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How do I reassure my students that my grading really will be “strict but fair” when the university has an “official” grading policy?
One of the biggest challenges I face year after year in teaching—and one that seems to affect my teaching evaluations—is that students are convinced that they are doing poorly in my course, no matter how much I reassure them that this isn’t the case.
Part of the problem is that the university provides a standard grading scale, and many of the instructors in my department strictly implement, a grading scale where you need to earn 90% of the available points for an A, 80% for a B, and so on. A fixed, unalterable predetermined scale irks me significantly for a number of reasons:

Chasing after an arbitrary goal is a bad way to actually learn material. I’d rather students worry about being able to apply what I teach them later than the grade they’re going to get.
Difficulty must be pre-judged, and gauged accurately, to ensure a fair grade distribution. This means if I screw up the difficulty of a question, I end up “hosing” my students.
There is little opportunity to recover from one or two mistakes on an exam during the semester, particularly if they are worth a large portion of the grade each. I don’t think one bad day should screw things up for my students.
I could impose an alternate scale but then I’d be committed to that—same basic result just different checkpoints.
Because of the nature of the class, it’s easy to make a mistake early on in a problem that means you can’t solve the rest of the problem, and the result must unfortunately be a low score (a student might make an error early and can only get 5 out of 20 points, but a mistake later on might result in a grade of 18 out of 20).

So I use the basic scale, but adjust it in the students’ favor at the end of the semester to adjust for what I think makes a fair and equitable grading distribution, and most students do reasonably well, because that’s an accurate reflection of their performance overall. But no matter how much I tell the students in the class that this will take place, no one really seems to believe it. (A typical distribution will typically be 20% A’s, with most of the rest B’s and C’s.)
Is there a way I can convince my students that even though my grading is strict but fair, even when students don’t get very good scores on individual graded exercises?

There has been some issue about the amount of adjustment going on, so I should probably clarify. Typically, the curve amounts to about two-thirds to a full letter grade: so the borderline for an A would be in the low 80's rather than 90. This curving amount leads to a distribution that is about 20% to 30% of the students receive an A, with about two-thirds B's and C's, and a smattering of D's and F's.
There was also the issue of how much grading is done, and it caused some confusion because I worked in two different positions where the grading is completely different. For the course I'm describing in this question, the students receive grades on every homework assignment, take a series of eight quizzes, and have a project in addition to a final. So students know what the "worst-case scenario" will be if there is no rescaling, so there is plenty of opportunity for feedback and course correction. My issue is absolutely not with grading—it's with grading on a predetermined scale.

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Dealing with the university "standard" is much easier than it seems, since they don't (can't) determine what a "point" is. So 90% of the available points is meaningless.
There is a form of grading called "cumulative grading" (maybe some other terms apply). Decide that the course as a whole is "worth" 1000 points. Create student exercises/exams/whatever that total to 1000. For example, Project A is "worth" 300 points toward the goal. When a student does an exercise they get a certain number of points up to 300. (See below for refinements.) Every piece of graded work has a value, possibly all different, and they add up to your total.
The list of tasks and their individual point "values" are listed in the syllabus. Students get to see the big picture, up front.
You can penalize for late work as you like.
The students always know exactly where they are. When they earn 700 points they know that they have a C or better - guaranteed. The University is satisfied and the student knows absolutely.
An additional element/benefit of this is that some students have many things to do and my class may not be the most important thing. They might be satisfied with a B if it gave them time to work on other, higher priority, things and they could do so without risk.
Important Refinements.
I always let students repeat/refine their work for regrading. They couldn't earn full points on regrading, but, say, up to 90% of the points lost at first grading could be returned to them if they improved the work sufficiently. This means, essentially, that if they got 270 points on that project, missing out on 30, that they could earn back 27 points leaving them only 3 points short of full marks.
Re-grading gave two advantages. One is that I never got whiny complaints about points. Second, when I thought a student (or team) really needed to revisit their work, I could give a relatively low score on the initial submission. They thus had more incentive to improve it.
You may not want to do the following, depending on your load and your students, but I didn't limit the number of times a student could re-do a piece of work. I made exceptions only if it got excessive as the down side, for a few students, is that they obsess over some early work, falling behind on the new. So it takes balance.
In computing summary grades, no student ever misses a mark by an insignificant amount. If someone is ten points out of a thousand short at the end of the term their grade is "rounded" up. This is perfectly justifiable as there is likely some (hopefully small) subjective element to any grading of projects and the like. I gave up on "objective" exams a long time ago, since they measure only poorly and can be greatly affected by other things such as student stress, etc.
Finally, at the end of the course, I looked at the grades overall according to the above measures. I asked myself whether this seemed to be a fair measure of what the group as a whole learned. Usually it was fine, but once in a while it turned out that the grading itself was somehow off, and the students were better than the curve suggested. I'd make an adjustment. No one ever questioned this, nor would they have any reason to. Tenure is a great thing, however, when you want/need to do something that the University frowns upon. At the end of the day (term) you need to be reasonable.
Note also that I had a reputation around the University of being very hard/strict/demanding. But the students always had a reason to feel good about themselves and how they did. This is, in some ways, nearly as important at the technical (Computer Science) things I taught them. Actually being more gentle than your reputation is a plus.
Also, note that the philosophy behind this whole scheme is "You aren't here to prove to me that you don't need to be here."

I think there’s a bit of confusion from the comments, in part because I’ve worked in two different systems. The first system was the crazy German system. I’m now in the US. My grading system breaks everything down into its components and explains how each section is computed. They also get the official scale, plus a caution that I’m allowed to change it. (The issue in part is that nobody else really uses that discretionary power.

@aeismail From my (german) perspective, the idea of adjusting the scale is completly alien to me. A is typically 94%+ here, so whoever hasn't done 94%+ hasn't earned the A, anything else would be called unfair. In one of my uni courses when I was at uni, only 2 out of 114 students passed (read: over 50%) the first calculus exam after the re-sit.

@Magisch, I'm sure you are correct, but such a system worries me greatly. Can you assure that everything counted toward a grade is evaluated absolutely objectively with no possibility whatever of subjectivity entering in? If you can make such a declaration (fairly and truly) then I worry that there are some things that we simply cannot test/evaluate. What is 94%+ on, say, creativity?

@Buffy Objective measuring is at the discretion of the instructor, to a point. I don't know how it is achieved in non technical fields, but I'd expect the instructor to set some overarching criteria. In similar subjects in school (like arts class) they simply didn't test for anything subjective and made you write about art history or recite from memory for the grades.

@Buffy: "What is 94%+ on, say, creativity?" - is this actually an issue with Magisch's approach, or a difficulty with judging creativity in general?

@O.R.Mapper, my objection is to all grading schemes that seem "objective" and "precise" but which are not. Moreover, those that are completely objective measure things of less actual value than those other things that require experience and judgement to measure. So, creativity was just an example of something hard to measure.

As a former student (not yours), I really wish I had more teachers doing what you suggest. The regrading policy you describe is perhaps the finest embodiment of meritocratic grading I've seen, and appears to me to be the epitome of fairness. I don't even think I could suggest anything to make it better. It also gives students serious freedom to choose their tradeoffs and modulate their effort as their circumstances dictate (e.g. other coursework etc).

I found that being as open and transparent about the grading policy is important. In the past course I taught, students performance improved on testing measures as semester started. The midterm was most students' weakest grade with their final being much higher. I was up front about this on day one and told the students not to worry as the midterm would always be curved to where the average grade was an 85/100 (not counting the bonus question). I learned the benefit of this the hard way after my first semester.
Other tricks that I have learned that make grading less of a pain for students (with minimal effort on my part):

Never put gotcha questions on exams. I tell students that there will never be a question on the exam with content not covered in the lecture/slides. Further I provide a review sheet with topics and an example of what is a good response to a short essay question and what is a poor response. What is on that list is on the test. If a topic is not on the review list, its not on the test.
I am up front about curves and where students have traditionally done poorly in the course. There is never any surprises in my course. Surprises are for parties and presents, not university courses.
I tell students that I have a record of student performance on different test items. If students from a class do poorly on an item that historically students have done well on, I curve that item. For example, if the test average is a 90/100 (above my test curve) but an item on the test had a 2/5 average when the historical average is 4/5, I will curve that item up. And everyone gets the two points. I tell the students that, in that case, the fault is likely mine in that I did not teach that topic particularly well.

In particular, I have found that point 3 is the most popular with students but also the one that comes up the least in grading.
In short, I have found that fairness in grading is largely about student perception rather than any mathematical fairness in the grading.

