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How to by-pass bioethics for a trivial bio-experiment?
I am from Computer Science (CS) doing microscopy imaging applications, mainly in software side.
Recently we submitted a paper to Scientific Reports on a new algorithm. My own human blood cells (a few tiny drops of blood) were used in the experiments. The experiments are extremely trivial.
However, our paper got quality checked, from the Journal Editor:

Authors reporting experiments on humans and/or the use of human tissue samples must confirm that all experiments were performed in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations. Additionally the article file must include a statement identifying the institutional and/or licensing committee approving the experiments, including any relevant details, in the “Methods” section. Please check that the information provided in the methods section is unambiguous using the following requirements:

A statement to confirm that all methods were carried out in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations.
A statement to confirm that all experimental protocols were approved by a named institutional and/or licensing committee.
Must include a sentence confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects or, if subjects are under 18, from a parent
  and/or legal guardian.

Briefly speaking, we need a bioethics statement that says, the blood in the experiments is approved by the University and the donor (which is me).
However, we are from CS and the University bio-ethics committee asked us to build a bio-safe lab before providing such license to us. This is time-consuming, costly, and far beyond our scope. Worse, there is no available human blood cells in the University for now. And I do not want to delay the paper submission.
My questions:

How can I by-pass the bio-ethics statement? Would there be any law issues? I am the donor and I approve any usage of my own blood. Why would there be an issue?
What are the proper, canonical, professional way of handling this?

Updates:
Declarations:

Why not use public datasets?

I am not doing machine learning, and our microscopy is specially designed. So I cannot use datasets from other groups.

Are you looking for retroactive permission?

No. We are applying to IRB for a new license. (That said, my previous experiments are unknown personal behaviors, and it has nothing to do with the group and the PI)

Can you use other samples, e.g. animal blood?

I do have other samples. Besides, I have tried mice blood but their red blood cells are x4 smaller and beyond the hardware & software limits. I would like human red blood cells to be in the paper because in convention it is the one to demonstrate the method, and its donut shape helps illustrating one of our major arguments.

A summary for today's talk with IRB (what they really need):

Biohazard: PI, the donor, and the person who is handling the blood, will have to take biosafety training, which is simple and online (I suppose).
Bioethics: The donor's confirmation for the experiments. (Actually, there is much more to discuss; but we skip this part)
How the blood is obtained: IRB does not care whatever interaction between the donor and the person analyzing the blood; they are only responsible for safety of all the persons involved, and that if the donor is from the University, make sure he/she is volunteered. Consequently, we can get the blood from:

Our lab. Additional equipments are required, lancets etc, as long as it qualifies as a bio-safe lab. (the IRB guy does not know the exact items; but can tell there is another committee to deal with...) Now it involves biohazard again.
Other groups with professionals.
Local hospitals.
Commercial vendors.

Now it is much clearer. I opt for Commercial vendors. Here will be my next steps:

Finish the biohazard training.
Submit the IRB form and get their permission. (only biohazard issue, not bioethics)
Get commercial blood samples (under $100).
Re-do the experiments, and submit the paper again.

In such a way, only the biohazard part is cared by IRB. Bioethics, blood acquisition, IRB does not care. And this is the fastest way to get it done.
Thanks everyone reading and helping me.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

People in medicine recommend private IRBs (as opposed to those provided by your university) for causing a lot less hassle.

Since your paper is primarily on the imaging and CS aspects, is it possible to conduct your experiment without using human blood? Perhaps animal blood or something synthetic?

@DavidK Thanks for asking. See my updates as response.

Moving only some comments is not fair... and it looses some of the relevant information.

If there is a medical school at your university, it may be very easy to identify a collaborator who already has IRB approval to study and collect human blood. Put someone from their group as a co-author and cite their IRB.

First, I'll assume that you don't and can't bypass the statement. The journal isn't going to go along with that.
Second, while this may be an edge case, the line needs to be drawn somewhere and it has been decided that the line is drawn in the most conservative place so that you don't need to make judgements in every case. The reason for conservatism here is the potentially harmful result of getting it wrong - from HIV to Ebola.
Third, there are issues that you aren't considering. While it is your blood and you certainly give permission, there are protocols for handling blood that treat it, properly, as a bio-hazard. Researchers (and medical personnel) who deal with this a lot know the risks and take proper precautions. But you haven't, apparently, indicated that you took those precautions yourself, thinking of them as trivial.
Fourth, it seems like you didn't deal with your institutions IRB (or equivalent) or you would have been told of these issues and how to avoid them. You may be able to go to them now and get the appropriate authorization for what previously happened, but I would guess they might well object.
Finally, I suggest that you abandon the current paper for now, redo the experiment under proper protocols and then re-write it (copying essentially everything from the current version) and then re-submit it with a complete accounting of the experiment. User Anyon suggested using another lab (after getting ok from IRB). Another option would be to (with IRB permission) elicit help from a physician or medical lab to aid in obtaining specimens and dealing with any waste.

The OP certainly could give informed consent to the use of the OP's blood, but the journal cannot know whether the OP's consent was properly informed. They would depend on the IRB reviewing the information that must be known to the experimental subjects before giving consent.

Consent is not the only concern here. Blood isn't benign, improperly handled or stored, it's a biohazard. (Yes, my own blood is a biohazard to me if I leave it out and it grows some very unpleasant bacteria while unattended, say in a waste bin)

@GlenPierce: The same is true of any organic material that can spoil, like that slice of pizza somebody left in the fridge for too long, but you don't see anyone applying biohazard regs to that (even if they maybe should). Also, people routinely dispose of their own blood (e.g. on bandages, sanitary pads, etc.) in normal garbage bins, and that's not generally seen as a major infection risk. Yes, there are specific risks involved in handling human blood, especially if it's fresh and not yours. But those risks do not magically increase just because someone put the blood under a microscope first.

That said, I agree with the gist of this answer: there's a line that needs to be drawn somewhere, and the OP was unlucky enough to have stepped just barely over it. So now they have to find some way to jump through all the hoops and tick all the necessary boxes to prove that what they did (or will do) was, in fact, done safely and ethically.

"Second, while this may be an edge case, the line needs to be drawn somewhere and it has been decided that the line is drawn in the most conservative place so that you don't need to make judgements in every case. The reason for conservatism here is the potentially harmful result of getting it wrong - from HIV to Ebola. " But it does look like a judgment is needed in this case. Moreover, even if it needs to be redone "right", building your own lab by someone who is not an expert would seem at least every bit as "ethically questionable", no? That demands thus seems clearly not reasonable.

And thus any solution would need to both address the need for proper handling and the inability of the people doing this experiment to build their own lab competently. I note you mentioned some alternatives at the end of your post, but what I want to hear and think is missing is a comment on the reasonableness or not of the board in demanding that specific, and very difficult to meet, demand, as opposed to something that might be more in line with their known expertise and/or lack thereof (including but perhaps not limited to the suggestions you mention).

@The_Sympathizer We don't know what "building your own bio-safe lab" actually means. It could be anything from "put a biohazard bin next to your desk to dispose of materials, and wear gloves and a lab coat" to "commission the construction of a multi-million dollar new building for the university", but I would bet towards the former end.

@immibis : However it was said that to do this is "time-consuming, costly, and far beyond our scope" which, to me, suggests that it is at the very least considerably more complex than just getting a bin and some gloves, and at least in OP's own estimation, not something sie is going to be able to do reasonably. Though perhaps it'd be useful if OP provided some more specific details as to what exactly that entails.

@The_Sympathizer It's quite possible that the OP just assumed that.

This is a much bigger deal than you seem to think it is.

What are the proper, canonical, professional way of handling this?

You (or your research group) should seek to partner with someone with practical experience running experiments on human tissue, which does not have to be from your University.  As long as you are running experiments on human tissue, someone in the pipeline needs to have knowledge of the ethical way to do it, and be able to properly document it.  If your group is working alone, you have to take that burden on yourself (which is how I interpret the the response from the university's bio-ethics committee.)  If you partner with someone, yes you will have to 'spread around the credit', but you won't have to be the ones to ensure that your tissues are handled ethically.
From your questions, it seems to me that you / your group is familiar with the equipment (enough that you were able to get the sample and correctly image it), but it is not clear to me that your group is set up to actually collect the sample in a professional way.  You've mentioned CS, so I assume that your facilities are not set up to collect specimens, but rather to analyze the images.  (Are you set up to safely handle and observe them?  I can't tell from the question.)
It also seems to me that your research is focused on what happens once the sample has been given to you (From calling it a 'trivial experiment', an extremely trivial experiment, a 'few tiny drops of blood', etc.)  This says to me that you have no experience running professional experiments on human tissue.  That lack of experience is causing you to think that it is unimportant.  I would bet that you have not been through Ethics and Compliance Training; you should start there.  Yes it will consume time (and therefore money).  But isn't the upfront cost of getting properly trained a better price than not being able to have your work published in a decent journal (which is where you currently are)?
One way that may help you think about why this is important: You believe everything is on the up and up because you were there.  How do you prove this to someone who wasn't?  Where is the paper trail proving you gave your blood with your explicit consent?  Was it obtained in a sterile manner?  (Prove it.)  Was the sample harvested ethically and safely?  (Prove it.) *

How can I by-pass the bio-ethics statement?

