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Author of main paper vs author of appendix
I'm a PhD student, more specifically in the field of geometric analysis and physics. Recently, I solved a problem that was suggested to me by my advisor. The problem is to sharpen some nontrivial bounds from her preprint with her collaborator (both of them are big named experts in my field). The result I obtained allows them to fully generalize the main theorem in their preprint. Now, my advisor suggests putting my work in the appendix of their paper so they can use it in the main text.
My questions/concerns are:

My work could be good as a follow-up separate paper (either solo or joint with my advisor, as her contribution of ideas and discussion are also significant). Would that be more beneficial to the career of a young scholar like me to have a separate paper than being an appendix author? Or, is it equally good to just contribute in the appendix of an interesting work?

Since their preprint is relatively new, it will look more reasonable (from their perspective as well as the referee's) to put my work with them to obtain a full result rather than two separate papers. The situation would have been a lot different if I happened to solve the problem later, say after their preprint is published or in the final form, in which case my work has to be published as a separate result. So if having a separate paper is better than being an appendix author, am I hurting myself by solving a problem quickly? I know this question sounds silly, but I never thought of any strategy in this game of paper publishing.

Since I don't know the techniques in topology/knots very well from two other sections that are used to prove the main theorem (or rather I did not contribute in those parts), claiming to be a coauthor might not be reasonable. However, I wonder in what situation similar to mine one should qualify to claim coauthorship?

Sorry for the long story, but I think these are the minimal words that describe my situation and questions.

Here's a related (not duplicate!) question explaining the practice: Appendices to other people's papers - what's the incentive?

Curious, I had no idea about the existence of this practice. Never seen it on my field.

Having publications allows you to pursue a career in research. An appendix does not look as good as a paper, but an appendix in a super-journal is better than a paper in a so-so-journal. Depending on the journal, you might have to declare author contributions, in which case there would be a strong case for co-authorship.
Since you contributed materially and substantially to a main result of the paper, you have claims for co-authorship. How strong your claims are depends on the centrality of the result to the rest of the paper.
Even in Mathematics, joint papers with Ph.D. students are common and some universities actually value them more than solo-papers. The fact that you have not been offered co-authorship makes we wonder whether your advisor is under some pressure by her co-author or whether there are other complications. It could be that the result you obtained is one of those that seem trivial once it is explained. In this case, your advisor might think that your contribution is not as important as you think it is, but rather more in the category of finding an embarrassing error in her work.
You are probably too close to the situation to have a clear view. If your relationship with your advisor is good, seek a clarifying talk. In general, by entering an advisor - advisee relationship, you express trust in the judgment of your advisor. You can simply express your fears that your first (?) publishable result is not going to be as valuable to you as it would be if you had waited until publication.
If the paper without your result is already submitted, then things are even more complicated, since editors do not look kindly on submissions that are being "improved" in the process of handling the submission. (This causes a lot of work for them and a referee working through a paper is not fond on being told that they have to start over.) This might be another reason for making you author of an appendix.

You really need to talk to your advisor and ask why you cannot be a co-author. Just be nice.

Addressing your question 1
I can think of several arguments supporting both the separate paper idea and the appendix option:
Arguments in favor of an appendix

Since your adviser proposed it, on the assumption that they are experienced, have a clear view of the situation, and have your best interests at heart, that suggests that going along with their suggestion is the best course of action.

Even if they don't fully have your best interests at heart, going against their suggestion might antagonize them, reduce the chance of the fruitful collaboration you have with them continuing, and/or lead to other not so good effects. All other things being equal, it is best not to get into conflicts with one's adviser.

The appendix will likely end up being published in a better journal than your contribution written up as a stand-alone paper.

The appendix will make you an official collaborator (though not a coauthor) of two big named experts in the field, creating an association that may be impressive to other people from the field.

Arguments in favor of a stand-alone paper

In my entire math career I've only seen one — maybe two — papers that had an appendix authored by a person who was not listed as a coauthor of the paper. In other words, it is a highly nonstandard type of authorship credit. That means that if you choose the appendix option, it will complicate things for you whenever you are communicating your achievements to other people, requiring various asterisks, footnotes, and complicated explanations (with attendant risks of misunderstanding) in your publication list and when you discuss your publication record. In other words, it goes against the KISS principle, and I would probably avoid this type of arrangement myself if at all possible for that reason alone.

Because the arrangement is so non-standard, I can't help but wonder what your adviser is thinking exactly in proposing this idea, and whether they in fact have your best interests at heart, or are proposing what is best for them. Another possibility is that they are simply a kind of person who is well-intentioned but isn't very thoughtful about things having to do with real life and who sometimes has ideas that don't make a lot of practical sense. Thus, although I can't say for sure that their proposal doesn't actually make sense, some caution seems warranted.

To counter the point mentioned above that "the appendix will likely end up being published in a better journal than your contribution written up as a stand-alone paper", it is not at all clear that being an author of an appendix (who is not listed as a coauthor of the paper it accompanies) in a very impressive journal will be perceived as a greater achievement than being a sole author of a paper published in a less impressive journal. Depending on the specific journals, the opposite could be true.

Being a sole author of a stand-alone work sends a clear signal about your ability to do independent research. So it's good to have at least some single-authored papers on your CV. (However, not everybody seems to care about this, and I have seen plenty of successful mathematicians who have very few solely authored papers or even none at all. And I should mention that many of my own papers are solely authored, so that's possibly one reason why I think that such a thing is impressive :-)).

Bottom line. There is no obviously correct answer here, only trade-offs between different things you can be trying to optimize for.

Addressing your other questions

[...] it will look more reasonable (from their perspective as well as the referee's) to put my work with them to obtain a full result rather than two separate papers [...] So if having a separate paper is better than being an appendix author, am I hurting myself by solving a problem quickly?

I partially disagree with your premise that "it will look more reasonable [etc]". Perhaps from your adviser's point of view that results in the cleanest way to publish what they consider to be an important research contribution. Certainly it's nicer when the research literature is all published in a nicely organized way with conceptually related results appearing together instead of being fragmented across multiple papers; so possibly your adviser is (reasonably) guided by that type of consideration. However, it's also true that everyone in the business understands that contributions made by different people usually appear in separate papers, and that as messy and annoying as that may be, that's just how academic publishing works. So I'm pretty sure that no reasonable referee will criticize you for publishing your contribution as a stand-alone paper, or think that doing things this way is "less reasonable".
That being said, there are indeed situations where you may be "hurting yourself by solving a problem quickly", but for a different reason. The reason is that the importance of an open problem usually grows over time. If author A publishes a conjecture or a partial result and then author B proves the conjecture or improves the partial result a short time later, most people would conclude that the improvement wasn't that difficult. But if the problem stands open for 10 years, or 20 years, or 50 years etc, then people are much more impressed by the later improvement, since they assume that since it took 50 years to come up with, that must mean that many people tried and failed to achieve that improvement, and that therefore there must be some very ingenious idea that was required to achieve it.
Of course, it's not practical to delay publication of your ideas by 50 years. Even if you delay by one or two years (which still has some hypothetical benefit of making your contribution seem at least a little bit more impressive), you run the very real risk of being scooped by someone else who doesn't mind appearing to solve a problem immediately after it was presented.
So, all things considered, while there is a little bit of a perverse incentive in this type of situation where you might get a bigger reward for taking more time to do something, I would not recommend ever intentionally solving a problem slowly when you can solve it right away. Still, your question about this is actually very reasonable and not silly at all.

Since I don't know the techniques in topology/knots very well from two other sections that are used to prove the main theorem (or rather I did not contribute in those parts), claiming to be a coauthor might not be reasonable. However, I wonder in what situation similar to mine one should qualify to claim coauthorship?

It's hard to know for sure without knowing the details, but from your description of what happened, I'd say you likely deserve coauthorship merely based on the fact that "the result you obtained allows them to fully generalize the main theorem in their preprint". Like I said, I think the idea of an appendix without coauthorship is so non-standard in math publishing that I would never suggest it to anyone except in some very unusual set of circumstances (and likely never to a student), and I wonder what your adviser is thinking in suggesting it. Coauthorship is the standard approach for the scenario you are discussing, although a separate publication bearing only your name, or your name and that of your adviser, is also a valid way to proceed.
As for the fact that you don't know some of the techniques the other collaborators are using, that is completely irrelevant; for example, I am a coauthor on many papers that have sections where I didn't know the techniques my collaborators were using. Indeed, some might say that this is precisely the point of collaborating with other people! You get to create something that combines the knowledge and expertise of several people and achieves something none of the individual contributors could have created on their own. If everyone knew the same techniques or had the same ideas there would be no need for a group effort.