WRT point 3, note that there is a statistical measure (whose name escapes me) that measures for each question how students do compared to the overall score. In particular, if a question is marked incorrectly by high performing test takers overall, the question is probably invalid. Maybe a statistician out there can supply the name. It was a standard feature of machine graded tests.

I believe you are discussing item response theory. I think its item discrimination but could also be very wrong as IRT is one of my weaker statistical areas.

Could you explain what "85" and "90" mean?

@Udank 85 or 90 out of 500 no sorry 100 most likely....

+1 For the last sentence! I would go as far and say that fairness is even a feeling.

Something I've occasionally done after grading tests and preparing a (handwritten) histogram of the grades (5 point increments was usually enough for me), and the grades were a bit low and I also felt the test was a bit hard, was to decide where A, B, C, etc. cutoffs would be and then scale (or add points, or something; just make it explicit and tell the students) the grades accordingly. In your case, just make the adjustment so that the A's are 90 and above, the B's are 80 to 89, etc. I don't recall what I called this (I haven't taught in 13 years), maybe nothing and I just wrote the raw grade down and put the adjusted grade next to it and circled the adjusted grade, but I suppose you could call this an "administrative grade adjustment". Since this gets written on their tests and recorded in your grade book BEFORE the tests are handed back, I would think you're not violating the guidelines you're trying to get around.
Incidentally, the reason I did this when grades were a bit low is that I didn't want, for example, 5 points on test #2 that covers hard stuff being counted equally with 5 points on test #3 that covers easy stuff when computing averages at the end, as this would be unfair to someone who put a lot of effort into preparing for test #2 on hard stuff as compared to someone else who put the same effort into preparing for test #3 on easy stuff, where the former gets less points than the latter for the same amount of work.

I wrote the sentence about the grading scale poorly. The university lists the scale, but my colleagues implement it strictly.

Perhaps one option would be to supply your students with your past grading data showing how much you scaled previous classes.  This would need to be anonymised of course, and you might even want to add some controlled contamination to the data to make it impossible for students to identify a past student, but it should still be possible to show them the distribution of the raw marks, and how the distribution of the scaled marks after your adjustment.
If this kind of data were supplied, it would give students an empirical basis to estimate their scaled mark from their present raw marks, or at least get a rough sense of what to expect.  The upside of this is that they will have a more realistic sense of how they are doing, perhaps mitigating the problem you are having now.  Of course, a corresponding danger is that you might decide to scale less than before in one year, and students might be upset, having expected a higher scaled grade.  Still, if your problem is that students don't believe you, perhaps showing them the hard data is best.

Everything moves together, so I could list the shifts by semester to give an estimate of what’s reasonable without compromising any individual grade.

At others have alluded to, you will have trouble assuring students that they will receive a fair grade because the grading scheme you've suggested isn't actually fair.  Literally no one knows even what the grades will be until the end when the adjustments are made.
Why do I assert that the grading is unfair? You have missed one of the purposes of grades, which is to help students determine where they need to expend their efforts during a grading term.  Even if the final grades end up being a reasonable reflection of the final understandings of your students, the ones who do poorly did not really receive a fair shake, because they were missing a primary indicator that they needed to pay much more attention. The same can actually be said of the students who did well; without clear performance feedback from you, they have little sense of whether they are rising to expectations, and even if you informally assure them that they are headed towards a reasonable grade, that means very different things to different people.
(As a small practical aside, why are you only curving at the end of the term? At the very least, why not curve each assessment as you go?)
While it is true that a question can accidentally be too hard, if the grades are as low as your question seems to indicate, then it sounds like your assessments are systematically too difficult, which means you're probably not thinking hard about what you realistically expect from your students.  Remember, all that curving at the end does is to prevent you from having to design real, reasonable, and achievable course expectations.  You can keep the work at an unreasonably high level, students can consistently miss the mark, and you can kind of pretend that they're getting it. But this isn't good pedagogy. Something is missing here.
I might sound harsh, but I am not unsympathetic to you. I appreciate the instinct to push grades aside and focus on the topic itself, which is the thing that can change our students into better people, and is ultimately the goal of the instruction, but ignoring grades in this way creates needless anxiety for students who depend on those grades for scholarships, good relations with their families, graduate admissions, or class rank. I would encourage you not to hold your nose and think about grades as some sort of necessary evil. Instead, you can use them as an opportunity to communicate whether your expectations are being met.  Grades are an extremely powerful tool that we wield to drive real education, perhaps the most powerful leverage that we ultimately have.  Don't let this tool go to waste.

Apparently I've not explained things well enough. The students have the official scale as a baseline and I only adjust their grades upwards in the students' favors. The only thing I don't know in advance is how much the scale is moved up. This is not inherently unfair. I don't curve individual grades because it's just as arbitrary. Since I'd have to adjust for the final exam, I don't see how there's any additional benefit to scaling everything. (A B- usually becomes a B+, so the curve is not as harsh as what it seems like.)

Also, my issue is not with grading per se. I use it constructively—I go over material when I find grades on a problem are lower than I thought, I try to analyze where students are grasping material. I bristle against the idea of doing what my colleagues do: just use the official scale without alteration.

@aeismail It feels like you've not read my answer. Adjusting each grade my be as intrinsically arbitrary as adjusting at the end, but it gives more meaningful feedback about standing as the term progresses. Arbitrary-ness was not the source of the unfairness I indentified; it was timeliness of feedback and knowledge of outcome. If I need a grade in the B range, will a C+ accomplish this for me or not? How do I compare my need to study for your class with my need to study for my other class when I have a final exam in both tomorrow, but I don't know what grades I am coming in with?


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Should systematic reviews be submitted to journals as original or review articles?
In the Information for Authors of several (health) related journals, manuscript types may include original research and review articles, among others.
I thought systematic reviews (whether quantitative or qualitative) should be submitted as review submissions, as opposed to, for example, original studies with novel findings based on data collected or analyzed by authors. However, the guides in those journals say a review requires an unstructured abstract, as in narrative reviews.
In this answer, review articles can be considered original observations. So why do some journals distinguish between review articles and original research? And, under which category should systematic reviews be submitted to these journals?

There is always the option to do an inquiry where you can propose what you want to write about, and the editors will reply if it fits and under which category.

Not to mention that reviews are often "invited" which means that either the journal asked you for it, or you asked the journal and then they sent you an invitation.

I can see a good case to be made on either side:

A systematic review, unlike a more traditional narrative review, is often an explicit numerical meta-analysis of prior data.  Its systematicity allows it to be an actual experiment with objectively verifiable conclusions, and thus it may be reasonably considered original research on a new data set drawn from the literature.
Systematic reviews still, however, are organization and analysis of other studies, and so could be grouped in with other reviews.

Since both of these are reasonable, I suspect that there is no way to tell which perspective a particular publication subscribes to without reading their guidance to authors or asking their editorial staff (who will no doubt be happy to answer the question).

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Difference between inclusion and exclusion criteria
Authors frequently report criteria of selecting subjects in studies in two separate categories, inclusion and exclusion criteria, e.g.:

Inclusion criteria:

age between 18-60

has the disease x

Exclusion criteria:

smoker

has disease y

Alternatively, one can simply put these criteria under one category:

Inclusion (or selection) criteria:

age between 18-60

has disease x

is not smoker

does not have the disease y

Is there a real distinction between the two terms? Or are they used just as a matter of convention?

Sorry, but your question seems to be about the content of research, which is off topic for this site. Maybe you could reword and place on the stats SE site or a biology SE site?

In some ways the second is clearer since no one will interpret it as the inclusion criteria overriding the exclusion. Your criteria is and for all items. Between 18 - 60 AND ... AND doesn't have disease y.
But in general, if it is clear what you mean it should be fine. Clarity trumps form.

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What are the important issues to consider when using secondary data?
Say you want to conduct a research study that observes people engaged in a generic activity. Rather than record this evidence oneself, would it be wise to try to gather recorded evidence that was part of other research studies? I am asking about gathering raw evidence, to re-analyze for the purposes of a new study, not leveraging/citing data/conclusions in other research studies. For example, if another research study recorded 1000 hours of people doing general enough activities, would I be able to ask the owner of that study to share their recorded evidence with me, so that I might use it for my own analysis?
In other words, what are some of the issues to consider when using secondary data?
If it isn't common, why not? What are the pitfalls of using evidence gathered from other studies, to drive my own research?

Is it likely that there are enough researchers who are evaluating the same software/hardware/product/etc that sharing videos of users from one study would be useful to others?

