text:
Is it ethical to profit by having my students buy my textbook?
This question was suggested to me by How can I sell my text book to my students in e-book format? which asked about the practicalities but attracted many comments about the ethics. So this question is to ask about the ethics directly.
Suppose I have written and published a textbook, and I want to use it as the text for a course I am teaching. I receive royalties from each copy of my book that is sold, so if my students are required to buy my textbook for the course, I will make some money. Is it ethical to do so?
Well-reasoned opinions would be useful answers, but even more useful would be pointers to institutional policies, professional codes of ethics, etc, that address this issue.
Of course, there are many ways to avoid profiting from the sale of my book to my students. If my contract with my publisher allows it, I could distribute PDFs to my students, or have the university bookstore print out copies and sell them at cost. Another approach I've heard of is to compute how much I earn in royalties on each copy and refund that amount from my pocket to each student who buys a copy.  Or, use my royalty earnings to buy pizza for the class.  Certainly, these are nice gestures, but I would like opinions on whether they are ethically required.

This question is hypothetical. I haven't published any textbooks myself and have no immediate plans to do so. In any case, my personal preference would be to make the book available to students for free, if at all possible. So I've phrased this question in the first person for rhetorical convenience only.

I had intended the question to be only about the potential financial conflict of interest that could arise if I make money by assigning my own book. Some of the answers feel that it is improper for me to assign my own textbook at all, whether I make money or not, but I don't think this point of view is prevalent within the academic community. If it happens that my book (as a pithy but now-deleted comment put it) "blows", I think most would agree that my decision to assign it is pedagogically unfortunate, but not unethical.

I don't literally mean that students would be required to buy the book, only that they'd be expected to have it. I might assign readings or homework problems from the book so that the student needs access to the book in order to do them, but they could certainly achieve this by getting a used copy or borrowing from a friend. But probably most students would buy new copies anyway since that is the most convenient way.

You'd sure be in the minority if you found it unethical. Several of my course requirements included purchased books and materials from professors.

You could also ask yourself the question "what if I wrote a textbook and not use it with my students?". Seriously, is your textbook a good one for the course? Is it non-overpriced? Are you a better instructor for writing it? Do you get to improve it for teaching with it? How much do you make by using it in class? Do your students think it is worth it (and did you ask them)? Ethics is all about you and how you judge your actions, there is a good reason to call that ethic[S] ;^)

Possibly useless anecdote: one of our obligatory fluffy social sciences courses was taught using lecture notes written by the lecturer (obviously), and sold by the department. It had the answers to exam questions printed in bold. (Possibly to avoid making the students have to care too much about an inane social aspects of engineering course.) This didn't bother me overmuch since lecture notes are <E10, and selling study material is fairly common for courses.

I'm also fairly sure many of our courses are taught using books written by someone from our university, although in that case it's more clear that they're established textbooks instead of just a cash-in. I'd say that if your textbook is used outside your class at all, i.e. people are buying it without being required to, it's not unreasonable for the students to buy it. (Besides, the second-hand textbook market helps.) Of course, excerpting material from it and selling prints at-cost-ish would be a nicer thing to do if possible.

This question leads me to further questions... On one hand, are teachers underpaid, and therefore deserving of such a system of additional revenue?  On the other hand, wouldn't it be most ethical if all information could be freely distributed to all?

I suggest that it's unethical to refuse to award marks if you do not purchase the book. My own experience with this was a subject where all of the test and assignment questions were in the book and photocopying was explicitly forbidden, but it's not clear if it would have been OK for me to just borrow the book from someone else. (The book was absolute dross, unfortunately.) If there are reasonable alternatives offered and no requirement that the book be purchased to pass, then I'm fine with it.

Missing alternative: use the royalties each term to award a scholarship to the highest-scoring students. I had an organic chemistry professor who did this with his lab manual (a ~$100 hardcover text book), and it was a very popular gesture.

In some places it's not a matter of ethics but simply forbidden. The point is: why don't you tell them everything they need to know during the class so that they don't need to purchase any book? It also poses an interest conflict, the worse your lessons are, the more interesting the book is and thus profitable. Personally, I would prefer to have everything in the books and the lessons be question driven (so I can skip all of them, to read the books) but that is my (very) personal perspective and not the general one.

@Nate Eldredge To clarify: are you asking because you would like to be paid for your work, but don't want to be unethical? Or because you wouldn't otherwize do it, but there is a standardized way of publishing materials at your school that results in you receiving royalties?
If it's the former, especially if yours is not a required course, or students could choose someone else teaching the class, then your students would be choosing to buy your materials by choosing your class.
If it's the latter, there are lots of options given by others that don't involve receiving royalties.

@Nate Eldgredge What I'm getting at is that a setting such as yours already involves (in theory) folks desiring an education that are already (indirectly) paying you for it. Assuming no rule in your school/department preventing it, I don't see a significant difference in getting some royalties from your book.
It would be nice to provide the book for free. (Or to teach for free!) But, royalties, as long as you don't sue students who make copies (please don't! xD) I see no (theoretical) ethical issue.
Frankly, if it's a good book at a reasonable price, that's better than most classes I took.

Only if the book blows

When I took a category theory seminar with Peter Freyd, he stated that he had a policy that in any class where he received royalties on the required text, he would refund those royalties to the students. That seems to me to be a simple way to remove the conflict of interest, which I do agree is real.

Non-hypothetical:  One of my professors did this.  However, her class was an elective and well-known as one of the hardest undergrad courses, so the only ones who took it were the ones who really wanted to.  We saw her having been a co-author as an advantage - she could directly answer any uncertainty we had about the textbook's content, and the content matched the course itself almost exactly.

@MJD I think it's a mistake to say that merely refunding the royalties removes all conflict of interest. The publisher is still making money off selling your book; that makes them more likely to keep printing your book (which earns you money), and to deal with you as an author in the future. I don't think the conflict is removed unless it's made available at cost.

I had a subject where they allowed us to have one of the professors' book at the exam. Technically speaking, we weren't required to buy it...

I'd be much more interested in taking a class with a professor who has written his own book. What's wrong with this? The professor provides a way for the student to create a strong intellectual connection. What does he gain? A few hundred bucks per class, if that?

I had a psychology course back in college.  Some local professors had written a booklet to supplement the textbook, specifically adapted to that campus.  They computed that the royalty for each copy sold was about 25 cents (this was 45 years ago, books were cheaper then).  So they arranged to give 25 cents back to every student in the course who bought it.  As I recall you brought your booklet, you would get a quarter, and he would put a little dot on the corner of the cover.

I think this really depends on the region/culture. As a student in Germany I never had to actually purchase a textbook for my studies. Either it was available trough the library (print or e-book) or the professor provided all the material, including digital versions of their own books. So from my perspective I would see it as unethical (or at least rude) if I would be required to buy the Professor´s book to take a course.

You seriously need to talk to your boss about it.  Several instructors at my college do this, but they jumped through flaming hoops to get it done.  It went through committees and sub-committees and review boards to get approval.  This is done is order to make sure the instructor isn't just recommend their own book for financial motivation, but that their book is actually superior to published material.  All the teachers in the department review many similar books to determine if your peers agree with your assessment.  Then more committees and etc and finally the board. If every one agrees, OK

often Klingon pain sticks ritual is easier to get through than this process.