Maybe you should consider that your collaboration with your advisor does not start and does not end with this paper, so maybe it is not worth making a federal case out of this issue. The advisor's suggestion does not seem unfair to me (if I understand it correctly that you will be credited as the author of the appendix): you participated in the appendix and you are credited as the author of the appendix. Also, as others implied, it is not quite clear how publishable the material of the appendix would be as a separate article.

Can they make you the primary or secondary author in the paper they want to include your findings as an appendix? In that case, you may agree to keep it as an appendix. But not making you a coauthor and wanting to include your results in their paper as an appendix is fishy to me.
Update: To clarify some of the confusion expressed in the comment, I'm adding text below. I also added this part as a follow-up comment.
Depending upon contribution to the paper, OP can request to be the major author or secondary coauthor. Alternatively, OP can ask to write a short note on the published paper stating that the contributions from all authors are equal and the order of the author's name in the paper does not correspond to the contribution effort. Or, something similar. This is a fair way to credit OP's contribution if their advisors want to use their work as an appendix.

What do you mean by primary or secondary author? OP would presumably be credited in a fashion similar to the example paper in the linked question.

@Anyon, Depending upon contribution to the paper, OP can request to be the major author or secondary coauthor. Alternatively, OP can ask to write a short note on the published paper stating that the contributions from all authors are equal and the order of the author's name in the paper does not correspond to the contribution effort. Or, something similar. This is a fair way to credit OP's contribution if their advisors are wanting to use his work as an appendix.


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Publishing a paper written in your free time as an unaffiliated author when you are affiliated
Suppose you are a researcher that works at a university. You produce, during your free time, i.e. outside of work hours, and without any other university colleague's involvement, a paper with your own funds, so there is no university involvement at any stage during the production of this work.
When submitting the results of this research to a conference/journal, is it ok to not include your university affiliation/university email and instead submit it as an independent researcher with your own personal email address. Are there any potential repercussions that could arise from doing this act?
Edit: I am adding this clarification as I may have badly described my situation. So when I say field, I mean in the sense of discipline. As in for instance, image classification and large language models being part of the same field that is machine learning. In my specific case, the work I'm doing at my university is say on image classification. Before I am able to publish said work, I would need to submit it for an internal review process by the industrial partner where the field of activity of this company is in image classification, say, so that they can decide whether or not they will file a patent on the idea. Now, a large language models paper will be completely irrelevant to this said company, but, because of bureaucracy, I would still need to submit this through the review process that could take multiple months before getting the answer that it is irrelevant to them and that I am able to publish it freely. The source of funding for the work on image classification at the university is for a research project on image classification.

Why do think that would be a good idea or a useful approach?

I didn't really suggest it was a good/useful idea, I am only wondering if one was constrained and had to go with this approach, what would be the potential ramifications.

Assuming using a personal computer and only having access to open access journals, without requiring the university credentials to access the literature?

The subject of this paper is unrelated to your academic subject matter?  So you will never (in the future) want it to be considered for academic promotion/tenure?  For example, it is a riské topic (or a political topic) you do not want linked to your academic persona?

yes, for instance ML conference papers are all open access.

@GEdgar The subject of this paper is very much related to my field. And it is not a riske topic.

Then why would you not want the affiliation? I would say trying to avoid affiliation on a regular paper even if you think you did it all in your spare time is just not worth the hassle.

Guessing here ... to make sure patents resulting from the research cannot be claimed by the university?

@MaartenBuis I can't really go too much into the details, but it is mainly related to a a green light which takes multiple months that I need to obtain before I'm able to publish my work, if I have to do this as a researcher affiliated with my university. This has mainly to do with the source of funding (industry).

So this ‘independent’ work is directly related to your field, and you are looking to bypass review by those funding your research/position? What could possibly go wrong?

Sounds like a recipe for a Rube Goldberg machine of Unfortunate Legal Events.

The obvious answer is to ask your boss, if the answer isn’t already clear in your terms of employment or company policy. Perhaps you already know what your boss would say if asked and you are hoping to get a different answer here? Even if we were to give you permission, that wouldn’t hold much water with your boss when they find out. Where I work, the policy is very clear: I need to have any manuscripts approved before submission and I need approval for any outside work.

I think the answer you’re hoping for is not one you’ll get. And are there extenuating circumstances making the few-month delay impractical?

What is your field that you can do this without any University resources? Maths? Theoretical physics? As a computer vision researcher, I don't think I could make a particularly meaningful contribution using only equipment I have personally purchased in my field.

It's in ML but oriented more towards the math aspect.

Is uploading to the arXiv also restricted until the industry partner has reviewed it?

Yes, so essentially any form of dissemination in the public domain that would render a patent application void by this company is not allowed.

Many academic positions do not have set hours and hence the concept of "free time" is sadly not always valid.

"You produce, during your free time, i.e. outside of work hours" Do you actually have and obey work hours in the sense that anything you do between, say, 9 am to 5 pm is "work" and anything you do outside of that timeframe is "not work"? Do you, in a given week, do precisely (e.g.) 40 hours of "work" and not more and not less? If not, you thereby admit that "work hours" are more or less a fiction, so two questions naturally arise, namely (1) what do you actually mean by "outside of work hours", and (2) how can anyone verify that you did this "outside of work hours".

This question belongs into "employment law" as well. There are legal responsibilities that you have to fulfill and they might make your proposed behavior ineffective.

The institution might be able to assert patent rights over any
invention contained in the publication.

You violated an enforceable condition of employment. If you were working at a university, your tenure could be removed. Depending on your country, this can be expressed (sometimes in coded language) in future letters of reference.

Your institution disagrees that your work has nothing to do with your employment and can take action against third party such as asking the publisher to remove your article as it contains trade secrets. (I have seen something like this happening, where USENIX pulled an article for some months because of a (completely fictitious Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) violation.)

How the conference and the people in your field will view your action, assuming you followed your proposal, is also difficult to assess.

You might be seen as dishonest / disloyal employee since you did not approach your institution / boss to ask for guidance. It would seem that you anticipated a negative answer and went ahead anyway. This would influence future employability.

You could be seen as a righteous rebel who prefers science over safety and is willing to cut through bureaucratic red tape.

You could be seen as a loose cannon who cannot be trusted with keeping to procedure.

As an aside, your institution will be important when a decision is made on your paper. Often, there is a double-blind peer review, but a program committee or editor can look at affiliations and notice something off if they know you. The obvious solution is to go to a decision maker and ask if they agree that your free-time project is not covered by the agreement with the industrial partner or to speak directly with the industrial liaison.

The OP has noted in comments that "The subject of this paper is very much related to my field." And that they are trying to avoid tying the paper to their employment because of reviews mandated by their funding.
Sure, you can claim that all the work was done completely independently of your work. Yet the paper is related to your field, that is, in scope of your work assignment. Therefore, it is not true - at all - that this work is independent.
Possible repercussions of this include losing funding to the institution as well as being fired from the institution. I will not touch on any patent issues, but if you are trying to claim that something you came up with in your field was somehow independent of your employer, well, it won't be a long court case.

And OP will be on the "do not hire" list for both university and industry.

@CaptainEmacs there is no "do not hire" list for "industry". There may be rumors for high level people or in a very small community but we are far from a Vatican Index Of People You Do Not Hire (VIOPYDNH)

@WoJ - sure, there isn’t a literal list, but word does get around. A few calls checking references within the institution will yield direct or indirect information about the issue.

@JonCuster this would not fly in industry, at least in Europe. You are no allowed to call a company to get recommendations about someone. You sure can have a friend who knows a friend but except for very specific hirings nobody does this informal background check because there is not time for that (putting aside the whole illegality of such a check)

Depending on the location and university, how related the paper is to the writer’s field may not even be relevant. I recall an instance perhaps 15 years ago where a researcher in something like biochemistry or medicine had written a novel (on their own time) and was taken to court by their university for royalties because they were employed there at the time and the university claimed ownership of anything written or created during employment. I don't remember the outcome, but it did make it to court (i.e., wasn't thrown out as unenforceable).

@WoJ You are absolutely allowed to check references in Europe – there would be no point in providing them otherwise. There are fairly strict rules about what prospective employers are allowed to ask references, and in some cases the applicant also has the right to a hearing to rebut any potentially damaging information given by a reference, calling a reference is definitely allowed. You’re allowed to not give any references on your CV/job application, of course, but then it wouldn’t be “a few calls checking references” anymore.

