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Should I wait until after peer review to apply for a change of authorship?
My boss submitted my paper to a journal, but he seemed to make a mistake when he entered the authors' names in the submission form. Another one was registered as the first author, so I'd like him to correct it immediately, but in general,
when can we apply for a change of authorship after submission? The paper is now under review but  should we wait until  after the peer review?

Was it really a mistake, or intentional?

Actually I don't know, but he said he may have made a mistake and he would contact the journal in a good timing.I thought "the timing is NOW" though.

was it intentionally from your boss? 2) are you confusing first and corresponding author?

@EarlGrey 1) I don't know. If it's just a problem of the submission form, I wouldn't mind so much. But he wrote that (my paper's title) was co-authored by my name and co-authored names in the cover letter. It makes me so confused. 2) No.

I don't think this is anything worth panicking over. It should be dealt with after the first round of peer review. To change it now the paper would have to be unsubmitted, then resubmitted halting the peer review and annoying everyone involved.
Presumably the error, as you describe it, is not on the manuscript itself, but rather in the editorial manager where authors and institution details are entered. Those can be cleared up after reviewer comments come in when you submit the revisions... or the article may be rejected, at which point you have other things to worry about.

Thank you for answering me.

I'm relieved a bit.In the cover letter, he wrote like "(my paper's title) was co-authored by my name and other co-authors' names. I also found this.It makes me confused though.I just expect he will correct after peer review.In the manuscript, the order of authors is correct.

"To change it now the paper would have to be unsubmitted, then resubmitted halting the peer review and annoying everyone involved." I think you are downplaying the formal aspects and the editor power.

@EarlGrey If the author list is correct in the attached draft, and it is simply a mistake in the editorial manager process, it is not worth bothering an editor over. It is a simple matter that can be resolved later. To be resolved by the authors it has to be unsubmitted and resubmitted, to be resolved by the editor it requires the editor's time and effort. The latter can be done at any point prior to publication, but why bother before the editor even knows if the manuscript is suitable for publication?

There are potentially shady reasons to change authorship or author order: paid solicitations to add authors for a fee, to punish a student for some reason, making a power play around an authorship dispute, etc. Your situation isn't any of these, but editors have to be wary and do not want to involve themselves in disputes about authorship.
My recommendation would be for the authors to inform the editor as soon as the mistake is recognized and ask how you should proceed. You might be explicit that it's only necessary to correct before the final publication but that you wanted the editor to be aware of the mistake; there's really no need for an immediate correction of anything. It would be helpful to note that the authorship order on the manuscript itself is correct and only the order in the submission software is mistaken.
However, it's not you that should be making this communication but the group of authors as a whole. The person designated to communicate with the editor on behalf of the other authors is usually the person who submitted the manuscript, in this case your boss. As long as you have a commitment from them (strategically, it would be ideal to have this in writing for example as an email if you suspect you will need some sort of 'evidence', though hopefully this is unnecessary), I wouldn't worry too much about leaving the correction until later. It may become moot if the paper is rejected by this journal.

Thank you for your comment.

I'll wait for my boss to correct it later, and I'll store all emails about this problem just in case. Like I said above, if it's just a mistake in the submission form, I wouldn't mind so much. But he wrote that my paper's title was co-authored by my name and co-authored names in the cover letter. I don't know how much it can affect the authorship or what he was going to do.

It is a bit a tricky thing to do, because at submission there are all ticks and boxes to check to claim that the submission is correct and fully agreed by all the authors.
However, the editor has some flexibility and can do a lot behind the curtains.
There are a couple of questions in the comment, when answered negatively then the best way is to go full-in with the editor, first you should agree with all co-authors about the needed urgent correction and then send an email (with all co-authors in cc) to the editor about correcting the first author in the submission.

Thank you for your comment. Cc all co-authors must be needed.Actually, is it possible to change the authorship by writing different information on the submission form and the cover letter？

You can absolutely wait until after the peer review process is completed. If the reviews are favorable, great! Change your authorship status then. If the reviews are not favorable, that will be your opportunity - from here on out - to ensure that all details are correct/updated prior to any future submissions.


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How to properly capitalize a title in APA 7 style?
Should you capitalize the word "a" following a colon? For example:

Lipscomb, A. Y. (2021). Addressing trauma: a look at the college essay
writing process. The Journal of College Admission, (249), 30–33.

You should, yes. According to the APA website (emphasis added)

Format of the title
Follow these guidelines to format the title element. Additional guidelines for less common cases are provided in the Publication Manual.
For works that are part of a greater whole (e.g., journal articles, edited book chapters), capitalize the title using sentence case. Do not italicize the title or use quotation marks around it.

Happy fish in little ponds: Testing a reference group model of achievement and emotion.

From the "Sentence case" page linked above (emphasis added):

In sentence case, lowercase most words in a title or heading.
Capitalize only the following words:

the first word of the title or heading
the first word of a subtitle
the first word after a colon, em dash, or end punctuation in a heading
nouns followed by numerals or letters
proper nouns (such as the names of racial or ethnic groups)

source: Stack Exchange

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Is it a good idea to email underperforming students?
Is it a good idea to email underperforming students?
I am teaching an upper division class and a midterm is coming up. I looked at homework scores and noticed a few students who were not doing well. I decided to email them in a non accusatory way asking if everything was okay and if there was anything I could do to help. I said I wasn't judging, I just wanted to know if I could help and reminded them of office hours.
I have never done this but I have heard of some people doing this. Does this has positive outcomes? Has anyone done this and had a student show up to office hours or start performing better? I also don't want to pressure or scare off students.

My old boss used to do this, and it was pretty effective, I think. He said he always expected a pretty low hit rate, but that sometimes it'd prompt a student who was really struggling to come talk to him, and there was normally a bunch he could do to help get them help. His theory was that people would rather silently fail than ask for help in a lot of cases, so they need prompting, sometimes, to show that you can see that they're doing it

Seconding @lupe's comment, yes, apparently "silent failure" is all too comfortable... but/and an email, showing that the teacher may actually care, can jostle people out of that state of mind, at least in some cases.

TLDR: It's a very good thing.
Full answer: I've been a teacher previously (not private lessons, I had a work contract with my country's public body in charge of education), and I used to do this.
It turned out to be a positive thing to do, for the following reasons:

It allowed me to spot that one student that was having a really hard time with personal (medical) issues they did not dare to mention to the teaching team. Once they opened up about their problems, first to me and consequently to the rest of the pedagogical team, the situation clearly improved. And being aware of the support the teaching team had to provide released quite some pressure from their shoulders. I was warmly thanked by said student at the end of the year for opening the discussion about it.
It also allowed me to spot the students who do not care. In particular, the ones that said they would make an effort, had a (very basic !) additional homework given by me, and did not do it. Which turned useful at the school council, in which we discussed what to do with the students who failed (allow them to retake the year ?).
It overall gave me a good reputation as a teacher. Not because I was good above average at my subject, not because I was clear above average in my explanations, but because I cared about the students above average in my behavior. Or at least, that's what other teachers told me, and what quite some students told me at the end of the year.
Lastly, if that's what's bothering you: Since I kept everything professional, i.e. I ensured I did nothing that could be interpreted as "the teacher getting into the students' private lives", I couldn't be reproached with anything. I was their teacher on a subject, they were clearly failing, because I cared about them I contacted them in an appropriate way (the email adresses they were supposed to use for teacher communication, fyi) to check that everything was alright, and if possible I offered them to discuss the matter during office hours at the school.

So it seems to me that you really care about our students, and that's a great thing. Offering to provide more efforts on your side so that your students succeed is a noble attitude for a teacher !
Edit to clarify something following a relevant comment: I am not American, but French, and I taught in a public higher education system specific to my country (won't get into details about it, it'd be irrelevant). Thus, the local culture might have played a role in my whole experience with this email situation, and this cultural factor may affect the outcome for someone doing the same thing in a different setting.

Nice answer! I think it would be useful to expand the last bullet with examples of dos and donts to keep things professional.

I actually received several responses and it seemed to have been helpful. Some students had some concrete issues that I tried to address. Others just said they would come to office hours. All of them thanked me.

user479223 : nice to see things are working well for you !
user1079505 : I understand your comment, but I don't think I'd be able to come up with such a list that isn't highly incomplete, and I wouldn't want readers to take such a list as (nearly) exhaustive. Actually, this concern was mine back then I was faced with the situation for the first time, and the only solution I came up with was, as explained, to strictly use school-controlled means to interact with the students about the subject. So I prefer not to answer this, instead of giving a misleading answer. Sorry !

the school council, in which we discussed what to do with the students who failed (allow them to retake the year ? - Is this at a university?  If so, what country? Repeating a year doesn't really make sense in a US university system.

