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What to do when students answered more questions than instructed during an exam?
I am a 5th year grad student. This is the first time I am allowed to teach a higher level major course on my own. We just had our midterm today and I am confused as to how to proceed.
On the midterm that I created, the instructions were to "attempt only 5 problems" out of a total of 8. But I didn't specify on the exam what would happen if the students were to attempt more than 5 problems.
I noticed half of the class (11 of 20) did follow the instructions and only handed in 5 problems or clearly marked which one are to be graded. But there are those who did more than 5 and did not specify which ones I should grade, perhaps hoping that I would pick their highest 5 problems or they simplify forgot.
What should I do in a situation like this? I know it is "standard practice" to simply grade the first 5 problems in numerical order that they have attempted. Unfortunately it seems most if not all students have no clue how to do problem #2 and #3 (these were fair questions, but required students to be clever), therefore if I were to follow this standard procedure, the students who attempted more than 5 (which basically means they attempted all) will almost certainly get a failing grade, which seems a little cruel.
(I listed on the syllabus "rough" grade cutoffs, i.e. A = 90+, B = 80+, C = 70+, etc. with pluses and minuses. The grades of students in the class are basically clustered at the moment, with a bunch of students around 90-95%, then a couple around 70-80% and then some around 30-50%, with not many outliers.)
Any advice would be appreciated!
EDIT: I asked two faculty members they both told me to simply grade the first 5 attempted questions in numerical order, and the difficulty of each question shouldn't matter. They said the same policy is used on qualifying exams. Sorry that I was just overthinking. That's what I'm going to do.

Glad you figured it out. Since you ended up disagreeing with all the posted answers, you might consider moving your "update" paragraph into the answer box (i.e., answering your own question -- totally allowed here!), and then accepting your own answer.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Please also remember not to add your answers in the comments - there are lots of answers here already that may cover your suggestions or you can add your own.

When I was a Senior undergrad, I took a course that was both undergraduate and graduate students. Most courses like this grade the two types on separate curves. This one didn't. For our (take-home) final there were 100 points, with 2 "extra credit" questions worth 5 points each. I scored a 93 which ended up being a B. Why? Because apparently, our professor didn't understand what "extra credit" meant. (I.e. you add it after the curve is determined.) And some overachieving grad student scored 115 points total out of the maximum 110. Which meant to get an A you had to score 95 points or higher.

I ended up grading the first 5 attempted questions for each student i.e. if a student attempted #1,2,4,5,6,7 then I graded #1,2,4,5,6. For questions that require short responses almost anything other than a blank counted as an attempt. For questions that require long essay-like responses (proofs), anything that stated an assumption and claim counted.
I don't think it's reasonable to say students "forgot" to indicate which problems are up for grading. I think the students who submitted more than 5 questions for grading without indicating which ones they want me to grade, are simply trying to game the system or get an advantage over other students, and here's my reasoning:

I have repeated in class instructing them to indicate which questions for me to grade. In the exam students were given a "question sheet" which listed all the questions and were provided "unlimited" number of scratch paper, in which they will put their responses on. On top of that, I have verbally told the class in the beginning of the exam "to only submit or indicate 5 questions up for grading, not more," and also at the end of the exam to "make sure you choose which 5 are to be graded."
Some questions require only a very short response which could be totally correct or incorrect (for instance, find the kernal of some map, or, list all the subgroups of some group). I think some students aren't sure if they got these questions correct and don't want to risk losing points for the entire question(s), so they simply didn't choose which ones are to be graded, versus the rule-abiding students who had to choose whether to discard these "questionable" answers.

Thanks for all your responses, I didn't expect this many answers, when I made the decision to grade as I did I only had 3-4 responses.

You should edit the question to add more context to it rather than putting it in an answer. The only part of this answer that should be in the answer is the first paragraph.

This is both an answer and a clarification. The part which is an answer should stay — thank you for coming back and telling us what you did, we encourage that! — but feel free to edit your original question to add your two reasons at the bottom.

+1: Given the clarification under (1), I think this isn't unfair, but the situation is very unusual. You must have a strange group of students. I do think you should mark on your spreadsheet which students got heavily punished for this rules violation.  Allow students to learn from their mistakes and redeem themself on the final. Penalizing them is OK, but causing them to fail the course for this if they know the material is not OK in my opinion. Punishments should fit the crime (this is a minor crime, so the punishment needs to be minor too)

My view is that we should make sure grades are good predictors of underlying ability. This answer reflects that. Perhaps it slightly overestimates a small number of students, but that is much better than vastly understimating/failing them (in my view, capriciously).
Option 1
Since the exam just happened, and with so few (~10) students, I would simply email them and state something like:

It's unclear to me which five questions you would like graded, please let me know by [some short deadline] or I will grade #1-5.

The short deadline - perhaps by the end of the next business day - is so they don't have too much time to game this system. In my view, if they are extremely likely to drop #2 and #3, any possible advantage they may have gained by discussing their answers and realizing which ones they did really wrong is well ameliorated by having them still have to pick five out of the remaining six and already having lost time working on more than five problems.
Option 2: Just grade the five most complete answers. This is probably what they want and what they meant to do.
If this still feels unfair to you after getting their preferred five questions, you could grade all students on their best four out of five. (This is what I'd do if this happened to me).
Finally, you could pick randomly out of the problems they started, but given these are upper-division courses, I feel giving them a little bit more benefit of the doubt feels more reasonable.

Some debate on this answer has been moved to chat. The discussion can continue in chat; however, please only post a comment below this one if there is a realistic chance that your comment would lead to this answer being edited.

Mark the five best answers for each student. Presumably the fact that they completed more work than necessary means they spent less time on those answers: hence, they have already 'penalised' themselves for not following instructions.
Next time, make sure the instructions are clear on what happens if they don't follow instructions.

Sorry, someone, but I don't understand this downvote. This is sensible action.

I didn't downvote, but I guess the flip side would be: isn't this unfair to the students who actually followed the instructions but wanted to / would have benefitted from using the illegal strategy that they were told not to use? You claim it evens out....but I am skeptical, and the students who followed the directions may be as well.

It could also be argued that you should grade the worst five asnwers to prevent students from throwing guesses at a wall to see what sticks.

@HAEM Come on, that's absurd. If your students can do well on your exam by 'throwing guesses at a wall' then you've got bigger problems than which answers to mark.

If I was a student, I would be infuriated if people who didn't follow the instructions got a preferential treatment (more opportunities to collect points)

I agree with @lighthousekeeper: you should not be doing something that benefits people who failed to read and follow the instructions.

That's manageable for a small group or if their failed attempts at some questions are instantly obvious, but would turn into a huge workload if many students  made a proper effort at too many questions.  As a result it's a bit generous, and may be more generous than policy allows.

By "mark" do you mean "enter the grade of" (i.e. mark all questions in order to find out which is best, and use the best 5), or do you mean ignoring #2 and #3 as the question is suggesting?

@cag51 The situation is more likely to even out if there are additional constraints, in particular if this was a traditional exam-hall in-person exam then I would expect things to be much more even, as students would be spreading less time on each question. For a take-home exam, there would be a definite advantage to submitting multiple questions. (Unless I've missed something, the exam "style" is not clear here.)

Not all exams have significant time pressure for all students. The notion that doing extra problems takes away time from the ones actually graded is likely false (otherwise you'd have many students who didn't even finish 5 problems). Doing extra problems has no drawback whatsoever for a student who finishes 5 problems with time remaining.

@NuclearHoagie Many students don't finish exam papers. I agree that doing too many questions will likely benefit good students, but conversely it will likely penalise poor students. Surely it is the poor students we should be focusing on?

@NuclearHoagie This: I had many exams where practically everyone was ready more than 30 mins before the deadline. Especially in STEM fields, often there's no point in enforcing a time limit (beyond practicality) on the students: you're only interested if they can solve a specific problem or not.

Picking 5 out of 8 tests the ability of students to assess which problems they can solve easily. Whether that should be tested in this manner is up for discussion, but the "over-solvers" have not demonstrated that ability.

Also, let's say Alice picked problems 1 through 5 to solve. She solved them except for #2, where she overlooked a crucial aspect, so she scores 80%. Bob did the same, but went on and solved #6 as well. Alice and Bob scored the same on problems 1 through 5, yet Bob, who ignored instructions, would score 100% if graded by the 5 best answers while Alice, who likely would've solved #6 had she attempted it, receives only an 80% score. That doesn't seem fair.

@SQB Why the focus on brilliant students? Say pass is 50%: what if both get 50% on #1, #3, #4, #5 and 30% on #2, while Bob additionally does #6 and gets 50%. Sure, Alice should fail. But Bob has shown sufficient knowledge to pass, his only issue is doing too much work.

@user1729 I think SQB's point still stands in your test case. If Alice had ignored instructions and also done #6, she might've gotten 50% on that one just like Bob, which would've also given her a passing grade.

'Mark the 5 best answers' means the person marking has to read and assess ALL of the answers. Why should they have to do that, just because the candidates didn't follow simple instructions?

