text:
Cannot complete thesis and blocked to go non-thesis. What other avenues towards a degree exist?
I began my MS 3.5 years ago with the thesis option. The research objectives required by my graduate committee chair will require another half a year at the very least. I am not willing to offer any more of my time having already exceeded my anticipated graduation date by 1 year.
I decided to cut my losses and change to a non-thesis program. I am prevented from doing this by my committee chair who does not approve of this transition.
So my committee chair has me at a bit of an impasse. I cannot spend any more time towards his research, but I cannot switch to a program of study that no longer requires more research without his approval which he is not willing to give. Where do I go from here?

Are there any possible answers other than "suck it up and do extra time", "beg/threaten/argue so they let you transition", and "drop out"? Which of those you choose is really a personal decision based on the specific details. Sounds like a difficult situation.

There is one other I can think of: change my committee chair (advisor). However, the department is very small and I don't know the others. On option two: I'm willing to threaten/argue. I think I've got beg already done. I have tons of work to show for the last 3.5 years, but I don't know who else to get involved while remaining tactful.

Yeah, doesn't seem likely that another professor would want to wade into the middle of this, particularly if your advisor would not approve (and even moreso if they don't know you). But I'm just guessing; you know all the details far better than anyone here. If you're really asking how to go about threatening/arguing, I would edit your question to reflect that -- that might be something we can help answer.

Independently of what you do to obtain a degree, you should consider whether you have enough research to publish. You should also certify your contribution to the research to protect that your advisor acknowledges your work properly should it go to publication. The question of how to do this can be the subject of an entirely different thread, and an answer may already exist here. As your interest on this issue dictates, a follow up might be reasonable. In addition, a report back on your actions would be appreciated to close the loop here.

You are not in a position to threaten. That could get you in a lot of trouble. So whatever you do, do not threaten. What you could do is escalate, i.e. move up in the bureaucracy, as Jeffrey Weimer suggested. Also there are typically faculty or non-faculty members who have the task of helping students with the "bureaucratic stuff". Going to their office hours would be a good first step.

Where I am, a non-thesis option requires only the approval of the department (meaning the department chair) and the graduate school. A "non-thesis advisor" is considered an oxymoron. At best, graduate students in this position are advised by either the Department Chair or the Chair of the Graduate Programs for the Department.
Put together a Program of Study (PoS) based on the Graduate Catalogue for your university and department / program. Your university probably has an on-line form to complete and submit. Confirm that you have met all of the administrative requirements. Then ...

Talk to the Department Chair.
Talk to the Dean of the Graduate School.

When you meet all of the PoS requirements for the degree, and with their approvals and signatures, you should be done.


text:
How to proceed when a professor is not answering emails requesting for a grade? and not awarding bonus points as he said?
Some key facts:

I am a master's student.
The professor in question is also our director of studies and teaches 3 mandatory classes in our program.
Several students have sent emails that never received a reply.

The situation:
The professor in question is not answering emails regarding the grades for two of the seminars. I contacted this professor by email about two weeks ago to know what was my grade for the last project and to have feedback on what I did well/wrong and also to know how was the class graded in general, but I never received a reply. At this point, I will like to mention that other students have also emailed this teacher about the same topic and to this date, no one has received an answer. Yet, he does answer emails for other type of inquiries we might have.
This brings me to next point, it appears to be that in both of the seminars he did not add in the grade bonus points we were promised (as a matter of fact, he was the one proposing the bonus points after some of us complained directly to him about the tasks\projects in question).
At last, if we know our final grade is because the department sends them to each student once the professor has given them the final grade which in the case of this professor it took about 2 months longer than the rest of the seminars. The issue here is that we never got the grade for the last project we did in both of the seminars, but only got a final grade. Therefore, there was no possibility to know if the grade for the project was fair and it has not been possible to have some feedback on why we got the given grade.
At this point, I am pondering whether it is necessary to contact an Ombudsperson from the university or to resend him an email or contact him personally instead of escalating the situation?
Thank you for your valuable feedback on this matter.

Does this class have a teaching assistant whom you can contact?

Have you tried asking in person?

Your key facts should include when the grades should be submitted. Does it say anything in the syllabus? Do they need to be submitted by the end of term or some period after the term? This will affect how you should approach the situation. If the professor is in clear violation of some written policy that's very different from the professor being on the slower side of acceptable. You make it very clear that you don't think it's within the acceptable range, but your key facts don't include a timeline for when marks should be awarded / uploaded and what kind of feedback is expected.

Yes, contact the ombudsperson, student office or office of graduate studies about this. If several of you do so then it’ll probably make the department push the Professor to do their job. Professors often see their teaching duties as secondary but this seems particularly egregious.
Hope it gets straightened out. I had a professor who failed to submit grades for nearly a year, eventually the entire class got an A- blanket grade which was infuriating.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Readmission after leaving for and being dismissed from a different graduate program
Consider this scenario:
I enroll in a graduate program at X university. Then I withdraw and enroll in an equivalent program at Y university instead. A few semesters later I get dismissed from Y university due to low GPA, but can apply for readmission to the X university's program after being dropped due to non-attendance.
What are my issues here? I would be continuing my education without skipping a beat, transferring over credits from the old program, even getting a clean transcript out of the whole ordeal. This all sounds like there is something unfair with what I am doing.

If this is for a Ph.D. program, I doubt that X would re-admit you with your CV. If it is for a masters with no financial support, who knows? It’d look odd on your later CV when applying for jobs, but if the program is strong, it might be a net positive.

Why all the problems? Disease? Laziness?

@Buffy this whole year itself

i don't understand.  Coronavirus disruptions?

@Buffy I have a very intriguing sob story with that as the main theme, and it also has a bit my where my low GPA is just a rounding error below the cutoff. But I want to save it for when I need to appeal. Here I just want to make sure my fallback is not some ethics violation

Considering the comments, I think you are most worried about whether you might be committing an ethical infraction. If that is the case, then no, you can certainly ethically apply back to your original institution as long as you don't do so fraudulently. Whether you can be accepted or not is up to them and their practices.
But you have a steep hill to climb and success isn't foretold. It would depend on the individual circumstances, how much you are willing to reveal, and whether you will be listened to. You will probably need to find a way to make some personal appeal and find an advocate who will stand with you to seek admission. Perhaps there is someone at the first institution who can intervene in some way.
I doubt, however, that you will get a "clean" transcript out of it. The first university has almost certainly retained all of your records.

Dropping is generally a red flag to admittance groups, but could be overcome with a good reason. Be prepared for the following questions: Why did you drop?  If the two programs are equivalent, why is the second one better?
There are presumably good answers: I moved home to look after a sick family member. I had a sudden loss of incoming financial support and rotated to a lower cost university to pursue my passion.  I worked with faculty member XYZ on a top-tier research project, and I came with them from the first university to the second under a full ride.  Sometimes the answers are still honest and fair but less flattering: "I was worried about my mental health during the pandemic and rotated to be closer to family and my support network. I did better afterwards and thrived at the second university."
You presumably have good reasons - it will depend on your ability to communicate why, and you will need more details than provided above.

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


text:
What do supervisors have to gain from a success or failure of a PhD student?
I'm finishing a really messed up dissertation. Maybe decent in some sense, but all the PhD has been done without following any of the supposed methodology and criteria. Since I'm in a sort of arm wrestling with the supervisor from years and since I didn't miss the chance of exposing some soft versions of my PhD nightmare, I think that my supervisor might act in the following ways:

Helping to actually finish successfully the PhD so that all the issues will be silenced and hidden under a carpet. This might imply inviting examiners that are under his influence and pretending that everything is alright.
Otherwise, he might bring me to the viva knowing that the research cannot be accepted and exposing all its shortcomings.

This last one would open to two possibilities:

Asking the changes that he expected from the beginning of my research (independently from their actual value)
Making me failed so that I can take all the blame without having any chance to expose his responsibilities and delegitimize any possible retaliation I can do

I have the feeling that the only thing he wants to avoid is that I leave the PhD, because in that case he is powerless over me and I can actually expose the problems that occurred and ruin his reputation.
For this reason I'm trying to understand what is on the stake for the supervisor if I succeed, if I fail or if I abandon. I would like to know how this might affect his reputation and/or his role in the institution, or if any of these options would not change much (in positive or negative) for him.
I'm asking this, also for another reason: in any case and at any moment, I never perceived that my supervisor expected or had any interest in having me doing a great job. I have the feeling that this doesn't really matter to him. The only thing that matters is the utility that this research can have for his personal, social, institutional purposes.

Please consider editing this question to be shorter.  The title alone is nearly enough to describe what you're asking, and all the rest of this is background that gets in the way of people reading and helping.

@Jeff I previously posed the question in another post and one of the suggestions said I should reedit by explaining all the story... I don't know how I can both make it shorter and contextualize the issue

Your original question was closed for being opinion based, not for being too short.  Regardless, maybe there's a balance you could strike between the two that explains the backstory in a succinct way.

There is no universal answer to this question.  It will depend on the regulations of the university (or perhaps of the department) as well as the culture of the department and the discipline.

https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4471/academia-varies-more-than-you-think-it-does-the-movie

@AlexanderWoo I agree... but in general sense I guess that excluding the specificities of the university there are some common and unwritten rules in the academic communities.

