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Should definition of terms section be included in the introduction or the literature review chapter?
I 'm writing a Master thesis. I have some terms that should be defined.
Where should I put this section? In the introduction or literature review chapter?
Thank you
Additional Information
I think there are always exceptions to the general rule of writing theses. That's, some may not have a supervisor, guidelines, etc. This is another story.
Concerning definitions of terms, they can be presented as a glossary or discussed in a separate section. Where this section should be put is my question. I have seen theses having it in the introduction while others in literature review chapter discussing each term in detail.

Example of a thesis discussing definitions in the literature review chapter: Contesting the Culture of the Doctoral Degree: Candidates’ Experiences of Three Doctoral Degrees in the School of Education, RMIT University. Link.
A handbook for writing Master thesis recommends discussing definitions in the introduction: Bui, Yvonne N. How to write a master's thesis. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, c2009.
You can have access to a summary of the book here.

So, what is the difference between discussing definition of terms in the introduction and doing it in the literature review chapter?
If the literature review chapter is about reviewing previous research on the topic, why should one allocate a whole section for example to defining a term or concept?

If you have seen theses having it in the introduction while others in literature review chapter - then lacking more specific information, clearly the answer to your question is "either." What do you think we can tell you that you don't already know?

I thought it was obvious that I was trying to figure out what is the difference between discussing definition of terms in the introduction and doing it in the literature review.

Perhaps you should say so in the question, then :) You could also say what you think the difference might be, and why you are unsure.

You are right. I'm sorry. I will edit it.

I've often encountered this type of problem in my own academic writing (and not only in theses). The problem is that it's often difficult to talk about something before you've defined what it is. But at the same time, it's awkward to write so much expository material before being able to talk about your own stuff. It's up to you to work out, for your document in particular, the best way to present these necessary definitions.
Given that you want to say what your work is about as soon as possible, you can't avoid mentioning at least a few of these technical terms before introducing them formally. For one thing, you may well have to put them in the title! Often, you can present just enough in the abstract and introduction to allow readers to get an idea of the technicalities, but not overwhelm them with detail. The trick is to make sure your presentation is accurate and useful. If you make it too vague ("the Riemann Hypothesis is a very hard problem") then nobody is helped.
A literature review chapter is often a natural place to put definitions. It's hard to say anything meaningful about the literature if you haven't introduced the terms that the literature talks about. Also, exploring the past contributions to your subject certainly includes identifying who came up with particular definitions, who disagreed, how they adapted the definitions, and so on. This is the case for the dissertation in your first link, which defines "research" in the literature review, in the context of conflicting definitions of what research actually is (p19). The author still talks about research in the preceding pages - but that is the point where she sets the scene for her own work, using that definition in particular.
Material which is more basic or less contested could be introduced earlier, if you like. If it is general background, which readers need to know in order to understand anything you've done, but which the thesis is not particularly "about", then the introduction is a fine place for it.
Equally, definitions could be in their own section - either towards the beginning, or as an appendix. I often see this in documents where the definitions are basic reference material. Some readers will know them already, and skip the chapter; others can read in more detail. Again, this option separates the definitions from the literature review, on the basis that the definitions are simply fundamental to the field.
Ultimately, the choice is yours, unless your institution tells you what to do. I hope these thoughts will be helpful as you consider which option is best for presenting your work.

In the guidelines for my Masters thesis we were told to put our glossary after the contents page and before the abstract section, with its own entry in the contents page. Does your course/institution not have any such guidelines?


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Will my methods chapter be less solid, if it is based on one book or the work of one scholar?
I'm writing a Bachelor research paper using netnography or virtual ethnography.
I've found that this new methodology was mostly advanced by two scholars: Kozinets and Christine Hine.
I managed to get Kozinets' book (2010) published by Sage, in addition to some of his papers, which I think is good in terms authority and currency.
I also have authoritative sources by Christine Hine but are more theoretical and do not offer step-by-step guidance like that of Kozinets.
Will my methods chapter be less solid, if it is based on one book or the work of one scholar?
Thank you

Literature on virtual ethnography or netnography is not restricted only to these authors. A cursory Google Scholar search reveals many other authors.
Having said this, ~50% of my methodological approach in my work is through grounded theory by using semi-structured interviews. The gold standard for grounded theory is:
Glaser, Barney G & Strauss, Anselm L., 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research, Chicago, Aldine Publishing Company

... and I would wager that ~95% of papers using grounded theory cite only them in the methods sections of their papers.
This does not necessarily make your methods poorer or stronger. You should make sure that you understand the methodological process perfectly and then implement it.
Make sure that you do talk about credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability as well !

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Should I use the pronoun 'my' in the title of an appendix?
Should I use the pronoun 'my' in the title of an appendix of a thesis?
For example:
Appendix A: An Example of My Participation in the Community's Rituals

possible duplicate of Using first person or third person in papers?

The use of "I"/"We"/"They" or "My"/"Our"/"Theirs" will be very dependent on the research philosophy that you are working on. I'll give you two opposite examples.
If you are conducting interpretivist/constructivist research, you are acknowledging your role in defining the problems (or things to look at), analyzing and drawing the conclusions. So, using I, my, mine are acceptable and even recommended if you are writing by yourself, which is the case of your thesis.
On the other hand, if you are a positivist, you will try to argue that you had no role in the experiment. You will speak on the third person and try to remove yourself the most you can from the picture.

Typically, the use of I-word is permitted in the Acknowledgements section. In the rest of the document it is better to use "we", to include yourself and your reader. To refer to yourself, you can use something like: "An example of Author's participation..."

What about: Appendix A: An Example of Participating in the Community's Rituals

This answer is very much field specific. In my field (philosophy), use of the first-person is very much the norm.

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Field-dependency of politics and public shaming in academia
I have recently been quite shocked to learn of the blog of an accomplished string theorist, which includes a lot of personal invective against physicists he disagrees with, as well as a lot of non-physics-related posts on politics from a right-wing perspective.
This is not the only example of which I am aware. There are some books that try to engage a mass audience in a foundational debate about physics in which a mainstream research program (string theory) is claimed to be fundamentally misguided.  I have heard several anecdotes from acquaintances more along the lines of personal invectives, including one that included denunciations in social media and an editorial in Forbes magazine.
I am a mathematician, and it seems like such a culture of polemics is absent from my field.  So I wonder: Is there something different about physics in this respect? Or have I just been lucky enough to avoid this side of the math community?

"What other academic fields have a culture of polemical writing and personal hostility" It is not because one physicist have such a blog that you can say that physics "have a culture of polemical writing and personal hostility". People are people, even if they are physicist, mathematician or whatever. Some will express their opinion like him, some will not. I'm pretty sure you can find examples in all fields.

But it is not the first example like this I have heard about in physics.  I will update the post.

While I assume that your questions were asked in good faith, naming specific examples is very prone to incite debate about these examples (and not really necessary to understand or answer your question). The same goes for your second question, which is problematic for the same reason shopping questions are. I therefore removed them. Note this is not because I want to generally suppress debate about these individual cases or large-scale comparisons of field cultures. This is just not the right place for them.

If you read any debate about Mochizuki's work on IUTT and the abc conjecture, you will find similar things.

@Wrzlprmft ok fair enough. I assumed people would want evidence to back up my claims.

OK everyone, thanks for the constructive criticism.  I'll delete this question shortly.

I see no need to delete (or close) the question.

My understanding is that the upper echelons of the philosophy discipline are almost nothing but that.

Scientists are people too, and in every field you will find some people who express themselves loudly and viciously toward others, whether rightly or wrongly.
While you may not have encountered this in your particular subfield of mathematics, I guarantee that if you turn over the right rocks you will find people slinging mud at one another (I'll bet there's at least some of it around P/NP and complexity theory in general, given how much that is both important and a crank magnet).
There will, of course, be significant differences in the culture of different fields, but that will not be due to anything about the nature of the material being studied, but rather due to the particulars of their history and circumstances and the degree to which the members of the field work to build a positive culture of communications within their community.
In fact, in my experience, there can be such radical differences in interpersonal culture between closely related subfields that I strongly suspect that community efforts are likely to dominate over all other factors.

I don’t know. There sure are a lot of books and magazine articles by theoretical physicists arguing that everyone is wrong.

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I have an unfinished translation of a speciality book. Should I write this down on my CV/SOP?
When I was working on my dissertation, I had translated some first chapters of a book that I was using into my native language. The reasons I do this because I could consider myself pretty good at reading English comparing two other students in my group (iBT TOEFL reading score: 25/30), and because my specialization was very new to my country (there was (and still is) only three groups, including our group, work in this), therefore seriously lacking good resources. While translating not really prove that I can afford a PhD, it does indicate that I have some contributions to the scientific community. But the translation is unfinished (only first 4 of 25 chapters are translated). I can continue to finish it, but it won't be in near future. Should I write this down on my CV/SOP?

Are you translating "my book" (i.e. your thesis) or are you translating "a specialty book" -- i.e., something someone else authored. When answering, I assumed the latter.

yes, the latter.