Participants haven't signed a release for further studies.

@BillBarth Let's assume for the sake of this question, yes.

I'm not sure if this is a dupe or not. http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1967/requesting-raw-data-from-previously-published-research?rq=1

It is not uncommon to use data from other studies. The caveats deal with data quality. Even if the data is provided with error bars, you can still not necessarily rely on it being completely accurate. Typos can occur and other errors could enter data sets by mistake. I have seen such cases personally, data that when analysed yields different results than presented in a paper.
If you use a data set that comes from a paper, you should make sure it at least yields the same results as the published paper, since that is what has been officially concluded. This does, however, not mean all is good so I would always threat data with varying degrees of healthy scepticism. The problem is particularly bad if you rely on the data to draw far reaching conclusions on your own. I can see situations where this could be life threatening and situations where it would lead to sending research off in the wrong direction but also, most often no major issues. So depending on how you rely on the data for vital conclusions, you need to adept your critical scrutiny of the data.
This may seem like I forebode a catastrophe but the key point is just to not take everything published at face value.

Thanks Peter Jansson, but I'm talking about using raw evidence rather than data from which conclusions are drawn.

Reusing data gathered in previous research works save a lot of time, energy and may be money. However, there are some subtle details you need to keep in mind when using such practices.

Make sure the author providing the data knows what he is talking about.
Make sure the data are valid and genuine.

As I heard from one of my professors, citing results of another author does not mean that you would not be held responsible in case of false/inaccurate results.
Update: Following the comment about raw data I think such data can be trusted, unless proved otherwise. Also, it is better to go for raw data (data sets) used widely thus reducing the chance there would be something terribly wrong with the data.

Thanks, but my question is more about just using the evidence that was gathered, not necessarily the data/conclusions. I've updated my question for clarity.

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Strategies for facing an "impossible" required course for PhD
I'm enrolled in the last doctoral-level course required for my PhD, and the course material is very difficult, requires a tremendous amount of time, and yet has no relevance to my research. I'm a hard worker who regularly puts in 90+ hour weeks balancing a full time job, research and course work. I'm no slacker, and I love a challenge; I'm no genius, but have a near-perfect GPA.
The course is infamous among students, and I discovered that, due to its difficulty, most students simply resort to cheating on the problem sets, copying answers from prior years. Meanwhile, I've regularly sought assistance from the instructor and TA, and reached out to fellow students in the course (no other student seems interested in working/studying together). You know, the typical things any intelligent adult would do. The problem sets alone occupy about 40 hours a week of my time - yes, really, and I am typically an efficient person.
Sure, I get the fact that the course is helping to identify a weakness in my knowledge of this domain, but it also has little bearing on my research. What are some strategies in dealing with this situation? The course is my "last requirement barrier" to being free to focus solely on research.
Informing the instructor about the cheating would be unwise, because I know that this has happened in the past, and that the instructor simply makes the remaining work impossibly difficult and rescinds assistance. It would just make the situation worse.
"Talk to your advisor" is an obvious thing to do, but my machismo and refusal to fail makes we want to seek other options besides begging to be able to not have to take the course. Any ideas?

I'm really touched and appreciative of the responses. I've chosen to "stick it out" and significantly de-prioritize other obligations besides my job and this one course. I'll update this drama at the end of the semester so others can see what happened.

With one month left in the semester, I've dropped the course. "Toughing it out" has been a rather futile waste of effort. Details below.

The midterm exam had problems that were barely related to any of the lecture topics or problem sets; no assimilation or synthesis, no re-application, and no exam problem was even in the ballpark of our coursework. Despite my preparations, it was not an exam one could prepare for. I welcome and believe in tough exams, but this was absurd; it was as if the exam was from an entirely different course.
Details of a term project have been released with only one month left in the semester, leaving little time to accomplish a very significant project. It's too bad, because I welcome the challenge and it seems fun. But the scope of the project, in addition to upcoming problem sets that alone take 40 hours a week, is a bit unreasonable at this point.
I do encourage others to stick out a tough course by removing other commitments and focusing on succeeding in the course (e.g. doing nothing but the coursework). It's just not possible in my case.

WHO requires this course?  In a sane PhD program, course selection is up to the student and advisor, with some restrictions from the university/department, such as only counting graduate-level courses toward the degree, but individual classes aren't specifically required.  If your advisor is insisting on this one, then perhaps your belief that it has "no relevance to my research" is in error.  If someone else is mandating it, maybe your advisor can push through a waiver.

In a sane PhD program...individual classes aren't specifically required — [citation needed]

@ChrisWhite Yes, it's ok for me to work. It's not the GPA that I care about. It's about putting in an immense amount of work only to find that I have received a failing grade (< B) in the end.

@BenVoigt I would say that not all PhD programs are sane.

Which field is this in? Mathematics? Just curious.

"90+ hour weeks" problem 1 "balancing a full time job, research and course work" problem 2 "machismo and refusal to fail" problem 3.

A PhD is a full time job.  Your problem is trying to do two full-time jobs at once, and you're burning out.  There is no problem with this situation - it is the expected outcome.  This is like an alcoholic complaining that they behave like a moron and then lose consciousness when trying to drink three bottles of vodka every night.  What did you expect would happen?

Most students simply resort to cheating on the problem sets, copying answers from prior years... That makes me wonder: What kinds of "problems" are in these problem sets? Why are the solutions so readily available, and where are students finding them?

@J... Wow how did you know that I like to drink too? :)

@J.R. Solutions are readily available b/c the instructor tends to re-use the same problems, and students simply obtain solutions from students who have taken the course in prior years; or online, etc.

Feels like Kobayashi Maru - I'm sure it's not, but it feels like it

What's the course? You can't leave us hanging like this, Vin.

You can use those previous assignments to cheat, or you can use them to learn. A cheater simply copies the solution verbatim and cares only about credit, not about acquiring mastery or knowledge. A learner might use a previous solution to get a nudge in the right direction, and then spend a reasonable amount of time developing knowledge and skills. Perhaps it's not as all-or-nothing as one might first assume. Just a thought.

Hopefully you're not talking about a research methodology course.

I see that you are in a cross disciplinary field which melds CS and art/music, I have to ask, is the course a heavy theoretical CS/Math course? Because I've been in courses like this, which were required and cross listed for multiple depts., and those of us in maths were fine because we had the background, but some of the physics and CS people were lost because they didn't...

@Fuhrmanator No, I love research methods courses, they're easy!

Perhaps you should consider not trying to do all the problem sets.
If you only spent, say, 20 hours on each problem set, what would the consequences be?  Maybe you could still complete 75% of the problems, and skip the most difficult or time-consuming ones.  And maybe you'd still learn the material almost as well.
It sounds like you're not terribly concerned about the material in this class with regard to your research (though I would get a second opinion from your advisor on that - there could be connections that you simply don't know about).  If so, then your motivation for taking the class is just because it's required.  So try to estimate the minimum amount of work needed to pass the class, and make sure you're doing at least that much; but perhaps it's not worth it to push for a perfect grade.
In many graduate classes, one could skip a large fraction of the coursework  and still get a grade of B.  People will know you didn't do a great job in the class, but it won't get you kicked out of the program.  And unlike the situation in undergrad programs, where every GPA point can seem critical in the race for grad school or a good job, in many contexts graduate GPA means practically nothing.  People will look at your thesis, your papers, your advisor's opinion of your work - but your transcript gets only a cursory glance.
Given the difficult circumstances and the lack of other good options, I think this might be worth seriously considering.  Of course you will have to set aside your "machismo and refusal to fail" - but these traits, taken to an extreme, can be a serious detriment to success in grad school, academic life, careers, etc.  So you're going to want to learn how to temper them anyway, the sooner the better.  Keep in mind that a B is not a failure; it's a strategic decision to prioritize other things.  A good general doesn't try to win every battle; sometimes retreat is the best option in the long run.

Problem sets are a 1/3 of the final grade, and I know the exams will be equally painful - hence the need to get as many of those problem set points as possible.

@ybakos: Okay, but if you get 75% of the problem set points, that's only an 8% reduction in your final grade.  Graduate courses often have a lot more grade inflation than people realize, so the overall effect may not actually be so great.  There's a cold-hearted calculation to be made here - I know you want to give this your best effort, but it may not actually be worth the rewards.

I'm not concerned about my GPA, rather, I'm more concerned with putting in an immense amount of work only to find that I fail to receive a passing grade (B) in the course.