Although much depends on the particular professor, the culture of the institution, etc., I can at least comment on this bit of your question: "he might bring me to the viva knowing that the research cannot be accepted and exposing all its shortcomings." This is extremely unlikely. Allowing a student to defend an unacceptable thesis would reflect as badly on the supervisor as on the student. Before one of my students can defend a thesis, I must certify that it's acceptable; I would be very humiliated if it actually wasn't acceptable.

As a prospective PhD student, when I choose my advisor if I see that PI had a PhD student who had left, failed etc, that would be a strong motivation for me to not to work with them.

@AndreasBlass This depends on the country. In the UK, a PhD student can decide to proceed to defend the thesis even if the supervisor advises against. It has happened in the past at my university with the student failing miserably.

@AndreasBlass thanks, this is an important point. Despite it really depend on the institution etc... of which I still hold some suspicions, I think your point is the most important. So, not sure, if I should, but probably I should trust of the evaluation of my supervisor on defining my dissertation to be ready or not, since he is also sharing the responsibility of it.

@electrique I didn't know that this was possible, anyway this is not the case

@pat On a personal note, you should get a heads up when the names of possible examiners come up. You should try to have a say. For instance, I know some brilliant but very demanding professors that most people would have a problem fending against in a panel. On the other hand, I know professors that would be happy to brush through and head for a pint.

Thanks @electrique, this is also a good hint. The names came up, chosen by my supervisor, I agreed because I don't have many ideas of how they can be. At first sight they looks as a reasonable choice, so here I wanted to trust the supervisor and avoiding negotiating also on this. I suspect my supervisor might have choose them because he probably have some influence on them. This also doesn't look that right, but again I'm in his hands.

@electrique Thanks for the information about the rules in the UK. Defending one's thesis when the supervisor deems it not ready to be defended seems extremely unwise. I'm not surprised that the student you mentioned failed. Are there examples where the student passed?

@AndreasBlass not that I know of. And I know that rule because of that one student.

Related question from same OP following day: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/147672/is-it-better-having-a-bad-phd-done-or-having-no-phd

@DanielR.Collins I have many correlated questions that I'm slicing because long and complex and because one by one can be of some use to others, everything together would just be relevant to my situation. I hope this is not wrong.

First, to answer the question directly, supervisors have much more to gain from successful students than unsuccessful ones. Among other things, success brings them new students and future collaborators. Most of us are very proud of our successful students and, we hope, they have good feelings toward us, as well. The failures just disappear.
Moreover, I doubt that he would want to keep you "under his thumb" rather than letting you go, whether from passing or failing. I think that it is very unlikely that any student, no matter how badly treated, can "ruin the reputation" of their advisor unless there is a pattern of abuse over many years and many students. I'm sure it happens, but is so unlikely that it would be an extreme event if he considered it to be a possibility.
But, it is also possible that he just wants you gone, however it happens, because he sees you as a thorn in his side and he is tired of dealing with it. It is possible that, while failing you is a poor alternative, he sees it as the only way. That doesn't imply that he is correct, though he may be, and that you are wrong. But it might just be more peaceful without you. Your statement "all the PhD has been done without following any of the supposed methodology and criteria" is a bit of a red flag.
I worry, however, that you may be fighting him just for the sake of fighting. He seems to have "expected" some changes. It seems you have resisted. I can't judge the case, of course, but it is a poor strategy to fight with your supervisor rather than seeking some accommodation.
I don't know what options are open to you, but most seem dire unless you find a way to make peace. Abandoning years of work is difficult, but may be necessary if it hasn't been productive. Even established researchers have to do that on occasion.

I'm afraid you might have a different notion of 'success' than the questioner here.  A student who continues as a researcher in the field brings a supervisor new students and future collaborators.  A student who continues as a successful practitioner in the field also adds reputational effects that might help bring in new students.  A student who passes their PhD and then slinks away because their PhD wasn't really all that good does neither.

@AlexanderWoo, I guess I don't define "success" as just basic completion. We can aid their success, but it is up to them.

Let me clarify this... in the general sense of the question with "success" I mean the actual finishing the PhD without quitting it. In the end of my post, when I said that " I never perceived that my supervisor expected or had any interest in having me doing a great job" I referred to the success in my career.

@Buffy I agree with everything you expressed, but I would need to explain all the story to make everything more clear, but this is not the place. Since few years a took already the distance from my institution and supervisor, and I started doing something else meanwhile. Certainly I would avoid future collaborations if not very attractive, since I realized that I cannot trust him. Sure he would say the same of me. There hasn't been serious abuses, but manipulations and perpetuation of irregularities in which he believe I could take the complicity while I was also a victim.

@Buffy when you said: "that he just wants you gone" this is possible and I try to understand it. Indeed, I think I provoked some embarrassment, indirectly, by expressing to the colleagues my frustration, for drawing the line and refusing activities unrelated to my PhD

@Buffy  "fighting him just for the sake of fighting" I have to say this is possible... I try to be self-critical on this and I cannot say I'm 100% clean in the situation. I'm in a long process of accommodation but I'm here posing this question because as I was saying I'm not able to trust anymore and I must be able to predict any possible move and intention

Sounds ominous. I wonder if this answer to a very different question would help. https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/147634/75368

@Buffy thanks but the answer on this link doesn't really apply... If you mean the possibility of changing institution, it's also a problematic thing. My supervisor is very well known and since he was also the supervisor of my master I would not have anyone who I can trust for a reccomandation letter

Harder than I suspected, then. I suggest finding allies. Preferably among the faculty.

To add to your "success is better than failure": depending on the country, you may also need to have tutored a few PhDs before getting promoted.

Sorry to hear you had a bad PhD experience.
PhD supervisors are invested in the success of the students for a multitude of reasons. In the science, much of the research a supervisor is connected to happens vicariously, through their students and postdocs. Assuming the PI went into academia because they loved research, that is reason enough! Plus, they are likey to to be authors on papers etc.
I gether things arn't so much the same in humanities. But I'd still expect a successful student to be a source of joy and intelectual stimulation. At worse, a student is a part of the job, given to you by the department to look after, and your record will record how good a job you did.
How many students I have succesfully graduated is an important part of my job when it comes to promotions and pay rises. More than a couple of failures to complete and the department will start getting flack from those that pay. In the UK system, if the completion rate of a dept drops below 75% they are cut off from research funding. One failure to complete is a black mark on my record. Two would get serious questions asked. Three would put you in serious trouble.
Almost nobody "fails" a PhD, doubly so if the supervisor green lights the submission. I've heard of maybe two people whom anyone I know has been connected to that having failed - that is they have submitted a thesis and the committee/viva examiners have said "no, this is not good enough, you fail". Students (and new faculty) often over-estimate what is required in a PhD thesis to pass. Much more common is failure to complete - where a thesis is never submitted, either because the student loses the motivation to complete, has personal problems, or the supervisor decides that the student will never produce a good enough thesis and starts proceedings to remove the student from the program. Or some combination (supervisor keeps saying "no this isn't yet good enought" and eventually the student gives up).

It is also possible that we say "no this isn't yet good enough" and the student gets re-invigorated and gets it right. I can think of a couple of cases of that.

Yes, everything is correct in normal situations and I hope the same will applies to me. My suspicion, thus my question, is that the failing or success, or success with major changes that I wouldn't agree, might be instruments for further manipulations and/or retaliations. Maybe I'm just overreacting to a very stressful experience, but I need to evaluate these possible strategies.

" success with major changes" is the norm. I think in my department proably just slightly less than 50% of students are required to make major corrections to their thesis by the viva examiners (the next 40% are required to make "minor corrections", the only difference being whether you are given 3 or 6 months to make them.

I like the answer by Buffy but I will focus on your question:

What to gain by you succeeding: nothing. Basically, your relationship is not good, so s/he cannot probably expect a collaboration in the future. Moreover, you succeeding might create more issues. For instance, you might decide to “expose” them anyway but now as a successful Dr rather as a disgruntled failed candidate.
What to gain by you failing: nothing. A PhD student failing is always bad for the supervisor. S/he has spent hours, days, months advising you and reviewing material. Even if s/he didn’t spend any time, still there is a social and professional “stigma” from one of your PhD students failing. On top of that, s/he’ll have to deal with you for a longer period.
What to gain by you leaving: maybe something. Confrontation is uncomfortable for most people. If you decide to leave, then you’re out of sight. Even if you try to “expose” them, you are anymore an outsider that failed the program and now you are disgruntled. Unless you have some really damning evidence (falsification of data, financial mismanagement, etc.), the effect on them would be minimum.

Anyway, you decided to stick with the said supervisor and for your own reasons you didn’t move to another lab or supervisor for years. If they feel that strongly about some ideas and yourself can only describe your own work as “descent”, then maybe you should reconsider following their advise or compromising. Keep in mind that even if you get a PhD, unless it’s an amazing PhD, you might still need some references in the future.

I like this answer, but "What to gain by you succeeding: nothing." might not necessarily be true. At some places, number of graduated PhD students is seen a success metrics and there might be explicit incentives for scoring well on that metrics.