This comes down to potentially conflicting principles.  Academic freedom requires that professors should be able to choose the most appropriate references for their courses, and of course the professor's own book will often be a perfect fit for the course that inspired it.  On the other hand, it's important to avoid even the appearance of assigning one's own book in order to make a profit: that would be offensive at any university, and often illegal at public universities (violating conflict of interest laws for government employees).  The American Association of University Professors statement on this subject elaborates on both of these issues, but doesn't find a good way of resolving the tension.
University policies are often more specific.  In many cases assigning one's own book either requires administrative permission or giving any royalties earned to the university.  See, for example, this report for a survey of the policies at eighteen public universities in the U.S.  My impression is that private universities are more likely to be flexible about this issue, but that's not based on a lot of data.
In practice, I doubt anyone cares very much unless the textbook is particularly expensive or the class is large, but in those cases I would strongly recommend donating the royalties to the department even if it is not required.  After all, you're then no worse off than you would have been if you had assigned someone else's book.  If you're not willing to do this, then it suggests that the royalties are attractive after all and may have played some role in the choice of text.
One special case is when you have self-published the book (or own the publishing company).  That looks terrible, because there you have full control over pricing and may be earning far more than typical royalties.  This is one of the few cases where I believe a strict rule is appropriate: if you are legally authorized to offer free or at-cost copies of your book to your students, then you should do so.  Anything less is clearly taking advantage of your students.

If you're not willing to do this [donating your royalties], then it suggests that the royalties are attractive after all and may have played some role in the choice of text. - a wonderful point.

Corollary: If you publish a textbook that you expect to require your students to use, you must do so through a publisher that allows you to offer free or at-cost coupes to your students. Anything else is clearly taking advantage of your students.

@JeffE Anything else may be inconveniencing the students, but it's not "taking advantage" if the person doesn't actually gain any advantage from it, which seems to be what the whole answer we're commenting on is about.

Sorry @MarkS.?  It's an immediate logical corollary of the answer's last two sentences.

@JeffE I read it as "If, given a particular publisher, you are legally authorized to...". However, a priori, there may be reasons to choose a publisher that would not allow that (and you may have good reasons to claim the best path is to avoid choosing such a publisher, regardless), but that seems to be a separate discussion from what is contained in the answer.

@BenCrowell: I see at least a mild conflict.  For example, I think the policies that forbid using one's own textbook without administrative permission genuinely violate academic freedom, although requiring giving up royalties seems OK to me.  And one could make much more far-reaching arguments.  I certainly wouldn't endorse them, but they are far from unheard of.  (Namely, that I have a right to choose whichever textbook I think is best and a right to get paid whenever my book is used, so forbidding royalties is either violating academic freedom or confiscating my intellectual property.)

I just meant there's no solution that will satisfy everyone (or even almost everyone), but you're right that I worded it too strongly. I've just edited it.

"...or giving any royalties earned to the university." I'm sure those universities see no outstanding conflict of interest, now that they are the ones approving the assignment of a course text and profiting from that decision.

Technically/anally he actually loses something if he gives back the royalties, i.e. he loses (1) the chance that one of his students might have bought the book anyway (with full royalties then), (2) some student might re-sell the book, again you would miss the royalties from the guy who bought it. (not implying that "potential lost profits" are actual losses, like evil persons do, but still they are something)

I've run across this problem from the student side several times (and I was a college student in the prehistoric 1970s).  Profit motive aside, I generally observed that professors who used someone else's book were more likely to comment on weaknesses in the text and alternative proofs or derivations.  It's one of those internal bias things, in that no matter how good a teacher and writer you are, you're going to be unlikely to recognize defects in your own work or style.
So my recommendation would be to make your book available but make sure to have at least one other text incorporated into the class.

Oh, I do see the flaws in my scribblings. And I fix them ASAP. Not too much to criticize now ;-)

It could be a bias things, or it could be that the things one makes fit one's taste. If the professor preferred an alternative proof or derivation, he would have included it in his book.

As an example of what's done in other countries, in many German universities, professors publish their lecture notes in printed form for the students to purchase. While the students pay for these notes, the profits do not go to the professor, but to the research group of the instructor. This money can then be used for various purposes, including paying for undergraduate tutors who assist students in learning the material.
I believe this is a reasonable compromise: nobody personally profits, yet the purchasing of the notes does actually leads to community benefits (in the sense that the money is used to help support students at the university).

The (German) lecture notes I've met were not comparable to a textbook they were more like printouts of the slides. OTOH, they were not sold, but one copy was deposited so students could borrow them and make a copy if they wanted.

... But all German universities I know have very good textbook collections. Plus it is usual here to recommend several alternative textbooks.

As a student in Germany I have seen pretty much all variations: no script at all, printed slides, "book-like scripts", and even the "preprint" version of books the professors published, which they gave to the course for free.

One arrangement with the publisher of my two "text"-books was that the price be reduced by the amount of the otherwise-royalty for any books sold through the university bookstore, so that, in effect, I was not collecting royalties from students at this university (whether or not I was the instructor).
Another aspect is making printouts from PDFs available at-cost to students at this university, which is what my contract with the publisher specifically allowed in one case.

Also, for graduate-level courses whose content varies slightly from year to year, I usually make coresponding PDFs that are available from my university web pages. This allows revision, corrections, additions, etc., indefinitely (rather than freezing everything at one artificial point).

... and I wrote a 70-page version of "calculus I" for a one-quarter "refresher" course, available as PDF or at-cost of printing, but the "unimpressiveness" by comparison to 500-page glossy texts costing 120 bux somehow makes them "not competitive". Srsly, some people "need" expensive, glossy books. Maybe like Freud's comment about psychoanalysis...

@BenCrowell, yes, thanks, but I didn't necessarily want to have an edit "kick" this question higher in the queue...

The 23-page version of basic complex analysis should also have been more "competitive"--http://www.math.umn.edu/~garrett/m/mfms/notes_2013-14/00_basic_complex_analysis.pdf

@paulgarrett Deemed non-competitive by whom, the campus book store who'd be making a large profit on the glossy hard cover book?

@DanNeely, by many of my "colleagues", who, in my opinion, have come to believe publishers' hype about huge glossy expensive books.

A huge +1 to Paul Garrett, who has put many hundreds of pages of lecture notes online and freely available to all.  I have often used them myself, either for my own edification or in making my own notes.  He is right to say that they are less "glossy" than the norm for undergraduate texts.  He seems to have modestly omitted the fact that they range in quality from as good as to vastly superior to the standard "glossy" texts.

@PeteL.Clark, thanks for your kind remarks... I am fortunate to be in a situation to devote energy to that without worrying too much about scoring "status points". It baffles me that we still allow for-profit publishers to control mathematics textbooks to such a great degree, both making new books expensive, and expensively reprinting classics whose authors are long gone. We no longer have the technological limitations that once-upon-a-time made "in-house" notes a bit anti-social and unhelpful to the larger enterprise. I do recall the dim mimeo notes in drawers at IAS in the 1970s. :)

Short answer: I think it is neither ethical nor good (in terms of education, independent of ethics) to force students to use your textbook.
(Assuming that we are talking about a "normal" lecture, as opposed to a workshop about your book.)

Long answer: I see 3 different (but connected) difficulties here. None of them needs to be a problem, but together, they can trap the students.

requiring a particular textbook: to me this is less of an ethical problem if it doesn't boil down to forcing the students to buy that particular book.
Nevertheless, I think it preferable from an education point of view to teach students that they left the kind of school where exactly one solution exists, and now they are in a world with lots of sensible alternatives. Giving  recommendations* (plural!), IMHO it is a most important point to make that the library holds even more useful books [also on that topic].
more or less forcing students to buy a textbook

(Recall that the origin of "lecture" is that a (text)book was read to the students. So historically, the lecture was a solution to the problem that books were too expensive for students to buy.)

