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How do tuition and credit accounting work in an independent study course?
I've been talking to one of my professors at a Master's program about enrolling in an independent study course under his supervision.
(An independent study course is a course in which a student engages in guided study on some topic under the direction of a faculty member. Students formally enroll in such a course as part of a degree program, just as they would for a traditional course, and it appears in the students' transcripts, academic records, etc.)
However, it's not clear to me whether independent study courses work the same way as regular courses with respect to tuition and credit accounting:
Tuition: Am I expected to still pay tuition for independent studies?
Credits: With traditional courses, there's typically some quantitative relationship between the number of credits a course is "worth" and the contact hours it involves. For example, a 4-credit course involves a certain amount of class time.
With independent study courses, where there are no fixed contact hours, is it common for institutions to have some expectation of how much time a student is supposed to spend on the course, per credit hour? For instance, that a 1-credit course expects about N hours a week from the student.

Since you ask about 1 or 2-credits, I'm assuming you're talking about doing an independent study course with the professor and not creating your own independent study track.
Independent studies (also called independent readings, directed research, tutorials, etc.) are essentially micro-classes of one or two students. You come up with your own reading lists, discussion topics, or projects -- subject to the approval of the professor. Whether to list it as 1 or 2 credit hours (or in my university 3 or 4 credit hours) is up to you. In general, you should plan on spending as much (or more) time in your independent study as you would with any other class.
From the registrar's perspective, it's just another class that you are taking. If you pay a flat fee for up to 5 classes a semester, then it can be one of those 5 classes. If you pay a fee for each credit-hour, then it would count as one of those paid credit hours.
I do independent readings with the undergraduate seniors, master's students, and PhD students when they come to me with topics that are of interest to me, but aren't in the regular course catalog. Since faculty do not get paid to teach independent study courses (we don't get any more money for doing this, nor do we get course releases for it), we're essentially do them out of the good of our hearts or because the topic is particularly of interest to us and/or we'd like the interaction with advanced students.

This scheme seems perfect for the university, they get tuition at no cost!

@Davidmh except for the cost of the time the Professor spends teaching/supervising the student (and the cost of any lab space or equipment).

@RoboKaren, thank you for your helpful response. So I guess from your experience, it is not common for there to be some kind of time limit on how much a student can an independent study?

You should generally spend as much time as in any intensive seminar or lab. If more, you should ask for more credit hours. However, the general assumption is that independent studies are student-driven and that you WANT to be doing it. I read hesitation in your statements. If you don't want to do it, don't do it. Your prof will be the first to thank you for not wasting his time.

Although there are several differences between a traditional course and an independent study course, for tuition and credit accounting, they are considered to be the same. If you receive credit for the course, you will also be expected to pay tuition for the course.
In my experience as a student who did an independent study (as an undergrad, it may be different in higher level courses), I designed the course and decided on the number of credit hours based on the amount of time I expected to spend on it. For example, a 1-credit course is expected to meet for one hour per week, plus 2-4 hours of homework/study out of class, for a total of approximately 4 hours per week. A student is therefore expected to put in approximately 12 hours per week for a 3-credit course. Tuition is then based in the credit hours that the student and instructor together have assigned to the independent study course.

With independent study courses, where there are no fixed contact hours, is it common for institutions to have some expectation of how much time a student is supposed to spend on the course, per credit hour? For instance, that a 1-credit course expects about N hours a week from the student.

Yes, as I indicated above, there are usually some expectations as to how much time you are expected to put in to earn a certain number of credit hours. However, as we all know, not all students need to put in the 2-4 hours of out-of-class study time to learn the same amount of material. In an independent study, this is also true. If a student in motivated to pursue an independent study, I will expect that you are also motivated to put in the number of hours needed to achieve your objectives for the course. I will also expect that you will put in more hours than you might in a traditional course because of your enthusiasm and desire to learn.


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I forgot to rename the school when applying my SOP to another school. How bad is this?
I just realized that I referenced my desire to go to school A in a letter to school B (in fact, I did this by mistake for 2 schools!). Most unfortunately, I have already submitted the applications for these 2 schools so I can no longer change the letters. How damaging can this mistake be? The annoying thing is, I mention specific professors I want to work with from both schools, and these names are correct, but it's just the school name that was mixed up in the editing stages.

Been there, done that.  You'll be fine.

As a long time graduate program director, I've read thousands of these essays; this mistake happens in maybe 1 in 50 or so. I have already seen one this year, for example.
Here's the deal: If it's a generic statement of purpose that is not tailored to the school in question, yeah, it hurts a bit. It's an added signal that you're not all that serious about this particular school. If your statement of purpose is well tailored to the program -- or if you've created other contacts there, e.g., talked extensively with a faculty member interested in recruiting you -- the harm should be minimal.

It also depends on the pool of applicants. If it is a competitive program with many applications, trivial mistakes can carry more weight. A redeeming quality is that the facility's names are correct. Hopefully the committee will keep one eye closed.

Edit: sad to see downvotes without comments. Disliking my answers is absolutely fine but I welcome and would love to know your thoughts. This is, after all, an academic board.
I myself have been serving in different admission committees for more than 3 years and I have to say, as naive as another answer pointed out, rejecting an application for writing the wrong school name has been one of the contributing reasons. It's never the sole reason, but it's definitely a negative trait.

To add to the existing answers, I think it is a good idea to find out who the graduate director is for School B, send him/her a very short e-mail apologizing for the mistake, and note that you really are interested in School B as is hopefully clear from the rest of your letter.
These applications go through various layers of bureaucracy, but (at least in the cases I'm familiar with) the decision-making is done my the department in question. If your e-mail doesn't ask for any commitments from them, and doesn't demonstrate that you haven't read their application instructions, then (in my opinion) it is more likely to be helpful than annoying.

Not an uncommon mistake. Good for a little laugh. Harmless.
Edit: I've read some of the comments to my post as well as other people's responses. If it were indeed true that someone might hold this against the student, I would find it naïve at best. Do we not know that students apply to multiple schools (if they know better)? Do we expect some sort of early allegiance from them? Do we measure a student's level of commitment, never mind his/her research abilities, by a small oversight buried in the SoP? None of this is very sensible.
The OP clearly states that he tailored his SoP to each school, so he did his due diligence and as a result the SoP is presumably informative as to the candidate's fit. No matter how you cut it, the application will (should) be accepted or rejected based on the qualifications of the student and the strength of the application package, this for the sole benefit of the graduate program.
The only case where I could even conceive this being harmful is if the package were marginal (for the school's standards) to begin with. I can't remember a single case (out of thousands) where I made a recommendation/decision based on something like this.
Read Corvus's careful response: Harm ranges from "a bit" to "minimal." I'd argue that, when the chips are down, it is very close to zero or just zero.

I'm skeptical that it is harmless.

I agree that it's a common mistake.  I disagree that it's harmless.  It shows that you were careless in preparing your application.  In a borderline case it might be enough to cost you a chance at an interview.  However, there's nothing to be done about it now.

The statement of purpose is very important, but if your CV is rock-solid, with great undergraduate scores and strong references, the importance of your SoP gets a bit lowered. So, yes, what happened is embarrassing, and can reflect negatively on you, but don't lose hope. And it's probably more common than you think.

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How do I handle plagiarism professionally and emotionally?
So I have been trying to get an article accepted since 2016. It is an article dedicated to a machine learning based prediction of a biological dataset. It was rejected 4 times. Today, on searching, I found that another paper has been published in Bioinformatics journal (Oxford) on 2018 April. This articles aim is exactly the same as mine. The feature set used is a superset of mine, only the classifier used is different than my current work. My work was rejected several times, so I have changed many things for every new submission. I also noticed that the issues that my previous reviewers had with my work, those same issues are still there in the Bioinformatics manuscript. This work in Bioinformatics has been done by 12 people while I am doing this work alone, with my advisor. Had it been accepted, it would have been the first paper with that aim. Now I feel terrible and I do not know how to deal with this professionally as well as emotionally. I suspect plagiarism by one of these many reviewers that this paper went through. I have been toiling for the last 2 years to get that work accepted. My advisor does not want to go for challenging plagiarism. What should I do?
On reading the manuscript I have found several flaws in it. The major flaw is its execution time is way more than my work. Now even if I try to get my work published, would anybody accept it since their work is already in a good journal like Bioinformatics?