@electrique, I also agree, but I would add some other considerations: before starting the PhD I had already a discrete success and reputation in the specific community (... my field allows this) after I started the PhD, this begin to degrade since I had to exit my specific area for dealing with what the supervisor requested. Meanwhile I got appointed as adjunct professor in another university in another country, so I might still be a disgruntled failed candidate, but that still can hold a bit of recognition that I can use. In the other hand my fear is that this won't be enough to have a voice.

@lighthousekeeper: in some places having tutored a number of PhD is a legal requirement for the next title of the advisor.

There are commonly institutional incentives to get PhD students to pass even if they're not strong candidates. At my institution there is a direct payment from the government when a student passes. On the other side, there's not much to gain from the failure of a student - every one that fails is a black mark against the supervisor's name within the institution. If the student leaves without completing, that's a failure for the supervisor. The supervisor wants you to pass.
Where the conflict usually arises is in how much work they're willing to put in to see it happen.
If i can offer advice: most PhDs get a bit messed up along the way, making the best out of what you have is the key. Don't focus on the problems or what you regret, focus on what succeeded or is interesting.


text:
technologies for remote proctoring / invigilating
I'm interested in a video solution (think Zoom) that would allow an
invigilator to see a number of candidates on the screen but which does
not allow candidates to see each other. Are there any such
software?solutions available for this? Obviously, the more mature the
better so that setup for the client side for candidate is simple. If it
was self-hosted then that would be ideal.
I'm aware of online proctoring / invigilating companies (Examity,
ProctorU, TestReach, ProctorExam,...) but they usually either use their
own invigilators or are quite costy.
Somewhat related question here.

There is a Lockdown browser solution for Moodle and several questions on here asking similar things.  Such as https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/145948/72855

What sort of scale do you envision? How many students per proctor? Can you be flexible enough that not every student deals with the same question(s)?

@SolarMike And how does Lockdown Browser differ from the online proctoring products mentioned by OP? Maybe you should write an answer.

See here for some related issues.

@FedericoPoloni Lockdown browser does not provide invigilators unlike what the OP mentions, however, there is a licensing fee... But you can check out the details - they have a good website.

As a partial answer, WeBWorK is an open source tool developed by the MAA (homepage here). You can either host it yourself or pay MAA to host it for you. WeBWorK allows for more complicated problems that multiple choice and automatically can give different numbers for problems (e.g., you might get add 2 + 3 and I would get add 5 + 1).
This would help with homework and possibly hosting the quizzes and tests (but not the proctoring part). I used WeBWorK when taking an undergraduate-level linear algebra course and found it quite usable as a student (it was actually better than the close-source software that came with my physics book and was used for homework).


text:
Are there any (online) communities for independent researchers?
Perhaps a bit of background on myself is useful in this case. I've obtained a bachelor's and master's degree in pure mathematics and applied mathematics, respectively. Although I would like to do a PhD on a topic that is somewhat related to these fields, I suspect I will not be able to obtain a position due to my GPA (7.0 out of 10) and limited amount of contacts in academia (I've graduated almost two years ago).
Despite of the limited perspectives for an academic career, I still have loads of ideas for research, and I'm eager to publish articles as an independent researcher in my spare time. More often than not, however, the research ideas only partially pertain to my area of expertise. Usually, I would like to apply some statistical methods to do research in some social science. For instance, I'd like to do a statistical comparison on the holocaust victims of different countries, or on the methods through which the media can influence governments.
While I may be quite good at formulating research questions and doing statistical analyses, I often lack the relevant domain expertise to substantiate the article with relevant information, and relate it to prior research in the area. Therefore, I would like to work together with people who are more knowledgeable in these fields, and write papers together.
Being outside academia, however, often makes it difficult to find people who'd like to collaborate with me. Thus, I wonder whether there is some international community of independent scholars. Preferably, this community would be backed by some website through which I can find like-minded researchers who'd like to work with me. Ideally, the website would have some kind of SE-like interface, through which on can propose ideas for articles. Then, others can respond to the idea, and "matches" between researchers can be made.
Having a background in mathematics, I know of the so-called Polymath Project for massively collaborative mathematical projects. This is related to, but not exactly, what I'm looking for. For one, it is restricted to mathematics. Moreover, it is not especially geared towards independent researchers, and the concept is not to have some kind of match-making system for researchers and their ideas.
Questions

Do you know whether an international community of independent researchers exists?
Is it backed by the website I've just described?
Are there any projects like this currently under development, or have they existed in the past?
If it doesn't exist (yet), do you think it's a good idea to create such a community and website, and do you have suggestions to make it a thriving, long-term community?

A profile at RG network may be interesting for you: https://www.researchgate.net/

@AntonVrdoljak Yes, that's a nice website. I have a profile over there, but it's not entirely what I'm looking for. It's not especially geared towards finding other people who'd like to work with independent researchers like me, and it doesn't include the match-making feature based on research ideas, I think

Does this answer your question? Is there a "Facebook" for researchers? (to collaborate on projects)

@GoodDeeds the question does seem to be related. I hope this question can still remain open to other answers though, as this one is more geared towards independent researchers and creating a research community outside universities

Take a look at Ronin Institute http://ronininstitute.org/

Re: 4, I don't think it exists yet, and I do think there would be interest. For example, there are lots of PhDs who go into industry that remain interested in academic research, but have a hard time finding collaborators. If you're serious about developing a project like this, let me know and I'll do it with you.

@AlexanderGruber let's talk about the possibilities. Do you have an email address? Mine is maxmuller100@hotmail.com

@Justas that looks like an interesting organization, thank you

Are you guys working on something? This is something that I myself would really like to see realized as well. @MaxMuller I have also sent you an email.

Would you consider starting writing your personal blog? I know some independent science bloggers have great influence now in research community.

There are organizations for independent researchers. Such organization is NCIS, the National Coalition of Independent Scholars, which is a US based organization providing resources (scholarships, a personal website, email, community...etc.) for people (internationally) pursuing independent researcher goals.
You can read more on their website: https://www.ncis.org/membership-benefits

IGDORE, a large organization for independent scientists, hosts an online forum titled On Science and Academia. This is by far the largest online meeting place for independent scientists to my knowledge. IGDORE membership is not required to participate. I am not a member of IGDORE, and I have seen others with traditional university affiliations participate as well.
I've found the website useful to meet like-minded people, and I believe they would be receptive to requests to collaborate on a particular idea.

No, there is no international community that convenes independent scholars together.
But, yes, it would be a good idea. LENS lists more than 14.000 scholarly works published by independent researchers, which indicates a demand for such a community.

That being said, there are national groupings of independent scholars: ISAA, or the Independent Scholars Association of Australia, is one example. In addition, there here used to be local groups in the U.S. dating back to the 1980s. However, I am not aware whether any of them still exist.
See p. 35 from the Jan-Feb. 1985 issue (Vol 71, No. 1) of Academe, a magazine from the American Association of University Professors:


text:
What are the consequences for missing a semester grade reporting deadline?
It is obviously doing a disservice to students waiting for their final grades who might need them for financial aid purposes etc. Course faculty involved in this would also at least have some explaining to do for essentially not doing their jobs. Beyond that, what do the consequences entail for those two levels and beyond e.g. program or department administration and higher?

Vote to close as institution-dependent.

Nothing, really. I had to go to the registrar's office and turn in a hard copy Change of Grade form for the entire class. In the meantime everyone in the class had an Incomplete.

Probably none, especially now, and especially if it is a one time thing.
Bad things happen. The "higher ups" need to deal with those effectively so that they don't recur.
But there won't be much beyond a possible apology and a report, though a reexamination of policies may occur.
Pandemic disruption is pretty widespread. Misfeasance also, I suppose, and repetitions and/or carelessness will have repercussions, up to termination. But people aren't perfect.

And especially not for department chairs and such. Any university that punished department chairs for faculty being disorganized... would quickly see a lack of volunteers for chair positions.


text:
Independent Publishing as a University Affiliate
What are some things to keep in mind while publishing as a university affiliate? By this I mean positions that allow credentials like for being a third party instructor, counseling etc. Is it ethical to use university credentials in those cases?
Also what kind of a difference does funding make in this case, provided the affiliation does not include any terms on intellectual property? This is assuming it is not completely unethical to use credentials that were provided for a specific purpose, even if not explicitly.

What do you mean by "affiliate"?, Or "third party instructor".