One thing that you don't address, at least for the US, is fellowship applications during the graduate career. A grade of B in a class will often put your application in the trash pile in today's competitive, low funding climate, unless you have some very well known papers already published...but otherwise yes, grades don't really matter unless you fail a class.

Your description of your PhD program makes it sound quite unhealthy.  There is a required course that students can only pass by cheating, the faculty have been apprised of this and that "only makes it worse"?  Yikes. If the students don't care about academic integrity and the faculty don't care about the students, then things are dysfunctional to say the least.
It is not reasonable for one required course in a PhD program to take 40 hours a week of a student's time: that's a full work week.  Spending that much time in the course in order to pass it doesn't make sense to me: something else will suffer in your program.  (By the way, you say you also have a full time job, so that's another 40 hours a week.  So you are spending 16 hours a day, Monday through Friday, on your job and this one class, and then whatever else you have to do for your PhD program gets done on the weekend? That's not being a hard worker.  That is dangerously little down time.  Putting yourself in that situation is a very poor investment for your own health, sanity and success.)  To say that you can only pass the course by doing this much work sounds to me like saying you can't pass the course and that you must seek out another option.  If you're not doing that because of "machismo": please be aware that that doesn't actually make any sense.  Neither does a "refusal to fail": what you currently have is a plan that is very likely to lead to failure.  Get a better plan.
I am very concerned that -- apparently, anyway -- everyone else is succeeding in the course by cheating.  That's not acceptable.  You say that it wouldn't help to point this out to the professor.  Unless you have already personally contacted this professor about this issue, I don't see how you could know that.  In my experience, the way that skullduggery like this gets perpetrated is because the people involved think they have "no choice".  Of course you have a choice.  I strongly recommend that you tell everything you've told us to the course instructor.  Yes, there is the possibility that this could "make things worse".  It could even jeopardize your future in the program.  However, your future in your program is by no means secure at the moment, and if all your negative fears come to pass it does not sound like the program is worth your time.
If you approach the faculty with the attitude that the program has to be functional and ethical for you to stay in it, I find it very likely that they will work with you and help you through it.  If they don't, then I think you're better off out of it.  I realize that's a hard answer, but it's what I feel is the correct one.

I believe I like your advice, however I'm constantly stuck on: this course is the penultimate step of the OP's PHD, according to him. "You're better off out of it?" Really?

@CGCampbell: This is the last required course in the OP's PhD.  In most PhD programs, required coursework occupies perhaps the first 25-30% of the program.  It is what happens before you get down to the real work of the program.  In this case in particular the OP has said nothing about thesis work and, given that he has a full time job and is spending 40 hours a week on this course alone, how much time could he possibly be spending on that?!?

@PeteL.Clark I love my work and do it 7 days a week, and thanks for the concern, I get it. The reason I know that reporting the dishonesty issue would make things worse is because previous students have told me it happened in the past, and what the result was - I'm assuming the same outcome here.

@ybakos you mean the same students who are cheating and have an incentive to tell you anything such that they can continue to do so?

@user2813274 I haven't conducted any kind of inquisition into the current state of affairs. Rather, numerous prior students informed me that a majority of students get by through cheating. I am assuming that the current cohort is no different. Regardless, cheating one's way through this course is not an option.

@ybakos: "The reason I know that reporting the dishonesty issue would make things worse is because previous students have told me it happened in the past, and what the result was - I'm assuming the same outcome here." So you don't know; you're going by what other students have told you.  Don't you deserve to give things a chance to work well for you, rather than assuming they will work badly?  I think this is one of the ways that bad practices get perpetuated: people convince each other that it can't be done any other way.

@ybakos The amount of falsehoods that propagate as folklore through student bodies across generations is amazing. Don't take such stories for granted.

@PeteL.Clark and Raphael Thank you for the perspective, I agree with you.

"That is dangerously little down time. Putting yourself in that situation is a very poor investment for your own health, sanity and success." Actually a pretty relevant point that is often overlooked. For one thing, there is research that indicates that the sweet spot for maximizing outcomes is somewhere between a thirty and fourty hour work week, and in the long run, doing more actually results in net losses (this is from memory, consider it hearsay unless you look it up). Anecdotally, Poincare and Hardy made a point of not working more than 4 hours a day.

@G.Bach Yeah I've heard all that stuff and to me it is BS. I work like a machine, love my work with a passion, and have been doing this for quite a while. I do get down time.

Here's what you do.  Ask the professor if this challenge is actually reasonable -- if it's some sort of final "trial by fire" strategy within the department.  If so, ask him to state that.  And then, as long as it is humanly possible (others have succeeded), you can simply put your nose to the grindstone and try to accomplish it.
Otherwise, it could be the department has slacked in evaluating student complaints.  It might be an unreasonable request.  Ask your Provost to investigate the matter.  Burn-out is not an accomplishment for the department.

It's definitely a trial by fire, and I do believe it is humanly possible, given enough expertise which I obviously lack in this particular domain. I agree, one has to man up. What I fear is putting in all the work and then simply failing the course in the end.

[Just now saw your comment.  Was censored (kicked off for a year) by the site for saying "fart".]  It looks like the instructor and/or department was unreasonable.  If you don't think it's helpful towards your PhD, either you are wrong or the department is being unreasonable and you need to discuss the matter with the provost.

There's one possibility which hasn't been mentioned:
Perhaps this is the test of character?
I'd hunt down some prior students and find out what happened in that course.  What did they (class members) do when they faced the fork in the road? (Cheat vs. Unfinished work) Even in 3rd person so they might be willing to share what others did (without betraying their own actions).
Are you willing to cheat and turn in complete solutions across the board? Or, are you willing to submit unfinished work, where you answer a reasonable number of them and present what direction you'd take with the remainder?

It's definitely a test of character, whether intentional or not. Prior students in the course informed me about the cheating.

I don't know if it really happens in real life or not, but I use to read that in... manga.

If you think that talking to the course instructor will not help, talk to your advisor first.
If this is a course everyone in your program must take, then your advisor will already have experience with students struggling in this course.
They might have solutions we don't even know about, e.g. a helpful book which explains everything more concisely so you don't have to spend as much time with the course book, or an older student who'd be happy to answer some of your questions.
Or they can talk to the course instructor about the workload, which might turn out better than students complaining about the workload (which - from the POV of a TA - they always do, regardless of the actual workload).
I know you said you don't want to go to your advisor, but this is one of the things to learn during such a program - when to ask for help. Trust me, as long as you're not on the top step of the career ladder, it's important to report problems early enough that your boss can do something about it. If you wait until you get a burnout, your advisor won't be able to advise you how to not get one.

As you seem to have exhausted all natural support ideas that come to my mind (collaborating - particularly surprising that no one wants to, and not a good sign for your program's climate; seeking advice by TA and instructor), I don't see what else you could do but suffer through one harsh semester, and stick it out. Not working 90+ hours, instead trying to get more sleep, would almost certainly help; but saying this would be patronizing as you probably know it yourself.
Keep also in mind that in most fields, if your GPA is currently spotless, one poor grade in coursework should not matter at all.
If you are absolutely certain that every other student copies their solutions, you are put by their actions into competitive disadvantage, and a strongly unfair position. Your honest attempts are probably less good solutions than the accumulated-over-several-years answers of your classmates. You shouldn't be penalized for being the one honest student. As you don't want to make it known, it would be natural to thus think of getting a short-term fix by copying solutions too. I like to think though that producing less good homework on your own will pay off in the final where your hard work might be rewarded, and the others might find themselves at a loss as they merely copied solutions.
It boils down to sticking it out, unfortunately.

@gnometorule: It certainly seems that you are suggesting that academic dishonesty is a viable option here, although it has tradeoffs.  Others (perhaps Pete) would say that it is not to be considered under any circumstances of this kind.

I disagree with the commenters; @gnometorule is only positing the cheating option, emphasizing that not cheating is obviously better. I think we all agree that cheating is absolutely not an option.

It's still a rather convoluted paragraph, and I had to read it several times to figure out what (I think) you're really trying to say. As it's written, you're basically arguing for one position for half the paragraph, and then turning around in the middle of the "wall of text" and arguing against that position. That's confusing, and easy to miss. You might want to consider rewriting the whole paragraph from scratch, and maybe splitting it into several pieces.

In my experience, many people need to be reminded that sleep and rest are very important. I don't think it is patronising.