Kimball : No, it wasn't in the US (that's why I mentioned "in my country" at the beginning, hoping that it'd imply I am not American and thus my culture might not be OP's culture, but restrospectively it was a bit unclear, sorry about that). Yes, it was higher education, in France. I won't get into long and irrelevant details, but in the public system where I taught, retaking the year upon failure once is a thing (that comes with drawbacks). And imo it is a good thing, since e.g. medical or personal issues can happen and the affected students deserve a second chance.

@user1079505 - I think expanding that last bullet might vary too much from country to country and institution to institution

Coming from a student in the US who was struggling a bit and had a professor contact me, it was very helpful.

I'd suggest that how useful this is, is contextually dependent, including such factors as how many students are performing poorly.
If only one is performing poorly, then it's almost a no-brainer to reach out and touch base for what the unique circumstance is. If a few, then it can make sense. If you have a large number of failures (due to very large lecture course, or environment where large percentages of students regularly don't have advance preparation), then I'd suggest that it would be too much of a drain on the instructor's time to expect this in every case. Don't commit the instructor to a protocol like this all the time.

As you describe it, I think it is fine, especially if you invite them to come talk to you.
Note, however, that some courses are required of students outside their major field (some places anyway) and the students may rather naturally be less involved/engaged/interested in those. Probably this is less likely for upper division courses, though.
And, for those for whom the course is important, triggering a bit of self reflection on their part might be a good thing.

I think reaching out without making students feel like teacher is bugging is important. How students feel about you when you reach out to them depends upon how you approach and treat them on other occasions such as advising, mentoring, daily interactions etc. So it's not just one time thing. It should be incorporated in and validated by your other actions and personal attitude. It should be part of your overall personal and professional brand.

Is there a reason not to mail all students such offers and make clear that you will try to account for personal issues and offer additional help for managing to get better grades?
You want to communicate that you're not only a teacher but also a caring person. Why don't you communicate it to all people instead of only to the people you see struggling? Who knows which of your students get good grades, but at the cost of not having any energy left afterward? Don't assume you can see who is having issues by their output.
The most important thing you want to communicate, and it should be communicate to all, is that you have an open ear and nobody has to fear to come to your office hours. A nice mail to all would be a good sign that one has nothing to fear by asking for help if needed.

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What is the proper etiquette when declining a professor's Capstone project offer after I myself applied for it?
In my department, every undergraduate (including me) has to do a Capstone project with a professor in order to graduate.
Students need the professor's consent prior to declaring that the supervisor for the project is that professor.
However, the rules do not indicate whether students can obtain multiple professors' consents and choose one of them as the supervisor (thus declining all others).
I asked fellow students and they all talked with only one professor.
I talked to two professors and they both are happy to be my supervisor
and now I have to choose only one of them.
Declining a professor's "offer" [1] might be an issue to the professor
because I suppose they have to make changes on their schedule
(though the consent must be obtained two months before the project).
Both professors are fairly respectable
and I do not want to be distrusted by them.
What is the proper etiquette when declining one of them?

[1]: They did not actually give a formal consent.
They jumped directly into the discussion of interests and schedules,
as if they have already treated me as their supervisee.

I hate to say it, but professors aren't chomping at the bit to add one-on-one undergraduate supervision to their schedule. It sounds like something that regularly happens in your department - and I'm sure professors often enjoy it and do a good job - but  a professor is not going to be distraught if you don't end up working with them.
A simple email suffices (see also this question):

Thank you for the discussion yesterday, Professor X. I also spoke with Professor Y and her interests align with my goals for this project more, so I will be doing my capstone with her.
Thanks again, and see you around,
durianice

As Rmano recommended in the comments, inform them as soon as possible so they can manage their own requirements.

+1. The only thing I would add is to inform the professor as soon as possible. They could have a minimum/maximum/recommended number of projects to take care of mandated by the department, so as soon they know, the better.

The phrase is "champing at the bit". Yes it sounds weird as champing isn't a word we use much anymore. Our interactions with horses are so rare these days.

@MiniRagnarok Depends on your perspective :) As a linguist, I take a usage-based account that would say that, if the majority of speakers are saying "chomping," not "champing," that's now [the/a] correct phrase, c.f. https://www.npr.org/sections/memmos/2016/06/09/605796769/chew-on-this-is-it-chomping-or-champing and https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=chomping+at+the+bit%2C+champing+at+the+bit&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=3

And the dictionary entry called out by NPR: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/chomping%20at%20the%20bit

Okay, so this is my experience of choosing a professor for my graduate research project.
When you approach a professor and talk to them, they do not consider that you have chosen them as your supervisor. Therefore, you do not need to feel guilty about declining their offers because:
Only in the second meeting or so, you can choose or agree with them on the selected direction of the project. Then, the professors will create a paper or a list confirming that you are their student and send to the department.
Even if you discussed your chosen direction in the first meeting with them, some professors might think that you have already made your choice and later change your mind. However, this is fine because the significance of the project allows you to do so.
And this is what I think on the etiquette:
Whether it is considered proper etiquette or not doesn't depend on the fact that you approached a professor and then declined their offer, but rather on how you did it. In my opinion, etiquette is about looking into a professor's bio, their specialty, and the usual direction of their previous students before approaching them. This way, when you decline their offer, the reason will be specific and professional.


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Why do we put so much weight on final exams?
As we know from cognitive psychology that humans are most creative and learn things better when they are relaxed. I can also relate to this. I do much better in complex problem solving at home rather than in a test. Therefore, I have a hard time understanding why semester final exams are always given such importance and a student's knowledge is judged on the basis of these test results.
I think that what I have learned in 3-4 months can not be properly tested in only 2.5 to 3 hours. Why are exams in general are given this much importance when we know that test results do not fully reflect a person's potential?

I tidied up your question to remove the irrelevant bits

Interesting anecdote: There's a book by Ko and Rossen, Teaching Online: A Practical Guide, about best-practices for fully-online distance teaching. They present a sample course syllabus for a fully-online course. It still includes one proctored exam that students must physically appear for in-person. (p. 129)

Because the revision stress makes you eating chocolate and that has a lot of calories. ;-)

"I think that what I have learned in 3-4 months can not be properly tested in only 2.5 to 3 hours. " Why? Of course, one cannot test everything you learned, but one could test a well-justified sample.

Hey @DanielR.Collins, Thanks for the suggestion. I will definitely check that out.

Hi @lighthousekeeper, I think the 'well-justified sample' is something very subjective. It would vary from person to person, institute to institute. Even within an institute, students should feel that a well-justified sample from the knowledge they gained is being tested.

@CaptainEmacs, lol! good one!

@incrediblesulk There are objective criteria for a well-justified sample. For example, the sample should represent the majority of the lecture topics in some way. In principle, the goal here is to reduce randomness for assessing those students that did not learn everything. The

@lighthousekeeper, Um.. I beg to disagree. Even if representing majority of lecture topics is set to be an objective criterion, different instructors can interpret this criterion differently. Say, there is a course in electromagnetism. One instructor may include five problems on Kirchhoff's law in the question paper and another instructor may include 2 problems with the same level of difficulty although both of them covered the same materials in class. I would love to hear any counter argument.

@incrediblesulk The amount of coverage in the exam should be proportional to the amount of coverage in class.

@lighthousekeeper, hm..maybe that would work in an ideal situation. In my experience, a lot students turn to online resources for learning because they either could not cope up with the speed of the course or there could be other reasons. Let me put it in this way, in a semester a student would not learn everything about the subject. What he should know would be decided by the instructor and the people who designed the syllabus. I don't think there is very much room for independent thinking here. I am not saying the system is completely dysfunctional.

@lighthousekeeper, (cont.) It does produce a lot of fine graduates. But it also leaves many promising students hopeless. My question has two layers actually, 1) What are the advantages and disadvantages of a final exam. 2) Why are we considering final exam results to be a good measure of knowledge given that our brains are designed in a ways that we are to do bad under pressure.

Your experience points to other issues that are mostly not about grading but mirrored in it. If most students do not follow the course, that's either the teacher's fault (for having poor didactic skills and/or unreasonable expectations) or the students' fault (for not investing enough time/attention into the course).

@lighthousekeeper, Maybe.. but it could also mean that there is a problem in the grading system itself.

What's the alternative?
Exams have been criticized since before I can remember, but if someone has come up with something better I'm not aware of it, e.g.

Oral exams would "work", except those would also be high-pressure examinations, and they are also very time-consuming. Furthermore, unless one records the oral exam, it would also be difficult to resolve grading disputes.
Homework-based assessment is vulnerable to cheating, since the student can get 3rd-party help with the assignments and it would not be easy to catch. Students can also work in groups, with associated problems (it's quite common for a few people in a group to do most/all the work and the rest just copy them).
Subjective assessment where the teacher simply assigns a grade to each student is vulnerable to biases (which is part of the reason why grading schemes and/or blinded assessment are common).
Finally, there's a school of thought that if you are unable to reproduce the learned material, under pressure, you haven't actually learned it.