I teach non-credited coding classes and get a .edu email, ID card and an entry on the directory for it. I am not on the university payroll though, third party curriculum and pay

First, you don't need university affiliation to publish papers. Different universities might feel differently about your situation, so you should ask someone, perhaps in the department for which you teach. They might not want you to use the university's name if you aren't on the payroll, especially if you aren't subject to their normal rules.
The one important thing that the university might be able to do for you is provide IRB advice if your research involves human subjects in any way.
Other than that, you can probably use anything that is merely descriptive, such as "adjunct instructor at H*d University".
But, "Independent Researcher" may be your best "affiliation". The reviewers will be interested what you write in your papers, not your university. Your email address will indicate some association in any case.


text:
Realistic to stay in the industry and study neuroscience at the same time?
I want to do interdisciplinary research in CS and neuroscience and I think attending at least some form of a grad program that gets me to the level of being able to publish and be taken seriously in neuroscience after finishing a MS in CS will give me a good edge both ways.
At the same time I do not want to leave the industry and take the lifestyle hit or lose my edge in engineering. I am not worried about the workload since I imagine it will not be different than my current situation already working full time and doing school.
I am more worried about grad programs being geared towards exclusive attendance causing issues with daytime conflicts, reduced faculty support, having to relocate etc. which I do not see worth the sacrifice since all I want out of it is to be able to do research, write and publish interdisciplinary work without putting my foot in my mouth, rather than committing to an entire career track.
Is there a realistic way I can accomplish this?

what kind of interdisciplinary research? Neuroscientists want to learn about nature. Computer scientists want to make new technology. If the latter (e.g. biologically-inspired A.I. or something) the amount of neuroscience you need to know is pretty limited. A CS dept might even have a class for you. Meanwhile to get "taken seriously" in biology research might take a phd plus a career focused in precisely the brain region / developmental stage / model organism you want to publish about.

That's... one way of simplifying those two massive fields with dozens of almost mutually exclusive sub-disciplines each. In my case I want to mix research in cognitive neuroscience, systems theory, algorithm design etc

maybe I need to simplify it even more. Research is performed to extend the frontiers of knowledge. What frontier are you interested in trying to extend? Also your first paragraph (i.e. sentence) is a bit hard to parse. Do you already have the MS?.

I don't think you should. I want to do research from a complex systems perspective. Cognitive neuroscience has implications in software engineering, software engineering has implications in computer science and computer science has implications in cognitive neuroscience, and vice versa. Having a mastery of all three would allow exploring that combined frontier which is what I want to do

Speaking only for the US, there are graduate programs that have courses primarily in the evenings to accommodate working people. But most people may not want to take a full course load of, say, four courses with the associated work. These programs are probably concentrated in large cities, I guess.
And it is doctoral programs that are more likely to be research focused than another MS. And evening only doctoral programs are more rare, I would suppose.
But, do you really want two full-time jobs? Both your work and schooling will require a heavy commitment. Does 80 or so hours a week work for you. Do you have other commitments on time and focus (family, etc).
Whether your current MS program in CS is more or less intense than studying neuroscience, I can't say. But go in with full knowledge.
So, possible, yes. But a very hard road for a couple of years at least.
An alternative might be a program (probably rare in the US) that is entirely research based and doesn't require much coursework. If you have a project that doesn't require your physical presence during the day it might work out. But still, 80 or so hours.


text:
How does one approach reverse-plagiarism -- being attributed authorship without contribution or consent?
For reasons I am not going to delve into, I was given second authorship outside my consent on a couple of conference papers I have absolutely no contributions on.
To resolve this, I have been repeatedly going back-and-forth with ACM to remove me from those, which keeps ending up with the head author very strongly insisting I did contribute, and ACM responding with the written equivalent of shrugging and walking away.
This whole situation is very bizarre and I am sincerely at a loss as to how to even begin approaching this. Plagiarism is complicated enough despite it basically being the most studied academic subject of all times. But how does one even begin to approach it happening in reverse?

Related, possible duplicates: What to do after I was named as co-author on a paper, without my consent?, My name was added to manuscript as co-author without my consent; how to get it removed?

This seems odd for ACM (Association for Computing Machinery). Why does the lead insist that you did contribute?

I'm aware of some journals that now email co-authors and have them verify their involvement before considering the manuscript.  That initially struck me as tedious, but situations like this must be common enough to call for that verification.

@Buffy lead author's motivations fall into the realm of harassment. I disagree on the “how to approach it would depend on the reasons you are not going to delve into” part though. We do not necessarily need to know why someone plagiarizes in order to call out theft

I do agree with Dan Romik. Actually the main issues to be solved seem to be those you are not going to delve into. For coauthorship alone, I guess that you can simply insist with the journal. I do not see how they can decide who is coauthor and who's not without screening for it in advance. It should be possible to pretend your name be removed.

@DanielHatton that's the other thing. It could be beneficial to my reputation, which makes the matters worse. I am attributed content I did not create, and not qualified to be responsible for it. Is that not the whole idea behind why plagiarism is the biggest sin one can commit in academia?

The head author’s insistence that you contributed is irrelevant. One simply cannot make someone a coauthor without their consent. I suggest that you reply to the chain of emails with something along the following lines:

Dear [ACM editors],
Thank you for your assistance with the issue of the coauthorship of [paper]. My colleague [head author], cc’ed, is being too kind when he says I contributed to the project. Perhaps there is some truth to that; regardless, for personal reasons I do not wish to be made a coauthor, and do not give my consent to be listed as a coauthor of the paper. I make this decision without implying any opinion as to the content of the paper, its quality, or the question of how much I contributed.
Please confirm that you are removing my name from the list of coauthors [optionally, you can add for added pressure if you expect more resistance:] or I will be forced to escalate the matter to the [Editor-in-Chief/Advisory Board/etc].
[head author], thanks for the lively discussion and for your generous suggestion to make me a coauthor. If you wish to mention me in the Acknowledgements section that is totally fine.
Regards,
Layman

Once you expressly state your refusal to be made a coauthor in this way, it’s difficult to imagine them “shrugging and walking away”. My guess is you simply haven’t been assertive enough in your earlier request. Good luck, and do update your question to let us know how things turn out with this curious affair...

I know this is an old thread, but for others who struggle with this question, I had some luck in convincing the author who kept adding me to remove me:
My argument to them was that I was not scientifically comfortable attaching my name to a paper where I had not taken part in verifying the results. When they pushed back, I further clarified that I did not want to stake my reputation on research I could not prove to have been done well. (They used some equipment I helped design but I wasn't present to see if they took steps to avoid known sources of error.) The journal in question required all coauthors to verify authorship, so I stated emphatically that I would not accept authorship. Since the other author wanted the paper out the door quickly, they agreed to remove me from authorship and instead put my name in an acknowledgements section. I'm not sure what they think of me after the experience, but the mild threat of delay combined with phrasing the issue as being about my opinions and my actions seems to have done the trick.


text:
Why target for low grade medians and generous curves, rather than extra credit?
There seems to be a trend with science and math classes especially, where target distribution for the absolute grades are somewhere in mid Fs. But then the curve brings all the students with 30s and 40s into high Bs or even As.
What's the rationale here? Isn't it effectively the same as having assignment weights sum up to over 100% sans the stress aspect?

Sorry, this isn't very understandable. And where do your assumptions come from about "trend" and such?

Is this simply a case of a flood of students into a "popular" major and a very difficult entry level course or two to push students into other majors since the place can't handle such a flood in later courses? This happens periodically in CS, for example, but less often in math.

I find it impossible to believe that students scoring in the 30s or 40s can be bumped to an A except in very exceptional circumstances, such as a technical error on the exam, and exceptional circumstances don’t make a trend.  I suppose the instructor could be entirely incompetent but again I doubt this is a trend.

@ZeroTheHero - one advanced physics course I took was set up so that a grade in the 30's was in fact an A. The homework and tests were made so that any given problem was extremely difficult to actually finish fully and correctly. The point was for the professor to see just how far along you actually got. Different philosophy. An extremely good course all the same.

@JonCuster I can only say I strongly disagree with this approach, and I know of no-one operating on this philosophy: it is disrespectful to students as it assumes they have nothing better to do than work on impossible assignments.  it's  easy to make arbitrarily hard assignments, and if indeed this was the case then I join the OP is question.

Can you clarify your definition of "absolute grade"? Does your professor or institution have a well-defined grading scale that says 40% = F? Or do you just have a preconception that a 40% "should" be an F?

@ZeroTheHero - and yet it was one of the best classes I ever took. I learned a great deal about how to wrestle with difficult problems, which has served me very well over the years. Learning how to approach hard problems in the real world needs practice and training, not a bunch of problems with a neat, simple. "right" answers.

Are you having a certain region or even school in mind?

@ZeroTheHero I don't see any disrespect towards students in asking them to attempt something hard. It would be far more disrespectful to assume they are only capable of something easy. I know I hated math classes where you were primarily graded on demonstrating all the intermediate steps: for some problems, the solution became obvious to me and it was silly to write out the rest of the basic algebra for a course in calculus.

@BryanKrause I disagree.  Students have other things to do than work on arbitrarily hard assignments to the detriment of their other courses.  Some may have hold jobs outside the university, some may have other obligations.  I recognize the need to have challenging assignments (for which I am locally notorious) and exams, but if the class average is such that students who achieved 30% get a high B or an A in this course, something's wrong with the format.

@ZeroTheHero I don't see how posing a difficult question in an exam causes the student to fail their other obligations.

@BryanKrause if every student is expected to study 100 hours per test to get a passing grade because exams or assignments are needlessly hard, the course load in the class is unnecessarily high.

@ZeroTheHero No one has suggested an exam that is needlessly difficult with respect to passing. The situation described is one where the threshold for passing an exam is far lower than the maximum possible credit on the exam, rather than a more typical "90% for an 'A'", etc.

I don't think this is a duplicate of the associated question. That question is about whether curving is fair. This question is about why target a low average score on an exam. One can make 40 a B and 50 an A without curving.