@WoJ Depends on the industry. In a large industry, you may disappear in the crowd, indeed. In a small one, especially a competitive one, less so.

@JanusBahsJacquet "You are absolutely allowed to check references in Europe" → I never said that you could not check provided references (though the concept is not common at all), JohnCuster was talking about "making a few calls checking references (...)" which I read as calling people who were not provided by the candidate. This is absolutely forbidden.

@WoJ I think it’s your reading of John’s comment that’s off, then: a reference is by definition provided by the candidate, so in the situation you describe, the calls wouldn’t be checking references but something more like making background checks, which indeed wouldn’t be allowed except in some limited circumstances (e.g., checking criminal records for certain positions). It’s pretty common here for companies to check references in the latter stages of the vetting process, but perhaps not everywhere in Europe.

@JanusBahsJacquet "a reference is by definition provided by the candidate" → in that case I cannot imagine someone providing references to people who would say anything bad. I was asked once to provide references, I sent the contacts of friends who basically explained that I am the next Jesus-turned-IronMan.

@JanusBahsJacquet BTW I think you are in academia, my comment as I mentioned was was about industry

I don't believe it's really possible to have work and non-work hours in intellectual work. You cannot physically make your brain not think about work things when you are otherwise idle (in the shower or laying in bed, say). You cannot physically restrict your brain from thinking about Work2 tasks while doing Work1. Everything you learn doing Work1 has potential to influence Work2, even if the tasks are otherwise orthogonal. You just cannot compartmentalize things in a human brain that way. Therefore the scenario you describe...

You produce, during your free time, i.e. outside of work hours, and without any other university colleague's involvement, a paper with your own funds, so there is no university involvement at any stage during the production of this work

...does not really exist. It's likely that your work contract or whatever agreement you have with your funder recognizes this, as well, and specifically calls out the relationship between your work and your employer, especially where intellectual property is involved.
If you wanted to work on a side project that you were going to keep separate from other work, the time to arrange for a waiver of any other restrictions would be before you've done the actual work. Now that you've actually done it, you can't skip out on the internal review process by the industrial partner just because you don't like it or don't think they will be interested. Companies can be interested in all sorts of intellectual property that does not clearly align with their past interests, that's how they grow, and even if they do not want to use intellectual property directly, if they own it and think it has value then it may be something they want to sell to someone else.
If you don't give them their chance to decide that your project isn't worth any of that to them, they'll have good grounds to be angry with you and have the means to hurt you both by denying future funding and also through legal action. They'll especially come after you if you start trying to make money with it. You would also make your institution angry by upsetting an industrial partner which could cost the institution money in future arrangements.
Don't do it.
You may feel that legal agreements you have or have not signed would give you some protection or that you could prevail in court; if you want to go that direction, you should have a lawyer advise you. However, goodwill and relationships are not built only on legal agreements. You do not need to be found in violation of a specific agreement in court for a company to be displeased and no longer want to provide you funding, for your advisor to find you untrustworthy and no longer want to advise you, for your institution to find you a liability and no longer want to have you as a student.

I am not really planning on commercializing any research output, I am exclusively interested in being able to do research and publish it in time. It seems pretty totalitarian that a company can claim ownership over anything you do in your own free time with your own resources, especially when its far removed from their line of business. The main issue is the time it takes for them to process the paper, it's in on the order of multiple months.

@NewPhD They're paying you a salary, they're not just making these claims out of nothing. You'd be free to not take a salary from them and then use your free time as you wish. Read your contract carefully.

Actually, legally speaking, I have a regular salaried work contract with my university, there is no mention anywhere of the funding source in my employment contract as well. And I personally did not sign anything with the company.  To be even more precise, even if the company were to go bankrupt, that would be immaterial with respect to my employment contract with my university.

@NewPhD What does your work contract with the university say about intellectual property? You say of your other work "I would need to submit it for an internal review process" - this must be based on something (that is, this is not a process that you personally imagined into existence). Even if it's just instructions from your supervisor, that may become something covered under your employment agreement.

My work contract states that I must abide by the university's code, and in this code is a clearly stipulated close against industry partners taking too much time to file protection if need be when the university engages in partnerships with industry. My promotor, who obviously has a vested interested in maintaining a good standing with this industrial partner for future funding, stated that it's the company that has the final word on this matter, and that they can take up to six months if they want to. I asked to see the agreement with the company, but he refused and was defensive about it.

@NewPhD And does it mention outside work at all anywhere in the university's code?

So I just checked the regulations, it states that any intellectual IP generated by the research staff of the university as part of their employment belongs to the university. And in case there is a research agreement with an industrial partner, the said agreement will take precedence regarding the IP generated. I am now not sure to what extent this company has legal ownership over research that is outside the scope of the research project agreement and is on top of this produced outside of my work hours.

Think of it this way: You have a choice between going through the process or gamble that the company or university or both won't take any action. The gamble could go two ways: you either safe 2 months or you are in really serious legal trouble. 2 months is not a lot when it comes to publications. You need to realistically count on being rejected once or twice, then a revise and resubmit, and each of these stages takes at least half a year to a full year. So 2 moths is nothing. So it is a lot of risk for no gain....

@MaartenBuis The main issue is that it's typically on the order of 6 months, not 2 months. This has already led me to miss deadlines for conferences.

Not in academia, so apologies if this question is a bit dumb. But if they left the university, then a year or 2 later started the paper and published it independently, then the university would have 0 claim on his paper, right? What's the difference compared to this scenario? The university research would still have given him the knowledge and experience to work on the independent paper. The university provided no support in either scenario. So why would the university have any claim now? Because it's unclear if he used university resources on his own paper or because they are paying him?

Ok so if the gamble works you may make the deadline for one conference and if the gamble does not work  you are in deep legal trouble. It is still your choice whether you want to make that gamble or not. I know what I would do, but I am not the one who has to make the decision.

@TheEvilMetal This is nothing special to do with academia. When someone pays you a salary for intellectual work, they generally take ownership of all your intellectual production doing that type of work during the time you receive that salary. That's what you're trading the salary for: your intellectual work product. Work done after your salary ends is not covered. Work of a different type is not typically covered. But if you are paid to do research, then research you do is your work that you're being paid a salary for.

You posted many details in the comments that are difficult to make sense of, making it hard to see the forest for the trees here. The edit to your question clarifies things a bit, but again it sounds like a mess of a situation.
Anyway, the specific details don't seem that important. Looking at the big picture, what you are proposing to do is fundamentally dishonest. Your institution pays you a salary to do research. This salary comes with certain strings attached, one of those strings being that you need to go through an approval process to publish your research due to some combination of the area of your research, where the funding and other resources for the research come from, and some weird bureaucratic obstacles.
The dishonesty lies in the fact that despite agreeing to be bound by those limitations (either explicitly, or implicitly by taking the salary) you now want to circumvent them by pretending that your research is not "affiliated" with the university. But that's all it is: a pretense. You are in fact affiliated with your university in every meaningful sense of the word "affiliated" - at least in the context of the work you do in this particular field. (By contrast, if you were to release, say, a rock album, you might be forgiven for publishing it under a different "affiliation"...) This game of "I did this in my free time" is not something that anyone in academia will buy as an honest or reasonable explanation. To be clear, in certain legal contexts related to intellectual property that sort of explanation might protect you (I'm not a lawyer so I can't speak with authority on that, but I have heard of situations where the distinction being work done on your free time versus work time can matter). But for all other purposes, you are likely to upset and heavily damage your relationships with basically everyone involved in employing you or funding your work. Even other unrelated people who notice that you are publishing work under a "double identity" might find this suspicious and shady, and form a negative opinion of you, whether or not they learn the details of why you acted the way you did.
The bottom line is, I understand that you are frustrated by what you perceive as misguided and heavy-handed bureaucracy standing in your way of just doing and publishing good, honest research. I sympathize, and I wish you luck in finding a way forward, but your current proposed solution is simply not an appropriate way to address this issue.

Does this mean any research you do as a hobby in your free time belongs to a company that signed an agreement with your university even if the research themes are far apart? The salary I am receiving pays for a research project with a clearly defined line of research. I do perform the requested research and go through the 6 month bureaucratic process in order to publish it. So I think I am fulfilling my contractual obligation as an employee. Why would this company then extend its scope to work I do in my free time that is not even related to the theme of the research they signed?