Other drawback to oral exams is there's no hard record of what happened. Instructor could punt a student for biased reasons  (my dad says he saw that in professional school in the 60's), student could challenge without reason and instructor has no way to defend, etc.

Good point - edited.

@DanielR.Collins That's why it used to be always a committee of two in Germany's oral examinations. Not sure whether it is still the case with the shift to Anglosaxon-type system.

I think we should look for new options as well. Thanks for the answer btw :)

In my university, oral exams are held by a committee of two people, and open to the public (so typically other students attend, especially those who are next in line to be tested).

What matters is (or at least should be) what you know at the end of the course, not in the middle of it.  Thus it is legitimate to have some form of end-of-term assessment, and expected that is should have a disproportional weight, although it need not be in the form of a single exam; one might include student projects or term papers in addition to (or in place of) a final exam.
The difficulty is in ascertaining that the work submitted reflects the knowledge of the individual student (or group of students if there is a group evaluation).  For term papers there are plagiarism tools; it is possible to test the knowledge acquired during a project by having specialized written or oral questions.  However, it is not always possible or desirable to proceed as so.
The easiest way to assess students in a practical manner very often remains a final exam taken under similar conditions by all the candidates.  (Of course this depends very much the discipline.)
In my experience, constructing an exam where students can, over the course of 2.5 or 3hrs, answers questions in a manner that fairly reflects their knowledge of the material taught over an entire term is not easy, and not always successful, but a well-designed exam should allow the more knowledgeable students to outperform the less knowledgeable ones, at least on average.
Of course, some students get lucky and some have a bad day, but in a large group the bulk of the students should be coarsely ranked by their level of knowledge of the material covered in class, else the exam is a failure of the instructor and remedial actions might be considered.

The problem is preparing a 'well-designed' exam! I have seen a lot of bright students who feel that their exams fail to evaluate their knowledge and their curricula is not well-designed to provide a minimum background in the subject they chose to major (Maybe because I come from a remote part of Asia where access to quality education is very limited). Anyways, Thanks a lot for taking the time to answer. I really appreciate it.

yes it is definitely not easy to prepare a good exam, and moreover what the instructor considers a good exam students might beg to differ.

Assessment theory is a complex and large subject.
We must ask why we are assessing students. Off the top of my head, I can think of 3 possibilities:

To give students a target to aim for. An understanding of what it means to have learnt the subject.
To allow both student and teacher to assess progress and best plan where a students future time would be best focused.
To certify that a student is safe or capable of performing a particular task (like a driving test, or a professional competence test).
In order to rank students so that an employer can choose between them.

I think final exams probably do a bad job of the first two. The can do a good job of the third if the test is well constructed to actually be examining what the student will be doing in their professional role.
But I expect that we focus a lot on the final reason (to the great determent of the education and society in general).  Exams are a really efficient and clean cut way of ranking people even if not the basis of genuinely useful criteria. The question is, what are they ranking them on the basis of? Almost certainly not the exact knowledge that an employer wants. Personally I think that if an employer wants to rank people then they should set an exam that actaully tests the thing want. But that's not the world we live in. Since an employer almost certainly doesn't genuinely care about your knowledge of medieval France, but just want some way to distinguish people, exams are an easy way to do that.
Also exams are probably the least work for professors of most assessment methods.

Thanks Ian! You provided exactly the type of answer I was looking for. The first two points should be the main purpose of an assessment if we are looking to educate people and the last two points set the standard of a training process. I think we need to decide if we want to 'educate' or 'train' people. I hope one day online education platforms like khan academy will turn these traditional ways of assessment and evaluation on their head.

I like to add that my last comment wasn't trying to suggest that professors are lazy. I literally wouldn't have enough hours in my life to assess all my students by more holistic methods.

@IanSudbery - I taught mathematics, and always told my students that the purpose of my final was to see if they were able to organize, understand, and use a relatively large number of ideas and techniques, and I tried hard to design finals that would give a reasonable measure of their success in this "project." Your first point pretty much sums up my approach to finals.

@ChrisLeary It is possible to design final exams that serve the first purpose. I think it both rare and hard though. I suspect it is different in different disciplines. Also, did this assessment have to be a final exam? What is added by doing it under exam conditions in a limited time, with little access to the materials you'd have access to in real life?

@Ian Sudbury - This is a problem I wrestled with my entire career. When I do research, I have pretty much all the time I want, and access to my own library as well as the University's. I tried giving exams in which the students had access to their notes and the textbook. My impression was that they didn't prepare as well as they should have. They spent more time looking through their book and notes than they did working on the test. I never liked exams as a student, and never liked them as a professor.  Unfortunately, I was never able to come up with a better alternative.

There are really two questions here: "what are pros/cons of final exams" and "why are we using them", which have very little to do with each other.
The answer to the second question is it's been traditionally done that way. Another post here rather peculiarly says that oral exams 'would work', when actually in many countries, oral exams are the main or a very common form of assessment. It is unlikely that they work better in those countries, rather, the traditions have been different. The main source of pedagogical expertise for a majority of teachers is their experience as students. There's very little over the course of their subsequent careers that has any chance to change that, and little incentive.
To make a point, consider an easier question: why do we still have 45min+45min chalkboard lectures on standard courses, like mathematics for economists or electomagnetism? They are really hard to defend. A lecture is a rigid format that goes too fast for some students and too slow for others. It is way too long; studies suggest that after 15-20 minutes, most people lose focus. It's not really interactive; 90% of students are too shy to ask questions in a large audience. It's imperfect with lecturer introducing confusing mistakes, talking to the blackboard, writing in too small letters not visible from last row. Why not replace lectures with high-quality videos, of just right length, with superb visualization, sound and text, pedagogically tested (see 3Blue1Brown series as an example)? As these are courses given every year at thousands of universities, such videos can be produced at a fraction of the cost of the current working time wasted on the lectures. Contact teaching resources can then be used in more productive ways.
Yet every September thousands of lecturers walk into classrooms, take the chalk and say "A matrix is..." Why? Because that's the way it's always been.
Coming back to final exams, they may have real merits, or they can be amended with post-hoc rationalizations, but that's beside the point: even if they were rationally undefendable, they would still be widely used.

"The main source of pedagogical expertise for a majority of teachers is their experience as students. There's very little over the course of their subsequent careers that has any chance to change that, and little incentive."... I could not agree more with you on this. It is so evident that the system is failing a lot bright people. Thanks for offering your two cents on this :) BTW I love the channel 3B1B!


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How to deal with past unintentional and unpunished plagiarism?
I am currently a master’s student and I cautiously and properly cite in my essays and works as per Harvard’s guidelines. However, I only learned how to properly cite just this year which made me go back and look at my BBAs graduation projects (I have two licenses) and, frankly, they are horrible when it comes to referencing!
To make a long story short, these projects are made up of ‘copy-and-paste’ chunks from online websites, Wikipedia pages and some books, all without putting quotation marks, however still referenced at the end with (some of them) a poor style. Back then, I never thought about it and was like, yeah I am just referencing the ideas. I was not aware of direct quoting, quotation marks (save for small definitions), proper paraphrasing and a proper style of citation. It is important to note that it was totally unintentional to plagiarize, just out of ignorance.
What to do now? Frankly, I feel so guilty about it since I am an ethical person. Although both projects were positively accepted (one of them is a technical one; a website, so the report was only to define some concepts), I, first and foremost, do blame myself for my ignorance and carelessness, however I also blame my instructors for not throwing the projects at my face and telling me to go home and correct everything! What can I do now? No instructor told me anything about it and this was four to five years ago. However and ethically, I am suffering because of this, I feel like I don’t deserve to be a graduate student (unlike what my current instructors think as I am seen as an excellent student at this part of my life and my current master’s grades are excellent and I even cite during exams!) and should just drop out and not use my bachelor degrees in life, yes I feel that way. Why to bother pursuing an MBA and even a PhD if my BBAs projects were built on academic dishonesty (even if unintentional)?
I am so glad that I learned how to properly cite this year just before my master’s thesis so that I can produce a well-written one, but again, I am not motivated due to the aforementioned reasons.

You plagiarised? That's bad. Your instructors didn't tell you? That's bad, too. However, they are only human, and may have overlooked the plagiarism. Now, you have realised your mistake, and you were lucky to not have been caught. You feel bad about this stroke of good luck. It honours you. However, understand, it will do nobody good to destroy your career retroactively - rather, take this chance to change the future. Take this opportunity to be an extra conscientious, honest, ethical researcher in the future, and you will have turned your experience into a force for good, the best you can do.

