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Prevalence of (systemic) corruption in Academia
Summary
Similarly to how gerrit asked "Is there any research on the prevalence of academic theft?", I am wondering if there are any surveys or studies on the forms and prevalence of "systemic corruption" (definition below) in Academia. I refer in particular to  corruption where people systematically ignore the rules, sometimes for "good reasons" (i.e. not for their direct benefit), but in such a way that it somehow justify others' abuses, ignoring the same rules for their own benefit.
As a member of Academia (in particular while being in Latin America), I would like to make my modest contribution to reduce the prevalence of such corruption, if only by showing the example and teaching about it to students. Are there any documentation around which can help in such an endeavor?
I list below Wikipedia's definition and some examples of such systemic corruption, along with more details about my motivation in asking such a question.

Definition of Systemic Corruption
The wikipedia page about Corruption defines various types of corruption, among which "Systemic corruption, defined as

corruption which is primarily due to the weaknesses of an organization or process. It can be contrasted with individual officials or agents who act corruptly within the system.

Examples of systemic corruption in academia
(disclaimer: some of those I witnessed, and some others I was suggested to perform by the hierarchy and/or secretaries):

Requesting money for one item and using it for another one. If requesting travel or salary money for person A so that it can be used to pay person B because the rules prevent or complicate paying to B, it can be done for reasons that both consider "good" (e.g. sending a student to a conference) but open the door to such rules to be abused (e.g. paying someone for a job they did not do).

Requesting a letter of invitation for a longer period of time than the actual visit, "to simplify things". When justifying a (paid) trip to various places/countries in the same trip, for distinct research projects, one could consider to ask a single invitation letter for the whole period rather than 3 distinct ones for the respective periods, to "simplify things" for the administration which has to decide whether to allow the trip or not, but it opens the door to people having the university to pay for their (extended) vacations.

Adding colleagues as co-authors to publications "because they need it" or asking colleagues to add one as a coauthor. [A colleague was recently suggested to do so by the director of their department to compensate their lack of publications after a period of intense administrative responsibilities, arguing that "everybody does it" (which I strongly disagree with).] One can be "generous" with co-authorship as a general principle, (among other reasons, because measuring each contribution is problematic, and expecting the n co-authors of a publication to contribute exactly the same would be complicated to enforce), but it seems to be one step on the path to  adding (a) co-author(s) after the article has been completely redacted as part of a "collusion deal" to increase publication numbers.

Shortening classes in agreement with the students without informing the administration. It is hard to maintain attention for 1h30, so it is a common practice to take a break in the middle. I saw some instructors deciding for the class to start 30mns late (arguing that "the students are always late anyway) and teaching only for 1h, and others ending the class 30mns early. It might make sense in term of student attention, but it might also open the door to abuses.

Skipping classes (in agreement with the students) without informing the administration. Some universities explicitly require professors to name an official replacement for their teaching duties during periods for which they have been allowed to travel (and check that the teaching duties of such replacement do not intersect with those of the traveling professor). When setting-up such "replacement", it seems common to request a "virtual replacement" where the replacement is just in name, and the students are "freed" of classes during the corresponding period. Such practice might seem justified for short periods of time (e.g. 1 week), but could be abused by being used for much longer periods of time, in a way detrimental to the student's learning.

Self-Plagiarism: when using a similar technique in two (or more) distinct publications (for distinct problems), duplicate the technical proof with minor corrections rather than "refactoring" it into a technical lemma in the first publication, to be cited in the later ones. Failing to do so might be just blamed to bad redaction, but it can be abused in order to make a publication "more technical" and novel than it really is.

Those are just examples which come to mind or which I witnessed, I am sure that there are many others. I am curious as to how prevalent such examples are, and of resources to help (young and less young) academics to

convince their peers at an institution to ban/reduce/fight some of such practices, locally considered "normal" and wide-spread, with arguments that such practices are globally NOT considered that normal, and definitely not that wide-spread in academia at the world level; or at least
convince students and young researchers NOT to adopt the local customs, with some arguments about what is accepted and what is not accepted in other institutions (where they could land a job in the future).

Motivation for the question
I witnessed various instances (some benign, some more grave) of such "systemic corruption" in academia in Latin America, but this gives only anecdotal evidence. I discussed it with some international colleagues,  which also only gives anecdotal information about their prevalence:

(some) colleagues from Latin America do not consider as corruption per se (for them, "corruption" rather corresponds to what the wikipedia page refers to as "Petty Corruption" and "Systemic Corruption"); while
(some) colleagues from Europe react by saying that such corruption exists in Europe too (with which I would agree although I think they do not understand the difference in prevalence) and
(some) colleagues from North America condemn such corruption (but admit that some of it exist also in some "bad" places in North America).

I understand at least some of the mechanisms behind such corruption: the people practicing it are mostly doing so in order to get around inadequate legislation and not for direct personal benefit, a type of legislation that they cannot change on their own. While understandable, this is highly detrimental to society in various ways:

in some cases the amount (mental, time, money, etc.) energy wasted in multitudes getting around a single "stupid" rule by out weights by far the amount of energy which would be required to design and switch to a better rule, if only people could coordinate;
in all cases, having most people disobeying a rule (without abusing it) opens the door for a few individuals to abuse disobeying such a rule (each decides to which point to disobey the rule), which is later used to justify even stricter rules, which more people will try to get around of in order to simply doing their job, in an endless vicious cycle.

I think this question would be improved by giving concrete examples of "such corruption" in academia for an international audience. For example, if I meet my program officer from the NIH in a dark alley and pass them an envelope with 5000 USD in it so that my grant is funded, I think we can all agree that is corruption. What are some examples of more "petty corruption"?

I was going to point out the same as @Ian, examples of such corruption that is specific to academia are needed.

RE: stupid rules. The purpose of a system is what it does. If the rules are not being changed it is because the people with the ability to change them don't want it.

About half of the post is an expression of personal opinion. I would recommend that you try to ask a precise well-posed question, and omit extraneous bits.

Bureaucracies have stupid rules all over the world. And normally they are required by forces outside the control of the faculty and staff. But bureaucracy and stupid rules do not cause corruption and may not even correlate to corruption.

The given examples of corruption do not really match what is usually regarded as corruption. For instance, in the second example: All countries I know have rules against "jaywalking" (crossing a street outside of a pedestrian crossing and/or when the traffic light is red). At the same time, depending on the country and a place in the country, jaywalking is more prevalent or less prevalent. The common understanding is that jaywalking is not an example of corruption. (However, if local police starts to charge people with jaywalking when they do not, it becomes an example.)

This question is not possible to answer, because it's not possible to understand what the question is asking. It's clear your asking about "systemic corruption", but it's not clear what that actually means. I guess you mean actions which an outsider might think is corrupt, but the insiders think is fine? For example, single blind reviewing could be seen as a type of corruption which benefits prominent researchers (with big names/schools). Or any type of recommendation (e.g. for reviewers, for conference organizers etc.) could also be seen as corruption because it's like nepotism.

@Ian I refactored the question in order to clarify it, and added a section with various examples of what I mean by systemic corruption in academia (rules that "everybody goes around" in such a way that it opens the door to real abuses).

I was not able to find up-to-date data on the academic corruption worldwide, the closest result would probably be Transparency.org's Global Corruption Barometer. As is typical for social studies, there are multiple caveats to the methodology; numbers may be hard to interpret: for example, Belgium has a low rate of bribery, yet the perception of corruption by institution (Table 2) is high overall and exceeding that of Bangladesh, which has a much higher bribery rate (from the 2013 report). That is to say, you are completely correct in noting that the same practice may be perceived as normal in one country and completely off-limits in another, and that would heavily affect the implications of any analysis.
To approach the systematic aspect of corruption in academia in particular, I would start with this highly cited paper (Rumyantseva, 2005), which attempts to build a taxonomy of academic corruption. It distinguishes between administrative corruption and education-specific corruption, and further divides the latter into cases falling under "academic corruption" and "corruptions in services". However, it does not discuss prevalence of these cases and generally sticks to more obvious, even blatant examples throughout the text.
This review (Denisova-Schmidt, 2018) and references therein offer a more detailed view on the prevalence of corruption cases. This includes high-profile public figures in the educational sector:

In 2016, the Ministers of Education of Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Russia, and Ukraine were all implicated in conflicts of interest. In addition, some or all the deputy Ministers of Education in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Croatia, Moldova, Serbia, and Ukraine, as well as some members of the cabinets in Armenia and Kazakhstan, have also been accused of having conflicts of interest.