@NewPhD my answer is not meant to be interpreted as legal advice. I was commenting on what I perceive as the duplicity of your idea of pretending that research that is “very much related to your field” (your own words) is done as a “hobby” and “on your free time”, and how that duplicity is likely to affect your professional relationships, not on any legal aspects. If you want advice on fulfilling your contractual obligations, talk to a lawyer.

I think the least terrible thing that can happen to you is that you will not able to renew your industry funding.  For all the other things that could go wrong, you will need to consult an intellectual property lawyer or the people who gave you this funding.

I think this is mostly a legal question. You need to check your employment contract and the rules of your institution. You probably need to contact a lawyer to be sure.
Generally, I do not think it is completely hopeless (I once knew a professor who convinced the university that a patent he was involved in does not belong to the university because it was not related to his research), but difficult.

For most people and most situations that would be fine. There are, however, exceptions where your contract specifies that all IP belongs to the institution. So, check to see if you have contractural obligations. This occurs mostly, but not exclusively, in industry.
The idea is that time and specific collaboration aren't the only considerations if you learn things while working that are considered proprietary. That is unlikely for university faculty unless they are involved in some "spooky" stuff with confidentially requirements generally.
However, as mentioned in comments, there is little downside to using your university affiliation unless, there are, again, contractual obligations that arise if you do so.
As to the patent question, make sure you understand patent law where you intend to file. The situation in the US has become a bit weird recently with the notion of "first to file". You may have to file before you make anything known about your "invention". For patent questions, see a lawyer - a good one.
And, for patentable "inventions", it is actually more likely that a research university would claim all such IP of its employees in employment contracts. This has been discussed in other questions here. Many, but not all, consider this to be a good thing as patent filing can be expensive. The defense of patents can be even more expensive. The university would absorb these costs and will usually share any proceeds with the "inventor".

The broad claims to IP happen at universities as well.  Have a look at Purdue's IP policy.  They ask "Is the IP entirely unrelated to your scope of employment or field of research at the University?" and do not talk about work hours.  https://www.purdue.edu/research/oevprp/regulatory-affairs/intellectual-property-faq.php

@TerryLoring, I've edited to clarify my meaning. I only claim it is more common in industry.

I also work as a university researcher. What you are suggesting may be illegal and may have consequences for you and you department or it may not. I don't think strangers on the internet can tell you what you can or cannot do. Judges interpret the law and you are a grown up so should be able to consider the morality yourself, but here are some pointers to questions that I might ask myself in your situation.
Is the work you are have done related to your work at the university? Did you use any university owned equipment in producing the work, including writing up the paper? Did you reference any papers to which the university has a paid subscription. Is there a clause in your contact about intellectual property? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then you might find that the university owns the copyright to the paper you have written and if this was the case you may not legally be allowed to publish it.
Is there possible reputational harm to the university or the industrial partner? There is clearly a reason why the university has chosen to run all papers in this field via its industrial partner, even if you don't know it. There may be a contract in place where the industrial partner is paying money to get a first look at these papers and exploit any IP. If you publish without permission the university could be seen to be in breach of contract with its industrial partner. The consequences of this could range from nothing, to you getting a telling of to who knows what more serious things.
Is there some emotional driver here? Maybe you are angry with your department for something (perhaps the delay in the publishing process, perhaps something else). Perhaps you are stressing over the need to get this paper published fast so it can go on your CV for job hunting. Perhaps you don't agree with the links with the industrial partner. Perhaps there is some other issue between the university and you. Perhaps this is work that you don't want to tell your supervisor you have done.
So in the end it might be that you are allowed to do it, but you still anger your university or perhaps you are not allowed to do it, but nobody notices or cares anyway. It's for you to take that risk if you see fit.
Whatever the situation, my best advice would be to take a step back, consider that you may not have the full picture of the reason for the departmental policy, consider what the consequences might be for you and others, consider who you might upset and the human impact of your actions, decide if you care about those consequences and the upset you could cause. Then act accordingly and live with whatever those consequences turn out to be.

Perhaps, but when I find myself wanting to go against policy, it's usually because I've messed something up, I'm stressed or I want to make a point. These are actually all emotional reactions more than anything else.

The decision about whether the sponsoring organisation could exert a hold on his intellectual property is not the OPs decision to make. It was made by someone else significantly higher up the organisation. So I would say this isn't a valid concern. If the university has a claim on the IP of the work then they are absolutely entitled to have a policy on how this is utilised. If what the OP says is correct - that the work is not relevant to the body, then the only reason to avoid the internal review is speed and it is likely that this need for speed is purely personal.

I absolutely have concern about natural justice, but the reality might be that, whether the OP likes it or not, his university owns the IP to this work done in his spare time. My contract contains a clause saying that any IP from any work I do in the field related to my department is owned by my university regardless of whether it is done in work time or my time. This is a much broader field than just my current project. But the harm may (or may not) be broader than IP infringement. It may upset people who have some say over the OP's future employment

And, this depends on the country, but here in the UK, any IP generated during the course of employment belongs by default to the employer.

As many others have noted this is mainly a legal problem so the OP should seek professional advice.
I'm not a lawyer and we don't have access to all the documents, contracts, etc, but there might be yet another solution, which the OP should investigate, i.e. publishing with the university affiliation, but without cooperation with the industry partner.
Usually, research staff in a university can be funded from multiple sources. There can be several grants from funding agencies and/or industry. Often, there is also the basic salary, which is not sponsored by any specific grant. When you publish a paper you need to disclose the funding source for each particular author. To my understanding, if you publish a paper under your university's affiliation, but do not mention the industry funding, you're not bound by the rules of the grant. Heck, you might concurrently work for a different project on the same university, which is funded from somewhere else.
I'd say that if you were hired by the university before the cooperation with the industry partner started, and in the mean time you didn't sign any new contracts, then you should be able to publish in the exactly same way as before the cooperation started (without mentioning the extra funding). On the other hand if you were hired in a lab which is completely funded by the industry partner, and always has been, that's a different story. The devil lies in the details. You should consult your specific legal situation with some legal experts on the university and/or independent of the university.
The main question is: are you allowed to work on other projects on your university? Like funded by a different company, funded by a government agency, or funded internally by the university itself.

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text:
Can i continue studying architecture in Germany after i did two year of bachelor degree in architecture in Lebanon
I started studying architecture in Lebanon and I have finished two years of bachelor degree and when I started the third and final year I decided to continue studying abroad,
So my question is: can I continue studying the third year or should I start from the beginning?
P.S.: I have a high school degree and the university I'm studying in is known internationally if this can help ! Thank you :)

Have you tried to discuss this with a German university?

Not yet, and of course I will :) but i saw this website and how much it’s helpful so i wanted to see if i get some information from here!

The way this typically works in Germany is that you enroll at the new university for the desired degree. There will be requirements regarding what modules you need to pass for this degree. You can then apply for courses you have completed elsewhere to be considered as equivalent to some of those modules (this is called "Anrechnungsantrag"). The department will examine what topics were covered (which may require you to obtain translations of the syllabus etc), whether they consider the standards of the previous university sufficient, etc.
It is common that there are quantitative limits on how many modules you can do this for. Since you will ultimately get a degree from the new university, they'll want you to have done substantial studies with them. It seems far more plausible to me to get 1 year worth of modules acknowledged than 2 years.
Getting a definitive positive answer before enrolling is not likely, but if you haven't chosen the German university yet, getting in touch with the relevant
Prüfungsamt at your candidates for a pre-inquiry might give you some indication of how open to the prospect they are.

Ow thank youu ! this made things clearer for me and it’s so helpful for someone that don’t know what to expect :) thanks again

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text:
Can I have the same project as another master's student (same experiments and results) and we both write two different theses?
I am currently doing a research thesis with another master's student and we both are designated the same project by the same promotor and we work together through every single experiment that we did.
Is it acceptable for us to use the same results (graphs and images) that we both obtained together and write them in our thesis? The only thing that's different will be the wording in our explanations. However, we have the same overall conclusion and take.
Our supervisor and promotor said it is okay but I hope the scientific integrity committee is going to say the same.

This is a local question. You should ask there. I would probably recommend against it myself.

Could you not write a joint thesis? At my school, that was quite common, and not a problem at all. The only issue with this is that you will be (probably) graded equally, so if one person does most of the heavy lifting, it could feel unfair to the other person.