I don't see why buying the textbook is necessary. Even if book and lecture are (naturally) close.

I might assign readings or homework problems from the book, so that the student needs access to the book in order to do them

Why would that be:

Is is that difficult to prepare a slide of the homework problem which is displayed at the end of the lecture or a pdf that can be downloaded?
Reading: I have to say that at university I've never experienced assigned reading from a textbook. So my question to you is: is it really necessary to assign reading chapter 7.4 as opposed to assign preparing the principles of pH electrodes? Also, I've seen reading materials for download.
Making small parts of the book available to the students is probably possible even if the contract with the publisher doesn't let you distribute pdfs to the students. At least, e.g. in Germany, it is even possible to hand small parts from any book (not only yours!) to the class for teaching purposes.
For the self-study aspect of the textbook, there is the textbook collection of the library. The university libraries I know have sensible numbers of the important textbooks to be borrowed by the students plus a number of copies that stay in the library so they are always accessible.  Are the books there really not sufficient? If so, why not? Why are the important books not there? How can books be bought?
(How to get your book into the collection is part of the next point:)

Possible conflict of interest because it is your own textbook.
This is the interesting part. But, if you take care of the first two problems, there is already much less space for an actual conflict of interest (≈ a real problem for the students) here.
Or, taking another point of view, I perceive taking unfair advantage of the position***  as a symptom of (un)ethical behaviour which is closely bound to the whole character. In that I perceive it less of a single problem that is solved or not by a particular line of action on this point but rather a problem that appears with some people and not with others.
In yet other words, people who take advantage of their position tend to do that in more ways than just this (e.g. in the combination of my three points - at which point @JeffE probably recommends to run). The formal action of not requiring their own textbook doesn't help much. Students will conclude from the general reputation/perception of taking unfair advantage that the book is required - whether it is stated openly or not.

I guess it is one of the topics where those who do worry whether what they do is ethical are the ones who don't need to worry (because they do act ethically) - it would be far more important that those who don't would start to worry...
Whether to donate copies of your own textbook to the library,
make a donation that reimburses the library for your royalties, or
convince the library to buy it like any other book, and/or
whether and how you want to reimburse students
is IMHO unanswerable as a general question.
I think valid points can be made for and against** each of the options here.
Good and sensible decisions will depend a lot on the particular circumstances and even more on the personality of the professor.

Side note:

Or, use my royalty earnings to buy pizza for the class.

I object to this option on the following ethical grounds: If my problem is that I'm too poor to buy textbooks, I don't want to spend money on pizza but would rather like to save that money towards the next textbook.

* A professor not recommending his own textbook sounds about as convincing to me as a vegetarian running a sausage factory.
** Here's the advocatus diaboli against each of the points:

Donating books to the library? Someone is buying fame!
Reimbursing the royalties - same as above, but more greedy (or the one above was more desperate for fame...)
Convinced some committee to buy the books? Surely there is a textbook-buying circle emerging: You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.
reimbursing students who buy the book: that's an obvious attempt to whitewash the reputation
and so on

*** As long as you do not take advantage of your situation, the conflict of interest is at most your problem (i.e. you are worried). If you take unfair advantage, the students have a problem.

Very good discussion of several further points! You probably know that the answers to some of your rhetorical questions (like "how hard would it be to ?") is that people nevertheless produce syllabi with completely useless indications such as "section 3.5"... which hilariously changes (deliberately) per edition, and so on. Yes, ridiculous, but such laziness is complicit in the traditional publishing companies' parasitism.

@paulgarrett: Thanks. Do you want me to tone down the rhetorical questions? Sure I know it is possible: throughout my studies, it was not once required that we get a particular textbook. Excercises were handed out on copied sheets or projeced or written on the blackboard. Textbooks were for self-study completely independent of the lecture.

Oh, I think no need to "moderate". The points are good. Peoples' laziness should be "outed".

This is a good answer but it is, I think, rather culturally specific. In the US, for example, many of the instructional practices you recommend are just not realistic options - may not be options at all. At undergraduate level, students just don't behave this way. Moreover, to be fair, the number of classes they are juggling do not typically allow them the kind of time for library research which exists elsewhere, even if the library had material for 200+ students. And you can't really put logic or maths exercises on a slide as a means of distribution. (Posting online would be a better.)

The "lecture" came from the lecturer reading the text, which the students wrote down. No printing press, copied texts cost a small fortune.

As a student, I feel that it's ethical if you can, honestly and impartially, say that it is the best book to teach the material, and the price you are charging is reasonable.
If you are charging a finished-book price for a draft riddled with typos and errors, then it is definitely not ethical.

I agree completely with the first sentence, but I also think the only reasonable price is zero (or as close to zero as practically possible).

"it's ethical if you can, honestly and impartially, say that it is the best book to teach the material" The (obvious) problem with this pseudo-middle ground is that nobody can say this "impartially", being the author.

@JeffE I have taken a class where the instructor wrote the book.  It was self-published but it was generally better than any of the alternatives.  He sold them to us at cost.  (18$ per 250 page book)  Would you consider that reasonable?

@PatrickM That sounds like a reasonable estimate of the actual printing and binding cost, which is "as close to zero as practically possible", so sure.

@JeffE Alright.  That makes sense.  I had thought you were saying the professor/school should eat the cost since they are not required to charge it by contracts.

This is an interesting question but it involves much more than just ethics and financial considerations. It is also a matter of tradition versus more modern thinking about free material.
I am currently writing a custom "book" (not to be published anytime soon) for a new course since no existing book will fit. It will be free of charge, as developmental material, until it becomes published (which will happen if I think it is any good in the end). My old advisor used his lecture notes developed over years to produce a commercial book that can be used by many but is tailored to his (in this case) course. To write materials for your own course or on your research field is quite natural. For obvious reasons such books will suit their purpose best.
I think many would dream of having tailored reading materials in their courses; few have the opportunity to spend the time writing it. In many, if not most, university systems no-one will pay you for writing it so it will be done on your free time. Such books benefit the students by covering more or less exactly what the course is about. As teachers, we have probably been involved in (endless) discussions about the pros and cons of books: "this covers this material, that book covers that, but not none is perfect. So which one to chose.". The small amount of royalty from own students is not enough to make anyone rich. From this perspective, and assuming the book (and the course) is any good, I think making the issue a matter of ethics is petty.
The choice is obviously to provide a book material as, for example, free pdf material or try to have it printed (which is expensive) as a regular book or as print on demand. If one want others to use the material, publishing a book puts the material "on the map". A book also carries with it prestige, not only for the author but for the department and the university. It may also signal to the student that the teacher is a "name" in the field. So there are many reasons for choosing a book but not many will first look at it as a source for revenue.
So in the end, I cannot see anything wrong with using a book and receiving royalty as long as the book is good, the course is good, so that the students get the best opportunity to learn the material the course should provide.

What if I steal $50 from you once a year: and I promise it will only be once.  I am not going to get rich from doing this.  Would it be "petty" to make this issue a matter of ethics?  (This is not to imply that I equate using one's own textbook with stealing: not at all.  Rather your answer seems to show a basic misunderstanding -- or to be more charitable, a disagreement -- on how ethics works.)