I have tried to explain to myself that I have more work to publish, but it seems that I cannot. I am going through a lot of emotional turmoil. I have been crying incessantly for the past 24 hours... I am unable to understand how to get my positive attitude back. Please help...

Why do you believe it to be plagiarism rather than parallel work?

@Buffy perhaps because of the feature mentioned...

@SolarMike, that isn't strong enough evidence.

There is a lot of work, and a lot of parallel work going on. It would be unwise to go for a plagiarism accusation without very strong evidence. Does OP have this evidence?

Just realize the real hazard is the emotional trap you are already stuck in

Tangential comment, but in some fields it's common to post papers to the Arxiv at the same time they are submitted to a journal. That way priority is established even if the paper is rejected (not to mention, the work is available for others to learn from much sooner).

Pararell work is in NO Way Plagiarism.

If this one has been accepted, and you have a method that has a much faster "execution time", this would be a great opportunity to refer to the other paper, propose your own method as a better alternative and to apply it to your own data set as well as theirs

I'm going to suggest that it may not be plagiarism at all, but just parallel work. I don't have evidence one way or the other of course, but please consider the following points.
First, I hope that your advisor is satisfied with your work and that your advancement toward a degree is not at risk here.
Second, a charge of plagiarism is very serious. It is career ending in many cases and can be career ending for an accuser if it is judged to be a false charge.
Third, parallel work is very common - especially in popular research areas. If two researchers start out at the same time they have access to all of the same tools, datasets, publications, etc. In particular, if they are connected to the "grapevine" they have access to the general feeling in the community about what is important and which lines of inquiry are "ripe" for exploration. In fields that have seen a lot of activity over a long time (mathematics, say), this is less likely as the questions get increasingly esoteric and the field becomes a web of narrow concerns. But working in esoteric fields has its own difficulties, of course.
Fourth, your failure to publish could be due to a lot of things. It may just be that the reviewers of the other work had lower standards than those who reviewed yours. You can't control that, of course. But it may be flaws in your paper as, I hope, would be detailed in reviewer reports you received over time. It may just be that the reviewers found the other work more comprehensible. It may even be just timing. The paper landed at a time when some of the reviewers were actually looking for a paper like that.
You may never be able to publish this work as you suggest, but you can move beyond it and publish future work based on it and the knowledge and skill you developed in exploring it.
The only way that I can see it as potential plagiarism is if one of your early reviewers unethically took your idea and specifically set a student to exploit it while rejecting your work. I don't think that is impossible, but shouldn't be a concern with reputable journals. If it is, then the whole structure of review falls apart.
But two people having the same, even detailed, idea at the same time isn't plagiarism. It isn't even uncommon. Similarity of result isn't plagiarism. Ideas are free for everyone. Direction of approach to solving problems is commonly known within a larger research community.
You might be able to salvage some of your work for a new paper, even without extending it. Focus on what is different from and better than the now published paper. You indicate that there is some of that in your work. You can still make important contributions here, though not the ones you originally hoped for.
I suspect that your advisor understands all of this and so is reluctant to make a charge that, if proved wrong, will destroy your career.
For an exploration about how bad it can be see The Double Helix.
Bad things happen to good researchers. Sad. True. You had a bad experience. Don't let it damage your career.

Let me note in closing, that getting beaten to the punch if it is really just that, leaves you emotionally in about the same place. Mad, sad, devastated. All natural.

Max Tegmark writes wisely about getting scooped (beaten to the punch) with physics papers. At first he dreaded it and was heart broken by it. He followed much of the advice in this answer. He grew from it. Now he sort of thrives on the competition, and his fear of getting scooped is surpassed by his passion for discovery in the field as a whole. Of course, it took getting a bit established in the field to gain such confidence.

In "Our mathematical universe : my quest for the ultimate nature of reality" Max Tegmark discusses it at various points, with one chapter titled "The Joys of Getting Scooped". The book goes back and forth between his personal experience as a physicist, and laymen descriptions of the physical phenomenon he researchers.

Something similar happened to my grandfather. He did his research work in Utah in the 50's, and someone across the country was doing the same thing. They both published, but years later the other person got a Nobel Prize. My grandpa isn't bitter at all though - he just says he's far prouder of his family than his research. And he had a fantastic career at an internationally renowned national laboratory.

There's also intermediate possibilities between outright plagiarism and fair play (but I'm not suggesting it's more likely than fair play): that a reviewer who was working on the same thing took action to delay publication.

It is possible that one of your reviewers stole your idea. This happens in academia, and reviewer anonymity can hide the person's tracks. This could even be a reviewer with good intentions but who acted unethically by letting a review paper give them some ideas. If you have good evidence to believe plagiarism, you should contact the editor(s) of the journals or conferences to which you have submitted your paper for review and explain the situation.
If you contact the editors, do not assume plagiarism. Simply explain that although this other work was hopefully and probably done in parallel, you have some evidence that it may not have been and you would like to inform them of the potential issue. Then, it is out of your hands, and you should follow all of Buffy's good advice: assume from that point that the other authors were not your reviewers, and were publishing in good faith.
This leaves the question: how can you prevent this in the future? One way that is effective in some fields (I am not sure whether it is common in your field) is to publish drafts and preprints on your website. This allows you to have documented proof that you had an idea first. If it is only a draft, then maybe they do not have to cite it, and their work still may prevent yours from being published. However, if you have a draft online, then at least everyone will know that you are not guilty of plagiarism.

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Advisor threatens to discontinue fellowship. What should I do?
This July I will be in the fifth year of my PhD. I am doing my PhD from India in bioinformatics. Within my four years, one year was for coursework, so that I did not get to delve deep into research in that time. In our institute, every year we have an annual evaluation, where it is decided whether a student’s fellowship will be extended for the next year or not. Today, my advisor expressed to me that he is not happy with my work.
My current work status:

one published review article,
one article has been rejected four times in peer-review. Most of the times, the decision was based on technical issues raised by the only peer reviewer. I try to incorporate all the reviewers’ comments as much as possible.
Not much of language related issues by reviewers.
two articles are ready for their first submission to journals (my advisor still not happy with grammar),
another article is in preparation.

I think the amount of work is pretty good to get an extension. When I asked him why he is unhappy, he said he had no question regarding the volume of work but my grammar mistakes are too much (I did tell him that I make my paper go through Grammarly (free version) and Microsoft word and also my husband who himself is a PhD). He also said that my papers are not getting accepted; hence he isn’t happy. Each draft that I write goes through about twenty times of checking by my advisor, yet they are getting rejected.
I am not getting any technical help from my advisor so I have to depend on the reviewers’ comments for this.
My point is: The work is in my hand but not paper acceptance right? It’s no one’s fault that paper isn’t getting accepted, right?
These uncertainties of probable fellowship discontinuation are stressing me out. I do not know what to do. Sometimes it feels like I will give up. Can somebody please tell me how to make my professor understand that paper acceptance is not in my hand and that he is increasing stress in my life which is doing me no good? How do I make him understand that grammar mistakes and papers not getting accepted are either too trivial an issue or out of my control (respectively), so that he does not discontinue my fellowship?  Can someone point out to me where my mistake is?
What I have understood is that he wants me to work till 2021. My institute will allow me to submit my PhD before 2021 and not beyond that. But he wants to stop my fellowship. It's like working without pay. He wants me to work without fellowship. He is not saying he doesn't want me as a PhD student.
Also, my institute does not have the privilege of having a writing center or having someone who checks English before publishing. We do all of this alone. Indian universities mostly doesn't have these priviledges. And mine isn't even a university, it's a research institute.
Now many of you may be thinking I am not working hard enough. I try to dedicate as much time possible to my research.