I am not about to answer this question. I do not suggest you try to do so.  Any legal issues would likely come from the tissue source sueing (so, I don't expect you would sue yourself).  BUT the questions to your reputation could be something you have not thought about.  If you are willing to publish results without a bio-ethics statement (even on something as "extremely trivial" as this), your audience will start to raise questions that will haunt you.

And I do not want to delay the paper submission.

Whether you want to or not doesn't really matter. You have to put publishing this work on hold, until you can find somebody with the proper training to work with you, or you meet the requirements of the university so that your group can collect and handle samples professionally.  I suspect that there is a very real chance that you will have to treat this work as a rough draft and repeat it on a new sample (one that comes with the appropriate paperwork).
 * And, just to be clear, my 'prove it' comments aren't challenges; they are the questions I don't think you are qualified to answer.  What medical training do you have?  What training in bio-ethics do you have?

A common response in such situations to "prove it" is often "I'm the one conducting the study, why do we need to make a big deal of my consent/safety?" However, there have been more than a few examples where junior co-authors have been coerced by their supervisor into being test subjects or donating tissue, to their potential detriment. Your particular case might not be coercive, but requiring the proper forms and third-party IRB sign-off provides a safety check. (If you can be coerced to donate, you can be coerced to utter nebulous assurances that you weren't.)

@R.M. - Would the forms and IRB really be effective in preventing that sort of situation?

@Obie2.0 Granted, they're not 100% effective, but having a third party look things over helps to separate out the "yeah, no big deal" cases from the "wait - there might be worrisome coercion happening here" cases needing a closer second look. At the very least it can possibly move things from (hard to detect/punish) unofficial "shading of truth" to explicitly lying in official black and white.

This answer could use an explicit example of what could go wrong to highlight the importance and thus make it understandable why these rules are not out of caprice. (For example, one possibility might be that while it is hir own blood, sie might be harboring an undiagnosed bloodborne infection [whether actual or not is irrelevant - it's a risk from the pov of others] and thus by treating without proper protocol, risking spreading that. The "infraction" is then that one created this undue risk to others in the experiment.)

"your audience will start to raise questions that will haunt you." the correct response from all sane people in the field is to shun and destroy the careers of anyone insane enough to respond in such a way. There's no excuse for discarding common sense.

Your results are not publishable.
I think the others are beating around the bush too much.
You didn't deal with procedures for handling human samples. You didn't document your consent, you didn't have any procedures for adverse findings. Could you even prove it was your blood?
Your IRB will not approve you retroactively, a) because they don't do that and b) as far as I can tell, they shouldn't have approved your procedure anyway.
It would have been easy to get approved a priori, and I'm sorry your training in CS didn't prepare you for this, but if you really need this paper ASAP, you need to forget about getting your sample approved and figure out how to get one you can work with.

+1 This is absolutely true and also why in the near future western civilization is bound to collapse. Bureaucracy and the legal system will eat us alive.

@DRF Not a legal issue atm (although it would have been if something bad had happened). And frankly, the bureaucracy here is not that intense; the OP was just not aware of it.

The point of the bureaucracy is to do more good than harm. Does it do that? I'm not so sure, after reading about so many cases of worthwhile research that was abandoned. It's not insurmountable, but how many good things did we already lose because people just don't bother anymore? This is especially true for counter-studies, given how rarely those are published.

@Luaan I'm not sure what you're referring to, but I'm not of the opinion this research was properly done and hampered by the bureaucracy.

No disagreement there :) I'm more worried about the people who are deterred from even trying to do any research, not about people who just don't understand the rules.

I can think of one (possibly) entirely ethical way to bypass the more onerous demands of the bioethics committee: don't use human blood.
You are working on microscope imagery, rather than immunology or any other functional issue, so any blood cell of approximately the right size ought to be acceptable. I would try contacting a local vet to see about collecting a sample.
It would still be necessary to consult with the committee, since they may well have guidelines for animal experimentation, but presumably the guidelines will be much less demanding, since in general you don't get cross-species infection issues.

+1...There are in fact onerous protocols for experimentation on vertebrate animals, but invertebrates are pretty much fair game. I'd  also be surprised if there weren't open source databases of images of animal or human blood...a quick search reveals one on Kaggle, though no idea if that would be suitable for OP's needs

@cag51 - My thought was that if an animal such as a dog were having blood drawn for testing, a small amount might be diverted to the OP, and the result might (or, of course, might not) be exempt from "experimental" protocols. After all, no experiments are being done on the dog.

Though I am no expert on animal testing, I think using a dog as you describe would lead to pretty much exactly the same type of problem that OP has now -- it seems trivial, but there are a ton of rules. Even filling out a survey requires an IRB, for reasons I've never accepted. But invertebrate blood might work, there are ~no rules on invertebrates.

@cag51 - Sheer vertabratism at its worst. We should form a committee to protest.

Thanks for the suggestion. Actually we have tried mice blood but the cells are too small to be seen (beyond our microscopy & algorithm capabilities). And blood cells are preferable because the donut shape is well known and easy for one argument of the paper. Also, I am not doing machine learning and the hardware is special, so I cannot use public datasets.

@WDC : Why would that prevent you from using a publicly-available image of blood cells? Is there something specific in the images you'd need control over?

@The_Sympathizer the microscopy is special; our contribution includes both hardware and software contributions. So I cannot use other data.

@WDC Ah, so you need a picture taken with your own microscopes, then.

Could another possible alternative be to use a pre-prepared specimen, such as those which can be ordered from suppliers? If one gets that then one doesn't need to collect and process any blood at all; all the handling and vetting has already been done for you. I typically see these sold for learning sets.

@WDC - "we have tried mice blood but the cells are too small" - What? Mouse and human RBCs are almost exactly the same size, and in general erythrocytes are pretty much the same size in all species. Apparently I'm missing something.

@JamesMartin Unfortunately not. Mice blood cells are 4x smaller than humans'. I have real data and I am not exaggerating.

@WDC - Then I assume you're talking about thrombocytes rather than erythrocytes, right? If not, something very strange is going on. As I stated, erythrocytes (RBCs, aka red blood corpuscles) are about 6 to 8 microns regardless of species.

@JamesMartin Weird. I am not from bio, but I did witness myself that red blood cells (donut shaped; similar to what I have seen from humans') from mice are (much) smaller than those from mine. Maybe I need to redo the experiment. Thanks for the info.

@JamesMartin I'd join your protest but, honestly, I don't have the backbone...

@WDC - Don't take my word on it. Google on "mouse red blood cell size".

@JamesMartin Well compared to your comment here I believe my experimental results much more. But you did remind me of the possibility that the sample blood might be wrong, though the possibility is small.

It is possible for an IRB to make a determination that your research, though it involves humans, does not rise to the level of human use that would require a whole protocol. I've gone down this road when trying to do 'experiments' that involve students using a web interface and having their activities recorded. It takes a few months and costs several hundred dollars, but it's probably the best case scenario for you.
That said, I do not know if you will be able to get such an exemption when you are drawing, storing and processing blood. Regardless of whose blood it is and whether they gave consent, there are legitimate concerns about infection. In this case, you may need to hire a group that does this kind of work and already has approved protocols in place (or find an extant dataset from such a group that you can use).

Yes, your IRB might simply give you a letter saying that IRB approval is not required.

I understand how requiring an approval and protocol for a few drops of your own blood may sound like a bureaucratic overkill, but it really isn't. Imagine you badly hurt your finger or catch a bloodborne disease in the process. Since this would've happened in your lab while you were performing your research duties, it would effectively constitute an occupational accident with all its consequences. If you could prove your adviser / head of lab / etc. knew you were doing experiments with your blood, yet didn't provide you with training and equipment required to do it safely, you'd likely have a legal claim against them, or the institution.
So yes, there are potential legal issues with your approach, and you'll have to fulfil the requirements for experiments with human tissue, or do your experiment with something else.

My apologies, I have not gone through the other answers. However, here are some practical tips:

There are independent Human Ethics committees that you can apply to who can then rule on them.
You can always ask for a waiver if the blood sample is going to be provided by the principal investigator in an investigator initiated experiment.
You can simply contact the nearest teaching hospital attached to a medical school or any biomedical research facility, talk to researchers there to collaborate with you on this experiment. Many would be happy to collaborate across disciplines, institutions, etc. Many journals even reward transnational studies.
You need to mention in your ethics committee application if this is a non-traditional method or if the method itself is experimental so that they can rule on various aspects of the experiment apart from the ethical part - biosafety, etc.

Hope this helps.
Added: On Independent Ethics Committee: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5839245/#cre292-note-0016
COPE Statement: https://publicationethics.org/files/Full%20set%20of%20English%20flowcharts_9Nov2016.pdf
Pay attention to : What to do if you suspect an ethical problem with a submitted manuscript.