Personally, I've not had any course where exactly one good textbook exists. In my experience, there were either several sensible alternatives, or the lecture was so specialized that we read research papers instead of textbooks. Note that for me it is perfectly OK to recommend different textbooks for different topics covered by the course (coming from a country with large textbook sections in the university libraries).

Since this is a hypothetical, I'll note that I had a professor who included in his contract for the book an agreement for 15 copies of the book every other year (he taught a small upper-level undergraduate class) that were given to his enrolled students to avoid this problem.

I want to add a few options that make selling your book and making your students use it entirely fair.

Make sure your books will sell for a good price ($30, not $150).
Give a decent amount of author copies to your local library.
Make sure that the ebook version is available for free via your local library (this may be easy if your library has a subscription of your publisher).

Pick at least two.
Stronger options that may or may not be possible for you with your chosen publisher (arguably, you should find a suitable one):

Retain the right to electronic publication, and offer a free version for download.
Sell students prints of your book (maybe chapter by chapter) at cost.

In the dark ages when I was in school, several professors used lecture notes that they sold to students for the cost of duplication. I'm guessing it would be difficult to get the publisher to supply them to the bookstore at a price without royalties, so I think your idea of pizza for the class is a good way to remove the appearance of a conflict of interest. You could also offer an "error bounty" to students.

In fact, it is not difficult for an author to get publishers to sell books to a university with prices reduced by the royalty amount, these days, ... In fact, in 2000 or so, my publisher asked me first about this very issue, as though it were common practice.

And the seed for university presses?

It is only unethical to force your students to buy your text if you believe your text to be suboptimal, subpar, and inferior quality to other textbooks that are available.  In short, if you look at your text and say "well, we really should use that one", then yes it is unethical to force your students to buy what you believe to be an inferior learning tool, just because you wrote it.
If however, you think your text is the bee's knees, it is the shiznet, and you are the best author and authority to ever cover the subject, then it would be unethical not to use your text.  You can't go around giving free copies, that is cheating the publisher.  And why in hell else did you write it, if not to be used by precisely your students for your class?

I strongly disagree.  Nobody can be an impartial judge of the worth of their own textbook.  The Dunning-Kruger effect is as rampant in academia as Impostor Syndrome.

Well, as far as his teaching is concerned, that's the best the professor is going to do.  Is it unethical for me to present to the students what I believe to be the best presentation of material, even if it's mine?  No.  If this is not actually the case, then am I a good teacher?  That's another question entirely.

You can't go around giving free copies, that is cheating the publisher. — That depends on your agreement with the publisher.  I know several textbooks, all still in print, for which PDFs are and have always been freely available online, with the full cooperation of their publishers.

Well that happens when the book is discontinued or made to be out of print.

Is it unethical for me to present to the students what I believe to be the best presentation of material, even if it's mine? No. — Of course not, but that's irrelevant.  The question is whether it's ethical to force your students to spend money what you believe to be the best presentation of the material, when you have a personal financial interest in that purchase.  I claim that the financial interest itself distorts authors' perception of the quality of their own textbooks.

I'd argue that's why you're the professor because you know the subject best in your school.  Own the role.

Own the role — Ahem.

Ok, your approach is reasonable.  I mean like I'm just saying.

I don't think this is unethical, but there certainly is a conflict of interest.  As with any other conflict of interest, it should be disclosed and managed.  My recommendation for such a situation would be to take it to your chair, let them know you would like to come up with a management plan for a conflict of interest, and the the chair drive from that point on.

Unethical
I think it is unethical to profit by having students buy your textbook because you're their lecturer and they expect you to inform them and provide them with some useful resources for learning. The students also usually get a bad feeling when you keep recommending your book unless it was vote one of the best to use in tackling the given subject. I don't know/understand how you may be able to provide other books to your students at no cost while you provide your book at a cost. It looks fishy. If you feel that you can't give each student a copy of the book then you can recommend the university to buy the books so as to restock the library or you can offer your own copy or a single donated copy strictly for class use. This depends on the number of students you're dealing with and how often they have to use the book.
Ethical
In a case where you had published the book before meeting the students, you're allowed to sell the book to them at the market price or you may subsidize it for your students.
Logic
Its always difficult to teach using your book especially when you reach a point where there are few discrepancy from other books. In the process of defending your ideas from the book, you may end up being seen as superior, dictator, rigid etc.

Yes,
It is not only completely ethical but should be mandatory. Your ultimate goal is to pass on your knowledge to your students, and what better way to do that than by using the textbook you wrote just for that specific purpose.
There must have been a reason why you wrote it in the first place - something was missing, or was glossed over, or poorly explained so you decided that you can contribute something to create a better product for students to use.
The student benefits twice as much since if there are questions or something isn't clear, bamm, here is the author in front of them to clarify some point. You also get valuable feedback so that your next edition will be of even greater use to the student.
Clearup:
It would only be unethical if the professor asks the students to buy directly from them , or force the student to purchase from a specific website using an affiliate code. As long as the student is given freedom of choice as to where the textbook is purchased new or used, it would be ethical to force students to buy a textbook written by the professor teaching the class.
It would only be unethical for a professor who strongly believes in some derivative of the teachings of Socialism. If the walls in the professor's office are adored with autographed photos of every former member of the politburo or they spend half the class defending the economic theories of Karl Marx (even though the subject they teach is Chemistry), then it would be unethical for them to charge their students for a textbook while preaching the spirit of camaraderie and international brotherhood of the proletariat.
Otherwise its perfectly ethical for a professor to profit from a textbook they created for the benefit of both the professor and the student.

While I agree (in principle) that instructors should provide their own teaching materials, the question is whether it is ethical to force students to buy those materials, instead of giving them to the students for free or at cost.

Presumably a similar restriction would apply to an instructor of socialism whose office is decorated with copies of the periodic table, and who spends half the class discussing electron orbitals and endothermic versus endothermic reactions.  No?

authors: Дмитрий Клюкин


text:
I can request to have my PhD certificate name a more specific research area than "PhD in Computer Science". What should I have it say?
I have already been enrolled in a PhD program and published a couple of papers. When I eventually get the certificate, it will state that I have a PhD in Computer Science. However, I can submit a request to change that to whatever I find more appropriate. I am asking here to be better informed before I raise the issue with my supervisor.
My research paves the way for machine-learning based solutions to be used for solving a particular software engineering problem.
I find (PhD in Computer Science) too broad of a description and (PhD in Software Engineering) too narrow. I also find (PhD in Artificial Intelligence OR Machine Learning) not to be an accurate description of what my thesis is actually about.
Should I, for example, use (PhD in Applied Artificial Intelligence) or (PhD in Applied Machine Learning)? Other suggestions will be appreciated.

I also have had to think about that. My research is in optimal transport with applications in machine learning. I could list it as comp sci, machine learning, applied statistics, probability, AI etc. etc. I go with choosing what I think describes my skills, background and interests the best, so I go with applied maths.

Nobody (in ML) cares what area your PhD is in, as long as you're doing good (ML) research.

Given automated and non-knowledgeable human resume-scanning, I would stick to "Computer Science". If you pick something unusual, you risk not being considered for jobs that require a PhD in Computer Science. Your list of publications will make your research area(s) clear.

@PatriciaShanahan Thanks. If you add your comment as an answer, I will accept it as such.

Many employers and recruitment agencies use either automated searches or low skill human readers to select resumes that meet specific requirements. Only those resumes will be viewed by a human with knowledge of the job etc.
If you pick an unusual subject designation for your PhD you risk your resume not being selected for jobs that require a PhD in computer science. It may never be seen by anyone who understands that "Applied Machine Learning" is just as appropriate for that job as "Computer Science".
If your resume passes the filter it will be read by someone who can evaluate your specialization from the text and the publication list.