The conversion of numbers to grades is entirely arbitrary.  For example, in England the norm is something like:

40-55 = C
55-70 = B
70-80 = A
80-85 = A++
90 = you should be teaching not me
95 = you should get a Nobel Prize or the equivalent
100 = I am repenting of all my sins because you must be the Second Coming

Learning flexibility as to conventions is an important life skill.  Setting the scale as it is has some useful meaning to the instructor.  (For me, 1 point on an exam = what a student who basically knows how to do this problem can do in 30 seconds.)
Also, doing different multiples can relinearize the scale in different ways.  If you want to require that an A student gets twice as many points as a C student, you can't do it simply by multiplying all the points as extra credit.

As an outsider to the English system: is this much exaggerated or are exams really created in a way that, say, 1 person in 20 years ever hat 95%?

@user111388 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/191600/17254

I got a 96 for one of my UK MSc courses. I'm sure my Nobel Prize must be in the mail =)

@user111388 it is a little exaggerated in the 85-100 range.  But in my 8 years as faculty, I've only given one 90, and I'm quite a generous grader. I'd say that there is probably one 90 a year in our department (on a single assessment, usually coursework, not averaged over the year). Also worth noting that we don't use letter grades. So what this answer calls A+++ we call "1st class with distinction", A - 1st class honors, B encompases 2nd class honors (upper and lower), C encompasses 3rd class honours and pass without honors. Curving is also less common in the UK I believe.

@IanSudbery: Thank you, that's really interesting! So, is 100 different from "everything was answered correctly"? In other words, if you would immediately after you created an exam, solve it, would you obtain 100 points?

@user111388: Let me point out that it is trivial for me to create an exam that I could not solve all of: just put the Riemann Hypothesis on it.  (Note the Riemann Hypothesis is equivalent to a statement about the distribution of prime numbers that can be explained to a calculus class.)

@AlexanderWoo: Yes. But I mean not an artificially hard exam, but an exam you deem fair (say the last exam you gave). Would you score 100?

@user111388 I don't know how it works in maths,  but in biology we set questions where there isn't a 100% correct answer. There is always something more you can  say, more points to be made. It's not exactly about being subjective, but about there being a while discipline of things you could say, and picking which to use.

@user111388 - If I were teaching in England, I would definitely write exams where I would not score 100.

You seem to assume that percentage of correct answers is independent of the questions asked.
Any experienced exam writer can manipulate the median / mean in a wide range. Sometimes, it is more important to give difficult questions and expect a good student to solve a quarter of them then to give easy questions and expect a good student to solve over 90% correctly.
You seem to be complaining more about the stress level caused by not being able to answer questions. That shows probably a lack of communication by the instructor in charge.

That's not quite what I meant. My thinking is more along the lines of if you are expecting a very good student to say 5 out of 20 questions tops, why not weight each question at 20 points instead

@Layman - what's the difference?  If everything is announced ahead of time, then you know what is going on.

@AlexanderWoo if there is no difference then what's the point of doing this?  The instructor is simply finding what students don't know rather than what they know.

@ZeroTheHero - Solving problems that are new to you (but based on what you should know) is an important life skill, and I want to test whether students have learned to do this.  Problem solving in the context of a timed exam has a high failure rate.

@Layman - that doesn't work if you're expecting a C student to get 5 out of 20, a B student to get 10 out of 20, and an A student to get 15 out of 20.

@AlexanderWoo I don't have a problem with challenging problems which force students to reflect on the material and, with suitable guidance, can be solved but if the outcome is such that students with 30% get an A then what kind of grade will students with 60% get?  And if the best students systematically get 30%, the problem is with the course material, not the students.

@ZeroTheHero - I write an exam with 5 boring problems I expect most students to do, and I want the best students to also solve 1 interesting problem.  I know 10 interesting problems and decide the best students might as well have a choice of which interesting problem to do, the choice of trying to make partial progress on 2 or 3 of them, and also the choice of skipping some boring problems and doing several interesting problems instead.  Then the exam becomes one where the best reasonable grade is around 40% (the 5 boring problems plus 1 of the interesting problems, out of 15).

@AlexanderWoo so what’s your saying (if I understand correctly) is that in effect your exam is out of 50, not 100.  I do a variation of your scheme but the students know ahead of time they can complete only (say) 5 of 7 questions to get a perfect score.  This does not yield a final distribution somewhere in the mid-F, nor does it causes students to panic because they only completed a fraction of the exam.

@ZeroTheHero: I think we are all talking about various schemes where the students know (at least approximately) what the conversion of numbers to grades is ahead of time.  I don't see why you can't just tell students that 15-25=C, 25-35=B, 35-100=A on such an exam.

@AlexanderWoo Under your scheme it is not possible to have an average of mid-F (or any F for that matter).  If this is your interpretation of mid-F,  it is now the way I understood the OP.

@ZeroTheHero That description is just OP's misunderstanding of this scheme. They are used to a grade around 50 being an "F", so they are describing the median grade as an F. The exam is curved so that 50 is not an F. See AlexanderWoo's 5/10/15 example above for why it may not be appropriate to just declare the exam "out of 50".

@BryanKrause well that’s just not how I understood things (at all).  The OP should clarify this point as it would change pretty radically the perspective of the question.

@ZeroTheHero How else are you interpreting "distribution in the mid Fs before curve", where people actually get As Bs and Cs? Clearly they are not actually Fs, they are actually the grades the students receive, whatever number is put on those letters.

@BryanKrause so you agree that - as written by the OP - curving a distribution from mid-F to Bs and As doesn’t make any sense.  Granted your interpretation is possible but (unfortunately) I know of cases where your interpretation did not apply - and it didn’t make sense either.  You may also be interested by this story (although the context is different).

@ZeroTheHero no, I think that they are disagreeing with the notion that a grade of 30-40 is inherently associated to an F. That may usually be the custom in K-12, but there’s no inherent tie between the letter grade and the numerical grade.

@ZeroTheHero Not arguing for setting exams where students only get 40 on average, but "the instructor is simply finding what students don't know" is generally thought of as being the most pedagogically valid purpose for an exam.

@IanSudbery yes but in an exam where the average is 30% are you achieving this purpose?  The instructor basically finds almost all the class cannot solve hard really problems, something no doubt they knew before the class started.


text:
Improving my profile for cs phd admissions (math undergrad)
I'm a third year math major who is very sure he is not capable of succeeding in a math graduate program, as my GPA is good but not stellar (3.8, will probably fall to around 3.6-3.7). As such, along with my exposure so far (detailed a little below), I want to move to cs for my phd.
I worked as a data scientist for a startup for 7 months, and I'm going to work as a machine learning engineer for another startup part time while doing school part time. I'm in host matching for an internship at Google for the summer. I plan to continue to work part time as a machine learning engineer and go to school part time.
I have done very well on most of my bread and butter mathematics (A- to A+ in my most recent linear algebra, calculus, abstract algebra) but I have done relatively poorly on my midterms for analysis and graph theory and I am expecting a B+ overall for both. I have taken an honors introduction to computing science sequence and I've gotten A's on both. I am taking a undergraduate introduction to machine learning course, and a graduate reinforcement learning course. I plan to continue with math up to measure theory.
My university has a very strong reinforcement learning lab and I plan to start working there in the summer full time if I do not get an internship at Google, or I will take a year off to work in the lab part time and work at the startup part time. I have already communicated this with the lab and the startup and they are fine with it.
What can I meaningfully do to improve my application, assuming that I will have my SOP and reference letters secured by the lab? Is there any must take courses for phd's in this space that are not detailed on the graduate admissions (like real analysis for most physics phd admissions)?
Also, what are the repercussions to staying at my own university for my graduate degree? I really enjoy it here and my university is quite good at the fields which I want to study, so I would be happy staying here.
My goal is to get into a top 50 phd program, and my pipe dream is to go work at the big research labs (brain, fair, openai, etc).

Reading your question my first reaction is are you sure you want to do a PhD? Because if your dream is to join big research labs like those you listed, you don't need a PhD to apply - see e.g. https://jobs.lever.co/openai/a0d3b158-14a0-48db-b38c-1c94bb18f69b

No, I've never done serious research before so I would have no clue of if I would actually want to do a PhD. That's a very good point and I'm surprised I overlooked it.

As far as marks and grades go, that will depend very much on where you apply. Checking the admission requirements for the 'top 50' PhD programs is the best advice I could give there. I'm assuming you're US based given you're referencing GPA, midterms etc, and providing you want to remain in the country looking up admission requirements should be then straightforward (the same would apply in any country with regard to undergrad marks and PhD admission expectations).
As you're intending on moving to computer science, the most important thing to have would be programming experience. Some of the 'exposure so far' that you detail might imply you have done actual coding, but it is not clear. You should definitely explicitly highlight what experience you have there on any application you make (and it would help if you did the same here!) If you are a competent mathematician (or scientist, or engineer for that matter) making the move to computer science should be well within your capabilities but it will, again, depend very much on where you apply as to how much foreknowledge they will expect / require you to have. I myself moved from chemistry research to being a C++ computer game engine programmer and I know plenty of programmers who have started out with degrees / careers in maths, engineering etc before ending up in computer science masters programs. Switching straight into a PhD may have more stringent requirements, but that'd be another thing to check on with the particular places you want to apply to.
There are no professional or academic repercussions as such to carrying out doctoral research in the same place you studied for your undergrad degree. However, moving elsewhere will most likely expose you to new ways of thinking and working, which is generally a good thing where research is concerned!