@TylerW So you would fail Bob, despite them showing requisite learning, because passing them is unfair to Alice? (I think failing them is unfair to Bob!)

@user1729 I don't think SQB or I said what we'd do either way. In both examples, finding a fair way to grade is practically impossible as soon as one or more students go outside the boundaries of the exam.

I would like to confirm the answer from Avid, with following thought experiment:
A student gets the eight questions and starts solving them, in the sequence from easiest to most difficult.
Once the student has finished five questions, he realises he still has some time left, and decides to solve the sixth one, and the seventh one, and finally the eighth one, which is the most difficult.
As such, the student has proven:

To be capable of solving all problems, even the most difficult ones.
To have an ambitious work ethics.

I could not disagree more with the reaction of Cag51, as if the "skill" to follow instructions is more valuable than the proof of higher competence, especially in a school environment.

Good answer and +1, but: I think the point here is that some of the students who followed the instructions may have equal or greater competence to some of the students who didn’t. This is a source of unfairness that the instructor must think carefully about eliminating (or reducing, since as I said in my answer, it seems impossible to completely eliminate).

… In other words, the “skill” of following instructions (and similarly the instructor’s “skill” of writing an exam with clear instructions) is important because it facilitates the goal of assessing the students’ level of competence in a fair, level playing field. So @cag5 has a point… but so do you :-)

Here's an alternative thought experiment: a middling student receives the eight questions and realizes that they're not 100% sure about the answers to most of them, so they'll have to guess and handwave and hope that they'll get enough points from their partial answers to pass. After doing so for five questions they notice that they still have some time left, so they write hasty guesses for the remaining three questions in the hope that they might guess right (or handwave convincingly) and that the grader will pick their five best (i.e. luckiest) answers.

@IlmariKaronen: it looks like I am right and you are right, although we say exactly the opposite. How can this be? Simple: I understand the situation as if the eight questions need a serious effort to solve and to formulate an answer. If, however, the eigth questions just need a simple, guessable, answer like a simple number or God forbid, the questions are multiple choice, then, obviously, your remark would be right.

@Dominique: Perhaps more to the point, you seem to be assuming that a student who doesn't know the full correct answer has no chance of receiving even partial credit just by guessing about the parts they're not sure about. In my experience that's rare, especially for questions needing "a serious effort to solve and to formulate an answer". Indeed, whenever one isn't 100% sure how many points one's answers will get (either due to uncertainty on the subject matter or uncertainty about grading), being able to answer extra questions and have the best answers picked gives a statistical advantage.

Or, a good student who knows the material does 5 questions (any 5, say they even work hardest to easiest) mostly correctly but makes some accidental error on one. However, they followed the instructions and stopped after doing 5. They thought the problems were interesting, though, so they went home and did the rest on their own time from memory, getting the rest of the questions all correct. Their neighbor did everything exactly the same, including making some accidental error, except they didn't follow instructions and finished all of the questions on the exam paper.

@DanRomik if you don't introduce that unfairness now, your students will meet it later in industry :)

My most important advice is not to do that again. And, make sure students read and understand the rules. Not all will find them obvious, though with 20 it is easier.
There is no perfect solution, but there doesn't need to be. If you use coarse graduations, then it probably doesn't matter if you take simple actions. And if you don't grade competitively in any way then you can assure that it doesn't really matter at all. If your attitude is "I'm here to give points", rather than "I'm here to withhold points" then you have a solution. But since it is on you, then it means more work for you (another reason to avoid a repeat).
Do something like this:
Peruse the other students first, to get a sense of what is known and what is not - generally. Then look at the students who answered more than needed without indicating which were to be included and see if their knowledge generally matches that of the others. Look at everything they did, without throwing out questions arbitrarily. You can, judiciously sort them into the coarse categories without applying numbers.
It may turn out that the few students have really demonstrated mastery overall, so should get high marks. They may have done poorly on most questions - low marks. But if the graduations are sufficiently coarse (as is normally true in the US at the end of a course) then the sorting problem isn't as hard as you imagine.
But a distinction between 89 and 91 is probably (definitely) beyond the bounds of the possible.
And note that the Sorting Hat at Hogwarts only had to distinguish four categories.
Remember that you are grading individuals, not the class as a whole. Each student demonstrates a level of mastery or fails to do so. All you need is a rough measure, mixed with a bit of generosity. This works as long as being generous is applied generally over the course so that individuals aren't treated unfairly by the grading system itself.
And the big big lesson is that you are an educator, not a grader.
You'll get better at this, I suspect, but don't repeat old mistakes.

Nice harry potter reference lol thanks for the advice! I appreciate it you taking your time writing this up!

Less than book length, anyway. But once I get started....

+1 especially for "you are an educator, not a grader" (but good advice all around).

While I'd broadly agree with the advice in your edit, I would mark the first 5 in the answer booklet, rather than  questions 1-5.

What is the difference? Are questions not always in order?

@Sofia: The questions are certainly in order, but the answers may not be, unless the students all solved them, or at least wrote them out, strictly in order (which would generally be a suboptimal test-taking strategy, as it's usually better to start with whichever question you find easiest). Of course, things would be different if the students were told to write answers in blanks on the question sheet itself, but I assume from the OP's phrasing that this is not that kind of an exam.

aaah I see. I imagined a page with space for the answers but of course, if they are separate, they could be in a different order.

When this happens you generally have two possible options:

Grade the first five problems.
Grade all of them, and then take the final score as the sum of the best five problems.

It's obvious that the second option is better for the student, while the first is better for you (since it takes less work). Since the instructions clearly said "attempt only five problems", you should take the option that is better for you. You can't control what students do in exams, but you can stop them from abusing you as a grader.
Frankly I'm surprised this hasn't already been drilled into your students by their high school teachers. If you do take the second option, I would emphasize afterwards that it's a one-off act of mercy, and not to expect similar favours in the future.

"Frankly I'm surprised this hasn't already been drilled into your students by their high school teachers." I'm not. Leaving aside the variations in quality of education at high school, I don't think I've ever heard of an exam being marked as "only attempt 5 questions out of 8". If you're writing up an exam, you typically want all of your students to attempt all of the questions, so that you can assess their capabilities in as broad an area as possible - and if you're okay with a narrower assessment, then why are you writing extra questions?

@nick012000 in that scenario, why not mandate all 8 questions to be answered? Also, the exam has been set with "attempt any 5 out of 8". That's good enough for this answer to apply.

The first option splits into 2:  First 5 as set and first 5 as answered.  They may of course be the same especially if the students thought they had to answer all questions (or if they answer on the exam paper but I haven't seen that at undergrad).  Here, in the absence of clear crossing out by the student, we mark the first n answers (n from m is common, often with n=2, m=3), and many students will start with the question they're most confident on.

The second approach in the answer is used for coursework sometimes - best 3 of 5 assignments was used in teaching labs.  Those assessments were formative with detailed feedback so improvement could be expected, but it was possible for an occasional experiment to go so badly they'd fail to get a decent mark

@nick012000 I've seen this since my A levels (UK school-leaving, over 20 years ago), through my own undergrad, and I've marked them for undergrad work in the last couple of years.  This is quite a common approach and may be required or expected by the examination policy

@nick012000: I've had final exams in college where I was instructed to only attempt some of the questions.  However, this was typically an act of mercy to allow test-takers to select the questions they were best able to answer.  If the instructor had later informed me, "some people answered more questions, so for them I picked their best answers" I would not have been unhappy: I knew which questions were my best 5, the lost opportunity to answer more questions was worthless.

@Brian For someone who's good at the material, answering all of the questions and having the best ones chosen is a definite opportunity, since it guards against some accidental error. For students who have no idea what they're doing it's equally an opportunity, since it may turn out that some answers were slightly less incorrect than others.

Pretty much all my high school (and undergraduate) exams had a choice between questions. That was some time back though so maybe it's less common now (non-exam based assessment was also very uncommon when I was at highschool but became more common after I left)

When I was in school, I was explicitly told that in such a situation my best marks would be taken. This is the procedure for state exams in Ireland. It actually surprises me to learn that other institutions do it differently.

First, be transparent about what happened and how you are addressing the situation. Document your grading methodology and share enough details with the class so that no one will have reason to feel aggrieved.
Second, your goal is to maximize the fairness in your treatment of all students. Unfortunately your unclear instructions can leave some theoretical possibility for someone to feel (or claim to feel) like they are being treated unfairly no matter what you decide to do. But the scope of this theoretical unfairness is quite small, so if you proceed with common sense and good faith, I think you (and everyone else) will be fine.
Now, as for what to do, I think the following is a reasonable option:

For each exam, grade all the questions answered by the student. Use their top 5 question scores and as the basis for determining a tentative grade.

Review the grade distributions of the two groups of students (those who answered exactly 5 questions, and those who answered more). Do you see a sizable difference in the average scores across the two groups? I.e., something that gives you reason to believe the group of students who answered more questions than they were supposed to are enjoying an unfair advantage in the grading?