In Russia, rampant corruption and plagiarism have prompted a formation of a vigilante group within the academic community - Dissernet. This is not to single out Russia or ex-USSR countries, although the situation is certainly problematic there. It is not a coincidence two of the authors I have cited so far have Slavic names. Many developing countries are experiencing similar growth pains, too. For an example more relevant to you, a high-level overview of this transition in Latin America (Segrera, 2010) is concerned with reasons behind these pains.
For the advice on fighting corruption, I will refer to Denisova-Schmidt again:

In order to combat this corruption, the faculty should present their assignments and expectations more clearly to the students, stipulating their educational and cultural backgrounds.

She then stresses:

Faculty members should serve as role models, however. If they also cheat, they might not be able to demand the opposite behaviour from their students.

And

General research on corruption suggests not fighting corruption in general but rather focusing on specific malpractices [...]

Coming from a somewhat similar background, I may only add to this advice one thing: do not put much effort in combating corruption where you can not provide a positive example. Pick your fights. Keep serving as a role model. But lecturing anyone on morals is not going to be particularly effective unless you can show your example works, that one does not have to offer bribes to be able to put bread on the table. As long as people keep trying, as long as they hope for a better future, there is progress. Do not demand it to be "all or nothing", because you will keep getting nothing. Offer encouragement and forgiveness.

Certainly there is corruption but it takes at least two different forms. I can only speak for the US, however.
There is minor corruption that is probably pretty common with people cutting corners, even so minor as taking home a ream of paper for their home printer when it will be used "mostly" for work. Padding of expense accounts for travel might qualify. This might not be a managed issue as the individual occurrences are small enough that policing them is more expensive than letting it go. But, I'd expect that a few people are fired over such issues. I don't see universities (reputable universities) as corruption machines that make such things easy.
The other kind of corruption is when a university is actually founded and organized around a corrupt purpose, say the financial or political benefit of the founders. Trump University was shut down and fined over such things. A few (not all) "religious" colleges in the US have a similar reputation. Even some technical "for profit" schools have run afoul of the law. And some schools have badly abused the student loan system to their own benefit. But these sorts of things are relatively localized, and aren't representative of the higher education system in general.
One feature of higher education that some consider corrupt is the tight relationship between some university presidents and the board of trustees resulting in very high salary. But this is done in the open, generally speaking, so may not be "corrupt" in the classical sense. Undesirable, perhaps.

Well, you miss a few types of corruption, e.g. when a student pay a professor to pass their exam, or it pays a professor to get hired in a selection.

@MassimoOrtolano, I've never seen that happen in US. Sad if it does anywhere.

It certainly happened in my country

@Buffy: It certainly happened in Russia, Ukraine and Peru.

The recent US college admissions scandal makes a much better example of corruption than TU, which was a pure fraud.

@MoisheKohan, yes, a serious case, but not an example of prevalent corruption since the people went to jail over it. It is, however, an example of how the rich can subvert a system due to economic imbalance. That is pretty prevalent, actually, outside academia.

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I put off taking some important classes until my senior year, should I still apply to grad school during my fall semester?
I'm a junior economics major who wants to get a masters and then possibly a PhD. I know that math background is a very important component of economics grad school admissions and so I'm also minoring in math. The problem is is that I haven't taken either real analysis or an upper-level linear algebra course yet (I did take an undergrad linear algebra course over the summer and got an A in it). While I have the GPA needed to get into most masters programs and I expect to do well on the GRE, I'm afraid that my transcript as of my junior year isn't very reflective of my math abilities. During my sophomore year I was in a really bad place dealing with both anxiety and depression (I know everyone uses this excuse, but I have the doctor diagnosis to prove it) and I got a C in my calc 2 class and a B in vector calculus even though I could have gotten an A.
Since my math background is so important for econ grad school, should I even bother applying before completing these upper-level courses that will better showcase my ability to do the math that economics grad school requires?

There are lots of programs where important classes are not taken by students until their senior year, largely because of the design of the major. Also, in most cases, if there is a "capstone" course, it's not taken until the final year, and grades would not be ready until after applications are due. However, this has not proven to be an obstacle for students applying to grad school, because the people making the decisions are cognizant of such organizations, and take this into account when making their decisions.
So don't worry too much about applying with your senior year courses missing—most of your peers will be in a similar situation!

That's true, I'm mostly upset because I was hoping that doing well junior and senior year would offset or at the very least mollify the impact of my subpar sophomore year.

The Director of Undergraduate Studies and/or your advisor in your major & minor would be helpful for this. The Econ DUS could advise you on what kinds of schools may be interested, and the Math DUS and/or your linear algebra instructor may be able to mention your struggles in a recommendation letter and endorse your demonstrated aptitude for math.
Doing well in a calculus-based econometrics class will also allay concerns.
Do practice for the GRE. It has a lot of formulaic questions about ratios, which go a lot quicker once you're used to them. Unfortunately, I don't remember it having calculus-based problems, so you could not directly use it to make up for your grades there.

I would not waste a letter of recommendation explaining why the OP's grade in linear algebra was subpar.

@aeismail Actually, OP did well in linear algebra, and the letter might tangentially say that there was a reason for subpar grades in previous classes.

Thanks for the answer. I did get an A in my intermediate microeconomics course, which relied pretty heavily on calculus so hopefully that will show that I'm not completely inept. I do plan on taking an econometrics course next semester, but again that's my whole problem haha

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Getting published in Nature or Science
I am a ninth-grade student in Bangladesh. I am alone in this research who is doing a research in neurophotonics. I have a dream to get published in Nature or Science. Can my age hamper my chances to get published there, even if the quality of the work is groundbreaking?

Your age is not a problem. However, what you should recognize is that publishing in Nature or Science is very difficult. If you have never published anything before, you will probably not publish there. It needs a lot of experience.

If not, can't I get published in Elsveir's journals?

You will still need a ton of experience about science in general and your particular field. For example, even before starting a study in neuroscience, you will need an approval from a local ethical committee and comply with the rules laid out in the Declaration of Helsinki. Have you done that? No journal will consider your work without those.

What is the Declaration of Helsinki?
One associate professor from University of Washington has revised my paper.

A set of ethical principles. Consult the associate professor.

But, isn't getting a revision from a professor is enough?

I do not understand you.
I am a self-funded researcher in my home. My research is not with medical science but with biophysics. I have read declaration of helsinki. But, I don't know why is it necessery and what will I do with it??

What makes you believe that "the quality of the work is groundbreaking"?

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1201

Decaration of Helsinki will apply if there are human subjects.  Other pre-conditions may exist if there are live animals involved.  But probably not, if you just sit in your room and think.

Also for animals, e.g. "Medical research involving human subjects must conform to generally accepted scientific principles, be based on a thorough knowledge of the scientific literature, other relevant sources of information, and adequate laboratory and, as appropriate, animal experimentation. The welfare of animals used for research must be respected."

Mobin, I suggest you read the answers to this question very thoroughly: I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank?

Well, age is not a criteria for accepting or rejecting a publication in any peer review journal, it's the quality of the scientific content that matter. Being 80 years of age doesn't guarantee that you are an excellent researcher. So work on the scientific content of your publication, and if it is ground breaking the for sure everyone will recognise it. So stay focused and work enthusiastically with scientific ethics.

Nature and Science both have an "interesting and newsworthy enough for a very wide audience" screening that takes place even before quality of science is assessed.  I know that's nor pertinent for this question, but it sort of completes the record

Leaving alone, for the moment, the ninth-grade thing, you are an independent researcher.  While there is nothing wrong about being an independent researcher, all US and European journals demand compliance with very high standards associated with human and animal research, and these standards involve submitting protocols to review boards before any work is done.
So, if the work uses any human subjects or animals, an independent researcher must hire such a review board.  For animals, it is unlikely that an individual without some major resources can meet the requirements for proper animal husbandry that a review board will demand, so animal research most likely will not be publishable unless you are working with a facility.
If you are not working with humans or animals, nothing would preclude submission to those journals.  I the work isn't exciting and newsworthy to a very broad audience, and if it really isn't world class, your chances of publication in those journals will be very low.
My advice would be to keep careful records of your work, and keep working to develop your credentials.