One mistake is putting up a fight over trivial things like grammar. Doing another good paper is 6-12 months of effort. Careful proofreading is a matter of hours. And you can't win that fight anyway.

@ASimpleAlgorithm I am not putting up a fight, I have given up to him, I have told him that I do check my paper via Grammarly and MS word but somehow the mistakes don't show up. He does not seem to accept my reply.

Instead of relying on tools (especially MS Word), is it possible to ask a colleague/friend, who does not even have to work in the same field, to proofread your manuscripts and fix some language problems?

@Roland but according to him, it is...

What does it mean if your professor isn't happy with your work? Will you still get the extension or is this more of a conditional thing? If I understand correctly, you'd only need an extension for the upcoming (fifth) year, right?

@Designerpot I have time till 2021 to submit my thesis. I can get extension till 2021. Since my advisor wants me to work more, I feel I should get paid for it. What he suggests I feel is that I keep working for my PhD but with no pay

Many answers and comments focus on the grammar. Equally important is the paper organization: saying things clearly, in the right order. Of course you also need unpublished scientific content. Most reviewers are not native English speakers either if the science is good, a few typos or grammar mistakes would certainly not lead to a rejection (possibly, minor revisions).
Your supervisor accepted you as a PhD student; that comes with some tasks, one of them being to teach you how to write good papers. Of course in most fields the system pushes professors to accept as many students as possible to publish as much as possible and they don't have time for their students. If your paper has been rejected four times, that's more your supervisor's responsibility than yours: he should have identified that the first submission was not of high-enough quality. He corrected the paper many times, so maybe he is not good at writing paper either...
Well, I think you should tell him (nicely) that he has his share of responsibility. You should also identify the actual reason why he want's to stop the fellowship. It can't be because you're not publishing enough: that's IMHO mostly his fault, since you are working hard. It could be that you have weak scientific bases, you work inefficiently, maybe that he spent many hours with you rewriting articles and that you are not learning  fast enough?
You could also bring the article to another Prof or experienced researcher, ideally not related to your Prof to avoid diplomatic issues, and ask if they can identify enormous issues with the article.
In any case, asking to work for three more years without salary is not reasonable.
Concretely, this is what I suggest:

Identify the actual issue with the article and understand really on what ground your supervisor wants to stop the fellowship.
Try to find an agreement such as: both of you finalize the article and submit it in the next X months, and you keep the fellowship for Y months.
If not possible, see if you could end your PhD quickly without fellowship.
If not, either try to find another supervisor (very rare, but there have been such cases), or find another job...

This is a tough one.
To be brutally honest, from your post I can gather that your English is not up to scratch for English language journals. And that's not a minor issue.
Thing is, it's not your supervisor's job to fix your English mistakes and it's not ok to keep giving him draft over draft over draft. Academics are super busy people. And if you want a paper published it has to be free from English mistakes. No-one is going to fix that for you.
In regards to the rejected paper, four rejections is a lot. It shouldn't take more then 2 revisions to get it accepted. Do you fully understand what the one reviewer want fixed? You need to fully address the issues the reviewer raised, otherwise you won't get it accepted.
Having said that, if you've done enough research for five papers, you've done very good work. It looks to me it's your English that's holding you back, not your research.
Can you get help with English from someone? Don't rely on software, that's not going to fix it for you. Can you afford to pay someone to fix it for you, there are people you can hire to proofread? Can you take a 3-6 month break and do an advanced English course? Is there someone at your university you can talk to?

No-one is going to fix that for you. – That’s not correct for most journals: They have copy editors who are capable to fix mistakes of English such as the ones in the original question (which aren’t that bad). There are people with far worse English who have no trouble getting their papers published. Finally, there was at least one paper rejected for reasons other than bad English.

also universities

The OP's English is good enough to be honest. I can understand them without too much difficulties. Many (good!) researchers have far worse English language skills. So, I don't think English is really the main problem here.

If your advisor has brought up the grammar issue repeatedly, but your response is "my software checker isn't good", then I can see why he would tire of you as a fellowship student.  You are getting a fellowship, a privilege many students fight hard for.  But instead of trying harder to fix your grammar issues, you regard them as "too trivial".  I wonder if that is your attitude towards other things your advisor and your referees bring up.
I knew a fellow PhD student whose grammar was very poor.  He took his papers down to a university writing center several times a week and went over them sentence-by-sentence with a person whose job it was to help international grad students with their English.  The papers would come back with many marks made during the revising sessions.  I saw these because occasionally he would ask me for help, but most of the time I would just see him sitting at his desk struggling over editing his papers.
Since I lived with him for a time, I got familiar with his schedule.  I estimate he spent about several hours every morning, revising his papers' grammar and style.  In comparison to other grad students I knew, he got up very early, usually by 7am.
I wish I had learned more from his example back then.

I get up at 7 am reach work by 9 traveling 15 kms and get up from work at 5. I reread the paper multiple times yet the errors get overlooked.

If you made bad grammar mistakes to begin with, you won't realize those mistakes when you reread them.  That shouldn't be mysterious.  Try and find a better solution, like my fellow student did.  It sounds like you have a tough commute, but I think my point remains: how much time a day do you spend revising your papers?

I see you are guilty of what we all are guilty of:
You love your results. You are proud of them.
It is out of the question for you that those precious results of your work are trivial or not enough to someone else.
I am not trying to ridicule you. I really mean that we all are guilty of this.
Paper rejections hurt, they hurt badly. The time, the effort, the sleepless nights, the countless boring hours spend re-reading it word by word to find typos. The idea, your idea. That cannot go lost.
Truth is, quite a lot of papers never get published. And they do so for a reason. Yes, sometimes reviewers are cruel. But often they just feel cruel to you, because they criticise your "baby".
You have one published review article (Nice, but not your work. It is a proof that you know your field and are good at writing. I am fairly sure nobody would publish a review with bad grammar. It is supposed to provide a comparatively easy to read overview in a much more "fluent" language than research articles often have.)
The first article about your own work is in an endless review loop. Not because of the language, as you say, but because of technical details. And that is your work.
How the other two articles will fare during review you do not know. Probably reviewers will be much more focused on the technical details than on language.
Your supervisor corrects language, tells you your problem is language, but I think they are either missing something or avoiding to criticize your work. I cannot tell you why (without knowing either of you and your work).
But I suspect like the only "actionable" criticism you get is from the one reviewer. I know you state that there is no problem with your work and you put much effort into it. But sometimes effort is not enough and it just does not work out. (I am sort of in that situation, so not speaking from a high horse here.) But this is the point where you need to try and improve things. You need to get the results closer to the expectations (of your supervisor and reviewers). When that is achieved, you can still find some help with the language if necessary.

If grammar is the main problem, get a tool such as gramarly to check your documents for you.
Regarding the papers:

How many do you need for a PhD at your institution? Some institutions only require 1 accepted and 1/2 submitted depending on the field of study.
Why was the one paper rejected 4 times (grammar issues or technical issues)?
Why are there 3 completed papers that are not yet submitted?

I would advise you to maybe (without seeing the work and assuming gramarly fixes the grammar issue), combine the papers into larger contributions if they are getting rejected on technical merit. Take the reviewer comments to heart and work to significantly expand the papers and and address the limitations they see. Some (bad) advisers try to produce as many papers as they can, and this can result in papers that are "thin" and easily get rejected.
Keep up hope, the fact that you have 1 peer reviewed paper accepted is a good indication that you are probably on the right track and it proves you have what it takes to complete the PhD. So aim for completion of the PhD. This work is your career, and you should obtain your PhD while doing it. The work is not done after you completed your PhD.

I have checked my papers using Grammarly (free version) and Microsoft word. I have failed to find errors.

There is no clear rule as to how many papers you need. depends on advisors

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Interviewing for tenure track jobs: When will the committee contact your references?
The title says it all.
Does the committee typically contact your references (or request that reference letters be sent) a) before you phone interview b) after the phone interview but before the on-campus interview or c) after the on-campus interview? Can anything be interpreted from the timing (e.g. after the on-campus interview) of the committee's initiation of contact with your references (or their request that letters be sent)?