If there is a sizable difference favoring the “rule-breaking” students, consider artificially raising the scores of the second group to compensate for that difference.

If there isn’t a sizable difference between the two groups, or there is a difference but it’s pointing in the other direction (the rule-abiding students being the ones who enjoy the advantage), consider not making any adjustments and declaring the tentative grades you calculated as the final grades.

As an intermediate solution, if there is some difference but you are not sure how relevant or significant it is, consider using the tentative grades as final grades, but announcing to the class that you are reserving the right to increase the grades of some or all of the students from the rule-abiding group later in the semester, if you feel that that makes sense. That leaves you an opening to be generous in some way that’s entirely at your discretion, for example if at the end of the semester there is a rule-abiding student whose score is very near one of the grade cutoff points and could benefit from a small extra push.

Any of the above options can be considered based on not just the statistical calculation I mentioned but also other information that you have that affects your perception about the extent of the unfairness.

If you follow these steps, I think the students will appreciate that there was a minor snafu in the exam instructions and you handled it reasonably and competently. Again, the key is: transparency, acting in good faith, and taking care that any grade adjustments you make are only in the direction of increasing the grades of some students, not in the direction of penalizing anyone.

Re: 2. As a conjecture, students who are unable to follow instructions will perform worse on the exam. So it cannot be determined directly from the score distribution whether students who answered too many questions were given an unfair advantage.

@FerventHippo it’s possible. In that case OP won’t have a dilemma as to what to do. But it’s also possible that some of the students you describe as “unable” to follow instructions are just unwilling to follow instructions, making an intentional gamble that this will pay off. I’m not so sure that such manipulative tendencies are correlated with lack of knowledge of the material.

"In that case OP won’t have a dilemma as to what to do." Depends on the philosophy underpinning their concern. If the issue is to isolate the effect of answering additional questions, and to find as best as possible the scores that would have occurred in a hypothetical universe where they had answered according to instructions, the dilemma remains.

Novel answer:
Grade all questions answered and then normalize it to out of five.
If all questions are worth the same, then it is simply score * 5/N where N = number of questions answered. Only do this if N > 5.
Also count a question that clearly abandoned early on as not answered- just ignore it.
Pros
A student who does equally well on all questions will get the grade the would have gotten answering only five.
Although possible to get a better grade than they would have, it is unlikely. It would require that the student had no insight into which they did better.
Some or many will get a lower grade than they would have but it will not be as bad as just doing the first five- taking as true the OP statement about questions 2 and 3. It will soften the blow of those questions.
So bottom line is there is a negative effect for most who did not follow instructions, but it is smoothed out vs. just picking five to grade.
Cons
It is more work from you.
You will get complaints that you should have taken the top five. And some edge complaints about incomplete answers that the student will say was clearly abandoned.

To avoid complaints about taking incomplete answers, you can sprinkle this strategy with guess that a student clearly would have picked 5 out of 6 questions they got to 50%+ and not those 2 questions at 20%, so you would average just those 6. Similarly, and if they got just 3 to 50%+ and 5 left at 10-30%, you could count 3 good ones + average of those 5 as the remaining 2 answers.

I find it highly unlikely that half your upper-level class failed to follow instructions unless we are not being told the whole story. Half the class doesn't do something like this unless something was at least somewhat unclear.
Did you announce your exam structure in the lecture before the exam? Is it described in the syllabus? Did you explicitly tell the students to mark the questions they want to be graded or rip out the pgs from the exam book they didn't want graded? Did you announce, verbally at the start of the exam, "remember attempt only 5 of 8 questions", or is it just in the written exam directions?
Written instructions are like the fine print of a 30 pg legal mumbo jumbo contract. No one reads them. They are taking a timed exam! Reading written instructions is a waste of time on basically any other exam. If you surprise your students with unusual rules in written instructions, you are effectively tricking some of your students. The only exception to this is if you allocate a minute or two at the start of the exam explicitly for reading instructions. "Now you will read the instructions on the first pg and not open the exam. Be sure to read the instructions carefully right now."
Furthermore, did you define what an "attempt" is in your written instructions? Suppose you got the exam

several well-thought-out and presented paragraphs/calculations etc.
a few scribbles or sloppy scratch work
a few scribbles or sloppy scratch work
several well-thought-out and presented paragraphs/calculations etc.
several well-thought-out and presented paragraphs/calculations etc.
several well-thought-out and presented paragraphs/calculations etc.
several well-thought-out and presented paragraphs/calculations etc.
several well-thought-out and presented paragraphs/calculations etc.

I assume under your "grade the first 5 attempted problems" you'd grade 1,2,5,6,7? Correct? If you graded 2 and 3, and I was your student, and it meant I failed the exam, I'd try my best to get you in serious trouble with your University. I'd drown you in paperwork and proceedings for the next year. I'd rally half the class to complain with me. Don't be fooled, most Universities in the USA usually side with the students in borderline cases like this. The students are the customer and you screwed up by not specifying that there is a penalty for attempting more than 5 problems. I highly doubt that half the class was trying to get an advantage. It's much more likely that the students simply didn't understand, didn't know, or forgot your unusual exam specifications. Do you really want to fail a student who knows the material well because of this?

Rule nr. 1 for teachers is that students are always right in a collective sense. A single student can be wrong, but if there are more than a few who did something unexpected, then you are the one who is wrong, the students are right, however inconvenient that is for you.
In this case, this means that you should look at all the answered questions and grade the 5 best, no matter what the rules say. Now, one could argue that the students did in fact make a mistake, but that's a totally mistaken view to take.
The students are not at university to pass exams, they are there to learn and master particular subjects. They are paying for the services offered by the university, including the opportunity to sit exams to measure how well they've mastered the subjects they are studying.
If you are going to grade the first 5 questions leading to students who would otherwise have scored 100% to now fail the exam, you are not delivering a service to the students that they paid for. This is then grounds for appeal, which could even go to a court should the university uphold the decision to fail he students. With many thousands of dollars paid for tuition, no judge would rule that it would have been too much effort to correctly grade the students that would have avoided this absurd outcome.

+1: I disagree with the first paragraph, but the last two are spot on!

You assert this is your first time teaching at this level. I noted carefully your statement (emphasis added)

Unfortunately it seems most if not all students have no clue how to do problem #2 and #3 (these were fair questions, but required students to be clever)

Since "most if not all" of the students did not successfully respond to the problems (honestly, did any succeed? your statement is vague on this point), it appears that you yourself have failed to either adequately teach the principles covered by the problems or in your expectations for the students to complete them. This calls their fairness into question. In every instance I have observed of this, the instructor owned their failing and eliminated such problem(s) from having a negative consequence on students' grades.
I appreciate that "clever" solutions are encouraged but when it requires such cleverness that the vast majority are likely to fail (per your own admission), the most ethical response is to remove said questions from consideration.
i.e. only grade 1,4,5,6,7. Students who did not complete the requisite 5 after eliminating 2 and 3 should be graded fairly on their attempts.

It's fine to ask hard questions that very few students get. What's not ok is having some students count these questions, because they have a few scribbles on the pg, while other students get to count easier questions.

Your institution should have a rule for how to grade exams in this circumstance. If so, find out what the rule is, and follow it. (It appears from the update to the question that this is what you did and it resolved the issue.)
If the institution's rule is one you disagree with, follow it anyway; it would be unfair to apply a different rule, because students who took the exam may have known the rule, and may have submitted answers according to their understanding that the rule would be followed.

If your institution doesn't have a rule to deal with this happening, I personally believe the fairest and most sensible way to deal with it is to mark every answer and then take the best 5. The reason I think this is the fairest rule is because it doesn't penalise a student for starting a question, realising they can't answer it, and then choosing a different question. If a student wrote one or two lines on some question and then gave up, it would be absurd to treat that as one of their five questions when they have written 5 full answers to other questions. That student could lose up to 20% of their mark just because they put pen to paper before realising that they could do better on a different question. (Or if they were supposed to cross it out to indicate that they didn't want it to be marked, then they could lose up to 20% of their mark simply for not putting a line through
something they thought would be ignored anyway.)
There are some other answerers and commenters who believe taking the best 5 answers would be unfair on students who only attempted 5 questions. I disagree; suppose the exam is 80 minutes long. Then if a student "followed the rules", then their mark is based on work which they had 80 minutes to do. A student who answers all 8 questions will receive a mark based on work they only had ~50 minutes to do. My own experience (from marking exams where the best k answers count, and students are told so) is that students who attempt too many questions tend to have rushed and made mistakes in most of their answers.
Also, if your institution doesn't have a rule to deal with this happening, then make sure that someone higher-up knows that they need to make one so this won't be a problem in the future.

"Your institution should have a rule for how to grade exams in this circumstance" In what country do you refer? US institutions do not regulate exams nearly this tightly.

@AzorAhai-him- If there isn't a policy at the institution level, there may be one at the department or course level. My experience is from setting and marking exams at two UK universities, but unless this is the first time an "answer k of n" exam has been set, then it's likely some students have answered more than k questions in the past, and a decision about what to do will have been made then; so that would be the policy. That said, by "should", I meant either there's a policy already, or there should be one; it is better for students to know how their exams will be marked.