Could you elaborate on Point 1 the independent Human Ethics committees? And elaborate on Point 2 please? From our application experience to IRB it seems there’s no difference if donor is me (student) or the PI.

Most of your answer is relevant for future actions and does not address correcting a past action.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5839245/
“…if no formal ethics committee is available, a statement indicating that the research was conducted according to the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki should be included”, alternatively stated “For those investigators who do not have access to formal ethics review committees, the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki should be followed”.
See: http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf
@SolarMike is correct. The way forward is to write to the reviewer that principles of the Helsinki were followed.

Clearly OP does have access to a local IRB though. Would it really be permissible to sidestep it (and its recommendations) by using an independent one?

It would almost certainly be against the rules of the OP's institution to seek permission from an independent IRB for this research as a way to avoid dealing with the institution's IRB.

@BrianBorchers OP had mentioned that the paper is on the Algorithm and Software and that the experiment was trivial, using blood of the OP only.
In most Universities, such experiments (say, at a very initial, preliminary or small pilot stages) are exempted from getting Ethics clearances. The parameters for applying for ethics is involvement of human or animal subjects.
If the quantity of biological tissue/fluid needed is very small, for e.g. a prick or drop of blood from the investigator itself, it qualifies in most places for waivers. This can be confirmed by any ethics committee.

@Jagan Mohan.  At my US based institution, the IRB (I'm a member of the IRB) would certainly require approval before the first blood sample was taken.

@BrianBorchers Agreed - Ethical clearance/waiver before the experiment starts. Sorry if my position was unclear. I recommended that the OP get a waiver with an initial study proposal or application where he makes a case that the experiment is a pilot, of low risk, one subject and a single sample of blood from a prick. Of course, he will have to repeat the experiment with either a clearance or waiver.

I'd say this (given the comments).
While I have not encountered such a situation, I'd suggest that because you are a Computer Science-trained person and not a trained biomedical researcher, the board did act very unreasonably by demanding that you, as such, and presumably with knowledge of your credentials if the institution is even half worth the salt of whatever accreditation it is supposed to have, undergo an even more technical and expertise-requiring, and thus introducing even worse possibilities for screwups, project of building your own bio-lab by yourself. Given that, I can absolutely understand and totally sympathize with (see my username tag) your plight. Personally I would not entrust that task to anyone but a real specialist in that area, i.e. a trained biomedical researcher. Using facilities is one thing. Creating a facility yourself is kind of like, to use a computer-related analogy, amateurs writing their own crypto, I'd think, and the actions of the board like that seeing you were not using proper encryption for secure communications and then demanding that as a response you should go and fashion your own ciphers and programs instead of trying to help you get properly-built stuff.
That said, you cannot expect the journal to lower its standards. While the risk from this is no doubt very small, nonetheless the precautionary principle is always exercised, as the other answers have alluded. As I mentioned in another comment, one could imagine a situation in which one (not saying you do, so don't freak) had an undiagnosed bloodborne infection (many do not immediately produce symptoms, e.g. Hepatitis) and then inadvertently spread it to a lab assistant or other person who contacted the blood. The journals are right to be concerned with the improper procedure used just as you are to be annoyed with ham-handed management.
If the experiment is truly trivial, then I'd suggest that you should not necessarily be too shy about repeating it (plus you may discover that in the course of doing so you could do something even better with a second think-through). The real problem though is getting management to approve, and I'd suggest your focus really should be on finding out why they'd make that demand and to find an alternate solution that will provide the facilities and/or handling required to meet the ethical guidelines correctly without you having to be pushed even further beyond the limits of your expertise.
Moreover, I'd also wonder why you'd need to rush this paper. Is there something of significant negative consequentiality that will happen if you do not submit it "on time"? (e.g. if you fail to deliver by the "desired" time is it going to jeopardize your position, or something else that would seriously affect you and/or others under your trust?) If that is the case, then you might want to take that up in the disputes with management as well and tell them that you are seeking to humour their concern that the experiment be performed according to proper ethical protocol yet also that you have an important reason you need to get it done as soon as possible.

thanks for the answer. Indeed I need to talk to IRB to understand their real need. I am rushing the paper is because it is been 4 months and I will be on industrial market soon.


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Ignored by university after requesting reimbursement for faculty interview campus travel
I did a campus interview for a tenure-track assistant professorship at a public R1 university in March. I was told to purchase my own air travel and submit for reimbursement after the interview due to state policy. Despite multiple emails to the department chair who hosted me, copying the department secretary and search chair, I have not received any response regarding reimbursement over the past 2 months.
What is the appropriate way to pursue getting reimbursed (for just ~$600) when emails are being ignored? I am willing to risk burning bridges if necessary.

I’d try the Dean next…

Telephones are still a thing, when people don't answer email. On the other hand, university bureaucracies are slow, and it's not at all surprising that a reimbursement would take more than 2 months, so it's quite possible that everything is on track and you just have to wait.

Thank you all for the reply.  I think my case is different from the other question because I received no replies at all -- I would say this is more an etiquette issue rather than university bureaucracy.  How come the dept/search chairs not even care replying emails... Phone call is sure my next todo.

Another possibility, of course, is that your emails are getting blocked by a spam filter.

Before the visit, my same edu email got replied in few hours -- after the visit they blocked me like a spam person? Unbelievable if it had been the case...

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/42415/what-to-do-when-university-has-not-yet-reimbursed-travel-costs-for-a-job-intervi?noredirect=1&lq=1

@WDC I agree that this sounds dodgy, but about the spam issue I recently had an unpleasant surprise. We interviewed and offered a postdoc position recently; all formal and informal communication has been done through their Uni address and has up to that point proceeded without a glitch. He got in touch some 10 days later saying he never received his formal offer letter (which we, the academics, has instructed our HR staff to do). Turns out, the offer letter was promptly sent 2-3 days after we asked, and was the only e-mail from our University that somehow landed in that person's spam.

Spam filters are often more aggressive on emails that talk about money or payments.

@NateEldredge I would find 2 months unacceptable for an internal payee, much less an external one.

Thank you all.  The issue is resolved by a phone call followed by emails. It was a communication issue.

To conclude the comments: Call and ask if your emails have arrived and what the status of the reimbursement is. (It helps if you do not assume bad intentions on their side.)
Some explanation: There are many valid reasons, e.g. spam filters, changed responsibilities, malfunctioning servers, longer leaves for whatever reason, unclear responsibilities (everybody is thinking the issue is dealt with), or slow procedures. So asking is the right thing to do - if email does not work, try other channels, the most natural one being the phone (then snail mail, maybe...).

The entire situation is quite abnormal. Before/besides trying Dirk's suggestion, here is one more thing to try: In many cases, when you are invited to a job interview at a research department, you already know somebody in the department professionally because they are working in a research subarea similar to yours. For instance, maybe you have meet at conferences, etc. Or, when you visited the department, you talked to somebody there in your research subarea who is genuinely interested in your research. [The reality of hiring is that whenever somebody is invited for a job interview, this means that, likely, there is a faculty or a group of faculty members "pushing" for this hire.] If there is such a person, consider contacting them and asking about the situation.

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Can someone with a bachelor’s degree in political science and a Masters of Business Administration teach undergraduate courses in Political Science?
I've read that it's quite common among students to take a graduate program which is different from the bachelor's degree. I was wondering if it is possible for someone with a bachelor's degree in Political Science and Master of Business Administration to teach Political Science subjects.

What's a DBA in this context?

Can you make your question more self-contained and also put it in the body of the question, not just leave it as the header?

Highly unlikely.  Even at the community college level, to teach in a field one must typically have at least some postgraduate degree in that field or in a closely related field.  So you someone probably teach in a polisci department with a degree in economics, because they use many of the same methods and consider some of the same areas.  Ditto philosophy.  Not a professional business degree.
(PhD political scientist here)

From my experience, community colleges are particularly strict with requiring you have at least a Masters degree in the subject you want to teach.

It is possible for people to teach across disciplines if their record reflects knowledge in the course they will teach. With a BS and PhD in Aerospace Engineering I have taught courses in CS and a division of Statistics and Scientific Computation. I was eligible to do this because my background is in parallel computing for computational fluid dynamics problems, so I have demonstrated skills in programming, software engineering, numerical analysis, and parallel computing. The courses I was teaching were on scientific computing and parallel computing and were being offered first by a CS department and then by this division (which has now become a department). I was deemed qualified to teach them based on my background and demonstrated skills even though my PhD is in a different subject.
So yes, it's possible, but I think you'd have to show some background related to the subject in question. It will also depend on what kind of job you are applying for. If a Poli Sci department needs an adjunct for one course, you might qualify to teach that course, but you are unlikely to land a full-time position unless your Doctor of Business Administration research was related to politics somehow.

OK, now the question has been edited to say MBA not DBA. I think this makes it a lot harder unless the Poli Sci department is at a community college or other school with lower requirements for their instructors.