This is highly field and school dependent. In mathematics, at least at R1 schools, we request that reference letters be sent with the original application, and don't expect them to be tailored to our position in particular (just to a generic hiring committee at a research mathematics department). We don't usually contact the references further. YMMV.

Given the expense of an on-campus interview, it would be very unusual to invite a candidate over without asking for (and reading) the references. In our (CS) department, we request references for all candidates that cross a minimum threshold, and use that information to decide on the next round of filtering.

Hi @Suresh, Anonymous and thanks for the comments. Part of my motivation for this question was reading this answer that came up in relation to non-academic jobs which states "References are generally checked after a successful interview and just before an offer", and I wondered whether any analogous logic applies for academic positions. It sounds like the answer is "No".

Yes. Industry jobs work very differently. For many companies, they don't even ask for references.

To follow on @Anonymous's comment, it is worth noting that in mathematics in North America, nearly all R1 hiring (and much R2, R3 and four-year hiring as well) is done through a central website, MathJobs.org.  This site has a convenient system where letter writers can upload their letters once, and then applicants can have them made available with every application submitted.  So requesting letters with the original application is not the logistical hassle for the applicant that one might think.

Can anything be interpreted from the timing (e.g. after the on-campus interview) of the committee's initiation of contact with your references (or their request that letters be sent)?

As the comments on your question suggest, the culture on this issue are highly field/department/institution dependent. Below are some reasons why different time tables may be considered (or not considered) for requesting letters from your references. However, if letters are not requested with the application, then a request for letters at a later time means that your application has made it past one or more rounds of winnowing.
As far as contacting references, it is probably safe to assume that such contacts can occur at all stages of the hiring process at most institutions/departments depending on the candidate. If such a contact occurs, it is probably a good thing. If the hiring committee was not interested, why would they bother to contact your references?

With the initial application.

This is an equitable way to handle letters of reference if you are not expecting a huge candidate pool or if your department wants to use letters of reference to help eliminate candidates that might not fit with mission and culture. For example, if no letters that accompany an application to a primarily undergraduate institution address the candidate's teaching style and/or efficacy, that may be a flag. A research institution may be on the lookout for individuals who too closely duplicate the niche specialty of existing faculty (ultrahigh vacuum single molecules spectroscopy).

After the initial application, but before any phone interviews.

This is probably the way to go if you expect a large number of applications (or a large number of applications from candidates who are below the minimum qualifications). In this case, you can apply a first-pass filter to select only the candidates meeting the qualifications (e.g. a Ph.D. in Biochemistry or Molecular Biology preferably with a focus on proteomics) and remove the inappropriate candidates (M.S. in Electrical Engineering).

After the phone interviews, but before potential onsite interviews.

As mentioned, given the cost of onsite interviews, this is another logical time to check references. Likely, however, letters have already been requested, and at this stage the hiring committee may be contacting the references for further clarification. For example, "Candidate X is ABD with a proposed defense date of July 17, 20XX. We want candidate X to start on August 10. Will Candidate X be ready to defend in that time frame?"

After the onsite interviews.

There seems to be no good reason to wait this long before asking for letters. Hosting onsite interviews is expensive (the institution or department usually pays for these, perhaps in contrast to industry). Again, references may be contacted to clear up questions. For example, "Candidate Y is completing a postdoc with you on synthetic fuels from biomass. However, Candidate Y's research presentation was on supramolecular tensors. What is Candidate Y's experience in this area?"

I don't have experience at a community college, but my small public 4-year college will pay to fly in 2-4 candidates for a tenure-track position.

I was invited for on site visit and the university paid ALL EXPENSES from A TO Z. I paid nothing. They asked for references at the beginning and I have good references who I trust. I didnt ask my references if they were contacted. I think they search committee is likely to contact them soon.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Conventions regarding listing grant applications/funded grants on a scientific CV
I am a young academic in a scientific field and, in the process of updating my CV, I've realized I'm unsure exactly what is appropriate to list with regard to grant applications/funded grants. Specifically, a few types of ambiguities have arisen:
1) If you receive funding from a grant but were not part of the project until after the application was funded (say your role is "Consultant" or "Statistician"), can you list this on your CV?
2) If you are listing non-funded grants that you had at least some hand in writing (say, an NIH grant that received an impact score but was not funded), but you were not the PI (say you're a co-Investigator), can you list it? Is the answer different if you had a non-investigator role such as "Statistician"?
3) Closely related to #2-- if you help with a grant that ultimately does get funded but you are not the PI or a co-I (again, suppose you're a consultant or statistician), can this be listed on your CV? Does it depend on how great of a hand you had in writing the grant?
Thanks for any input.

what did you decide to do . . . do you have an example CV (or CV section) you'd be willing to share?  (perhaps with identifying information removed . . . i.e., just a template?)

My philosophy about such issues is that you can list everything on a CV, as long as you make clear what your actual role was, i.e., you may list any project or grant that officially recognizes you in some function, but of course you cannot imply that you were the PI in all of these projects if this was not the case.
Further, make sure that you list only "official" responsibilities on the CV - it may be true that you are doing all the work for a project, but that does not make you the official PI. Saying or implying otherwise is not good.
Finally, note that different roles in a project can be used to illustrate different things for you as a researcher. Personally, I have two different sections for projetcs on my CV:

Projects, which lists all funded projects I was ever involved with, plus my official role. This shows that I am experienced in working in different roles in different national and international research teams.
Successful grant proposals, which lists all successful project proposals that I was officially recognized as an author, i.e., either coordinator, PI, or co-investigator. This shows that I am able to get funding for my research.

I like your approach, more or less.
As someone who looks at lots of CVs in a non-academic research unit at a university, I don't really care to see grants listed on which you only worked. I want to see grants that you were a PI or co-PI on, mostly, and perhaps any that you were a significant part of the writing team on. The purpose of listing these grants is to show that you can be part of the writing and winning team for funded work.
In another section, I might be interested in short summaries of your participation in projects (funded or otherwise). What I don't want to have to do is spend a lot of time figuring out whether you were instrumental in thew writing of a proposal or just did the work after the money was won.
The key here is whether your qualifications and background were considered by the funding agency when approving the proposal. If not, then it's not worth implying that you had any role in winning the money.

Thanks for your answer (+1 to both answers). To clarify your statement "perhaps any that you were a significant part of the writing team on" - in at least one funded grant I was responsible for writing the entirety of the statistical analysis section (the proposed analysis, how it tests our scientific hypotheses, and justification for the sample size). My role on this grant was "Biostatistician" or something like that-- would this be generally accepted as being a significant part of the writing team?

These are the borderline cases. I have a couple of these that I leave off my CV b/c I'm not quite sure what to do with them.


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What is a good set-up for the board of directors/executive committee of research institutes?
I have been elected as employee representative for the board (edit: not really a board of directors, the competences seem partially advisory and partly decision making) of a new interdisciplinary research institute at my university. The board in its current setup consists of ~ 10 professors (all stakeholder in the institute as department heads) + dean + 1 employee representative, all with the right to vote, only the employee representative is elected, there is no student representative.
Is this a common setup? Are there any good examples of other boards with better parity/more egalitarian representation of relevant groups?

Professors usually have automatic majority/voting power, esp. in Germany. However, it may be good practice to have a few more representatives of employees and students (2 are probably ok), to be able for them to voice concerns/issues, which is their main role, in any case.

What are you getting at -- are you wishing for greater student representation?

There are many examples of University research boards and their makeup (as I'm unsure what your research institute focuses on, it's difficult for me to pick a similar one, but it's easy to find examples on the net) however I'd definitely recommend a few things from my experience on non-profit boards.
Firstly, all those influenced by your decisions should have a representative. This means students in your case - it's vital to stop problems down the line.
Secondly, wherever possible, all members should be elected as impartially as possible. This isn't always easy, but it's an important step in proving the high standards of the board.
Lastly, realise that a board of any kind tends to get into cliques. Anything you can do to stop that is important. Examples to stop that would include a rotation of positions, or setting tenure lengths.


text:
If I write a really bad, but controversial, paper, can I increase my h-index?
Imagine that I write a paper about a controversial topic like global warming denial, the link between vaccines and autism, why different races have different IQ. After publication, the paper gets the attention of mass media, and as a counter measure, serious experts start explaining why the paper is completely wrong.
Would that count as citations towards a higher h-index?