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If boss is my PhD supervisor, is a wage negotiation inadequate?
I got the offer to do a PhD at an university while being employed at a company. In that scenario, my boss is also my supervisor.
Is it inadequate to start negotiations about my wage I get from the company?
I am asking since I come from Germany, where there is a standard wage for scientific staff. So, I cannot change what I get from uni, but that does not hold for my job within the company. Eventually my boss expects me to accept the standard wage for the company job too, but I generally have good arguments to get more money, e.g. work experience, talent and good motivation. However, I want to avoid that he cancels the offer due to inadequate behavior from my side.
Thanks in advance for ideas!
P.S.: Comments about if the constellation boss=supervisor is problematic are also welcome!

If it is any consolation, I have a friend in the opposite situation, which is even weirder: my friend working in a company is the PhD supervisor for her own boss!

OK, now that's funny! Getting paid by the person you supervise... Your friend probably also needs a supervisor so that he/she doesn't get mixed up.

Your post has the unusual feature that part of your first question actually answers your second question. Namely, you write:

However, I want to avoid that he cancels the offer due to inadequate behavior from my side.

and then ask

Comments about if the constellation boss=supervisor is problematic are also welcome!

Well, yes, it's indeed quite problematic, and that is precisely related to your worry about your boss/supervisor rescinding the offer. What's got you worried is that there is a huge, glaring conflict of interest here: one person is making decisions that two separate people should be making on behalf of two separate entities with very different interests. There might be some rare individuals who have the ability to separate their different interests and act objectively and without malice in a situation like this, but I fear that the mere fact this person has put himself in such a conflicted position already does not send out a very reassuring signal about his common sense and good judgment. Consider this: if I were in a similar situation and through some unlikely turn of events ended up as a dual boss/supervisor looking to employ and supervise the same person (something I'd be already very wary of doing and try my best to avoid), the first thing I would do is to bend over backwards to reassure my student/employee that I am taking every step imaginable to separate or manage my conflicted interests, for example by emphasizing repeatedly and vocally that the discussion of the student/employee's salary in the commercial employment will have no effect whatsoever on their graduate school funding or supervision, or by having the salary negotiation be done by a different person in my company, or taking various other measures to alleviate any concerns the prospective student/employee might have. From your question it sure doesn't sound like he has given you any such reassurances, which suggests he doesn't consider anything about the situation to be problematic -- not a good sign.
Now, I'm not saying such hybrid PhD/commercial employment arrangements never happen or cannot be made to work. Maybe his intentions are completely noble, and maybe in Germany there are cultural norms that make such behavior acceptable. But based on the details you've provided, and from my (U.S.-centric) point of view, this situation raises some serious red flags. Honestly, this whole arrangement doesn't sound like a good idea, which makes the question about salary negotiation a bit moot in my opinion. Before starting to talk about salary, I'd want to have a good long discussion with the prospective boss/supervisor about the viability of the arrangement, including discussing specific details about how you can make sure that he will not be incentivized to abuse his dual position of authority over you.

Thanks a lot for your answer! It clarified some points for me. I am generally confident that my future supervisor is a decent person. Though, it's not clear to me if he is fully aware of the problems you stated. I will start a seperate question on academia.stackexchange about opportunities for him to abuse his position.

Indeed Dan noted correctly that there may be cultural differences: Germany has a much more relaxed view on "conflict-of-interest" situations which sometimes works better and sometimes worse than Anglo-Saxon style "balance of forces". Generally, I found that less of a problem while in Germany, but it means that bosses can get people work for cheap. It means that you need a far stronger negotiation point to get a higher salary. If you have no believable alternative, you have no real way to negotiate a higher salary. If you have, be kind about it, and never bluff!

100% agree. I am working on it ;).


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What are some tips for passing qualifying written exam (i.e., writing a lot in a week)?
My school's comprehensive qualifying procedure has thee parts.

A paper that is a synthesis and analysis of the literature on my topic,
A written exam that lasts 5 days, and
An oral exam on my topic.

This question refers to the second portion.
After reading your paper, each committee member writes a question for you to answer (total of 4). You have from 9 am Monday to 5 pm Friday to write a 2,500- to 3,000-word response to each question (not including bib). This isn't necessarily something you can study for.
I am historically not the fastest writer. I also have a tendency to not always be clear in my writing (it is clear in my head, but not always on paper).
My question is: How can I prepare to successfully pass? I need to write a large amount of high-quality work in a short amount of time with no time to prep for questions ahead of time.
Thanks in advance.

Well, perhaps you could work intensively on your writing with your campus writing center, over the however many weeks or months you have before you take the exam.  Practice makes perfect, and this is especially true with writing.  Tip: it helps if you repeat a certain format a number of times before you try to branch out to write in a variety of formats. // Also get more practice with revising your work. // Step one, plan your writing.  Step two, churn out reams of words and sentences and paragraphs, using your outline as your guide.  Let some time go by -- half a day, or overnight, before ...

... proceeding to Step 3: proofread.  Try reading it out loud.  Display it in a different font or different size, or on a different screen.  Or print a hard copy.  These things will make it easier for you to see an error.

That is great advice. Thank you. I guess I should have clarified that I am taking the written portion in a week from now. So I hope by now, I will have written enough.

This sounds like a marathon, but one that you've been training for. Your mind is prepared, so maybe it would help to make sure your environment is prepared. With the books you need around you, with some yummy snacks, and with some calls or meals with friends scheduled, you'll be in your best position to write.

Step one, plan your writing. The most efficient way to work is to write an outline before you start.  However, in this case, where you have five days, you might need to alternate activities -- researching, trying out ideas, outlining and writing up parts you feel pretty sure about.  So you might find that after a couple of days of this, you've written a large part of your submission, without having gone strictly step by step (outline, then write from the outline).  In this case, you may have to produce an outline from your written paragraphs.  You might need to do this more than once.  Definitely do work with an outline, though, even if it's a bit of a pain to analyze your existing paragraphs and then describe them with an outline.
Why?  Because this will help you find places where you're being repetitive, or where you make a leap of faith and omit to explain how you got from Point A to Point B, or where some reordering would make things hang together better.
If you need to consider a major restructuring, it can help to print it all out and cut it up into pieces according to sub-topic, and then try laying out the pieces in a few different orders on the floor or a large table.
Ideally, though, after having written an outline, you would then churn out reams of words and sentences and paragraphs, using your outline as your guide.
Revision: Let some time go by -- half a day, or overnight, before proceeding to the revision stage. Ideas for finding errors and places that aren't clear: Read it out loud. Display it in a different font or different size, or on a different screen. Print a hard copy. Have the computer read it to you out loud.  These things will make it easier for you to find problems.
If you're allowed to, ask a friend to read a draft and circle anything that seems unclear or possibly having a spelling, punctuation or grammar mistake.
(The best way of all to prepare for writing is to pre-write with an interested live human being, who asks you, "What is your essay going to be about?")
Get lots of exercise and sleep between now and then, of course.  Make sure you have a reliable set-up with all the resources and tools and groceries and peace and quiet you will need, including headphones or ear plugs if noise bothers you.  Alert friends and acquaintances that you will be on the dark side of the moon for five days.
Use version control.  Save a new, numbered version every couple of hours.  Make sure your computer does an autorecover save when it crashes.
Practice makes perfect, and this is especially true with writing -- and revising.  So, you may wish to warm up your writing and revising skills between now and then.
Remember that they won't be grading only on the quality of the writing, and that lots of students find writing challenging, but somehow many of them graduated.