I made an edit to clarify, feel free to roll back (or ask me to roll back) if it doesn't meet with your approval.

it's good. No problem

Unfortunately, most hiring committees would at best ignore this contribution and at worst wonder if you allocate your time wisely.
The work of translators is (unfortunately) given little value in academic communities with the exception of the field of literature and even there it is deprecated. The rationale is that the work is not the result of independent research nor does it add any intellectual value -- it is inherently wholly derivative.
There might be some association of value if your translation had been finished, published by a reputable scientific publisher in your country, and you had been given awards or otherwise acknowledged for providing an important service to your community.  But even then, there is a perception of someone as being "just a translator" that is hard to shake off.
Note that Famous People® are allowed to do translations and be recognized for it, but Famous People® have latitude in their work that non-famous people don't.
At the very worst, a committee might worry that the fact that the translation is unfinished and that you have put effort into doing something with little recognized value means that you don't allocate your energy and time wisely, and that you are not capable of independent research.
The same also applies for authoring textbooks. Textbooks are also seen as inherently derivative and while they make the publisher and author money, are not indications of original scholarship.
At this point in your career, you want to be seen as the generator of original scholarship.

Thanks for your answer. What do you mean by original scholarship?

Scholarship based on your own research.

In general, does contribution to scientific community serve a role in applying a scholarship? As I know, US schools prefer students who is active in community service.

Please note that there may be very high value to your translation work in your country. I am speaking  of how translation gets viewed in the American academic setting.

In my country, there is a movement in translating, therefore my work may be an advantage. However, I am applying into a US school, and I worry about what they think.

There is no positive benefit because it's unpublished and because it's unverifiable by search/promotion/retention committees. If you could show your translation is being used in X number of schools, then there might be minimal positive benefit, but again it's hard to shake off the label of "just a translator."

That's a very good point.


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Universities offering PHD in Economics or CS without requiring a masters degree
I am an Information Management and Systems student just about to graduate in three years from college. Due to financial constrains I would like to pursue a PHD degree directly without having to go through Master degree which is extremely costly. I am determined to get a PHD either way. I have a 3.7 GPA and I got 730 in GMAT. I am looking for a good university (top 50) who offers Phd programs in economics, eCommerce, or something that is economics or computer science related without having a master degree. Any suggestion will be highly appreciated.

The GMAT makes me think US, but it is usually for an MBA and not a PhD program. Most US PhD programs do not require you to have a Master's degree. Are you looking for a US PhD program without any coursework requirement or are you looking outside the US?

@StrongBad is exactly right. Most U.S. programs do not require a master's degree as a prerequisite to a PhD; you can earn your MA within the framework of the program.

@Jacob In most fields (such as computer science) that is true, but I'm not convinced this is the case for economics. In economics I know of at least 3 programs that admit you into the masters program, which often leads to the PhD program. These programs do not admit students straight into their PhD program. Often the masters program is unfunded. How much experience do you have with economics departments?

Generally you can get a place for a Ph.D. in the UK or US after your Bs.c.; however it is a time consuming process.
For this I would suggest the following steps:

Ask one of your lecturers about this. They might give you recommendations based on their knowledge. For example if you want to do a Ph.D. in E-commerce try to ask this from a lecturer who teaches this.
Ask your personal student advisor or your last year supervisor. You need their recommendation letter more than anything to get a Ph.D. position besides your marks.
Look for lecturers in the top 50 universities yourself, and try to communicate with them through your university email.
Repeat till you get there! It might take up to a year to find a place; so meanwhile you could get a job so there will be no gap year in your CV.


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How to stay motivated when working on projects by yourself?
My advisor told me that I needed to be an independent researcher, so I came up with a project by myself.  But I don't really work on it because there are no deadlines and no one else is involved with the project.  Also I stopped having regular meetings with my advisor, so he is no longer there to kick me in the butt when I don't do any work.
I spend most of my time procrastinating, working on coursework, and being a TA.  TAing and problem sets are things that actually do have hard deadlines and involve other people, so I end up working on that stuff instead of my research project.
How can I stay motivated to work on my research project?  I have barely done any research for months.

I'd recommend changing the structure of your working relationship with your advisor, if possible, or changing advisors, if not.  At your stage, it is unusual for the student to be able to work entirely independently.

Why did the meetings with advisor stop? Are they out of town or uninterested or asked you to leave them alone? Restartup the regular meetings with your advisor as a way to give yourself deadlines by what you say you are going to accomplish- or to have something to say when you meet with them.  Even if it isn't their 'project', presumably it has relation to areas that they  have expertise in, or at very least - they have a lot more expertise at breaking tasks down and a vested interest in you making some progress.

Would your advisor be ok with you finding and switching to a different project? If you have the opportunity, you really should work on something you want to research/find out/build. Don't expect your advisor to goad you... it's your project. There is virtually no replacement for intrinsic motivation.

Isn't there a plan with milestones, publications etc? If not, this is what you could discuss with your advisor. If there is a plan, go for it.

It is great you came up with a project, but if you are that uninterested with it that's not going to get you anywhere. (In that case, you need external motivation.) The idea is to come up with a project you are interested in, even passionate about. Then you do not need additional motivation to work on it, in fact, you have to be careful that you do your other work as well.

In my experience doing an independent research project, one of the most helpful things has been to remind myself why I thought my project was worth doing. If you can periodically re-excite your interest in the project, you may find yourself wanting to spend time on it. Those have been my most productive times.
Also, meet up with your advisor on a regular basis, even if it's only once every quarter or something (more is preferable). If it will help light a fire under you, set a meeting a few weeks in advance, decide on something you'll show them/discuss with them at the meeting, and use the meeting as a mini-deadline.
It's all about carrots and sticks. Remind yourself why you're doing it; remind yourself that it won't be so nice if you don't do it. Reward yourself for meeting milestones. Make yourself keep milestones.
Also, if you're experiencing any health issues (mental or otherwise) related to this, don't be afraid to seek help. There are often resources nearby, and you're better placed to do good research if you look after yourself.


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Structuring two first authors equal contribution in computer science publication
Sorry if this is a naive question. We tried finding guidelines, but have failed to find concrete advice.
There are N authors (where N>2) in our publication. Two authors have equal contribution. We are aware of the custom of putting an asterisk and writing a footnote about equal contribution.
However, while arranging the names of authors with equal contribution, how should they be arranged – alphabetically by last name? For instance, if the names are John Foe and Jane Doe, should they be arranged alphabetically by last name: Jane Doe*, John Foe*?

You've given us a choice of one.

Typically ties, or approximate ties, are broken alphabetically by surname, yes.


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Can I hand in an essay which I have written last year, but not as part of a course?
I have written an essay last year, as a personal exercise. I now have a course at uni on the topic and could basically just hand in this essay now, the topic fits perfectly. I have also never submitted this essay to any other course or so.
Could I just hand in this essay, or would I violate some rules with that? Is this maybe already self-plagiarism?

I would rather not do that to be honest, it doesn't give the best impression. I am also not sure whether I want to hand this piece in, it would just be good to know that I could hand it in without breaking any regulations. I could then set my priorities differently, and should time get in the way I would have a safety net.

Did you ask your professor?

Could I just hand in this essay, or would I violate some rules with
  that?

If you wrote it as a personal exercise and it was never submitted to any course (i.e. never read), I can't see how anyone would notice the difference - provided you are right about the fact that it answers your assignment perfectly and you are not subconciously trying to make it fit into the assignment.

Should I just hand in this essay?

Aside from the rules, consider the teaching value of writing an essay (which you obviously already know, since you wrote one as a personal exercise!).
If your workload allows it, you might find that re-working on that essay a year later is really instructive. Your perspective (on the content, but also on the writing level) probably changed in one year, and with the head-start of having a first version already, you could dig deeper into the subject and end up really learning a lot and producing an essay worth an amazing grade. Or, if you don't feel like reworking this one, maybe you could pick another subject altogether? The teaching goal of essays is usually to have you research a new subject; handing in your already written one, while being legal, would certainly not serve that purpose.

Could I just hand in this essay, or would I violate some rules with that?

Rules are specific to your institution, so we can't answer that for you. But I can't imagine why a rule would exist to prohibit this, and it would be very hard to implement.

Is this maybe already self-plagiarism?

No. Self-plagiarism is about claiming credit more than once for the same piece of work. If you've not submitted it anywhere before, you're fine.

Not only the institution. It might vary by professor or even by course.

I would consider an institution that considers a first-time submission to be invalid only because OP had on their own initiative already done that before (without "cashing in on it") an institution that does not value initiative, independent thinking, and discipline - in short, an institution that does not deserve OP's presence there.

Many institutions include in their definitions of plagiarism something like:

submitting a paper as original work in one course when the paper has already
  received credit in another course (unless prearranged with the professor).