What makes you think such a paper would pass review?

@There are enough previous examples of PhDs thesis about these topics. If you are thinking about a serious magazine, well, then probably not (and if it pass, it can be retracted lately).

Yes, but it's a terrible idea. Pros: you could potentially increase your h-index by 1. Cons: you're now the author of a widely-known terrible paper. Cons ≫ Pros.

Controversial papers can get a lot of cites. My favorite example is an MD reinventing the Riemann integral, which is highly cited but likely not always in a positive way.

You're not being ambitious enough. You need to write a paper proving that a Zionist pro-vaccine conspiracy caused global warming.

h-index is monotonic, nowhere to go but up.  It's not really a great measure.

Cynically speaking, you might be able to get funding from "certain" sources (in the case of climate change denial, at least).  But is that really the career you want to pursue?

You should worry more about the quality of your research than about your h-index. Remember what Stephen freakin' Hawking replied to the journalist that asked him about his IQ: "I have no idea; people who boast about their IQ are losers". You should have the same attitude towards your h-index.

@Peter Jansson, I could give several examples of such papers that have made it through peer review and gained significant media attention, despite being completely wrong.  In fact I have published comments papers refuting two examples of exactly that.  In climatology in particular there are many examples to choose from, it is a genuine problem due to the media interest, although it isn't a scientific problem as they tend to be ignored by the scientific community (peer review being only the first step towards acceptance of an idea).

are terms like 'smart' or 'IQ' really scientific though? see NNT aka Nero, Dweck and salman khan

Yes, you can!
But that it is possible is by no means to say that it is ethical, practical, wise, or otherwise commendatory. I would be especially concerned about becoming known as the 'person with a kooky idea' rather than as a serious academic researcher.
The question becomes, "It is possible to write on a very controversial topic, create a media firestorm, attract a lot of attention, increase your h-index, and still keep your credibility intact?" The answer will be highly variable dependent on the validity of your research, your previous reputation, and the sheer capriciousness of luck.
First, assuming that your work is valid,  even if you have proven the viability of a very controversial position, your work is likely to attract some negative attention as well as attempts to disprove your research (or you-- ad hominem attacks are unfortunately common). However, if your work can and does stand up to scrutiny, all the brouhaha may actually work in your favor-- you have proven a controversial theory to be true, your h-index will increase and your credibility is not only intact but also bolstered by your success.
On the other hand, if your work does not stand up to scrutiny (which seems to be the scenario you are picturing), you will have made a public fool out of yourself and the slight increase in your h-index will be more than offset by the decrease in your credibility. Neither the counter-moves of serious researchers nor the attacks of fanatics are likely to help your academic career, especially if your work cannot stand up under scrutiny.
So, write a really bad, but controversial, paper only if you are willing to sacrifice your credibility for the slight increase in your h-index.

Not to mention, if all the scrutiny reveals misconduct (like falsifying or manipulating the evidence you offer to support your controversial claim) you could be criminally liable under some circumstances.

h-index counts citations regardless of the content of those citations, so citations by people criticizing the paper, disagreeing with it, or pointing out that it's nonsense do still count as citations.
(As a plan to improve one's h-index, this seems like a bad plan for a number of reasons.  As a concern about the meaning of h-index, it's a concern, though there's room to argue about whether this sort of situation is common enough to matter.)

I suppose it must be rare to find people doing this on purpose, but an author could do it unintentionally, if he really believes in his 'findings.'

Not really: note that by definition of the h-index this paper can increase your h-index at most by one, unless you are lucky enough to get citations of the type described by David Richerby in the comment below ("X, despite making significant contributions to the subjects A [1-3] and B [4,5,7-13], has some unorthodox opinions on the subject C [6]").
However, attracting this kind of citations is very field-dependent, and I doubt that even if this strategy works out, be it with a single paper or in David's way, it would really pay off, especially given the losses in reputation.

You could increase your h-index by more than one if you manage to pick up lots of citations of the form, "just-learning, despite making profound contributions to both brain surgery [1-3] and rocket science [4,5,7-13] has some bizarre opinions about porcine aviation [6]." ;-)

@DavidRicherby: Thanks, I've edited the answer accordingly, but please refrain from identifying me with the OP, which I am not. To me your attempt at humour doesn't sound a least bit funny.

It hadn't occured to me that anyone could be offended by the suggestion that they have published three papers on brain surgery and nine on rocket science.

@DavidRicherby: As you may well have guessed by now :), the problem rests of course with the porcine aviation rather than the other two items...

I think it's reasonable to suggest that pigs will fly before anybody actually increases their h-index by more than one from the type of citations I suggested. :-)

No, you probably can't, because for it to gain a lot of attention it needs to be intriguing in some way.  Simple rubbish isn't; there's plenty of that already, and the peer review process screens out most of it.  You could try some huge publicity campaign, but if you're that good at publicity, maybe you're in the wrong field?
Finding just the right balance of plausibility, tension, incorrectness, and publicity is very hard.  One indication that this may be the case is that the number of highly-cited bad/controversial papers is much smaller than the number of highly-cited good papers.
Just write a good paper.  It's easier (not easy!) and more useful.

And, if you were that good at publicity, it'd make more sense to publicise one of your good papers, instead of writing a bad one.

@DavidRicherby - That helps, but might not be as effective: then you have to work with what's actually supported.  If you write a bad (under-supported) paper and speculate to the most attention-getting conclusions, there is more for hype to work with.

In my experience, most papers of this nature tend to be written by senior academics near the end of their careers, and so it has little impact on their h-indices as they already have a sufficient number of papers with more citations than the controversial paper is ever likely to attract.  Less senior academics at the start of their careers (where it might have an impact on their h-index) tend to be more circumspect and careful (as their lack of experience tends to make them more self-sceptical).  As a scientist, self-scepticism is a vitally important quality to be carefully nurtured.

Most bad papers are ignored not cited for being wrong. You would have to get it into a good journal and get people to praise it etc. before other researchers will think it is worth critcizing it.

I just want to add that your examples are not likely to succeed. If you attract media attention, the debunking papers will be published in newspapers, not in peer reviewed journals, and it will not count towards bibliometric indexes. For it to work you would need to attract attention in your field, and therefore, fool experts.
This said, there are some exceptions, one "good" and one "bad":

Very groundshaking papers, like some of the ones published by Nature. They explore a very new frontier, and are likely to make mistakes. They do get attention because the ideas are refreshing. Even if they are not correct, the mental process is useful.
In some multidisciplinary fields, most experts tend to be in one of the sides. For example, some branches of biomedical research are dominated by doctors and biologists, but there are not many physicists or statisticians. In these fields, people may incur in mistakes outside of their area of expertise (for example, a doctor may not have understood the electronics involved in his machine, and why his results are flawed). In this case, one could write a honest paper that has a fundamental mistake, and the reviewers are from the same area of expertise as the author and don't catch it; or someone could take advantage of his rare expertise and introduce wrong procedures on purpose. The first case is not unheard of, the second I haven't seen.

This is a clever idea, never thought of it.
You are famous for the wrong reason.  Of course, what's being worse than being talked about is NOT being talked about.  Unlike Hollywood, publicity does not equal fame, nor does it generate grants.


text:
Missing final exam due to exhaustion?
A student is asking for an alternative exam because he was "completely exhausted" due to overwork the last month or so of the semester, including the exam day.
He provided a doctor's notice validating the claim and explaining the physical symptoms. He also provided another notice proving he did actually took an excessive number of courses recently and did well.
Should I give him the opportunity to retake the exam?