Good Ph.D. training requires that you are able to opening talk to your research advisor.  You need to have this conversation, and explain your situation.  I do not know of any graduate programs that will kick out for postponing your research in order to pass a class.  I do know there are programs that will kick you out for poor grades, and programs that will not award you a degree if you do not take and pass a class.
Having said that, there are going to be inevitable delays in your Ph.D. research.  This is going to be one of those delays.  Your advisor's hands might be tied, but getting research done is probably very high on their priorities.  If they receive government grants for research, then they most certainly need to maintain productively.
Simple put, you wont win if you fight the system.  Focus on the class, and tell your advisor what you are doing and why you are not working on research.  Nothing more that you can do.  Your advisor will likely take up this issue with the director of the course or in the next department meeting.  Finally, get all of the required (and only required) classwork out of the way before you start to get serious about research.  At some point in the very near future, you should be able to teach yourself about any topic in your general field.  That is one of those skills you should develop as a Ph.D. student, and as other have suggested, this might be testing that very ability.

It is important in life to know when it's time to go to the next level of the hierarchy (I miss the correct expression in English).
If the work is basically impossible to be completed without cheating, and without sacrificing everything else, you MUST report that to the head of department, to the boss of your professor.
In a job, in the future, will you always comply with directives from your boss, even when you are sure they are counterproductive? you must go to the higher level in the hierarchy and complain.
The same now.

to the boss of your professor I am not sure what you mean by "boss".

"will you always comply with directives from your boss," well yes and no. Yes in general, because that's what I get paid for, and no, when the directive is poor. Believe me, I'm a grown up and know how to handle a problem; in this case I feel like I should handle it myself rather than "whine to daddy" (advisor).

My point is: sometimes you need to complain at one level higher than the one where the problem is originated. If the prof is giving objectively unreasonable tasks, go above him to complain.

@ybakos: 'asking for advice' and 'whining' are not the same thing. Matter-of-factly lay out the situation, and ask your advisor for suggestions on how to handle it.

I guess I'm just a tough guy. Like that Vin Diesel dude. Or not.

That leaves you only the two options that you were already aware of: cheating, or studying. I don't see a point in asking for counselling, especially because this may have taken away a couple of hours of your time that you will definitely need. And about Vin Diesel: you should check "Strays".


text:
How do I recognise a peer-reviewed journal article?
I have lots of research papers, but can I tell which of them are peer-reviewed. Also, on Google Scholar, is there any way of finding only peer-reviewed articles?

The cynical answer is that in borderline cases it's impossible to be certain what is peer-reviewed without a lot of investigation.  Fraudulent journals claim to be performing peer review, and it's hard to disprove their claims (you have to distinguish between no peer review, incompetent or corrupt peer review, and genuine peer review with a very low requirement for how interesting the papers have to be).  Sometimes someone gets a clearly absurd paper accepted (see SCIgen and follow-up projects such as Mathgen), in which case we know something is terribly wrong.  However, there are other cases where we just don't know for sure, even though nobody really trusts the journal.  It takes a lot of work to investigate, and there are tons of ridiculous "journals" operating on the web, so nobody has the time or energy to look into every case.
On the other hand, this doesn't come up except with pretty weird journals.  Everyone working in a field has a pretty good idea of which organizations and journals are reputable; if an expert doesn't know what to make of a given journal, then that's a bad sign.  I don't know of any systematic way to make this judgment other than based on experience and mentoring, although Beall's list is a useful tool to flag highly questionable publishers.
In particular, I know of no automated tool to do searches only for peer-reviewed articles, and I see no prospects for building a reliable tool of this sort (given that some publishers are simply lying).
This makes the situation sound much worse than it is.  I've never run across a paper I was even remotely interested in where I had any doubt about its peer review status.  However, it's a hard problem if you go dredging through junk journals.
Incidentally, in mathematics it would be a bad idea to limit your reading to peer-reviewed articles.  Preprints are not yet peer reviewed, and if you ignore them until they are formally published, you may never catch up to the state of the art.

Yes, an important point about limiting attention to peer-reviewed things, in mathematics, because of the time lag.

If the journal is listed by ISI, it has an impact factor and the chance is high the journal is peer reviewed.
In addition, proprietary search engines like Scopus seem to be more critical to its sources. Google Scholar picks up more, e.g. also the deliverable report I wrote for an EU project, which is not a reviewed paper. Using something like Scopus thus, imo, increases the chance of finding reputable journals. This comes however at a hefty fee, although is probably paid already by the institute.

how can i know the impact factor? is it only the number of other papers that has cited this paper?

Most journals list the impact factor on their site. The IF is the amount of citations papers in that journal get in a given period, divided by the amount of papers published in that same period. What is regarded as a high IF depends on the field, medical journals have IF of around 6, climate journals around 3. Nature and science have IF's of around 20-30.

By the way, at least one journal has listed an apparently fraudulent IF (and at the very least incorrect) on their site: http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/02/05/corrupt-new-publisher-fakes-association-with-reed-elsevier/

The Impact factor is a metric published by ISI Thomson Reuters and relevant for the whole journal, not a single article. You can find it typically on the journal homepage (or wikipedia).

On Google Scholar, i find only the Citation and is the only way, i select papers, is there any other metric on google scholar?


text:
What factors should I consider when deciding between a general MBA vs. a specialized MBA?
I'm currently in the process of applying to business schools and I notice that nearly all of them have general MBA degrees and MBA degrees with different areas of concentration or specialization. I currently work in the IT industry doing some project management and customer support, though I'm on the fence about whether the IT industry is where I'd like to stay.
I'm going back and forth between the general MBA and something like an MBA in IT Management, but I'm having trouble deciding. What are some things I can consider during this process so that I can make a good decision and not get a degree that's either too general to be useful or too specific to give me options?

Because you already have real world experience in IT but are unsure it is where you want to stay, a general MBA should be fine.
If you want to stay in IT, what most companies care about is actual experience - and it seems you have that. Having an MBA and experience in IT is a great combination and having experience in IT is far more useful than having a specialist MBA in IT.
Another issue is that IT management is usually not a challenging place to get to if you are interested. I've worked with quite a few people in IT and it was the rare one who wanted to be in management. Most wanted to keep their hands in the technology. For this reason, IT management is different from many other fields in business.

You are saying that you have working experience in project management and customer support in the IT sector, in that case you can choose MBA specialization, that means MBA in IT. This specialization will give more fruit.
But for non working person I want to suggest to all go for general MBA

I don't think an MBA in IT is only for people who have experience in IT. It can be quite useful for people who want to get experience in IT. School is, after all, where we learn things we can use at work.

I think a general MBA is much better.
The course load is about the same; to qualify for a specialist MBA you often only need a few specialized classes.
The MBA general or specific is still a very broad based super-generalist degree. Uninformed employers may believe that a specialized MBA makes you a specialist and not someone for the management track.
A general MBA will allow you to progress through many changes of industry and jobs. Yesterday a banker, today a quality control supervisor, tomorrow a head of strategic management, that is an MBA. Specializing is for undergrad and msc.
When I did my BBA in finance, my main professor allowed me to sit in his finance MBA classes, they knew less than undergrads. It is quite understandable a BBA needs nearly 2 years of finance courses, an MBA like 3-4 courses. So when I did my MBA I chose General but elected to do a thesis in finance.


text:
Do journal editors disallow paper from college X to be reviewed by someone from college X?
What is the general opinion among editors about whether my paper should be submitted to review to academics from the same University/department? Will this ever happen? If it does happen, isn't this bad for the quality of peer review because the reviewer might have a good relationship with the person who submitted the paper and may be biased consciously or unconsciously towards giving a favorable review?

@Naresh Some journals are not blinded in my field. In fact the #1 ranked journal is not blinded. Also even if it is blinded, they can often just Google the name of the paper and find it on the Author's CV as a work in progress or conference presentation. Especially if they're in the same department, chances are the reviewer has discussed the paper with the author (since it'd only be submitted to them if they have experience in that sub-field) or has seen a faculty presentation of that paper, or knows about a grant associated with that paper.

Why would they google it? Since they are reviewers I'd assume that they know most of the work cited in your paper. It would not impact their decisions at all.
[http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/625/open-versus-blind-reviewing-process?rq=1] is a similar question.

@Naresh They might Google it to learn who the author is. A professor I know says he thinks people do this but he doesn't for ethical reasons.

Since they are reviewers I'd assume that they know most of the work cited in your paper — Not necessarily, no.  "Are vaguely familiar with", perhaps, but not "know".

I have been led to believe that something like this isn't that uncommon - that it's entirely possible for a paper to be sent to your supervisor or similar (I assume with a bit of a gap after you graduate). I've also heard tell (urban legend perhaps) of students submitting a paper without the name of the head of the research group, X, on it (X not even knowing the paper existed), and it was sent to X to review.