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Publish pre-research code on Github?
In preparation for future PhD work I came up with some ideas & protypes for software components that might later become scientifically relevant, both from a CS and application viewpoint. My natural reflex to having a working proof of concept for an idea is to put it on Github under GPL.
However all (or most) of my colleagues strongly recommend against that before I haven't built any scientific credit based on that code. Their reasoning is that someone else might "steal" the idea and "usurp" the scientific precedence.
Given that the scientific and open source communities do seem a bit detached in places this appears plausible.
Does anyone have actual experience from a similar situation? Did anyone ever have scientific credit stolen from open-sourced code? The other questions, namely 19348 and 17740, don't even mention the appropriation issue. But when it's not an issue, why are my colleagues so frightened about it?

As an aside, github offers free private repositories with an academic email address.

Thanks for the pointer, but the idea was really to  share the code since I do want feedback, and I also think of open-sourcing it as a way to certifiably claim original authorship.
Thanks for the answers so far, at least now I know I'm not the only one who thinks ideas should be out in the wild, even (or especially?) the immature ones.

@mdd it now offers free private repositories to anyone (limiting number of collaborators to three).

If you make your code public, you need to think about the consequences. If your goal is to contribute toward academic research, the GPL should cover you just fine if someone wants to use your work. Remember, this means people can (and might) use your code for their own work. This doesn't stop someone from taking your incomplete idea and running with it. However, it can ensure that you are credited for your contribution (at least in the codebase) and that your code cannot be monetized for someone else's benefit. But remember, this is the internet we're talking about. Not everyone is conscientious.
I generally go by the belief that an idea is worthless without execution. Thus, if someone beats you to the punch, it sucks but that's life. Nevertheless, the best way to curate a good idea is to get input from others, hopefully some of whom may be more knowledgeable about the topic than you or have different takes on it than you. Therefore, it's a cost-benefit trade-off. You should decide whether the risk of someone completing your idea outweighs the potential improvements you may make from sharing your work and receiving feedback. If so, don't make it public. If not, share it with the world and seek informed feedback.
I am personally inclined to go with the latter case. There's a lot of stuff out there. The chances someone steals your ideas are often pretty slim.
To answer why people are often so afraid: I think most people have tunnel vision about their work. Because everyone is an expert on their own work, it seems pretty easy to them. They've also put so much time in to it that even the most minute chance of someone taking their idea frightens them. Having read plenty of OPC (other people's code), it's usually a pretty high bar for entry in order to actually try to steal someone's ideas.

I have heard anecdotal stories from people whose research ideas got "stolen" (if there is such a thing), but never in the context of someone looking at code on github.
So I would guess that the chances of someone randomly copying your idea from your public code on github are pretty slim.
However, the questions can be asked the other way around. What do you gain from making the source code publicly available? Any (outside) interest in the code would likely only come if you publish your idea in a journal or other type of publication.
If you want to collaborate with people in your group via github, an option might be to make the repository private (which is free with an academic email address, as I mentioned in my comment above).

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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


text:
Is it a valid request to a professor to delay other tasks till I decide on my PhD topic?
I have been working with my professor for a project for last 1 year. Initially he was excited to work with me, but recently I noticed, whenever I try to discuss my approaches to him, he avoids, making different excuses. I guess I couldn't come up with an approach good enough to take his time. (Needless to say, I have not published any paper yet.)
Also, I took my PhD entrance exam and took admission to my institute (same institute where I was doing a project) recently. Because I have been working with the prof, I assumed I will be doing PhD under him, as he discussed 1 year back. He has also started giving me teaching assistant responsibilities for his classes.
But sensing his disinterest (though he didn't tell me anything upfront), I asked him about the plan for my PhD and any feedback on my performance. He delayed the discussion for a few days, then told me that he will retire soon and I might take a few years for completing my PhD, so I might want to find a younger professor. Next day I asked another professor, and he was ready to guide me. So I informed the same to my current professor.
I am also facing issue with a student under my current professor, who seems to be jealous on me getting professor's attention, or professor giving me respect, as I am older to the other students. The student has submitted his thesis and will obtain his PhD in a year. He keeps on making a lot of sound in the lab, whenever he sees me doing something with full concentration. He also does things to irritate me, like opening the drawer beside my desk and never closing. He also hits my chair repeatedly with an excuse as if he is doing something. (he sits just behind me). He also has a habit of misbehaving with me. So, I just try to ignore and avoid him, so I can concentrate on my work, and don't spend all time thinking about how irritating he is.
Since the professor is anyways not going to be my guide, I asked professor, if I can concentrate on my courses and find my PhD topic for the time being, and sit in the lab of the new professor, under which I will be doing my Phd, and once some topic is finalised, I will get back to his lab and restart any pending work, or other teaching responsibilities.
My old professor did not reply to my email. Which means I guess, he is not fine with it.
Is it not a legitimate request for a PhD student to get settled a bit, and finalise a topic, before getting distracted to so many other tasks?
My batchmates, other PhD entries, are all attending courses and deciding about their profs. I do not think any of them have started with teaching assistantship yet. It has been only 3 months after entrance to this course.

There is far too much here that is unrelated to the headline question. It reads mostly like a rant, actually. Can you reduce it to the essential question?

No, I am not ranting. I have friends to rant. I have given all details so the full situation is clear. I am asking for advice on my next step. With no reply, is it ok that I start working with my new advisor for my PhD topic? Or do I meet the other professor personally and ask for permission again?

It looks like you are covering at least three different topics here: The disinterest of your first professor and moving to another, the issue with a student under your current professor, and whether settling in before the brunt of the PhD work is legitimate. Please focus on one, or at least make it clear how they relate to each other.

FWIW, I am somewhat confused by the timeline you suggest. If I am reading this right, you want to move to Professor New's lab now before you have a topic to work on there; once you have a topic with Professor New, you want to move back to Professor Old to finish your obligations there. Why not finish your old obligations before you have something new to work on?

@MisterMiyagi, that makes sense. I am fine with completing old things, but I am getting new workload. Whatever teaching responsibility the jealous student is denying to perform and asking to assign to me, prof is assigning them to me. Also I used to mentor some junior project people when they came new here, those people are calling and demanding me to be in the laboratory to still guide them saying they got a lot of work. I don't want to perform these extra additions. These people do not know though that I am no more under prof.

@MadamCurie Sorry, I don’t understand how that is supposed to answer my comment. Did I get the planned timeline right? Is there a reason for not doing it the other way around?

Is it possible that your current professor has some health or other personal problems and may have difficulties to concentrate, and consequently to give you proper supervision? (I have experience with a supervisor and another close professor in such situations.) Also could it be that he doesn't retire because of reaching the standard age but early, and that maybe he has decided this only recently based on health or other issues? I can imagine the reason for his behaviour may be different from not appreciating your work.

Who funds you and for what???

As @Buffy notes, who is paying you? Would you be OK if your current professor stopped paying you since you were busy with other things?

Payment is not professor dependent. It is from the institute.

All of these issues sound like they could be improved if you communicated more directly (but of course not angrily).
For instance, you deal with an annoying peer by saying, “Dude! What the heck! Do you realize you keep bumping my chair? What’s up with that?” Or “Hey man, it seems like you are annoyed with me. Am I reading you right?”
You should ask complicated questions to your advisor in person. Yes, you can likely ask for fewer TA responsibilities if it is not part of your contract.
You should directly tell students from your last job that they need to stand on their own two feet. Maybe give them a little pep talk about how they are ready to do so.

Accepting the answer. However it does not work with the peer. I have tried reasoning out with him once. He started fighting, behaved as if he is very upset on me, stopped talking to me for 2 weeks, until he got a teaching assignment and had to work with me. He also tried to isolate me from other peers. Told (I don't know what) to all other peers around, so people were coming to talk to me when he is not around, and as soon as he enters the lab, people became serious, and moved back to desk).

He is a passive aggressive bully. When he sees I am good with others, all of a sudden he starts behaving very nicely and try to be my friend, and as soon as he sees I have started talking to him normally, he starts misbehaving. And his misbehaves are increasing with time. Earlier he used to keep normal distance. Nowadays he got so desperate that started physically hitting my chair!

I tried changing my sitting place (as my PC had a problem), looks like he is unhappy. He made all efforts so I get back to my seat behind him. Recently I couldn't go to the lab for some time due to health issue (with permission from professor). Yesterday went to the institute after a few weeks. That peer saw me on road, and forcefully came behind me to speak to me, though I was trying to avoid him. He behaved initially like a gentleman. Enquired what problem I have. Then told me another peer is coming to the lab and coughing like me. Also told me I should not attend courses, and sit in lab.

