text:
Is asking my mentor, the post-interview opinion about my recruitment, unethical?
I recently attended an interview in which my supervisor is a panel mate.
After the interview, I met my mentor and asked whether I performed well and her opinion about the interview happened.
She (my mentor) told, "you performed well and I think you will get hired".
After a day, I shared this incident with a colleague. He (my colleague) opined that asking such a question to the mentor is unethical because it may be an obligation for her.
Indeed, I cannot ask opinions about my interview with other panel members and took advantage of rapport with my mentor in asking such a question, but I am not feeling that it is unethical since I didn't ask her any favor and just asked an opinion about my performance in the interview.
Is asking such a question unethical or perfectly ethical?

To be honest, your supervisor should be experienced enough to know what to answer. If they think they are not permitted to give an evaluation to you that's what they should have told you. That being said, by asking them you put them under (slight) pressure. In my personal opinion, not a big issue, but I always feel it is better not to put people in a courtesy dilemma.

What kind of job is this? For hiring a PhD candidate there would be very different customs than for a faculty member.

@lighthousekeeper It is for a sort of position in my university independent of my context.

I am very surprised that your supervisor agreed to participate in an interview as a panel member. Often, it would be considered a conflict of interest to interview her own PhD student. Considering that your supervisor knows you very well, and probably does not know other candidates for the same role equally well, this situation puts other candidates at disadvantage. Even if your supervisor were completely fair in her judgement, there will always be some doubt whether or not she has shown some favouritism for you as a candidate. This is exactly what every job interview panel is trying to avoid - the ethical rules dictate that they have to act fairly and also avoid any situation which may be perceived as unfair.
Disclosing the results of the interview before the official announcements are made is also a bad form. However, first and foremost, even accepting to sit at the job interview panel with you as a candidate seems unethical behaviour on her part.

The answer of Dmitry Savostyanov focused on ethical obligations of the advisor. I'll focus on yours alone.
I see no problem with asking "how you did". It is a perfectly natural thing to do and not unethical. You could even ask whether they think you will be hired, and you might get a reply or not. The best reply would be to wait for an official announcement, but that is an issue for the advisor and not for you. You might also get some advice on things you might have done better which would help in future interviews.
But I see no ethical issue for you to ask.


text:
Group Versus Individual Assignments
Every spring (including the spring about to start), I teach an honors course that normally has an enrollment of about 25, with 15 to 20 of those coming from the top few percent of our students and the rest coming from the top 20%.  I give a series of quite challenging assignments that require both a lot of technical skill and a lot of creativity, and students are not permitted to work together.  Usually about 2/3 of the students earn grades of A.  Grades below B are rare but not unheard of.
I have always felt like the students are missing out on an excellent experience by not being allowed to work together, but I have also always worried that if they work in groups, then it will become impossible for me to tell the B and C students from the A students.  This matters for a lot more than just their grades, because a large fraction of these students end up asking me for letters of recommendation and I like to single out particularly brilliant solutions they've come up with.   With groups, I never know who had the ideas.
This term, for complicated reasons, I will have less TA support than usual, which creates an argument for dividing the class into say, groups of three, with each group submitting one paper --- thereby cutting the grading by 2/3.
Possible policies are:

Stick with individual submissions and figure out a way to get them graded (maybe by enlisting some star undergraduates from recent years).

Let students work in groups to swap ideas, but then submit their own individual papers crafted in their own words.  This still means figuring out a way to get them graded.

Accept group submissions.  This has advantages and disadvantages alluded to above.

What should I do?
Edited to add:  Guided in part by the many thoughtful responses below, I've cobbled together a grading system I think will work.  Of course I don't know whether it will work until I've tried it.  I'm therefore not sure whether it's appropriate to post the relevant portion of my syllabus as a self-answer, or as an edit to the question, or to do nothing at all (at least until the semester is over).  I'm sorry that I'm new to this site and not at all sure of the culture.
Edited further to add: In response to a comment below, I've posted my plans for the semester as an answer below.  If this sort of thing is on-topic here, I'll come back at the end of the semester with a report on how it worked.

Figuring out how to pay undergraduates to be your TAs seems harder than just assigning a few group apers, no?

@AzorAhai-him- No, I think I have a substantial stable of undergrads I could draw on for this.  I have always hesitated to ask undergrads to grade the papers of other undergrads who might be their friends, but aside from that, recruiting should be no problem.

Sorry, I didn't mean recruitment, I meant the overhead of hiring them as TAs, teaching them how to be a TA, etc.

I would just assign a few group assignments (change groups) and a few individual ones, you should have more than enough information to pull out the high-performers

@AzorAhai-him- :  Without going into a lot of detail that would be irrelevant to the question, I'm sure I've got that covered.

We're always glad to learn what you decided. In this case, it sounds like answering your own question with the solution you came up with is probably best. You can even accept your own answer. You're welcome to edit this answer at a later time with additional updates. The alternative of making your update in the question text would also be allowed, but this route is usually most appropriate when one decides to follow one of the existing answers whole cloth. Cheers!

Also, I recommend changing this post's title to be an actual question, with a question mark. Something like: "How to assess each student individually when having them work entirely in groups?"

Here is what I (the OP) am going to do.  It's more complicated than I would like, but I think it serves my purposes.

Students are warned that this is an experimental system and might have to be tweaked mid-semester, but I expect it to stay mostly in place.

Each student must choose (once, for the entire semester) among four options:  A)  The "loner" option --- you do all your homework yourself.  B) The "partner" option --- you team up with a partner and the two of you do all your homework together.  C)  The "rover" option --- I will assign you  a different one or two teammates for each assignment.  D)  The "roving partners" option --- you have a partner you work with all semester, and I will assign you an additional one or two teammates for each assignment.  (Therefore team sizes will range from one to four.)

Teams work together, and cannot get any help from anyone not on the team.

Each team submits one paper, together with a small spreadsheet indicating which students believe they have completely understood which solutions.

Each student separately submits an individual assessment of his/her teammates' contributions.

Most of the time, the whole team gets the same grade, with three exceptions:

Exception 1:  If Carol claims (on the spreadsheet from point 4)) to understand considerably less than Alice and Bob, she might get a slightly lower grade than they do.
Exception 2:  I might randomly call on you to explain a solution you claimed to understand.   If you can't explain it, you will get a much lower (and possibly failing) grade for the entire assignment. (This is explicitly presented to the students as a disincentive to exaggerate on the spreadsheet.)

Exception 3:  In cases where the applicability of Exceptions 1 and 2 is ambiguous, I will consult the evaluations submitted per point 4).

Classes have not yet started, so I will be very receptive to criticisms, issues I might not have thought of, suggested tweaks to make this a better grading system, suggested tweaks to make this seem less complicated, and anything else you think I should be thinking of.

I like this. Two suggestions: (1) I would simplify #2; as is, it seems so confusing that it might get you off on the wrong foot. Personally, I would make option C the default, and tell students "if you prefer to work alone, or if you have someone that you want to team up with, let me know, I will consider exceptions." This is less confusing and lets you magnanimously grant exceptions. And (2) I would similarly simplify point #6 -- e.g., have a schedule for when students will be interviewed and a rubric for how these will be graded. "Schedule" and "Rubric" sound better than "3 exceptions"

In my opinion individual assignments also have many benefits. For example, each student’s success hinges completely on their own actions rather than on the contributions of a group of fellow students. Other than that, they don’t need to discuss a certain topic, just like in the group (within the assignment’s parameters), so they can write a paper on whichever topic they choose. Since all students work independently, there is no conflict between them. During individual projects, students will become responsible for their learning and finishing, which will lead to their learning more about their topic.

I suggest group assignment is a good choice because can improve our skill development: Working in a group allows students to develop a range of skills, including communication, leadership, negotiation, and conflict resolution. These skills are valuable not only in academic settings but also in professional and personal contexts.
Group assignments enable the division of tasks among team members. This helps in efficient time management and allows individuals to focus on specific aspects of the project where they excel, contributing to a higher quality final product.

