to future teachers. Generally, the curriculum involves:

Coursework covering education theory
Practice designing semester-long (and sometimes years-long) curricula, as well as individual lesson plans
Student teaching, where the teacher teaches in the presence of an experienced educator and receives regular feedback

While you'll probably want all three to some extent, note that (2) and (3) involve other, more experienced educators giving you regular feedback, rather than books and articles. I don't think you'll be able to set this up yourself; this is a very involved process which requires a significant time commitment from the mentor. I would speak with your department and see if you can get backing to run a program like this, even if just for yourself.


text:
Should I report an accepted PhD thesis in which the literature review is copied verbatim from sources?
While writing the literature review for my doctoral dissertation, I picked up a few recent dissertations on similar topics from the library to get some pointers on references and style. As I was reading some of the articles cited in one of these theses, I discovered that this person had lifted large blocks of text from the cited works verbatim. Although the original works were cited, the borrowed text was not presented as a quote, but used directly in the thesis.
I checked a few more, just out of curiosity, and realized that basically the whole literature review by this author (who graduated with a PhD two years ago) was cut-and-paste verbatim quotes strung together (and who knows how much more of the thesis is plagiarized - I only checked this one chapter).
This really ticks me off, as I (and many students like me) spend a great deal of time reworking cited information into proper coherent explanations for our projects. I happen to know the offending author's advisor pretty well, as we currently work together outside of my graduate program.
Should I say something or should I just let this person get away with plagiarizing large parts of their dissertation?

Edit:
I still don't know what I will do about this -- no-one wants to be a tattle-tale, and it really isn't any of my business how other people go about getting their doctorates. However, as I am currently writing my dissertation, it really irks me when I see someone else getting away with this, as I know from experience how much hard work goes into writing a PhD thesis.
I just have one more comment -- I ran the chapter in question through the TurnItIn software, which I have access to as an instructor at my institution. The thesis came back as 52% unoriginal. Turnitin only counts exact matches, so the 52% figure doesn't even include some of the paragraphs that I caught, where the author has changed one or two words but kept the sentence structure.
I doubt that there would be any legal consequences, even if I report the thesis for plagiarism -- it is more a question of academic dishonesty and what steps the institution that awarded the degree would take. I will show it to my advisor and see what he says before I do anything.

If you know the author's advisor pretty well, starting with an informal chat might be a good way.   If you don't want to talk to him directly ...   Well, there's this other question I see, that might be, um, 'interesting'.   http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10733/what-to-do-with-otherwise-good-international-student-who-has-accidentally-plagia

If you do not want to put your name to the accusation there is nothing to prevent you from contacting the relevant person or body anonymously. Disposable e-mail addresses are easy to come by or you could simply post an anonymous letter to the relevant person.

I'm assuming, although you haven't clearly stated it, that the thesis author is not a co-author of any of the work reused in this fashion.  It probably also makes a difference if the earlier work came out of the same research group, as permission for such use may have been obtained (of course it should have been somehow disclosed, but perhaps not directly adjacent).  I did obtain permission from my lab director to reuse some problem-defining text from grant applications, although I ended up not using it.  Please clarify the connection between the authors of the thesis and cited works.

I'm not condoning this sort of thing, but it wouldn't surprise me to find that plagiarism of lit review sections is pretty common.  When I was doing lit review for my own dissertation, I found an article's lit review that was a sentence-by-sentence paraphrase of another's.  Not a word-for-word copy, but citing the same papers in the same order and saying essentially exactly the same things about them.  I can sort of understand why somebody would do this; writing a lit review is really tedious compared to writing about one's own research. Even so it's a bit of a cheat, I wouldn't recommend it.

A similar post may be found here (http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5997/should-i-report-an-accepted-phd-thesis-in-which-the-literature-review-is-copied/36830#36830), reflecting the experiences of someone whose thesis was plagiarized. It seems there is lack of clear guidance on how to handle such cases as each case is a little different, although the heart of the issue is consistent (academic plagiarism at the graduate level). Perhaps there is a policy gap in the academic institutional space in terms of resources and practices for addressing such issues.

Did you have the permission of the author to use Turnitin on the text? Turnitin stores copies, so you may have violated copyright (even if the thing is plagiarized).