Looks like he wants me to sit beside him at any cost, and keep troubling me :)

In fact the main reason why I want to move to the other laboratory is because I am unable to concentrate on my work in this lab, this peer disturbing me all the time. I think the professor also understands it to some extent. Yesterday I spoke with him, and he gave me permission to concentrate on courses and PhD topic now, and coming to lab at later point.


text:
SHA-256 research paper and referencing FIPS
I've posted this first one the Cryptography SE but was advised to move it here due to the very nature of the question.
Anyway, for my college thesis I've decided to do a full stack project on SHA-256. I've read and researched the FIPS PUB 180-4 top to bottom, made a very inclusive code in Python for demonstration purposes (step-by-step printing on every transformation, conversion, compression etc.) and now the time has come to put it all into a final paper.
My issue is in the understanding of the rules on proper quoting and referencing. The FIPS PUB is written so straightforward and simple that it is almost impossible to paraphrase anything, or, "write it in your own words", especially the math there. And it doesn't make sense to quote literally everything. This is my first paper where I am basing everything on math. With any other subject, it was mostly a combination, and it wasn't an issue.
So, to summarize, my questions are as followed:

Can I just make a note on the abstract or somewhere that most of the writings are translated references and definitions from the official FIPS PUB document? And if not, how can I do this by the book?
Since the FIPS PUB is an official publicly available document, where does the law stand on using it's information in papers and research such as mine?

Also, there is no official translation for this Standard in my language, so I am the one who is directly translating it.
Just to note, this is not a thesis nor a college major in the sense of the public recognition like a doctorate or similar. It's a thesis paper with which I complete one class. I am not sure if I am translating these terms correctly though (I am not from the U.S.).

The document you reference is "public information" according to NIST: https://www.nist.gov/oism/copyrights. As such, you can quote from it freely. There is no need to paraphrase and paraphrasing doesn't free you from other obligations.
There are multiple things that a scholar needs to consider when using the work of others; even public domain materials.
One is copyright, which doesn't apply here since this document, like most things produced by the US government are public domain. Other things that are "common knowledge" are similarly unbound by copyright.
Another, however, is giving credit where it is due. So, anything you use from this document needs some form of citation.
The latter (giving credit) saves you from any charge of plagiarism. So, whatever you use from that (or any other) document needs to be cited.
But the form of citation is less important than the fact of it. You have to be clear in some way that some of what you use comes from another source. Perhaps you can manage that with an overall citation covering several quotes but perhaps you need to separately cite each quoted sentence/paragraph/...
It is unfortunate in some ways that scientific/academic work can't be made to read as smoothly as a novel, but when one work needs a lot of things from another, there is no way to avoid the citation references.
Since this is a school work you would be wise to treat the rules seriously both as practice in how scholars write and to save yourself grief from your professor.
If you use it quote it and cite it. Make it clear. Carefully distinguish what is yours in the paper and what is from another source. Perhaps you can use old forms like "ibid." and "op. cit." to make the citations short within the text.
Note also that paraphrasing can actually make it harder to properly cite than straight quotation does.

Excellent reply, thanks. Of course, I am noting and quoting. I am mostly worrying about the visual aspect since 90% of the introductory part of my paper is literal translation of the FIPS document. I am noting the pages used, and referencing in the text i.e. " _ ...as it is explained in the Standard, the hash... _ ", I am just hoping it's not um...overused I guess.


text:
Submission of manuscript in another journal
I have submitted a manuscript in the "filomat" journal back in 2020-02-21. The paper's status is "under review" and it's been like that from the day of submission. I contacted the editor many times about the (real) status of the paper, but he didn't reply! I  wanted  to know why it takes so long for my  paper to be reviewed but he didn't reply!
I do want to withdraw the manuscript and submit it elsewhere, but I cannot withdraw it!
So, the situation is: I want to withdraw the paper but I can't! And I contacted the editor about this many times and he ignored! And the paper is there and I don't know what to do!
Any advice!
Thank you all

Why do you think you can't withdraw your paper? It doesn't require permission from the editor. The paper is yours, not theirs.

I don't think I can't withdraw the paper, I just don't know how to do it! I tried in vain!

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

This may be a duplicate question, but I can't find one that answers directly.
All you need to do to withdraw a paper, prior to assigning copyright to them, is to inform them of the withdrawal. They have no rights to the paper unless you grant them. The fact that they don't respond is not essential. Just make it clear and unambiguous that you have withdrawn the paper.
Unfortunately there is no way to guarantee that they will see an email or admit that they have. A better solution, though now uncommon, is to send something like "registered mail" where you get a receipt when the post office delivers it. This probably isn't available everywhere, but it makes it clear.
Some email systems will have a similar function, sending you a notice when the mail is first opened. Keep copies of your correspondence, even if it is one sided.
It is unprofessional not to have answered your mail. A journal that is unprofessional in one way may also be unprofessional in others.

Would you please explain this "A better solution, though now uncommon, is to send something like "registered mail" where you get a receipt when the post office delivers it." in more details?

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_mail


text:
LOR designation wrongly put?
One of my references for MS grad applications has submitted the LOR undersigning as "Assistant Senior Professor."
Is the undersigning incorrect? and will it hamper my overall application?
She is an Assistant Professor but on a senior scale.
Thanks.

did you read the letter of reference?

Actually she said that she wrote this designation.

I have a feeling it's not correct or maybe I am overthinking

Letter writers should use accurate titles. If her university thinks this is valid, then it is. Others may be puzzled about it, but that shouldn't affect your application. I doubt it will be a concern in any meaningful way.
Titles vary widely.


text:
Can the university you work for or study at protect your identity by listing you under a pseudonym?
Some people have reasons to want their identity protected from a Google search, such as a dangerous stalker ex-spouse.
When you become a grad student, assistant professor, etc. at a university, and if the university wants to put your name on their website (directory, course catalog, departmental page, to name a few), can you refuse it or have them at least put out a pseudonym instead, assuming you have been publishing or contributing to articles (or intend to) with that pseudonym?

Ask your school. Many will offer the option of not listing you at all, but I've never heard of a pseudonym option and I'm not sure why you'd want it rather than simple non-publication.

@keshlam: "simple non-publication" doesn't actually sound that simple as soon as you get some tasks that require you to be findable by strangers.

It's really not only a question of the university, but of your whole academic existence. You will need to publish and list an affiliation. If you use your real name and your actual affiliation, there goes your anonymity. But how many journals/conferences will allow you to publish without giving an affiliation? And even if that works, it will be easy for the stalker to socially engineer your affiliation out of them - all it needs is one helpful administrative assistant. Sadly, the only possibility I see for a stalked academic is a complete legal change of name.

@stephankolassa has a good point... If you need to be invisible but findable the only idea I have is delist but make sure all publications list what lab did the work so you can be found that way. Working with your school is still the only way to make it happen. Good luck.

@StephanKolassa: Well, you could use a pseudonym for your academic website and use only that for publishing, while listing the actual affiliation. Of course, the pseudonym should not be linked to a photo. But no-one ever verifies whether the people indicated as authors of a paper during the submission process actually exist. It could work in universities where the ties between the HR department (handling the actual name) and the people responsible for the staff websites (only entering the pseudonym data) aren't too tight.

@O.R.Mapper - problem: now you have published under a pseudonym, and you go to a conference. Do you go under your real name, and people can't link your papers to your name tag and your presentation? Or do you attend under your pseudonym? That may be possible, but you may need to do some explaining, as to why your name tag says "Student", but the credit card you pay your fee with says "Gosset". A few things could go wrong here.

@StephanKolassa: I don't quite see that problem; you'd always go under your pseudonym. No-one claims you have to pay the fee yourself, with your own credit card. Paying for colleagues doesn't strike me as unusual. You may have to use your real name in your hotel, but then, I've never had a problem staying away from the conference hotels and finding another nearby hotel, where I'm usually the only conference attendee.

This is commonly done in several types of cases:

by women who want to retain using their maiden name professionally while switching their legal name to their husbands
by students from countries who have taken a hostile stance towards the United States and who want to protect their extended families back in their home country
By foreigners with impossibly long (from an American standpoint) first or last names or who use non-mainstream variations on their name
By faculty who go by their middle names or nicknames not their formal first names
By aforementioned stalking victims

If you are at a large enough institution, they are prepared to handle these types of situations. My (large enough) institution has the following:

Fields in the university directory database that allow for 'nicknames' to take the place of names. Because all of our e-mails are firstname.lastname@myschool.edu, this allows for e-mails to arrive properly.
Flags in the university directory that particular information should not be publicly released. One can prevent the listing altogether if you choose.
The only other place where names would appear would be the faculty/staff/student website, which is under departmental control and easily changed.

One of the doctoral students that I work for is from one of the aforementioned hostile countries and you will not find any web presence for her on the departmental website.
This gets trickier when you are faculty, as students need to enroll in your courses and you need to publish. I would recommend in this case either a full legal name change or pushing your university/department to recognize a pseudonym. It helps greatly if you have a common last name and only need to modify your first name.

I think you have to accept the reality that this is not practically possible. Your name will appear on dozens of websites in various ways -- your own website, your department's website, the university's website for news and announcements, the university's class catalog for the current and previous years, the university's records of external grants funded, the university's accreditation reports that include publication lists, your university's open records disclosures of state employee salaries to open websites, etc etc etc. This will, in all practicality, involve dozens of people who take your name from electronic databases, paper records, payroll systems. Many websites will be automatically generated as well from electronic databases. Even if state law gives you the right to opt out of something like this, you will almost certainly find it impossible to actually do so in practice given that you have no idea where all your name is listed and who to contact to get it removed or changed. You also have to balance this with the university's very reasonable interest in allowing students to find information (such as teaching schedule, website, course information, etc) about their teacher.
I don't really think you have any other options than legally change your name permanently.