Where is this taking place?  How institutions handle "medical issues" can vary wildly between or even within countries.  In the US the professor would basically neither want nor need anything at all to do with these notes from the doctor.  The student would coordinate verification of the problem through a suitable university office.  Too much of a legal minefield for the professor to get involved so directly.

You should do whatever you or your institution would ordinarily do for a student who brought a doctor's note after missing an exam. You are not the student's doctor and the cause of the student's illness is completely irrelevant.

I'd like to add that the nature of the illness is not only to be disregarded, but that it's none of the professor's business in the first place. All the professor needs to know is that the student's physician deemed him unfit to take the exam. What consequences that will have is surely outlined in university policies or applicable law.

@RQM The OP hasn't released the contents of the physician's note.  It may only say the student is exhausted, not that he cannot take an exam.  Or suppose the note said the student is exhausted and cannot take the exam because he's been partying too much.  Let's not make assumptions.

@NicoleHamilton This is a very slippery slope. There's already a tendency (in US culture, anyway) to blame people with disabilities or illness for their condition. And there's also a tendency to divide disabilities and illnesses into sympathy-inducing and non-sympathy-inducing. It's possible that there are students who would party themselves into exhaustion and then find an unscrupulous doctor who was willing to certify it as a medical condition, but this seems like an incredibly stupid way to get a few more days to study for an exam. Better to let the doctor make the decision and butt out.

I agree fully that if the doctor's note testifies that the student was medically unable to take the exam, that is all that the professor should be interested in (and should act accordingly to university policy for a one-time illness falling on exam date). Whether it was the students "fault" or not is irrelevant - he might have been jay walking and got hit by a car, hospitalized with a broken foot on the day of the exam.  I would not consider this case any different from that of a student that got hit by a car and hospitalized while crossing at a zebra crossing, after duly checking for traffic.

@NicoleHamilton It's not at all clear to me why not making assumptions would lead down the road of speculation that your comment takes. If we aren't making assumptions, then all we know is that the student has a doctor's note validating the presence and physical symptoms of the disability he claims to have. The idea that this is just normal exhaustion faced by all students is an assumption. Even the belief that a typical student faces a healthy/safe level of exhaustion is an assumption. I've seen plenty of depts. where unhealthy/unethical levels of exhaustion among students were the norm.

@NicoleHamilton: I didn't intend to assume anything. What I was trying to say is that, in general: 1) Provided that the physician deems the student unable to take the exam, he should write a note stating this and only this, because the details are nobody else's business, and 2) the teacher should not care to know any more details than that, because, again, it's none of his business. He is in no position to inquire about health-related details, or overturn the judgment of the physician. That's just my opinion. I don't claim that this is legally the case, and I don't demand that anyone agrees :)

I don't think you should decide this alone, and here's why.  If it's an unusual circumstance -- well, okay, we're all human.  But if there's been a pattern -- that's disrespectful of the instructors' time.  So check with the undergraduate program director. in the department

Many of the answers so far have focused on either the fact that the student did this to himself (by taking too hard of a classload) or that exhaustion is not a valid excuse because it is common at the end of the semester.
This answer does not focus on the medical issue per se or its validity, but I wanted to point out that there are valid opposite side to these two issues.
Point 1. The student failed to manage his own time by signing up for so many classes.
I agree that some students fail in this regard, but these failures, around exam time in particular, are not always the student's fault. Example: when I was an undergrad, I majored in both math and molecular biology. My university scheduled exams over a 6 day period with exams for classes not commonly taken together typically scheduled on the same day. This is designed to accommodate most students who have picked one major, but for those of us who had interdisciplinary interests, the result was that we often had as many as 3 or 4 difficult exams crammed into something like an 18 hour window. For a junior or senior taking advanced classes in which the professor believes they know what other classes their students are taking and how difficult they are (because most students follow their department's curriculum), these conflicts can potentially be devastating. Ultimately, It may not be fair to allow two students different timelines for an exam in the context of the class, but it is also quite unfair for the algorithm that schedules exams to systematically disadvantage students who have interdisciplinary interests.
Point 2. Exhaustion is not a valid excuse, particularly because everyone is exhausted at the end of the semester.
I feel that this sounds convincing on its face, but it makes me uncomfortable. This line of thinking may come from a desire not to give anyone preferential treatment, but the net effect of this as a policy is that students with more resources get preferential treatment on average. Those students whose tuition and living expenses are covered by wealthy parents or who have the option of painlessly extending their degree to 5 years will always benefit from this policy on average while students who must work/raise children during college or who can't afford to spend more than 4 years getting their degree will always be hurt on average by this policy. One can argue that this is the best bias we can extract from a general policy, but I don't think one can argue that this policy is universally fair.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that one should or should not follow such a policy universally; rather I'm arguing that the policy has a non-trivial bias. The OP should consider if the biases implied by such a policy are biases that they are okay with in the context of their class/grades or whether they would prefer the biases carried by other policies.
Conclusion. I don't have a direct answer to the question, but I wanted to point out that rigid adherence to a policy position is not more fair just because it is more rigid. In particular, if the OP's goal, in teaching the class, is for the students' grades to best reflect their level of understanding of the topic (rather than to best reflect a standardized test on the topic) independent of other students, then adherence to a rigid attendance policy is probably antithetical to fairness. If the OP's goal is to have a clear paper-trail that shows they did nothing amiss, then the best thing is always to route things through the proper administrative channels. If the OP's goal is to prevent a situation where any other student might feel cheated, then obviously they should disallow the makeup exam. But if the OP's goal is to be as fair as possible to the student in question, then the answer isn't going to be found verbatim in a policy document.

Ultimately you will need to consult university policies and applicable local laws.
I think your best option here is to grant the request.  In the US at least, this would normally consist of giving the student a grade of Incomplete.  Exactly what warrants an incomplete can vary from institution to institution, but these guidelines given by the University of Wisconsin are fairly typical in my experience (emphasis mine):

College policy states that Incompletes should only be given in situations where students are receiving a passing grade in the course, have completed most of the course assignments, and are not able to complete their coursework due to unforeseeable circumstances.
Incompletes should only be given when there is a reasonable expectation that a student can and will complete the work in a timely fashion.

Now my initial reaction to all of that is that your student does not qualify for an Incomplete: exhaustion is a completely normal and foreseeable circumstance of overloading and overworking yourself.  Any college age student will be familiar with this concept.  However, I think there are enough possibilities where this could still be "beyond their control" enough that you should give them the benefit of the doubt.  They may, for example, have a mental disorder which drives them to compulsively engage in such behaviors, regardless of their knowledge of its negative impact.
Such things would all be beyond what you should inquire about.  You should either give the student the benefit of the doubt that one or more such things apply, or if you fail at that then ask the relevant university office for guidance and if they can independently verify the matter.  You probably want to—and in some jurisdictions may be basically legally required—to distance yourself from the medical particulars and let the University handle verification of these things on their own, and have them pass onto you their evaluation of the situation. This keeps the private information of the student out of your hands and helps ensure no one engages in discriminatory behavior towards protected classes.

Probably not; it would be unfair to the rest of the students, who managed their time and took the final when scheduled.  A more likely alternative is a hardship or medical withdrawal.  Check with your department chair about policies at your own institution.
Edit: I've reconsidered.  You should record the grade the student earned, without the final exam, or with the grade earned if the student took the final, and let the institution's policies take things from there.

But if the student has medical verification, the issue becomes a lot thornier.

@aeismail  Not at all.  That's what the medical withdrawal is for.

Around here a medical withdrawal would require the student to take the entire course again next semester (or whenever it is next offered).  If the course is prerequisite for other courses, or the student is close to graduation, this has a good chance of forcing them to take longer to graduate.  Is that what you had in mind?  Would you say that would be reasonable if the student had been unable to take the exam because of some other medical reason like the flu?  If not, then how do you distinguish the cases?

@NateEldredge  Yes, I had in mind that the student re-take the course, potentially delaying graduation.  The difference is the difference between a sudden onset of injury or illness and a continuing problem, in this case self-inflicted.  During my time as a college teacher, I tried very hard to distinguish between helping those who had run into bad luck and rewarding bad behavior.  Taking a double overload is bad behavior.