I had a lot of students work on small-team projects. Sometimes I would form the groups and sometimes I'd let them. More below on selection.
Usually there was more to the course than the project so there was an opportunity to get some additional ideas about performance. But not always. In the "senior capstone project course" one of the requirements was a presentation of their project at the end where everyone was required to participate. I graded that separately (preparation, presentation, etc).
But, I never assumed that all the students would contribute to the project in the same way and so it was impossible for me to decide who did "more". And they worked outside my view mostly. But there were two features that I generally included.
First was that everyone got the same grade for the project unless there were compelling reasons to do otherwise. And I'd tell them at the start that an individual taking on all the work and closing out their team mates wasn't a good way to get a good grade. Team work should be team work. If they haven't worked in teams before you may need to teach them how: meetings, discussions, small continuous improvements... I also kept an open forum where students could ask questions and get answers, either from me or from members of other teams.
The second feature was "peer evaluation", which is not the same as "peer grading". Each student was required at the end of the course to name two or three (depending on team size) team members who contributed the most and to say why. I didn't ask for slackers to be named. Additionally they were asked for their own primary contribution to the team.
I was once surprised when a team praised a teammate for their important contributions to making it all work when I'd thought that person was rather a poor performer. They actually got a boost in grade from peer evaluation.
I'd discourage teams of size greater than five unless there were special circumstances. You can permit individual projects or not, but in my field (CS) teamwork is valued so I didn't permit it, since they needed the experience.
You can also, perhaps, let everyone vote during the presentations on who had done the best job on the projects and boost that team a bit.
I never tried this, but my own doctoral advisor used to hold five or so minute "oral exams" with each student (in every course, actually). You can learn quite a lot in a few minutes if you ask the right questions.

More on selection.
One way to choose who is on a team that works in a small (~25) group of students who know one another is the "sandlot baseball" method. Choose a set of "captains" equal to the number of groups(randomly, by perceived skill, volunteers, voting...). Then in rotation the captain (perhaps in consultation with other members already chosen) chooses a person from those not yet on any team. Yes, somebody will be last, which is a disadvantage, but it seemed to work when I used it. This spreads the talent among the teams without being too cliquish.
Another way, was randomization. I once needed two teams, so I made up a set of index cards, half of them with the word "Fire" and half with "Ice". On one of each of those sets I also wrote "captain". Face down, I had each student draw a card. That told them their team and gave the team a name that they actually liked. I explained that the "captain" wasn't the manager, but only the one responsible to communicate team needs to me as required, including a list of the team member initially. This also worked. One of the "captains" was a bit isolated from the rest of the class but getting the "job" seemed to spark something in him that was positive for everyone.

Depending on the class, I can usually determine the grade level (A/B/C/D/F) within five minutes of an oral exam and the individual grade level (A+/A/A-) after another five minutes. I started doing oral exams at the onset of COVID, and I'm not going to go back to written midterms and finals if I can help it. Orals allow me to see each student individually, and to make the exams formative as well as summative because I can give immediate feedback on their answers. Students seem to be more open to such feedback in-the-moment. YMMV

@PeterK. What kinds of courses/class sizes are you talking about?

@Kimball The largest cohort I’ve done is 75, but it’s generally smaller. My classes are electrical engineering and software engineering classes: circuit analysis, programming, data structures, requirements engineering.

In your question, you mentioned "a series of assignments".  Is there something preventing you from doing both types, i.e. some of the assignments done in groups and some individually?  That would give you the best of both worlds.

I might be overthinking this, but:  These are pretty serious students, who I think will mostly follow the rules.  But I feel like once they get used to the idea that it's okay to work together on some assignments, the temptation to continue working together even when it's disallowed will be significantly increased.

I suggest first and foremost that you are missing out on the significance that you can bring to your honors students by giving them exercises that teach them how to work effectively in teams (I prefer the word teams rather than groups, as the former implies a greater or more formalized degree in collaboration and sharing). By example, what balance do you expect your students will have after they graduate to the real world between working entirely by themselves on a project versus working in teams on a project?
I might also challenge your statement that "students are not permitted to work together". We could enter entirely new threads on what the students believe this means in principle or practice versus what you intend it to mean as well as how effectively you can truly monitor or grade against this restriction even after all sides (you and your students) fully understand its meaning in precisely the same ways.
To your problem. In a nutshell, you have less manpower to grade your assignments. You can find replacement manpower or restructure how your assignments are to be graded. If I review your proposals individually, I would comment as below.

Employing undergraduates to grade their peers or peers from other classes is fraught with potentials for abuses. In the US, we would immediately recognize FERPA limitations have to be respected. You will probably have to clear this proposal through your department chair. My experience is that we employ senior undergraduate students as peer mentors to our lower level courses, but we never employ them as graders. The administrative overhead (and potential for abuse) is too high.

This approach promotes exactly the wrong ideas about what is involved to work effectively in and be evaluated entirely at the end as a team. Indeed, it is this example that I give to distinguish "groups" versus teams. The former is a collection of students who swap ideas about the questions, all come up with the best answer, each submit it, and then each get graded individually for having one (unified) "best" answer. Or, back to my challenge above ... How will you explain and police this proposal to meet what you believe are the standards for working in "groups" versus working in teams?

Are you building a false presumption ... allowing team work projects prevents you from having any ways to separate B and C students ... to avoid being creative in restructuring your assignments instead? Why not have both team-work and individual-based assignments? Examples for the latter (mentioned also in other responses) could include individual oral reviews on the team-work reports, quizzes or exams, and homework. Why not also restructure your grading in ways that will take less time for the TA's (and you) to grade. Examples include assigning ten problems on a homework but choosing randomly only three of the problems to grade (choosing after the assignment is submitted).

In summary, I have great respect for the hard work that is required of an instructor to administer a proper mix of individual-based and team-work-based assignments in a course. I propose that taking on this responsibility will be the best response to your immediate problem.

You could let the students work in groups. They submit a paper as a group and this is part of their grade. You can let the other part of the final grade be based on individual conversations with the students.
I understand that 25 individual conversations is also time consuming, but it could give you the opportunity to identify students who actually understand what they did from students who benefitted from the collaboration more, and with 10 minutes per student it should be doable in 25*10 / 60 = just over 4 hours, plus some additional time for planning and admin so let's say 8 hours.

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text:
Acknowledgments in Arxiv preprint
I have recently submitted a paper to a journal, with the format required by the journal itself.
Now I am submitting on Arxiv a version of the paper with the same content but a different formatting (not the journal format, just a generic one).
I am wondering: should I keep the acknowledgments in this Arxiv preprint?

Do you have any reason in mind why you would not keep it?

No, it is just my first upload and I don't know the common practice.

Probably you've already thought of this, but just to be sure - you've checked the journal is happy with you uploading this to arXiv? (It probably is in CS, but best to be safe..)

Incidentally, in my field at least (mathematics), although journals often request that submissions be formatted in a certain way, it is pretty universal to not bother until/unless the submission is accepted. You might ask someone in your department if they think it's reasonable for you to skip this step.

@Andrew Well, I see many papers published from this journal (that is open-access) on Arxiv.. but actually, I have not really focused on this problem

I think it should be a 100% match between the version of the paper submitted(or published) and the arxiv version, so that other scientists can easily read the paper on arxiv without an institutional access or login to publisher's website.

@Ulderique Demoitre: From reading your posts I made conclusion that this paper can have relation to computational complexity. If so, please send me link or paper (mail in profile).

Yes, you should keep the acknowledgments. Whatever the acknowledged did to contribute to your paper is independent from the mode of dissemination – except when it clearly isn’t, e.g., when you acknowledge a reviewer whose suggestions improved the journal paper but could not be included in the Arxiv paper due to journal policies.
If an acknowledgment is required by somebody (e.g., by whoever funded your research), this requirement may also apply to publishing a preprint, i.e., you may even be forced to do this.
As for common practice, I have seen many Arxiv papers with acknowledgments and never noticed an acknowledgment being only present in the journal version (but then I never payed attention to this). I never removed acknowledgments for an Arxiv publication.

Why do you spell it "Arχiv", if I may ask? Arxiv itself uses the latin letter X everywhere on its website, and using a different spelling makes it more difficult to retrieve your posts in an automated search.

@FedericoPoloni: The X in arXiv at least originated from a stylised chi (χ, the Greek letter that is traditionally transcribed as ch). It’s the same thing as TeX. Using a χ instead of an X avoids the irritation and silliness of a capital letter where you do not expect one.

I solve that problem by spelling it "Arxiv". It doesn't harm web searches, since they are usually case-insensitive, and it is consistent with the good old rules of capitalization in English. For other arguments in this direction, please see http://www.theslot.com/webnames.html, which I find very convincing. That page convinced me to stop writing MATLAB.

@FedericoPoloni: I know that article (and given that I like to link it on such occasions, it’s quite possible that you know it through me). The χ is a lowercase letter after all. At the end of the day it boils down to staying true to the original and web search and the later is already served by tags and askers not using that spelling. Anyway, I do not have a strong opinion on Arχiv vs. Arxiv.

Yes, it's quite likely that I found it through you. :) I agree with your analysis, but in my view the "original" is that those letters in Arxiv, Tex and Latex are "inspired from" the Greek letter χ, but ultimately they are the latin letter X. This is how their creators write them, from Knuth (who had the option of typesetting it with a chi in his Texbook, but chose not to), to the pages in arxiv.org.

A greek letter appearing out of thin air irritates me much more than a capital letter in the middle of a word. Especially in this case, since it differs from the (to me, well known) writing on the website itself. I would even say, that a greek letter in the middle of latin letters, is, think of it, kind of silly.