That may be place-specific, and maybe the institutions you are familiar with have a very high degree of automation - in some places, it rather seems like the HR-related matters are entirely disjoint from the whole publicly viewable part of the university. That is, the HR department and the agency that does payments has to have an employee's real name, but other than that? Employees have to set up their own websites and add themselves to the listings on the department websites (or they have to ask administrators to do so for them, based on the data the employees provide), the class ...

... catalog is written by each department based on the information provided individually by each of the employees, and - up to a certain level - salaries are standardized based on nationally valid tables, so there is no public listing of who works at the university (that sounds like violating privacy laws in some places, anyway). I'm not claiming an employee could pull that off on their own, but as long as the head of the group and similarly administrative persons (who may deal with HR and payment departments and who might have access to internal staff tables) are informed, it might work.

I think it would be a Herculean task. I would also think that the number of places where students still enroll using websites hand-crafted by departments rapidly converges to zero. It is so much more efficient to have processes like enrollment, grade management, online homework, etc, done centrally that whoever isn't doing it that way is almost certainly thinking very hard about doing it centrally. All of these in one way or another require university-wide databases.

Sure, no opposition to that. Universities whose processes I have seen invariably used such databases. It's just that they usually kept all of those databases strictly separate from anything that ever becomes publicly visible.


text:
What would happen if I don't have a published research paper during my education?
I am a 3rd year Ph.D. student. My field is computer science. I've worked on my topic for a long time, but finally, I found out that there are a lot of parameters correlated with publishing a paper. So I don't have hope for publishing a paper, since I should do it all on my own. What should I do now?

We need to know your field.  We also need to know your goals - the correct advice is depends on whether you're aiming for a Harvard professorship or if you need a published paper because some university's regulations require one for you to be hired and don't really care what is in it.

My field is computer science and I'm working on the machine learning in network analysis. Actually besides every university rules or progress in my career, I need paper for my confidence. Because I read paper, have ideas, but l don't know why I can't distinguish valuable ideas from non-working and I also I think my ideas are obvious for everyone and doesn't have strong theory behind them.

Apply to lower level journals (not conferences, avoids the issue of travel).  Just do some solid basic work to get your confidence up.  Not "home runs" or "triples" but singles or bunts.  Anything other than a strikeout.
Story:  I had a girlfriend who was hired to sell huge enterprise level deals for a packaging company (not software, the boxes, but also box systems, services, etc.)  She was hating life because she hadn't sold anything and didn't feel she was getting support to sell these huge deals and all the other salesmen would drop a price list and make little sales (not systems).  I advised her to (counterintiutively) go ahead and sell some simple stuff like the Cro Magnon salesmen had advised her.  The problem was that she basically had ZERO for a score and hadn't even learned how to use the systems (order entry to cash, credit checks for new customers, etc.)  And her confidence was in the dumpster.  She took my advice, felt WAY better after making a little sale and eventually got one enterprise deal done.
You need to get your confidence up.  Just go to some decent journal.  Not a fly by night predatory thing.  But second tier decent, looking for datapoint papers.  And don't try to claim you've invented hydrogen. Simple, simple, simple.  And short ("least publishable unit").
P.s. When asking questions here, it helps if you tell us the field.  There are huge differences by field.  It's good if we/you can generalize as well (not requiring answers to be field specific), but if you give us the field as well, you will get some targeted answers from practitioners.  I'm assuming it is computer science based on "stack exchange" and the comment about conferences, and I am not as familiar with that field, but many others here are.

I'm so thankful for your reply. Yes, my field is computer science. My adviser doesn't let me to submit my paper to lower conference or journal. He insists that unpublished paper is better than publishing in low conferences and journals. He wants us to work, but it makes me nervous that I can't publish in top conferences and high impact journals. Again thanks for your advice.

+1  I strongly disagree with OP's advisor. The first thing I try to get my own PhD students to do is just publish something. It doesn't matter what, and as long as the venue isn't a scam, it doesn't matter where.  The confidence boost from having a publication outweighs the disadvantage (if any) of listing a weaker venue in your CV.

Since your field is computer science, conferences are important. Much more so than in other fields. I don't know the academic culture of Iran, but in the wider world, your advisors permission isn't needed to publish anything anywhere. Also, in the wider world, degrees in CS are usually awarded for dissertations than for a set of publications, though this varies by country. In the US, you don't normally need publications to complete a degree in CS, though it is valuable if the ideas are worthy of publication.
I don't know what publishing without permission would do in your circumstance, so I'll assume the worst - that it would harm you. Otherwise, just do it. Keep improving the papers and keep submitting until you find success.
You don't seem to be without ideas. But I worry that you may be abandoning them too soon. That may be a problem, especially in a fast moving field. Timing is partly an issue in such fields. If you overly refine a paper before first submission then it may wind up too late in the queue to be considered. It might even be advantageous to submit something less refined, but with a solid core, so that you get in the publication process early enough to be considered.
Perhaps the following would help. Understand that your advisor is partly responsible for your success. Use him/her to sign off on the quality of your work and make suggestions to improve it. Suggest that you co-author a paper, putting the advisor's reputation on the line. You will probably learn something from this process, either how to write better papers or that your advisor is unsuitable. But both are valuable.
The fact that your friends have papers is partly serendipity. They were, perhaps, lucky. If they have the same advisor, then it is likely that there are good ideas floating around.
But, in general, find the shortest path to completion in your case and follow it. It might even involve changing advisors or institutions, though that is normally not a short path. But if you can finish with only a dissertation, then do that. If you can publish without permission, then do that. Etc. You don't need to stay in the current situation longer than necessary. Find a door and aim for it.

In the US, you don't normally need publications to complete a degree in CS — You don't??!

@JeffE, you need a dissertation acceptable to the faculty. But publishing it is a different matter.

Yes, I know the difference.  Publication is not a formal requirement for a computer science PhD in the US, but (at least in all the departments I'm familiar with) it definitely is a de facto requirement.

@Buffy Your answer is amazing. I can't submit a paper without my adviser permission, if I do, I might get fired and when I send a paper for him, it takes him a loooooong time to read and comment.
You are exactly right. When I get rejected or have any idea, I abandon it so soon since I always think that this is an easy idea and after rejection I think it's unworthy to work more on it. I'm also too afraid that the field is moving and my idea perhaps is too old.

The main problem of working as team is that everybody is focused on his/her work and doesn't have time to help, so we are almost alone in papers. And since I'm alone I think testing every idea takes a long time to test and I'm always stressed that another group might work on the same idea.
Again thanks for your comment. It is a good motivation for me.


text:
How do people have so many papers in just one year?
I am a 4th year Ph.D. student majoring in computer science. My advisors don't do anything for me unless saying that my ideas are really simple. I've got so many rejections for my papers, on the other hand, I see people who write more than 20 papers in a year. Can someone guide me on how is it possible? I cannot change my advisors and I should do it on my own.

Unfortunately, without someone experienced to help/guide you, it is unlikely you will publish in good places.  It is 'easy' to see the final outputs (published papers) and try to copy their patterns.  However, doing research is about having good processes, from the idea conception stage all the way to paper writing.  If any of these processes are poor, then the paper quality will likely to be poor.  So my advice would be to learn each process well.

On getting 'ideas', I find that students do tend to have 'simple' ideas.  This is because they lack experience and an in-depth knowledge of their research areas.  Consequently, what they can 'reach' based on their current knowledge tends to be trivial.    This is why an experienced supervisor is critical.  They can identify gaps, new areas or pose novel research questions, which students then work toward.  Without such guidance, students are driving blind.

@DanielHatton I submitted it to two conferences, the first one got good reviews from one reviewer, one got above the threshold and the third one said below the threshold. The submission to the second conference was terrible. I can't understand how people come up with ideas that beat everything and also have great mathematical support and also new and ...

@Prof.SantaClaus If I want to learn more, where should I start?

@user137927 unfortunately, you will have to find a good supervisor/teacher.  There is simply too much info on the Internet, and you need someone that can tell you what is important.

@user137927 I think you should take our comments with a grain of salt.  We are providing info based on very little information or context; I treat reviewers comments the same.  Also, understand that research is punishing, with many failures.  Even great ideas are rejected many times.  See https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2019/05/8-papers-rejected-before-winning-the-nobel-prize.html

@Prof.SantaClaus Thanks for your time

You're in school, it's the school's job to guide you. If your advisors don't do anything for you, complain loudly to the dean. If they don't hear you, go complain to the president/rector. I'm serious. If you're the squeaky wheel that makes them embarrassed, they will want to fix it.

@user137927 If the problem is you, you have nothing to lose by complaining. If the problem is them, you have everything to gain.

Thanks, @chepner. I will try to ask them again :)

Do you search to see if you can find anything previously published about an idea before you take it to your supervisors?

@DanielHatton Sorry I didn't answer your question. The problem is that there always some other methods that I've not compared my method with. I can even say that some of those suggested methods are not related to our method and they don't have the same assumptions. Actually sometimes, they are the first results of the search with the keyword of paper.