(The above is from my own institution's Honor Code, as stated in the student handbook.)  If you were at my institution, what you're proposing wouldn't violate the letter of the honor code since the work wasn't graded in another course.  Your own institution probably has an honor code or a policy on "academic integrity";  it may or may not have similar language.  As far as the "legality" of what you're proposing goes, your answer is probably in there somewhere.
That said, you probably still sense that your instructor might not look kindly on this—otherwise you wouldn't be here asking the question.  If you were my student and you handed in work that you had written well before you even took my course, I would be somewhat disappointed.  As @Kerkyra alludes to in their answer, the reason I assign essays & written work is to make you think about a subject in the context of my class, as part of the process of learning the course material.  By presenting me with work whose preparation was completely separate from my course, you're depriving yourself of this opportunity to make deeper connections and understand the subject even better than you did before.
However, there could be other professors out there whose main goal in assigning a paper is simply to allow the student to demonstrate mastery of a particular subject;  such a professor would probably be fine with you submitting your older work.  Other professors might have different pedagogical reasons to reject the idea.  So it probably boils down to the following:  ask your professor whether this is acceptable.  Depending on their pedagogical priorities in giving this assignment, several things might happen.  They might say it's fine;  they might say "I'd like you to substantially revise/rewrite it" (as suggested by @Kerkyra);  they might say "actually, this paper wouldn't satisfying the requirements of this assignment, so you'll need to pick another topic"; they might say "I want everyone in the class to be writing about something they don't already know about";  or something else entirely.  Ultimately, if you want to do something unusual for an assignment, it's better to ask permission of your professor than it is to risk a messy and protracted debate over its acceptability after the fact, when your grade is on the line.

"If you were my student and you handed in work that you had written well before you even took my course, I would be somewhat disappointed." In my opinion, it is exactly as reasonable for instructors to expect novel written work from their students as it is for students to expect novel assignments from their instructors.  Very rarely did I get a university writing assignment that was generic enough that I could have even considered substituting prior work.

@PeteL.Clark: By novel you mean relative to other classes, right? (As opposed to other semesters of the same class?)

If someone, on their own initiative, did something before I asked them to do it, course or not, I would consider this a sign of initiative, intelligence and independence. I would be exactly the opposite of disappointed. Just because they had got inspiration before I imparted them with my morsels of wisdom does not devalue their work; who knows, maybe the freshness of their approach out of context may bring some fresh air into the rehashed routine of a lecture [Of course, always assuming it really is a suitable response to the topic set out]

@CaptainEmacs:  I suppose you're one of the professors I mentioned in my last paragraph, then.  :-)  I do agree that it's an admirable thing for students to do work on their own initiative.  The disappointment would (for me) be more along the lines of "you had an opportunity to expand on your knowledge on this assignment but you chose to rest on your (well-earned) laurels instead."  It's never the case that there's nothing more for the student to learn, and I would hope that a self-starting student like you describe would recognize that.

@MichaelSeifert Sometimes, time is better spent against the grain and not just doing stuff because the prof wants it done (or even because the prof thinks it's the right thing to do at this stage), but because oneself wants it done. But I see your point.

Some aspect that was not discussed yet is the time you invested into your essay. The other students got their topic at a specific time with a deadline so they have a limited time (maybe even while having to work on other classes in parallel) in which they can work. You however had potentially more time (or maybe nothing that distracted you) so you had an advantage by preparing this essay in advance.
At first it could be seen as unfair that you don't have to invest more time, but in the end you have been lucky and are now rewarded for your good preparation.
But this is probably such a rare case that you just have to talk to your professor.

Their advantage is fair: they were insightful enough to think about it before being prompted to and on their own initiative. They deserve the advantage.

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Using public profile data from website for research
A member of our department plans to download millions of profiles from a public website. The data is freely accessible after you have logged in, though there is a company behind the website that does have commercial interests and sells premium memberships. The website’s terms and conditions don’t explicitly prohibit mass downloading of information and he claims that his software would simulate normal user behavior, thus not interfering with the normal operations of the site.
A preliminary evaluation from our ethics committee suggests that – from an ethical standpoint – everything would be fine as long as he doesn’t publish the dataset (which he doesn’t plan to do) and the data is anonymized. Also, he will aggregate the data, so no information pertaining to individuals will be intelligible.
Still, I am not completely convinced that this study should be done and the final vote is still pending. Are there any other things to consider? Could the company operating the website possibly sue the university (or him) for using the data or would that be condoned by an act protecting the freedom of press or anything similar? We are in Germany, so German and EU law applies.

What you're describing is the OKCupid data release, just without publishing the dataset. I'd recommend consulting with a lawyer re: the website's terms and conditions. Or getting an OK from the website.

I strongly suggest talking to the company owning the website. Unless the research could cast them in a bad light, they may be interested to learn something about their userbase as well. Also, you may get to know relevant information about the data, such as hidden selection mechanisms or similar.

(Realistically, nobody here can tell you the likelihood of being sued, or of losing the lawsuit. A lawsuit would probably be based on the terms and conditions of the website; get a lawyer to review them. Your colleague's assessment that they "don’t explicitly prohibit mass downloading of information" is not exactly reassuring.)

How does Google actually hold a lot of websites in cache if they do not download them initially - would they violate all websites ? Regardless of T&C ? On the other hand, I have heard multiple times that it is prohibited to scrape any kind of website in Germany without the OK of the website owner.

@Michael Google respects the robots.txt, which gives permission (or not) for search engines to scrape the site's content. It's like a T&C for search engines. Furthermore, Google has been sued for caching content on copyright grounds (they won the lawsuit, but still). Finally, when it comes to law, it's rather dangerous to assume "This thing has some similarities to what I want to do and it seems legal, probably nobody will sue me either" ;) Websites benefit from what Google does; they have no reason to sue (usually).

@ff524 I am aware of the robots.txt, however, as you stated this does not give permission to really scrape, just to be visited. And I was not opting for "Google does, so you can too" :) Interesting that they won the lawsuit. Thanks for the info

@Michael Further reading on that lawsuit, in case you're interested.

The OKCupid release sounds very interesting. Thank you for that! A member of the ethics committee also suggested getting in touch with the website owners, though he seemed reluctant, probably because if they say no his study would be over even before it started. It is unlikely that his research would cast a bad light on them, though they probably regard their information as their trade secret and be rather unwilling to share anything (but I may push him to do so anyway). As @ff524 pointed out, Google respects the robots.txt, which would disallow downloading member information for this website.

@ff524 Can you please turn your comments into an answer?

What you're describing is the OKCupid data release, just without publishing the dataset. Note that the OKCupid "study" and similar studies on Facebook data were considered ethically controversial by some, who argue that users who participate in a website are not necessarily giving consent to participate in a research study, especially when users' profile data is only available to logged-in users. (Also see: “But the data is already public”: on the ethics of research in Facebook by Michael Zimmer.)
Re: avoiding a lawsuit, you should get the OK from the website. As Wrzlprmft pointed out in a comment:

Unless the research could cast them in a bad light, they may be interested to learn something about their userbase as well. Also, you may get to know relevant information about the data, such as hidden selection mechanisms or similar

If you choose not to go that route, I'd recommend consulting with a lawyer re: the website's terms and conditions. Realistically, nobody here can tell you the likelihood of being sued, or of losing the lawsuit. A lawsuit would probably be based on the terms and conditions of the website; get a lawyer to review them. Your colleague's assessment that they "don’t explicitly prohibit mass downloading of information" is not exactly reassuring. (For example, language in the terms and conditions that enumerates the permitted use of the website can potentially exclude other uses, without explicitly enumerating the prohibited uses.)
The case law on this issue is far from settled. The decisions so far have been limited. There is no legal precedent that clearly establishes that "scraping is always allowed if the T&C don't explicitly prohibit it".  There are some select cases that have begun to map out cases where scraping is and is not prohibited, but the legal territory is not yet fully explored. Some further reading on case law in the US and EU:

Judge: Google cache kosher when it comes to copyright
Judgment in Ryanair Ltd v PR Aviation BV
Judgment in Innoweb BV v Wegener
Web Scraping in an Era of Big Data 2.0


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May a man attend a workshop entitled “Young women in [domain]”?
The Max Planck Institute for Mathematics at the University of Bonn hosts workshops such as 'Young Women in Harmonic Analysis', 'Young Women in Geometry' and 'Young Women in Mathematical Physics' biannually, I think.
I am very interested in attending such a workshop as they are seldom found within the topics I am interested in. However, the title of the workshop begins with "Young Women". Moreover, the description on their page states that "the workshop provides a platform for female graduate students and postdocs in mathematical physics..."
Now, before you lambast me for even considering it, note that they also write "everybody is welcome to attend the workshop. We encourage all participants - male and female".
My worry is that male participants are technically permitted so that they do not break any discrimination laws and that if I were to attend such a workshop, I may find myself in the awkward situation of being the only male there facing the scowling looks of my female contemporaries.
Thus, my question is: can I apply (from a common sense, ethical, moral, situational point of view...because technically, I obviously can)?

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

"We encourage all participants - male and female"

There is no need to look into it further than that. They encourage you to come and you want to go. I don't see any reason why you wouldn't want to apply.