+1 for “Use version control” and systematic way of doing it

Adding to the above answers,
You need to be thorough with your work first , you need to be aware of every aspect of it from top to bottom to answer questions on it , this is very important , then comes the writing.
Most often , if it is clear in your head , you can phrase it into sentences , refine and rearrange them into answers .
BUT , if you don't know or aren't familiar with parts of your work very well then you cannot answer specific questions on it.
Make sure there aren't any blindspots.
In the days before the exam , look out for probable questions from each area and think of how you would answer each of them.
If you have a clear idea and know which way you are going to proceed towards the answer , take your time and write it down and devise your answer into paragraphs , once you start writing you will get the hang of it and just go with the flow.
After writing the answer , read the question a couple more times and review your answer too and make sure it is clear , understandable and to the point.


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Number of potential PhD advisors at a school
Past advice suggests that potential PhD students should be wary of attending schools with only one professor in their subfield. If you have problems with your advisor and want to switch, having that option would be invaluable.
But what if your subfield is not represented that well in the vast majority of departments? Almost all schools I'm considering applying for only have one professor in my intended research area. I'm a MS student at the moment and I'm sure what general subfield I'd like to do my PhD research in.
Should I just accept that this is how things are and try to check whether a professor and I would be good matches before accepting? Or should this make the few schools with more than one professor in this subfield more attractive? To be clear, every school I will apply to will have top researchers in this subfield. The comparison is more between a school with one top researcher and one newer researcher and another school with one top researcher and no one else in the subfield. The majority of schools are in the latter group.
I'm tempted to think that hiring committees avoid hiring additional faculty in my subfield if they already have one professor doing research in the area. They have their token professor and that's enough for them. Never mind that the professor's personality, perspective, and research methods matter!

As the author of the original answer, I suppose some further clarification is appropriate. The issues are:

Are you willing to work on a topic outside of your intended subfield?
Does your program assign students directly to a research supervisor at the time of admission?

If the answer to both questions is "no," then you have a potential problem on your hands, and then you should be very cautious. However, if you are willing to move outside your intended subfield if there are no positions available, or if you're guaranteed entry to the desired research group at the time, it's not nearly as serious a situation.
That said, if you only want to stay in your subfield, and it's only represented by one faculty at most institutions, then you'll need to do due diligence and figure out who will be the best fit for you, both in terms of research but in terms of "fit." A significant concern would then be: "Whose advising and supervision style best meshes with my own preferences?"

Thanks. I especially wanted your perspective as you made me think of this issue. I understand in the US that students usually apply for the dept. and then pick an advisor later. I am in the US, but perhaps my experience has misled me. I essentially applied to my MS advisor, and I would not have gone here if he did not accept me.

It sounds like this subarea might be somewhat marginalized in the larger area the department represents, and this is consistent across universities. Why is that ? is the subarea not particularly popular, or interesting, or does it lack the ability to get funding ? In all these case, you do have to ask yourself whether the risk of getting into such an area is worth it.
But on the more direct question of whether you should favor the few schools that have more than one professor, the right question is: what are you planning to do after a Ph.D ? And in what way can this professor (or professors) help with that goal ? If you want to go into academia (say), are these professors the dominant players in the area ? and so on.

This subfield is neither fashionable or easy (too much math and programming for most), which probably explains the low popularity. I anticipate no significant difficulties with funding or job placement (I won't enter academia) because the demand for PhDs in the area exceeds the supply. You've misread me on one point. Every school I am considering has excellent research. But should prefer a school with one top researcher and one newer (not established) researcher to another school with only one top researcher (and no one else)?

In that case, one side channel is to look at the recent trajectory of grad students from those profs. are the students active ? have people recently got jobs ? is there a way of talking to any of them ?

Yes, having other professors in your subfield is a benefit. You and your advisor might have a falling out, or some freak tragedy could befall your advisor, or your advisor might leave for a job elsewhere and not get you an adequate (or any) offer to bring you.
But that doesn't make it an absolute necessity, since there are plenty of other really important things to consider. You should consider it a plus at the institutions that have two, but only you can evaluate how big a plus.
You should also think about ways to mitigate the problem at other places. For instance, there might be people in related areas, even if not your exact subfield, who are close enough to potentially supervise you, especially if they're switching in half-way through your PhD.  Or there might be other faculty in the area near-by, at other schools in easy reach, who might at least be able to help out if something happens.


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Is it rude to ask for accommodations due to a learning disability?
I have a learning disability where I can only learn through seeing (not seeing and hearing). As a result, I need to have headphones in class to block all sound. Should I just tell the professor this?

Actually, you probably want to ask more, such as whether the professor could adapt his material to cater for the fact that you will not hear what s/he is saying.

@DaveClarke: That's sort of a mixed bag, and would be difficult to accommodate. It's certainly worth a try, but you shouldn't expect a priori a positive result. It's a tough challenge to adapt a lot of material, especially for the needs of one student.

What is this disability called?

I'd say it is rude to not make lecturers aware of any special requirements you may have. I'd very much want to know of any special arrangements (be it that somebody can't attend to exams because she is part of the school orchestra and will be on tour or a disability) in a timely manner.

@user13107 Misophonia?

@vonbrand I think the disability office, if any, of the OP's university should give proper advice on the matter

It would not consider the request rude, as long as you have a reasonable justification for needing to wear headphones during class (which you do). How you might approach your professor and whether he'll accommodate your request may depend on where you're located and whether your jurisdiction provides protections for individuals with disabilities.
In the United States, for example, individuals with disabilities are protected though the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which require colleges and universities (amongst other organizations) to provide reasonable accommodations for individuals with disabilities—in your case, needing to wear headphones in class would be considered a reasonable accommodation (although this might depend on the subject of the course—in a woodworking course where headphones would pose a threat to safety, for example, it would likely not be a reasonable accommodation).
There are also proper channels a student needs to go through to request medical accommodations—initial requests should not go directly to the professor. Universities and colleges will have a centralized student disabilities office that handles requests for disability accommodations and it is this office that will require documentation of a disability and determine what accommodations a professor will be required to provide. They will then send a form to your professors indicating what accommodations they need to give you. Because of ADA and health privacy laws, the disability office will not tell your professor what your disability is and your professor is not allowed to ask you what your disability is.
Although this answer is very much local to the United States, similar protections may exist in other countries as well. Rather than approaching your professors directly, consider asking your university's student advising office, student life office or health clinic whether professors will provide accommodations for disability (you shouldn't need to tell them what your disability is). They will then be able to point you to resources that will work with you to find solutions.

In the Netherlands, the procedure is similar: in general, students should consult the central students office rather than professors directly. However, I'm less convinced that lecturers will be ready to write everything on the board/slides in order to compensate for the auditive channel being "switched off".

The accommodations may not require the instructor to write everything out in class, but may instead take the form of providing lecture notes to the student. Usually, accommodations can be granted unless they constitute an undue burden. Indeed, asking to have everything written out in class is a much different accommodation than asking to wear headphones during class.

@HarrisonW.Inefuku This is not necessarily easy. I copied my own preparation notes for one of my students, but my own preparation notes are written for me, it takes me about three times as long to write something understandable for someone else.

I think more common than the lecturer providing notes (which may go beyond reasonable accommodation), is paying someone (often another student) to take and share notes.

I would like to add that in my experience an increasing amount of professors now specifically say on the first day (or in the syllabus) to let them know if you need any special assistance within the first week of class. So I would recommend doing both - talk with your schools "Disability Services" department, AND talk with the professors after class to discuss your situation to the extent you are comfortable doing so. Most people are happy to do simple/small things, like allowing diabetics to have food/drink in class, and the only problems are when you ask for something more work intensive.

My understanding is that it's also wrong per the ADA to extend accommodations wily-nilly rather than through the office.

If you are in the United States, I would suggest you identify the office on your campus that services students with disabilities. That office can formally write you an accommodation for your disability, which you can share with your professors. By law, professors must follow the accommodations that have been created for you by the office on your campus that services students with disabilities. You do not have disclose your disability to your professors, but you do need to provide them with documentation.

(+1) Welcome to the site. I agree with what you say, but your saying "By law, professors must follow" makes it seem a bit more rigid than my experience. In my (admittedly little) experience, the office made it clear that accomodations were only to be taken within reason, e.g. I wasn't expected to make a new course or have any different standards for the students with learning disabilities. I've never had a student with physical disabilities in my courses.