Bring this up to your university and be open about it. Make sure your supervisor knows you are seeking extra guidance. This is very sketchy but not necessarily bad.  If you think about it, some grad work may rely entirely on secondary sources or data collected by others.  The challenging part here is that you have the same project, not just the same data.  Working together on the experiments isn't the problem - I had some masters students work with me on my experiments - writing the same thesis "in your own words" is the problem.
If you are both going to draw the exact same conclusions and do the same analysis, then there is an issue.  You both need to be able to distinguish between your specific contribution and your specific methods.  For instance, just having a data set in common doesn't mean much if you analyze it for property A using method X and your partner looks into property B using method Y.
To be more concrete, you and I might run the same survey, and to save resources we run it with the same participants, but you are looking at socioeconomic status as an indicator of academic success and I am looking at a correlation between socioeconomic status and academic preparedness.  We will look at different things, probably have different literature reviews (at least partially), and definitely make different conclusions.  No worries here.  We'd just acknowledge that the survey was run cooperatively.
The problem is that, during your defense, you have to be able to defend what you personally did.  You can give credit where it's due, but if it turns out that your thesis is only half yours, then giving the degree is going to be difficult.

If the supervisor said it is OK I don't see why we shall have something to say. "Our supervisor and promotor said it is okay" taken from the question.


text:
I have ended up on a mailing list for lecturers
I'm a final year undergraduate student. When I opened Gmail today there was an email regarding some conference and instructions on how to submit a paper to it. I never get emails like this, so I was curious. The sender was a professor in my department. And the mail was sent to lecturers@[university_name].ac.[country_suffix]
I checked with some of my close friends and non of them have received that email. It seems like I have ended up on a mailing list for lecturers somehow. Since there might be confidential emails circulating among the list there is a risk of me being on it. Should I inform the professor about this immediately? Since I didn't 'hack' my way into the mailing list, can I just ignore the emails and carry on without informing?

Is there some reason you can't (or don't want to) just shoot your departmental administrator a one-sentence note explaining the mixup?

Receiving one email does not necessarily indicate that you're on the mailing list: it's possible that your address was (deliberately or accidentally) in the bcc field.

A possible explanation for why this happened is that you happen to share the same name as a lecturer who just joined the staff, and someone didn't check properly.

@cag51 No. But I don't know whether it is appropriate.

@FedericoPoloni My name is pretty unique. And its not my university email id added to the list. It's my personal gmail account.

I see several reasons for receiving such an email, and it may not be the reasons that you surmised (some of which are noted in the comments).

The fact that you received an email about a conference does not necessarily mean you are on the mailing list. You could have been blind copied (Bcc) on the message deliberately. This may be a good thing and indicates that the professor felt you might be interested in attending the conference or submitting a paper to the conference as it may relate to your work (such as your dissertation project). This would be a compliment showing your work has promise; however it could just be a mistake. I mention this as when I was an undergraduate I did submit a conference paper on my work, which was a great experience!

Your email address could be very similar to that of another faculty member at your university (or even another). This can quite easily happen with so called "intelligent" auto-complete of addresses in email clients. This often can be very annoying and in large organisations like universities there are many people who share similar, or even identical names. If the sender (or list maintainer) is not careful they picked the wrong one, or the correct  one was not even in the "pick-list". This happens to me frequently; I have a name-sake elsewhere in Internet-land and I often get their email. Also I have in the past emailed a postgraduate with the same name as one of my colleagues. Easy  to do when in a hurry.

Someone is spamming to advertise their conference, and has just harvested a whole pile of addresses of people who are believed to be faculty members. This is not very ethical (or legal) but some over-enthusiastic conference organisers get sucked into this trap. I still get spam from what would otherwise be considered "reputable" conferences. I have about two dozen of these in my spam-bin, some from Government agencies and the like.

The university is confused who is staff and who is a student. Not as strange as it may seem. At my institution we use senior undergraduates as Teaching Assistants on Freshers' courses. Due to silliness within the "intelligent" software because they are in receipt of payments the payroll system regards them as "staff" and they get auto-added to the staff category. Plays havoc with keeping things confidential that should be kept confidential. (Insert rant about software design here)...

There can even be more plausible reasons that may come to mind!
What can you do? You have a choice: you can just ignore it, you can spend time investigating if someone else should have received it, or you can contact the sender and enquire. Most people would say just ignore it and move it to your "junk" email folder and let the AI deal with it.

In my experience, if I was bcc-ed the 'to' field will say 'bcc'. I have a pretty unique name and it is my personal email address that is added to the list. Can't be a spammer since the email is sent by a professor in the faculty. Might be the last thing you mentioned. I'm satisfied with your conclusion and advice.

@slhulk No; you are incorrect about Bcc. You do not necessarily have to be shown as Bcc for that to be the delivery mechanism. I can go into detail on the SMTP as that is what I teach. However this is not the time and place for a lecture!

If I was BCC-ed why am I seeing the email address of the list?

@slhulk because that is how email works! As I said not the place for technical explanations on  the operation of email protocols on the internet!

This is something I really didn't know. Thank you for pointing that out.

Great answer, I'd add that the email may not have been actually sent by the professor. It's easy to spoof a sender address. You can always enquire and send an email (to their officially listed address) and ask whether the email was intended for you.

If it is annoying you, ask your departmental administrator to remove you from the list.  The IT department may be able to help you identify the person who controls the list, if it is unclear.  You might even be able to remove yourself, depending on the system.
Email is a very old technology which was never intended to be private.  If there is a need to transmit confidential information, cryptography should be used.

Privacy/cryptography have nothing to do with the fact that OP might have been mistakenly put on the addressee list (if it was a mistake). Of course the argument stands that email is not private, but it's not pertinent in the present case.

Not annoying but I'm wondering about the consequences. Also, there's no option unsubscribe myself.

@slhulk There are no consequences of note. There is an option to unsubscribe yourself: it is emailing the person who administers the mailing list and asking to be removed from it.


text:
Can I create anonymous repositories for double-blind peer review via GitHub organizations?
When submitting a paper to a conference/journal for double-blind peer review, one usually has to anonymize source code, if there is any. In my situation, I have to do it in a form of GitHub repository. I know that people often do it using anonymous GitHub accounts. However, it seems inconvenient to me, and I am trying to achieve the goal using a GitHub organization, created from my main account. My question is: can you identify me given the following setup?

This is me: https://github.com/Yura52
This is my organization: https://github.com/Organizationnnnn
This is the repository with one my commit: https://github.com/Organizationnnnn/first

NOTE: if you want to use this workflow, don't forget to:

remove yourself from watchers right after you created the repository
set user settings after you clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/Organizationnnnn/first
cd first
git config user.name "Anonymous Author"
git config user.email "anonymous@author.org"
touch README.md
git add README.md
git commit -m "anonymous commit"
# you can also anonymize yourself only for specific commits, but there is always a risk of forgetting this
# git commit -m "anonymous commit" --author="Anonymous Author <anonymous@author.org>"

Maybe the https://anonymous.4open.science/ service could be useful to you. It was mentioned in this answer to Double blind peer review when paper cites author's GitHub repo for code.

@Anyon Sorry, I did not see your comment when I posted my answer.

@Clément No worries.

The fact that you created the repository is visible under your account's activity, so anyone following your account can see it in their feed. This can also be seen later by viewing your activity by subscribing to your RSS Feed.
However, generally this should be a concern for anonymizing for peer review, since the requirements are usually much lower — authors can often be identified by preprints and similar means anyway if someone really wants to find out, and reviewers are expected not to go looking for this information.
But if you have a GitHub account with a lot of followers or want to prevent anyone from checking if your account created the repository, then your proposed method is not sufficient.

Oh, I see. One of my followers confirmed that: the fact of creation of the repository (but not of organization) is visible. I tried the following fix: 1) create an anonymous user 2) invite this user in my organization ("Organizationnnnn" in the original example) 3) create repositories on behalf of the anonymous user. It doesn't add anything to my activity feed and I can "manage" the repository from my main account (since I am the owner of the organization). What do you think?

@StrausMG AFAIK your pushes (not the same as commits) are also available in the RSS feed, so I am not fully sure if you can manage using your regular account. I think the suggestion by @ Anyon is worth looking into, btw.

@StrausMG Also, if you're anyway creating a separate anonymous account, you might as well stick with it. You can create a separate SSH key for that account and set your git config so you don't need to worry about passwords or anything.

Yep, there are some 3-rd party tools, but I was trying to solve the problem without them. Sorry, I should have said that in the beginning. Thank you for the answer.

as for pushes, I can see "Yura52 created a branch master in Organizationnnnn/first" in my RSS feed. I think I am ok with that, because my main concern is the activity that is visible in UI.

@StrausMG Just check once by watching the repository using another account. I am not sure, but it might show up in the UI for each push then.