First, it depends on what kind of PhD your institutions offer. Also note, that the number of different types varies by country. In general I would advice to choose some title which is likely to be meaningful in a few years/decades from now. For example AI was a great hype some decades ago, went out of fashion then, and is top notch again now and maybe nobody will be interested in "Machine Learning" a few years from now. So I would go with the broader field, in general.

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text:
Is it acceptable to write that you are getting a "Ph.D. in [area]" (rather than name of department) on social media?
I am starting a PhD in computer science, and have noticed that a number of classmates will write on LinkedIn or their academic websites that they are getting a "PhD in Machine Learning" or "PhD in Artificial Intelligence" and so on. Is this common/acceptable to write "PhD in [Area of Interest/Expertise]" instead of your home department?

Common/acceptable to who? It appears common within your class, but how much wider are you interested? Also, if you have reason for believing that it might possibly not be acceptable then it may be worth saying.

@Ian_Fin, an ideal answer will note if this is audience-dependent and factor that in if needed.

Given the range of possible audiences, and consequently the number of considerations potentially requiring factored in, does this not make the question rather broad? Perhaps a more focused question would be something like "Is it accurate to describe myself as getting a PhD in Machine Learning specifically, rather than just a PhD in Computer Science?"

I believe it makes sense.
The PhD education is a very narrow education which will give you very specific knowledge regarding a specific aspect of a research area.
Therefore, it makes completely sense to be a bit more specific rather than general. PhD in computer science sounds very broad and not much descriptive.

The problem is that the OP's classmates are not PhD yet. I think it would be fine if they say "PhD student in AI".

Well, i agree with you. I was focusing more on the research area rather than on the title. For me is obvious that if you are still pursuing it you can not use it officially.

This should not be a problem.  These people are providing additional information about what they are studying; nobody is going to be confused and think that they are studying under the auspices of a "department of machine learning," or whatever.
Whether people do this is cultural, and it depends on both the field and institution involved.  Personally, I would not phrase things precisely this way on my c.v.  However, technically, my Ph.D. degree is not "in" anything at all; no field was noted on my diploma or at my commencement ceremony.  Depending on context, I might say that my degree was in "mathematics," "applied mathematics," or "mathematical physics."  Which I would use would depend on my audience and what information I was trying to convey.

It sounds fine to me too. FWIW, I usually phrase it as two separate statements: I'm getting a PhD. My research/thesis topic is..."
Not only are you clarifying what your field of expertise is, you're also preventing misunderstandings. I study artificial life, but I'm in what's called the "Faculty of Engineering", and for all I know that's what will be listed on my diploma. I certainly wouldn't want people to think I was capable of building a bridge!

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text:
Is it ethical to submit a research proposal to multiple funding agencies?
I reached the point in my PhD where, besides focusing on performing and analyzing the last experiments and starting to write the thesis, I should also start thinking about the next step - what to do once I finish it?
Since I would like to have some more research time to publish as many papers as I can from my PhD work, I think the obvious next step would be a post-doc position.
I am an international student in the US and I could apply for fundings both from my native country and from US agencies.
The big question here is: is there anything unethical in submitting the same research proposal to two (or even more) agencies? Will I be committing some kind of academic crime if by any chance one same reviewer is called to judge the same proposal submitted to different funding agencies and realizes it?
I should highlight here that I would never accept both fundings. The goal would be purely to maximize the odds of getting research funded. In the unlikely event I would have the proposal granted by both agencies, I would choose the most beneficial or convenient to me and my advisor.
Two reasons I can think of NOT to do this would be:

a) wasting time of a larger number of reviewers (who could be reviewing someone else's proposal);
b) preventing more people from getting funded.

But is this cheating or just part of the business?
I appreciate any input - specially criticism.

This question is similar to the one here: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/52368/is-it-acceptable-to-submit-a-postdoc-fellowship-application-same-lab-same-proj

To write a good proposal from scratch you'll probably be looking at spending one full month of your time or more. The trade off is to have about one in a hundred to one in ten chances of being successful for competitive calls. Let me put it this way: if you don't reuse your application your full time job will become just writing applications. I think that, as you say, as long as you don't get paid twice for the same thing you are not doing anything unethical.

See also http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15772

It is not only unethical, but often illegal to actually be funded for the same work twice---in the United States, this would typically be considered double billing and looked on very poorly indeed by most funders.
As such, it is poor form to propose the same work to two different places simultaneously, because if more than one funder wishes to fund it, then you will have to turn one down.  Even if this isn't against the rules, it will piss people off for wasting their time and burn bridges.
That said, there are certain circumstances where overlapping proposals are reasonable, as long as they are appropriately declared. For example, one might submit two proposals to the same call, each of which share a critical task, but the rest of which go in different directions.  The proposals can then explicitly declare this fact and note that if the funder chooses to fund both proposals, that the overall cost will be reduced because only one instance of the critical task need be funded.
In short, here, as in many other places in academia, the key to ethical behavior is transparency and avoiding wasting peoples' time.

Perhaps the point to emphasize is simultaneous submission. Really good proposals have often failed a time or two, particularly the first time you approach an agency, because you don't know quite what they want the first time around.

The OP is not proposing to accept funding more than once. With the same logic as you propose, it would be unethical to apply for more than one job at a time - committees spend time reading application materials, and if you get more than one offer, one will have to be turned down.

@PadraigÓCatháin The situations are not analogous: it is a matter of expectations, and in the scientific communities in which I have operated, program managers typically look rather poorly on simultaneous proposal to multiple different programs.

@jakebeal Understood. Out of interest, how would you see submitting the same proposal for multiple research fellowships simultaneously?

@PadraigÓCatháin I haven't been involved in enough fellowship applications to have a clear sense of whether those are typically treated more like funding proposals or job applications.

Ask your program manager(s). NSF for example specifically asks you to list any simultaneous submission on the cover page.

This gets it right.  There are actual published rules for this kind of question, and your ethical obligation is to follow the rules.

For example, I'm pretty sure you're allowed to apply for a math NSA standard grant and a math NSF standard grant in math proposing the exact same research (but if you get the NSF you have to withdraw from NSA).  Whereas for the CAREER and standard NSF grants they're supposed to be somewhat different from each other.


text:
Do graduate admissions simply see the 'letter grades' for a course, or can they see the numeric grade and/or exam scores, too?
Not a long question, but I'm curious if grad school admissions (I'm more concerned with master's programs instead of PhD programs, right now) take into account only the letter scores of courses taken ("A", "B", etc), or if they also see if you were very close to another score, i.e., an 89 in a class would be a B, but it's 1 point from an A. Or to them, "a B is a B, no matter how close you were to an A or a C"?
Also, do they see specific exam scores from courses, too? For example, in a class, on each test I got a better score, and ended up with a great score on the final (100%). Will this be taken into account, or will it never be seen?
I realize this could be dependent upon specific admissions boards, but I would guess there's a "status quo" for how things are done.

Graduate admissions sees what your transcript says. Get a copy of your official transcript (an unofficial copy will do for our purposes). Does it just have letter grades? If so, that's all they see. (This all that any of the institutions I've been at do (private US), but the one I work at (public Japan) doesn't even make the letter grade particularly clear -- conflating As and Bs in the written part as yu.