I believe the request certainly isn't rude - I'd almost consider it your responsiblity to let teaching staff know the best way for you learn. How much effort the teaching staff put into servicing the request is dependent on the policies in place at your own institution.
Where I work, we'd co-ordinate with the educational support office, who would have met with you in the first instances, worked at the best process, and come to us with some recommendations (so they are looking after things like assessments and reports and the like).

To be honest, I have a student who has not reported any ADA-qualifying issue who requested (and got) permission from me to wear gun-range over-ear noise-blockers during exams (we're both very Southern, so all clichés aside, it's easy for both of us to tell that these cheap cans are not in any way specially augmented in a secretive way).  I don't see that self-creating a silent zone is in any way inappropriate, it isn't disturbing others, and she made the issue far easier to deal with than she would have had she actually decided to pursue the matter as a potential ADA issue.
But yes, if you feel that an accommodation might help ameliorate your federally protected condition, then by all means, pursue it!

Its not rude to ask and that is supported by the previous answers .If you are at a real university that has real exams that have candidate numbers on them and are moderated by lecturers at different universities then when you pass a paper you are just as good or just as bad as anybody else .I had a tutor to help me when I was repeating a course that I specialised in repeating .Over 20 years later when my tutor became a senior lecturer  I let news of my learning disability slip .I passed and thought that If I had told the UNI would have things been any different .I dont think so because why should they make allowances for me .


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Presenting a Negative Result
This past summer, I came up with a research project that I wanted to pursue (I am in high school). At first, I thought that the experiment would take about a month. However, I experienced more problems than I could have ever imagined. Finally, over half a year later (and after hours upon hours of research), I ran my experiment. During the whole research process, I believed that my alternative hypothesis would be supported. However, it wasn't.
I will be presenting my research at science fairs very soon, but I fear that all of my hard work will be overlooked because of my negative result. Is this fear warranted? Is there anything that I can do to ensure that this does not happen?

A falsified hypothesis is not a null result.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null_result

I have little experience with Science Fairs, but in my experience research that has not led to positive results can be fairly well received if the research has been done very carefully, but the bar you need to pass is high. That is, if most people believe that A -> B, and your experiments show no support for A -> B, then there is a danger that people will conclude that you did not do your research carefully or claim that it is "obvious" that A !-> B.

If the context is a science fair, maybe you could reframe your result in a positive way (as in: reword the result as showing that you proved a positive), i.e. "you would think A implies B, but my research shows they are unconnected".

Could you please post the instructions provided for participation in at least one of these science fairs? // In general, when preparing your poster, and when standing next to your poster, answering questions about your project, be upbeat and honest, and focus on what you learned (e.g. about experimental technique).

For what its worth, even though this is a question about a high school science fair, the general nature of the question makes it still relevant here. Good question, looking forward to more answers.

Short answer: No.
I have judged science fairs in the Southern US for many years. The "negative result" is not going to affect how highly you are ranked. I once supervised high school students who won the local science fair competition and went on to be semi-finalists in the Siemens competition. Their project was mostly comprised of "negative" data suggesting that a newly reported finding in the scientific literature might be wrong: link to their project. Their "negative" data was later used in a major scientific paper link (Notice how the title contains two instances of NOT; basically a paper entirely made up of "negative" data).
Science fair projects are mainly judged on:

Clarity of presentation
Adherence to the scientific method
Logical conclusions based on the data
Coming across as professional, knowledgeable, enthusiastic, and personable during the interview

What you should do:

Emphasize why it was important to test your hypothesis in the first place.
Critically analyze why the results did not support your hypothesis. Of course, the hypothesis could have been wrong, but could you have tested it in other ways? Is a technical problem a possibility (it always is)? Could you tweak your hypothesis in a way that it would explain the experimental results?
Think about alternative hypotheses and how those could be tested. Be prepared to discuss these during your presentation.
Focus on preparing an awesome looking poster,
Do not be negative or unenthusiastic during your presentation. This cannot be emphasized enough. Keep in mind that 95% of the experiments that a scientist performs "fail". And most science fair judges know this!

Good luck!

As another science fair judge, this is a fantastic answer. I'll add: also please critically analyze your experiment to see whether you could have done anything differently yourself.


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Does prestige of PhD granting insitution matter for those wanting to work in industry? And can a high level post doc position elevate an application?
I know for those wishing to have a career in academia that branding is key for securing a tenure track position. Branding is also key for certain industries at the undergrad level. I was wondering if that bias softens a bit at the PhD level, specifically for life science roles. How many doors shut if one gets a degree from a Top 30 instead of a Top 10 institution?
I figured HR recruitment would not have a clue how great your PI is in whatever field. Moreover with software based resume screening being so prevalent, searching for MIT, CalTech etc... may be a shortest route to get resumes down to reasonable number.
As a follow on question, say one gets a postdoc at an elite institution does that have any effect on said bias?
Any comments are appreciated.

Possible duplicate of http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/90/university-rank-stature-how-much-does-it-affect-ones-career-post-ph-d/154#154

@Alexandros I disagree with it being a duplicate since I am referring specifically to industry and dealing more with the tier level of the school. The question in your link is very generic.

What bias are you talking about - the 'bias' of people looking at the school you graduated from? I also can't wrap my head around the statement that a Postdoc might effect 'said bias'. Can we use less catchy, and more descriptive words?

@gnometorule Yes. At the undergrad level it is quite large, but finishing a PhD is tough no matter where you go. I want to know if the bias diminishes somewhat at the Phd level, for industry roles (not limited to a research lab). So if one attends a strong school, but not necessarily Ivy or Ivy-like, how much of a ding is that against you? Can that be eliminated with a post doc at an elite institution?

I think it is very dependent on industry and the position. Pharma, biotech most probably value academic experience more than others

Just because someone got into MIT's PhD program and managed not to drop out, doesn't necessarily mean they are a great candidate. Perhaps eliminating those employers who think otherwise is not such a great loss.

Ok, get it now. I don't think we are talking about a 'bias' here: you fear that the ranking of your Ph.D. granting institution will not play in your favor with industry; if you get a Postdoc at a higher ranked school, will this help in industry? And does ranking at the graduate level matter in industry?
As a Ph.D. (PostDoc), and in many industries, you rarely come in through HR. It's probably more common to rely on contacts, friends, academic collaborators, and recruiters. This already somewhat dampens the impact of where you studied. If you hope to get in through HR, expect trouble. What I say next assumes that you largely stay near your field of study (you're not a biologist seeking to do momentum trading).
Not quite dissimilar to JeffE's answer to a related question, at the PostDoc level you are expected to have some research to show; and as you probably won't show it to HR, the people you talk to quite possibly understand what you did, or maybe even are familiar with it. They also might know, or have heard of, your PI, which you mention as well you wonder if they do. A famous alma mater is certainly nice, but it will matter much less than how highly they think of what you did, and how it fits into your possible job there.
Applying as a Ph.D. (only) in industry will put much more emphasis on your graduating institution: in many fields, even if you publish, it might not yet be printed; and the breadth and number of your contributions tends to be naturally fairly small. I think hiring, in industry, based on name makes more sense then; but your field of specialization, and what you did, still matter quite a bit.
Finally, the further your potential job is from your field of expertise (and that is common too: I've seen people go from CERN to building user interfaces), the more names matter - as is probably no surprise to you. It also matters in just making people curious about you - in the stage of getting an interview; whereas what I wrote before is you discussing a job at a desk or lab.

I'd actually argue that where you studied can make a huge difference in industry prospects, not so much due to tier, but precisely because you're more likely to go through a contact. Different institutions can have very different contacts, and the industries/companies that are more closely linked to (people at) your institution will be much easier to get jobs at. One of the most important factors of doing a post-doc is that it exposes you to an additional set of contacts.

The following is based on my experience as both a hiring manager and as a participant in the hiring process in industry.
I'll say "not so much", with the slight caveat that it slightly depends on the type of position to which you're applying. When we were hiring at the bank, we gave a lot of weight to the undergraduate institution. For those applying with PhDs, weight was given if the advisor was well known in the field, but beyond that not so much. We placed a lot more importance on the ability of the candidate to actually explain what they did quickly and concisely. A few times we had candidates who were from outstanding programs and outstanding universities, but that really only got them the initial phone screen... if they couldn't broadly explain their topic in three minutes or less they went in the reject pile like anyone else.
The same was true for postdoctoral fellowships.
I will say that there were a few candidates who got a leg up simply because they had collaborated extensively, and they had some connection with someone on the team. Again, though, that just got them in the door... we never hired someone simply because they had a performed research at a respected university.