@Bob Brown But maybe the student had a reason to do so? Having him explain this makes the case much more complex etc

@MaireZer  If I had a nickel for every minute I spent in curriculum meetings deciding how much education an undergraduate could absorb in a semester, I'd be rich.  In the case about which you have asked, the student's reasons did not match the student's capabilities.  I think we will ultimately disagree, but I do not see the complexity.  The student bit off more than he could chew.

@BobBrown I have seen students take course-loads there were perfectly reasonable for them only to be heavily disadvantaged at exam time or at a particular moment in the semester due to assumptions made by professors about what classes their students are taking and/or by bad exam scheduling by the university. These are often not the student's fault unless you believe that students should not deviating from department-recommended curricula (e.g. by double-majoring or by pursuing an interest in ethics during a biology major). See my answer for more explanation.

From him providing a notice which showed that he took an excessive number of courses and did well suggests to me that it was intended to show that he is otherwise a "good student" and should be allowed to take a substitute exam on that basis, but it also suggests that his exhaustion was self-inflicted and thus he did not manage his time - he bit off more than he could chew.
Perhaps it is normal where-ever you are that a doctor's note which validates a claim of illness or unfitness for work/duty also explains the physical symptoms, and if it is a medical certificate such as someone would provide to an employer to explain an absence then I see no problem with allowing a substitute exam on that basis - unfit for work or unfit for an exam can be taken as the same thing.
Here, and in many other places, a medical certificate to explain an absence says little more than that a suitably qualified medical practitioner has certified that the person was unable to attend work due to a valid (medical) reason, and the specifics are confidential between doctor and patient. The details are covered by privacy, an employer does not need to know and are not entitled to that information.
However, if the note from the doctor is something other than a medical certificate stating that he was unfit to attend on that day, then I would say that his exhaustion was self-inflicted, he didn't manage his time and/or workload with his courses and should not be given special consideration as a consequence.

Mick, please check my edit and roll back if I got it wrong.  I added the word "if."

For me, it comes down to the students overall performance/engagement during the entirety of the course. If the student was generally good, but bombed one test (obvious outlier score) I'm usually willing to give another shot, albeit the test will be harder (which is hard on me, too). If it's too soon to tell, I might say to him/her to prove their resolve through the rest of the course, and if that one test was indeed aberrant, we could work out something towards the end of the semester. But, you have no obligation to do any of this.

In my opinion, exhaustion is not a valid excuse for not taking an exam, even with a doctor certifying that you are indeed exhausted.  By the end of a term, everyone is exhausted! I'm especially unsympathetic to a student who admits the problem is entirely of his own making, that he's exhausted because he took too many heavy classes.
Here in the US, most institutions have a student disabilities office that decides what accommodations a student should get based on their needs and the law.  Professionals in that disability office review any medical information and may discuss possible accommodations with the student and the instructor, but ultimately, they decide.  As an instructor, you follow their instructions.  Until you have instructions from the disability office, you should not offer accommodations due to disability because you're not qualified and it's not your job to make that decision and it's not fair to the other students.
What I would do is tell the student that all requests for accommodations based on disability or medical conditions beyond the obvious (e.g., you're in the hospital) must be decided by the disability office.  I would tell the student I could make certain accommodations on my own, e.g., rescheduling an exam for a student with another exam in the same time slot upon verification, but that I am not qualified nor is it within my authority to review medical claims.  If the student wants an accommodation based on exhaustion, they will need to present approved instructions from the disability office stating what accommodations are to be provided.
Offhand, I don't think a disability office will accept this excuse either, especially retroactively, but I also don't know that it will get that far.  Once you tell the student you need an approved disability form, I think there's a good chance  they give up and the problem goes away.  Otoh, if the student does take it to the disability office and they say the student should get a make-up exam, no problem, you just do it.  But now you've followed the rules and let the professionals own the problem.

@NajibIdrissi What's judgmental?  I don't think being exhausted because you took too heavy a load is a valid medical excuse.  That's just my opinion.  But I also don't think I'm qualified or authorized to decide whether to offer a disability accommodation, either medically or under the law.  Fortunately, most US institutions have offices with professionals who are qualified and authorized to do that and I would do what they say.  Tell me again how that's judgmental?

@NicoleHamilton while I appreciate the desire to be fair to the other students, I would point out that these kinds of scenarios are often created by the university accidentally. E.g., exams are usually crammed into a 6 day period with exams for classes not usually taken together crammed into one day. An excellent student who is double-majoring in areas that don't usually go together (say, pure math and molecular biology) may find all their difficult exams scheduled on the same 2 days. That's a pretty unfair situation for an otherwise capable student with interdisciplinary interests.

@user16054 The universities I've been to all specifically spell out to students that if they have multiple exams (sometimes two suffices, sometimes it needs to be three) on a day then they may request an alternative date from one of the classes.  As with most things, whether they get this or not is up to the professors in question, but odds are good at least one of them will comply.

@zibadawatimmy  Yes, same at UMich, where I teach now.  Too many exams on one day is cause to ask for rescheduling.  Just being exhausted because you took too heavy a load is not.

@zibadawatimmy Not all universities have these policies and many profs do not follow them. Nor is this the only way a university/dept can accidentally overwhelm a student. I've also taken advanced classes whose exams were group projects that took enormous amounts of time because typically all students in the class were also taking the same two other advanced classes, and the project was intended to be the final project in all three. When a doctor diagnoses exhaustion in a student doing well in a heavy class-load, this is precisely the time for reflection, not a blanket blaming of the student.

I come from a background where it is totally acceptable and common to not attend the regular exam just because you want some extra time to study. Any students who missed the first exam or failed it are automatically registered for the make-up exam, no justification needed. So, leaving out the "moral indignation" aspect, unless you have strong practical reasons not to organize a make-up exam, let them take it.

It strongly implied one, but edited to make that explicit.

-1 Not applicable in the majority of contexts; most institutions do not have a mechanism giving arbitrary automatic makeup finals to everyone (I  hope).

@nengel: The US system does not normally feature make-up final exams, nor can one register for a final exam without registering for the course as well (so one has to repeat all the work as well).

@DanielR.Collins: German universities are set up that way, sort of.

@aeismail: Good to know.  But I think this is still clearly not an answer: if the OP were in a part of academia where makeup exams were automatically given, she would not be asking the question.  The suggestion to "import wholesale" this academic practice to (e.g.) the US is really problematic.  Explaining why is an entirely different question.

@DanielR.Collins My Croatian university was also set up like that: every exam (even the middle-of-semester-examinations) had a make-up term that a student could take if they could justify the absence (e.g. doctor's note); they were typically a bit harder as there was more time to prepare. Similarly for a failed final: failed students were automatically assigned to a make-up exam with their maximum grade capped at the minimum passing grade (and they took the exam together with students that have been sick, or refused the final grade - except these two groups did not have their grade capped).

I have a sore spot for this topic, because among my very first hard lessons as a first-semester instructor was that if I was lenient with makeups, almost everyone started skipping tests, making more work for me trying to chase after them (and delay regular lectures), and then have everyone show up at the makeup and magically replicate all of the original test's answers (even for different questions).

But this student did have a doctor's note, which is a case that I assume US universities do allow make-ups for? So there wouldn't be a need to "import the practice wholesale". I was merely trying to say that the world does not end if you do not go into the business of second-guessing your student's doctor on if he was "ill enough" or "ill for the right reasons" or whatever, as well as explaining why my background would bias me in favor of leniency.


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Does "corresponding author" carry an implied meaning?
After reading the question Mentor trying to be first author?, I got the impression that (at least in the writers' field) the "corresponding author" flag could carry an implied meaning, such as "did more work than the other authors", or "is a more senior author". Is it the case?
I am in mathematics, a field where we typically sort the authors alphabetically, and I've never given any importance to that role (apart from "this author is willing to answer a couple of extra e-mails, if needed").