This has been a fascinating post. I am astonished at course of action to take this to one's advisor (which reads as keep it secret) and even the rationalization of plagiarism. Is this what has happened to academia? Seems to be. Plagiarism is serious and it undermines research credibility. I would think the university would rescind the PhD granted. This should be made public by an anonymous informer and the university in question should be notified after the case has been made public.

There's a reason trust in science is falling in the US. I bet questions like this are a big part of that.

Wait until you graduate.

This is of course a sensitive issue. However, the ethically correct behavior is to notify someone responsible about the problem. Etiquette says to go to the advisor first, as the advisor is the person who, after the author who committed the plagiarism, stands to lose the most from the accusation.
However, if you feel squeamish about doing it by yourself, you can talk to your advisor about the best way to proceed.
The main issue on your part is if you will need to rely on the plagiarizer's advisor for recommendation letters. Then you should definitely proceed with caution, and with the support of your advisor, department administrators, or both.
Of course, make sure that you've done your due diligence before going public with your charges, and to have the evidence with you when you meet with anyone about this matter.

Thank you, that is a good point. The evidence is indisputable - large blocks of text, in some cases several pages, are copied and pasted (and duly cited (!) so easy to find in the original), but I do work in the same area as the dissertation adviser, and I don't want to embarrass him.

I'd strongly recommend going to your advisor first.

Just for further emphasis, take it slow, and be cautious. Also prepare to be disappointed and angered, there's a non-zero chance that the first response will be to ignore you and hope it all goes away.

@LukeMathieson or even get angry with you for exposing them...

That's what I meant. The advisor needs to be informed before going to the others. If there is no response, or the advisor dismisses it out of hand, then escalation is warranted.

This post doesn't mention the possibility of submitting it anonymously. I think it really should.

OP - agree with this.  It doesn't really affect you.  It won't change anything, and its going to piss people off.  If you are so inclined, mail the dean of the school after you graduate.  Focus on getting out instead of crap like this (i've seen it too).

My institution has a commitee in charge of this, does yours not have anything similar? There you can report such findings (even anonymously since the evidence is not depending on the person providing it). They will then decide upon the procedure to be followed.
Revoking a title is not an easy procedure in any case, also as there are large numbers of personal relationships entangled in it. I just know that almost any case where something like this happened, it ended in court.

If I understand you correctly, the only place in which text is known to have been lifted was the literature review. While it is inappropriate to do so, it's possible that only the phrasing can be considered as plagiarized (and even that, like @PaulHiemstra states, is not exactly the case since the author did cite the sources).
In other words, you do not have evidence that the actual research presented in the thesis is original and not lifted from anyone. That means one cannot claim that "large parts of the... dissertation" are plagiarized. Now, in theory, some other content could be plagiarized as well, but I would avoid suggesting this is the case.
Anyway, based on what you know there is nothing which merits a reconsideration of the awarding of the title. At most, the Ph.D. candidate should have been chided for failing to cite clearly enough, and require to resubmit his dissertation so that the literature review is less copy-pasty.
However, the dissertation's readers / examination committee should have picked up on this. They weren't doing their job and that's actually a different problem, which is even more important to address (among other reasons, because of the possibility they may have missed a more material plagiarism)
With that said, I think it is your duty as an academic to act here. My suggestion for the order of actions is as follows:

Inform your own advisor of this matter, letting him know you're going to talk to the dissertation author's advisor. Don't ask for his permission or anything - but he might have some relevant cautionary information.
Talk to the dissertation author's advisor. Tell him that the dissertation needs to be corrected, or at least an erratum added on all relevant pages in the physical and on-line copies. Ask him to contact his previous advisee (is that a word?)  about it, as though he (the advisor) noticed it himself, to make the advisee feel less uncomfortable and more obliged to act.
If the advisor agrees, you're done with this part (well, you'll need to check up on him). Stop reading this list
Tell him you intend to continue to pursue this despite his refusal.
Contact the dissertation author and ask that he address the problem.
If the author doesn't agree, write the both of them and threaten to report them (now they're both at fault; maybe the advisor already knew and didn't care).
If that doesn't work, try your grad student union / junior researcher union, and specifically your department's union rep. Don't have one? Too bad... anyway, the union might have some ability to apply pressure and the interest to uphold academic professionalism; and ratting someone out to his union is not as bad as ratting him out to the university authorities.
Talk to someone like the vice-dean in charge of graduate researchers, or a corresponding relatively-low-level official in charge of oversight of Ph.D. candidates' academic progress. (I mean someone in an academic capacity, not an administrative one).
Talk to your dean / department head.
If all else fails, publish an open letter. Make sure it's very polite, vitriol-free, makes no unfounded assumptions and does not demand anyone's head on a platter, merely that the issue be addressed and that the principles of professional academic behavior be better adhered to.