The answer is that a better PhD program is better for your "industry" prospects, all other thing being equal. But as you noted, this tendency "softens" for PhD students.
That is because people who interview PhDs are more technically oriented themselves. PhD resumes tend to "short circuit" HR and go directly to hiring managers. These managers will want to know what you've done in your program and how well. So pick the school that best matches your aptitude and interests. If it is a Next 20 program that you will do particularly well in, that will make up for the supposed quality of the school.
Bottom line: You'll probably want to be a better student at a "Next 20" school than a mediocre student at a Top 10 school. But if you figure to be about as good at one school or another, then the Top 10 school is better for the resume.


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How should I express theorems without a proof in a research paper?
What do you do when you have a conjecture, and you run experiments that confirm your conjecture, but you are unable to provide a formal proof (perhaps because it's too complicated)? Do you name them as conjectures or observations or... what?
This is in the context of a CS theory paper.

It's still a conjecture, now with some supporting evidence.

A theorem without a proof is not a theorem.

@JessicaB: Any theorem that is literally without a proof is a monkey. Vacuously, that is.

In mathematics and TCS (which is really a branch of mathematics), if you don't have a proof, you don't have a theorem.  (You write "experiments", which I will assume means "computer calculations".  Please let me know if this is not the case.)  Doing some computer calculations can be interesting and even sometimes publishable, but it does not constitute any kind of proof, formal or otherwise.  (Added: Well, unless it does, of course.  You can prove a theorem by reducing it to a finite calculation and doing that calculation by hand or by computer or some of both.  You can't prove a theorem which pertains to infinitely many cases by doing finitely many of them and claiming "and so on".) Also, although the word "confirm" is often used in this way in empirical science, in mathematics to "confirm a conjecture" means to prove it.
I see two possible questions here:

How do I write up computational evidence for a result that I cannot prove in a paper?
Can I publish a paper in which I do not prove my conjecture but only have computational evidence towards it?

The first question is more straightforward.  You state the conjecture -- i.e., the statement that you think is a theorem but can't yet prove.  Some discussion of the provenance of the conjecture is probably a good idea but is not strictly necessary.  However, if you got the conjecture from somewhere else you must indicate that.  Then you document the calculations you made.  Finally, you probably want to make some remarks about why the calculations make you confident in your conjecture (if that is the case).  Here sometimes informal reasoning can be helpful: e.g. if your conjecture is that for two sequences of integers a_n and b_n that a_n and b_n are always congruent modulo 691, then if you check this for the first 100,000 terms then in some naive sense the probability that this happened by accident is (1/691)^{100,000}, which is vanishingly small.
The second question is much more complicated.  It can be hard to publish papers in which you do not prove a theorem but "only" give computer evidence...but not as hard as it used to be.  Mathematics is slowly becoming more enlightened about the merits of computer calculations.  I would say though that you need to understand the field much better to be able to predict whether a paper primarily containing computations would be publishable than to publish a more "theoretical" paper: many, many referees and journals will say "no theorem, no proof, no paper", so you should expect to work much harder to sell your work.

Well, the problem is simply too complicated, and yes, by experiments I meant computational experiments.
I have been working on this problem for over 3 months now, and I am hoping to raise some discussion on the topic and perhaps even initiate some collaboration that hopefully leads to an enhanced theoretical understanding of the problem.

"Well, the problem is simply too complicated" I'm not scolding you for not being able to prove the conjecture!  Every mathematician I know has conjectures they would like to prove but can't.  That's almost the definition of a mathematician....

Good point! this is perhaps the first time I've encountered a conjecture that I haven't been able to solve after a few months. I guess, this is the beauty of Math!

@NeoN 3 months is not a long time to work on a reasonably complex mathematical problem.

The important thing is to be honest and clear.  In any proof-oriented subject (including theoretical CS), you should carefully distinguish theorems you have proved from conjectures you believe but have not proved.  It's reasonable to give evidence in favor of your conjectures (such as your experiments) or to discuss possible proof techniques that might work, as long as you are clear about what you have or haven't done.
What makes this awkward is that sometimes beginners are tempted to be a little unclear in dishonest ways.  Suppose there's something you are pretty sure you could do if you had more time, and it's embarrassing to admit that you haven't yet been able to work out the details.  It can be tempting to write something vague like "These techniques apply to case X as well" and rationalize it by saying it's not technically a lie, since you never actually said you applied them to complete the proof.  Nevertheless, it's unethical since it misleads readers into thinking you've done more than you have.
Even if you don't feel this temptation yourself, it's important to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, so it's best to be extra careful about anything near the borderline of what you have or haven't proved.

Do you name them as conjectures or observations or what?

Conjecture sounds like the appropriate name here.  Observation might make sense if this terminology is commonly used in your subfield, but it sounds potentially problematic to me.  It sounds a little too much like something you could prove but are omitting the details for, rather than something you have been unable to prove (so if you use that terminology, you should be careful to make this clear).


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Has the pandemic changed opportunities for graduate funding for on-line PhDs?
In the past, I wanted to start a part-time PhD in History, but due to my geographic location and unwillingness to move, I realized there were no funding for a student like me. Usually if students want to study a PhD on-line, it required self-funding, which means $30k out of pocket minimum. Everyone advised me that, if I wanted to get funding for my PhD, I'd have to study it on-campus in a traditional format.
Given the pandemic has shaken up higher education somewhat, is this a situation I should revisit?
Is it now very common for students to receive a research fellowship to fund one's online PhD?

There's some strained legality these days around funding for remote students...I suspect it won't last beyond pandemic restrictions.

The situation has not really changed.  https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11133/13240

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


text:
Is it bad-practice to have a high citation to content ratio in academic writing?
I'm writing a high school history textbook. While writing my book, I'm finding its becoming very heavily laden with sources. If I used Turabian's footnote style, they tend to fill half the page. Perhaps 1 source per 2 lines of text. My reasons for this are:

The history involved three different groups of people, but typically
only one point-of-view has been presented in most general sources, so I'm having to check more sources from these other points of view (which has revealed to me that a lot of sources are missing important details).
There is heavy bias in much scholarship, because the scholars are writing about their own ancestors, or have much local pride, they ignore facts that contradict their developed image of their ancestor as a "hero".
Indigenous groups with no written language were part of the history, so the facts can be difficult to pull out, and requires cross-checking and confirming information across multiple sources while filtering out the biases mentioned above.
Sometimes a great source ignores the basic details, like the date of the event, so I have to include cite general sources for the date alongside the more thorough detailed source with better analysis of the event.

Is too many sources frowned upon? Most secondary textbooks I see are strangely quite absent of sources. Is there some way this is bad practice?

I don't think you should be changing your citations to fit them on the page - you should be using a different citation style.

I likely will change the citations to be placed on the page at the end of the chapters, so they don't take up much space. I'm not concerned with that issue, but whether or not having such a dense amount of sources is frowned upon.

Are you working without a publisher? Without an editor?

I've only finished 10 chapters, have 40 total, so I think it is too early for working with a publisher.

@Buffy asks a good question.  It's not too early to work with a publisher if you can find one interested. Publishers know the audience you are writing for and what books for that audience should look like.

That seems like a normal amount of citations for a history textbook.


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How do I determine which of two International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2018) is genuine?
International Conference on Web Services (ICWS) is one of the top conferences for web service researchers. But this year (2018), I find there are two ICWS websites:

http://icws.org/2018 (this one is the old website for ICWS 2017, 2016..)
http://conferences.computer.org/icws/2018/ (this one is sponsored by IEEE)

How can I determine which conference is genuine? And as I'm a Chinese researcher, another thing I care about is that which one is recognized as the B-level conference by CCF (China Computer Federation)?

Both the organizing committee for the Seattle conference and the San Francisco conference have members at Chinese universities, so perhaps if you email them they could help you understand which one is recognized by the CCF. That is, if people here don't help you sort it out first!