Interesting. I would find that pretty unlikely in the US, instructors have a lot of flexibility in how they set their courses.

@AzorAhai-him- Then I will defer to your experience.

@AzorAhai-him- If this institution gives instructors flexibility in how they do this, then that just means it is the instructor's responsibility to decide in advance what to do if students answer more questions, and make this known to students. An exam rubric which says "attempt at most five questions" without specifying what happens if you attempt six is simply not fit for purpose.

I also agree with the rest of this answer: I think if it has not been specified anywhere (either as a general policy or specific instructions for this paper), most people would expect the best five to be marked. But that is based on my personal experience of exams, and may not be generally applicable.

@EspeciallyLime And it wasn't, so here we are.

I have just been in this situation.  I solved it by grading all of the problems and calculating the expected value of randomly selecting five problems. In my case, a complaining student actually admitted that he was trying to game the system.
I give choice because sometimes people have difficulties understanding a problem as posed and because sometimes people draw a blank on a particular problem.

Picking the worst answers is the "standard practice" where i live and most fair to the students that did follow the rules. Picking 5 of the best answers is giving an advantage to the people who didn't read the rules. I think what the student has proven by solving multiple questions is irrelevant. Rules are rules and who is to say that people who only solved 5 questions couldn't solve all 8? It is after all, the smart thing to do.
The other option is picking random questions, but that doesn't feel very professional to me.

Not sure how picking the worst 5 helps anyone. Seems like this would lead to absurdities: suppose a student began attempting some question, then quickly realised they couldn't answer it so they moved on to a different question. This student likely scores 0 for their partial attempt at that one question, plus their four worst other answers. But a student who did the same thing and also crossed out their failed attempt to indicate that they don't mean for that answer to be marked, could do 20% better on the exam. I can't see any justification for a 20% penalty on a rules technicality.

@kaya3 The student clears their question or marks the ones answered (or both). It's not as complicated as you make it out to be. If somebody knows the worst ones will be picked and then still answers an extra question, only to fail it completely and do nothing about it. Knowing it is against the rules, i think seems 20% is fair. You are making an imaginary scenario where a student makes the decision to do worse.

Students may know that it is their worst five answers which will count, but they may think their quickly-abandoned attempt at a question is obviously not an answer and obviously not supposed to be marked as if it's an answer. I've marked exams where students wrote the question number and then just one or two mathematical symbols or words and moved onto the next question, where a full answer would typically take up an A4 page. Where do you draw the line? I would find it absurd to mark a student down by 20% for doing that, and I think the student would too, at best.

More fundamentally, an exam is meant to test a student's learning of the relevant course material, not their understanding of the rules of the exam. If 20% of someone's mark depends on them crossing out a non-answer, then whether or not you think they "deserve" to lose those marks because it's their own fault, it makes the exam mark less of a valid metric for what it's supposed to measure.

@kaya3 I think you've seen students scribble on answer boxes, because their worst questions are not picked. You wouldn't care to clear your answer if it didn't matter, but it does, so you do clear it. Where the line is drawn is not important, as long as it's the same for everybody. You do make a fair point about testing the students, but you can't please everybody here. I still think this is the best option in this lose-lose situation.

Not sure what you mean by "answer boxes", I mean exams where the student is writing on normal lined A4 paper in a separate booklet from the one their questions are printed on. I think your argument is like "students will do X in an exam if it matters, therefore it's reasonable and fair to have exam rules which penalise them for not doing X", but I disagree with the premise that students will uniformly do X when it matters. If all of your mind is occupied by the subject of the exam, then it's easy to miss a simple step in the entirely separate procedure of writing the exam.

For a concrete example, it obviously matters for a student to write their name or whatever other identifying information is required on the front of their answer booklet - and we announce before and after the exam to remind them to do this - yet I've had one or two intelligent students forget to do this, so that I ended up with an exam script with nothing on it to say who to award the marks to. Would it be reasonable or fair to have a rule saying those students just get 0 marks? I don't think so, even if the students know the rule.

Simple. Given there are 40 students who answered more questions than allowed, generate 40 arrays with the numbers 1-8 in a random order. In Python,
from random import shuffle
a=[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8]
for s in range(40):
    shuffle(a)
    print(s,a)

This will give something like
0 [4, 2, 5, 7, 6, 3, 1, 8]
1 [4, 7, 2, 3, 5, 8, 1, 6]
2 [5, 1, 6, 7, 2, 8, 3, 4]
3 [6, 1, 3, 8, 4, 5, 2, 7]
...

Then you only consider the first 5 questions numbers that the student answered. For example, if student 0 answered questions 1 3 4 5 6 8
then you would only consider questions 4 5 6 3 1.
This is very fair because the questions considered are randomly selected. So there is no gaming the system.

Fairness is not just randomness or not being able to game the system. Would it be fair to just generate a random grade for each student? That's random, and can't be gamed either.

This strikes me as more work for an unfair solution.  Two students, with 8 identical answers to the same 8 questions could get different grades depending on which questions got graded for each student.

@Justin, of course it wouldn't be fair to generate a random grade for each student. My suggestion only applies students who have broken the rules, as I say in the 1st paragraph.

@Beska, that would admittedly be an unfortunate outcome, but the disbalance in this unlikely scenario would only apply to those who have broken the rules. Those who break the rules should be satisfied with anything that is better than "your grade is the sum of your 5 worst answers". In other words: If you agree to play a roulette game under the same rules as your opponent, you can't complain if your outcome turns out to be worse than your opponent's.

Setting aside what people "should be satisfied with", potentially giving different grades to people with identical answers just sounds like trouble (if not a lawsuit).  It would surprise me if the school sanctioned this method (but I have admittedly been surprised many times in my life.)

@Beska It may sound like trouble for someone that doesn't understand the context. Again, students who tried to game the system have no right to complain when the professor does make their grades non-deterministic. After all, they trespassed the deterministic boundaries once they decided not to comply to the rules.

@LoremIpsum Do you think when someone commits a crime and gets found guilty, the judge should roll a dice to decide the punishment? Or should they decide a punishment based on the severity of the crime and the context of the case? I prefer the latter.

@WetlabStudent Punishment is established in criminal codes. All the judge does is apply it if evidence is convincing. There is no crime when there is no law.


text:
How do I contribute to the scientific community without publishing research in a scientific journal?
I do not study physics at the university, but I have a very important scientific research. I do not think that a magazine will accept my research, though, because I am not sufficiently specialized in the field. Is there any way to obtain intellectual property for my research without publishing it in a magazine? Or are there any physics magazines for beginners that preserve intellectual property rights?

Have you been keeping up to date on the work of others in the field that your research is about?

It depends what IP you are interested in. In the US, copyright is by default yours unless stated otherwise by you or transferred. If you are interested in patenting, you need to file a patent before publication. If you are looking into TMs or design patents (I think the German analog is Gebrauchsmuster, but IANAL), again the constraints are different. You really need to identify what you want to protect. If you want to just protect priority, find a timestamped trustworthy server and put it there. I do not comment on other questions such as scientific integrity/avoiding plagiarism etc.

You might want to use data-sharing services like Figshare or Zenodo to publish your work. They also provide a DOI for your contribution.

@CaptainEmacs Gebrauchsmuster is a utility model, something the US doesn't have. The design patent is called "Design" in Germany. The confusion might arrise from the old name of the Design - Geschmacksmuster.

If you are outside of the physics community, how are you so sure that you even have a "very important scientific research"?

@JohnColeman they may be incorrect, but that really doesn't matter. Plenty of people employed in academia fail to notice that the research they are doing is not very good, and that does very little harm. I'm more than happy that someone not employed in academia has found the energy to get excited about doing physics. Let us hope that we can be welcoming to anyone who makes an attempt to contribute.

The title focuses on contribution while the body focuses on intellectual property rights. I suggest you edit the title to avoid misleading the readers who choose to open or skip the question based on the title.

I would also point out that many journals don't really care if you're a physics student or a factory worker.  It is absolutely still an option for those outside academia proper per se.  Many journals don't have time to look into your history, they'll look over the article, if it seems like the topic is good for their audience then they send it for peer review.  Yes, names at well known academic institutions get a bit more benefit of the doubt, but a good work from anyone can get into a top notch journal.

@Clumsycat This may be a noble (and correct) sentiment but the odds of someone not trained in physics discovering something very important are infinitesimally small.  It does happen that someone not fully trained (e.g. an undergraduate student) makes a useful but not routine contribution, but this is exceedingly rare.  The OP should realize that, in all likelihood, the work is either incorrect and not even wrong.  It doesn’t mean the OP should not try or continue, but it would be deceitful to suggest he or she has a meaningful chance of success.

@ZeroTheHero I don't disagree with your sentiment, but we both know that this is not actually an infinitesimal; https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/2468/are-there-any-famous-physicists-that-never-went-to-university . You're not wrong to manage expectations, I'm just not sure how to do it without being off-putting? I want to preserve OP's enthusiasm.