Yes, you are definitely welcome to attend. Looking at previous workshops in the "Young Women in..." series, you can see from the photos that some of the participants appear to be male.

This is an excellent empirical answer to the question.

That said, it appears that most of the male participants are from Bonn, so perhaps there was no travel funding for them.

Not only should you definitely go if you would like to, but you and other readers can use this as an interesting moment (and this is not meant as an attack on the original poster in any way) to reflect on the fact that women have experienced this 'but won't I feel like the odd one out' kind of feeling ever since they were first "technically permitted" at math conferences and technically allowed to get mathematics degrees, be mathematicians etc. (I work in geometric analysis myself, actually)

good point, and politely made.

I once unknowingly took a class with the expectation that it was a psychology based class based on the description and even my advisor thought it would be good for my degree. It turned out to be something completely different. I ended up being the only male in this class and even the teacher was female. I spent 99% of the time sitting quietly as most of the time the women went on a man-hating rant which was usually followed by "well let's ask our only guy in the room of his opinion" in which I would try to find the most neutral way to not poke the beehive.  I don't regret the experience (cont)

as it helped me to understand how others might feel when they are a part of the minority or the only one to represent their whatever. I do admit though that I remember exactly nothing from the class since it was more geared for nurses and the medical field in general (at the time I was getting a degree in criminal science). I am just glad I was able to make it out without upsetting anyone!

But I feel like the odd one out in almost any gathering :-)

Amusing anecdote, @ggiaquin. I was slightly surprised when very similar number dynamics happened to me in classes on human rights law and on social enterprise. The numbers were more like 50-10 and 16-2, respectively, but just about the opposite in a national security law class. Interesting at the very least.

@ggiaquin Oh goodness me yes! "And what does our lady engineer think of this?" Probably the same as you, actually, but of course it's different with ovaries.

@jamesqf Maybe there are even odder gatherings out there just waiting to be attended ;)

@Mateen Ulhaq: Yes, indeed.  I recall one graduate physics course in which the Chinese instructor would often answer questions in Chinese, because I and one eastern European woman were the only non-Chinese in the class.  In a US university, mind you :-)

@RedSonja I literally barked laughter at that "with ovaries" comment.

I would like to point out that this case is completely different from whatever female-minority thing OP is getting at. If you're a female and you apply for a course in a male-dominated field, it's not the same thing as attending an event where the title of the event literally starts by excluding you from the event "Women in..". I also wanted to ask OP why he/she made the point that women feel this way or have this experience? Or did OP mean in a certain category of university courses?

This doesn't really feel like an answer, it feels more like a not-so-subtle jab, as if you're trying to say "well women experience this all the time!".

There are two kinds of workshops organized for women.
A. One kind is a place where women can build confidence, for example, by presenting to an audience where there will be lots of supportive women in attendance.  Men are welcome here if they go into it with an attitude of wanting to support the mission.
B. The other kind is aimed specifically at just women.  There are specific reasons for organizing this kind of event.  Perhaps historically there have been problems with sexism and/or actual gender violence at mixed gender, but male dominated, events.  This kind of workshop could be organized as a stand-alone, or within a larger, mixed gender conference.
Whatever the ground rules are, they will be announced.  The workshop you're interested in clearly posted their ground rules, because they didn't want any misunderstandings, and because supportive males in the audience would be an asset to the event.
Thanks for asking!  I hope this is just a first step and that as time goes on, you'll (a) hesitate less about contacting the organizers with a question, and (b) learn more about gender issues in science.  I believe that as women get better integrated into traditionally male fields, those fields will benefit from a healthier gender balance.

I wouldn't say it would be awkward. On the contrary, it would be very pleasing for the organization commitee that the workshop has reached beyond their targeted audience despite the title.
Of course, by audience I should clear out that if you're not in the field, it would be awkward even if you were a female. But they organize a workshop to encourage female students to present their work, and a male (clearly invited in the web page) supporting them is great, in my opinion.

I think the other answers cover the general case well, however, I can give you a more specific answer:
A few years ago, I and a few colleagues were also interested in some of the talks in one of those workshops in Bonn. Since some of us were male and we missed the deadline to apply anyway, we sent the organizers a mail if we could show up anyway for one of the days (Bonn being close enough for a day trip).
In short, the answer was yes, the talks are public, similar to any other talks they have Bonn. While the audience of course consisted mostly of the female participants, there were also quite a few male phd-students, post-docs and professors attending. They were just not the ones giving the talks.
So in other words, if you are interested in going, just drop the organizers a mail and go there. Just do not expect to be invited to give a talk.

"everybody is welcome to attend the workshop. We encourage all participants - male and female"

This is your answer.
The title (and indeed the content) is meant to showcase the work of promising young women in X field, but it's pretty clear they more than happy to have a general audience.

I've been in a situation like this where I wanted to attend a workshop to support a female friend, but the name of the event made it sound like it was definitely geared towards women. In that case I reached out to the event coordinator and asked her if men were able to attend, she said they'd be happy to have me join them and that there were a few other gentlemen planning on attending as well.
Moral of the story is, if you're not sure reach out to the person organizing and ask. Plus, you may not be the only dude there as it is.

From anecdotal experience, my advice is that you should attend if you want to but expect it to be as exclusive as the event title sounds. If you were an Art History major attending a conference titled, "Young Engineers After College", don't be surprised if you end up feeling alienated. Don't be shocked when you're the brunt of a few "A Liberal Arts major walked into a bar..." jokes.  I refuse to be vocal about whether or not this is a form of prejudice, I'm simply stating that you may feel out of place.
I've gone to five different Women in [insert STEM topic here] conferences. At each event, there are a handful of jokes by the speaker(s) along the lines of, "Women do it better" and "Let's be honest ladies, men make it unnecessarily complex, am I right? Ha ha ha". The few men that attend are huddled in the corner and typically omitted from the entire discussion all together.
Realistically, what would you expect from an event that is clearly advertising itself to be for a select group of people? The topic of discussion isn't about a group of people, e.g. "How to encourage women to choose STEM", it's for a group of people. The former encourages all to attend in order to solve a problem; the latter encourages a select group of people to attend.
If the event organizers didn't want an exclusive audience, they wouldn't have set an exclusive title.

Well I'd suggest that if the workshops are "to provide a platform for female graduate students and postdocs" then they will want to present to a diverse audience and to sensitize young women ( thinking of an academic career ) and men to the value of having women successfully in those fields.

Yes.
The organizers explicitly write that "everybody is welcome to attend the workshop.  We encourage all participants - male and female."  This probably means you wouldn't be the only man.
If you're still uncomfortable, you can contact the organizers and ask their permission.  But I'm 99.99% sure they would say yes.

"99.99% sure" A rule of thumb with rough estimates like that is, that if you can't back them up, don't mention them. It distracts from your answer.

well, they might say "We're full," who knows.

What would be wrong with being the only man in the room? As a woman specializing in the interface between hardware and software, I have often been the only woman in the room.

I would have thought that attendance of men at such an event is likely encouraged, not just allowed.
I recently wrote up a preprint attempting to outline the achievements of twenty female mathematicians and received positive feedback from many other female mathematicians working in academia who were happy that I had made this effort and attempted to outline the achievements of mathematicians working in such a diverse range of fields (I think the fact that I happen to be a man myself is not seen as relevant).

One solution would to be what American blacks did when attending a meeting where there would be mostly whites, 100 years or so ago:
Just come in, take a seat in the back, and say I'll just stay here out of the way and not bother anyone.
Now I'm not saying this the optimum solution, just that it will work if nothing else will.

Why would this be necessary?  And how is the analogy relevant?

I don't know if it would be necessary.  And the analogy is based on "possibly not being welcome".  I repeat again, I'm not saying this the optimum solution, just that it will work if nothing else will.

"possibly not being welcome", aka feeling alienated, is totally a feasible scenario. I agree with you. I've seen women alienated when attending a majority-male event, like some video game conference. I've also seen men alienated when attending events with titles like the one the author mentioned. Kind of bothers me that many answers here completely disregard that.

Not allowing men to attend would be sexist.
As they explicitly state that "everybody is welcome to attend the workshop" and that they "encourage all participants - male and female", they already explicitly give men permission to join the workshop, even though it may be directed towards women.
Nevertheless, it may indeed be awkward if you decide to join the course if you're the only man present. I'd be inclined to discuss this with one of the organizers and base my decision on her (I assume it's a she) input.


text:
How to improve graduate student recruitment at a small, good, but non-elite department?
I am a mathematics professor in a small, good but non-elite department in the US. Several of my colleagues and I would like to work to improve our recruitment of strong prospective Ph.D. students.
We do not really know how to go about this most effectively. Obviously it is difficult, but -- what are some good ways to do this, in addition to

maintaining a useful and informative departmental webpage,
serving our present Ph.D. students as well as we can, making sure they are happy, and (hopefully!) helping them to land good jobs,
maintaining our own research programs, and
continuing to network and maintain professional connections with colleagues at other universities?