Good question. I've wondered about that too. I once has a co-author on a project, who happened to be the PI for the contract that paid for people to work on that project, but had done zero work on the project himself. He was suspiciously eager to be corresponding author. Afterwards, I wondered what he knew that I didn't.

This seems very much field-dependent.

I though that corresponding author is simply the one, takes care of submitting the article and communicating with the editor.

"This person has a stable email address"

Corresponding authorship is often used to signal the person who is the primary contributor to the work. I've seen this in fields like economics where there is a relatively strong norm of listing authors alphabetically. In these cases, the primary contributor is signaled with the corresponding author designation. I've seen people go so far as to list corresponding authorship on their CVs when they list their papers although I think this is far from the norm.
In fields where authorship is not simply alphabetic, I've seen the corresponding author designation used to flag the second author as a major contributor because, even in cases of so called "dual-first authorship," somebody's name has to come first.
In lots of other fields, it caries little signal value and really is just used to mark the person who is in the best position to answer questions about the work. Of course, the person marked as best able to answer question will, mostly likely, be someone who was involved in a wide variety of the research reported in the paper.

Can corresponding authorship be used to override the "first author is primary author" presumption that seems to be common in some (e.g. biomedical) fields?

@FaheemMitha Not in my experience, no. It's generally just "A senior person" and often just "Someone with a stable email address". I've never seen anyone assert that it "trumps" the position of the first author.

@FaheemMitha: It will signal "primary author" when the order is alphabetical. But if the order is not alphabetical (or not in a field where that is normal), it will not trump first authorship that came from explicit ordering.

In theoretical computer science, "corresponding author" does not carry any implied meaning related to who is the primary contributor.
The coauthors are listed in alphabetical order. The corresponding author might be, for example, the coauthor who took care of the interaction with the publisher, or a coauthor with a fairly permanent mailing address.
In pre-prints, conference abstracts, etc. we do not usually mention any corresponding author. This is just a piece of information that is required by journal publishers.
There is no prestige related to it. Certainly you will not list this kind of information in your CV.

Similarly, no prestige in mathematics, of which I'm aware. If anything, perhaps the opposite, since the "corresponding author" is the one who has to deal with... correspondence.

I am sure it can be used for many meanings. I will provide the ones with which I am familiar:
First, corresponding author means it is the person to contact if you have questions about the research. The reasons for this is what varies.

The first author(s) are not employed at a university or are students
The first author has done much of the legwork but someone else (a senior scientist) has provided the original idea, funding etc.
Someone is specifically responsible for a project in which the work for the publication has been made. There may be legal requirements that a specific person should handle correspondence, for example in a company
In some fields the most important author is not first, in which case the flag can be used.

Sometimes you will see first authors stating they are corresponding author. This is mostly implied by default in fields where the first authorship means also doing most of the intellectual work.
I am sure there are additional examples which hopefully are added by additional posts.

The Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, a German research funder, uses corresponding authorship as a criterion for paying publication costs with open-access publishers (source).
In this context, the corresponding author is the one whose funder paid for the publication.

In biology, the designation "corresponding author" is sometimes used to indicate the senior author(s) of a paper. A senior author is typically the professor, which may have a central role in the project but will usually not do any of the actual experimental work. Usually the senior author is listed last, but in cases of collaborations where there are multiple senior authors that contributed equally, this would sometimes be indicated by giving these authors a  "corresponding author" designation.
However even within biology there is a lot of variation and this could mean different things.

Is the first paragraph of your answer extend-able to Bio-sciences?

@scaaahu probably, but there is a lot variation especially in disciplines that interface with fields in which authorship works differently (e.g. bioengineering, bioinformatics).

Interestingly, as a biologist too (molecular) - the practice i've been taught is to look at the first (junior, the one who did the physical work) and last author (the senior, mastermind). Last one is often corresponding one, but not always. I guess practices really vary from lab to lab.

@Empischon this is indeed the general practice, but complications come from having multiple first/last authors which contributed equally.

The corresponding author is the author designated to be the first point of contact by readers of the paper. In theory, authors could use any rule they like to decide which author is the corresponding author.
However, in my experience, the corresponding author is often the author who has made the largest contribution or an author who has made one of the larger contributions to the paper. The corresponding author is also often chosen as someone who is likely to have a stable contact address and is likely to remain in academia for some time to come. In that case, supervisors are sometimes corresponding authors rather than students (even where the student has done most of the work). A similar pattern can hold in the case of industry collaborations where the academic may be the corresponding author.
Importantly, in most models of ethical publishing, all authors are meant to take responsibility for the claims in the published work.


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Should my citation graph be acyclic?
In a recent question on how to deal with submitting several papers on similar subjects at the same time, one of the (good) practices suggested by the answers is make sure that they cite each other, and that each result appears as original only in one of them.
One may want to put informative references from one to the other; for example:

paper A "An application of this result is in paper B";
paper B: "We apply this result from paper A".

From the point of view of providing all the relevant context to the reader, this might be the most informative thing to do. However, the other use of citations is for computing metrics, and in this respect this practice could be seen as a dishonest way to improve one's citation count, since you get two (self-)citations instead of the one you'd normally get if the two paper were not written simultaneously.
Hence, the question in the title: Is this practice recommendable and/or acceptable? Or should I decide an implicit temporal order for my simultaneous papers, and only cite older ones from newer ones?

Screw the metrics. Your first duty is to the reader.

Don't most citation metrics discount self-citations, anyway?

@StephanKolassa no… h-index and number of citations are the most used metrics, and they include self-citations

I am . . . slightly confused about how you cite a paper that doesn't exist yet.  What happens if only one of your two papers gets in?

@imallett In many fields, it is common to release a new manuscript as a preprint and/or an arXiv e-print to release it to the public before it gets peer-reviewed. At this point it can be cited. In some cases, citations to the preprint can be updated to citations to the published version, when and if there is one.

If the two papers are already written and submitted at the same time, I don't see why not. You are right about the upsides: making information easier to find for the reader. This is one of the purposes of citations! The only small addition I would make is that you should submit a copy of B along with A (and the other way around), so the reviewers can evaluate the need for this citation (as they do with “regular” citations).
And to end on a practical note: this will probably no inflate your citation count anyway. You submit your two papers at a time, then let's say A is accepted before B. So A is published with a reference to “B: F. Poloni, submitted for publication”, which won't be counted in citation databases. Then when B comes out, it will feature a proper citation to A (either in full, or through DOI if A does not yet have full citation information), and this citation will be included in databases.

I agree with the "This is probably not going to matter much" bit - I've had a couple "paired papers" like this, and generally speaking, it's nigh impossible to get publication schedules to sync.

I once saw an article that managed a self-loop: It cited its supplemental information by DOI, which meant that the day the article was published, it already had one citation -- from itself!


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Will a mail to the journal asking about the status of my article have a negative effect on the decision of the article?
One of my journal article was submitted to a journal last year. It has been under review for more than 3 months now. I want to send them a mail asking for my article status. It is given in the website of the journal that the average time for first decision after the article goes under review is 8.5 week. Is there a chance that this mail may affect the journals decision, like they may think that I am being pushy and might just not even go through the paper and reject it?

It will probably not have any true negative effect, but if 3 months is not considered long in your field, then writing to ask already might make you look like you are not familiar with how things work, which could give the editor a slightly negative impression of you.

It most likely won't. I think it is normal to push the editor if there is a significant delay. Check what the average time for receiving reviews is first.
I have done it when there has been a significant delay and it hasn't been a problem.

As a former EIC (the one who'd be contacted regarding a decision), I have to push back on this.  It is normal to push the editor (or publication staff, preferably) if there is an inordinate delay.  Here, if the average time to first decision is 8.5 weeks, that probably means X% are rejected without review very quickly and (100-X)% are reviewed over the period of 3 months or more.  It is too soon to be pushy.

Thank you Fred Douglis, I have updated my answer to reflect this.

Usually , three months needed for a journal to find a reviewer, collect their opinion on your paper and make decision. Afterward if you didn't receive news , you need to ask about the status of your article .

Review and processing times vary so much between fields that this answer is at best misleading without specifying the field.