Yeah well, even if it was unintentional and out of ignorance, I wish I was stopped back then... but does I make sense or am I delusional when I say that I don't deserve my degree? (Even if the project itself is credited as any other course and is NOT the entire degree requirement)

Welcome to Academia.SE! Looks like you may have accidentally created two accounts (this one and this one). If those are both you and you'd like to have them merged, you can follow these instructions to do so.

Yes please, what instructions?

@eykanal: Maybe you linked the wrong place? Did you mean http://academia.stackexchange.com/help/merging-accounts?

Thanks. Both of them are unregistered accounts, will see what to do.

@user21820 - Thanks, my bad... copy/paste error.

First, it is unreasonable to blame your instructors.  For what reason?  If they had done something years ago, you wouldn't feel bad now?  Probably it was not obvious to them that you had plagiarized.  (Plagiarism can be more obvious or less obvious, depending on many factors.)
Second, people make mistakes in life, and not all mistakes are fixable.  You just have to do your best to be honest and correct now and in the future.  You might consider contacting your old professors to let them know what you did, and that you now realize it's plagiarism and that you are sorry.  If you need to do this to feel you are "deserving" of your situation, you could also redo your projects and send them to your old professors, but this is not ethically necessary.  Who among us deserves the fortunes granted us?  Not I.  I can only appreciate them.

But they could have just informed me that I am plagiarizing... and a correction is required before the 'defense' of the project! As I said, I, fire and foremost, blame myself for my ignorance.
I cannot remain silent, it's killing me. I am really ready to resubmit all the work required to possibly correct the situation. However, I am afraid of the reactions of all the parties involved. I certainly don't feel ashamed of my ignorance as there's no shame in education. Should I approach a close instructor and explain to her about the whole situation?

This is not really an academia question, unless you're only looking for what the academic community considers right. My answer is going to be based on what I consider right, so take it or leave it but think about it.
Judgement of any action cannot be based on things that you could not reasonably be expected to be aware of at the time of the action. This is the same reason we distinguish in the court of law between premeditated murder (intent to kill) and involuntary manslaughter (no killing intent but possibly due to negligence) and accidental killing (neither killing intent nor negligence). Similarly, you have to judge your past unintentional plagiarism according to what you personally feel you should reasonably have known.
If you had honestly thought at that time that what other people write can be freely copied without using quotation marks as long as you duly record your sources (which is not an unreasonable opinion, since anyone who checks the sources can determine which parts you have copied), then you cannot blame yourself for not knowing that the academic convention is to put explicit quotation marks even if you cite the source in the bibliography.
If this is true, there is no reason for you to feel guilty. However, note that other people may not share this opinion, so it would make no sense to go and tell the people previously involved (such as your school), since consequences may not be fair to you. At the same time, if you can discreetly correct any part of your prior work, such as if it is on a website, just do so.
The issue is a bit more troublesome if your previous work was in a publication of some sort, for which there is a related question and some answers at What to do (years later) with otherwise good student who has accidentally plagiarised part of PhD thesis?, and I think you'll agree that what Anonymous Mathematician prescribes in that case ought to be done. As for his opinion that one should turn oneself in to the university, it is a fine approach to take but you have to use your discretion. Say you recall that you wrote an essay about some topic during an English exam as a 12-year-old where you made the same mistake, copying some sentence you remembered somewhere about the topic, and of course you did not cite it (it's an English essay after all!), and the results of this exam let you later go to a good school, and eventually it leads to you being where you are now. Should you trace your whole path and tell everyone that you don't deserve to have what you have now? Certainly not!
There is a limit to how much you should condemn yourself to other people, when you did not do any intentional wrong.

They taught us about the research methodology a year before my work, however and due to carelessness and ignorance (I wasn't an A student back then), I did wat I did despite, at the time, really believing that the way described above is the way to go to write essays and senior projects! I cannot remain silent, it's destroying me and I am currently depressed. Should I just go inform a close instructor and describe the situation to her? No, nothing was published, it's just a BBA senior project. To worsen the whole situation, I never cited during exams (until now) and usually answer word-by-word.

@R.AS.: If you are close to an instructor (whether current or the one you had at that time), indeed you can talk to her about it, and it would certainly help to get it off your chest. I should also add that it is often ethical people who are more concerned about what they did wrong than they need to be, whereas unethical people are always trying to find new ways of doing wrong! So the very fact that you say you're feeling guilty shows that you've nothing to worry about, since every righteous person will not blame you. Righteousness is of the heart more than actions.

Thanks for the words. But, if asked to re-correct everything and re-submit all works, why do I feel like I don't have the right to do so or I should not be doing this since what I did, at that time, captures a specific time of my life with then-knowledge and then-education level and I'd be opportunistic if I do it now with my current level of education and culture? Also, I am mostly sure that the close instructor will tell me to ignore it and focus on my master thesis, I won't be satisfied with that answer, I need to find a way to correct what I did.

@R.AS.: The reason you feel that way is a natural response, but it is because you are retro-actively judging yourself using an inappropriate standard in my opinion. You now know that not quoting properly is not academically acceptable, but at that time there would have been no way to reason that out since you did not hide anything (you stated the sources). So you should not blame yourself for the mistake that you had no way of being aware of. However, what you are responsible for now is to fix any consequences of those mistakes that you can fix.

@R.AS.: If as you say it's not published and it was just a senior project, you can do whatever you're asked to do, and it's up to you if you want to even offer to redo it, but it's not necessary since the consequences of your mistakes did no harm to others since they were committed innocently and (in a sense) did not affect the present. Just imagine, if at that time you quoted correctly, would it have changed the present? Almost surely no, because it was not published.

@R.AS.: Also, you have to find a balance between trying to correct what you did wrong in the past and focusing your time and energy on doing the right things now and in the future. You cannot change the past, but you can mould your future to some extent, so you have to weigh the priorities and choose what you (at this point in time) feel is the best decisions. Sometimes there is no perfect choice, so note again that, whatever you choose to do now, if you feel it's your best choice now, it is! We live in the present, so don't fret over the past or worry about the future too much. =)

I understand and appreciate all what you're trying to say here. Instead of channeling all my efforts right now into my master's thesis, I am dwelling on past issues. I am also worried that if I talk to an instructor other than the 4 involved in my 2 senior projects (I have 2 bachelor degrees), I will be negatively affecting their reputations, I don't want to cause harm to anyone.

@R.AS.: Yes. It is alright to spend some effort into correcting what you feel is worth correcting, and it is very reasonable for it to include talking to any close instructors (that I presume either were involved or whom you know will give you good advice), but it might as you say be unwise to talk to too many people. There are some people in this world who are either out to destroy others' lives or are too legalistic to see the real meaning of life. If we follow any laws or moral codes, we do so according to its essence, not always to the letter.

@R.AS.: Talking to the instructors involved will bring a closure to the whole matter, and as long as you feel they are not the wrong sort of people to tell (see above), it would be a possible path for you to take. Wish you'll get the peace you're looking for!

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


text:
Found one major literature review paper, how to differentiate now?
I started to write my own literature review today for my master's thesis and I found a very good paper which sums up/overviews the history and concept of the specific topic I am writing about. Usually I track down each cited source to read the original and paraphrase it in my own words. However and with that paper as a guide, I feel like I am 'copying' it or copying its chronological order. Is this a bad thing? I am also reading other papers and I will also try to address the gaps in such papers.

First off: Using review papers as a guide line for your review is perfectly normal. What you should consider is, that even if the review is comprehensive, since its release there has been new research and publications were released that you should address.
Personally I don't think there is anything wrong with using review papers for tracking down other papers, but the least you can do is to also cite the review paper and remark that the review has a good take on the topic.
If you have any additions or own takes on the reviewer's opinion: do that! Discuss why you added other papers to your literature that the author neglected, give a different order to the topics if you prefer it, etc. In a historical context it might be difficult to change many things, but you should try not to copy it too much. As long as you formulate own sentences, your're fine.

In addition to ian's excellent answer, I would say that you need to clearly understand the purpose of your own research topic and the purpose of your own literature review to support that topic. I don't know how original your master's thesis is supposed to be (that depends on your supervisor), but if your topic is original, then no matter how similar the review article that you found is to your topic, there must be some aspects of your topic that are different from what that review covers. You must develop a very clear understanding of what these differences are. Then, on one hand, you should still read and summarize the articles that overlap with the published review, and then on the other hand, you should explicitly highlight other articles that the published review did not cover that you need to cover.