You should check out  Anonymous GitHub . It comes with a set of limitations:

What are the limitations of Anonymous GitHub?
Anonymous GitHub does not allow to download the repository.
Anonymous GitHub only anonymizes textual files.
Anonymous GitHub does not support files that are larger than 8Mo.
The anonymization can change the behavior of the program.

But it is probably more reliable than any "hack" you could come up with.


text:
Should I write a follow up email? (UK Academic position)
I had an interview for a lecturer position on a Friday. The panel mentioned they would give an answer the following week. The week has passed and Im wondering if I should contact them with a follow up email asking kindly for an update. I know for sure that they have interviewed all the candidates they are interested in (we all got interviewed on the same day).
Should I send a follow up email?

I interviewed twice in the UK when I was a postdoc on the academic market.
The first time, I was notified after two weeks that I was not getting an offer.
The second time, I interviewed Friday, flew back to the US on Sunday, and was contacted with an offer on Tuesday. I took a week to weigh competing offers and politely declined on Friday of that week. They proceeded to counter-offer as much as they could (pay scale is set, but I was bumped one) on the Monday. I anticipate after that they went after choice #2.
I could be wrong, but my guess is you are not the first choice, and until they can get a commitment from the first (or subsequent) choices, you will not be notified.
Best of luck


text:
Postdoc in the US: should one inform other departments of a received offer?
I got an offer for a postdoc in a great US university A. I am still waiting to hear from another postdoc position also in a great US university B. The search committee at university B mentioned that their decisions would be made by a deadline that is prior to the deadline I have to decide about university A's offer.
I know that the usual advice about Tenure Track positions is to inform all places you are still waiting to hear from, about the offer(s) one gets. It is often said that it can even help one's chances of receiving other offers.
What isn't clear to me is whether the same applies to postdocs. That is, strategically speaking, should I inform university B of the offer I received from university A in this particular postdoc case? I have the impression that for a postdoc, it may harm more than help the chances of getting an offer from university B (which would be my preferred place).
Note: my goal is not to enforce negotiations. Rather, it is to make sure that, if university B was to make me an offer, they indeed would let me know before I have to reply to A. Like I said, theoretically, by their informed schedule, that should happen - but I have rarely seen such job-search schedules be respected. On the other hand, my concern is that such an email informing B of A's offer may harm my chances of getting the offer from B. For example because they prefer to give to another candidate slightly below in their preference rank but with no second disputing offer. I know that in Tenure Track searches that would not be likely, I am not so sure about postdoc searches.

As a hiring manager for postdocs, I would not object to a quick email saying that you have another offer in hand. I may not be able to speed up our internal processes to meet the other offer deadline. I'm certainly not going to hold it against you - you are looking for a job and want to know if you have options, a position most of us have been in...

@JonCuster thanks! Quick follow-up. Even if you're choosing just between me and another candidate that did not notify of another offer, wouldn't my notification tend to make you more inclined to choose the other candidate? For whatever reason, e.g. the greater likelihood that he, among the two good options, would be more inclined to accept the offer? I think that in particular in the postdoc context where there's little to no room to negotiating offers

If I make an offer I want to hire that person. Don’t overthink this.

If you are not negotiating or suspecting there will be delay in offering offer letter from B, I won’t bother to inform. But still I suggest to inform both parties so that you can negotiate salary and benefits. You can always negotiate these things in your favor. I recommend negotiating without being forceful.

Generally speaking, postdoc offers are not significantly negotiable.  There is no advantage to collecting additional offers.  Also, offers are generally comparable to each other in terms of salary and benefits.
If you would prefer Department B to Department A, then by all means let Department B know that you have an offer from A but would prefer to work at B.  Let them know when your deadline for A is.  (This is not a binding commitment; if the offer at B turns out to be terrible you don't have to accept it.)
If you're unlikely to accept an offer at B because you generally prefer A anyway, don't bother.

Thanks! My question came not really from the idea of negotiating offers, but more like to make sure that, if university B was to make me an offer, they let me know before I have to reply to A. However, both being postdocs, I am concerned that such an email may harm my chances of getting the offer from B. For example because they prefer to give to another candidate slightly below in their preference rank but with no second disputing offer.

@hannah, they might not know of any "second" offers. Don't overthink it.

@hannah They're hiring someone to do a job for them; their top priority is hiring the best person for the job. Why would it change who you think is the best person to know that someone else also thinks they're qualified for their job?

This carries some risk unless you word any such letter carefully. Don't make it sound like you aren't interested and don't make it sound like extortion.
Personally, I would wait until you need to make a decision if the place making the offer would please you.
And, I'd guess your information about "helping you get other offers" is a bit misplaced and far from universal. If they have ranked the candidates already this information isn't likely to change that. If you are at the top of their ranking, you might get a somewhat earlier offer, but not one you wouldn't get in due course.
Risky.
Since B's finalization is promised (sort of) before your decision on A is due, I'd wait to send a mail until close to B's date (or close to the A decision point), letting them know that you have a decision to make elsewhere. If you are at the top of the rank they might put out the offer soonest, but you might still have different drop-dead dates to deal with.

Thanks for you answer! Do you think that only regarding postdocs or also regarding Tenure Track positions? I got the impression that you think that also about Tenure Track searches - in which case I would be a bit surprised given that I nearly universally found the advice of notifying places about a receiving offer.

My guess/opinion is that it applies to both. I wouldn't be swayed in a TT application. If we already really wanted you we might speed it up a bit (after application deadlines, of course), but if others fit our criteria better than candidate X the news wouldn't change that. Your mileage may differ. Different story if you have two offers, perhaps.

If you know for certain that you would prefer University B to A, all other things being equal, write a brief email to B expressing your enthusiasm and let them know you have a deadline. Do the same if you are not sure and it would depend on details of B's offer (salary etc.).
If you are certain you'll prefer A to B, do nothing.
I realize this is very similar to a previous answer. Where this differs is in the following:

Postdocs are often not negotiable, but occasionally this is not the case. You have very little leverage even with an additional offer, but it can hardly hurt.

Postdoc offers can vary widely in their underlying job particulars. Over the course of a search I did 4 years ago I had offers ranging from 0 teaching to 2-1, durations from 1.5 to 3 years, salaries from $45k-60k (this was math), 0-$5k relocation, 0-$5k annual travel stipend, and a solo office vs a shared office. These were nowhere close to equally comparable.

It never hurts to have more information. If Uni B throws out your application over a polite email informing them you now have a deadline, you don't want to work there anyways.


text:
How should I handle students who are very disengaged in class?
I teach undergraduate mathematics. This semester, I started walking around the classroom while using an iPad to write (to the screen) during lectures. This allows me to notice that a few students are not paying attention and doing all sorts of things on their laptops, sometimes even watching YouTube videos right in front of me. I wonder what the best approach would be to handle such students. I see a few options:

Completely ignore them and focus on students who are engaged and there to study.
Be more direct and ask them to answer questions in class.
Invite them to office hours to understand why they attend class but do not engage. (Note: I do not enforce attendance.)

What would you suggest based on your experience?

"...using an iPad to write during lectures". How does that work, exactly? It sounds like the behavior you don't like. Why don't you require/inforce attendance?

Is this an elementary or an advanced class?

I project my ipad screen via zoom to the screens in the class room. This allows me to walk around the room and call random students to answer questions, some directly on my ipad.

@Buffy Second year university level.

A bit of encouragement, then let natural selection take its course.

I'm still not sure I understand how precisely this works. Do you write on your iPad while you walk through the classroom? This sounds rather difficult for physiological reasons.

@JochenGlueck Most of things on the slides. So I just need to annotate the slides a bit. I also stop when I need to write something a bit longer.

I was one of those students. Perhaps my perspective is useful: I had previous knowledge which typically covered ~50% of the material taught in most courses. So I'd attend to see what the topics and levels are and when it turned out it was stuff I already know well, I'd work instead (I studied part-time while working). I tried joining just the first few lectures then skipping, but that'd make me miss the point where I needed to start paying attention. I also tried paying attention the first few minutes and then leaving, but that was unacceptable to many professors. Hence, I stayed but worked.

University isn't school. University students are old enough to be responsible for themselves. As long as they don't disturb anyone, just let them do whatever they do. The lecture is a service offered by you/the university to the students, and they have to decide themselves what they make out of it.

Whatever you do, you have an obligation as the instructor not to let them distract students who are interested in following the lecture. YouTube videos are (depending on the seating arrangement) a definite distraction to students sitting behind them.