OK. What about the first question? which one is genuine? or in other words, which one's papers will be inside the final proceedings (and indexed by EI, IEEE, Google Scholar, etc.)?

Looking a little closer, the IEEE conference in San Francisco is the one that has prior proceedings, and it has an "Important Notice":

Note that any other similarly named conferences are fresh starters beginning this year and operated by a different organization in Seattle, Washington that has nothing to do with IEEE.

The thing I can't immediately tell is whether the Seattle conference put on by "Services Society" is real or fake.
That conference says in relation to its proceedings:

The Proceedings of ICWS 2018 will be published in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) by Springer International Publishing AG. Currently the Abstracting and Indexing services covered by Springer’s data feeds for LNCS proceedings include ISI Conference Proceedings Citation Index (included in Web of Science), Engineering Index EI (Compendex and Inspec databases), DBLP, Google Scholar, IO-Port, MathSciNet, Scopus, and ZBlMath.

I did confirm that the Seattle conference is on the list of upcoming Springer Proceedings. Springer published several prior proceedings related to ECOWS 2004 and 2006, the conference the Services Society conference traces its history to:

the International Conference on Web Services (ICWS) was first conceived in June 2003 in Las Vegas, USA. Meanwhile, the First International Conference on Web Services - Europe 2003 (ICWS-Europe'03) was held in Germany in Oct, 2003. ICWS-Europe'03 is an extended event of the 2003 International Conference on Web Services (ICWS 2003) in Europe. In 2004, ICWS-Europe was changed to the European Conference on Web Services (ECOWS), which was held at Erfurt, Germany.

The IEEE conference says it goes back 12 years.
The Services Society has been a registered non-profit organization in the U.S. since at least 2011, according to this IRS lookup. The Principal Officer on that registration is Zhixiong Chen of Mercy College (the mailing address on the registration matches his office address).
He mentions on that same profile page:

President of the Services Society, a non-for-profit organization, promoting collaboration between Academia and Industrial practitioners on Services Computing and delivering relevant open course modules, sponsoring with IEEE conferences like IEEE Services 2010

So, my best guess is that Services Society is related to some entity that had been involved in running the initial European Conference on Web Services; that conference perhaps became affiliated with IEEE and the name ICWS; Services Society had some minor affiliation with the IEEE ICWS; and now it is running a separate conference of the same name. (In fact, according to an announcement in IEEE Xplore, the Services Society ran the 2009 School on Cloud Computing with the 2009 5th IEEE Congress on Services (SERVICES 2009).)
What I do not understand is why, if that's the case, IEEE would say there is absolutely no link between the two. The poorly sourced ICWS Wikipedia page claims that ICWS is run by both Services Society and IEEE.
It is possible that the Services Society conference in Seattle will have a legitimate conference, and it does have a satellite conference in Shenzhen, China. However, it is definitely NOT the IEEE ICWS.
If the Chinese Computer Federation conference list does not specify that it is the IEEE ICWS conference, then there is some possibility that the Services Society conference is acceptable to them. In that case, since both the organizing committee for the Services Society Seattle conference and the IEEE San Francisco conference have members at Chinese universities, perhaps if you email them they could help you understand which one is recognized by the CCF.


text:
Are there accepted criteria to define an author's institutional affiliation?
I ask this question because there are institutions that pay authors an honorarium to add the institution as an additional affiliation when the authors publish, even when those authors do not have any kind of contract or appointment with the institution, nor do research or teach there. This is clearly a way to game the system and increase the number of publications accounted to that institution. This is evidently not ethical, but I do not know if there are any stated policies or regulations on this practice. The end result is that a university that does do not provide funding or resources for research will have the same number of publications as the university that does conduct and foster research.

I recall a similar question that was asked some time ago, but at a first search I couldn't find it. My feeling is that only the main institution can have rules against such fraudulent affiliations. Note however that many researchers have perfectly ethical (unpaid) multiple affiliations because they collaborate with several institutions (e.g., I have a double affiliation).

Related question: What should you do if a co-author has an unethical affiliation?

Even closer: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/41684/19607

This is pretty old, but I will provide an answer to an increasingly relevant question. Affiliation is understood to be where the major part of the work was done. If this is not the author's current primary employment, then those details should be included in the contact details and/or acknowledgements. Any paid affiliation is unethical. Surprisingly, I did not find any reference to this "creative affiliation" in the COPE standards https://publicationethics.org/.
Many publishers include a statement about what to do if affiliation changes during the publication process - i.e. how to credit the institution where the work was begun and the institution where the publication was finalized. For example "Present/permanent address. If an author has moved since the work described in the article was done, or was visiting at the time, a 'Present address' (or 'Permanent address') may be indicated as a footnote to that author's name. The address at which the author actually did the work must be retained as the main, affiliation address." from Elsevier Guidelines for Authors (https://www.elsevier.com/journals/journal-of-archaeological-science/0305-4403/guide-for-authors, but they all include this). It seems that what the OP describes is so unethical that no one has addressed it explicitly (yet).

Don't be afraid to be an independent researcher.  No affiliation may be fine if you are not truly concerned about who gets to "own" your research. I have seen papers where the person does not have an affiliation.

As far as experience goes, an author's institutional affiliation matches the location of their name on a payroll, regardless of their publishing.
In other words:

on the payroll of University of 123 = institutional affiliation is 'University of 123'
on the payroll of no research institution = 'independent scholar'

Any other arrangement may be characterized as 'creative affiliation'(along the lines of creative accounting).


text:
How to see how many times a document has been cited?
I'm working on my thesis and I'd like to see if some documents that I'll use have been used before to see if the topic and focus I'm working on has been done before. At the moment it seems it hasn't, I looked for citations in Google scholar and it has only 1 citation, Academia.edu has around 2000, but I must have Academia Premium to see it. Is there any other way to look for citations? Is it worth to have Academia Premium?

Are you saying that Academia.edu claims that the paper has 2000 citations but wants you to pay to see them? Given how inclusive Google Scholar is this seems highly doubtful.

elsevier's free version of scopus, etc.

Even if subscriptions are required, your library may have access to many of the citation index type publications.

For biology and chemistry-related publications you can use Europe PMC as a search engine - it indexes citation counts and is free to use. Since it only shows open citations (those that publishers have made freely available), the citation counts will be smaller than those for the Web of Science, but you can access that info without subscribing. Alert: I work for Europe PMC.

For papers in mathematics and related fields, arXiv tracks how many times a paper has been cited by other arXiv papers. In some fields this might not be useful, but in mathematics/computer science/some fields of physics it’s going to be a very good approximation.


text:
Who assigns paper to reviewers for a conference and what are the challenges?
Note: I'm aware that the reviewing process in a journal has been explained elsewhere on this site.

My question is about the process for peer-reviewed conferences.
Question 1: In a peer-reviewed conference who assigns submitted papers to reviewers? and what is that party called?
Question 2: Is the party above a group of people or one person?
Question 3: What are the problems in this process? In other words, (is it fair to ask) what if a person in this process acts dishonestly?

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/101385/20058

In very small conferences and workshops (with up to 50 submitted papers), reviewers are usually the members of the program committee. The papers are assigned manually by head organizer (Conference chair or chairs if there are more). Usually the chair knows the members of the program committee well and is able to take care of any conflicts of interest. Reviewers are also asked to declare their conflicts as soon as they get the papers to review (with implication that then the conflicted paper is reassigned).
In larger conferences, papers are assigned to tracks, headed by Area Chairs, who again do the similar job than conference chair at small conferences. In such conferences, Area Chairs may form the program committee, and the reviewers are other researchers in the field that get invited to review papers. Essentially, one level of hierarchy is added. In such conferences, paper matching is sometimes done automatically based on keywords supplied by the authors; in the same way, conflicts of interests are detected. One of such systems is Toronto paper matching system, used by many conferences:
https://openreview.net/forum?id=caynafZAnBafx


text:
How can multiple people grade assignments online so that different graders don't see each others' grades?
this question is related to how you do your double blind marking for assignments, we are looking at the coursework plugin for moodle but are interested in how other other institutions do this. a specialist piece of software? paper? excel spreadsheets?
To clarify this would be two markers not being able to see the grades the other marker has assigned to the student, unless the grade is within a percentage.
This would be passed to a third marker if grades cannot be agreed upon.