I'm hopefully working at google this summer as a software engineer intern if I get host matches (I have passed the interviews), I've worked as a data scientist for 6 months, and I'm working as a machine learning engineer at a startup part time while I'm in school for the foreseeable future. I've done a lot of competitive programming so my data structures and algorithms are good, and I have written a lot of toy projects. How would you recommend I describe that? I tried to in my post but I did a poor job.

@alexsieusahai You simply need to be explicit in what you write / say. Saying "I will be working at Google" could mean anything from cleaning floors upwards as they're a huge organisation! In contrast "I will be working at Google as a Software Engineer", as you've written in your comment, is clear. Similarly a Data Scientist, at first glance, may be someone who deals with Excel spreadsheets? I don't know myself, will an application committee? Generally in an application you should write something like "I worked as ???? and this involved <insert relevant skills / experience>.


text:
To what extent should papers from a PhD dissertation form a coherent whole?
Currently, I'm a few months in a PhD track on the applications of process mining to the archival sciences. The idea of the research project is to devise algorithms that would enable government officials to (semi) automatically search through lots of different digital documents (including e-mails, text messages, and others) which would help them gain an understanding of complex political processes and actions carried out by the government in the past.
Although I think this is an interesting subject, I also have ideas for papers in other research areas. My academic background lies in mathematics. Now that I learn more about finite-state machines, push-down automata, and other related concepts through a course on computational complexity theory, I find myself forming thoughts about defining the Kolmogorov complexity of certain classes of finite automata. Though this may have some overlap with process mining, the subject matter of a paper in this direction would diverge a bit from the original overarching research question.
Questions: In general, to what extent should the papers written for a PhD dissertation form a coherent whole? To what degree is variation allowed among the articles? Does this maximum degree of variation depend on the field in which one is doing the PhD?

When you say "papers from a PhD dissertation" and "papers written for a PhD dissertation", does it mean your PhD thesis is going to be a so-called "sandwich thesis", with just an intro, a conclusion, and then a stack of previous papers?

@Stef Yes, I believe so.

You could probably ask your supervisor for the official list of criteria applied for assessing PhD theses; maybe this is even accessible to you without asking the supervisor.
I assume that such a list exists in most places; for sure I get one sent if I'm asked to examine a thesis.
Whether or not there is a criterion of being a coherent whole and how exactly this is worded will not only depend on the field but also on the place where you are. (Obviously you can also ask your supervisor for their opinion on this - what do they say?)


text:
Venues for the dissemination of research proposals
A bit of background: I studied mathematics at a Dutch university, and graduated some years ago. Although I didn't pursue a PhD degree in this direction, I have always maintained a deep interest in the subject. Recently, I decided to summarize my ideas for research in a particular subfield - analytic number theory - in a research proposal.
This research proposal contains 15 research questions, which are accompanied by partial results and texts that motivate the questions. Although the questions sometimes relate to one another, the research proposal doesn't form a tightly integrated whole. It is more like a collection of loosely related, short mathematical essays - each of which ends with one or more questions. The proposal ends with a list of references. In total, the proposal comprises about 20 pages.
I would like to collaborate with professional mathematicians on one or more of these ideas in my spare time. However, the ones I've corresponded with so far are usually quite busy with their own work, or they are not interested. I am currently looking for ways to reach a broader audience with this research proposal, so as to find people who'd like to collaborate, or to inspire them to work on the questions themselves.
Therefore, I would like to publish the research proposal somewhere, so it can be viewed by the public. I've considered putting it on the ArXiv. At the same time, I was wondering whether there are other venues that were specifically created for the purpose of dissemminating documents that contain research proposals with research-level questions in mathematics. Do such venues exist? If so, could you give me some advice on where and how to make this proposal publicly available?

You seem to have made this a "shopping question". See the help center: https://academia.stackexchange.com/help

@Buffy I'm not sure what you mean by that

Note that if you publish this, then there is no guarantee that someone reading it won't take up the question(s) independently from you. It might not result in collaboration. Ideas for research are free. You might get an acknowledgement, and maybe not even that if they avoid plagiarism.

@Buffy I do realize that. It's a risk I might take. I do think people ought to cite the proposal if they employ one of the methods or results I describe within it

I wrote a paper a bit like that once. It was a summary of a subfield, with a bunch of open problems at the end: An overview of schema theory
I put in on arXiv, where it sat for many years, periodically being cited. That led me to want to get the paper peer reviewed and published so people would feel more confident relying on it. And so I published in the Graduate Journal of Mathematics, where I subsequently became an editor.
I think it's a great service to the community to share open problems that young people might like to work on. I wrote something before on Mathoverflow to that effect: Math papers where the only issue is that someone else could've done it but didn't
My advice to you, if you are willing to let others work on the problems, is to put it on arXiv and then consider submitting it to a journal like the graduate journal of math, or one of the journals listed here: Publishing conjectures

Thank you for your answer. Could I send the proposal to you? Then you could see which parts - if any - would be appropriate for publication in the Graduate Journal of Mathematics

@MaxMuller Sure, go ahead. My email address is easy to find. Looking forward to reading your paper.


text:
Including unpublished quotes in research proposals
Currently, I am writing a research proposal for the purpose of obtaining a one-year grant. The proposal centers around a mathematical algorithm that possibly has applications in oncology. As far as I know, this algorithm (or similar ones) have not yet been applied in this medical field. It is therefore not certain what the clinical, biological, or pharmacological applications of such an algorithm could be. My own background lies in mathematics.
In order to substantiate the proposal, I am contacting a number of researchers in oncology and related fields. It is my hope that an expert in any of these fields will help me out a bit, by pointing out a possible medical application of this algorithm. If that happens, I think the proposal could be strengthened by including the relevant quote of this researcher.
However, this quote can likely not be traced back to a specific academic publication of this researcher, as the proposal centers around possible applications that have not yet been described in the literature. The hypothetical quote will probably be part of a message through email.
I was wondering whether it is possible for researchers to link a specific quote - which is not included in one of their academic papers - to one of their digital researcher IDs. These IDs may include their ORCID, Google Scholar, Academia Edu, ArXiv, or some other profile on a venue for digital academic publications. This would allow me to include a quote in the proposal, while at the same time ensure that others can verify the quote indeed comes from an expert in the field.
Does such an application for quote - profile linking exist? If not, are there other solutions one could employ in this situation?

In order to substantiate the proposal, I am contacting a number of researchers in oncology and related fields. It is my hope that an expert in any of these fields will help me out a bit, by pointing out a possible medical application of this algorithm. If that happens, I think the proposal could be strengthened by including the relevant quote of this researcher.

Researchers in biomedical fields are experts in their own right, even if they are not as expert in maths as you. You're asking for their expertise to support your grant.
If you actually want to write a convincing proposal on the applications of some algorithm to a field like oncology, you probably need more than just a quote from someone who studies oncology, you need some level of collaboration with them.
It's common, at least in fields that I work in which include biomedical research, for collaborators to write a Letter of Support (or similar; check the requirements for the specific funding opportunity you are applying for) in favor of the project. In this letter, they will briefly describe who they are (to establish their expertise) and what they can commit to the project. This would be a far stronger way to establish that your algorithm has the interest of people in the applied field than a weakly attributed quote.

Agree -- but I would point out that the exact term of this letter varies by sponsor.  NSF specifically does not want a "Letter of Support" but instead a "Letter of Collaboration".  NSF reserves the right to return without review if you provide a "Letter of Support".  At least in the US, the idea of documenting formal collaborations should exist for almost every federal sponsor, but you may have to look beyond the name and see what they call the mechanism and what the requirements are because it will vary (and could vary within a single sponsor also).

That's an interesting take - thank you. Unfortunately, the deadline for submission for this particular grant has already passed, but I will keep this in mind during subsequent grant applications.

If personA tells you that something exists, then that can be checked, presumably, unless it only exists in unpublished work. So a verification may or may not be even possible. When it is possible, you can also follow up with the source that A names. That can work even for unpublished (not yet published) research.
But if you quote someone in such a case you cite the quotation as [personA: private communication]. In a critical situation, personA can be asked, assuming they are still alive and they may remember or not. But if you retain the email (and you should) then you have a record.
In a research proposal this seems fine and I suspect that it is fairly common for work at the bleeding edge of the known where publication can take a while.