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Can I ask to be the first co-author?
I am working in a lab as a research assistant for the last 3 years.
During this time, I published three papers (1 first author) and three of them were published in good journals. In one of my published work (I am a co-author), I had to repeat almost most of the works (writing, figure, table). The project was done by another person and rejected several times. Then he went for a Ph.D. and he did not bother and did not continue with that project. As we have the same supervisor, so the supervisor asked me to work on that paper. I had to correct a lot, had to do experiments again. Then the paper got published. Even all the major corrections (that reviewers asked was done by me) as the main author had no idea at all. That time I was thinking I should be the first coauthor as I worked really hard on that project. That project was kind of dead and I started to work on that after two years and it got published.
Now I have two more projects like this (both were done in 2015 and none of the authors care about them anymore). Again I have to give the same efforts as a new project. So is it worth to ask my supervisor to make me the first co-author? Is it too much to ask for?
I am happy that I get many projects to work on, but personally I think I should be the first co-author as I have to work hard to get them in shape.
PS: My supervisor is very pleased with my work till now.

When I was in a similar situation (re-analysing and writing up someone's work - but I was senior to them), I asked that we share first authorship. In my field this is a known thing, and no deserving person loses first authorship in the process.

Yes, of course you can ask. But in some fields there are other considerations that are considered important and first authorship is assigned for reasons not obvious to people from other fields. Sometimes those reasons are just political, but people go along with them to keep peace. It might also be necessary to keep the peace with a supervisor who has authority over you and can affect your career.
So ask, even if you might not get what you think is fair. Think long term and preserve relationships. Having a publication, even if not as first author, is still valuable.
And there may be future work that you can extract from the project that won't bump up against the same considerations, making your own first authorship the obvious choice.

It sounds completely justifiable to be the first coauthor. Depending on how much work the drafts needed you may even qualify to be the first author. If the experimental data was near-useless, the ideas half-baked and you needed to do most of the heavy lifting you could definitely argue that. Something like this happened to me during my PhD. A colleague who'd left handed me down some material and experimental data and told me I was free to use it. All he asked for was a co-authorship. I had to perform additional experiments and modelling work, wrote everything up and got it published. I think me taking the position of first author was justifiable in this case.
But as Buffy pointed out, author position depends on the conventions in the field and the relationships in the group. If pushing for more credit means ruining relationships it might not be worth it.

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What to do if a coauthor lies?
My coauthor and I work at some organization. After I started working with him, people told me that he allegedly took some data (used in the paper) from the organization without authorization (He was let go from the organization.)
I received a letter from the organization stating that he indeed took the data without authorization. He explained that if I finished the paper he will send the paper to the organization for clearance. I asked him to show me the document, but he only replied: “I am in good relation with that organization.” So, I gave him benefits of doubts and I did all the work, including every calculation.
While he had been claiming that “the data breach is a rumor”, I confronted him over the phone and he finally admitted that the data breach is a fact. I myself have acquired clearance with the organization regarding the data breach since then. However, he refuses to withdraw from the paper.
As for the paper, I have proved every single result, every single calculation, and every single sentence of the paper. He did not do anything. I asked him and he cannot define a very basic term used in the paper. He said: “But it is not honest to ask me to remove my name only by simple assumption like the one you raised.”
I would think of proceeding as

ask the coauthor to provide me the formal paperwork on this issue,
if the coauthor fails to provide me these documents then I would need to drop him from the paper.

Do you think it make sense? Are there any other procedures that I need to follow?

Criteria for authorship depend on the journal, but generally follow something along the lines of the ICMJE recommendations. To be an author, you should:

have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of
the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data
for the work; AND
Drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Approved the final version to be published; AND
Agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of
the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

You don't mention who conceived or designed the study, but unless he made a substantial contribution to this he hasn't met #1, since you acquired and interpreted the data (if he initially provided the data but was not allowed to, that doesn't count). It doesn't sound like he's met #2. If you've showed him the final version he could claim he's met #3 and he would probably agree to #4 even though this would be misrepresenting his ability to follow the rest of the work.
Basically, you leave him off the author list but (potentially) acknowledge him.

Thank you. But he is not willing to withdraw from the paper.

I'm not sure what you mean by 'withdraw from the paper' - he doesn't get to decide whether he's on the paper or not, you do (as submitting author). You submit without adding him as an author.

What if he writes a protesting email?

To whom? If it's to you, ignore it. If it's to the organisation, it sounds like he's already in their bad books and they would agree with you. If it's to the journal, you have a letter from the organisation showing that he did not own the contribution he initially made, and you can explain to them that he didn't do anything else subsequently. As long as you've not left anything out here I don't really see the problem. I would probably tell him (not ask him!) beforehand that you do not consider him to have made a sufficient contribution for authorship and you are not including him as an author.

He never admits data breach and continues to exhibit the affiliation with the organization without consultations with the organization. Thus people will think it is me violating the rules of the organization.

If you have a letter from the organisation confirming that he had no authority to share the data, I really don't see the issue. The only way I think he could make trouble for you would be to claim he did in fact make a substantial contribution to the study design, analysis or interpretation.

I have proved every single result, every single calculation, and every single sentence of the paper. He did not do anything.

There are different criteria for determining authorship, but at least you must do one of the following:

Provide funding OR
Provide or gather data OR
Participate in the analysis OR
Preparation of the manuscript

It seems your co-author, regardless of his lack of action regarding the data breach, hasn't done any of this, so he wouldn't qualify for authorship even under the most generous criteria.

I will appreciate any references.

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text:
What happens if your research doesn't get published?
In research work, I'm guessing that the primary product you want to create is some sort of publication. But what happens if you don't get you published? Does that mean the research you did is invalid / you can't reference what you learned in any future work?
For example:
Let's say someone gets a grant to research a question. The research is good/accurate, but for whatever reason, they can't get it published or they run out of funding. On the other hand, they get a different grant to do similar research where research from the first project would be useful. Only thing is, it isn't published. Can they still reference it in their new work? I guess another way to ask it is: Is publication the only way researchers can validate their work?
I currently work in development, but I'm interested in how research-heavy projects work. So sorry if this is a simple question.

...you try harder!? Mostly PhD's are given for endurance, patience, discipline...a smart idea is a little part and starting point.

You resubmit it somewhere else, until it gets published! That's why there are many journals with different "tiers".

If you are doing true research then there are no guarantees and you either keep trying or you scale back your goals until you find some success, even if not the one you strove for.
Research is examining the unknown. You can't schedule it. You can't predict it. You can just keep looking. You can broaden your scope, or narrow it, or redirect it.
The examples you give aren't necessarily terrible if you are working on a hard problem. But is good to get advice about whether your field of study is "ripe" for solving the problems you are working on. That is where an advisor is useful.
Normally you don't "reference" unpublished work, but you can include relevant parts of it in new work.
However, don't think that "failing" to get the result you thought you would represents actual failure. Knowing that something isn't true is knowledge just as is knowing that it is. Knowing that certain approaches fail to settle a question is also knowledge.
And don't start out researching "toward" a result you "want" to be true. That is always invalid. You are trying to find out what is true, not trying to prove a point. The latter is propaganda, not research.
But if you submit a paper and it is rejected, be guided by the reports of the reviewers. Normally they are quite knowledgeable about the area and about what can and should appear.

Thanks! That makes sense (especially your comments about getting into the right mindset). I'm a software developer. I see software as ongoing (e.g. maintenance/feature updates), but I definitely do have milestones that I work towards and schedule for. Also, most of the time, I more or less know the answer I want when I create a software solution; then I work towards that answer even if I don't have all the implementation details. Having a type of project where all of that is the complete opposite is a bit daunting, but I can also see how it would be a good challenge. Thanks again.

In academia it's true that by "publication" people often mean "peer-reviewed publication", that is a publication which has been checked and validated by other researchers and consequently accepted in a more or less reputable journal or conference (see below for the "more or less"). Peer-reviewed publications are the only ones which matter in terms of academic career and in any kind of academic evaluation.
However there are plenty of other options to publish: pre-prints, technical reports, books or even simply putting a document on a webpage, all of these are valid publications which can be cited, even if they are not peer-reviewed. Of course they wouldn't be considered as valuable publications in the academic world (unless they get cited a lot, but that's not common), and for good reasons: non-peer reviewed publications can be full of mistakes or claim that the Earth is flat, since by definition they haven't been evaluated by the expert community. Anyway, this implies that it's virtually impossible to be unable to publish a research work because it gets rejected.
Even if we assume that the author wants to publish only in peer-reviewed journals/conferences, they would still have a lot of options to choose from and it's unlikely that they can't get accepted anywhere: in every field there are venues which are known to be very reputable and consequently very selective, but there is also a spectrum of journals/conferences which range from "very competitive" to "desperate to receive submissions". Of course publishing in a bottom tier venue is not going to boost an author's track record, but at least it's reasonably easy.
Finally, even in decently reputable journals/conferences, any serious research work can always be accepted... eventually. It might take a very long time, but if the methodology is correct, the state of art is properly covered, the motivation for the work is demonstrated, etc., in short if there is a real scientific contribution then it's very unlikely that the work would be rejected everywhere. Even in the case of negative results, e.g. the author attempted a new method and it failed, there is a legitimate contribution: provided it wasn't already done and the method makes sense (that's part of the scientific ground work), it's useful for the community to know that this method doesn't work. Additionally every rejection comes with reviews which explain why the paper is rejected, and normally addressing the shortcomings identified by the reviewers makes the paper more likely to be accepted next time.