With this resolved, consider trying to talk to whoever in your university is in charge of appointing dissertation reader / examiner committees for Ph.D. candidates. There should be some kind of effort on his/her part to ensure committee members understand they need to notice such things.

There is no such thing as "only" a part of a dissertation is plagiarized. It is one indivisible piece of work! If they plagiarized in one section, how do you know that the others are not, if they have demonstrated a willingness to cut corners? You just don't know! It is bad academic practice to just copy someone elses literature review without reading the literature yourself. The person you are copying from may have made mistakes that you are propagating. The opiod crisis, for example, is partially due to a heavily copied reference that was quite wrong.

@DeboraWeber-Wulff: "It is one indivisible piece of work!" <- Not only is it divisible, it is already divided into chapters and sections. "If they plagiarized in one section, how do you know that the others are not" <- I only know what OP knows; and we know that the thesis has been reviewed by knowledgeable experts who did not notice any plagiarism. Still, you have a point and I'll edit my answer accordingly. As for the US opioid crisis - I am not aware of what you're referring to and we'd probably better not discuss that here in the comments.

in case after case of German law, courts have found that a thesis is submitted in one piece. That is, you can't say: Oh, but the rest is fine, because you don't know about the rest.
The copying of references without checking what they say is discussed here https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1700150 with reference to this letter to the editor https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM198001103020221 stating that opiods are not addictive. One should always check a reference and never just copy it.

@DeboraWeber-Wulff: 1. OP has not suggested they are in Germany. 2. German law does not decide what's true in principle and what isn't - only what's legal in Germany and what isn't. 3. The fact that a thesis is "submitted in one piece" does not mean that there is "no such thing as only a part of a dissertation is plagiarized."

my point is, that you just don't KNOW if there is plagiarism in the rest of the thesis! Software cannot find all plagiarism as it does not have access to all sources (and can't deal with translation plagiarism anyway). But if someone has demonstrated a willingness to plagiarize in one portion, why would you believe that the rest is okay? Where there is smoke, there is fire.

@DeboraWeber-Wulff: OP does not know whether any other thesis is plagiarized, either. They know of a (weaker) form of plagiarism in the literature review. They should act based on that knowledge, without assuming that anything else is plagiarized - although also without assuming nothing else is plagiarized. I'll try to clarify this further.

The person did provide the citations, so for me it is not clear if legally this person did something wrong. I would first try and find this out before taking any steps. Of course, I would not accept this kind of verbatim copying if I were a supervisor. The angle on takes in an article is always a bit different than in the cited work. In addition, paraphrasing the text shows that you have understood what was written.
And be carefull how you deal with this, some people would not appreciate you being a snitch (in their view). However, I agree with @aeismail that it is the scientifically ethical thing to do to at least report this. And do get some backup from your own supervisor/professor.

What do you mean by "legally"?  Copyright violation?  I don't think the law is the right framework for looking at this (if it's legal, that doesn't make it ethical, and if it's illegal, it's certainly not at a level where anyone would try to enforce it in court).

One outcome of this is that the person in question is going to lose their PhD if the plagiarism is proven. Then, it will be important that in a legal sense plagiarism can be proven. If it is going to be a warning of some sort, the legal part may be less important.

Hmm, I wonder whether this is country-dependent.  In the U.S. I don't think there are laws governing plagiarism except for copyright law, and the decision of revoking a degree is based on university policies rather than law.

Direct quotes were presented as paraphrases; that's a pretty clear violation of copyright law.

AFAIK, copyright law doesn't care about attribution: you can't copy substantial passages verbatim, with or without citation.  However, copyright violation would have to be pursued by the copyright holder (the original author), and this would be independent of any actions the plagiarist's institution might take.