Thank you for your answer - this seems like a reasonable approach. Do you see any value in a digital quote-profile application? I suppose it would be easier to ascertain the source of a quote with such an application


text:
Could your supervisor decide what you post on social media?
I am a first year PhD student in Europe, I started in November. My supervisor has recently take a liking into posting on social media and communication-related issues (style, words, hours etc), even for subjects that are not strictly related to our laboratory academic activities. Since he was also my supervisor for my master thesis, I know for a fact that he discovered Altmetrics only a year ago or so.
Problem: today he basically demanded that whenever he posts on social media something that's related to the lab activities, it is mandatory that all members have to like and share on their personal account the post or whatever that will be.
There are other issues with him, but in this case I think that this is a violation of personal space: I should decide what to post or like with my personal social media account, not my supervisor or future employers.
Question: could he even think of making this kind of demands?
Edit: I know that for someone could sound like a rhetorical question (to me, it sure does), but I wanted to hear others' opinion on the subject.
Update: I managed to apply and then win a PhD position abroad in a better university, with a more stimulating working environment and a more professional group.
It was fair on my end to tell my supervisor that I was about to sign a contract and quit the current PhD program: it was fun that in this situation, while I was explaining that I was planning on leaving, my behavior was labeled by him as "unethical". Furthermore, if we were to collaborate in the future for any kind of reason/project, I would be stigmatized, as in labeled as "unreliable" for the decision of quitting/leaving (a low-key professional threat basically).

Stupid. Also, abusive. But stupid. Does he radiate stupidity in other ways, or just this one?

This one today was only the tip of the iceberg, but, putting it briefly, yes. This one stroke me as stranger than usual because it involves a serious effort on others part to act in an abnormal way without question. I asked myself: "does he really think that we will all do it only because he said so?"

Set all your accounts to private, if you haven't already.

Can you find the door?? Can you run through it? A selfish attitude by an advisor bodes ill for the future. This "EXIT" sign is blinking red, perhaps.

To further drive home @Buffy's point. Run away, don't walk from this advisor.

I think you already know the answer. No, not normal and not OK in any possible way. I think the real question you should ask is whether you make a stand and say no, ignore him/her or do as s/he wants. In most cases, it’s not worth the fight. The power dynamics in a supervisor/student relationship is heavy towards the supervisor so in most cases, unless you are asked something illegal or morally degrading, I would say swallow the pill, do the work, and get out of there ASAP.

Btw, can you clarify what you mean basically demanded? Was it a clear demand or more like “I suggest you do this because it’s good for the lab and thus also for you”? (Neither is OK, but one is worst than the other).

After this one, I've really started to actively looking for other open PhD positions @electrique I'll try to quote him (English it's not my first language); he texted this on the Lab group: "Some basic rules about socials. Whenever you see a post related to our activities (i.e. whenever he posts something about them), it's not enough to just like the post, you must also share it." The patronizing tone that I feel in here makes only things worse in my opinion.

This is why God gave us "OK Boomer".

@JeffE What does it have to do with "OK Boomer"? Self-aggrandizing academics/bosses/bullies predate this generation (and, being human, probably will persist into Gen Z, U, V, W, Alpha, Beta etc., until the Singularity will put paid to it when we all turn into Borg who advertise our collective's achievement to ourselves).

First, it would help to know which country in Europe because there are big gaps in the way PhD programs work from country to country. There are untold agreements between supervisors and students depending on the country/university. How far into the program are you?
Second, what social media you are referring to. Is it LinkedIn or Facebook? It would help to know more background, because you can use their features to “trick” a post exposure.
Third, is he asking you politely, with arguments or he’s just pushing you to do that by imposing authority? If this is the case, there are legal aspects and PhD school directors or coordinators can help with this. Here is why it is important to know which country. In Scandinavia, for example, the system is well organized and you can go and talk to the PhD school director and ask for advice without any consequences. Moreover, the supervision there is not so abusive and if it is (like in your description) then you should consider going to another supervisor (this depends on funding, of course).
Is he imposing any consequences if you don’t do so? Did you try to talk to him about this? It always help to talk to them and see if you are on the same page.
Lastly, surely it is unethical and wrong to request something like this, but you should also try to understand why and if this makes sense. At the beginning of my PhD I thought that it would be unethical to add a supervisor/colleague in an article as a coauthor, but later I found out that it made sense after weighting the indirect contribution of that specific person.
These are the kind of things that you have to solve with a meeting and discuss with your supervisor about what’s bothering you. It’ll also help you to decide if it is worth continuing with this type of supervision. Moreover, if that’s the only thing he’s requiring and he does it politely, you might want to make a “sacrifice”. In the end, you are not sharing fake information or information about something that is not indirectly related to you. You can just share and then delete. Or share only with your group. There are always methods to make a small compromise if you feel like it is worth it from other perspective. If you are at the beginning, then brace yourself for more. You will be surprised how many compromises will need to make to have things running smooth and forward.

Thanks for the detailed answer, happy to hear that in Scandinavian countries things are so well organized. In Italy, even if on paper things seems to be ok, going against your supervisor in any way means academic death. I'm barely six months in, but I'm now actively looking for positions in different universities, even if I love my work. While he wants to picture himself a pro, he has no idea of how new technologies work, so other impositions that are very common are deadlines that don't take into account running time to produce data/make analyses. It hasn't happened to me yet, but still...

I hear you and I understand your frustration. It’s never easy to deal with people and each supervisor comes with some weird trade offs. I had many and I ended up liking them all, despite the fact that each one has its own way to be weird. I think it’s important to find one that you consider a mentor that inspires you. If that comes with a sacrifice of liking or sharing a post, then do that... bite your lips and close your eyes. If he’s not even an inspiration for you, then, well, it is wise to leave. I had good experience in Italy as well, so maybe just stay around and find another uni.

By the way, do you still have to apply to a PhD position by sending the application by regular mail in Italy? :-D

At that time, applying where I am was both the smartest and safest route, so even if I had an idea of what I would have found, I thought I could swallow it up. Now, "If he’s not even an inspiration for you" truly speaks to me since he is not and never was, I'm looking elsewhere. I don't know where you applied and in which field, but nowadays, for the 3-4 Italian universities where I applied, application is a long process into websites designed ad hoc only for that task. So long that would make a lawyer scream in my opinion ^^"

Haha. Well, I wish you good luck in your next endeavors. Stay strong!


text:
Include as an author someone who contributed to financial support only?
I am co-authoring a physics manuscript with some students and colleagues. The results in this has been obtained by means of a grant to which multiple people have participated.Because the main research project reported in the grant proved to be too hard, we switched to a backup project, which is the subject of the paper.
One of the authors just asked me to include as an author one of the persons who contributed to the grant writing, even though this person made no scientific contribution to the paper, because of the subject switch above.
Is it fair and honest to include this person?
I am asking because if I feel like this is not fair, but if I refuse, this would put me in a difficult situation with the colleague who asked, potentially ruining our future collaborations with him. What should I do?

What is the reason for including a grant writer as an author of the paper? Did the grant writer contribute to the new subject of the paper? Meaning did the grant writer, through the process of writing the grant, help clarify in any way the advantage of the new topic, or help focus on a specific aspect of the topic, etc.? If there is absolutely no impact on the authorship, what's the reason to include them as an author? The one who finances the work isn't called an author; why should the one who obtained the grant be any better?

The paper isn't done, right? This person reasonably has an understanding of the topic, considering they wrote a grant that funded it. There is still time for them to make a meaningful contribution to the paper. Is this not being proposed? (Note I'm not in physics)

@AzorAhai that is a great idea, and it has not been proposed. I doubt that the person in question would accept to contribute. He would rather call himself off the paper (which may actually be a good strategy to solve the ethical problem!).

@Pascal In the most generous interpretation, I would assume the request was something like "X contributed to the grant, and therefore enabled and is interested in the outcome of your project. Please involve her in writing the paper." not "slap her name on it," but i didn't see the message your received

This is why I prefer writing papers by myself as it's clear that I did absolutely everything in that paper, whereas sometimes when there are 6 or more authors it's not clear who actually made a significant contribution and who made the tea.

I think (hope) that most people in academia would consider it improper to include, as an "author", anyone who didn't contribute to the content of the paper. There are some exceptional cases that are questionable, but this one seems pretty clear.
But the paper might properly include an acknowledgement section naming the person and thanking them for their help in obtaining funding for the project.
But I recommend not degrading the meaning of authorship by naming others.

Note that some of the exceptions, such as including a PI as an author, are justified, at least in part, because the PI, in addition to funding and running a lab/project also contributes general guidance and conceptual background to the work that goes on there. They have a continuous presence that impacts all the work in the lab. And some consider this to be improper, also. But it is highly variable by field.

Thank you for your reply. I agree with you, but I asked because if I refuse this would put me in a difficult situation, see the edit to my question. Any advice on what to do?

Sadly, what you should do and what you can do may not be well aligned here. If the other person has authority over you  it is usually best (not ethically) to submit. But you could look at the responses to similar questions on this site to get a sense of what arguments you might make to try to convince them. But don't sabotage your own career for a single issue on a single paper.

Regarding advice on "this would put me in a difficult situation with the colleague who asked". If someone is asking you to do something unethical, are you sure you want to work with them? There is also a political/diplomatic solution here, and you might get outside help on communicating that if that's not your skillset. For example, if there are school, journal or general guidelines you could reference or an authority you could get an opinion from, point to those instead. That makes your refusal more impersonal and gently reminds them they're doing something wrong without closing the door.

@ChipMcCormick obviously, I did not know no what kind of person this was when it started to work with him... as for the second part of your post I have been thinking indeed about copying and pasting the the authorship form of the last paper that I published, where it is clearly demanded that all authors need to make a significant contribution to the work.