Edit: I see this question is related, although in my case recruiting is handled on a departmental rather than individual basis.

Would you have funding to support this?

My department got GRE data and sent packets to potential recruits by mail, including an application fee waiver. I never heard of them before, but that's what made me join.

How about information on what former Ph.D.'s have gone on to do?

Offer to pay them more.

All of the ideas that you've written down so far seem quite useful and reasonable, but I think that there is something important missing.  In particular, all of these are aimed at recruiting "generic" students rather than individual students.
Ph.D. recruitment is different than undergraduate recruitment because people choose their undergraduate institutions for so many random reasons, while they tend to be much more focused and "status-conscious" when looking for a doctoral program.  As such, rank matters a lot more for students... when they have no personal relationship.
As such, if you want top students to come to your department, you don't want them to be thinking, "I wonder if Nice University's grad program would be good for me," you want them thinking, "I really hope that I can do my graduate work with Professor Neato!"
There are at least two really good sources that I can think of for recruiting such students:

Your undergraduates: Because of the high variance in how people make their undergraduate choices, at least some really top students are likely to end up at pretty much any decent school.  If you can get those students involved in research as undergraduates, then they will know you and your research personally, and may well be inclined to continue with a cool program that they are already invested in rather than taking a blind leap into a big and possibly unfriendly place far away.
Close colleagues at other schools: Reaching beyond your own pool of students, your colleagues elsewhere are likely to have bright students that they may be looking for a good place for.  If they've got a top student who's just interested in generic stuff, then packing them off to an elite institution and hoping they'll find their way may be the right thing.  But if they think the person might be a good fit for your work on Frabjous Tulip Fractals, then they can refer them directly to you, and again a student may be much more interested in working with a specific professor who they can get to know and meet, particularly where that can improve their chances of admission.

I know of folks who are pursuing both these strategies with significant success.  Other approaches may work as well, such as international exchange programs.  The common theme, however, is to compete on the basis of your individual personal relationships, rather than as a generic institution.

A variation on your first strategy: host REUs (or similar undergrad research program) for top undergraduates, including those beyond your own institution.

I honestly think that a lot of this advice applies much better to STE fields than to math.  For instance, I wonder if you aware that in a math PhD program you do not apply to work with a specific faculty member in any sense.  In most cases that decision is made 1-3 years later.  In my own case, I chose my PhD program precisely because there were multiple faculty members in my broad topic of interest, so that if one of them didn't want to work with me or vice versa, there were still plenty of options.  But maybe I'm being too closed-minded; let's see what others say.

@PeteL.Clark One of the people I know who is using these approaches is in applied mathematics, so at least anecdotally it seems that it can work well for that end of the department.  Theoretical mathematics, I have no idea...

@PeteL.Clark I agree that this may be less impactful for math, but I still think it is useful.  One way I chose grad schools to apply to was to ask faculty for advice.  I had done some algebraic combinatorics and one recommended Caltech, which is very small, because of one person there. (Admittedly, Caltech is probably not non-elite.)  Many undergrads also apply to certain schools because they've met, or heard of, one specific person in the department.

Good question.  I am answering more to brainstorm along with you than anything else.  I think that you have the broad bases covered, but the finer details of implementation are important.
It is tough for a PhD program in mathematics to directly network with undergraduates, because being an undergraduate math major is almost entirely about coursework and very little about research.  This limits the usefulness of one of @jakebeal's suggestions in this field: most undergraduates do not understand the research that faculty members are working on -- I mean, do not understand at all, including not knowing what most of the nouns are -- and this makes it difficult to promote faculty research to undergraduates.  For instance my most durable research interest over the years has been the period-index problem in Weil-Chatelet groups of abelian varieties.  This is a plausible topic for PhD research for a UGA student -- in fact, a student just last month received a PhD at UGA on this topic under my supervision -- but the undergraduates who have any clue what this means are not coming to UGA.  So what can you do?

Adjust your research program so that some part of it makes sense to some undergraduates.

When I was a postdoc, this would have sounded unlikely to me.  As a postdoc I did supervise two undergraduate students' summer research (at my institution), and that research was on a problem in real analysis...which I chose because they were the grader and one of the students in an undergraduate real analysis course I had taught.  When I arrived at my current good but not-too-elite tenure track job, I made it a point in my early years to acquire a much broader, shallower knowledge of my own subject (number theory) than I had as a student.  Then over the years I have led two different research projects whose main goal, honestly, was to be pitched lower to the ground than WC groups or Shimura curves or flat cohomology.  These groups have resulted in several publications which an undergraduate has a much better chance of understanding...and in fact there was a (well, extremely bright) undergraduate coauthor on some of them.  Even more recently (since December 2013) I have gotten involved in a research program at the border of number theory and combinatorics in which some of the important results are really at ground level.  So nowadays if a prospective PhD student finds their way into my orbit, they can probably grab onto something they can understand.

Have a web presence that is attractive to undergraduates.

To be honest, I feel that I do this rather well.  I have an enormous quantity of lecture notes, starting at the advanced undergraduate level.  I often get contacted from undergraduates about these notes.  Unfortunately though I do not know that anyone has enrolled in our PhD program because of this.  The closest I can think of is that a faculty member at a top school told me that he recommended UGA to his students because he thought I would be a good mentor based on my webpage (and indeed we got a couple of students from that school).

Do REUs.

This is @ff524's suggestion, and it is a very good one.  We have done REUs at UGA, and two of our current PhD students participated in them.  If a student has a successful REU experience but does not have the profile to get into a very elite PhD program, it is very natural (and actually sensible) for them to want to continue working with the same faculty or at the same program.  In fact it is kind of ideal because you are modelling the experience you want the student to have.  Of course not everyone who wants to run an REU can, and if this brings one student per year into your program you are doing extremely well.

Have a critical mass of happy, successful, sociable female and minority students.

Of course this is a bit of a Catch 22, but it's something to keep an eye on in the cultivation of your current students.  If a prospective female student shows up and doesn't see enough other female faces, or if the female faces she sees do not model the kind of experience she wants to have, she is more likely to go elsewhere.  Similarly for minorities.  Encouraging female students to organize as a group may seem awkward at first but is probably a good idea (and one with a lot of precedent).  Having such a group can make them more comfortable and productive, and when a prospective female student comes to town, they will naturally be welcoming.

Cultivate and exploit regional pipelines.

The thing which is most frustrating to me about graduate recruitment is that so many students aren't considering my program because it is in the Southeastern US and they're only considering programs in their region.  (To give an example, we get a fair number of students from Florida.  When I ask them why they come to UGA, the most common answer is "Because I'm used to warm weather and it's the farthest north I felt comfortable going."  These are people who are going to be happy to get a suitable job anywhere in the US upon graduation.)  But sometimes two students from the same region or same institution enroll in your program in the same or consecutive years, and then all of a sudden for a little while people from that place are primed to come.  My PhD program admitted two students from the same tiny Central American country in consecutive years.  (Both students have since done strong thesis work and graduated.)  And then the following year a third student from that country applied.  We had an especially strong applicant pool that year and didn't accept him.  I happen to know that he went to another, slightly more highly ranked, US PhD program and seems to be doing quite well there.  I wish we had kept the lines open.

Develop relationships with colleagues at liberal arts colleges.

Since you have a PhD program, you are almost certainly not at a liberal arts college, and in fact most good-but-not-elite PhD programs have little natural interaction with good-but-not-elite liberal arts colleges: we run in different circles.  This makes it hard when students from such places apply: a student who gets perfect grades while taking only undergraduate courses, has letters saying they're the best student in the last few years from faculty you don't know and who has okay but not great GRE scores is kind of a black box: they could do excellently in your program, disastrously, or anywhere in between.  If you can cultivate personal contacts at these places you can get much more information and maybe you can leverage the dynamic the other way: probably the faculty at a top 50 liberal arts college do not have many top 50 research university faculty on speed dial.

Encourage -- and fund -- dynamic faculty to make recruitment visits.

When I get the chance to visit a new department I usually have a blast, and because I have a shallow knowledge of a lot of different parts of mathematics I have sometimes had the experience of going door to door, talking to each faculty member about their work: not super deeply, but enough to make a positive impression.  (And you could send people in my department who would do much better than I would, in particular people who give amazing talks.)  However I almost never travel to a place unless I have been invited by someone that I already know, who is willing to fund my visit.  I have been to the majority of the top departments (at some point, anyway) but only a small minority of the departments whose undergraduates we could be best recruiting from.  If my department had the funds to send multiple faculty members around for multiple recruiting visits, we could make much better connections that would reinforce a lot of the points above.  Apparently we don't have funding for this, but maybe we're not trying hard enough.

+1 For Encourage -- and fund -- dynamic faculty to make recruitment visits. and the following paragraph.  This is exactly why I asked OP the question Would you have funding to support this?

@Massimo: I softened the language.  There is no doubt that there is a disconnect between the way I think about this and the way many prospective students think about it.  I understand that one does not want to live in the middle of nowhere, and one or two top graduate programs in the US (not Stanford) fit that description for me.  My point is that if you are going to cross off whole areas of the US as being unsuitable for living, then you are in for a rude awakening in your later academic career.