@AnonymousMathematician: "the decision of revoking a degree is based on university policies rather than law": True, but the person whose degree is revoked might well decide to sue, claiming the decision was unfair, malicious, etc, etc.

@NateEldredge Sue who? On what basis? Plagiarism is a major no-no in academia, and automatically leads to revocation of degree in many institutes based on grad school policy. If the revocation is based on proofs (well, the thesis itself a proof) and well established, well known policy, on what basis one can say it is unfair or malicious? Also, the reporter is not responsible for a graduate school decision. If the report factual (it is), again, what to sue about?

@Greg: Some examples of alleged plagiarists suing: 1 2 3 4 5

@NateEldredge First, thank you. Second, out of the five examples you gave, at least four is unrelated situation and/or lost by the plagiarizer. The remaining one can be so general that make ANY kind of discipline based on policy and university rules impossible. If anyone anytime can show that someone could get away than rules should not apply to anyone.. Which is stupid, but I am not a lawyer to judge. But this case is also an argument for NOT letting anyone get away with any kind of misconduct, cheating etc, to not let any precedent happen.

@Greg: I'm not claiming the plagiarist will win a lawsuit. But an institution which takes a drastic action like revoking a degree may very well have to defend its action in court, if the plagiarist is sufficiently litigious. So it's not just a matter of internal policy.

Regarding "some people would not appreciate you being a snitch " - is this a university, or a school yard? The remainder of the answer is good, but the concept of a "tattle tale" is better relegated to elementary school.

Adults can act like children nonetheless. This kind of reporting can always have consequences, however unjust that may seem.

One possible course of action is to talk to the student's advisor about a "hypothetical," that is, ask him how he would feel if he were told that someone had plagiarized a PhD thesis in such-and-such a way.
One possible result is that he is entirely surprised, or better yet, indignant. Then you can follow up with your secret and tell him the truth about his student.
Another possibility is that he winks and then says something like "yeah, these things happen from time to time." If that's the case, he "knows," and then it's up to you to decide (from a political point of view), whether or not to bring it to his official knowledge.
This idea came from a novel, "Strong Medicine" by Arthur Haley, where a young doctor went to his hospital CEO to inquire about how he should advise a "friend" to report that a senior doctor (his boss) was operating under the influence of drugs. The CEO said, "I don't want to deal with problems from another hospital, but tell your "friend" to keep his mouth shut," then winked at the young doctor and told him how valuable the boss was to his hospital.
The young doctor had his answer.

The analogy is interesting, though there is certainly a gap between a PhD student copying work about the usage of commas in ancient French between 1743 and 1792 in Toulouse, and a doctor operating while high. I understand that this is obviously a novel and everything but the young doctor, in the second case, may commit a felony by not reporting that (IANAL but it looks quite so). The first case surely reduces our knowledge about comma usage in the past but the risk for current population is somehow limited.

"Hi, random professor, I want to know your opinion on this completely hypothetical scenario, that is totally invented." Sounds to me as convincing as "a friend of mine that is totally not me has this embarrassing question about drugs"

A lot of posts have already touched on the delicacy of this issue, and the vulnerable position the OP is in.  I agree whole heartedly, especially if your field intersects with this other person's field, as it presumably does.
Ethically, I think you're bound to report this; at the same time I don't think you're bound to make your own career path more difficult over it.  The obvious solution to me then, is to do it anonymously.
Create a random free email address somewhere without any identifying info involved, address your letter to a few appropriate people, and explain nothing about how you came upon the info.  Simply report exactly what you found, then be done with it.  I don't think it's your duty to make sure action is taken once you've appropriately reported it.  I do think one of the places you send it to needs to be an impartial university body though, like the registrar.
You don't go straight to the advisor who oversaw it, or only to your department, because worrying only about damage control isn't ethical either, and you would be potentially placing them in ethical conundrums as well.  I also don't think you go to your advisor, because then you're just punting a difficult thing that has a clear right answer on to someone else.  You're also potentially attaching your name to it; most departments are talkative places.
As you described it, it seems like several people did something wrong and there probably should be consequences.  If you help them avoid any consequences, are you complicit when it happens again?  I would think so.
Edit: I just noticed this is a necro'd old post, so hopefully this is useful for others besides the OP

I agree with this answer. Please, if you report it, do it anonymously. I was in a similar situation and I reported it. After it was determined that the two students in question did, in fact, plagiarise in their theses, I lost my faculty job due to the bad feeling toward me because I reported it. After several years, one of the former PhD students is still working there after several years, and the other is continuing his career elsewhere. Neither student even had to issue an erratum for his thesis. My career, on the other hand, is in ruins. If you can't report it anonymously, just let it go.