Conflict of interest rules vary between journals, and some are far stricter than others.  In general, it's not clear where to draw the line for what's appropriate.  Asking someone from the same department to review their colleague's paper would generally not be done, even if no rule forbids it.  Beyond that it's a little less clear, and you can make up all sorts of borderline cases.  (It's considered fine for people from different University of California campuses to review each other's papers.  What about someone from the Harvard biology department reviewing a paper from the Harvard medical school?  I don't know, and it's not clear to me that there's a simple rule for deciding what constitutes a conflict of interest.)
Handling conflicts of interest responsibly is an important and difficult part of being a journal editor, since there are all sorts of relationships that are not as easy to detect as a shared departmental affiliation.  For example, some people have been best friends since they were in grad school, while others may be enemies or rivals.
Sometimes when evaluating a submission it's valuable to get advice from someone who has specialized knowledge you need, but who also has a conflict of interest. In that case, you should be aware of the conflict and try to adjust for it (for example, by asking the person for objective information rather than opinions). By contrast, it's much more dangerous to rely on someone who has a conflict of interest you are unaware of.

Don't understand your last sentence, but still very insightful.

What I mean is that sometimes when evaluating a submission it's valuable to get advice from someone who has specialized knowledge you need, but who also has a conflict of interest.  In that case, you should be aware of the conflict and try to adjust for it (for example, by asking the person for objective information rather than opinions).  By contrast, it's much more dangerous to rely on someone who has a conflict of interest you are unaware of.

@AnonymousMathematician I think your clarification comment is very helpful - please would you edit your answer and add it in? Comments are ephemeral, and can get deleted at any time; and it would be shame to lose valuable content such as you've written there.

The principle is to obtain an objective review. One basic point is therefore to avoid any petsons with a conflict of interest. It is pretty clear that chosing someone from the same department is very likely to involve a conflict of interest, either by  (or equiv.) obtaining an uncritical review or the opposite. Chosing someone from the same university (or equiv.) is perhaps less problematic but for an editor trying to stay clear of possible problems it is likely just as well to avoid such persons as well. The problem is of course larger than this since possible conflicts of interest can exist with many regardless of their location. The honours based system then dictares that reviewers should also decline to review if they believe they cannot provie a fair review or if the involvement can cast such suspicion. We are, however, not living in a perfect world soeditors also have the possibility to moderate apparently unfair reviews.


text:
Highlighting sentences in the statement of purpose
I am under the impression that admissions officers are busy people and they have lots and lots of applications to review, especially in top schools. Because of this, it could happen that the some statements of purpose might not be thoroughly read.
Does it make sense to highlight things (underline, bold) that I think admissions officers are looking for? Like ranking or publications? What might admissions officers understand from the statement of purpose if they found these highlights?

Perhaps you should clarify: e.g., are you applying to undergraduate institutions in the US?

Sorry. Applying for PhD in the US.

Okay, for PhD applications, it's not the university admission officers you need to worry about, it's the professors in that department.  Highlighting a couple of key points should be fine.  Just be factual and not self-aggrandizing.  It will be interpreted as these are the things you're trying to highlight.

I use a similar approach, using bold to highlight key words or expressions in a short free text summary in my CV. The benefit is that points I think are key to my career are visible even at a glance. As you mention, many are stressed and reading through letters take time. Although the persons responsible for the admission process should read the material carefully, it is only human to, for example, get tired after a large number of applications. Using highlighting and other forms of structuring elements (paragraph breaks or even bulleted or numbered lists) to make the text easier to access is therefore a good way to make the reading easier.
To anyone thinking that highlighting might induce unfair advantages, it is worth stating that it can also easily back-fire if the highlighting is not consistent or give an impression that is not consistent with what the text or other supporting material will indicate. In other words, any highlighting must be done with care to be a tool to simplify the access to the information and not to skew it.
Depending on where you are in your career, the CV will be the most important part of an application. Finding ways in which to summarize, for example the general impact of your articles or other activities becomes important. This is why I have a short summary text at the start of the CV, the lists of publications is then supporting the statements about number of publications, the citations of individual articles, etc.


text:
How can I make sure I'll get credit for my work when working with unwanted and untrusted collaborator?
I am taking a course with a major final project. I was looking for a topic when my co-advisor noticed this. He suggested that I do a project related to my master thesis, and I agreed since I didn't know what I was going to do. He suggested that we do a certain design in half between me and a colleague of mine during a brief meeting with the course instructor. The course instructor asked if we are going to team up and I said no (I am not a team player). I submitted a proposal saying what I will do and as stretch goal, I will complete the whole design on my own.
I ended doing a very smart design in one week and my co-advisor was very impressed. He said that one part of my design could be patented. The whole design can make it to top conferences. Now he is saying you both, me and my colleague, should work together to finish the whole design. I still have 3 weeks to go and I have almost finished his part too. I feel very mad now and I don't want to give him any credit that he didn't deserve(His is part is much simpler than mine).
He is asking me to show him my design and I am not comfortable with that since he, in two occasions, performed "unethical actions" during these projects. He could easily claim that this is his work as well.
On the other hand, I don't want to start a fight with my co-advisor who suggested a paper that helped me in my design. He also knows my design and likes my colleague much more than me. He could easily tell him do this and that.(I feel like I made a mistake showing him, my co-advisor, my design).
What would be a smart move in this situation ? What words should I use to explain this to my advisor ? I just want to protect myself and get the credit for the work I did.

I am not a team player — Learning how to be a team player is way more important than your awesome design at this stage, in my opinion. The problems started when you set out to do all the work yourself rather than splitting up the tasks between you and your colleague like adults.

Thanks, but when the instructor asked if we are going to do group project I said no. So this wasn't a group project. I can work with others just fine but I have a serious problem handling this guy, but that is not the point here.

You have every right to refuse to collaborate with him, but don't be so blunt when you tell your advisor.

Communication is needed and you need to communicate to your co-advisor your feelings rather than second-guessing things and increase your frustration. You may lack some aspects of the picture that your advisor's see. So I would suggest the following:

Prepare everything to as close as the final product (manuscript) you can at this point. Add your name as sole author (unless anyone else deserves co-authorship at this stage)
Present the work to your co-advisor for discussion and point out what "little" is left to do and discuss what remains to be done. This can then lead to understanding of what other could contribute that is not accomplished in your work.
Once you have the situation a little more clear and depending on the outcome, state how you would like to see the distribution of co-authorship and take any discussion that follows.

Hopefully this will put you in a clearer position when considering taking on additional collaborators.
Please also check the tag authors or search for contributorship here on academia to et input on what should be involved in adding names on a manuscript (here is a link to one example).

Please do not take this personally, because I do not know you or your abilities. I am only  guessing by what you say but consider that a complete Internet stranger like me, gets a negative vibe from your words. And this is not a good thing. In detail:

I still have 3 weeks to go and I have almost finished his part too.

You never do that. Would you like the other-party to do exactly this on your part of the design? And perhaps even doing it better than you? No, you would not. You can offer suggestions / improvements on his design after he finishes and only in a way that does not offend / belittle him. You have a task - he had a task. Do your part and stick to it.

I feel very mad now and I don't want to give him any credit that he
  didn't deserve.

You should be mad at yourself because you are a lousy team-player. Programming skills and intelligence can only get you up to a point. If you do not play well with others, you will usually be the first to get the boot. And the sad part is, that in that case no one will miss you. Consider this, at your next cooperation.

He is asking me to show him my design

How does your colleague knows that you finished his part of the design too? It is obvious that not only you did something wrong (doing his part of the design) but probably bragged about it. That is totally immature, childish  and unprofessional.

He likes my colleague much more than me

I wonder why. And why do you care who he likes most?

I feel like I made a mistake showing him, my co-advisor, my design.

Of course you made a mistake. You wanted to brag. You could actually used the time you spent on your colleague's design to improve your design. Or you simply believe that your design does not need any improvement. If you believe that, you
are seriously mistaken, because everything can be improved. So, focus on improving your design and checking for errors that have escaped your and your advisor's eyes.
I believe you must be an undergraduate from your previous posts (I may be mistaken). If you are and you want to go to grad school, please humble down. Some of the things you are suggesting sound pretty paranoid. You thought of hiding part of the work from your co-advisor, so that he would not share this with his "beloved" student, who you seem to antagonize. Your design (which you finished in a week) will be patented and it could make it to the top-conferences.
You do understand that all these sound a bit strange.
Also, grow up. All of you (you, your 2 advisors and your coleague) have a common task / goal. You all are going to be co-authors if the project comes out. Understand, that you will not get more credit by overtaking other people's work but just burn some bridges. So, work towards the project's goals and not toward your personal goals.
On your next project, make clear to everyone that you do not want to cooperate, because you want to do everything on your own. Although this is not a good long-term policy and sooner or later cooperation is a key to a good research output.