"Is publication the only way researchers can validate their work?"

Not necessarily but the other ways I can think of are more specific to the field. For instance in computer science developing a software system which turns out to be successful in the scientific community or even beyond would actually prove the value of the work and certainly contribute to the author's reputation.


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How to tackle papers filled with unknown vocabulary
Background
I am having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around papers for my distributed systems class. I and two partners have to write a research paper, and we must cite around 20 research papers for the paper in our bibliography and also use them as a jumping off point for our material.
I am a computer-science student. I see a lot of stuff in the paper about discrete mathematics, and algorithms. I took a discrete mathematics class, however I have forgotten much of it by now, and I don’t know if I was too competent after leaving the class. I did well, but I don’t know how to apply outside of problems. I am new to distributed systems as well. Everything in the papers are so overwhelming.
Question
I am so used to thinking, speaking, and seeing things in vernacular. There’s so much jargon in these papers that I feel like I am reading a different language and I am so lost. I will read through multiple paragraphs or sentences and just not comprehend a thing. I don’t know how to grasp the main points from the abstracts and then pull those out of the rest of the paper.
How can I deal with this?

Distributed systems? Just wait until you get to paxos.

Ask your professor for help.  That’s what he or she is there for.  (But be warned – there may be no way around needing a real understanding of some basics in discrete math and in algorithms.)
When you say you are used to seeing things only in the vernacular, that means you have been getting away with only vaguely understanding them.  The jargon isn’t there to make it hard for you; it’s there to make everything precise.
When I have some reason to work on something for which I don’t know the background, I find a collaborator.  If I can’t, I give up and find something else to work on.  (Of course, this only works if there is something you have background for so that other people will have reasons to collaborate with you.  That’s why graduate school takes so long!)
Reading technical material is not like reading a trashy novel.  Seriously reading and understanding the details of a paper relevant to my research (in mathematics) takes about two hours per page.
You probably need to make up your own examples and work through some of the papers sentence by sentence, working out how each sentence works out for your examples.  Obviously you cannot go into that level of detail for every paper, but not all of them will be equally important to you as starting points.

I would also mention: Use wikipedia and similar sources; while they need not be precise and may use the notions slightly differently than the papers you read, you get the idea quickly and easily. The ability to quickly navigate to referred notions is also helpful.

I have had the joy of switching fields a few times and faced this each and every time. What worked for me may not work for you, but it's worth a try.
Take notes on the paper. Write down words and phrases you are unfamiliar with, draw interconnected diagrams if necessary. Pursue each and every reference that seems useful, and do the same with those. You'll start to build up an understanding as you do this. Then you'll learn something that knocks everything you built up back down and forces you to rebuild your understanding. This will likely happen again and again.
I tend to do this with highlighters and notes, but I guess more modern folks can use Mendeley and such.
Of course, if you happen to find a book discussing some of these ideas you are interested in, then read that. However, the edge of research is often far beyond the ideas available in a book by the time it is published. So the network of understanding you build up may end up having a few holes in it that you don't even realize are there. That is, unfortunately, the nature of the beast.
But keep at it, put the time in, and it will reward you. I wouldn't focus so much on the "I need 20 references." As that tends to make you insert references inappropriately. Instead, you should be familiar enough with the subject to be able to do so and insert them naturally into the paper. This isn't always possible for folks working on the edge of very small and/or very new fields, but you do the best that you can.


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Is it acceptable to take photos of slides at a conferences for private use?
Is it accepted/appropriate to take pictures of presentation slides at conferences for private use?
I am not talking about putting those pictures out in the public afterwards, I know this is illegal without consent of the presenter.
Should it matter, I am talking about math conferences.  And I am asking because I don't see anyone taking pictures.

Whether this is appropriate would be opinion-based. Whether it is accepted (or common) isn't. I have never seen anyone taking pictures, either. I know that I'd be a bit confused if somebody did that in my presentation. After all, I'll happily mail anyone who asks the presentation. If I wanted to keep the contents a secret, I'd hardly present them.

Just ask for the presentation, most of the people would sens it. Taking photos and using it without permission is not appropriate as my personal thought.

This answer seems to address your question.

@Stephan but why is it not accepted, even though you say that one shouldn't present in the first place if there were secrets to be kept? I wouldn't be taking pictures with flash and I wouldnt be using them except for my own archive. But okay, if asking for the slides per mail is common I'll do that instead

It is not accepted because it disturbs the presentation. The presentation is there for you, and the others in the room, to listen and ask questions.

You don't have to ask by mail, just talk to the presenter at one of the many breaks.

@StephanKolassa that's interesting, I've seen it many times. I think I once saw someone taking a photo of the 'no photos please' slide at the opening talk. I never saw them be removed, so I suppose if not acceptable, it wasn't unacceptable to the point of halting proceedings

In my experience, taking pictures of the presentation/slides is extremely common, at least in small computer science conferences. I rarely pay any attention to it. When I do, I just take it as a sign that somebody is actually interested in the talk.

@maarten I am surprised that picture taking could be considered disturbing when doing stuff on laptops without looking up once is absolutely commonplace. I don't see how it would disturb a presentation if I listen actively and then take pictures of the parts that are important to me. To me it's just a modern way of taking notes. Thanks though; after all my question was geared to find out what people think and feel about the issue, not to argue about the one true answer to the issue

@Phil Don't get me started on people who take pictures when it's explicitly forbidden... so many aren't even discreet about it, and unlike cameras with a viewfinder the display stands out in a darkened room.

I have seen it done many times, sometimes I would see people recording entire sessions on video. My guess is these are people coming from institutions that cannot afford to send many researchers abroad and the one person sent will pass the material to their colleagues in their home country.
Some conferences explicitly forbid recording presented material. See for example the American Association for Research in Otolaryngology (ARO):

ARO   does   not   permit   audio   or   photographic recording  of  any  research  data  presented  at  the meeting.

But that rule was not strictly enforced at the meetings I attended. So the answer is: it depends on the venue.

A lot of big conferences are like this. The biggest conference in my field expressly forbids all photos / videos and I even saw them stop the talks twice this year to tell people to stop taking photos. I don't agree with it personally, but that's how  it is. Emailing or approaching the people whose talks you'd like a copy of is the way forward, in that situation.

Your observation is right in general (but note that the situation may be a bit different if some big-shot gives a plenary - people may take pictures or may even ask for autograms).
If the conference does not have an official policy, I would suggest to try to ask the speaker beforehand. However, as explained in the comments, speakers usually are happy to send you their slides (or upload them somewhere anyway), so there seems to be little use in taking pictures of moderate quality of some slides while you can have the whole presentation in perfect quality.
As a matter of fact, at some of my first conferences I did take pictures during talks. This was when I was new to the community and not to record the slides but to help me remember who the speaker was and to identify them in the coffee-breaks even a few days later. I made sure that taking pictures did not disturb the talk in any way (e.g. no flash and all sounds turned off).

Interesting to read the other answers and the discussion in the comments, which suggest that there are very different practices around this. I'll add a different perspective, because in my field (a quantitative social science), it is absolutely commonplace to take pictures of slides and also to tweet them. In fact, this is often even encouraged. When I give a talk, I want to reach a large audience, and if someone is interested in it but cannot attend, it is just great if they can be reached in such a way.

I have often seen researchers at conferences taking pictures during talks. In my field (astrophysics) people often show complicated graphs and equations. If their work is not already published some people like to take photos of the slides to help them understand the work and discuss it with the speaker later. Most of the conferences I've been to will ask speakers to submit slides for an online repository to be shared with attendees later, so everyone will get the slides eventually. I have also emailed a speaker who gave a talk very relevant to my research a couple of days after a conference asking for a copy of the presentation to help me understand some of the notes I took at the time. They were perfectly happy to share their work but also asked that I keep it to myself until it was published.
I would say it is fine as an aid to memory, but it is polite to ask the speaker first or mention it if you chat to them later.

"it is polite to ask the speaker fist or mention it if you chat to them later." - just out of interest, would you consider the same to be true for other forms of storing the contents of the talk for later retrieval or pondering, such as taking notes with a pencil, or maybe even just remembering parts of the information conveyed?