The information we get about grades comes from the official transcript that you arrange for the registrar to send to us.  Whatever information is recorded there is what we see.  At the vast majority of US institutions I'm familiar with, this means letter grades only, converted to a numerical GPA using the four point scale.
Based on what you write, perhaps "plus minus grading" does not exist at your institution (as it does at most, but not all, American institutions: apparently it was introduced at my university only just before I arrived, and there are occasional weird -- though minor -- holdovers from the former state of affairs).  If it does exist, then it goes on the transcript and is used to calculate GPA.
More information about course grading could come from individual faculty members in the form of their recommendation letters.  It is fairly common for such letters to include additional information about performance, including performance on individual exams.  In general if you got a good grade in a course but feel that your actual performance in that course was outstanding in a way that the grade does not reflect, then the instructor for the course is a good candidate for a recommendation letter.  In your case you might want to consider getting a letter from the instructor of the course in which you did better and better, culminating in 100% on the final exam.  This is exactly the kind of academic trajectory that admissions committees want to see.

What is plus minus grading? Like an "average" around the final grade?

See e.g. http://www.bulletin.uga.edu/PlusMinusGradingFAQ.html.

Thanks. I think KSU actually doesn't have that, though some googling shows that they've talked about it.

There are three schemes that I've seen used in the USA: straight letter grades (A = 4.0, B = 3.0, C = 2.0), plus-minus where these are not weighted: (A+ = 4.0, A = 4.0, A- = 4.0, B+ = 3.0), and plus-minus with small steps: (A = 4.0, A- = 3.7, B+ = 3.3, B = 3.0)

I agree with this answer, but I'd add that I've seen transcripts that included numerical scores.  To the best of my recollection, these were all from schools in Asia or perhaps eastern Europe.

@Ben My school assigns 4.0 grades in 0.1 intervals. So that exists too. There is no letter on my transcript


text:
Can I reuse part of an essay for an application to a different program at the same school
Asking for a(n international) friend. She has gotten into and is weeks away from completing her masters at a public university in the US (California). She is now applying to PhD programs and wondering if it is acceptable to reuse part of her personal statement and statement of purpose that she wrote to get accepted into the masters program for her PhD application at the same institution. Obviously, she would not use the whole thing, as she has work and experience from her masters to talk about, but certain parts are still entirely true and are already well written.
Would this count as plagiarism or otherwise be inadvisable?

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text:
Are Online First articles considered "In Press"?
I'm a little bit confused about this point. If an article has appeared as an Online First article for a print journal, is it still considered "In Press" or is it considered published, and so no longer "In Press"? Or is it only articles that have not cleared the Production Stage yet that are considered "In Press"?
I'm thinking some journals take ages to assign an issue number to accepted articles, so they might stay on the journal website for quite a while until they have one. Some funders want you to attach publications to the grant application that are "In Press", but not "fully" published publications.
Thanks a lot for your help!

I would guess that anything that has been formally accepted (final form) by a publisher is "In Press". Not, of course, for things you put online yourself. And, maybe not, if the online version is a preprint, rather than the final version.

Yes, to clarify: I meant put online by the journal after acceptance - is that considered "In Press" or something like "published"?

My understanding is, online first articles are completely published except for the fact they aren't assigned to an issue. There's literally no production work left. They will also have a DOI. Therefore, although you can't give the full reference yet, you can list it in the application giving the journal name & DOI.

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text:
Why do some journal proofs insert dozens of typesetting mistakes?
Why do some journals change the final software and do not provide a template for the final draft(e.g. contains the same font as in the gallery proof)?
I often hear that some of my colleagues get unacceptable proofs (often even from Elsevier journals).
I am checking an Elsevier paper (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0141029619305024) which was in the state of Galley proof (after acceptance)

letters in math equations look different: (converted all math equations to vectorgraphics)

letters have inconsistent size even in the continuous text

made a screenshot of the rendering of jpeg-graphics if the jpeg-image contained two images (a) and (b)

where they converted all simple *.eps-graphics (nothing complex) to *.jpeg with 110dpi (text is almost unreadable) also declare a min of 500dpi in the author guidelines

changed the font from the font declared in the template("Times") to "Charis SIL", now the continuous text is in Charis SIL, but the equations, the variables in the text and the figures are in Times
The font color is generally dark gray, but in math equations it is black

the variables in micro-environment are not aligned with the surrounding text (sometimes smaller letters are even higher then capital letters)

several manual line-breaks are awful (some lines contain more space than letters) also a short word is following

some lines start with "," or "."

converted a table (conatining text and two eps-graphics) to jpeg with obvious compression artifacts

added space between "mm" and "²"

removed spaces

some citations are outside the page border

According to the pdf metadata, it was created with Prince 10 rev 7, which only supports SVG as a vector format.
Why don't they convert all eps/pdf-files with inkscape to svg (can be done fully automatic as a batch-process e.g. pdftocairo.exe -svg "Input.pdf" "Output.svg")?
In my field, if I use a space instead of a small space, it is unacceptable or at least unprofessional. (As a reader, such mistakes are evident and disruptive.) And it is so super-important to add it as vector, but then the proofs ruin everything! Why do they have guidelines for authors if the journal introduces illegal (according to the guidelines) mistakes on their own?
Why do some journals change the final software and do not provide a template for the final draft?

Regarding use of Sect. and Section by Springer: Their policy is to use Section in full at the start of a sentence, and abbreviated everywhere else.

Then there are those journals where they accept only Microsoft Word...

@GEdgar MSWord would be ok for me. Yes it is annoying to transfer LaTeX to winword.exe (MSWord), just because you decided/found a better journal. Some Autors/Editors prefer Word, others LaTeX, but if I send them the paper in there template using there specified program (MSWord,dvi-latex,pdflatex,HTML-Online) then the proofs should look the same. But they use different font, smaller font-size, other program, converted eps2jpeg,...

They get money for each typo introduced; plus kickback from blood-pressure medication companies.

The worst experienced I had was with IEEE Access.   The person typesetting my paper had poor English and no idea how academic papers are put together.

Lost all compassion when it turned out your original font was times new roman:D

@BenCrowell  I googled for >>journal proofs mistakes<< and I everything I found was minor mistakes/mistakes of the authors. I wanted to show an example how it is in my field. I wanted to describe the extend, to see that it is not only journal style or a single mistake.
1)Why do publisher not just take the reversed manuscript scientists sent them. 2)Also Latex would support the font CharisSIL. (Template uses Times)
->The reason for this question is to better understand the journals and how to support them in future submissions, to make proofs as simple as possible, for a good looking article.

Please understand, the errors you describe affect, what, < 10% of papers? I could tell you horror stories about the stuff academics write and expect publishers to publish, too, but they're all in the minority.

This is one of the best arguments for submitting your paper to arXiv or a similar preprint service.

I really don't understand the comment, "often even from Elsevier journals".  Is there some reason you would expect Elsevier journals to have higher standards for typesetting than any other publisher?

@MarkMeckes Elsevier is one of the most famous Journal-Publisher see https://scijournal.org/top-international-journal-publisher.shtml for example. Known trademarks often stand for a good quality.

Known trademarks often stand for a good quality. Often, yes.  I see from your profile that you are quite young.  I suspect that over time you will decide to be more skeptical in your application of that heuristic.

Because they are incompetent.
That's about it, really. But don't lump all publishers/journals as one - the typesetters for one journal might not be the same as that for another journal, even one published by the same publisher, and of course there are good and bad employees everywhere.

I was about to say: because they add no value other then "cite points" to be added to CVs.