@Clumsycat right... but as pointed out John Moffat did get a university degree.  I personally know of one other person who entered graduate school without formal training, so this does happen but it's several steps from claiming "very important scientific research" on their own.  So, even if we can come up with some historical exceptions, that would make the odds extremely small.  Regrettably (and I say this without prejudice to the OP), the number of people (with or without training) who think they found important results dwarves the number of these historical exceptions.

(I do agree OP should not be discouraged, just realistic about the chances.)

You're worrying about the wrong thing. The danger is not that someone will steal your work, it's that nobody will ever read it. The reason for this is:

In the modern age, it's very easy to prove that you did the work first. Everything is timestamped.
There are more good ideas to work on than anyone has time to pursue. Thinking of a cool idea is the easy part, doing the work to show it's useful is hard.
Lots of not so useful ideas are being pushed too, so filtering through them to find the useful ideas can be hard.

It is very likely that any useful work builds on other work. If that is not true of your work, then honestly, you should probably read a bit more of the literature, because you are likely repeating something that already exists.
When you have identified who's work you are building on, check if they are still alive. If they are not still alive, find out who else has cited/ or built upon their work. That is the person you should contact. Write them a quick email, saying you have written a paper that is related to their work. Tell them a bit about it and attach your paper. This person is in the best place to help you find an appropriate way to circulate your contribution.
For physics, that would probably be the arxiv, and the arxiv describes almost exactly what I have just suggested here; https://arxiv.org/help/endorsement

Edit; Buffy's comment highlighted that I should probably say something about the licences when you do find someone to endorse you on the arxiv.
Arxiv requires that you chose one of these licences;

grant arXiv.org a non-exclusive and irrevocable license to
distribute the article, and certify that he/she has the right to grant
this license;

certify that the work is available under one of the following Creative Commons licenses and that he/she has the right to assign this
license:

Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY 4.0)
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0);

or dedicate the work to the public domain by associating the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0 1.0) with the
submission.

This part will be easy.

Note that when you publish at arXiv, you retain almost all rights. You only give up a license for them to make it public in perpetuity. The copyright remains with yourself.

"It is very likely that any useful work builds on other work. If that is not true of your work, then honestly, you should probably read a bit more of the literature, because you are likely repeating something that already exists." Or you're a crackpot who's pet theory if bogus science.

@nick012000 lets take a good faith attitude to peoples contributions. I'm more than happy that someone not employed in academia has found the energy to get excited about doing physics.

So you don't study the subject, and you aren't specialised in the field you are researching, your research is important according to yourself, and you are primarily concerned with getting credit for your results, rather than determining whether your results are correct, new, or important to other people.
These are warning signs. There is a very high chance your research is not correct, not new, or not important; and you almost certainly do not (currently) have the proper knowledge or skills to assess any of those things yourself. If your motivation is to contribute your results to the scientific community, the best way to start would be to get some independent advice from somebody who can assess whether your results are correct, new, and important.
Keep an open mind; find somebody suitably qualified, and ask them if your work has any merit. Don't tell them you are sure it does, because you shouldn't be sure of that in the first place. And if they tell you your work is flawed, believe them, otherwise you will become a crank.

The hard part would be finding an expert who is willing to listen.  Physics, in particular, has a lot of cranks, and so it'd be quite a task trying to prove to anybody that you're not wasting their time.

There are of course people like Einstein and Ramanujan who made fundamental contributions despite being outside the academic establishment, so let's not rule it out. And in astronomy, there are many modest contributions from amateurs. But for every Einstein or Ramanujan, there are a thousand people who think they have an idea, when in fact it's either (a) wrong, or (b) unoriginal.

@MichaelKay I think by “a thousand people” you mean “a hundred million people”.  Even a hundred million could be an underestimate.

I'm not keen on the tone of this answer. You're not wrong about the odds of success, but an outsider's enthusiasm is something precious. I'm glad just to see someone taking a shot at this. And sometimes, amazing things happen; https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/2468/are-there-any-famous-physicists-that-never-went-to-university Don't put them off.

@Clumsycat Honestly, I'm not keen on your answer either. I don't claim that the OP is a crank, because being a crank also generally involves disregarding the expertise of genuine experts, and believing that their own lack of education is a benefit or at least not a hindrance. Answers along the lines of "anyone can contribute to physics research!" and "Einstein wasn't an academic either" are well-meaning, I'm sure, but effectively you are bolstering those ideas (devaluing genuine expertise) and encouraging OP down the road to becoming a crank. OP seriously does not need advice about ...

... intellectual property, because the truth of the matter is that intellectual property protections are for protecting ideas with value, whereas the extreme likelihood is that OP's ideas don't have any value. So the first thing OP must do is establish whether their ideas have value. The purpose of my answer is to inspire humility, not to discourage somebody from being enthusiastic - though let's be honest, OP seems most enthusiastic about having their name associated with a scientific breakthrough rather than doing the work required to actually achieve one.

I think you should offer OP a more realistic way to start a conversation with someone who could offer them guidance. You are not pointing OP to the tools to find out if their ideas have value. I also think most young physicists are arrogant, and your words about "devaluing genuine expertise" do not exactly come across as humble either. All together, this gives the impression of a discipline in an ivory tower.

@Clumsycat Since I am someone with no genuine expertise in physics, and have not claimed any genuine expertise in physics, I think my encouraging deference to "genuine expertise" cannot fairly be interpreted as arrogance.

In most of the world, what ever you write, provided that it has creative elements, is yours by right. You have all copyrights to it until you give them up.
In fact, part of the normal publishing process is to give up your copyright to a journal.
If you publish it yourself, say on a web site you have, and can claim, "all rights reserved".
That doesn't mean, however, that no one can use or build upon what you write, provided that they cite it.
Devices, as opposed to creative writings and such, may need to be patented for you to keep rights.
However, the rules vary somewhat, so "most of the world" doesn't mean "all of the world".
The only way to be sure that you "can't/won't" be published is to submit a paper for publication and see what happens. Affiliation with a university is not a requirement, nor is the background of the author.  Avoid "predatory publishers", however, who will publish anything and take your money to do so. You will need to meet the usual standards of "novelty" and quality and make sure that you can situate your work within the larger scientific body of knowledge with appropriate citation, but that is the case for everyone.
And, it is possible for some to enter into collaborations with people who do publish, provided you can meet them. This will likely result in publication, of course.

What are you trying to achieve?
You say you want to "obtain intellectual property for my research", but why?
And as @RichardHardy points out, your question asks how you can make a contribution, which is entirely separate from obtaining intellectual property (or recognition) in respect of that contribution.
Do you want the kudos that comes from being identified as the originator? Do you want to reach a wide readership? Do you want to exploit the idea commercially? Do you just want to prevent other people exploiting the idea? Or do you just (as the question suggests) want to help in the advancement of knowledge?
Publishing your ideas in a blog, with a copyright notice at the bottom, would protect your IPR. But it wouldn't help you to gain any revenue from your IPR, and unless you find a way of publicising the existence of your blog, there's no guarantee that anyone would read it.

File for a patent at the US Patent and Trade Office if you're concerned that someone might steal your work or monetize on a similar idea before you're capable of doing it.
Note that you can only get a physical component, system, manufacturable product, or process patented. It has to have real-world application and in general solve a problem in a unique way that no other patent accomplishes. An abstract idea or algorithm can not be patented. But a procedure related to that abstraction or algorithm can.
Plants and ornamental design features can also be patented under different applications.
Before filing, make sure that your idea is novel and consider how you will run your business, if it's something you plan to sell to consumers. This will require some research into existing patents. Also consider contacting a registered patent lawyer or representative to help streamline the process.
This is just one solution other than publishing into peer-reviewed journals, and it may / may not apply to you. I'm not professing it's the only solution.

"This is just one solution other than publishing into peer-reviewed journals" This is not an alternative to publishing research. Patents and papers serve entirely different purposes.

@Szabolcs It is an alternative to publishing research; we don't know whether it is a suitable alternative, because we really don't know what the OP is trying to achieve.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
I am like a stranger in the group
I don't know how to behave as a new PhD student towards the other people in my group. I started my PhD at the begining of Covid in February 2020.
One week after I met the people in our group, our research center was closed. During the last year, only me and my advisor came to the research center. Others visited from time to time.
Now, restrictions were lifted and the other members of the group started to arrive. We know each other, but nobody invites me to anything, even lunch. Besides, my room is in another corridor and there is noone from our group on that side, it's just me. I can't see if the rest of the group is leaving for lunch or not. I feel so excluded and I don't know what should I do. I'm like a complete stranger. They don't have to like me, but I don't understand why they act like that.
There will be group meetings which I don't want to attend. Would it be bad to say to my advisor that 'I do not want to attend the meetings because no one but you has talked with me until now' ?
I want to add this, to be more extrovert, I did my best to bring cake and invite others for coffee.

Are you based in Germany?

I came Germany from Italy.

Just to say that as someone who has also recently moved institutes and countries, I sympathise and you are not alone.