@O.R.Mapper-  note-taking or remembering I would not consider necessary to mention to the speaker, as this is what everyone does at conferences in my experience. The difference with pictures is direct reproduction of someone else's work. It's like the difference between referencing, quoting and plagarism in papers or essays; discussing someone else's ideas is normally always acceptable, taking direct quotes is allowed so long as you give them credit, but using their words as your own is not ok.

Interesting. I do not really see the difference, as memory or notes can just as well directly reproduce parts of what is being presented. Arguably, these are even much more likely to produce quotes without proper attribution, as metainformation such as the author's name is typically found in the footer of slides and hence comes along automatically when taking photos. Clearly, this seems to be very field-dependent, as in my experience, taking photos of slides is what everyone does at conferences.

Actually all these comments are naive. It is completely inappropriate to take pictures. If you have sat behind an idiot who does you'd know why - its bad etiquette and interferes with the focus and thinking of all those around the idiot. A presentation should be listened to, not raising cameras obstructing others views and then distracting the thought processes further with noise and lights. Presentations are not there for taking pictures but actual communication - its not wonder there are no more questions these days after many presentations other than from the front.

There's really no need for that kind of language. What is good or bad etiquette varies wildly, you cannot just assume that your own preferences are universal. (I've moved to China recently-ish, and taking pictures of slides is very common here. It doesn't seem bad etiquette at all. On the other hand, blowing your nose is definitely bad etiquette. Would you like to read a screed about "idiots in presentations distracting everyone with their disgusting tissue trumpeting"?)

authors: احہٰمد رقہأويہ


text:
Elsevier open-access fee waived for subscribers?
I have recently been comparing publishers regarding their policies on double dipping (charging an open-access fee for publishing in a hybrid journal and then charging again a subscription fee). Many publishers (Springer, Wiley, Taylor and Francis) state they lower the subscription fees based on the amount of open-access articles to not charge their authors / readers / customers twice for the same article.
Elsevier has a different approach. They state:

Elsevier's policy is not to charge subscribers for open access articles and when calculating subscription prices only to take into account subscription articles – we do not double dip.
  [source]

But how is this implemented? The Elsevier support team was of no help when I asked there. I only got links to the help pages, which I have read forwards and backwards three times already. I even created an account and started a test submission to two of their hybrid journals but there wasn’t even a box to tick for selecting Open Access.
Has anyone made use of this policy and asked for a waiver based on a journal subscription?

In the help page you link to, there are three relevant subheadings:

For journals that publish only subscription articles
(snip)
For journals that publish only open access articles
(snip)
For journals that publish both subscription articles and open access
  articles:
Adjustments in individual journal subscription list prices are made in the same way as for journals that publish only subscription
  articles. We do not count open access articles when setting
  subscription prices for titles. Subscription prices are therefore not
  affected by the volume of open access articles published in the
  journal.
Adjustments in article publishing fees (APCs) are made in the same way as for articles that are published in journals that publish only
  open access articles. We do not count subscription articles when
  setting APC prices for articles. APC prices are therefore not affected
  by the volume of subscription articles published in the journal.

The first two sections explain how Elsevier set subscription prices for subscription-only (no OA) journals, and publication fees for OA-only journals.
The third section, on mixed OA/non-OA journals, refers to the previous two and explains

How subscription prices are set, taking OA articles into account (they are not counted in the calculation according to the first section)
How OA publication fees are set, taking subscriptions into account (they are not counted in the calculation according to the second section)

Bottom line: the idea is not that you get a waiver for your subscription based on how many OA articles you (or your school) has published in the journal. Nor is it that you get a reduced OA publication fee based on subscribing to the journal (yourself or through your school).
Rather, everything is lumped together. It's simply a mixed calculation.

I agree with Bottom line: the idea is not that you get a waiver for your subscription based on how many OA articles you (or your school) has published in the journal. since Elsevier states We do not count open access articles when setting subscription prices for titles However, what would Elsevier's policy is not to charge subscribers for open access articles (the quote in my original question) mean if not waiving the Open Access fee? This is why I was hoping for a case report from an author.

I think they mean that they don't charge subscribers "in the aggregate" - not that they don't charge individual subscribers.

@Stephan Kolassa has given the technically correct answer.  I will add that all of this is irrelevant to the vast majority of universities, since they don't pay individual journal prices.  They pay for an Elsevier bundle, and Elsevier forces them to keep the amount paid secret.  It seems clear that bundle prices are determined based on what Elsevier believes a university can afford (i.e., will submit to) and are not based on any formula involving numbers of articles.  Thus Elsevier is double-dipping.  The only way they could prove otherwise would be to have a transparent pricing scheme and to allow universities to make public the actual prices paid.
Note that Elsevier has gone far beyond this and even charged for access to articles whose authors paid an OA fee in some cases.

I am not a big fan of Elsevier either but our library is not ready to cancel the subscription yet and while we have it, I could make the best of possible additional value for authors (although Elsevier tries its best to hide them).Thank you for linking to the latest scandal. Regarding the pricing of subscription bundles, you might be interested in this study in journal bundles which was only possible due to the Freedom of Information Act in the US link.

No great fan of Elsevier either... but note that the proportion of OA papers in most hybrid journals is small enough (overall ~2% per STM 2015) that it would be hard to identify a "double dipping" effect on a bundle scale even with a clearly defined model, due to other sources of variation - inflation, subscription changes, etc.

@Andrew Agreed.  But my point is that their own tactics make it impossible to claim that they are not double-dipping.  Their "non-double-dipping" policy only affects individual journal subscription prices, which are not the real prices paid by the majority of subscribers.

Stephan is entirely correct: the OA APCs Elsevier charge are not directly dependent on whether or not you are a subscriber. The method used by Elsevier, and most publishers, is to reduce the overall subscription cost in proportion to the number of OA articles in a journal, not reduce the APCs in proportion to subscription spending. In theory, were a hybrid journal to go 50% OA, then the subscription price would be halved - which makes sense - but as David notes, the mechanics of this are pretty opaque. Most journals are not bought at list price, and things like varying numbers of articles year-on-year confuse things.
That said, there are projects which run the way you envisage it working - where APCs are reduced or waived for subscribers. The recent UK initiative to put substantial government funds into gold OA has led to a lot of pressure to come up with a system like this, because otherwise we would create a situation where UK universities spent very heavily on gold OA but only saw small reductions in the global subscription rates. Similar systems are being set up in Austria and elsewhere, and I suspect will become common over the next few years.
At the moment, two of the major publishers (Taylor & Francis and Wiley) offer such "offsetting" schemes. The T&F one is summarised here and the Wiley one here. With these, the subscribing institution gets a "rebate" voucher based on their subscription (or subscription + APC) spend over the previous year.
They can then use this to pay for future APCs. Elsevier do not have such a system, but JISC are strongly pushing major hybrid publishers to set them up, and I feel it's likely we'll see one for Elsevier within the next couple of years.
Edit: the RCUK Open Access Review, released today (26/3), has a little more detail (Appendix H) on the current offsetting projects - as well as T&F and Wiley, there are active projects from the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and Sage. The Sage one works exactly as the original post assumed - authors at subscribing institutions are charged a heavily discounted APC - while the others are a rebate/voucher system based on total spend.
Edit2: and as of 31/3, Springer have announced a very vague offsetting plan with JISC. No details on how it works yet but probably some kind of voucher system.

Official answer from Elsevier
After an exchange of six emails, I finally got a definite answer from someone at Elsevier, who is responsible for the Open Access Policy. Very clear in the fifth email:

Open Access is not free for authors whose institutions already receive a subscription.

Then I asked for an explanation of the statement I quoted in my original question. The answer in the sixth email was:

Elsevier's no double dipping policy means that when we calculate the subscription price of a hybrid journal (a subscription journal that offers a gold OA publishing option) we only look at subscription articles in calculating this price. Open access articles are not charged for as part of a subscription, as we recover the costs for publishing open access articles via an APC.
  Elsevier's no double dipping policy does not mean that we waive APC fees in these journals, as an APC is still required to cover the cost of publishing the article open access in the first instance. Instead what we don't charge for is access to the open access article once it is published.

Would have been too good to be true. From an inofficial source I also learned that Elsevier's internal guideline says to not give in to any kind of fee waiving / voucher / subscription vs APC calculation request from any institution. I guess they are afraid these news would get around very fast and then everyone would request it. If only every country would have a negotiation position such as JISC in the UK.

Very belatedly adding a comment to this Heike, but unfortunately JISC failed entirely in its efforts to get a decent deal from Elsevier.  See e.g. https://gowers.wordpress.com/2016/11/29/time-for-elsexit/

The two approaches you describe in the question are actually the same, just worded differently.
Subscription prices are judged based on several factors, such as:

How many articles are published on average?
Is there a print subscription? If so, is the journal printed in color?
How many issues are there a year?
How many pages are there on average?