@Ian I do not understand what you mean.

@Allure I think he means, that you are going to publish your work in that journal even if they have crappy typesetting, so why should they care about not being crappy?

I wish I can upvote your answer for every single sentence.

I suspect that all of the examples are from rather less reputable journals. I have never seen anything like these issues in SIAM or ACM journals, for example.

@WolfgangBangerth: One of my papers was published in a leading journal in mathematics, and there too the typesetting was thoroughly incompetent. I had to explain, among many other things, that the meaning of a fraction changes when you move symbols from the numerator to the denominator. Sadly, this phenomenon is not limited to less reputable journals.

@academic I don't recommend associating [bad typesetting] with [journal], because the people doing the typesetting change, even for the same journal. For example if the typesetter goes on holiday, it's natural to get someone to cover for them, and that someone might not be familiar with mathematical symbols. I would still say the journal is at fault in the examples above because one of the three people involved (typesetter, proofreader, and desk editor) should have spotted the errors, but it's still very possible that the next paper submitted to the same journal doesn't meet these issues.

@Allure If someone is not familiar with mathematical symbols, then they should not be typesetting a mathematics paper. Period. Especially given the astronomical prices that journals charge. I'm sorry to be so harsh, but I see no reason why researchers should excuse this sort of incompetence.

@academic you sure you'd rather wait for the original typesetter to get back for the production to continue? Also, of course nobody should excuse this sort of incompetence - it's obviously unacceptable, even if it's understandable. Finally, I suspect these errors actually arise from converting the manuscript from one form to another, and this was a side effect. Still not saying it's acceptable (one of the three people involved should still have caught it) but I doubt the staff doesn't know how to handle fractions.

Publishers will adhere to their own style sheet.  Just because you supply a photo-ready version of your document, there should be no expectation that it will be published as is.  There should be absolutely no expectation that your font choice is followed, as fonts are a matter of journal style.  Further, the journal fonts might not even be open source or free, and journals would not be entitled to distribute them. Same with math layout.  Same with choice of emphasis.  So, a typeset error might not be an error at all -- it might be a copy editor's correction to make the manuscript match the journal's style sheet.
Real errors do happen, though.  Anybody can make a mistake, or have a bad day (there are EASILY a half dozen errors in the question here!).  Automatic conversion algorithms can mess up. A typesetter might not be working in their first language.
Publishers are famous for errors in tables, as tables often involve hand entry.
As for the things mysteriously captured as images, I can't imagine why.  The instructions for elsarticle say

Keep it simple. (Advanced constructions with for example TikZ or
  pstricks will be rendered as images.

Since you specify in comment that your Latex table had eps images in it, it makes some sense that your table was rendered as an image.  While the layout staff probably should have done better on this, and given you a high-resolution rendering, it really is out of their normal workflow, and violates the "keep it simple" directions in the instructions to authors.  I suggest that you could have submitted your own rendered artwork for the table, following guidelines for figure submissions (which is likely how you will resolve the issue with the typesetters), but also point out that your resulting published table style might not perfectly match the journal's style sheet.
This is why you get galleys prior to publication.  Take the opportunity to correct the galleys very seriously, and certainly address all author queries.

Yes true, totally agree, but why do they do they change the font from there template to the proof? They should name there font "CharisSIL", then all figures and the JPEG-screenshot of the LaTeXtable would have their specified font. The thing is that the proof introduces mistakes that do not agree with their author-guidelines (much to low resolution, vector should be preffered,..) .
Errors in the question: I suffer from dyslexia, I know it is not an excuse, but mistakes in the question here are not that important to me as in the article, so I did not double-check.

They may not care.  They don't want to be in the business of supporting every Latex installation of every author.  They are probably lifting the text and putting it into a professional non-Latex typesetting environment.  The Latex template just needs to work reliably enough to support the submission, it doesn't need to be perfect.  I'll point out that copy editors and layout staff might not be perfect either.  They lay out a galley that's neat enough to support correction.

@ScottSeidman: Do you think your answer is the most likely explanation for any any of the typesetting mistakes in the question? To which one do you think? I think incompetence and carelessness is the most likely explanation for each. However, your answer can be a likely explanation for some other (hypothetical) smaller mistakes.

@pts I think automatic conversion failures most likely explain most of the shown errors.

So, a typeset error might not be an error at all -- it might be a copy editor's correction to make the manuscript match the journal's style sheet.

This can be true for some other small mistakes, but I think it isn't true for any of the serious mistakes mentioned in the question.

Yes and the importance of the galleys is why they usually give you something between 24 and 48 hours to check them.

@ScottSeidman We used simple *.eps-graphics so we neither used TikZ nor pstricks, no macros. The eps-graphics are mainly Matlab-diagrams. But even if two jpeg-images are next to each other (a) and (b) they replaced it with one single screenshot.

@JoKalliauer I thought your table was rendered as graphics.  Was that an eps?

@ScottSeidman the Table was in a LaTeX-table-environment mainly containing text, but it also contained two simple eps-figures. But as said before all graphics that were eps or two jpeg next to each other were replaced by a single JPEG-screenshot. As said before the software seems to not be able to handle eps-graphics at all, since the table contained graphics they replaced it by a screenshot.

@JoKalliauer. Well, there you go.  You've just explained where your table problem came from.

Elsevier charges something like $5,000 for an annual subscription to one of their journals. I do not see why authors should be obliged to "keep it simple".

One issue that I have run into is the outsourced typesetting staff ignoring the provided images and using Acrobat to clip the image out of the author PDF, which rasterizes it at what seems to be the screen resolution.

Here is another complaint. The typesetters are simply not doing their
  job.

This was the email that the editor of the journal, where our paper was accepted, sent to the chief of the Elsevier production team (and put us in cc) as a result of our complaint regarding the mess that the typesetters induced on our manuscript.
Here is the story. After receiving the first proof, we rejected the correction of the manuscript because there were many systematic errors, e.g. the bold symbols were not bold, some of the mathematical symbols were wrong,.... After sending it back to the production team and putting the editor of the journal in cc, we received the above email by the editor of the journal. After spending another 2 months, we finally got another manuscript but just insignificantly improved. So we quit and spent many hours to correct all the mistakes and inconsistencies.
You can follow the same procedure but don't expect too much.

What above email?

Read the beginning of my response.
"Here is another complaint. The typesetters are simply not doing their job.
This was the email that the editor of the journal..."

I think it would be better if you formatted your first line as a quotation (with > ) rather than as bold (with **).  It currently reads like the first line is a title.

@MartinBonnersupportsMonica I hope it is now clear! Sorry for the confusion.

I have read your question several times to understand what you are complaining about. Many answers are discussing poor quality of published material.

I have an Elsevier paper (will add link here when published) for proofreading

This note may shine a slightly different light on the issue. Maybe the scenario was:

Editor has recieved .docx manuscript with MSWord's equations used and graphics embedded.
Editor turned the manuscript to the most-common file format or his most-loved file format using the fastest (and simplest) tool they have.
You, as a proofreader or reviewer, are to assess the article quality - the quality of motivation, methods, arguments and conclusions.
When editor decides the paper is ready for publishing, the typesetter shall get the materials for typesetting and actual publishing.

I think you are at the third bullet point now and it would be a waste of effort to typeset the manuscript that is about to be changed several times before actual publishing.

Editor recieved the LaTeX file and all eps-graphicsfiles and now I, as one of the co-authors, have to check if the gallery proof is still as intended in the original LaTeX-file. (Maybe I did not understand you correctly?)