As a german PhD student myself, I know how confusing and frustrating the Covid restrictions are over here at times. I feel that the overall situation is generally very difficult for friendly collegial interaction at the moment. Getting to know ine another under these circumstances is very difficult, especially when you came from a different country to Germany and had little possibility to interact with your peers in person.

Don't forget that Italy is a more open country than Germany and that, in turn, is more open than others. Take your time. Don't be pressured. Is there a Slack-board or some other joint communication platform?

Thank you. No, they don't have even a whatsapp group.

Do you speak German? do they speak German or English? there may be a language barrier, on top of a cultural barrier, on top of pandemic-related behavior.
Even drinking a coffee with some of them after the group meeting may give you a way to bond with some of the group members. At the moment, you do not have any bond: even being in the same group and working on the same topic is not enough for many culture to feel there is a bond and to curate it.

@carlos_ser As a fellow Italian in Germany, don't expect the same "warmth" that you were used to. You will have to take the initiative for many things, and actions that to you seem polite, or even basic norms of common living, are considered rude and excessively familiar here. It sucks, but it's the way it is. The good news is that you can change the group to fit you a bit better, even if it will take a lot of effort.

Hey Carlos. I know this is not exactly the same issue, but I think you should read the question and my answer here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/165968/making-friends-in-academia-and-building-connections/165986#165986 . We are all struggling, and possibly, those who don't talk to you too. Its not 100% this, as you are going to the office, but covid has and will have impact in our lives for a while.

@carlos_ser Getting invited to social activities can take a long time in Germany. They will need to get to know you first. It is common for such processes to take many months or even years. So go join the group meeting, and ask your peers if they go to lunch regularly and if they are interested in including you. The fact that you work on a different floor can be mitigated with a bit of will from the rest of the bunch. I think that you are severely underestimating the time Germans need to build a type of bond by casual interaction that is sufficient to get included in activities.

@DCTLib One thing I found that works well-ish is to organize social activities myself and invite people. They are a bit shocked at first (as you said, the familiarity threshold for inviting someone in Germany is ridiculously high), but it does work in getting you more included.

It can be the normal way. We are all the same, in depth, but there are so many facets.... The only firm point is that a group meeting is a serious thing (for many reasons, and one is exactly the problem you face).

@DenisNardin: the threshold is much lower if we're not speaking about inviting people into your home but, say, meeting for a BBQ in the park. Unfortunately, these lower-hurdle social activities are still quite hampered by Covid (regulations or concerns)

Attending the group meetings could be a good way to get your foot in the door with people. Germans are typically more reserved than Italians, a professional context in which you can talk about work might catalyze the relationship.

"There will be group meetings which I don't want to attend. Would it be bad to say to my advisor that 'I do not want to attend the meetings because no one but you has talked with me until now' ?" Going to the group meetings would be a great way to fix that, right?

Why on earth do you not want to attend the group meetings?

Even in normal times, some groups go to lunch together often, some occasionally, and some never or only on special occasions.  Not only that lunch groups and research groups aren't always the same - in plenty of cases a few from one research group and a few from another go to lunch together, which can be a very good thing, but is harder to get into. (Experience from mostly British but a few European groups)

Adding support for @EarlGrey - when I was a USA postdoc in Amsterdam, the science was done in English, and the chatting at coffee was in Dutch. I learned Dutch which proved quite useful outside the institutes walls as well.

You could try the brute force approach. Throw a party and invite everyone.

@cbeleitesunhappywithSX What you say is not false, but the threshold even for those events is higher than I was used to. Moreover one other aspect is misunderstanding body language and facial expressions: many times I got the impression that some German acquaintance barely tolerated my presence, and then I discovered they actually really liked to hang out with me. The old stereotype that Germans never smile is not completely false. But this is getting sidetracked, so if you want to continue this conversation we should move to chat :).

I think it would be a mistake to miss such a meeting. You will be isolating yourself, adding to the problem. Go there, even if you only listen the first time.
Perhaps you have an option to switch offices. Ask.
Perhaps there is a coffee room in which people can gather. Go there. Take your work with you in case no one shows up. Introduce yourself when they do. Try small talk. Try asking about their research.
If you are on good terms with your advisor, make the issue known to them. Perhaps they can make a few introductions.
If you meet anyone, let them know you'd like a knock on the door if they go out to lunch. Make small steps lead to bigger ones.
When I was a doctoral student, one of us organized sport activities (pick-up baseball) and we got to meet and interact with each other, even outside our small research groups.
It has been a hard time for everyone and lots of people have lost social skills, so be aware of that.
But go to every meeting that is offered.

I believe that this is an unusual situation for all involved - for your and your colleagues. Especially with Covid restrictions, lockdown, etc. it was probably difficult for both parties to get to know each other. If your colleagues had already formed a closer peer-group before the pandemic, it is understandable that they have a stronger bond with each other as they have with you for the time being. With the unusual work situation, it may also not be easy for them to commit to getting in touch with you to a greater extent.
As long as your colleagues ar not hostile towards you, I would encourage you to continue with open-mindedness and friedlyness for the time being and hope that your situation will improve as the general work situation normalizes.
Under no circumstances sould you stay away from general meetings, if your colleagues are not hostile towards you. These are, in my opinion, one of your best chances to get in touch with them on a professional level.

Sometimes it is hard to enter an established group of people. And I think Covid didn't help, maybe your other group members have to get adjusted to being back at work, and don't really feel like socializing - especially since many of us have had a definite lack of socializing during the last 18 months and might be a bit rusty.
As others have already said, not attending group meetings is counterproductive, because if you make yourself scarce, it will make others notice you less and will not alleviate your situation.
Instead, maybe you could ask your supervisor if you could switch rooms, so that you are physically closer to the others. If that is not possible, try approaching them and telling them explicitely that you would very much like to go to lunch with them, and that they should tell you when they leave so that you can join them. Using a messaging system like MS Teams or whatever you might use already in your group will make communication easier even if located in other parts of the building.
Maybe even bring up your feeling lonely, having moved to another country just as the pandemic hit and not having had much chance to meet and get to know other people. It might feel uncomfortable to approach them, but more likely than not they don't exclude you because they don't like you, but they might not be aware that you feel this way and might just be overwhelmed by the situation over the last year.

(German here, with some working experience at an Italian university long before covid)

First of all, like the other answers say, do attend those meetings!

Since your advisor is the one you know best, and since they are your advisor, I'd talk to them about the group taking you along to lunch, and about the possibility to get a place where the group is.
(when I started in Italy, I got the "status" of having my own office - not good to get acquainted with people. I changed it to share an office with a colleague when the possibility offered. But this is something you need to say, people may be thinking they do you a favor by giving you a work place that is more calm. But all in all, even as a German I think it is not nice to put someone new far away from the group.)
As a side thought: "There will be group meetings which I don't want to attend." Since you are in a stage of loneliness where you withdraw yourself, I see a certain risk that people may be misunderstanding you thinking you want to stay for yourself.
Also, I'd expect your advisor to introduce you to the others in  a fashion that should open the possibility to collaborate with at least some of them. The seminar may be important in that respect as well.

People just returning to the institute may be quite busy/stressed because they try to catch up doing lots of things they had to postpone while they couldn't come.

People still have quite different levels of stress/anxiety related to the whole Covid situation. This will make them less able than usual to socialize.

Being invited to activities outside work (which is where you really get to know people): Here I'd expect right now to be those activities that do happen to be so private that only friends are invited and you are not yet sufficiently acquainted with people to be in there. More official/group public (less private) activities where you would be invited are quite likely to still not happen right now.

for mostly private activities relating to the group it is a bit of a gray zone whether you should be invited or not: when a colleague has, say, a BBQ to celebrate their PhD defense or birthday somewhere else, it would be up to them whom they invite. If they don't know you, I'd say chances are 50 : 50 for you to get invited.

I'd expect they start meeting sometimes at a pub again. But in order to know of this (and be invited to come along), you'll like need to first gain entrance into the lunch group.

People over here are more "private" in, say, whom they invite into their garden or house or flat. And that applies now even more than usual.

OTOH, if someone brings a cake for their birthday to the office, all group members should be invited.
Unfortunately, this may still be forbidden (like coffee) by your institute administration - or your colleague may not be sure whether it is allowed or advisable and therefore not do it.

There are usually also official group social activities - again, I know of institutes whose administration plain forbids any such activities at the moment, even if they are legal and no substantial risk (I've heard such a discussion recently where the proposed activity was to walk to the botanical garden in groups of 10 people, all outdoors, not even taking a bus. Still no way with the administration.)

I'd recommend to try and get acquainted with people at work and outside in parallel. I find meeting people outside work easiest at sports, either university sports (which should be open to you as well) or sports clubs.
There may also be sports groups at work, but again, at least the official ones may still be dormant due to Covid...