Maybe figure out WHY those students aren't interested in your lectures and actually try to get them interested. I've had lecturers like you, droning on and on reciting their lecture material (which we all had to buy before the course) and doing nothing else whatsoever during their lectures, including not allowing for questions. Obviously 90% of us just tuned out and did other things, if we shows up at all. When the guy was replaced because he was sick one day his replacement had great engagement.

@jwenting Thanks. But I would not have posted this question if I have been "eciting their lecture material (which we all had to buy before the course) and doing nothing else whatsoever during their lectures, including not allowing for questions".

I think my experience is an unusual one, but not so much that you won't run into it. I have ADHD. When I am learning something new to me but that doesn't require my full attention, I actually find it easier to pay attention if I do something else, like logic puzzles on my phone, at the same time. The additional activity keeps my brain happy, whereas trying to pay full attention to something that isn't engaging enough (even if it is engaging to a degree!) causes me to get lost in boredom. Some of your students might be paying their best attention in a way that looks like distraction!

That said, I rarely did this in university. It comes up more often in my life as an industry worker with meetings and presentations. And I think my experience is the exception, not the rule.

Could you edit and finish the two dangling sentences in your bullet points please? "who are engaged and there to" what? "to answer questions in" what?

Depending on country a lot of the students may be taking the course for some credit requirement and have no actual interest in it.

I've discussed the following elsewhere here. It was CS, but, I think, fundamentally the same.
Many (most?) people have a sort of natural ability in some subjects and it gets them through school to some level. But it ends for nearly all (all?) at some point. Such people have no real need to "learn how to learn". And, seeing something once or twice is all they need to pass the required exams. But then, they hit the wall. Some fail completely at this point and I think that the later they learn the following lessons the harder it is to recover, though I have no experimental evidence of this.
I noticed the same behavior you describe in a class. I asked one of the students why he wasn't taking notes and he pointed to his head, indicating no need. I thought about that for a while and decided that the behavior was self defeating and self limiting, so I spent a class period changing the rules.
Being tenured (and trusted by chair and dean), I first scared them a bit by suggesting that if they weren't really interested in learning the material then we could all agree that they would get F's and could then spend their time elsewhere doing other things that mattered more to them. This caused a bit of a stir in the halls as you would guess, and I don't recommend it for everyone. And a chat with the department head would probably be wise before trying anything like this.
But, I also taught them how to take notes in class and to work to capture the most important messages. I like index cards for big ideas, since they can be carried about for review, shuffled, sorted, combined, extended (if not filled up initially), etc. I bought a big set of cards and handed out a small deck and a rubber band to each student.
For a few weeks, I would end lectures a few minutes early and ask, either specific students or generally, "What is a big idea from today's lecture?", having told them I was expecting up to three such big ideas captured on their index cards. I would agree publicly or not.
I would also start each lecture with the same question-response system. A former teacher (this was math) would start each and every lecture with a five minute quiz based entirely on the previous lecture: "Please take out a sheet of paper...". We hated that guy, but the "stick" was effective even though those quick quizzes were a minor part of the grade.
Learning requires reinforcement and feedback. Few people learn with a single introduction to a big idea. To learn actually requires rewiring the brain (hence repetition/reinforcement). And we sometimes make mistakes in our integration (hence feedback).
See The Art of Changing the Brain by James E Zull for a run-down on the science behind the reinforcement/rewiring/feedback ideas.
See also: Active Learning in general, and how to foster and require it.
Notes: You can't ethically ignore the inactive students. You still have a responsibility for their learning, while still recognizing that some students just won't care or respond.
I'd suggest requiring attendance. If the scale is right, you can also use other active learning ides such as pairing (tripling) students to explore ideas, etc.
If you have a doctorate in math, note that most of your students are not like yourself: driven to learn math. Many students take a few math courses for other purposes and are perfectly satisfied with a modest grade.

I feel a bit ambiguous about requiring attendance. That might get me more students in class who are just doing other things.

My impression is if I ask "Should enforce attendance" here, I will probably be called silly. :'(

I think requiring attendance is kind of a catch-22 situation. It makes most sense in entry level classes where people are not yet used to university life/learn style, but it also will cause the most friction with people. For example I only did my CS studies for the diploma, because you needed to have one to apply to jobs at that time. I had already programmed for almost a decade and if anyone would have forced me to sit into an introduction to Java lecture it would have been a massive waste of time. There were several others in the same situation. We went to the exam and nothing else.

Your second paragraph seems to describe something like a hard wall. Both from personal experience and from people around me I would say this is more often a very gradual increase in difficulty. True, the strategy of simply dozing through class and passibly absorbing the material that worked great in high school was not sufficient in university anymore but a gradual shift of paying more attention and spending more time on the material was sufficient to counter the increasing difficulty.

@OP I would guess those not attending regularly probably fall mostly into two camps: 1. Those who are slacking. 2. Those who can understand the material easily, and will do well in the class regardless. There is the possibility of making attendance optional only for those achieving at least a certain grade (decide on a threshold). There is also the possibility of making attendance optional only for those who have proven themselves by doing some kind of remote learning - but putting together that kind of content is not easy, and details have to be worked out like how to prevent cheating.

Don't require attendance. Track it and show a plot attendance vs grades from the previous year at the start. There will be people with good grades who didn't show up (I was one of them once), but you can point to them (on the chart that is, no actual students involved ;-) and let your students know that unless they are sure that they fall into that category, that showing up was an activity with a good return investment. If there's no correlation, you might have to look at your teaching.

@Marianne013, so, disadvantage this year's group to advantage next year's??? Better run that experiment past the IRB first.

In my undergrad, one lecturer went really far with his attendance records on me (which was typically 10-20% across the board) and sent me an email saying that he was going to go to the Dean of Engineering about it for his class. I replied "I look forward to speaking to him". It never actually happened, nor did his apology when I came top of ~120 students at the end of the semester. He would have looked rather stupid at that point, but he missed the idea that I'd just figured out which books he was using and could go through them in bed at my leisure. Forcing attendance is a terrible idea

"But, I also taught them how to take notes in class and to work to capture the most important messages. I like index cards for big ideas, since they can be carried about for review, shuffled, sorted, combined, extended (if not filled up initially), etc. I bought a big set of cards and handed out a small deck and a rubber band to each student."  This is a failure of the earlier parts of schooling.  By the time students reach university level, they should have already been taught such methods.  Those are the things that people need to learn young - how to learn.

I rejects the idea that taking notes during class is always best for everyone.  Absolutely students benefit from being actively engaged,  and note taking can help, but not for everyone.  For some people,  particularly, but not only,  those with dyslexia or dyspraxia, the act of writing is sufficiently cognitively demanding that it doesn't leave capacity to engage with the material. I do endorse the testing at the start of the next lecture those.  I do with (even without assigning credit), and it works well.

@IanSudbery, please, the question and my answer are about disengagement,

@Marianne013 I've done that before, showing them clear positive correlation with attendance and exam grades (which of course does not imply causality), but there seemed to be little effect on participation.

Most of this answer (the back 2/3rds) is about theory of learning and note-taking. Only the 1st part is about disengaged students. I think the intent is to add "how to study" tips in class and the disengaged students will pay more attention? The book recommendations seem unrelated. Are those are to help lecturers wishing to add "how to study" tips? Or do they just back-up what you already wrote about note-taking?

@OwenReynolds, the idea is to drive active learning. The notes force evaluation as do my questions

It is appropriate to expect active participation in class by several methods, eg, questions and presentations that have been prepared. I dit n't like doing frequent short qi uizzes but I found it was the only way to insure students read the assigned material. I gave students the chance to ask any questions they wanted and only gave a quiz if the questions ran out early.

I cannot even describe how much I would have hated this as a student, and if forced into it I would have failed utterly.  I suspect that this kind of action might help some students, but for students that that type of learning doesn't work for (or for whom it might work acceptably well for, but who are unwilling to try it for whatever reason) this is just weeding them out when they might otherwise do well.

If the idea is to drive active learning, I wonder if this might benefit from stating that at the beginning: "At the start of each course I devote some time to explaining Active Learning -- how to take notes. I've even handed out notecards to students". Otherwise this looks like a transcript of you thinking out loud until arriving at your real reply.

@Beska So, which practice suggested in this answer do you dislike? Taking notes? Quizzes?

@Timmy Enforcing a specific process for learning (like the notecards) is part of it, but the piece that jumped out immediately to me was "For a few weeks, I would end lectures a few minutes early and ask, either specific students or generally, 'What is a big idea from today's lecture?', having told them I was expecting up to three such big ideas captured on their index cards. I would agree publicly or not."  For anyone with social anxiety, this is pretty much a guarantee that the student will shut down and/or avoid/drop the class.