You can see an illustration of where the pricing comes from in this article:

Elsevier has disputed the claims, saying that its average list price per article is $10 (£6.50), which is "bang on the industry mean", and that volume-based discounts bring the effective price per article down to $2, which is "slightly below the industry average".

What Springer, Wiley, Elsevier, etc as alluded to in the OP are saying is that if articles are published open access, then they're simply not counted as "normal" articles. For example if a journal publishes 50 articles/year and about 20% of those are open access, then the subscription price is lowered to that of a 40-article/year journal. Of course, this kind of price reduction can only be done once it's established that the journal will continue to receive ~20% OA articles, since if that number drops they could easily be making a loss - remember that subscription prices are set the year prior, and cannot be varied in the current year regardless of how many or how few OA articles one publishes.
If there's a difference at all in what the four publishers are saying, it's that Elsevier is giving the method, while Springer / Wiley / Taylor & Francis are giving the result.
In all cases, subscribing to a journal does not mean you get to publish open access for free. If this were the case, everyone would subscribe, since the OA cost is typically higher than the subscription price. For example, for the journal Discrete Mathematics, the OA article processing fee is $1500 before taxes, while the personal subscription price is $360.


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What can I do if my advisor threatens to take away authorship of my undergraduate research work?
My mentor professor has threatened to take authorship of my work away from me because of a disagreement. Can she do this? Is this plagiarism on her part for not including me as an author? I wrote the original paper, before editing. She never provided a syllabus and kept tacking on more and more things for me to do. I told her she was taking advantage of me and was told to go to the head of the department. She now says that I can no longer get a grade above a D, even though I am an A student and won an award for my work at a symposium. I have no idea what to do about this situation.

Assuming this is a genuine question, you should go to the dept chair immediately and say what you have said above, with all possible evidence of what you say. (Hopefully, or maybe not, this question is not a troll prank...)

What's the disagreement about (roughly, not details)? Is there something you are not telling us that may be relevant to the case?

I'm 99% sure we're not hearing the whole story here. Among other things, a professor trying to steal your work and publish it would be unlikely to be foolish enough to also give you a poor grade at the same time.

Did she put any of these threats in an e-mail? When you were writing the paper did you consult with her over the e-mail? Take this evidence and escalate the issue. Note the comments above, where random people who are not friends of the professor in question do not believe you. Department head is probably a friend of the prof, so even less likely to believe what you say. So don't just go in there all guns ablazing, take your evidence and talk it through calmly. I would not make too many accusations, just say that you are concerned and if he/she can help you resolve the issue. And have evidence.

What is this disagreement about? When you are just saying you are disagreeing this sounds outrageous! However, I can think of some circumstances where it's justified. Did that first draft contain plagiarism, and you disagree? Then it seems like the professor is justified in taking action against it, and if you seriously believe it's not plagiarism, then go to the department chair. Did you falsify data, or does it look like you did? To help you, I'd have to know more about what the disagreement is.

she told me my first draft was bad and she rewrote it for submission to a journal. The three options that were given to me via email "1) (Proceed as planned and meet deadline, maintain authorship, remain in course) 2) (Abandon paper and complete alternative assignments and final presentation, lose authorship, remain in curse with possibility of up to a B if the work is really exceptional)... 3) (Discontinue any work on the course/research project, no authorship, D in course)"

i sopke to the department head and he did not seem to think that her denying me authorship in my own work was a bad decision on her part. He told me it was all about the % of my writing in the article but i think he was trying to minimize the damage that she did by what she emailed me.

the disagreement was about me not being able to physically meet with her  during a week that i had extensive field experience...i just feel like this is completely out of bounds for her to do, she has been teaching for only 3 years and i am only the second undergraduate researcher tshe has worked with

I think more information is needed to make this question answerable: I am confused about the idea of a syllabus for a paper, and more generally about the circumstances in which this paper was written.

If you are the original author, you have authorship rights and your advisor cannot take that away from you. The worst that she can do is refuse to coauthor with you and take her own name off the paper, not yours, although if she did that, you should remove her contributions from the paper.
At your school, there should be a number of people who will advocate on your behalf, and I would start there. The dean of students and the department secretary are usually good first stops. If that fails, you could consider going to the school dean, the provost, or conceivably even the university president (although if it got that far, you are likely in the wrong or have a terrible program). If your advisor publishes without you as a co-author, you can seek redress with the editor of the journal where she publishes.
If you already know that this is an issue, you need to start getting your "ducks in a row." A first step would be to 'publish' your paper as a working paper somewhere. Where you do that is going to be discipline specific, but SSRN is a good choice if you are in the social sciences, and Academia.com has this ability as well. If you do that, make sure you give appropriate credit, too. Two wrongs don't make a right, as they say.
Try to ensure that as many people as possible can attest that the idea is yours, and if you still have the original graded by the professor make digital copies, preserve the original at all costs. In the end, you don't want it to be your word against hers, and the more evidence and witnesses you have, the better. Rightly or wrongly, other faculty are more valuable than students, so show it to as many faculty as possible.
A few words of warning.

What you are talking about is plagiarism, and could even be intellectual property theft. Universities take this very seriously, and it can end careers—both yours and your advisor's. Consequently, things can get very dicey very quickly. Be absolutely certain before you start making claims publicly that you are in the right: talk to someone you trust outside the department and outside the discipline and show them your work with the work you are doing jointly with your advisor; verify your sources; know your allies. Once this goes beyond you and your advisor, and perhaps a small cadre in the department, it is the intellectual equivalent of going to war.
Be prepared to come to the table. If this isn't published yet, then there is still hope for a negotiated solution. Know what your objectives are, and use your position to get those objectives, and don't get hung up on abstracts. For example, if you are really hoping to get into law school, then being author may not be as helpful as something else, and be prepared to accept that something else. Make no mistake, what I am talking about is corruption, but as an undergraduate, it is highly unlikely to be worth hanging yourself out to dry over something like this, if there is a negotiated compromise. On the other hand, if you are hoping for a PhD and a career in the field, then authorship can be crucial, and you may need to go to the mat over this so as not to be seen as a pushover or a flake in the future.
Don't get caught up in office politics. If your advisor has enemies, and she likely does—especially if this is typical of her treatment of others—departmental enemies will likely try to use you as a weapon to get to her. While it may be gratifying to do so at first, if you let that happen your interests will fall by the wayside as the whole issue becomes about whatever stupid issue is driving the office politics, and not about your intellectual and students rights.
Don't get steamrolled, but don't overstate your contribution. This is hard as an undergraduate, because you definitely don't have as much information about the discipline as your advisor, and it can be tempting to think "My idea changed the world!" whereas it is only a minor contribution. Know what you have done, and don't get pushed off that, but being seen as someone who is self aggrandizing or consistently over-estimates their own importance will hurt your cause. There are already people who devalue contributions because of who the contributor is, and you don't need to give them any ammunition, or give your potential allies pause because they are unsure of the reliability of your perceptions.

I'm putting this as a comment, since it doesn't belong in the answer. I have seen an entire, world famous department destroyed through a process related to this exact issue. The careers of neither the advisor nor the advisee, and even many of the ancillary characters, never fully recovered. In that case, I'm pretty sure plagiarism did not occur, but once that ball got rolling it didn't matter. Tread carefully and learn the lesson of Pyhrrus of Epirus! You are dealing with people's lives, including your own, and while the situation may not be of your making, the end of the story will be.

Usually a university will have a policy specifically about publications and student projects. I'd  recommend beginning by finding their policy. But in general, yes, she can do this (all personal ethics aside). Assuming she does not use any substantial part of what you wrote, it is not plagiarism. As a student project, your work is generally considered like that of an RA (again, this is legally, not morally), so you have no requirement to be listed as an author of the paper. Assuming, of course, that anything you wrote is not being used in the publication.
My recommendation would be to try and discuss it with your previous advisor, and if they are not willing to discuss it, or you cannot reach an agreement, ask your advisor if they will get the chair of the department to mediate (she'll be less offended than if you just go over her head). If she says no to that, discuss it with the chair yourself. But be clear on exactly what you want to get out of it. Whether that's a chance to write it yourself (which doesn't legally make you first author as a warning), or merely inclusion as an author on any final publication. Always keep your end goal in mind in all conversations.

"As a student project, your work is generally considered like that of an RA (again, this is legally, not morally), so you have no requirement to be listed as an author of the paper." - this makes no sense. Legality is irrelevant. Authorship is based on academic ethics, not legal standards - there are no laws in jurisdictions I know about regarding who gets authorship credit on academic papers. And having been an RA on the project is also irrelevant to the authorship question.

"Legally" was being used as shorthand for "not against university policy or any ethics standards". Just a shortcut. And yes, being an RA is irrelevant to authorship which is why I was using it as an Analogy. Sorry if that wasn't clear. But to also clarify, this is speaking about 'general' university policies, some universities may differ in their own policies.