First, it's worth mentioning that socializing with your lab is not a requirement for finishing the PhD. While the situation is not ideal, your advisor may not see it as a problem for your studies.
It sounds like you're expecting the group to invite you to gatherings. Since they haven't, it's natural to assume that they may be satisfied with the current social situation, and may not be motivated to change it themselves. Since you are dissatisfied, what have you done to change the current situation? Have you invited them to lunch?
Going back to my first point though: if your lab isn't very social or doesn't want to include you, your best option may be to make friends elsewhere.

There will be meeting, I don't want to attend the group meeting, would it be bad to say to my advisor that 'I do not want to attend the meetings because no one but you has talked with me until now' ?

This is probably counterproductive. Other students are more likely to include you if they interact with you regularly. Also, group meetings are usually part of PhD studies, not a social gathering.

"Going back to my first point though: if your lab isn't very social or doesn't want to include you, your best option may be to make friends elsewhere." This is not particularly good advice. Most likely the others in the lab just didn't think about inviting OP for lunch. That doesn't mean they actively want to exclude OP.

"your advisor may not see it as a problem for your studies" if they don't, I do see a problem with the advisor. It is plain bad to not help a student get into the group. And much more so with a student who came from far away and thus is unlikely to have friends and acquaintances around.

Firstly ask yourself a question: why do you need them?
If it's only for work you can have only official relationships.
If it's for friendship and fun you can find other people in different places.
We just create problems for our self. Maybe this is not a problem at all? Put more attention to your research or find more friendly environment. Please do not force yourself to friend with them. Forget about it, just do what you should do by your responsibilities and leave them.

I don't think this is a good advice. Even if you don't want to make real friend with people with whom you happen to share your work environment, getting acquainted is a great way to foster one's academic career. I've a couple of friends in academia, and they often told me that many occasions for collaborations (shared papers, new research inputs, etc.) have arisen from casual conversation with people in the same institution, may they be regular staff or visiting academics.

First time poster here, so please be kind and let me know if there is something I should improve.
I basically agree with the other answers, but I'd like to address an aspect which as far as I can see has not yet been mentioned: How have you been introduced to the group?
Over the years I have been working in several German groups and depending on the group dynamics I experienced at least one or even all of the following activities:

Boss/professor/supervisor writes an email to everyone, announcing the arrival of a new group member (along the lines "... Warm welcome to our new group member Alice, who will work with Bob on XY...")
New group member uses the opportunity to write an email to everyone (including information such as "my name is ... thanks for the welcome... will be in office xy ... I am looking forward to meeting you and working with you... feel free to drop by my office to discuss XY")
In the first week(s) follows the "Einstand (link to German wikipedia)" by the new group member. Short summary: New employees in Germany often invite their colleagues to a short (!) get-together which serves as means to introduce themselves. Typically it takes place in the room where the group has coffee, lunch (if brought from home) or informal chats. Typically it is either breakfast (for example in Bavaria white sausages), a small lunch if you want to be really fancy or (most common) cake in the afternoon. Typical sweets from your home region are normally also well received and gives you something to talk about to brake the ice.
Did your birthday happen to be recently? Typically people bring cake for their birthday. This also gives the opportunity for a short meeting (for example after lunch) with everyone.
The same rule may apply for accepted papers or people returning from conferences abroad brought something typical. I worked in a group where all of the above was applied- yes, we ate a lot of cake ;-)

As you can note there is quite some activity that might be "expected" by a new team member. Depending on how much international experience your colleagues have it may be possible that it just didn't come to their minds that you don't know about them and they assume that you want to be left alone.
Therefore I agree with the other answers: I don't think that skipping the group meetings is a good idea, quite on the contrary. I also suggest to pro-actively try one of the activities above and see how it goes. You can always add that due to the covid restrictions you have the feeling that you are still the "new" member and that therefore you want to say hello and meet people. I have yet to meet a scientist who doesn't appreciate food brought by a colleague for whatever reason ;-) If in doubt about it or you worry about covid rules you could always check with your supervisor.
My background:
German who has worked both in academia and industry in Germany and in a few other European countries in German and international groups

Good catch. The "Einstand" wasn't mentioned yet. Since the OP started before the pandemic, it's a bit late for that, though. Perhaps this helps others.

Typically people bring cake for their birthday. Just to confirm that, no, this is not a mistake. People don't get, they bring cake to their own birthday... :)

I really doubt that the PhD group don't invite you because they don't want you to be there. It is probably just a misunderstanding- for example, somehow word did not get around to you that some social meet up was happening (probably online) but the people in your group probably thought you knew about it but just did not attend. Sometimes the supervisors don't even know about or keep track of these student get-togethers. They may be being organised by one or two students from a different group (if they are between groups) and perhaps these people just did not get your name as a new phd student, so you weren't invited.
There are probably some underlying reasons that the group think you are antisocial, or don't know you are a phd with the same group (you said you are down the corridor. Maybe they just think you are an intern since you are separate). The first thing I would do is: go to the meeting, and make sure everyone is one the same page about you being a PhD student with the same supervisor, just like them.
Talk more and become friends with a couple of people in the group. Chances are they will send you a message before one of the lunches and say 'hey a group of us often meet up for lunch and eat together. Do you want to join?'. It is useful if you have some instant messenger for that (facebook, whatsapp etc), or check your email regaularly.
If that fails, go to lunch and just approach them when you see them. Either ask if you can join, or just pull up a chair. You can keep eye contact with, smile and say hi to the couple of people you are closer aquantances with. Just make sure that you keep it smiley and confident rather than awkward. Try to integrate yourself with the group.
Remember that you are doing nothing wrong by trying to have social interaction with the group. You are not infiltrating some social bubble, you are trying to build relationships. A group with good relationships between the members works better together.

Go to the lunch alone, if they don't invite you to the table, don't attend the meeting. talk with advisor..
If they invite you, attend the meeting, you should be more open.

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text:
What are the consequences of rejecting a Marie curie doctoral position, after accepting it?
I have recently been selected for a Marie curie doctoral position and have to inform the selection committee about my decision within a week. I don’t want to let go of this opportunity, but I also have some really good applications going on. What happens if I reject the offer, after I have accepted it? Are there any personal/professionql/legal consequences?

It's ultimately your career.

Can you clarify what situation you are in? First you say you have only been selected (implying no action from your side), then you say you have already accepted (implying that you acknowledged and agreed to the offer).

@MisterMiyagi I understand that OP has not yet accepted, but is considering accepting the Marie Curie position and then rejecting it later if one of their other applications goes through. OP is asking what would be the consequences of this approach.

Have you considered telling the truth? If an offer has been made and you cannot honestly say yes or no to it, what about saying so - giving some idea of when you will be in a position to answer?


text:
Banned from the Journal Cureus
Unfortunately, I forgot to correct the ethical approval number of my manuscript and included the approval number of an already published article.
I have been informed that my article has been blocked and my account has been permanently suspended. Later on, I provided them with the correct ethical approval documents and ethical approval number.
Will this unintentional mistake (although I later provided the correct ethical approval number and documents taken from my own institution ) be reported to other Springer journals? Does my account suspension apply to other Springer Journals? Will this affect my whole academic career?

What did folks at the journal say about this when you discussed it with them?

I’m voting to close this question because it's a question for Springer, not for this site.

Well they said tey cannot accept this excuse and they suspended my account forever……

I would apologize and tell them you understand their decision. Mistakes do happen, but with an increasingly fraud-riddled community (or the rise of easier-to-detect fraud) and intensified campaigns to crack down on cavalier attitude towards research fraud, publishers increasingly adopt a zero tolerance policy. Above response will indicate to the editors that you are a professional that accepts the rules of the game, no ifs and buts - and maybe it will mollify them as to not pursue further action if that was on the cards. There are few things that are more convincing than a genuine apology.

Your first question is impossible to answer. If I had to take a guess, I would say that this shouldn't affect other Springer journals. On the surface, Cureus seems to use it's own submission/account system separate from Springer's normal journal system. There probably isn't much intentional communication between those disparate systems so unless an editor went looking, I doubt it would be "reported" per se. This is just speculation though - the only way to know is to ask.
As for how this will affect your career, it probably won't in the long run. (1) Generally, journals don't disclose reasons for rejection. (2) Cureus isn't what most would consider a high-tier journal so you don't lose much by not publishing there. (3) Most venues for exposing research misconduct (which I would argue this is, "mistake" or not) focus on already published research, including Cureus's own "Wall of Shame" (which was discontinued last year anyway).
There are a few caveats though - providing what is essentially a fake IRB/ethics approval is serious. We all make mistakes but you can't make these types of "mistakes" regularly and escape scrutiny for long. Also, while Cureus isn't a high-impact, powerhouse medical journal, it is a convenient place for case reports, smaller studies, and reviews - especially if you qualify for the free publication. So that might be inconvenient for you and could lead to some awkward conversations about why a paper you co-authored can't be sent there.
In any case, I would worry less about how this will impact your career long-term and more about why it happened in the first place and how you can learn from it.