The latest edit changed the focus of the question quite a bit- time to revert to keep the already given answers in line with the (original) question?

@Mark I thought that the original one might be so hopeless and when someone read it, cannot be helpful and answers are still quite well and established.

Don't aim for quantity of papers, aim for quality.  It is better in the long run to publish two good papers that you and the research community can build on than 20 papers that lead nowhere (I've written plenty of those!).  Take as long as it needs to make the paper solid.

@DikranMarsupial Thanks for your answer. Since you said that you have also written both types of papers, can you tell me about the difference between them in the path of the idea, writing, and any other aspects that you think are different between them? Do you have any advice about the steps?

@user137927- the key is to be your own "reviewer #3" and work to address any weak-points you can identify in your argument and experiments.  It needs the right balance between self-confidence and self-skepticism to see the faults in your work and fix them rather than downplay them.  Not worrying about productivity in terms of quantity helps as well, but that is more difficult at the start of your career.

@DikranMarsupial Thanks for your answer. I think the key problem is that I can always find drawbacks and if I want to focus on them, I can never complete a paper. I see drawbacks in the published paper too. I can't find out where I should give up on drawbacks.

@user137927 drawbacks don't always need to be fixed, sometimes it is enough to point them out and discuss them.  Very few papers are going to be without drawbacks, but what the reader really wants is a balanced presentation of the ideas (at least in principle).

@DikranMarsupial Thanks for your time

A few remarks:

Those who write 20 papers a year typically write with co-authors. At this level of productivity, the authors often take over a part of the research and writing for the paper. More senior authors often do not conduct the experiments, but rather have a share in designing the overall idea developed in the paper and a part of the writing process. If you are really on your own and cannot join a team (e.g., take over a role in some other project work in your research group), then you can't expect this level of productivity from yourself. And ultimately, it's also not needed.
If your advisors dismiss your ideas as too simple, there are four possibilities:

the idea is actually quite simple, and others have tried it out and published about it
the idea is so simple that it's non-publishable
the idea is simple, it has been tried out, and the results were bad
your advisors are wrong

I've seen cases where the second case held, but later another researcher tried it as well and successfully wrote a paper about it.

About paper rejections at conferences: In my experience, the quality of reviews varies greatly between the conferences and the reviewers. Sometimes, reviewers take a lot of time to write precise reviews for why exactly they recommend a paper for rejection. These are very helpful reviews and should be taken very seriously. But then there are others in which for clear rejections the reviewer does not take the time to write up why exactly the paper should be rejected. Quite often, when the answer should be "the paper is overall not written well enough" or "I don't believe that the result is significant", the reviewer singles out something that is easily defensible objectively, such as a missing comparison against something else, missing references, or the like, and  bases their rejecting recommendation on that. The problem with these reviews is that while the reviewer is normally correct (but sometimes isn't), it doesn't help the author to address the core problem. Normally, your advisor should spot such reviews and tell you what to focus on, but if you get little help, that's not good.
If you see other published papers that are similar to your own ones, read them and then think about why they were accepted. What is the core contribution that the paper made? What is so cool about it that the paper was accepted, despite its inefficiencies? It may simply be that for the papers you are submitting, no program committee member has a good reason for why they should make a case for you that exactly your paper should be accepted. And then it is rejected even though it's not actually bad on any scale.
Solicit feedback from peers (fellow PhD students) if your advisors won't give it. Don't ask peers about feedback on grammar, spelling, and the like on your papers. Ask if they would be writing an "accept" review for the paper or not. Any why they would do that. Get feedback on the paper story and if the argument and structure is convincing.

Thanks a lot for your great answer. If I think in the worst case, my ideas are quite simple what should I do? There are lots of papers published in the journals and conferences, how do they come up with great ideas which beat all the previous works and also are not simple? What is wrong with me?

@user137927 'great ideas' -> have deep knowledge of the area or broad knowledge (experience) -- both of which allow you to see farther than other people.  Bring new perspectives/concepts to an area.  Some authors work in a good environment where they are always ideas floating around; i.e., cross-pollination of ideas in different areas is high.

@Prof.SantaClaus I've heard it so many times that one person wrote a paper in only one month. With this rate of publication, how can I even get deep knowledge about something? Everything I want to work on has been done already by others...

@user137927 well, I wouldn't put too much thought on that.  Think about how much time the authors spent on gathering the ingredients required to write the paper. Imagine being in a restaurant, how fast did the food come out?  how long did it take the cook/chef to prepare the dish?  I can assure you, the cook/chef did not just chop all the ingredients up a few minutes before the dish came out!

Try joining Academia.edu, create your own website and post segments of your work which contain a unity of thought. Without going into any detail on why, in your absract ask for honest feedback on the idea, writing, paper content etc. That way you will receive feedback plus begin to gain an audience of like minded researchers. Regards, Charles M. Saunders

Thanks, Charles. I will surely do that.

Reviewers of conference papers are often working under extreme time pressure (I once received a package containing 10 papers and decisions to publish or not were required in 3 days!) Also a conference can only present a finite number of papers. If 1000 papers are submitted and there is only presentation time for 50, the other 950 will be rejected however good they are. Submitting a paper to a journal is a slower process but unless the paper is an "obvious" rejection you are more likely to get some useful feedback from the reviewers.

@user137927 Keep in mind that there's a ridiculous amount of low-hanging fruit in CS; most obvious ideas you think of will already have been done, but a lot of them won't've.

Thanks, @alephzero, that's understandable, but I don't know why I can't accept that there are people who their idea is always better. This is a very very common thing in the papers that the proposed method beats everything. But I think there are millions of experiments that one method might fail. I don't even know why I can't do experiments that are acceptable by reviewers :(

@wizzwizz4, yes you're right. But when my supervisor says that's a simple idea, I feel really stupid. I don't know how I can come up with complicated ideas. I read a lot, I almost understand all the papers I read. In lots of times, I think the idea of papers is not that complicated, but my ideas are even worse and the sentence: "it's a simple idea, I think it's duplicated", it hurts me.

Even while I'm writing this, I feel so embarrassed. I cannot publish a paper.

Try not to blame yourself for this. Based on your post, I suspect it's not your fault, but a product of your situation with your advisor. Most PhD students are only able to publish because of good support from their advisors.

My advisors don't do anything for me. I am totally alone.

This situation is a serious problem.
PhD students typically need good advising; it's necessary for survival, like the water, food, or oxygen of getting a PhD. If you feel alone, you need to be able to go to someone for help; and if you get stuck, you  need good guidance on directions to take.
Are there other PhD students in the program who you can find support in? Are there other professors who you know who might be sympathetic and help you with your research and paper writing?
You also need to be willing to ask for help, and not to feel embarrassed and ashamed. If you aren't willing to ask for help, then no matter what mentors are available to you, you won't be able to succeed. Needing help doesn't indicate a problem with you. It's completely normal.

When I come up with an idea, one of my advisors tells me that "it's an easy idea that comes up to every mind, so I'm sure that it's duplicated".

DCTLib has suggested some possible reasons for this. It's possible the idea truly is too simple, but it's also possible it could lead you to a good direction. However, you could reflect on your advisors' behavior here. A good advisor will not just tell you that it's easy, but suggest a better related direction. For example:
"That idea X is interesting, but it's a bit simple. What might be better is to combine idea X with Y. If we want to pursue this direction we might first try to read some papers on Y. If you're interested in that, I recommend also looking at Z."
Are your advisors' answers like this? Or are they just shutting down your ideas without help? If the latter, have you tried asking them, straight to the point, what is wrong with the idea and if they can help refine it into something better?
Be confident on this; you need to know what's wrong with the idea, and they have the ability to explain it.
If they are not willing to be helpful even after being asked, then the problem becomes worse. You would need to look to other mentors for support.

When I wrote a paper and tried to publish it

Did your advisors help with writing the paper at all? If not this is another major red flag for your relationship with your advisors.

I see people who write more than 20 papers in a year.

No one writes more than 20 papers in a year. Some people publish that much, but if so they likely personally wrote none of those papers. The "hard labor" of writing the bulk of the paper is usually done by PhD students.

Can someone guide me on what I should do?

To summarize:

Start asking for help. No one can make it on their own; you need guidance and mentorship, just like everyone else. The hardest part is that you also need to believe that it's not a problem with you or you will be too afraid to ask for help.

Try to utilize your advisors more effectively. Find what feedback they are able to give and utilize it. Ask them direct questions. Ask what is wrong with your paper, how to address reviewer feedback, what related work to read, etc.

Find other mentors, including other PhD students or other professors in your program if at all possible.

Consider therapy to try to build self-confidence. It helps in many cases try to deal with the underlying psychological painfulness so that you can focus more on asking for and getting help.

This isn't an easy situation, I'm sorry you have to deal with it. Good luck!

Can someone guide me on how is it possible?