Using someone's intellectual contributions without crediting them is certainly against university policy in many universities, and against ethics standards in virtually all fields. So I'd have to strongly disagree with  "not against university policy or any ethics standards".

I don't even think it's just university policy. In a scientific ethics course administrators explained that the rules stem from the granting agencies (NIH/NSF). By law, any data that is generated via grant money is owned by the principal investigators on the grant. Thus the "student's data" is actually the PI's. They technically don't have to credit you for it because it's not yours. Of course the whole class had many questions and were furious, but what I got out of the fury is that it really is up to your adviser. In mathematics it may be different because there's no data ownership issue.

We're discussing undergraduate research work here. As my own stipulation is that they are not using anything of the students writing, then what intellectual contribution are we discussing here? Undergraduate projects are almost always a project of the advisors (and their own ideas), and most universities have a policy specifically outlining authorship for students on faculty research. Sure, many things would be different if it was, for example, a PhD students project and their own unique research questions and methods, but I certainly see no evidence of that.

I agree with you. I was noting that even if the student conducts an experiment and generates data which is in the paper, the student still does not have some legal right to claim authorship. The only way that it is plagiarism is if they contributed unique intellectual ideas (came up with new methods, experiments, etc.). Since the OP talks about syllabus' and "tacking on things to do", it sounds like he/she was given protocol/steps to do, which he/she did, and gave the results. If this is the case, even if the results are physical, those are not the student's results, they are the PI's.

Undergrads can certainly make intellectual contributions, and I don't know how you can assume that the OP didn't. I just co-authored a paper with a high school summer research student. The first paragraph of this answer, which suggests that students somehow have less of a right to be credited with authorship based on their student status, is irresponsible advice.

I didn't think you were disagreeing, we were just typing at the same time so I hadn't seen your post yet. And good point about if it was a grant project.

@Chris ownership of data is orthogonal to academic authorship. (Technically the institution receiving the grant, not the PI, owns the data in most cases.)

I publish with my undergrad students all the time as well. Am I required to though? No. But I will agree that I feel morally obliged to include the student in the pub process and even give them a crack at first authorship. That still doesn't mean I have to which was the op's original question. And it is very rare for an undergrad to run a supervised project that was their own original idea. It is almost always a derivative of the supervisors own work, and often part of an already ongoing project due to time constraints (though that may differ between fields).

@ff524 I thought data ownership came in when talking about authorship because in order to have to claim authorship you have to demonstrate that you made a contribution, but since you don't own the data you cannot point to some result and say "I made that figure" since that is not yours. Instead you have to demonstrate that you had some further intellectual contribution (i.e. came up with the idea to make this figure and argue from this direction). Honestly I still don't know the policy/law behind this too well and should probably ask this as its own question.

-1 for suggesting that this is in any way something the advisor can do. If a student of yours does some original work and you publish a paper based on tvis without including them as an author (assuming the work would have merited authorship had they not been a student), then you have committed academic misconduct of a serious nature, whether or not you use none of the writing of the student.

@tobias I completely agree with your statement. But I'll point out you've added the caveat "if (the student)... does some original work" (although I'll add in that you're missing the word substantial which is usually in relevant policies). If you'll notice in the comments, I do only mean this in the case where the research is a derivative of the academics. If it's the students own novel research, then it's a completely different story. But given we are discussing undergrad research, I've assumed that is not the case (but obviously, we don't know unless the Op hops in and tells us)

Your answer is phrased in absolute terms, so I have no idea what you are claiming I am missing. The word substantial is unnecessary given my addition that the work would have merited coauthorship from a non-student.


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How to start doing undergraduate research in mathematics when I have limited support from my professors?
I have no research experience and I'm in my junior year of college. I'm very interested in doing research in any field at this point (combinatorics or linear algebra would be especially preferred) and I fully intend to apply for math grad school during my senior year.
I have a decent amount of coursework (abstract algebra [groups, rings, fields and special topics], analysis [real, complex, functional, measures], linear algebra, topology, combinatorics, number theory, partial differential equations, and more). I want to do research this summer (even without funding if need be) and throughout my senior year (I was declined to every REU that I applied for, unfortunately) and I plan to work alone since I have no other options (that I know of).
There aren't any student projects going on at my own college (except for one on wheels) and my professors (5 total though one is leaving and another will be on sabbatical) only seem willing to help if I provide a research topic and if that topic is related to their own expertise (I don't fit in this category) which means that I've had no help so far. I don't know where to look since most journals and blogs seem to be deeply invested into very complicated projects where my ability is likely not high enough to understand. There is no graduate program at my college so there are no grad students.
My questions is this: Where can I find potential research projects or at least a start? How does one decide on what they want to do? I know people from other colleges but they were simply given projects to work on so they didn't know how to find on otherwise.

For reference, here's the list of other questions tagged both "mathematics" and "research-undergraduate". You may find some of them helpful

Any chance you know those students at other colleges well enough that you could suggest a collaboration on one of their projects? And what is a project "on wheels?"

Perhaps get together with some (could be just one) other like-minded students and hold your own weekly or bi-weekly seminar in which you take turns presenting things to each other. These could be short articles of interest found by flipping through MAA journals, Math. Gazette, etc. in the library, or it could be surveying one specific topic (e.g. Cantor-Bendixson theorem in various contexts, inclusion–exclusion principle in various contexts, how to solve cubic and quartic equations), or it could involve everyone working through some appropriate book.

@ff524 In fact it seems a dupe of this question you answered: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/59953/19607

I think this can only be explained with a personal story. I did my undergraduate at a small liberal arts institution and because of that there were not many professors to choose from. However, I knew who I wanted to work with since his general area (dynamical systems) always interested me, although we had never met (since he was on sabbatical for awhile).
I sent him an email listing 3 different projects I had thought of, and he emailed me back saying he wouldn't do those, but he had a project I should do (climate mathematics, never even thought about it before). I was kind of taken aback, but in the end I thought, well this is the best I am getting, and took the project.
When we finally met the following year, I was still a little skeptical, but as we started working through the problems I found out how interesting the subject was. I learned a lot through his mentorship, and gave chalkboard talks on different papers / analysis results (working out of Courant/Hilbert and Wittaker) every few weeks and a few months in I was very fond of the project and was spending all of my time on it just because of how interesting it was, and the story ends with it turning into a good publication.
Turns out the professor had the idea planned out during sabbatical. He was working with a research team there where many ideas were created, and the papers I worked from were recent results by newly minted PhDs he was working with. He had even published a paper on how to teach undergraduates climate science: this man had though it through!
There are a few morals to the story. First of all, when you're young in your research career, you don't know what is interesting yet, and a quick read of the literature is not enough to gauge this. Also, if plenty of people are researching a subject, it's probably pretty interesting and worth a try. Lastly, for research with undergraduates, the good mentors would like you to go with their ideas because they have a plan for how to teach it / work through the problem.
All together, I would say find a mentor you respect and trust and just ask them to take you under their wing. It may not be the project you had in mind, but you will learn a lot more this way, and you'll be surprised how interesting the project is.

It sounds like it would be easiest to do research with one of those professors. I'm not sure why you say you don't fit in the category of one of the professors expertise when you seem to have a general range of knowledge. I would look up your professors literature, checking for what's popular and what's interesting to you. Use those ideas while looking at related papers and try to come up with a problem to explore. Often they won't want too grandiose a problem when working with students because they want you to be able to do some of the work. Dave Renfro offers good advice. In flipping through materials likely to have student works, you can get an idea of what's appropriate.
If the professors are hard to approach, show them you've done your pre-research and maybe even attempted some things. If you need help getting to that last stage, perhaps come back to SE with more detailed information, or to some mathematics forums asking for some hints/direction.


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Applying for Post Doc position with already one in hand
I have finished my PhD in Germany recently and am applying for post doc positions here. I have an offer from one branch of a reputed research organization among the other institutes of the same organization that I applied to.
The people at the institute have initiated the process of processing the contract. Although I like the work that they are doing, I am looking for replies from other institutes since they are in a location that is preferred by me.
I am now in a fix that if they have already initiated the process, would I be able to attend interviews by the other institutes of this organization or does the hiring process reflect in the database and would I not be called for any more interviews at all.
If it helps, the organization is of the likes of Fraunhofer, MPI, Leibniz institutes.

They would be unhappy if they expect you to start and prepare the contract for you, and then you back out.  They might be telling others no already.

There is no "database of all people who have applied and whose job offers are being processed by some potential employer". This doesn't mean that not one person or the other may mention that to one of their colleagues, but it's not like your application is going to be automatically rejected.