I'm interpreting this question as "I was banned by journal X, am I also banned by all other journals by that journal's publisher?"
The answer is "it depends". Some publishers have mechanisms to block you publisher-wide; others do not; yet others might have it in limited fashion. In the first case the editorial management system flags recognizes you and flags all your submissions; the publisher can then decide (presumably on a case-by-case basis, after reviewing the reasons that got you blacklisted in the first place) whether or not to automatically decline your new submission. For this kind of block you are not "reported" to other journals by that publisher, but the information is there if they search for it.
Other publishers might run different databases for different journals. In that case the new journal might not be aware that you're blacklisted in another journal. It is how, for some publishers, you can tell journal X you will not collaborate with them for publisher-level reasons, and still get an invitation for journal Y by the same publisher.
Sometimes the above is only partial, so it's possible journals X and Y share the same database, but journal Z does not, even though they are by the same publisher. There are reasons for this - e.g. if your name is common, then there should be multiple namesakes around, and any naive blacklist of you might adversely affect others. One way to get past this is to assume that if you currently work in medicine, then you will never publish a math paper, so you are only blacklisted by medicine journals but not math ones.
So the answer is "it depends", and you'll need someone with internal knowledge of Springer to know for sure.


text:
I'm at the fork of the road; should I quit my PhD … again?
I was enrolled in a top university in the faculty of languages and linguistics for my PhD in the spring of ’21 in my home country. Naive, I was unsure of what I wanted to do and with my grades, I decided to take the advice of others who are more experienced in life by signing for the direct to PhD programme from my undergrad. Summing it all up, I had terrible supervisors who were demoralising and self-centred. On top of that, I could not execute a topic that was of my interest, but theirs. With the advice of the deputy dean, she asked me to withdraw from the programme. That was September of ‘23.
Out of rage, I signed up for a PhD programme in another university which started in the beginning of ‘24. This time, they are supervisors whom I worked with during my undergrad. It started off wonderful until recently, the fog has lifted, and reality has set in which I began to realise that the nature of academia—the debates that goes on in what has been written in dissertations or assignments; the time that goes into work that I’m starting to lose interest for; demotivation; and altogether the conflict in which I value real world experiences of solving them there and then, rather than something that can stretch on for years as time is of the essence. It’s only been 6 months in this new institution, but I don’t see a future with me continuing. Neither am I saying that anyone who has completed their PhD did not garner success down the road, nor did they waste their time for some. Everyone’s path is different, but I just feel purposeless staying in the programme. Now, I’m conflicted whether to leave or stay as my folks are telling me about the prestige of a PhD and my supervisors are super nice which I don’t want to let down. I don’t want to regret staying and not pursuing my art which I am fond of, or regret leaving the PhD many years down the road.
Which road should I take?

"I’m conflicted whether to leave or stay as my folks are telling me about the prestige of a PhD and my supervisors are super nice which I don’t want to let down." I have no idea which road you should take, but these are both terrible reasons for staying in a PhD programme. If you genuinely have trouble handling the fact that meaningful research takes time, this in contrast may be an indicator that science is not the path for you. (But I confess that I don't understand what the vague platitude "time is of the essence" means in this context.)

What will you do with a PhD if you earn it? (Note that "become a literature professor" is an extreme long shot.) What will you do for work if you drop out? If the answer to either is "I don't know," recommend you think about that first and then come back.

Prestige is a terrible reason to put yourself through a PhD.  So is not disappointing your supervisors or your family.  I don't say this to be mean or insulting, I promise you.  But I say this very bluntly because it is very important:  You should do a PhD because the colossal effort is worth it to you.  We are often conditioned to think of others before ourselves and this is almost always a wonderful instinct.  But this is one of those times where you simply must consider what you personally want.

Expanding on cag51's comment: you really need to know more about your choices before making a decision. Right now all you have are "I'm unhappy, should I quit?" That's not enough. You need to also know the answers to:

If you quit now, what will you do? ("Option A")
If you don't quit and eventually finish your PhD after several more years of work, what will you do? ("Option B")
What makes you think you'll be happier with Option A than Option B, if you'll be happier at all?
And just to be clear (since we don't know what Option A and B are): what makes you think you'll be happier with Option B than Option A, if you'll be happier at all?

Don't make impulsive decisions. Figure out all your options and work through their consequences as deeply as you can. Remember that ultimately you'll have to earn a living somehow, and whatever else the PhD is, it's a tool towards this end. If the PhD will help you live comfortably, then it makes sense to stay; similarly if the PhD will not help you live comfortably, then it makes sense to quit. But will it actually help you live comfortably? Without first figuring out what options A and B are, you don't know.

Thanks very much for the response. That's good insight and something to visualise on. Only thing that's is clear as for now is that I don't know what I'll be doing with the degree if successfully completed. It was suppose to be left as a fallback plan, but it doesn't sustain the motivation when there isn't a purpose for the degree essentially.


text:
How can I get to research stay?
I want to do a 'research stay', but I have no idea how to arrange it.
I don't need to go to another laboratory or country to do my own experiments, because I have already finished most of my studies.
I want to do a research stay in a different country but I have no idea how I can do it.
I am hesitating even about what I should write while applying.
For example, I will apply to a professor, 'I want to do a research stay in your group for 3 months'.
But, what I will do there, if they accept me? I don't want to be like a tourist. My aims are networking, gaining knowledge, experiencing how things work in other labs, etc.
I thought may be I am late, but with the covid restrictions, I am thinking to do it next year.
What is your advice to me, or your experience, should I talk to my advisor?

Do you need funding from them?

I have a scholarship which covers most of the costs. not too much but enough.

Regarding "and should I talk to my advisor?": Yeah, seems like your academic-advisor ought to be a good source of advice.

Your question is very broad so I will give a broad answer as well. Specifics include your country, field of study, interests, future career plans, etc.
You will find it harder to find a research stay if you just contact people randomly and ask for a 'research stay'. Ask yourself: what are they getting out of it?
My suggestion is as follows. Come up with a plan for what kind of research you want to do, find someone in another country (using their recent publications) with whom you can potentially work, and then combine the two: propose a visit with a project in mind. Make sure they feel they are getting something out of it, that is how you will get them interested in the first place.
Talk to your supervisor and career counselling team (if there is one) and figure out a list of scholarships that offer such research stays (e.g. Mitacs in Canada). Then apply to these with a strong proposal. If you already have funding, this will make things easier since money is mostly an issue for hosting supervisors.

I have three suggestions, though the first won't help you most likely.
The most common way to have such a position is to get invited to it. The most common way for that to happen is for you to already have a collaborative relationship with someone there who is interested in working with you more closely that remote communication allows. The way to make that happen requires a long term plan to develop such relationships. So, not much help in the short term.
The second way is to have something to offer to the host institution. This would, perhaps, be something like an interesting project that some faculty member there was interested in. In other words, if you are asking for something then it is good to be able to offer something back. Collaboration can certainly be that thing. This is more possible than the first in the short term.
To make that happen, though, you have to search around for people who are interested in the same thing you are. The authors of papers you use in your research are a good place to start, but (less useful) note that some universities publish lists of faculty that includes their research focus. Large universities in particular will do this, and possibly also links to individual faculty pages. If you can, somehow, find a person who might want to work with you then they might be worth contacting.
But, it might take some time to arrange a slot in the best case.
Third, some universities will advertise for short term appointments if they have a need, but no continuing budget for a regular position. These positions are likely to be paid, but also likely to have some requirements such as teaching an advanced course. That might make it less useful to you.


text:
What if professors I mentioned in my PhD application are not accepting students
I recently applied to US universities and contacted professors I mentioned in the application. In one particular case (the most important one), all three professors are not accepting students. Would the application get rejected straight away?
My research area as mentioned in my SOP is “Deep Learning and its applications in Computer Vision”.
I guess the area I mentioned in my SOP is neither too broad nor too restrictive. Does it affect the application in any way?

Not necessarily "straight away", but US graduate programs want to admit both:

Strong students with a high potential for success in graduate school and beyond

Students that fit well with the specific graduate program

If you name people you are interested in working with, and none of these people are taking students while you're a student, then that doesn't seem to me like a good "fit". If you're going to name people to work with, you should contact those people ahead of time; if they aren't taking students, there's no reason to mention them in your application. If there's no one at a given institution that you want to work with who is also taking students, then you should apply somewhere else that has a better fit of mentors to advise you.
As Buffy mentions, though, the program may see things differently if they expect incoming students to not find a mentor right away. If the program invites you for interviews, that may be a time to emphasize the breadth of your interests and take a chance to meet other faculty who could be possible mentors (if indeed your interests are broad; don't become the next Academia.SE user to post "I joined a lab in a topic I didn't like and now I don't like my topic, what should I have done differently?").

Being rejected for that is  unlikely in the US as long as you are willing to be flexible. If you have only a bachelors when you start then the question of a dissertation advisor won't really arise for a few years and the situation might be different then.
Even with a masters, you probably need to pass comprehensive exams first so there is some time. And, again, if you are happy to work with someone else there won't be an issue.
The only real negative in this is if you have been so strong in your SoP that they think you will reject an offer out of hand, but I don't see that as especially likely.
If you get a chance to speak with anyone, say in an interview, just don't be rigid about advisors.