Thanks but let me explain a few things.
In my proposal, I indicated that as a stretch goal I will complete the whole design on my own and I did that and the instructor never complained. So completing the whole design was part of the deal.
The instructor gave us the option and I decided to do an individual project. Since I made that choice I don't even have to talk to the guy.
Lastly, I have never bragged about it. My co-advisor consistently asked me for updates. He went and told him all about my design.
The issue started when my nosy co-advisor started interfering. I need him to back-off.

Moreover, this guy took more than one "unethical" action against me and fabricated his results in the midterm project. I can't work with someone with no ethical values.

@Alexandros You know too little about the case to judge the OP as harshly as you do. It is quite possible that s/he is not a team player where s/he should be. However, there do exist constellations where indeed people are taken advantage over and end up having to carry fellow travellers. Very capable people can be very intolerant of fellow travellers, and, while some team play may be desirable, we are in science here. The purpose is ultimately good science. At this stage, it's the OP's right to choose whether s/he wants to go it alone or in the team and pay the associated cost.

While most research projects involve collaboration, I will assume that this was a student project where there was a legitimate option to either work alone or with a partner. You chose to work alone. Honestly, if someone had a history of fabricating results, I would also not risk publishing or presenting with them.
I see 5 issues to resolve/consider:

One issue seems to be where you're academic project (where you had the option of working alone) ends and where the publication, presentation or patent begins. The co-supervisor may think that you have already fulfilled the personal academic project with your design so far and that to bring it to the point of publication/presentation, additional steps need to be taken. To fulfill these additional steps, they may think it is best to bring in the other student.

You need to honestly ask yourself if the other student may have something to add (a different skill set, etc.). The co-supervisor may like the other student and just want to do him a favor, but he might just be thinking of what is best for the project.

Another potential issue is what has the other student been told. Perhaps the other student worked on his portion of the design for his individual project and the idea is now to combine them. Even if this not the case, the fact that you chose to complete the other students contribution, even after being told that was his job, does not help your case. For future reference, you should have addressed this issue immediately- making your case for completing the whole project alone before moving forward. Right now, it could look like you knowingly completed the other students work to force him out of the project. Although based on what you say, I can see why you would do this, I am not sure it was the most mature approach.
The patent issue. Depending on your location (or maybe it is an international law), you may have a legitimate claim to the design. I am not an expert in intellectual property law, so please consult an intellectual property lawyer before proceeding. But, legally, you already at least co-own the intellectual property rights to your design. See this legal blog post for an example of student intellectual property. The law overrules academic norms,seniority etc. Although it may be unusual for a student to come up with a successful patentable design, no one here knows whether this is what you have. You may be in the small percentage of students who do, in fact have something of value. Please realize that you need to think this through, read through the legal literature and consult a professional if possible. You might take a risk (reputation wise) asserting a legal claim, but if you are really sure it will pay off, maybe it is worth it. But please be sensible and humble here. In the mean time, document, photograph, time-stamp, send e-mails to yourself...these steps won't hurt and could help if a disagreement arises later.
The role of the co-advisor. If ultimately presented/published, this person may be assuming they are the senior author/PI. The PI would be an author and thus, would have a legitimate say in your work. You say you want him to 'back off', but if they consider themselves the PI on a collaborative project, they are not overstepping their bounds.
The unethical behavior of the other student is another issue and one you need to consider. If you know this is 100% true and you exhaust your other options, you might need to bring this up. I'll call the other student John. Say "I am in an uncomfortable situation that I think I need to bring to your attention. John fabricated the results of his mid-term project. I know this because [present your evidence]. I am concerned about the long-term implications of publishing work with an unethical collaborator. As you know, this could impact all of us. So, as uncomfortable as this is, I need to bring it to your attention and ask for your help." But, check your schools rules-you may have been required to report this as soon as you knew, so be careful. Depending on the rules and culture, this may be a last resort.

But, the most important thing you can do is try to get a clear idea of expectations and roles. Perhaps you could ask the course instructor to help you. He gave you the option of working along and might be able to sit down with all of you and sort things out. Calmly ask for help, stay away from accusations and speculation and see what he says.


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Resume writing guideline for applying a PhD position
I've been working a Software Engineer for almost 7 years. A few months ago I finalized my Master's degree on Computer Science, and now I'm thinking in applying to a Phd program in a European College.
I have no prior experience in research -besides the Dissertation for the Msc- so now my resume is very enterprise oriented. I'm a big fan of Gayle Laakmann resume tips, so the current version of my resume is very goal-oriented and brief but I'm not sure if that's what academia expects of a resume.
Do you have any suggestions on how to do a resume to applying to a Phd Position in Computer Science? Also, a template or an example would be of great help.

Re: examples, many of us have our CVs available on our websites (for example, my own); of course, depending on where we are in our careers they are more or less related to the kind (in terms of length/breadth) of CV a PhD applicant might have.

It's crucial to know which countries, in particular, zou are applying to, since conventions vary very much across Europe.

I've never heard of a University admitting students based on a resume.  Universities use transcripts, standardized test, statements of purpose, and letters of recommendation to admit students.
The statement of purpose is probably the closest to a resume, but this is meant to be more of a narrative of why you're pursuing a PhD, not a sales pitch about how awesome you are (which is what a resume is).
From your question it sounds like you may not have much experience with graduate research.  This is fine, but it sounds like you're approaching the PhD as another job, which is wrongheaded.  A PhD gets you out of the trenches of customer demands and allows you to focus on "pie in the sky" problems.  If you want to remain business focused, a PhD may not be for you.
If you do want a PhD, you should speak with your profs. from your MS degree.  They will be able to guide you towards universities and programs that will appreciate your industry experience.  Is there a reason you don't want to apply in the US (using the word resume suggest you're American).


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Asking a professor about his advisor
When searching for graduate schools, I've found Professor A of University X with whom I'm interested in working. I'm also interested in working with Professor A's advisor, Professor B, who is at University Y.
Is it considered socially acceptable or a conflict of interest if I ask Professor A about how it was like to be advised by Professor B?

I don't see how it would be socially unacceptable. You might have to weigh the response you get from Professor A if you think he or she is keen to have you as his/her student -- but that often happens. The conflict often arises: the desire to do the best by the student in terms of suggesting other supervisors or institutions against the desire to have a good student working on a shared topic.
Regardless of whether you get Professor A's advice, seek out students -- current and past -- of Professor B and ask them for their opinions.

The line of questioning may suggest an implicit comparison between Professor A who is trying to create a research identity away from his advisor, with Professor B who is much more influential and established.

If your interest lies in their intersection, and they still work together, you might even get them to agree on some sort of joint advisorship.


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Academic occupation options for foreign visitors to the USA?
My wife is a student in the US. I am visiting her after I got a PhD degree several months ago in mechanical engineering in China.
My visit is about one or two years long. I plan to go back China to work after that. My question is: What can I do during my visit in the USA?
Maybe a post-doc is the best choice for me, but my research background seems not competitive enough. Moreover, I am a F2 visa holder, which means I cannot get a paid job.

I am not sure this is the right forum for this question. Also, if you are not allowed to get paid you might not be allowed to be payed as a postdoc either.

somewhat related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/29464/10643

Might be better suited for http://expatriates.stackexchange.com/ ...

If you could find employment as a post-doc, then you would typically be sponsored for a visa by your employer.  That visa might be a J1 or an H1-B visa.

@BrianBorchers Yes, it is true.