I'd recommend you to stay anonymous since your professors will be hostile to anything that reflects poorly on them and their institution. For example, they've been unable to just use Turnitin as a basic checker.
There are plagiarism hunters online who dissect theses for fun and entertainment. This might be a place to start.
In addition, you should contact the plagiarized sources.
Lastly, let chatgpt write all of your anonymous emails, so you don't give away your personal writing style.
It's important to point out academic misbehavior and you should have no second thoughts about doing so. Just take care of yourself in the process.

I strongly advise not to contact the supervisor of the other student directly. I have seen my share of scientific misconduct while i was in research and most of the time when a student crossed the line so hard the supervisor was either ignorant to it, tolerating it or outright encouraging it.
While i would have trusted my supervisor to do the right thing (i informed him about shady things and he reacted appropriately) this is where it gets tricky: If your supervisor and the other supervisor are friends it could end up not so well, but you should know your supervisor good enough to know.
So you could try go via you supervisor, inform he ombudsman or corresponding committee anonymously, or you could wait after you have your PHD until you notify the institution.


text:
Are there any online tools that allow you to figure out the names of the industry positions you should look for?
I am almost done with my PhD in physics (specifically, in MRI), and I am not sure which positions would fit me well. I am also not very familiar with the terminology used in the industry, so I am unsure which search terms to use. I am not asking SA to recommend me a job, but I do wonder if there's any tools or resources that could help in browsing the job market effectively.
My main question is thus: are there any online tools that allow you to figure out the names of the positions you should look for, based either on your preferences and your hard skills?
To illustrate the sort of things I would like to get recommended by some online tool, here are the positions I have looked for (and done interviews for) so far:

research engineer
R & D engineer
signal processing engineer
quantitative developer
data scientist

As an 'analog' example -and to address the Louic's comment below- there's Sarah Blackford's test for career choice. Surely there must be some online tool that does similar things?

Some feedback on why this is being downvoted would be nice. I think it's a valid question. And if the answer is obvious, do let me know.

I agree that this is a shopping question, but I doubt that this will attract a lot of answers because I suspect I am looking for something quite obscure. I will not attempt to salvage this question.

The words you are looking for are "phd physics", which when input into a jobs portal - if you don't know what these are in your local country, search using Google -  will find you all jobs that ask for applicants with a PhD in physics. You can also search Google directly with "physics phd jobs".

Somehow I thought that using that as a search term would only show me Physics PhD's, but it of course also searches the content of the job posting. Very nice suggestion!

Limiting your search to just 'physics' will be a disservice to yourself. The OP should at least try 'electrical engineering' or even just 'STEM' in there, and probably add some more specific key words for their particular skills. I post a lot of jobs where the degree could be physics, chemistry, EE, materials science, chemical engineering, ... just because the particular skills/interests of the person matter more than the title on the degree. Certain specialties end up in very different departments in different universities.

@JonCuster I think that depends on how many results one finds. If one does not find enough results with "physics phd", then one can broaden the search terms. But if there are lots of interesting results with "physics phd" then one's time would be better spent investigating those jobs than casting a wider net.

@Allure - I guess my point was that the skills and attributes of a job the OP wants are (perhaps) more important than the degree title. My job postings list required and desired attributes. A PhD in a relevant area is one of the requirements, but the stuff somebody gets excited about is in the desired listing.


text:
What is the conventional way of presenting combinations of things in a table?
For a paper I am writing, I need to name several combinations of things (specifically, certain combinations of mathematical equations/inequalities that impose specific constraints on certain variables). I thought of presenting this as a "binary table", like this for example:

Animal name
Eyes
Whiskers
Fluffy tail
Teeth

Goldfish
Yes
No
No
No

Cat
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes

Shark
Yes
No
No
Yes

Worm
No
No
No
No

..and so on (please ignore any biological inaccuracies, I hope you understand my point). The field I am doing research in is rather maths-heavy (neuroimaging). Typical journals are NeuroImage, Human Brain Mapping, Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, ...