Typically different institutes, even within the same organization (e.g. the Max-Planck or Fraunhofer group), don't formally exchange information on applicants to their positions, so you don't need to be afraid that they won't consider your application just because you're in the process of getting hired somewhere else. However, you shouldn't underestimate informal information exchange - if you're in a small field, the PIs who want to employ you may well talk with others about that post-doc they are going to hire soon.
Moreover, if you've already explicitly agreed to an offer at one place, and they are preparing the contract, it perceived as very impolite to back out of that. Legally, it's still possible to do, and if it makes a really big difference for you, then you should probably do it, but be prepared that it will annoy the person you agreed to working for.


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What is the rationale for not allowing auditing students to participate in class discussions?
I have been considering returning to university to continue my education and further my knowledge. I have a strong interest in finance, but before I dive in to a second degree/diploma at this stage in life, I want to take one or two courses to see if I can get back in to real coursework.
Having been out of university for many years, my initial thought was to take one or more courses through continuing education as a place to start. I remembered that you can audit courses (typically at half the cost of registering in a course directly). I was reading through the Audit Regulations and I was surprised to see that participation in classroom discussion is not allowed.

The auditing student shall not participate in class discussions, assignments, examinations or in laboratory or like parts of the course.

I understand that that as you are not registered in the course, you would not be able to participate in exams for credit and/or receive graded assignment etc... however the inability to participate in class discussion was a little disappointing.
Based on the Business classes I took while in university, the classroom discussions are the core of most courses. What is the rationale for not allowing auditing students to participate in class discussions?

Weird, I personally have the opposite policy... I only allow auditors if they agree to participate fully in the class, submit assignments, etc.

Firstly the proper spelling is "rationale" not "rational." At the universities I've attended, professors usually have been very accommodating towards auditors. Many times, the auditing students had to submit assignments (though exams were optional since it is extra stress). I get the feeling that this might be a bit of a special case. I don't get the rationale behind it, honestly. You're robbing a student of one of the best parts of the classroom setting. Professors often bend university rules.. I would ask those professors you wish to take courses from if they object to you participating.

@Cameron, thank you for the correction. Further research suggests this policy may just be a University of Calgary policy. Other universities such as UofBC and UofM do not have similar documented restrictions. That being said, any thoughts on why they would list such a restriction?

@ChrisBaxter It could be some sort of "fairness" policy. Universities can often go a little bit overboard with such things. Auditing students don't pay the full price of a course and presumably don't need the course for their degree plan. To keep them from taking the full experience away from full-paying students, I can see them instituting this policy to keep students from taking advantage of the auditing privilege. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me though. If it is indeed a problem, perhaps it might be better to register as a post-bacc student.

@CameronWilliams that auditing students don't pay the full price is also a university-specific thing.  At every institution I've been at, audits are billed exactly like regular courses, presuming you do an official audit that goes on your record (as opposed to the officially discouraged unofficial audits where you just ask the prof if you can sit in and doesn't go on record anywhere).

Note: This answer is mainly for institutions where auditors only pay a nominal fee.
From the institution's perspective, auditors are freeloaders. The nominal payment (if they pay anything at all) is trivial compared to the tuition income from paying students. They would like to make their internal cost of hosting auditors as low as possible.
If auditors were (as part of university policy) required to hand in assignments or participate in discussion, then professors could argue that they need more resources.

For example, if a professor gets an additional teaching assistant (TA) for each additional 20 students, and there was a class with 155
  paying and 10 auditors, they could put in a request for 9 TAs rather
  than 8. The department class enrollment would also increase by 10
  which might mean more resources to the department, depending on the
  university allocation policy.

So the usual university policy is that auditors are ghosts or non-persons -- they do not count for teaching enrollments or resources. In order to argue this, the administration has to make clear that auditors receive no services.
That being said, many faculty such as ff524 and myself do not like "dead bodies" in the classroom and require our auditors to do the coursework and participate in discussion. This is our own prerogative and because we are going against university policy, we could not then turn around and ask for more TAs or claim hardship. We do this in the spirit of providing the best classroom experience for all.

From the perspective of paying students, auditors who are participating in the class also seem like freeloaders and can create resentment. This is usually ameliorated by the restriction that auditors do not receive transcripts or grades for their participation in courses. That said, the other business students are keenly aware that "discussion" is the core benefit of the classes and may resent your over-active participation. You'll need to work it out with the faculty member (and perhaps your peers in the class) if you want an exception to the policy.

I would hope someone paying to audit a course (granted at 50% of regular fee) without possibility of course credit would not be considered a freeloader. A student who chooses to audit a course would be there to learn the material and expand their knowledge.  That being said, thank you for the insight; definitely sounds like the best course of action would be to speak to the specific professor(s) directly.

Even if you're paying 50%, you're paying a'la carte for a single course. The degree students who are paying full fare for multiple years are the real customers that must be kept happy in this equation, from the university's perspective.

Thank you again for the insight; although I personally find that hard to understand. As an additional note, in this case you are correct that I would be initially taking the courses a'la carte, the same rule would still apply if I was a full-time student auditing an extra course for similar reasons.

At many universities (including mine), auditors pay full tuition.  At some universities (including mine), auditors actually receive a "grade" of "successful audit" or "unsuccessful audit", and the instructor has the option of requiring students to participate in class to recevie a grade of "successful audit."  I think audit policies vary a lot between institutions.

thanks, I clarified my answer Brian. You may want to write your own from the perspective of an institution that charges full price.

Just to give the alternate perspective from institutions that charge the same amount for auditing...
When I have students that audit my class, they get a grade on their transcript if they show up for x% of classes.  If they don't, it doesn't show up at all.  Alternatively, there may be two designators, one for having shown up and one for not; one grade regardless of attendance; or there may be no record provided, transcript or otherwise.
I'm expected to treat my audit students exactly the same as any other student: I grade their work, they have access to the online portions of the course, and they participate in class and group work as any other student.  In practice, some of them have skipped exams because ultimately it doesn't really matter for them.
And it's this "it doesn't really matter for them" bit that has a (low) potential for causing problems.  If you have a class with lots of group-based work, and one student has no repercussions for not doing their work, you're setting the stage for possible trouble.  Likewise, students who audit (in my own experience, YMMV) tend to be the ones most interested in the material and ask a lot more questions.  Unfortunately, their questions sometimes aren't necessarily the same ones that a student who is going to be assessed on the material would be asking.  Entertaining too many of their questions may potentially hurt the learning experience of other students.
I use wiggle words in the above because it's all very much in the hypothetical as (a) every instutition I've been at charges full tuition for auditing and doesn't forbid participation and (b) good classroom management could easily work around anything that might pop up anyways.

At my institution, community members and alumni can audit classes for free. Normally, having 40-50 year olds in the classroom can be a good experience for all, but not always so I screen them carefully. Allowing them in is at my discretion.

@RoboKaren yeah, we have a similar set up, but they can also opt to take the classes for credit for free. They are absolute last in line for registering. My department's courses fill up very quickly (yay hiring freezes), so I've not actually ever had such a student, credit or audit. But it's a good point, they are out there.


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How do I get 3 recommendation letters when I have only worked with one advisor?
I did my Masters (by Research) from a premier institute in India. I had taken 6 courses and the rest of the time was dedicated to research. All the research and collaboration was done only with my advisor.
Now, almost all the universities ask for 3 recommendation letters for PhD applications. But I have only worked with my advisor and published a paper too. So my advisor would be able to write me a good recommendation letter based on his experience with me.
How do I manage to get the other two recommendation letters? I have done only courses with other faculties and no small projects. I am aware that based on just courses and grades, these professors might not be able to write good recommendation letters.

Most of your profs could write decent recommendation letters, so don't worry about getting letters that actually harm your application. And thus, your job is to pick the three letter writers who will write you the best letters—which means you can kind of let go of worrying about the absolute goodness of each letter.

It doesn't have to be only people who've observed your research work.
Pick instructors who know you from classes where you did well. Best if it was a small upper division class with especially relevant content and where the instructor got to know you well, e.g., in office hours, and can report some detailed observations of your work and ability.

Good PhD candidates aren’t necessarily the ones who have lots of research experience.
What you want are referees who will not repeat information that you already supply on your CV or that is already supplied in your transcript.  Given that you are early in your career, nobody expects you will necessarily have 3 referees that will speak to your research activity.
Presumably there are others who can speak to your work ethics, industry, autonomy, punctuality, resourcefulness, tenacity and other qualities that would make you a good PhD student.
Such people might include professors from which you took courses (especially if you did projects or term papers in a course), your department chair, even people with whom you recently worked outside of academia.
Remember: supervisors don’t necessarily look for “machines”, but for humans who will interact constructively with others.  Maybe you had a chance to do some marking in a course, or ran a tutorial or a lab section in a course; the instructor for this course can function as a referee.   Maybe you worked part time in a shop and the manager can speak to your ability to deal with people or customers politely, correctly and efficiently.

This fills me with good hope.