There are several ways that some people use to publish more papers per year:

Some split their project in several ideas that can be published as separate papers to make as many papers as possible.  For example, in CS, they may publish an algorithm in a conference paper, and then an optimized version of that algorithm in a follow up conference paper.  Another example: some may publish a paper about an algorithm, another paper about the whole system, and another paper about the application of the system to a given domain.
Some choose to work on small projects that requires a small amount of work to make and that are likely to succeed rather than work on long and risky projects.  Sometimes, the idea are simple and they just combine two ideas together to make a new paper.
Some publish in easy journals and conferences where papers are easy accepted
Some participate in projects from other students/researchers. If someone has 20 papers, they are likely participating in many papers from collaborators/friends.

To make this clear, I don't say that you should do all of the above. I just say what some people are doing to increase their paper count.
Also, experience plays an important role. Researchers who have experience writing papers can write/conduct research more quickly.  The first paper that you write takes quite a lot of time, the second one is faster, and so on.
Also having several papers is nice. But remember that quality is also important for a student/researcher. Sometimes, having a paper in a very top conference or journal might be viewed as better than having 10 papers in some weak conferences and journals. The reason is that writing many low-quality papers is easy.. but having papers in top journals/conferences is not easy and will show your research ability. Thus, although you want to increase your number of papers, I would recommend you to still make sure that you write some quality papers. I would say that aiming at a balance between the number of papers and the quality is important.

Be patient. I wonder why you want to publish a paper when you have a job to do already, which is the job of finishing your doctorate?

In CS, it is the norm that the central contributions of the later PhD thesis are already published in journals or conferences. There are some PhD regulations at some universities that even require this.

Yes, @DCTLib is right...

The important thing is that there is nothing “wrong with you”. Research is not easy; it is not done by a routine process; there is no standard technique; success is not guaranteed. Enjoy the task, do your best, be prepared for disappointments, rejoice if you do something well, and keep trying until you find a role in life that suits you. Research is merely a human activity like many others.

Research a particular specific open problem until you are an expert on it and know its state of the art. Then think of a promising solution to it. Write it down. That is a non-simple paper, journal article material.

Thanks for your answer. I have a problem and I've read lots of paper in it. My problem is that anything that comes up to my mind has flaws and every reviewer can say that, or it is so simple. Promising solution is a very general term.

@user137927 I understand. Keep thinking. Think of a flawless solution, even by a process of elimination of every other possible solution if necessary. My first publication went thru 167 versions before it was ready.

Wow, that's interesting. I think it's also interesting that you had someone to help you revise your paper. One of my colleagues was telling me that she published a paper in an A+ conference and started to work on it 3 weeks before the conference. But so many revision needs a lot of time, I think the speed of publishing papers is so much faster than so many revision on one paper :(

@user137927 Yes, it was more than a year. Don't know about conferences, I'm talking about journals. You can submit at any time. Most revisions were done by myself, although of course I had my principal supervisor, cosupervisor, and two external reviewers to help me, and then four peers that reviewed it for journals. Oh, and it was my second article now that I think of it, not my first.


text:
Where to add a name which is added by force without contribution in a paper to keep my supervision and contribution?
A few months ago, I asked here a question about a student in our group who claimed the authorship in our paper, because he was planning to work on the same problem that we did. I said that I refused to accept the co-authorship the night before the deadline because he did not have any contribution. Two days ago, my advisor sent me a message that the other student is planning to follow up and send a request to the conference committee and claim about our paper. We had a meeting about details with my advisor today. He said, "Let me tell you what will happen, the student will send the request, due to the law, the committee has to ask three professors to talk to all of us, and then it will go nowhere because there is no evidence, but it will be so bad for anyone who has been in this process. To prevent this, add the other student's name to your paper". I tried to refuse but he insisted and said "You did the mistake, until one week before the deadline I didn't know what you are working on. You didn't tell me about your work to keep the number of authors at the minimum and become the supervisor. Now you have to add his name". I said that I wish you told me this when you found out the problem, but you said it is okay at the time. If I knew, I would withdraw the paper, and he said this is not a professional manner to withdraw the paper. I am deeply sure that I did not take EVEN A WORD from that other student and am really sad about the situation, but I cannot lose my advisor for my future positions. But my question: my collaborator (the first author) and I worked on the paper and both proposed the idea and divided the coding into two parts. My collaborator did more than I did in the writing. That is why my collaborator is the first author and I am the second with equal contribution (I was the supervisor who defined the problem). Now, I should add this new student's name, where should I put the new name? Shall I add the new name as the second author to keep my supervision and also the effort? I cannot ask my advisor, because it seems that he wants just to solve this problem without any conflict and doesn't care about my situation.
My field is computer science in medical applications.
Thanks a lot for reading and answering.

While the proper action is to not add them at all, where it should be added is very field dependent. Both first and last can have a positive connotation in different fields. You indicate that in your field it is even more subtle than that.
But, this, I think is a question for your advisor. If they are going to force you to add a non-contributor, make it their responsibility to say where. Ask the advisor, also, what sort of "Contributions" section would be appropriate for the paper.
But, do what you need to do to finish your degree with a positive letter from the advisor. Prioritize that above the rest when you are being abused.

Thank you so much for your time in reading and answering. I edited the post and wrote my field.


text:
How to find out someone really holds a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering from Hungary?
How to find out if someone holds a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering from Technical University of Budapest?
I know that the university changed its name to Budapest University of Technology and Economics.
He claims he got a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering from that university in 1972. What I know is that he has a professional "engineering degree" from that university registered in the Engineer Association in my country. But the translation of his degree does not say Doctor nor PhD, just electrical engineer. The certificate is in Hungarian with a translation to Spanish, but translation has no word of "Doctor" anywhere.
Another thing is that I find no record of any article nor paper nor publication from him on any journal. Well obviously I can not look for in Hungarian language.
When I finished my PhD (in math), I was registered in math genealogy project and I have one paper published on a reputable math journal.
Is there a web-page similar to Math Genealogy Project for electrical engineering?
I have also written to the university but have no reply until now. I do not know also if Hungarian Universities may release records of former students.
Is there anyway to verify that person really holds a doctorate? Or how can I prove he does not have it?

Phd did not exist at that time in Hungary, neither doctorate programs. One could earn only university doctor or candidate degrees, whic are research thesis based. Note at that time publishing in English wasn't that common in the Eastern Block. On the other hand, I wonder what a PhD worth anyway that was taken a half century ago, in another world and was not followed up with a related career.

I think your best bet is to get somebody who knows Hungarian to translate it for you.

You might check the university library to see if there's a thesis.

@mkennedy Scientific degrees were not under university regulation at that time, so unlikely they would have a copy of any thesis.

@mkennedy Yes, but they were under the regulation of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences at the time. There was a time where both Unis and the HAS could issue degrees, the second were much more prestigious.

You could try writing to someone who teaches mathematics there --- see the course coordinators listed here. Pick someone who is likely to have heard of you (or your Ph.D. advisor, or any of your co-authors, or someone who might be marginally interested in anything you've worked on) and make sure the email subject line reflects this connection. I've done this sort of thing MANY times, even a few times in the early 1990s by postal mail. Also, try writing to a reference librarian, something I've also done successfully several times.
To hopefully not overstate the obvious, if you write to someone in mathematics (a field I chose because you said you are in mathematics), this person is almost certainly not going to know the answer to your question, but he/she should be able to assist you in locating someone who can investigate your question, and you should be clear about this in your email to any such person in mathematics.

I think that the most probable outcome of such a move is being ignored.

If the document doesn't say "doctor" or "PhD", then for all practical purposes it can be asumed that he doesn't have a doctoral degree. The burden of proof is on him to present valid (and reliably translated) certification.

But beware that even if it says doctor, it might not be a PhD. For instance in my country doctor is anyone who has a Master's degree.

Can you say this for certain? The certificate is in Hungarian, from the Cold War era, and who knows how competently it was translated into Spanish? And you have no idea of the relationship of the OP to the degree holder, so saying that "the burden of proof is on him" is an unwarranted assumption.

@PeterShor maybe I misunderstood OP's practical problem. I'm answering from the perspective of an employer. If a PhD is a hiring requirement, then a certificate that only shows the person has some kind of university degree is just not enough to presume it's a doctoral degree. It's the responsibility of the degree holder to prove he has a PhD (or else I'm a Nobel prize winner unless disproven).

And from the perspective of an employer, you are perfectly correct. But if the OP was a prospective employer, he could ask the degree holder for clarification about his degree. And based on the fact that he asked the question, it sounds to me like he can't.

@henning In many cases, employment law requires the burden of proof to be on the employer. This is highly complex and country dependent, but some examples where it's the employer's responsibility would be firing somebody because you think they lied about their credentials, and some government/public-sector hiring systems.

@PeterShor  The degree holder gives lectures at my university. I suspect he does not have that degree because it is not registered at doktori.hu. The reason I ask is because that person gives terrible lectures and I am sure he does not have that degree due to the level of his knowledge. Doing a PhD in the US opened my eyes.

@juan The requirement to obtain a PhD, is a piece of independent research.  The correlation between the ability to do that, and to give a decent lecture is almost zero.