@PeteL.Clark: I noticed and appreciated the edit. I deleted my comment, which was also definitely too unfair toward the Stanford area. I agree with your point. Students should take opportunities and start somewhere, they will have time to move somewhere else later on their career if the starting region proves to be inadequate to their needs.

@MassimoOrtolano I think Pete was just expressing frustration at the disconnect between what factors students actually consider when choosing graduate programs, and which ones will seem relevant when they graduate.  I can also attest we get a lot of random applications from people in Virginia who don't seem to have thought much further than "What good Ph.D. programs are in Virginia?"  As an undergraduate, thinking "My in-state school is pretty good, guess I might as well go there." is a reasonable plan; it's not for graduate school, and it can be pretty frustrating to encounter.

"In my PhD program admitted two students from the same tiny Central American country in consecutive years." Either the "In" is superfluous, or I'm missing something.

@Faheem: The former.

Based on my experience investigating and applying to grad schools (2010), I believe that it is easy for nearly any grad school/department to significantly improve their recruitment success.  Why? Because nearly every grad school and department does such a poor job today.
The "secret"?  Treat your potential grad students like customers and apply basic marketing methods.  (By this, I do not mean hype, exaggerated claims, gimmicks, hucksterism, or carpet-bombing all media with advertising.)
First, segment the marketplace of graduate students.  "If you aren't thinking segments, you aren't thinking", said Theodore Levitt in The Marketing Imagination (highly recommended book!)  But your segmentation scheme requires imagination and insight into what differentiates some grad students from others in terms of their motives, behavior, and choices.
Second, decide on how you want to position your department and your offering. Read the book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind.  The essence: your "brand" needs to be "top-of-mind" for **some* meaningful segment.  If you are 4th or below on everyone's list, then you are no where.
Third, differentiate your department and your offering in every way possible to fit your positioning and to satisfy the unique needs of your target segment.  (The book The Marketing Imagination includes a chapter called "How to Differentiate Anything".)  Your "offering" involves every aspect of the grad degree process, from investigation, to application, to selection/commitment, to funding/financing, to doing academic work, to work/life balance, graduating in a reasonable amount of time, to getting a job after graduation, and even connections among alumni.  There are dozens of changes your department might make in each one of these.  Here are a few simple examples, focused on the investigation/application process:

Post on your web site the specific qualifications you are looking for in Research Assistants, not just generic statements.  (This list would change as often as your requirements change.)
Post statistics on the number of applications you receive, the number of students you accept, the % of accepted students who enroll, the demographics of applicants, and the demographics of accepted students, what % get funding and of what type, etc.
Create a decision tree or maybe an interactive web page to help prospective students assess their chances of being accepted and their fit for your department.
Assign an experienced grad student to each incoming first year student to serve as mentor, especially for the non-academic aspects to help avoid common pitfalls of grad student life.

Finally, put in place a handful of objectives and associated metrics so that everyone can see if your department is making progress or not, and also whether you are doing these things in a quality way.
Oh... one other thing.  Read the book How Economics Shapes Science.  It will give you plenty to think about regarding how graduate schools fit into a larger socio-economic system which frequently works to the disadvantage of PhD students and, especially, Postdocs.  Find ways to go against this tide and you will really stand out!

If this sort of marketing thinking and action is uncomfortable for you and your colleagues, or it is beyond your skills and capabilities, then I strongly suggest that you hire a marketing consultant.  You could also recruit some students or interns who know "Design Thinking" and use your department as a case study.

In addition to the two books above, you would greatly benefit by reading anything by Peter Drucker.  To pick one: Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices.  A few choice Drucker quotes, woven together: "The purpose of a business is to create a customer...to convert need into demand...Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs."
Why are academic departments so poorly managed? Because the people who run them don't think they need to know anything about management or have any management skills.

My first reaction to this answer is that there is a lot of terminology that I don't understand, e.g.: "If you aren't thinking segments, you aren't thinking."  Could you write that in the form of an equation, perhaps? :)  But I strongly agree with the underlying premise that we know nothing about marketing and that our traditional ways of recruiting can be shockingly bad.

I wish though that I could see the generalities translated into specific points that I thought were applicable.  Concerning your four bullet points: (i) There are no Graduate Research Assistants in any math department I have ever been affiliated with.  (ii) Are you sure it is legal to post demographics of applicants?  In terms of funding: 100% of our PhD students are funded, as is the case with many other programs.  But giving more information about better funding that some students get is a good idea.  (iii) and (iv) Sounds good.

@PeteL.Clark  Yes, I know the marketing terminology may be unfamiliar. That's why I referenced these books.  Even if you don't act on them, you will greatly benefit by reading them.  They are easy reads!  Levitt is a superb writer.  Regarding ii), check with your Legal dept.  But notice that corporations are publishing demographics on their applicants and hires and employees.  If you post group photos of your grad students, you are revealing their gender (and maybe age and ethnicity).  In any case, you could have an "opt-in" policy on applications. Regarding funding: more info = better!

@PeteL.Clark Not that you are doing this, but many academics and intellectuals look down on "marketing", based on a cartoon image of it.  Result: their "customers" suffer for their ignorance and arrogance!

The excellent suggestions already posted mainly target getting applications, and encouraging your selected applicants to accept places.
There is another piece to the puzzle. There are a lot of students who have a low GPA because of some problem or simple immaturity. Large, well-known programs tend to set hard cutoffs for any individual consideration, because they have so many applications.
Consider searching the reject pile for diamonds-in-the-rough, students who have a low GPA for reasons other than lack of ability, and who really want to do research. See How does the admissions process work for US Ph.D. programs, particularly for weak or borderline students?, and related questions. Check that any hard requirements that do not allow for exceptions are really essential, not just habit.

I agree that it is not in the best interest of all but (perhaps) the very top departments to automatically reject applicants for low GPA.  If someone has a low GPA and every other aspect of the application is sky-high, including GRE scores, then in fact they would not be automatically rejected by my department.  But in my experience this situation is quite rare.  (FYI, in my department there are no literally automatic cutoffs: the committee sees all applications.)

I certainly agree that many students who did not distinguish themselves from the pack in their undergraduate work have the potential to be excellent, or even superior, PhD students.  But how do we tell?  Taking the person that some faculty member swears up and down is amazing works well if you know and trust the swearer perfectly.  In other instances, it works less well, unfortunately.

I agree strongly with @Pete's comments.  In particular, unless you can identify the reason for a low PhD and have good reason to believe it won't affect graduate work, this is a risky strategy.  "Simple immaturity" doesn't normally fall into this category.

Summer Schools
Organising summer schools (and workshops) on interesting topics also helps boost visibility, and allows you to market your research and results. You could pick a topic in your particular area of expertise and organise a summer schools catering multidisciplinary students at all levels. Make sure to dedicate part of the training program to discussion and poster sessions where students can get to engage with and pitch their work to the speakers as well as their fellow students. Don't forget to tell your participants, explicitly or not, that you have graduate opportunities available and are looking for valuable candidates.

Well, the obvious thing to do is advertise, as evidenced by the inordinate sums of money spent on this each year.  It's helpful to just get your name out there, and the more students see it, the more likely they will be to remember your school when it comes time to apply.
While the other answers make good points, I don't believe any of them explicitly mentioned the following:

Send advertisement posters to other departments.  I think ads may be particularly effective in certain foreign countries, where people want to come to the US to study, but many of the top schools aren't so well known.  There are a lot of good foreign students who don't really know where is appropriate to apply.  And as foreign students often follow their predecessor's footsteps, getting one good student from Nepal, say, may lead to many more in the future.
The annual Joint Math Meetings has a Grad School Fair.  I represented our department there last year, and it's hard to measure the direct impact, but as I recall we got a couple of applications that year from students we met there out of 30-40 names that we took down (and not all students were graduating that year).  My feeling is it's a worthwhile way to get your name out there.
Organize undergrad conferences or a regional competition at your school (or as ff524 mentioned in a comment, do REUs).  Virginia Tech's competion became very successful.  This option is of course significantly more work.
Offer one or two nice fellowships (e.g., more money and/or less teaching, but mostly more money) to top applicants to be competitive.  I've seen many students choose lower ranked grad schools for an extra $1000/year.

You could use Gradschoolmatch.
It's an easy way to introduce your program to people who are thinking about a graduate degree. It solves pretty much the choke point problem that others have already mentioned.
It works somewhat like a dating site. Prospects have profiles providing information about their academic background and interests. Graduate programs have profiles, too. Since either side can make the first move you don't have to wait and hope.
So, for example, you can spot someone with a profile that you believe would be a good fit for your PhD program, click a button, and follow up with a short warm message.
Voila! They know about you. Will they engage with you further? Can you attract students? That's up to you and your value proposition.
Obviously, students have biases towards elite institutions. In most fields, those are unwarranted. But those biases come from a lack of insight, more than anything else. It just takes a little mentoring to help them understand your program is a good as any other.
Full disclosure: I'm a professor at Emory University and use Gradschoolmatch to recruit for our pharmacology PhD program. Pharmacology is the unknown step sister of the biomedical sciences--it's not taught at the undergrad level, so it's overlooked by people looking for biomed PhD programs whom we would like to attract.
That problem frustrated me so much that I went ahead and invented Gradschoolmatch.