Does this type of table have a name?
Would using "Yes" and "No" be appropriate? Or should I use ones and zeroes, or maybe dashes and asterisks? Or maybe just color the cell? Is there a canonical layout?
Could you perhaps provide me an example of how such tables are typically presented?

Your way of doing it is totally legitimate. You see such tables more often in the advertisements for credit cards, etc. than in the mathematical literature, but they aren't unheard of there (though the ones I remember now are from computer science for comparing the performance of algorithms). As long as you keep your table on a single page and don't resort to minuscule fonts in the cells, you can choose absolutely any way that clearly conveys the message. As to names, they are usually called Table 1, Table 2, etc. and referred to accordingly in the text.

A black dot for "yes" and empty cell for "no" would probably be easier to read, and take up less space.

@Louic Or checkmarks and crosses (could potentially be labeled green and red, respectively). In general, having some kind of graphical element to the table seems easier to read than just 'yes/no'.

Look at the journals that might publish your work to see how other papers format and label information of this kind.

Just so it's said...  Tables are a good, solid go-to for most data, but they aren't necessarily the best option. Generally speaking, you don't want to present raw data in a paper, you want to present analytical results, and choosing the best graphic representation for analyzed data is a bit of an art. You haven't really said much about your analysis, but if you're modeling constraints you might do better to create a line graph showing the various constraints, and position your animals spatially as points on the graph. But that's just a guess; give more detail and we can do better.

You could call it a Boolean table -- this has a technical meaning in the computer engineering field, but it seems to be roughly equivalent to what you are doing.

Welcome to Academia.SE. Your post got flagged for being "not an answer", so I suggested an edit to the text to make it a bit more "answer-like." Feel free to make further edits (or even delete it) if you like, but it's important that only real answers go in the answer box.


text:
After I put a paper on arXiv proving X, I found out someone had previously proved X already. What next?
I recently put a paper on arXiv proving X. Shortly after, I received an email from L letting me know that my result was proven quite a while ago by G. I was not aware of the paper by G and there is no reference to it made in my arXiv upload.
This happened for two reasons, primarily it was my carelessness, which I have no excuse for. The other reason is that there was a more recent paper by B published after the paper by G that proves a special case of X that also does not cite G as the first person to prove it. I had seen the paper by B and not the paper by G, so I thought X was still unproven outside of B's special case.
At this point, I do not know what to do. I have already responded to L thanking them for letting me know that my result was already proven, and I intend to update my paper when I get the chance with a new abstract, introduction, conclusion, and citations that acknowledge the paper by G.
However, outside of those two things, I do not know what to do, so here are some questions:

After I update the paper, should I email L again letting them know that I resolved the issue?
Should I send an email to G apologizing for the lack of citation?
Should I let someone (either G or L) know that the paper by B also misses their paper?
Should I let B know about the paper by G?
Is there anything else I should do?

I second @Buffy that in principle there is nothing else to do, as long as you update the preprint. I'd add that depending on the circumstances, the necessary update may turn out to be quite minimal - for example, if I was notified that my result appears in, say, a letter from Euler to Bernoulli, then I would probably add just a line to the abstract, not rewrite the whole thing, and also add a thank-you to the person who notified me (I would probably ask them first). Of course, if the paper of G is more recent and accessible then Euler, or if your proof falls along the same lines as G's, or if the two proofs are actually completely different and it is of interest to compare them - then the rewrites would be more substantial. All this would also affect the publishability of your work, so I would encourage you to ask a colleague with experience in the field to advise if/where you should submit your paper.
I would also encourage you to consider the opportunities that present themselves in your situation. You came in contact with L, who presumably is also a researcher in this field, you are now aware of the paper of G and can explore the work based on it, and possibly contact B to share that knowledge. While it is very much dependent on the importance/usefulness/applicability of methods and results in your or other fields, and the people involved, this is an opportunity to consider inviting B, G, and L to a collaboration. While "I rediscovered your result" is probably not a strong incentive for G, if it is actually "I rediscovered this result, because it turns out it is very interesting in this other field", then the incentive to have a discussion is stronger, and ditto for B (although let me stress that if you reach out to B, make sure that the message cannot be misconstrued as an accusation that they didn't do their due diligence reviewing the literature). Who knows what you can discover together, instead of working on the same topic in isolation. Again, it may be helpful to ask a colleague familiar with both the field and your result for advice here.
Finally, let me say that rediscovering known (or better said: published) results happens to all of us at some stage. I personally was once in your current position, and also was either L or G in various other situations, and I am also just now starting a collaboration that emerged from exactly this kind of 'unintentional networking'.
TL;DR: correcting the preprint and thanking L is all that is generally expected in this situation. Consider using your new information about the prior work to approach L, B, or G for a possible collaboration.