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


text:
Is it ethical/legal to obtain journal articles from reddit?
My university's subscription is really limited (I come from Lebanon). I never found any paper related to my research or essays using the database that my university is subscribing to; even the basic pioneering papers in business. Yesterday, I started writing my master's thesis and the very basic papers behind my topic cannot be accessed through my university's portal (cannot simply ignore them) and I, obviously, don't have access/cannot pay for individual papers. What to do in this case? Someone here recommended a Reddit page that provides and shares papers upon requests. How legal/ethical is that? The page claims that all the shared papers are based on the concept of fair use.
Eventually, I have 3 options: Follow this way, adopt a bad scholarship behavior by not tracking down original references to check myself (which is out of the question) or I just go home and forget about writing a master's thesis or a literature review because it's almost impossible to access those papers without the help of option 1. As for emailing individual authors, well none have replied so far so it isn't always a practical option as I cannot wait days for 1 particular paper to be received (if any).

Also see Literature searches in publications when you have limited access to journals, What do you do when you find yourselves with an unreadable/inaccessible paper?, Ways to get free and legal access to research papers as a researcher for alternative ways to find papers.

Yes, checked most of these but I am particularly asking about Reddit (or similar ways for that matter).

Legally, I am not sure --- it depends on the laws on the country as well. Ethically, I don't see anything wrong about it. Academia is about building and sharing knowledge: if anything, I would consider it unethical to put papers behind a paywall.

Legally, I don't have any issue really. I mean, I am always trying to be a 'good citizen' in a corrupted country. So I usually place it under fair use especially that my condition fulfills all the 4 points of the fair use concept. As for ethics, you're totally right, it's just that I feel bad about doing it. I've just received 1 paper from the corresponding author. I asked for it on Sunday. So again, its's not always a practical choice to wait a few days if I just want to check like 10 words. Thanks for the answer.

Most scientific papers have their copyright owned by an academic publisher (which may be a for-profit company, a scientific society, a university press, etc.), and the publisher often does not allow people to redistribute the papers that they own. Hence, in most cases, it may be a violation of copyright for an individual to give you a copy of a scientific paper, either privately or by posting it online. Sometimes, even the authors of the work may not be legally allowed to share their work with you, because they have signed the copyright away -- even though this is common practice.
Now, in terms of ethics, many papers are produced by researchers who are paid by public money, and many researchers intend their work to be as widely disseminated as possible. In any case, researchers are not paid when publishers sell their articles, and few would object to their papers being shared with people who cannot afford to buy it from the publisher. People in the open access movement will argue that, in ethical terms, people like you should have access to the output of scientific research, without the publisher's copyright standing in the way. In fact, open access advocates often feel that academic publishers, in particular commercial ones, are acting against the interest of the research community by restricting the dissemination of scientific papers. This follows the intuition that research supported by public funds should be freely available to members of the public.
Personally, I would encourage you to obtain articles however you can when you cannot obtain them from publishers, without worrying about legal issues. I find that the most convenient way is often to use Sci-hub, but you can also ask for papers on Reddit, or asking colleagues or the authors of the paper. I can completely sympathize with the fact that it is essentially infeasible, when checking related work, to send emails, requests, wait, etc., for every single paper which you think may be relevant and need to check out. Situations like yours is what make me believe that the current academic publishing system has significant problems, and that encouraging open access to scientific papers is worthwhile.

Thanks for the answer. My instructor shares your point regarding 'getting it in any way' as she has informed me yesterday. As for legality, see my previous comment, I am not really concerned about it now, I am just worried about ethics since I am an ultra-ethical guy.

I won't comment on ethics because that's up to personal values, but I'll discuss legality.
It is usually legal to obtain journal articles from Reddit. That's because these sources don't usually yield the final published version (i.e. the one accessible from the journal website) and that is the only version behind a paywall. Publishers are usually happy if authors share preprints, since more readers leads to more usage leads to more citations leads to more subscriptions.
Here's an example from Elsevier. Note authors are allowed to share their article for "Personal Use, Internal Institutional Use and Scholarly Sharing purposes". Clicking on "scholarly sharing" links to this page, which explicitly says:

Authors can share their preprint anywhere at any time.
Authors can share their accepted manuscript [immediately] by updating a preprint in arXiv or RePEc with the accepted manuscript.
Authors can share their accepted manuscript [immediately] by providing copies to their students or to research collaborators for their personal use
Authors can share their accepted manuscript [after the embargo period] via non-commercial hosting platforms such as their institutional repository

In other words, Elsevier allows you to get a preprint off Reddit. Since Reddit is noncommercial, Elsevier also allows you to get the accepted article (i.e. the article after reviewer comments are incorporated, but before copyediting/typesetting/whatever) off Reddit but only after the embargo period, which is usually about 6 months to a year. Elsevier does prohibit you from getting the published journal article (i.e. the article after copyediting/typesetting/whatever) off Reddit, but if you like some people believe that publishers add no value, then you probably aren't concerned about getting this version anyway.
Although every publishers' policies differ, Elsevier's are typical.
tl; dr: unless you are getting a very recent paper, or you're getting the published journal article, you're not breaking laws.

The legality of copyright is a mine field. As I said here, I think that redistributing a paper goes against the wishes of the publisher and is therefore unethical. I think the real issues are

I cannot wait days for 1 particular paper to be received

and

papers behind my topic cannot be accessed through my university's portal

I find it hard to believe that your research is progressing so fast that a couple of day delay receiving a paper is going to be catastrophic. Additionally, while electronic access is nice, you should check with you library regarding paper versions. Additionally, Lebanon seems to be developing an "Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery Services" called LIDS. In the absence of your university helping you obtain a copy of the paper, you should talk to your supervisor. They may have a colleague at a university with a better library. Only after exhausting all other opportunities would I consider buying the paper from the publisher or using a general list server to obtain a copy.

For waiting, imagine like I have to check 20 papers for 1 particular idea, out of these 20 papers, 18 cannot be accessed, imagine emailing all these authors with the huge potentiality of not getting answers (I haven't gotten any so far) so it's not a matter of patience, it's a matter of not wanting to waste days and weeks just to read a line or two of information. It isn't efficient. Again, no problem with waiting but I am not getting anything anyway.

Moreover, I have asked my instructor about this before and said that I may cite these sources as secondary which I don't want to do that now. As for asking 'a colleague at a university with a better library', it's technically the same as asking someone from Reddit to get the document for me, isn't it? Oh and my university isn't listed under LIDS.

No asking an individual is not the same as asking the world. Just as emailing a paper to an individual is not the same as emailing it to the world.

My instructor has just informed me to check with other colleagues at other universities but also told me that asking Reddit is completely fine and acceptable.

Yes, waiting a few days to get access to a paper (in case it succeeds) is a real constraint, not because your field is progressing so fast, but simply because it makes it really harder for you to make progress.

I really have to give -1 to this answer. Given your answer,I think that you pretty much have no idea what it looks like to try to do anything research-related when you have no access to papers. Given that OP just stared writing his thesis, he's most likely in the exploratory phase. I myself, back when I was writing my bachelor's thesis, had to skim well over 200 papers, in order to determine that maybe 50 are related to my work and that maybe 10 or so should be examined in great detail. If I had to spend just 1 hour getting papers the old way, it would take more than a month to do all of that.

Well, I have just received one paper from 1 author. That's good. I am grateful. It took 2 days compared to 3 hours on Reddit and since then, I've written 2 rich pages of literature review. So had I waited till now, I'd have started writing my thesis tomorrow so that would make it a 3 days loss. That's just for 1 paper. Again, I am really grateful for both ways.

Indeed, because I do have pretty good access behind paywalls, it can take me as little as 15 seconds to see/have an article... and, yes, often they prove irrelevant. But all these outcomes are clear fairly soon after that 15 seconds... as opposed to waiting several days for each item? It often happens in a literature search that I look at 100 things in a day, and, yes, I am able to dispatch the vast majority as irrelevant or subsumed by later. But if I couldn't see them? Or couldn't see them without waiting several days? That'd be a slow-down of a factor of 1,000 or more.

I think that redistributing a paper goes against the wishes of the publisher - I think this is incorrect more often than it is correct. Publishers want papers to be read because it leads to usage and / or citations which leads to more subscriptions.


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A bad feeling about first published papers
I was taking a look at my first published papers, which are published in (peer-reviewed) A*/A/B level proceedings. Thanks to these papers, I finished my PhD a few years ago.
I was surprised by the quality of the papers and I felt ashamed that I wrote these papers -Of course, this was not my feeling a few years ago-. I found that my assumptions were naive and the conclusions can be valid only for the used dataset (there is a high chance that they are not valid for other datasets). I found also that I lacked some fundamental knowledge and I could explain my approach differently.
Overall, if I receive these papers now as a reviewer, I would definitely recommend to reject them.
I don't know whether this feeling is just because 1) I gained knowledge over the past years, 2) the domain (CS) has evolved significantly or 3) the papers were indeed bad and they shouldn't be published.
In the case of (3), I am wondering what I should do.