Downvoting, as this is essentially a service promotion.

@NajibIdrissi I understand the spam flag specifies that the author did not disclose of affiliation with the merchandised service. This guy did.

@Scientist: Note that self-promotion is not a good reason for downvoting per se. (An overly promotional non-neutral tone, factual inaccuracies, or lack of focus on the question would be.)

@tj_m: Welcome to Academia SE. Please read our guidelines for self promotion. It would help your answer if you can [edit] it to have a more neutral tone and phrase it more as an answer to the question.

@NajibIdrissi I don't know, I just interpreted what says in the spam flag instructions


text:
Should I report a graduate student who "hires" other people to do their coursework?
Should I report a graduate student who "hires" other people to do their coursework? Is this a proper course of action to take? I understand the repercussions will be outstanding for the individual.

Thank you for the input. I've talked to some old professors as well as people in the industry and they all agreed that I should bring it to the attention of the dean and other professors because it is unfair to the people who have worked hard to get into the program, the people he has been scamming, and also people who were denied entry into the program because he was deemed the better candidate. As far as evidence goes, I have substantial evidence both from him and an upset developer who contacted me through his friends list on Facebook.

Is "this" a proper course of action,   Where "this" is hiring someone to do their coursework?  Or where "this" is reporting them?

Can you describe in a clearer way what exactly you are observing? Is the student paying someone to attend courses for them, or to solve homework?

I read "this" as the action of the question title "Should I report...?" not whether the hiring of another to do the homework is proper.

I understand the repercussions will be outstanding for the individual. Good! This will teach them a valuable lesson that hopefully will help them learn from their mistakes and later achieve honest success in life. Note that the "repercussions" will be a direct result of the individual's actions which they chose to engage in, not a result of your reporting those actions.

@gnometorule: "I don't see myself as the enforcer of other's morality, and find it good policy to focus on my own life and shortcomings" - as often in such questions, it's not (exclusively) about enforcing anything towards others, but about making sure that your degrees and certificates are not devalued by granting the same degrees and certificates to fraudsters. If you work hard for a degree, and it is not taken seriously later on because cheaters get the same degree even if their cheating is known, yet no-one steps forward to expose them, it is very much a shortcoming in your own life.

@GEdgar the student in question hires people to do their work. In my undergrad career in CSE,  I've seen people cheat but not to this extent. What I've discovered is that this individual "hires" other people to do his papers, take home exams, and projects. I leave the hires in quotes because he admitted that he does not actually pay them in the end and cuts off all contact with them after the deed is done. Am I in the wrong to feel that this is a prime example of bad character and someone like this should NOT be in academia?

@LordAzu: That is massively different from what I read into the question (I took it as significant hw help in exchange for a dinner or beer ("hire" in apostrophes only)). If I understand you correctly, the quotes just mean that someone is contracted for much more universal and serious fraud (exams, etc.), then short-changed out of promised payment (the second part being not even necessary to make this unacceptable, but painting the person you talk about as even worse). I would definitely go ahead and report them; just make sure to support conclusive evidence.

Saying somebody hires someone to do the coursework is a serious accusation. Do you have any evidence? Based on your comment, he admitted that he does not actually pay them in the end, then this is not "hire".

@scaaahu regardless of whether he has paid them or not, having someone else do assessed work is as bad as having someone sit the exam in his place.

A few years ago, one of my PhD students spotted an offer for such hiring in a student cafeteria. She managed to secure incriminating emails from the student and he got expelled from the university for a few months by the disciplinary committee.

Not only is this an unethical student, but a he or she doesn't even have honor among thieves. Sounds like chaotic evil to me. Please report this sociopath.

Wow. So he not only hires people to help him cheat, but then he cheats them as well? That makes it worse, not better. He can't even claim that he somehow believed this was a legitimate transaction, like hiring a tutor.

I guess I'm unclear as to why you would hesitate to report him. I can understand not wanting to ruin someone's career over one misguided error, but this guy is a clear an example of willful academic fraud as any I've ever seen.

Yes. You're describing academic dishonesty, and it doesn't matter if it's essay-buying, texting answers during an exam, involves undergraduates vs. graduates... academic dishonesty should be reported.

The OP hasn't really described a whole lot. And while their mention of "coursework" makes it likely something that is not supposed to be done is happening here, it is not at all clear or undisputed whether hiring people to outsource certain tasks is invariably problematic.

Most likely you are expected to report it. My university's policy on academic honesty makes reporting everyone's responsibility.

Let us not forget the the formal grades a student is assigned are often used to evaluate candidates for scholarships, internships and right-out-of-school jobs. This is less important when we're talking about grad school than it would have been for undergraduate work, but it doesn't go away.
In other words, this stuff has very real consequences in the real word and can profoundly affect career arcs. Indeed, if grades didn't matter why would anyone ever bother cheating in the first place.
So here is the point: a student who receives moderately good grades doing their own work might be passed over for something important in favor of a student who gets slightly better grades by hiring out the work, and every time that happens the cheater has stolen something from the person skipped over.
Cheating is a moral issue on the same level as theft at the capital scale. It is up to you to decide if you want to abet that or not.

That kind of behaviour you are describing in your comments is against the principles of academia. It is unethical and malpractice. Hence, he is not helping himself at all by avoiding to do what he has to do. So yes.

Perhaps you can expand your answer a bit?

@jakebeal Is it okay now?

I personally think there is more than just one aspect here. Plus I believe we're not getting the fully story.
Yes, what this guy is allegedly doing is wrong. He cheats at university, and he seems to cheat the people he hires (OP clarified this in a comment to his post). And still we're speaking about two very different things.
In the latter case, there is a contract between him and the hired person (the "dev", as you said). Even if there is no written contract, there will be other evidence supporting the contract. So he could sue him. But here is one thing I find a bit strange: if I was ordering such work with the purpose to cheat, I would be much too scared to not pay the bill since the dev could rat on me. If this thing would even go to court, my career would be over. Why risk it?
Anyway, for the sake of argument, let's assume that the dev is not going to take any action for whatever reason. The next question then is: how did you find out that the guy is cheating? From the way you describe it it sounds as if he confided in you. I mean, it's a bad thing to cheat alright, but how is misusing a friend's trust any better? I wouldn't want to have business with any of you.
I would agree with what the user O.R. Mapper wrote in a comment to your question:

"I don't see myself as the enforcer of other's morality, and find it
  good policy to focus on my own life and shortcomings" - as often in
  such questions, it's not (exclusively) about enforcing anything
  towards others, but about making sure that your degrees and
  certificates are not devalued by granting the same degrees and
  certificates to fraudsters.

Frauds will be exposed for what they are, sooner or later, be sure about it. I know of people having had their degree revoked even 10 years after they graduated because fraud was discovered. And frankly, with this guy cheating even on the people he hires, it will be sooner rather than later for him.
If this guy is your friend, make sure he understands that you disagree with his actions and, as a last resort, break up the friendship if he won't stop it. I just don't see it in your responsibility to tell on him.

I would be much too scared to not pay the bill Maybe I am missing something. Would you point out where the OP said the guy did not pay the bill?

@scaaahu In a comment to his own question, OP wrote: "What I've discovered is that this individual "hires" other people to do his papers, take home exams, and projects. I leave the hires in quotes because he admitted that he does not actually pay them in the end and cuts off all contact with them after the deed is done."

I don't know how to point to comments by link. It's the 7th comment from the top. You have to expand all comments to see it.

Okay. I got it. Upvoting.

The student is not my friend and did not confide this to me out of the goodness of his heart. He admitted to it(in text and email) after the dev contacted me and showed me emails,text messages, and chat conversations as well as the work he did. I am not trying to put my personal feelings into it but some of the messages he sent to dev paint him in a completely different light. For example a little excerpt near the end of the logs read " I am not going to pay you but you are a nice guy. Consider it a good deed for the year."

Why would the dev contact specifically you about it? Maybe you could give us an idea about the nature of relationships between yourself, the dev, and the alleged culprit? Might be easier to give you proper advice.

authors: Xi'an ні війні


text:
Should I notify students that I've interacted with after getting sick, by email?
I saw a bunch of students today during my office hours (~15-20 out of a class of 96). Then around noon I went downhill quick, and now I'm sporting a fever over 100 F.
I don't know necessarily what I have, but it seems reasonable to assume it was already there when I had close interaction with the students this morning.
Would you email students, notifying them? Would you wait until you went to the doctor (which won't happen until tomorrow, if I go)? If you emailed them, how/what would you say. Note, I also don't know exactly who all I saw, so I was going to send a class email.