There doesn't seem to be anything else to do. Don't beat yourself up over missing a paper. There is a lot out there and it can be hard to see it all.
However, your paper may not be publishable, given that the result has already appeared. You can possibly do some extension(s) that would be publishable, but old results aren't very "novel", to publishers.
In some fields, like math, a different proof of an existing result might be worth publishing, provided that it provides some new techniques or insights into a general class of problems.

If they are grateful that L contacted them, it seems fair to "give back" and contact B, although it may depend on how old the paper by B is.

This kind of thing happens reasonably often, and can occur due to reasonable oversights of the available literature on a topic.  Sometimes a writer misses a relevant paper, and in the worst case, that paper renders their own work of minimal or no value.  Now that you are aware of the existence of this other paper, I recommend you undertake the following process:

Review and revise your existing paper to incorporate this new literature.  At a minimum, this would entail telling your reader that the result was previously proven in G.  You will need to make a decision on whether it is still worthwhile to include your own proof (is it a different approach?), whether to include the proof in G, and so on.  Upload the revised version to arXiv to replace the present version.

Once you have revised and uploaded your paper, you will need to decide whether it has any residual value given the existence of this previous paper.  If you decide it doesn't have any residual value, you can withdraw your paper from arXiv.  You can then treat it as a "working paper" on your own system that you might be able to come back to later if you have any further insight that would add value to the paper.

In regard to the decision of whether to withdraw your paper, the main issue is to decide whether "it's ready".  As pointed out in the comments below, rediscovery of an idea can be useful in science, even if it leads to some redundancy in papers.  Nevertheless, you might decide that the paper can later be extended in another way or refocused to add some novel results.  In the latter case you might decide to withdraw it for now and keep it as a working paper for later work.

I agree with most of your answer. However, things cannot generally be withdrawn from arxiv (it's in their policy) and I don't think the OP should, even if it were possible. It's understood that manuscripts on arxiv may miss some of the requirements for a peer reviewed publication, for example originality. I think uploading a revised version that accounts for the previously published proof is more than enough.

My understanding from reading here is that you can "withdraw" a paper on arXiv, and what happens is that the repository remains up there but it is listed as withdrawn and there is an explanation for the reason for withdrawal.  That would seem a reasonable outcome to me if OP concludes that his article has no residual value after revision.  Withdrawal reason could invite readers to see the other paper (with the original proof) instead.

I think it's a matter of personal opinion. From what I've seen searching for withdrawn arxiv submissions, it's generally done when factual errors are found in the paper, which make the conclusions wrong. In the case of the OP, I think amending the paper to acknowledge the existing proof is enough. In many cases previous proofs have been found even after a paper has been published on a peer reviewed journal and in those cases the paper is not withdrawn. Withdrawals are serious stuff reserved for academic misconduct, forged results etc.

A final comment, prompted by the recent chemistry Nobel prize awards. Rediscovery is a healthy part of science, not something to hide and be ashamed of (this is why I'm against the idea of withdrawing the arxiv submission). Ekimov had published about quantum dots in the Soviet Union in 1981, before Brus published similar results in the West in 1983. Brus was not forced to withdraw his publications and actually they have both just been awarded the Nobel prize, jointly with Bawendi who later improved upon their discovery.