I think you're overly self-critical. If your paper was good enough to be accepted at an A* conference, then there is value to it, even if it does not necessary generalize to all datasets.

You discovered something: you learned. You improved over the time. You once wrote insufficient papers, now you are beyond this. Improve further, so that in 10 years time you will be able to say "boy was I naive then". It's far better than looking back and saying "Well, I'll never reach that level of brilliance again." It means that you grow as a scientist. And yes, fields change. We did do a lot of very naive things once. That's how science as a whole works.

CS has so many bad papers, yours won't stand out. Don't worry... Keep learning and keep improving, then there's no point in looking back.

There's a difference between a paper that isn't worthy of publication due to being insufficiently original, clever, useful, etc. versus one that is actually incorrect. As long those papers are not in the latter category, there's no harm in their being out there in the world. Maybe they're not something you want to include, or at least highlight, on your CV; but even in case (3), there's no action you need to take.

Just an interesting thought. What should I do if the paper is indeed misleading (say deliberately done)? What if a section of the paper has misleading information but, the rest of the paper is gold? What if it is just the Dunning Kruger or Impostor Syndrome making me think about retracting a highly cited paper (thinking I misled research community while in reality my paper would have helped research community a lot)?

@PrasadRaghavendra I think your question is somehow different but interesting. It would be better to ask it separately.

@CaptainEmacs Your comment can be well a good answer ;-)

@CaptainEmacs can you please make it an answer!

@MassimoOrtolano By popular request, I added it as response. Thank you for the recommendation.

i can only say: Welcome to the club, and every scientist who has the ability to look back critically on his own science is a big win for the world!

You should do nothing other than continue growing and learning. The most common reason would be #1. I can't say the most likely reason is #1, not having seen the papers.
But a lot of authors, even poets, look back on their early work with a sense of wonder about how they could have been so naive. It is a sign of growth.
Yes, #2 is probably also a factor to some extent as CS has been a fast moving field overall, not being much over 60 years old, compared to, say math and such.
And you haven't said that the papers are actually wrong, just a bit naive. Hopefully we all learn some things as we grow older. It normally happens because we are actively thinking about things.
Others at the time (reviewers, editors, advisors) thought that the papers were fine for the time. They were fine.

Just ignore the bad papers.  Don't include them in your curriculum vitae.  Instead of using the title "Papers" in your CV, just use the title "Selected papers."  That implies that you have some papers that you are not proud of.

Or so many papers, that you only want to present a few gems! ;)

@ndpl: I know a phd student who has two lists on his homepage - selected papers and papers - both list exactly the same paper:) (my ex-supervisor also lists all their papers under "selected papers");)

You discovered something: you learned. You improved over the time. You once wrote insufficient papers, now you are beyond this. Improve further, so that in 10 years time you will be able to say "boy was I naive then". It's far better than looking back and saying "Well, I'll never reach that level of brilliance again." It means that you grow as a scientist. And yes, fields change. We did do a lot of very naive things once. That's how science as a whole works.
[added by popular request]

If indeed:

"my assumptions were naive" and
"the conclusions ... there is a high chance that they are not valid for other datasets"
"I could explain my approach differently"

(which, I should say, might just be your misjudging your past work, as other answers suggest; but if that is actually the case)
then consider writing a new paper about the subject. Regardless of whether it is sufficiently important for a top-tier publication, you can at least share your further-developed you of the subject with the community.
It is not uncommon for papers on some subject to begin with partial insights, simplistic assumptions and limited applicability, and develop - often by the same authors - into something deeper, more mature and more useful.
Note: If you do write a paper, don't waste your time and the readers berating your previous work; rather, focus on the new presentation of the previous method, a discussion of its assumptions (as opposed to other, less-naive assumptions) and dispassionate explanation about its limits of applicability. If you can add some new result that doesn't make this assumption - even if it's a proof of impossibility or a concrete useful/insightful counter-example, that's even better. But don't write a "my last paper sucks" paper.

Why the downvote?

@Tommi Aren't you also curious why there's 6 downvotes on the other answer?

@Tommi: Unfortunately, the person who downvoted will not get notified of your question, so I guess we won't know.

@user1271772 No, I have a good feeling why that might be the case. Here I do not know if there is a good reason for the downvote that I am simply missing (and this answer was at -1 total when asking), which is why I asked. Maybe I have a blind spot.

The way I see it, the papers were good enough to pass peer review so they're good enough to remain in the scientific lexicon. Even if your assumptions were slightly wrong or naive, the results of these naive assumptions are still important.
Remember the maxim:

Even negative results are results

If you feel really strongly about it, you could go back and write further papers addressing the issues in your originals and improving on them. This is the scientific method in action. Otherwise, just leave it and move on to bigger and better things.
Be proud of finishing your PhD, we sometimes forget in academic circles that this is no small achievement in and of itself.

To add to the other answers:
One takeaway is, that you learned in the meantime and now see the weaknesses of the paper, that were not obvious to you when you wrote them, even when you did your very best.
When you are a reviewer, look at such a paper and realize, that it had been from you years ago and don't reject it, but write a helpful review, in a way that would have improved your weaker papers.
Point out what can be improved and give hints how it can be done, so the authors that sent in weak papers that have potential to become strong papers have a chance to improve them instead of being rejected directly because you are now way above their level.
And when you see things that can be improved on your old papers, you may consider to write a follow up paper to your old paper.

The crux of your situation is that years ago you published some papers, about which you now say "if I received these papers now as I reviewer, I would definitely recommend to reject them." Then you suggest three things and ask for advice if option (3) is true:

"(3) the papers were indeed bad and they shouldn't be published.
  In the case of (3), I am wondering what I should do."

The other two answers essentially say "just ignore the bad papers and move on", which is certainly an option for you. But if you are curious for more options that you can do in situation (3), apart from just ignoring the papers, another option is to retract the papers.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.


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Letter of recommendation from professors without prior contact
I am a postdoctoral researcher at a German university and aim to apply for a visiting lecturer program to be a visiting professor at a foreign university. For this, I am required to provide two reference letters from two professors working at German universities but not at my university. As most of my collaborators are either from my university or from international institutions, the options are pretty limited for me.
Isn't it silly to request such a letter from a professor without prior direct contact? If yes, how am I supposed to fulfil this condition?

Yes, it is silly. Boneheaded, actually. I assume that they don't want many applicants and I wouldn't put a lot of hopes on this position.
But you might ask some of your current colleagues for advice. It might be that your work has been shared with other German scholars who might be able to provide a (mild) recommendation based on your published work.
You could also ask for an exception, explaining your situation. Some other arrangement might be made to happen if you, otherwise, seem like a good candidate.
Good luck and keep looking.

Ask your PI if they have any German peers who might provide a recommendation based on your PI's recommendation to them.  It's not the way to get high fidelity recommendations; but, this request sounds more like it is biased to select a person with a German network of peers, so give it to them :)

Silly or not, these are the written requirements. The issue of course is that you don't have two people who can write with actual knowledge of your work.
Write to the chair of the search committee and ask them for an exception and that you can provide references from researchers abroad.

Letters from faculty at universities who the candidate has not worked with is often part of a tenure promotion package. Requesting such letters is usually an attempt to obtain an external opinion of your research. The idea is that people you have collaborated with are likely to write positive letters about you, so someone who is detached from your work can only represent their views of the merits of your research.
The search committee here may have that same goal in mind.

So you mean it is a kind of a review (FYI they call it a reference letter)? The question again is whether it is common to request such a letter without prior contact?

I don't know about this search specifically, but I wanted to state one possible reason for such a letter. It could be called a "review" or "reference letter." For tenure promotion packages, such reviewers are usually referred to as "letter writers."


text:
I feel that I have a weak application. Should I take a gap year before applying to grad school?
A little about me:

I'm a math major.
I'm going to be starting my senior year this fall.
I have the credits to graduate early, at the end of the fall semester.
I have taken a few graduate level math classes, computer science and statistics  classes, and science classes (psychology, biology, chem, physics).
I'm leaning towards applied math.
I go to my state school, which isn't very selective or prestigious.
I have a 3.9 GPA.

I haven't had any advising beyond getting me to fulfill my graduation requirements and now it's my senior year and I still don't know what I want to do career-wise.  I think I want to go to graduate school because I really enjoy the school environment and learning, but I'm not 100% certain.
Assuming I do choose the grad school path, I feel that my application would be weak at this point. I would like to stand a chance at getting into a more prestigious program than my state school.

I have not taken the GRE General or GRE Math test. These seem to be the most important factors in admission. I don't know that it's possible to get a good score on both between now and the application deadlines around December.
I have no research experience yet. I plan to assist a professor with research in the fall, but I wish I would have more prior to applying.
I have little work experience so my resume isn't impressive.
I still don't know what program/research area I'd want to go into. I think this would show in my personal statement and recommendation letters.