@Beska Thanks for the clarification. I don't understand how anyone could avoid that. Of course, the professor will ask questions and publicly agree or disagree with the answers. I don't see how anyone can complete a college education without ever being asked to answer questions.

I've done fine with your option #1 -- not doing anything (*). One reason is that we don't know why they aren't paying attention, and those reasons are different. Some know the basics and are waiting for the harder stuff. Some need the class to be considered full-time but plan to actually pass it next semester. And so on. But the main reason to do nothing is that there are always more productive things I could be doing: thinking about how to add common student Q's to the lecture for next semester, writing new assignments, new test questions, checking whether I need to slow down or review, writing up plagiarism ... . There's only so much time and worrying about a few people who aren't asking for help and who know my office hours if they do is at the far end of the effort vs. results curve.
(*) Well, I do one thing about not-paying-attention students. In my first day lecture I say "it's fine to show up and just keep an ear open while you do something else, but try not to distract other people, so sit near the back or sides". Which means the other thing I do is to treat them like normal students. No glaring or snide remarks. I want them to know that if they finally engage, I won't embarrass them.

My general feeling on this follows three stages:

Is there a reason that they are not engaging, that we might be able to solve together? There might be accessibility needs, or they might be struggling, perhaps missed some early material, and have given up. So it's worth reaching out. If numbers permit it may be worth a private conversation, or there might be a personal tutor or similar role who can do this.

Are they disturbing others and impacting their learning? (e.g., youtube videos might have this effect if not in the back row) If so, you have to stomp on this.

At the end of the day they are adults, and if they want to spend huge amounts of money and time to be there and then not pay attention, that is up to them. If there's no underlying issue (or there is and they have rejected attempts to help), and it isn't bothering anybody else... at some point it isn't your problem any more.

Your second point is so important, if they are annoying or distracting, this will have a negative impact on the motivation of other students.

One of my sister's undergrad math professors had a rather unorthodox and creative method of encouraging student engagement: He announced in class orientation that each lecture would contain one intentional lie, and they should be alert to spot it.
In the first few lectures, the lie was something obvious, and the students immediately called it out. The professor congratulated them for getting it right, and moved on with the lecture.
As the semester went on, the lies got more subtle, and increasingly often they would reach the end of the lecture with no one having spotted the lie. Whenever this happened, the students were tasked with figuring out the lie using their notes, and the next lecture began with a discussion of what the missed lie had been.
Then, late in the semester, there came a lecture where no one in the class could identify the lie, despite many hours spent scouring their notes for discrepancies or anything that wasn't properly supported by its explanation. At the beginning of the next lecture, the professor revealed that there was no lie in that lecture. The statement in orientation that every lecture would contain a lie had, itself, been the orientation lecture's lie. That particular lecture was chosen to be the singular lie-free lecture because it covered the most difficult and important topic in the course, and getting the students to put in lots of effort searching for a lie in it that wasn't there resulted in them learning the material of that lecture very thoroughly.
I think the elements of this method that made it so effective are that it made the class more interactive, in a fun sort-of-game-like way, that required strong comprehension of the material to engage with. Giving the students a regular opportunity to call out their teacher likely also added to its appeal for the students.

I can see how this would work for a lot of students but I would be extremely annoyed as a student to find out about the lecture which didn't have a lie in it. I'm autistic and find being lied to really distressing - I'd be able to cope with the "one lie per lecture" thing but looking for a lie when there wasn't one would be too far for me.

@deee Would it help for you if the existence of that lecture were also announced up front, along with the reason for not identifying it in advance?

@deee , I hope this question is not insensitive, as I am genuinely curious: Would my autistic students find such false statements distressing? Presumably, these statements are false claims about mathematics.

@Timmy Yes, the lies were all false statements about mathematics. The whole point of them was to motivate the students to think about what they were learning and evaluate whether it made sense, thereby improving their understanding of the class. As a knowledgeable but non-expert third party to your question, I think most autistic students would be fine with it as long as they're told in advance and understand the purpose of it, but a few might still be distressed.

@Timmy Autism makes subjective nuances hard to judge, implicit social conventions hard to deduce by observation, and ambiguous interactions hard to resolve. Autistic people tend to develop a system of rules to navigate social interaction, and lies undermine that by throwing the hardest kinds of problems for them into everything. Lies in a restricted scope, with a positive purpose, with forewarning, and identifiable by clear-cut mathematical reasoning, avoid the main reasons for distress. Some autistic people may nonetheless be unable to fully accept an exception to their "lies are bad" rule.

@Timmy Side note, often one of the kindest and most helpful things you can do for an autistic person is to give them a clear and explicit explanation of a social convention they did not yet understand. Even, or especially, simple things that seem blatantly obvious to you. The "blatantly obvious" ones can actually be the most helpful to explain, because autism makes many of them actually not obvious at all, and at the same time their obviousness to most people makes people not even consider explaining them, due to assuming that they must be already known and understood.

Interesting idea. Perhaps it would be better to call it an "inaccuracy" than a "lie."

@Douglas For me, yes, knowing that one lecture didn't have a lie would make it a lot better. The part I would find distressing is feeling like the rules as stated had changed under me. J.R's suggestion of framing it as an "inaccuracy" is also good.

I think the difference for me is between "false statements about mathematics" as you put it, compared to "false statements about how the course works".

Your suggestion labeled #2 is an interesting one:

Be more direct and ask them to answer questions in class.

It's worth asking yourself, "How am I motivating my students to pay more attention in class?" If you tend to lecture for 50 minutes straight without ever asking them to contribute, and then you post your lecture notes online after class, then your easily-distracted students are more likely to get easily distracted.
I don't think you'll ever eliminate this problem completely, but a more Socratic approach when you strategically call on students to do some talking can go a long way into increasing attentiveness, particular if students notice that watching YouTube videos makes them more likely to be called on.
That said, I'd advise against calling on students simply as a punitive measure for not paying attention. Instead, ask yourself how you can make your time in the class more interactive and engaging for all students.

This is a partial answer, to complement the other ones here.
As someone who's been on his laptop and even slept during classes he absolutely loved (and also taken intense notes in other classes) and who turned out just fine academically:
Your first step (after ensuring they aren't being disruptive) should be to observe how those students are doing academically. If they're doing fine, let them be. Doing anything else will do nothing other than embarrass them and achieve absolutely nothing positive; in fact, it might make them resent you or skip lecture entirely.
You have to realize, some people are just stronger in some classes. Maybe the material comes naturally to them, maybe they already have a lot of background in that area, or maybe they've looked at the lectures ahead of time... there are a million reasons not everyone will need an equal amount of attention to the same material you're teaching at that point in time.
Your job is to teach, not to make sure people are paying attention. If you find that they're not learning adequately, then your second step should be to figure out how to handle that -- and, for that, I defer to the other answers.
But please don't skip the step of figuring out "is there an actual problem here to solve". Don't solve what's not broken; you'll only make it worse.

As others have pointed out, there can be good reasons to pay only a bit attention like they already know the general topic but don't want to miss when something new comes up.
It can be very boring when you are taught to something which you already know.
As long as they don't affect other students I see no problem in ignoring them.
There is one point to consider:
A university usually has some better places where you can watch a YouTube video than a class room with a lecturing teacher. They have a reason to be in your class room.
If you get the chance, kindly ask them in person after the class why they attend your class.
You may get confirmation with the prospect that they will pay more attention on the next upcomming topic.
If they don't have a reason and just sit through the hour then they may think twice before they do this again.
A casual talk may be less intimidating than when you invite them to office ours.


text:
How to cite a SSRN paper in master thesis?
How should I cite a paper which I found on https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2580904? In my references, the citation appears like this:
Hayes, A. (2015). A cost of production model for Bitcoin. Available at SSRN 2580904.

Is Available at SSRN 2580904 the standard way of citing SSRN papers? I am using APAlike bibliography style.

The paper you linked has a suggested citation at the bottom. One of the choices is a DOI.

Suggested Citation:

Hayes, Adam, A Cost of Production Model for Bitcoin (March 19, 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2580904 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2580904

This is not APA format, so it needs a bit of reformatting to get it into proper APA 7 format:

format of author name
format and placement of date
casing of article title
inclusion of journal title
format of DOI as HTTPS URL

Hayes, A. (2015). A cost of production model for Bitcoin. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2580904