Some journals and scholary societies have formally established criteria of what "authorship" is supposed to mean. For instance, in computer science, IEEE has such criteria here, and they say pretty clearly that you need more than just having contributed to securing the funding, and that adding an author that does not match the criteria is "a breach of publishing ethics".
So if want to bring up the topic, a stronger and somewhat less confrontational way to fight back is to find the authorship definition given by the venue where you are submitting the paper, the scholarly society or publisher to which it is attached, or some prominent scholarly society of your field. Just look at the criteria and see whether that additional person matches them or not. If not, you can say that you are worried about not respecting these ethical guidelines.

It's kind of tough to call, but anytime you reject this kind of "demand" there might be social and political friction and the risk of gathering enmity or passing as arrogant. The fact you have extra people on the paper who only slightly contributed to the ideas is not uncommon expecially as a junior author/researcher.
But then, what does having an extra author on your paper really cost you ?
I think you have to balance the two issues, and ponder who is asking you to add that author, if it's your direct supervisor, it might be easier to go along with it, maybe make the point that the next paper you will be more clear ahead of redaction of who is going to be authoring the paper; and that if that particular co-author is not helpful, he will not be part of it.
People in academia stay around a long time (so gathering enmity is bad), and writing grant responses is a lot of work that involves identifying a relevant subject and saying you will go for it, so it is helpful research-wise, and if your grant stems from that initial proposal, you do have a moral debt in a sense with regards to that guy's contribution.
So maybe talk it out with your advisor, tell him/her you don't feel it's fair, but if they kind of insist, don't be too hard on it, extra authors are not truly detracting from you imo. And solve/prepare the issue beforehand for the next paper.

This sort of thing reaches its apotheosis in particle physics where there are upwards of 5000 co-authors on a paper.

Thank you for the nice reply, it is well very well written. Fortunately I am an independent researcher, and have no supervisor...


text:
What to do when a result is essentially proven but not stated in an existing publication?
I am writing a paper in mathematics that uses some technical results from a classic paper in the field, but not exactly in the way these results were stated at the time. Basically, I found that interesting, slightly more general versions of the statements are also true.
I can't say that these new more general versions are entirely obvious, a few hours of staring at the original statements passed before I even began to consider generalizing them, and then I had to work through the proofs themselves to make sure that the original proof basically goes through verbatim in this new setting. Or in some cases the proof of some equivalence actually breaks down, but one of the implication still holds, and that's enough for my purposes.
These new versions of existing lemmas and theorems are not the core contribution of my work, and I don't think they are interesting in their own right, but I do use them to derive some (at least seemingly) novel theorems. And here is my dilemma: If I present the proofs, I am essentially copying multiple pages of proofs written by my predecessors, which doesn't seem perfectly ethical to me. If I don't, I feel like I am doing the reader a disservice: I am basically asking them to believe me when I say "If you find a copy of this book, and change all instances of the word macguffin to weak macguffin on pages 438-442, you will find that the statements and proofs remain correct".
EDIT: I asked some colleagues and found out that the original versions of the statement are not really common knowledge, since they are more akin to lemmas than theorems. With that in mind, I guess a reader that sees a statement or its proof for the first time would not care too much if it's not that different from something already published elsewhere (and of course, I will be explicitly mentioning the source).

Is the original publication easily available (and even better, online)? Because if the original source was very difficult to obtain, including more might be the better course, while on the other hand if it were easily available, people can be expected to look it up.

What is the type of paper?  Is this a thesis where length doesn't really matter (or even longer is better)?  Or is this a publication with a maximum length requirement?  (There's nothing unethical if everything is explicitly stated.)

@Teepeemm It is something I am hoping to publish. I do understand that it's not plagiarism, and I don't mind prefacing my version of the proof with something like "this proof is due to X and I claim no originality whatsoever".

Personally, I think it is worth it to publish different proofs or arguments for known results and also those for only slightly modified results even when the proof is only slightly different. This is a subjective opinion though, and many will say it's not worth publishing. Certainly, it is a lower value work when the same or only slightly different proof works for an slightly extended result, especially if the changes are very easy reflective to the main body of the work. But again it is hard to assess this universally. At the very least, it is worth writing up and posting online.

I found myself in the position when I need some fact but the literature search produced something "close enough but not quite what I want" rather often. Moreover, I bet that this is a fairly usual experience for any mathematician who wants to do something a bit off the beaten path. My choice in such cases has always been to give a full reference and attribution to all those sources but to redo the whole thing in an appendix (not in the main body) in the shortest way that would get me exactly to the point at which I need to be with all relevant details. Why?

I find it much easier to trace a full formally presented argument than to reconstruct the details from the vague sentences like "slightly modifying the proof of Lemma 15 in [3]" or "Arguing similarly to the second half of [10]".

It makes me sure that I haven't missed any subtle errors in my modifications and generalizations. The proof is generally not reliable until it is fully written down and checked line by line by several people a few times after that. Granted, there do exist people that never make mistakes or make only "mistakes of a genius", but 99% of us, as far as I can tell, fall into neither category.

I do not want to take part in generating a long tree of references like "Applying modifications from [1] of the generalization from [2] of the main result of [3] to the setup similar to that in [4], we conclude that...", which would inevitably result from applying the alternative practice several times in a row and that would make the text nearly incomprehensible and extremely hard to verify.

Sometimes, when writing this appendix, I find a shorter or clearer approach even to the "well-known" results insofar as my needs are concerned and occasionally this may result in an overhaul of the main text as well.

The third point is something I didn't even consider!

It is acceptable to write "If you find a copy of this book, and change all instances of the word macguffin to weak macguffin on pages 438-442, you will find that the statements and proofs remain correct."
Except of course you should cite the book, rather than writing "find a copy of this book".
Also, if there are portions of the proof where the generalisation from the macguffin setting to the weak macguffin setting is not as obvious, it may be helpful for the reader to work that portion in the proof explicitly.

If you think it works better in context, it is also fine to preface your proof with 'this is a straight-forward generalization of a proof in xxx' and then write out the full detailed proof.

Thanks for the answer! I will leave this unaccepted for now in case somebody else has something to share.

This is a judgement call. I've seen (and applied) different approaches, each of which has advantages and disadvantages.

You can say that the result follows by a modification of a proof from [insert citation]. This has the advantage that it saves you the time and work of writing the argument, and it saves the reader the need to read the argument if they're willing to trust you. This has the disadvantage of making it harder for the reader to follow the argument, and it makes it easier for you to miss a crucial technicality. With this approach, I feel like you're putting your reputation on the line: I would not blame a colleague for writing a complicated argument and missing a subtle detail which invalidates the reasoning, but I would slightly decrease my estimation of a colleague when they take a shortcut and end up being wrong. In my opinion, this approach is best suited to situation where you're very confident, especially if you have the reputation to back it up.

You can reproduce the argument from scratch. It is not in the least unethical to reproduce reasoning from a different paper almost verbatim as long as you're honest and open about what you are doing. It goes without saying that the source paper should be cited. In addition to that, it is helpful to add some remarks on precisely how closely the two arguments are related, and to add references linking specific points in the two argument (e.g. "equation (13) in our argument is the analogue of equation (43) in [insert citation]). As others have pointed out, if the argument ends up being long enough to interrupt the flow of your paper, it's best to put it in the appendix. This has advantages and disadvantages that mirror those of the previous option: It costs you more time and effort, but minimizes the chance of error. I find this to be the more pro-social option: it produces references that are more accessible. In my opinion, this approach is best suited to situations where you have some lingering doubt, wish to go out of your way to make other people's lives marginally easier, or simply feel like writing out the details of the argument for practice.

Finally, you can do a weighted combination of 1. and 2. This would include saying that most of the argument follows along the same lines, but then writing out the details of whichever steps you consider most interesting/trecherous/etc. The tricky part is to decide which steps need this treatment: depending on the implementation, this can end up being the best of both worlds, or the worst.

I've also seen (and written) combinations of 1. and 2. the other way around: you write out the overarching structure of the proof, but for the proofs of some lemmas on the way you just say it's the same argument as in [specific reference].

One issue is also length restrictions; you simply may not be able to include an arguably-redundant 3 page proof in your paper without running afoul of the journal.
One trick, which I wish I saw more often, was to say something like "this is fundamentally like the proof in [13]. A full proof of this lemma is available at [arXiv link / personal website / whatever]."
Of course this is only relevant where you have length restrictions and no space to dump things in an appendix.

This is what appendices are for; and also, there are always ways in which the exposition of the proof can be streamlined and adapted to your particular purposes -- I am always baffled by students who believe that the only way in which the argument has already been developed by someone else is ipso facto the only way to state matters.

Let me see if I can sum up your current situation:

The existing publication proved a lemma, but did not deem it worth of calling it a lemma and left it silently in the proof of another theorem.
You noticed that this lemma was useful to you in a seemingly different context.
You are planning to leave this lemma silent once more and just include it as part of the proof of another theorem in your paper.

Your insight that the unnamed lemma from an existing publication in a given context was applicable to your theorem in a different context is probably worth more than you think! This kind of cross-topic insight is extremely valuable in all branches of mathematics.
Please do consider giving a name to the lemma and proving it formally rather than leaving it only as a small part of a proof of another theorem.