Do I have time to improve all this before the application deadline? Should I take a gap year to see if I can get some research/work experience, make sure I want to go/figure out what I want to research, and do well on the GRE? Does a gap year weaken an application?

I think you are overemphasizing the importance of the GRE. Consider it as a box you need to check, rather than "the most important factors in admission". Still, you should get started on that process only because opportunities to take the test are few and far between, and if you are ill the day you intend to take the test or otherwise do poorly, you might want a second chance.
I think you still have time to get some research experience. I don't know what is available in your field of study and at your institution, but in my field I would recommend you find a lab that would possibly be interested in hiring you on in the spring after you graduate, assuming things go well in the fall. Although applications will be due before that spring semester, at least you will be demonstrating your interest in research, and hopefully you can get a decent letter of recommendation from your research advisor.
I would also suggest finding a faculty mentor: not an administrative academic advisor, yes, those people are mostly interested in your undergraduate progress, you need to talk to professors who have gone through the grad school experience, who are involved in admissions for graduate school, etc (of course one of the disadvantages of a smaller state school is that no one there may have experience with graduate admissions, except as a student).
I don't think there is an either/or question here. If you are set on doing graduate school, you should apply and plan for what you might do to make your application better next year if you don't get into a program you like this time.

+1 for pointing out this is not an either/or situation

I'm a math major.
I have taken a few graduate level math classes, computer science and statistics classes, and science classes (psychology, biology, chem, physics).
I have a 3.9 GPA.

I'm not seeing the problem; a 3.9 GPA (with grad classes, no less) by itself will open some doors. Math in particular is much more focused on classes and grades than some of the sciences, which care more about research (though applied math may be different).

I have not taken the GRE General or GRE Math test. These seem to be the most important factors in admission. I don't know that it's possible to get a good score on both between now and the application deadlines around December.

Most students (in the US) study for these during the summer before their senior year and take them in the fall. So, you are right on schedule.
By the way, these are usually not "the most important factors" -- the GRE general in particular is pretty useless for math majors (you should be able to do very well on the math section with no studying, and expectations for the verbal section are pretty low).

I have no research experience yet. I plan to assist a professor with research in the fall, but I wish I would have more prior to applying.

This isn't great, but given the pandemic, I suspect it will be less of a hinderance than it might be otherwise. [I realize this question was asked before the pandemic and might be read after the pandemic, in which case the lack of research experience is a significantly bigger problem. Nonetheless, my advice below still stands].

I still don't know what I want to do career-wise...I still don't know what program/research area I'd want to go into...Should I take a gap year?

This is true for many students. It is good that you are asking these questions, though. I would recommend really considering what jobs you might realistically want to pursue and whether they require a PhD. Most students have only the vaguest ideas what "industry" looks like until they are on the cusp of graduation. But if you can identify a few specific career paths of interest, you may be able to better align your short-term plans with your long-term goals.
As for a gap year, the question is what you would do during the gap year:

An internship or "real job" might be valuable, though there is always the risk (or maybe it's a perk) that you'll like the real job and never go back to grad school. But, these are not always easy to get (especially if you are up-front about only staying for one year).
Doing a "fifth year" of undergraduate or a master's might be an option, but I don't really see the advantage of this in your case (this is normally for students with poor records who need to demonstrate success).
Personally, I never recommend taking a whole year to just hang around and study for the GRE and do research part-time, since this has a huge cost in time and money.

This isn't great, but given the pandemic --- Note that the question was asked in July 2017. Serendipitously, I did the same thing by answering a June 2017 question earlier today without realizing it was asked 3.5 years ago! But +1 nonetheless because your answer is more appropriate/targeted to the specifics of the OP than the only other answer at this point.

Thanks...yes, I realized my mistake shortly after clicking "submit", but oh well.... :-) Have added a note to clarify.


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Have made several mistakes during the course of my PhD. Can't help but feel resentment. Can I get some advice about how to move forward?
I am about to defend my thesis. My PhD journey was not a pleasant experience. I worked in an area not within the field of expertise of my advisor. Though she was present to discuss; the conception, implementation and problem solving of the projects were a lonely enterprise. This was disheartening at times, leading to poor productivity during the first two years of my PhD. In addition, my advisor was not prompt in correcting my manuscripts and thesis resulting in poor publication record till date.
As I am about to defend my Phd thesis, I feel resentful about the poor decisions I made by choosing the advisor or by not being more productive or vocal about the need of the manuscripts getting promptly corrected.
I have a postdoc position that I will be beginning from the end of the year. Thanks to lack of connections in my field of research and my poor publication record, I managed to land an okayish postdoc position. I hope to do well and get a better position after.
I don't want to be resentful and feel self loathing. Can I get some advice about how to make the best out of my position forward?

Don't worry. We all went trough your experience.

As you have BOTH succeeded AND can see your mistakes in retrospect, I only can assume you HAVE grown substantially during your PhD journey. Congrats!

No need any resentment if you managed to get a postdoc. Many try and fail this hurdle

Please consider the selection bias in the answers you will get from this sites audience.

My experience talking to other PhD students is that 'most' have problems and struggle at certain points, so you are certainly not alone.

These "mistakes" are perfectly normal learning experiences for a PhD student.  Feeling resent and self-loathing are not normal.  I suggest you discuss that with a professional counselor.
It's not your job to tell your supervisor to work faster.

I'm not sure if they are not normal. From what I've seen here (and in person), it is not unusal to feel some resentment and self-loathing in the context of your PhD. Which is not to say that one should not seek counseling if seems like these feelings (might) become overwhelming.

Congratulations on getting a postdoc in what is nowadays a highly competitive career choice!
I would encourage you to seek professional help as soon as you can afford it, since that's probably the best way to address this internal conflict of yours. This is particularly hard during a PhD given the 1) low salaries, 2) academic culture (e.g. romanticising the hardships of the PhD life) and 3) the high costs of therapy, but I'd like to believe that this is not a problem with a postdoc salary ;)
If somehow money is still an issue you should see what kind of support network does the university you work for has. Sometimes they have some sort of counselling service which might be useful.

In some cases counseling is free for students but not for postdocs.

@AnonymousPhysicist: And in some cases, the other way around.

A great PhD student is the one who can be a very hard worker and "autonomous". I think the advantage is that you learned how to be very autonomous in your work.

I see the point of this argument, but there are two perspectives to this. From the POV of an institution it is the perfect excuse for whatever is going wrong in your department: " Bad councelling/guidance? No expert knowledge from your superviser? No institute communication and work processes?! ...oh, well well, we expect our phd's to work autonomous!". As I have said, I perfectly see your point but I have also encountered this argument as a crutch in the wild.

Honestly, the PhD experience is highly inconsistent. A rare few sail through with no major hardships, a larger proportion join an established research group and at least have peers to help them through the challenges in their research. However, even that basic level isn't a given for the modern PhD experience.
First is that within 12 months if you don't know more about your area of research than your supervisor then that is a very bad sign. In theory your supervisor should be at least dedicating enough time to understand your research to just enough detail to offer useful guidance. But the modern academic environment usually has supervisors under such pressure that if they would be lucky to be able to dedicate more time to your research than the time they spend meeting face to face with you.
I feel it is a very valid complaint if your supervisor didn't engage with you and try to help you through your PhD. But the PhD is a test of individual endurance. While doing a PhD you are technically a student, the process is actually more like the transition from student to employee and sadly is typically handled by a sink or swim process. The PhD is often an almost traumatic experience and most people never want to touch the area they did their research in ever again because of it.
After sounding very negative so far I'd like to encourage you. What you have experienced is a good trial by fire for your chosen career. You have learned the lessons the hard way but you have learned them early. Your decisions were likely reasonable given the context at the time. While the path was hard, you have actually managed to finish, that is an amazing achievement. The next time you face this process it will be much easier for you. While you say you are behind on the publication track, until someone has published the same work you have done, you can always go back and publish past work even 10 years after you did it. On that point, for your future career, remember that there isn't anything more important than publishing papers, so always bring your focus back onto that. Also you should be better at spotting the more toxic environments in academic now, definitely follow your gut feel on that as academia can be a meat grinder.
I think the last point I would say, as well as supporting the idea of seeking some professional help, is to remember that most people in the academic world are trying to do their best but often can't because of the pressures of the environment. Get angry at them, be disappointed, but try to retain some forgiveness because they are human too and soon you will be one of them as well.

“there isn't anything more important than publishing papers” I’m pretty sure that there’d be people who would disagree with you on that.