@LucaCiti: Excellent observation.  I've updated the answer to note this point.


text:
What do I do when I can't find the source of this chapter of a book so I can cite it APA style?
I have found part of a book in .pdf file format and it contains some information I would like to use in my study. I'm trying to cite the book APA style, but I can't find any information on it whatsoever. I've spent ages searching around for any information I could find from within the PDF, but failed as only that specific PDF keeps popping up in the results. I can't make a citation if I don't even know the title of the book or the author.
My citation currently looks like this, with "Onbekend" meaning unknown and "z.j." meaning no year:

Onbekend. (z.j.). Onbekend. Opgehaald van
  http://wps.pearsoned.co.uk/wps/media/objects/10977/11240737/Web%20chapters/Chapter%2012_WEB.pdf

Which is unacceptable.
The part of the book in question is here.
What should I do now?

A 10-second google books search using a random sentence from the .pdf file suggests that it might be Modern Database Management [Pearson Education, 2015] by Jeffrey A. Hoffer and Ramesh Venkataraman and Heikki Topi.

Search more or Ask an expert.

@DaveLRenfro Whenever I search for any random sentence, even ones such as the one in the intro text: "distributed database, decentralized
database, location transparency, local autonomy", Google Books tells me there is no result and once again states the .PDF. How did you manage to create results?

Maybe I got lucky, but I copied the top line on p. 12-5 -- A significant trade-off in designing a distributed database environment is whether -- and did this phrase search.

That is incredibly strange! If I click your phrase search, it says "No books found" and then lists only the PDF from my question!

I searched for the first line or so in the introduction. Another route is it's from wps.pearsoned.co.uk I.e. Pearson education, it's got a chapter title and number you can search for too.

I checked the link AFTER I made the comment, and it worked, and it works now, a few minutes later. I got one book result that says no preview is available, but it does allow me to get information about the book (which I posted a link to earlier). I'm in the U.S.A. -- I wonder if that makes a difference?

I guess it makes a difference, check this out: http://imgur.com/a/XX52h (Dave's link)

Dave's links seem to work for me, in the UK.

The book your looking for seems to be:
Modern Database Management
By Jeffrey A. Hoffer, Fred R. McFadden, Mary B. Prescott
https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Modern_Database_Management.html?id=cYfDQgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y&hl=en

Also see: https://www.pearsonhighered.com/product/Hoffer-Modern-Database-Management-10th-Edition/9780136088394.html

Hoffer, J., Venkataraman, R., & Topi, H. (2015). Modern database management. Prentice Hall Press.


text:
How should I list the conferences and courses I attend as an undergrad student to my CV?
This is not really a duplicate of this question: Should I list conferences I attended on my CV?
I just finish my bachelor and trying to apply to a grad school. Of course, my CV is weak and strong LORs are what I should count on. However, I do want to strengthen my CV, so I want to list some conferences and courses that I have attended. So far, I have attended:

A specialty workshop held in my university. Actively helping behind the scene (put letters into envelops, be a reception, etc). Unfortunately I don't remember exactly the detail, but I can seek for help.
An international flagship conference held by a reputable institute in my country. I just sit back and listened, and unfortunately didn't register to attend.
An annual conference held by my university. This one was opened for any specialty, and I had a poster presentation in there.
An course taught by an invited professor from Germany, with h-index was 36. This course was organized at the same time with the workshop.

Should I list them down to my CV? How should do it properly?

I notice that this may be too local. But I don't want to spam the site with 5 questions at the same time.

I would only list activities that you actually did something concrete at. Definitely presenting a poster, maybe if you helped with administrative work at a workshop, probably not if you just attended.

@RogerFan thanks again. I have raised a question about the poster in the comment in Nate's answer. Can you come and join?

Yes, I would suggest you include these in the CV for a graduate application.  It probably won't make a huge difference in admissions, but it is evidence that you are interested and involved in the research community in your field.
You can list them in any way that seems appropriate; there's no strict standard format for a CV.  You probably have sections for "Education" and "Work experience" and maybe "Publications"; make a similar section entitled "Conferences attended" or "Conference participation" or something like that.  Include the title, date and location of each conference, and maybe a short sentence discussing the scope of the meeting and your role.
(As discussed in the question you linked: later in your career, you will probably want to take this section out.)

Thank you again. However, about the poster, I have already mentioned this work as a paper to submit this conference in the Research Experience section, and as a dissertation in the Education section. I have asked about this duplication. I'm afraid that if I continue to list it, the recruiters will think that I'm trying to inflate the work.