If you want to work or study in a program, you must change your visa type. You can file for an adjustment of status once you have found a job that will sponsor a different visa type or matriculate into a program that will also sponsor a visa for you. Tread carefully in your job hunting as job-hunting itself may be interpreted as a violation of your status -- it would be good for you to consult with an immigration attorney (or barring that, your university's foreign student's office) before you initiate this.
Otherwise, you are unable to work or study formally. The things that you can do:

Use your spousal ID card to study in the library
Use your spousal ID card to audit classes for non-credit
Enjoy hobbies -- join a maker club and make giant fighting robots, learn to fly a kite, etc.
Take part in the activities organized by your university's foreign student/scholar office (there are many spouses in your same situation, so they tend to offer things to help pass the time)
Cook, clean, take care of the children, and otherwise be a fantastic spouse to your wife


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Co-supervisor demands more output
I am one month away from finishing my dissertation. I did not receive much guidance from my supervisor, so I asked a co-supervisor to join my project about two years after I started (with still two years left). In these two years I think I had 5 or 6 meetings with him, which is not too often, but his feedback in these moments was always very valuable. Moreover, when my relation with my supervisor deteriorated, he was there to 'protect' me. I am pretty sure I would not still be working as a graduate student otherwise.
He now points these things out to me in quite an angry way via email and argues that I have not provided him with enough output to justify the time he has spend on me. We currently have one paper together that is under review. I have no idea how to provide more output for him because we have no other papers together. I have only one month left in my current contract so I don't want to start a new paper. I can put his name on another paper that's currently under review but that doesn't feel right since he did not contribute to this paper.
Right now I feel very stressed about this and I have no idea what to do. I cannot afford to have a bad relationship with my co-supervisor right before I wish to submit my dissertation but I also feel this guilt trip is not fair. What do you think? Do you see a solution? Thanks for your advice!

Is there a possibility of taking something from your dissertation in which he was involved and turning it into another paper later on? Perhaps working with one of his current students?

Thanks Patricia. My dissertation is article based, which means that in this stage all my empirical chapters are submitted to journals and are at least under review. He has only worked with me on one of these articles, which is also under review. So I don't think we have something that we can turn into another article.

Did this outburst come out of the blue?  Is your co-supervisor the moody type?  I would suggest you two have a conversation, not through email.

What is an angry email? All caps, curse words, sarcasm? You must have this conversation with him. It sounds like he has been pretty helpful, so it would be very appropriate to ask him what he would like to see. He has been with you for two years, and he must know your current time restraints. His requirements should be workable, if you know them. We can discern from your current position that you are not afraid of work.


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Writing a commentary to a scientific journal without one's advisor
I started as a research assistant in a new lab 10 weeks ago. I have a six-month fixed-term contract, which was supposed to be extended to a PhD project in 2017. However, my supervisors have been mean to me (I don't quite understand why) and therefore I do not plan to stay in the group.
I have one unfinished paper (from the previous lab) which I plan to submit as soon as possible. The situation is quite clear: it was work that was started elsewhere, which I complete on my own time, and hence my new supervisors will not be co-authors.
I have been advocating against a certain practice in my field for about one year. I have received good comments about it. I would like to try to publish a short commentary in a leading science journal about it. However, I am not sure how to go about doing it. I would like to be the sole author, and not even discuss the work with my new supervisors. If I do it on my own time, is there potential for problems regarding authorship? It appears this particular lab has a policy that the supervisors co-author everything. Anyway, the usual protocols (e.g. Vancouver) suggest that without contributing they should be not. From a legal perspective I guess there are no problems, since the work (1) concerns a very general topic, (2) constitutes only of the idea, and does not need any resources from the university, and (3) I did it on my own time.
One thing I am also wondering is what to put as an affiliation. Should I put my present lab? Since it is the place where I work... Actually, doing that will have a positive effect to the lab's funding prospects if it is mentioned as an affiliation. On the other hand, I guess it could be used somehow against me in the worse case.
What should I do?
Please note that this is about a commentary, not original research. I think that makes this question different from many others.

Send it as sole author. I would choose to use the current affiliation. The other choice is no affiliation but it could be viewed as unprofessional.

I see no reason not to send this as a single author paper.
I would, however, mention it as a courtesy to any new adviser you may acquire. If they are reasonable, they will not require being authors, but they may have input that could be useful to you, and it would certainly be useful for them to know about the paper.

"If they are reasonable, they will not require being authors, but they may have input that could be useful to you, and it would certainly be useful for them to know about the paper." I agree.  But if they are not reasonable, maybe they would use the input they gave as a pretext for seeking coauthorship?  I think that if the OP has reason to worry, he should bring up his paper as a single author paper to all of his supervisors.

Yes, that is certainly a viable approach: "I have written this paper and would like some feedback, but within a level that allows me to stay the single author of the paper. Would you be willing to give me feedback of this kind?"

Well, if they are unreasonable, they might also feel slighted that their new student published without their consent, and even if their names aren't on the work, if they disagree at all with the premise of the article they may also not appreciate (for example, if the premise of the article is about the attribution of authorship and ending the common but against-standards practice of gifting authorship to funders and supervisors without their intellectual input).


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Can i post my article in arxiv for comments from other mathematicians?
I have recently written a paper on Quantum Polynomial Algebra. But I am not studying anywhere, so I havenot got anyone to comment. Even I have mailed a few math professors but they may be to busy to answer. That is why I was asking whether can I post my paper in arxiv to know whether the result that I have obtained is good enough to publish or not? Idonot want to send my paper in reputed journals and get rejected after 2 or 3 months.

The rules for submitting an article to Arxiv are fairly clear and do not exclude you on the basis of not being affiliated to a research institution. You have to be registered, but that's about it.
I feel that a change of terminology is in order - you don't "post" to Arxiv - it's a preprint server, not discussion forum or a message board. You "submit" work to Arxiv. Among the functions that a preprint server provides is a record of intellectual ownership. If you submit it to a preprint server, you could claim later on that this work is your own and was published on a certain date. A second function is that of peer review, which you are asking about here. If indeed your work was plagiarized, this would likely be discovered by peer reviewers if you submitted it to the Arxiv (or for that matter, to any journal with a reasonable editorial process).
Note that Arxiv does not have a peer-review process - it's a preprint server that exists specifically to speed up publication of non peer-reviewed research. However, it does have a moderation process. So while submitting your research to a preprint server makes it more likely to have it peer reviewed, it does not guarantee it.
So, to answer your question

Can i post my article in arxiv for comments from other mathematicians?

the answer is undoubtedly "yes". Nothing prevents you from doing this.
However, the corollary which is implied in your question:

If I submit my article to Arxiv, will it be peer-reviewed by mathematicians?

is more difficult to answer. Almost all peer review is a volunteer activity, irrespective of where you submit, so someone needs to volunteer their time and intellect to reviewing your contribution.
Ask yourself what your motivations are. Do you want a publication, or do you want your contribution to objectively evaluated? Either way, submit it to the Arxiv to state that the work is yours.

If I submit my article to Arxiv, will it be peer-reviewed by mathematicians? Definitely no. No one goes around peer reviewing random papers on the internet. Only journal submissions are peer reviewed, and already for them the editors have a hard time finding reviewers and getting them to do their job on time. Some mathematicians might look at the paper if they are personally interested in the topic, and check the proofs, but they will not do the same thorough job that they do for a journal submission.

It's not quite that easy to get your first paper on arxiv if you're an independent researcher. You generally need an endorsement, and since OP says it's a struggle to get anyone to respond that might not be easy.

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


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Will my supervisor be contacted by a conference if my submission is rejected or requires revison?
I submitted my paper to conference proceedings and still waiting to get the feedback within 2 months. When I uploaded the paper they asked me to fill the name and email for each co-author in the paper. So I did as they ask and I noticed that they sent an email to all mentioned authors (including the office of my professor and his secretary) that the paper is received and still under review.
What I want to ask is If the paper rejected or sent back to major reviews will my professor get an email from them as I will get?

what is your field? Did you use any platform like EasyChair? If yes, then all the authors are notified.

@PsySp field of computer science, conference name is WI2017 that will be held il Leipzig Germany. https://wi-lab.com/cyberchair/2017/wi17/scripts/submitform.php

Ok, I checked it and this system is unknown to me (it's not standard). What can I offer it's a guess and that is that everybody will be informed.

The system is cyberchair, and I've seen it before in another conference. In my case, I received the notification e-mail even though I was not the submitting author.

Your supervisor's secretary is an author? That's very egalitarian of you!

What exactly is OP worrying about?

Some conference systems do, and some systems don't. If the system contacted all authors upon submission, one could speculate that it will also do this when a decision on the paper has been made. But it really depends on the system, and as there are so many, it's hard to predict.
But I'm going to add that it shouldn't matter: Whatever the outcome, you will have to tell your coauthors one way or the other. If they learn it from an automated email, then that is as good as if you sent them a personal email.


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Will the asterisk (*) next to merged articles in my Google Scholar profile disappear?
After merging two articles in my Google Scholar profile, an asterisk (*) shows up on the profile next to the merged items. Will it disappear after a while, or will it remain forever?

While forever is a long time, article that I have merged over a year ago are still marked with the asterisk. I would assume that this will not be automatically removed, and will remain until Google decides to change the design.