How many student results are you working with?

Hi, we are working with around 100 students. What about yourselves?

One lot of 180 the other 160, but I don’t have double marking - just starting to think how I would do it in excel...

This feature is currently not available in Moodle.
Please have a look at the link below.
https://help.blackboard.com/Learn/Instructor/Assignments/Grade_Assignments/Delegated_Grading
Trust this matches your requirement


text:
Which alternative names can one use to refer to a "blind experiment"?
Which  alternative names can one use to refer to a "blind experiment" (defined by  https://www.thefreedictionary.com/blinds as "2a. Performed or made without the benefit of background information that might prejudice the outcome or result: blind taste tests used in marketing studies.")?
A colleague recommends to replace the word "Blind" (for the sake of inclusiveness) by "masked", "hidden", "anonymous", or "unbiased", but I fear that the referees will suspect me of not knowing that I am actually referring to a "blind experiment", and negatively evaluate my submission because of that (I am sure to commit other newbie mistakes, but I do know what a blind experiment is).
Note: This is distinct from my other question (For inclusiveness sake, what is the consensus about which usage of "blind" should be changed?)
about the consensus about which of the usage of the term "blind" should be replaced: for an academic submission (to a conference, where there is no opportunity to answer to the referees, just an acceptance or rejection of the submission by the program committee based on the reports of 2 to 3 anonymous referees), I do want to replace the term "blind" so that to avoid annoying any referee...

Does this answer your question? For inclusiveness sake, which usage of "blind" should be changed?

I was the one asking this other question! They are related but distinct (in my mind at least).

Why would the usage of the term "blind experiment" annoy a referee if this is the common teminology in your field?

@JochenGlueck: My (non-coauthor) colleague threatened to refuse any future collaboration with me if I stuck to the use of the term "blind" (when I only stated that I did not understand her objection, but that is an unrelated issue). They are a potential referee, and I assume that other potential referees might share their opinion.

Thanks for your response! So what term does this particular colleague use in papers instead of "blind experiment"?

Her experiments were not blind at all (that is my contribution). I was suggested various terms, and am considering the use of the term "masked experiment" in the sense that the experimenter's view is "masked", even though no real "mask" is involved (just turning the screen so that the subject sees its display but not the experimenter). ["hidden experiment" sounds misleading, and "unbiased" preposterous, as there could be many other bias!]

Are you sure "anonymous referee" is the same as "reviewer in a blind-review process"?

@EarlGrey the concepts are related but not identical. I added details to my note to precise the context: I will submit to a conference where there is only one opportunity to convince the referee, no discussion.

I've had an opinion along the lines of the other commenters for a while, that substituting blinded would be far too confusing to be worthwhile. However, today I used 'double-blind' in a presentation and was informed that my institution employs people with limited vision who have personally registered their objection to the term ‘blinded’ in the context of blinded trials.
In terms of practical substitutes, NASA uses the term "dual-anonymous" for peer review. This is sufficiently entrenched that they don't seem to need to define on first use.
This paper also offers a reasonably convincing argument to me that 'blind' isn't the best term even just for tangential reasons, and starts to make the argument that blinded could be replaced for scientific reasons for being imprecise. It also mentions some practical issues with its use:

She is told that she is part of a double blind trial in which she and
the doctor will be blinded to the treatment. Taking fright, she
withdraws her consent and goes home, terrified that this “blinding”
experiment may deprive her of what little vision she has left.
The term “blinding”—commonly used in clinical trials—is particularly
inappropriate in the ophthalmological setting, not least because an
outcome measure of a particular trial could indeed be blindness.

They suggest "masked".
"Masked" is used as a substitute in even quite old papers without first defining it, and it's introduced in a few university texts on the topic.
The APA Manual of Style, 11th edition, says

The equivalent term masking (or masked review or assessment) is
preferred by some investigators and journals, particularly those in
ophthalmology (see 5.7.1, Confidentiality During Editorial Evaluation
and Peer Review and After Publication, and 19.5, Glossary of
Statistical Terms).

A Springer journal refers to the process as "journal’s peer-review system is masked (i.e., double-blind). Thus, leave all identifying information off the manuscript."
In fact, a Google Scholar search for 'double masked study design' returns ~800K results (compare to the 2.3 M results from 'double blinded study design'); adding flags -opthamology -eye to remove that field yields ~500k results from broadly across the life sciences.
So I at least feel reasonably comfortable that my audience will be familiar with (or can straightforwardly learn) the term "masked" in place of "blinded".
This paper offers some fairly reasonable objections to even the double- part, mentioning the blind- part only briefly:

In some situations, it can be confused with the condition of being
without sight [2, 5, 12, 20, 22, 23] Some authors prefer “masking” to
“blinding,” although the meaning of either term in a clinical trial
may not be readily apparent to nonnative English speakers [18, 22].
Further, some authors use the terms interchangeably [5,6,7, 10,11,12,
15, 18, 24, 25], others insist that only masking be used [17, 20, 23],
and still others insist that only blinding be used [2, 5, 22]. In
addition, masking is sometimes used to describe how treatments are
made indistinguishable [18, 19, 25, 26], whereas blinding usually
indicates which groups are unaware of treatment assignment
[1,2,3,4,5,6]. Finally, searching the literature for “blinded,”
“partially blind,” or “fully blind” randomized trials also identifies
dozens of unwanted citations to the condition of being without sight.

The reviewer comments make it clear just how much of a minefield this topic is:

“Fully blinded” makes sense only if everybody agrees on what “fully”
means. The problem is not the definition proposed by the reviewer,
which is excellent. The problem is whether researchers will define
“fully” the same way. The literature identifies at least 12 groups or
individuals that can be blinded in a trial. The likelihood that a
study will blind all of 12 groups is close to zero, meaning that
nearly all studies would have to be described as “partially blinded,”
a term no more informative than “blinded.”

And finally there's a really good suggestion along the lines of cbeleites' Alternative (above), in the reviewer commentary, which is both scientifically unambiguous and can sidestep this problem:

We also propose that all trials described as blinded include the details in a standard “Who Knew”
table that would indicate whether each of the 6 groups most commonly blinded was or was not
blinded, what information they were blinded to, how blinding was implemented, and whether it
was compromised during the trial.

I think that your best approach is to explain in the paper that

Rather than referring to our trial as "blind," because [your reasons here], we use the term "masked."

I don't think it would be reasonable to object to mentioning the former term "blind" in the context of explaining why you are not using it. It isn't as clearly bad as some other words.

(single|double|triple) blind experiment as well as blinding or employing a blind* against ... are technical terms with well-established meaning.
I'd like to point out that substituting something else for a well-established technical term in itself makes a text targeted for the corresponding technical audience less inclusive, burdening readers with questions about the precise meaning of the employed term. E.g., whether that particular term is used to emphasize subtle differences to the established term.
And it is much less inclusive against non-native speakers of the paper language, who are familiar with the technical terms, but to whom your substitute term may not come as a natural choice.
I'd therefore suggest that you stick to the established technical term (and, as a side note: please give a precise description of your blinding techniques ["... were blinded by .... against ..."].)
If I'd feel an additional need to explicitly express respectfulness for blind people, I'd put a footnote that I judged the potential of verbal injury to bind people against the potential loss of inclusiveness due to non-standard terminology and decided in favor of the established term.
*As a personal side note: *

* which suggests to me that we may be talking about blinds as in curtain or shutter rather than blind as in people. Which of course also has a root in not seeing.
Along this line of reasoning, if you are forced to substitute the term, single/double curtain experiment may be a possibility: "masked", "hidden", "anonymous", or "unbiased" all are meaningful in combination with "experiment", but do not have the same meaning as blinding (one may go for "masked", but at least in my field, masking is already used for multiple other entirely different effects/approaches). This creates a danger of the resulting text being misleading.
In contrast, I believe that "curtained experiment" is an entirely new term and while being burdensome for readers, it forces readers to look up and use your definition.

As an alternative, you could give a precise description of whom you blinded how and against what effects without mentioning the term blinding. This would take some more space and words, but it is anyways far more informative than saying only blind experiment.