@nick012000 that is fair criticism, though when it comes to changing jobs or applying for funding the bulk of what "counts" is your paper trail of which the publication record is a critical component. I personally liked some advice my supervisor passed on to me from his supervisor, "If it isn't published, you might as well have never done it"

Sure, but there’s other factors that matter as well. It doesn’t matter if you churn out a dozen papers a year if you do so through academic dishonesty, for instance. There’s also other metrics for evaluating the quality of your research like your h-index.

A PhD is an individual project, so it's not surprising if you feel you that you have been bearing the weight of it. It's not unusual to have an advisor whose area of expertise does not align 100% with your topic. In my experience, my advisors were helpful because they listened to my ramblings each week and were able to provide advice about general academic topics (i.e. how to prepare and submit papers to journals/conferences, responding to criticism, dealing with administrative issues, etc.) Although they sometimes shared their domain-specific knowledge, I was expected to be reading and understanding the papers relevant to my topic. In the end, I knew more than them about my topic, which is how it should be.
I'd also say that 99.99% of PhD students experience challenges. (I state without any references. Please excuse me.) You could have changed your advisor earlier, but as they say, there's no use crying over spilt milk.
Well done for obtaining a postdoc, because the majority of PhD graduates don't continue in academia.

As user347 said, get some therapy and more formal support. Could it be that your experience was traumatic and you are still quite affected by it? On the severe end of the scale, your negative experience will cloud impact your post doc and your future. It is inappropriate to speculate too much but many people are severely traumatised by their PhD. This article below describes an extreme end of the scale. Landing a post-doc and graduating from your PhD should be a moment of joy and celebration. Try to connect with that somehow in a meaningful and fulfilling way.
https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2015/09/29/essay-trauma-associated-graduate-school
Focus on improving and networking with people who publish extensively. Getting mentored or joining a supportive writing group that enjoy and that you get along with may help develop your confidence and skill in publishing more independently. Yes your publication experience was negative, but hopefully you feel freer to adapt reach out more rather than feeling trapped like you were before.

TL;DR: Shit happens.
Supporting other answers, but from a different perspective:
The task "Complete a PhD" is not just "Make some scientific progress" plus "Write it down". It is also "Get the whole thing done".
The organisational part of the whole thing is important - even very important!
That part is exactly about the problems you are worrying about - and you have solved!

You did not give up even when it was disheartening.
You managed to continue the work even when you found yourself in a dead end.
You could stay motivated to finish even when you found the work you spend much time on turned out to be worthless.
You somehow overcame frustration.

When a company wants to hire somebody for an non-academic position, the requirements often contain having a PhD in the relevant topic.
That is not because of the scientific results. Also, it is not about knowing how to write them down in the form required for getting a PhD accepted.
That you finished a PhD means you are able to get large, complex tasks done - on your own.
The only thing about a PhD that is really important may be that it was finished, proving your organisational skills, and the field of knowledge of the PhD topic, proving you can work in that field. That the topic was not in your field of expertise means you completed a harder task. And that you now have a wider field of expertise.
Not the scientific result.
Not how to write it down.
There is one final task: Accepting how you got it done - and moving on.
Your question is about how to accept all the things that could have been better.
That you recognize what went wrong proves that you already learned from it.
How it was done no longer matters.

the conception, implementation and problem solving of the projects were a lonely enterprise. But you made it through. If this is the sort of loneliness you have come to enjoy or thrive on, then academia is for you. There will always be people more senior than you who will abandon you, only to suddenly reappear when you have produced something that can be published in a top journal.
my advisor was not prompt in correcting my manuscripts This problem should become less of a concern as you advance through the ranks. As a postdoc, you may again run into this problem of a "supervisor" who is not available until credit is to be shared. This is a matter of luck and (trust me please on this) avoid prospective collaborators like the plague as soon as your gut tells you that they are bad news (the upshot of decades of heartbreak in academia: your gut is always right about this; you don't have time to waste on the bad 'uns). When you finally get tenure, you can go ahead and publish by yourself, although it is always better to work together.
Some PhD students and postdocs solve this problem by pressing right ahead and submitting without the "supervisor's blessing". This gets them into trouble. Supervisor Mad! ... Right until the paper is accepted, and the "supervisor" has gained a co-author credit without having done any of the work. That tends to put them in a forgiving mood.
(I remember one horrible academic who had a lot of nasty things to say about his -then former- postdoc... until that PNAS acceptance email came through.)
So: you learned a lot from this. In all likelihood, there is more of the same s*** ahead, but at least you know you will be able to deal with this.


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Same presentation topic for different conferences
Is it possible to give the same presentation, e.g., invited talk, tutorials, and like (same topic, slight change in abstract and other parts) in different conferences? Is there any plagiarism issue like with papers?

Possible duplicate of Under what circumstances can one republish a conference paper/presentation?

I don't think this is a duplicate. Although the title of the other question mentions presentations, the question doesn't at all.

@shoover, I am taking about Tutorials, more specific invited talk. It's not about normal paper presentation like oral presentation or poster.

@shoover: Also that question is about fields where conferences are a primary mechanism of publication, which is a small minority.

I just picked one that sounded the closest, and OP did say "presentations" after all. There were bunches of questions about reusing material...

It's entirely reasonable to give the same (or nearly the same) presentation for different audiences.  This frequently happens with invited talks, which are often expected to present a survey rather than a particular new result.  Thus, there is no expectation of novelty and thus no issue with plagiarism.
If you are presenting on a paper, on the other hand, the talk should be novel simply because it is about a paper that is novel.


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Leave postdoc in the middle of contract to start work with another professor while being in one postdoctoral research
I am little bit of confused. I have completed my PhD, I do not have any prior postdoc experience. Let me explain my current situation. I got a draft contract letter from lab in China (say, Prof. A) a couple of month ago. I have started the process, I am expecting the VISA within a month. However, the research field does not relate to my current research work. Day before yesterday, I got one reply from another professor (say, Prof. B), who's work directly falls in my PhD research area. This person has a very strong background. I was dreaming during my PhD research to do some work with him. Anyway, he asked me to write an proposal, he told me that the fellowship will be ensured after a couple of month. I believe that the fellowship can be granted, assuming his positive response from his side.
Now, my concerns are as follows:

I have heard that the contract in China a bit tough. It is not easy to break contract during the middle. My initial contract period is one year, then subsequently can be extended upto  three years. My plan is to go China first, then after 6 months, once the proposal is granted, I want to move to 2nd guide (Prof. B). Is it feasible? How can I make sure there will not be any official problem during the process.
It looks odd, if I want to leave any position after six months, then why should I join there? My point is, I don't want to loose current opportunity, I am uncertain about the future response and funding from Prof B. One point, the current funding in China is a huge amount almost double with respect to the funding assured by Prof. B.
Is there will be any way out like, I may go to the Prof. B with the permission  or collaboration with Prof. A. After all, everybody is looking forward collaboration. However, I am not sure about this. Is it normal scenario in postdoctoral research?
Should I discuss the matter of collaboration to Prof. B, with Prof. A, or vice-verse?

Answer for #4: Yes, you should discuss the situation openly and honestly with both potential supervisors.

@JeffE Yes, I want to be in ethically right position. However, I think, there might be a risk in that. Can you please suggest some way to do so?

Yes, of course there's a risk, but there's a risk in any course of action.  As for how to do it: First talk to your PhD advisor, who will likely more insight into your specific situation than some stranger on the internet.

@JeffE Thank you for your suggestion. I already discussed with my PhD supervisor. As he does not have any postdoctoral experience, he is not able to give the solution. However, after the discussion with him, we found that these are the main concerns and I look for some help from researchers having postdoctoral experience or persons who are closely related to postdoctoral related issues in this forum.

You should be as up front about the situation as you can --- with both parties. Prof. A needs to know that you are interested in a one-year deal but cannot currently commit to anything longer. Prof. B should know that you are interested but have another opportunity and will need to know about the funding. Worst case situation, you join Prof. B's team 12 months down the road. By that time he should know about the funding.
As to #1, you answered this yourself. Once you commit yourself for one year, you should stick it out. Of course it is always possible to get out of any contract, but at what cost? Seems that it would not be worth your while to antagonize Prof. A. What is not clear to me is who makes the decision to extend. If Prof. A does not want to let you go after 1 year, are you stuck?
As to #2 and 3, forget about it. Once you go to China, you will be there for 12 months, and you will work on Prof. A's project. Everything else is unrealistic.

Is it possible to suggest me some forum related on contract issues? It is tough to get hidden clause in a contract, although you have the draft copy in hand. After reading your answer, it looks unrealistic about collaborative work with both Prof. A and Prof. B. Thus, I want to make sure that there should not be any hidden issue that might be undetected by me, as I don't have any prior experience.

@Mithun - Great answer by user36.  If you have any questions about the draft contract, for example, would there be a problem if you left after one year, ask the Personnel department ("Human Resources") at the Chinese lab.