It's all about how the education system treats this topic. Most people are happy with a fast-written Word document as long as what they want to discuss in the paper is there. They neglect the fact that proper presentation is essential.
Sadly proper typesetting isn't something that is actively thought at universities, which is a rather interesting situation given that universities in general aim to promote science and everything that comes with it including paper publication. So if you don't get into it on your own the chances are you will end up with a Masters or PhD degree without ever having done a proper paper in terms of typesetting.
I remember at my university that there was a workshop for typesetting using LaTeX specifically for writing proper publications, seminar papers etc. It became mandatory years later (kudos to the teachers for noticing the poor level of typesetting in assignments the students were turning in) but before that most people didn't even know it existed hence a gap in typesetting skills was present
I know plenty of people, who think decent typesetting is rocket-science. It's not. But the fact is that this air of mystery that surrounds it makes many people quiver. Quite often this results in using Word or similar word processing tools, which are easier to use for simple things but fall flat once you start getting into proper typesetting. Most teachers at the university will not have a problem with you using Word and some even require it (mind-boggling, right?).
I started learning about typesetting, LaTeX etc. quite early on during my studies even though no one required it from me. I just had it with papers with poor typesetting. Sometimes it's so bad that your whole concentration goes into analyzing the typesetting issues instead of the actual topic in the paper, which is sad since the author(s) has(have) put work into doing the research.
In addition we have to consider outsourcing. Due to lack of experience, time etc. many people outsource the writing (in terms of typesetting) to others, who may or may not have the expertise to do it.
Finally proof-reading is something that is often neglected. People concentrate on what's discussed in the paper but forget that the presentation is also very important. Just like when buying a car - will you go for the slick looking one or will you pick one, that looks as if it just got dragged out of a scrapyard because it was too much of a junk for it. If my professor saw the examples you have given, he would have told me to buzz off and redo it all.

Thanks for sharing your experience. But I noticed even within my field different supervisors have different opinion on importance of typesetting. But all of them really know the importance. I know supervisors that will do ~90% typesetting-errors in average corrections and other supervisors they will report almost none typesetting-errors in average corrections. Typesetting styles is something you learn from corrections, and different supervisors handle that differently.

My professor was teaching Usability and User Experience so it would have been weird for him not to be into the typesetting side of the thesis. :D


text:
Publication charges are not sent to the right address?
I am disappointed that I can not get an answer about a submitted article for publication in a journal.
I receved the acceptation for final publication, then I paid the publication fees by Western Union according to the recommendations that I received by the publisher on my account. I sent the payment order then I receved the Acceptance letter and the Payment Receipt indicating successfully received money with changement of the article status to : Revised Manuscript has been accepted for publication.
After two days I get an mail telling me that the mailing address of the publication fees is incorrect !
I try to communicate with the journal editor for several days but I do not receive any answer.
What can I do !
Thank you for your help
Regards

Please indicate the name of the journal.

That they suggest to pay your fees via Western Union is a giant red flag that this is not a real journal. That the editor does not answer is another (although "a few days" seems like hardly any time at all). Still, I would assume that you fell prey to a predatory journal. Get out as long as you still can.

Yeah... sadly it sounds like an outright scam from what you've described. If they come back asking you for more money for any reason (fixing the mailing address, administrative fees, late fees, fee fees), it would probably be most prudent to just cut your losses, report it to the relevant authorities, and have no further dealings with these people.

I'm afraid there is an extremely high likelihood that you have been scammed, by a predatory journal or just a run of the mill scammer.
The first red flag is the requested use of Western Union. Any payment requested by Western Union is highly suspect - I have never once encountered a legitimate use of Western Union or Money Gram other than to personally send gift money to a family member personally known to you, and never as a payment for anything. I've never heard of any legitimate publisher of any kind using either service.
The next red flag follows from the first, about the "mailing address of the publication fees" being wrong. They are trying to get you to pay them again, and will likely come up with some nonsense story about how you can get the other money refunded but they need proper payment right away to the "correct" address or they won't be able to publish your article (or some other lie). They will do this over and over again, so long as you keep paying them money, and you will get nothing worthwhile in exchange.
From the sound of it, you have selected an illegitimate source to try to get a publication, and they will attempt to get as much money as they can from you. Regardless of what you pay, the most you will get is a meaningless "publication" in a predatory journal, which may not even exist and even if it is every put online it may just vanish overnight.  From the sounds of their trying to shake you down for additional money, I suspect they won't even give you a fake publication, they'll just disappear and stop responding.
I rather doubt you will get any of your money back, but I would suggest if at all possible to back out of the deal, request a refund, withdraw the article by any 'official' means (I doubt they have any true official way to contact them by certified mail, of course), etc. Cut your losses, don't pay them any more money, try to avoid losing your work (by being technically published and not easily publishable in a reputable place), and spend extra time researching any potential publisher in more depth before submitting your work in the future.


text:
Visa and funding options for undergraduate internship in US
I wrote to a professor (let's say Prof. X) in a US university (cannot disclose the name) for an internship over the next summer. Prof. X is happy to have me work with him.
The university has a program for interns (that takes students through the J1 visa program) but the dates do not match with my home university's summer break schedule and I cannot overstay. I asked Prof. X about this and whether I could work as a student independent of the program. He's not sure if he can help me with the visa process if I don't come through the program but he said that he's looking into it. I also sent a mail to the program manager's office 2 weeks ago but they haven't replied back.
Also, I cannot apply for a J1 visa without a source of external funding. My country does not have any government scholarships to fund such research internships. I'm unsure of asking Prof. X for funding because I don't know the proper etiquette in the US and if it's polite to ask for funding. I could make do with personal funds, but it would be a big help if there were some external funding.
My questions -

First and foremost, is there any way I can help Prof. X with looking into possible options? I feel bad about not being able to do anything from my side right now.
Should I ask Prof. X if funding is available? If it's not impolite to do so, how should I phrase my request?
Are there any scholarships in the US that I can apply to that would fund me (I have a very good resume)?
If the university is not able to provide a DS2019 for the J1 visa to students wishing to work independent of the program, what other visa options do I have and would they also need external funding? I know that the F1 visa is not an option as that requires enrollment in a university.

Edit 1 - My home university's summer break starts and gets over a month earlier than the specified dates of the program at the US university. I will not be allowed by my home university to register for a semester more than a week late.

Please clarify the dates do not match with my home university's summer break schedule and I cannot overstay. The summer vacation in your country is longer or shorter? The whole thing is because of this mis-match? Did you ask your home university to help you to adjust the schedule? Why ask the US university to adjust?

@scaaahu Please see the edit. The mismatch is one problem. The other problem is the strictly external funding requirement for applying for a J1 visa.

I doubt that there is a lot that you can do. A lot of the options will depend on the internal policies of the university and/or the department concerned. Since your professor is better placed to contact the department administration, international students office and any other entities involved in the process, him/her coordinating the process would result in the most efficient resolution of the problem.
Absolutely. You only stand to gain if you do. Professors understand that it could be expensive for international students to fund themselves and will do all they can to help you with it. Its best to phrase your question in a brief, straightforward but polite manner.
A lot of the scholarships require a US citizenship or permanent residency. Your best option would be to contact your home university, destination university or your home government to look into options to sponsor your trip.
As far as I know the F1 full time enrollment requirement is for the academic terms and does not apply to summer programs. The best judge of this would of course be the International Student Office at your destination university since it is a matter of university policy.