I'm not a lawyer, but I'd make sure that there are no legal ramifications to offering up yourself as an excuse for a student getting sick. I know that's not what you are intending. But just be careful, people can be really manipulative sometimes.

@SH7890: not everything is litigious. There's a difference between saying a) "Dear class, I am sick" b) "I am sick and I might have been infectious when I saw some of you at office hours today". The former seems harmless. Avoid clarifying or elaborating on what sickness, when they got it etc. c) Unless it's suspected to be something highly contagious and dangerous, like meningitis, measles etc., in which case there will be a policy to follow.

Warning: this question was written before the Covid-19 pandemic. The answers may no longer be relevant as they do not include common practices and standard safety precautions in the "after-disease" era.

I would send out an email, but I would recommend caution and measure in writing it, so as not to cause undue panic.
Mention exactly what happened, along the lines of what you wrote here. Just state facts, and urge that anybody who starts developing symptoms to seek medical attention.
I should mention that I am one of the "immunocompromised" people mentioned in the other answers. Since full lecture notes were posted online for each lecture, I asked students who were contagious with something to please exercise caution, because I really couldn't afford to get sick.

That's sort of what I thought to do, but my fiance thought it was weird hence asking to a larger forum of other academics :)

@JM Uh, well, I'm an academic and I'd consider it weird too sending an email, but probably it's a matter of culture. For instance, we had a flu wave here during the last couple of months and there was always someone falling sick around, one doesn't care too much.

I didn’t necessarily mean that we would all agree. More that I was looking for perspectives from other people in the same field. Jobs have different ideas/norms, so thought I’d “ask other academics” for their perspectives

Either you infected them, or you didn't. Sending an e-mail about it will not change that (enough time has passed that telling them to wash their hands now will make no difference).
Therefore, it only makes sense to send an e-mail if it turns out to be something where early treatment can make a big difference, or where ignoring it can do harm. (IIRC, this year's flu is an especially bad one, and students might be tempted to dismiss it as just a cold. It's good to remind people that the flu kills and that they need someone to check in on them every few hours.)
Technically, an early warning might also let them avoid people until they are sure they aren't infectious, but in practice that is unlikely to happen as "I was in the same room as someone with fever earlier" probably won't be accepted as a valid reason to skip class...

Sorry, but I have to downvote this one - that last point is much more important than your response suggests. It's not about skipping class, it's about skipping that visit to a sick family member who might be seriously endangered by exposure to infection.

Fair enough, I guess that depends on your circumstances. Where I live, it's almost impossible to avoid daily exposure to varieties of the common cold. If I were to get an e-mail from every feverish person I was in proximity of, I'd just be deluged under daily emails - there's no useful behavioral response I could have to that.

Upvoted - illness is a fact of life and prior warning is unlikely to change outcomes. "Someone two degrees of separation away may be immunocompromised" is technically possible in the same way as "if I leave my house I may get hit by a car" - the risk is sufficiently small and uncontrollable that special attempts to mitigate complicate more than they help.
If it turns out that OP is the patient zero of something especially dangerous, the story would be different. In this case I would expect your healthcare providers to have contingency plans and communicate with local authorities etc.

I normally do not make a habit of emailing students if I get sick (unless it is to cancel class). I only considered it because: 1) it came on so fast and strong 2) if it is the flu, I certainly would want to know if someone I had just sat face to face with was sick with it (but maybe that is a minority opinion)

@nengel - Just curious, why you wrote this answer (an hour after I posted mine).  Could you clarify how it's different from mine?

@JM: yes, if it's the flu, definitely notify people. The flu counts as "something dangerous", especially this year.

@aparente001: I wasn't sure where I was going when I started writing, I just wanted to further tease out the reasoning. Turns out we ended up with the same conclusion. (Not that surprising considering I upvoted your answer before I decided to add my own.) I actually like the way 1006a explains it even better!

@nengel - I actually like the way 1006a explains it even better -- I don't.  My answer encompasses the grandparent visiting the toddler, but more succinctly.

If it turns out to be something serious that requires treatment, yes.  Also, if it's the flu, yes.  But if it's a garden variety virus, no.  There are so many bugs on campus, students are exposed quite often, and your bug is just one among many.
However, if you shook hands with someone, or sneezed on someone, then notify the individual.

Out of fifteen to twenty students, the chances are pretty high that at least one of them has friends or family undergoing chemotherapy.
Exposure to infection can be very dangerous to chemo patients, since many chemo treatments drastically weaken the immune system. When my friends were going through chemo, it was understood that we wouldn't visit them if we were feeling even mildly ill. People can also be immunocompromised for other reasons, with similar consequences.
By letting your students know about your illness, you make it easier for them to protect vulnerable loved ones.

The chances are also high, in fact higher, that each of those students spent time with other students who could be developing something already... So, do students make sure they would do the same? I have students who come to class and say "sorry I'm sick but came anyway"...

@SolarMike that's part of the problem - in far too many places, academic and work culture encourage people to feel that they should come in sick, when it's better for everybody if they don't. Our response to that should be to model good behaviour rather than replicating bad behaviour.

Yes, many managers frown on people being sick - a tendency of worshipping the God Profit...

Even though your concern is laudable, I think that anyone who works or studies in a university is aware of the fact that they will come in contact with tens or even hundreds of people every day, and that many of them can be sick. If someone has friends or families who are, for one reason or another, immunodepressed, they will have to take this into account anyway. Just to make an example, when I have a measurement lab session, I have some 50-100 students closely sitting together at the benches, and I usually move from bench to bench sitting among the students. How many of them can be sick?

@MassimoOrtolano "Many of my students don't wash their hands, so what is the point in me washing my hands?"

Make the decision after you see a doctor, and
Base the decision on whether there is an effective treatment available.

In other words, if it turns out that you have influenza, where early treatment (even before symptoms appear) can make a strong difference in outcome, then email. If it turns out that you have a cold, which will last a week if you treat it and seven days if you don't, then just let it go.
I actually just experienced this from both the warnee and warner position, though luckily not with students. A day after my parents left our house after the holiday, my mother called to say that she had been diagnosed with influenza A (despite having had the flu shot). When my toddler spiked a fever the day after that, I took it more seriously than I might have otherwise (we'd also all had the vaccine); it turned out my child also tested positive for influenza A, and the whole family was put on a prophylactic dose of antiviral medication. By that point I was also symptomatic, and accordingly informed colleagues with whom I'd had contact. Fortunately I'd already been keeping my distance from them before I was symptomatic, due to the previous notice, and none of them were affected. And thanks to our prompt treatment, no one else in our household came down with the flu, and my symptoms only lasted a few days.
On the other hand, colds around here are absolutely inescapable, and along with most of the folks around me I pretty much assume that anyone I come in contact with could be contagious between September and May. I'd be somewhat baffled to receive an email "warning" me that someone had come down with one.


text:
Two potential advisors are interested in me as a master’s student – should I meet with both?
Last Wednesday, I first contacted one potential advisor (PA) with a well-thought out email and my CV. He contacted me a day later and was very interested in me. I sent him my transcript and we had a phone conversation over the weekend. He seems very interested and we are currently talking about projects, how to apply for grants, etc.
Before he emailed me back, last Thursday, I emailed another potential advisor, expressing interest. She just replied back and is interested in me. She requested my transcript and offered to talk over the phone.
To be honest, I did not expect any PA to reply back to me, let alone two. I have heard that most of the time, PAs don’t even reply to these kinds of emails. I’ve contacted six PAs: Three got back to me and said they are not expecting graduate students in the next year, and two of them got back to me expressing interest.
So, should I still meet with the second PA? I hate the awkward situation of saying, “oh nevermind” to one of them, especially if I like the second PA better since I have already been talking so much about research to the first PA.

I think that everyone contacts multiple potential advisors before starting any project. You might want to be honest, if you are worried, and tell them, when you meet or talk to them, about the ongoing conversation with the other potential advisor. And, once you decide for one of the projects, contact the other advisor (over the phone if this is how you've talked until the) and tell them that you won't be working with them.

@AnnaSdTC I humbly suggest you convert this comment of yours into an answer.

Mostly everyone contacts multiple potential advisors before starting any project (or multiple schools/departments when exploring program options, such as PhDs), and advisors/departments are fully aware of it. You want to be honest, if you are worried, and tell them, when you meet or talk to them, about the ongoing conversation with the other potential advisor. Assure them that you are interested in what they are offering to you, but you want to make sure that, whatever you work on and whoever you work with, it will be a good fit. And, once you decide for one of the projects, contact this advisor to confirm it, and the other advisor (over the phone if this is how you've talked until then, not email) and tell them that you finally decided to work on the other project because it was closer to your interests or any other reason. Don't have anyone on the hook, be clear to everyone as soon as you make a decision so they can take another student.
Overall, be polite and honest, and they will be fine with it.


text:
How to prepare for a phone interview with a prospective advisor?
I sent my initial inquiry email to a prospective advisor on Wednesday with a brief description of my background and my interest in his research (I talked about one of his papers). He emailed me back the next day and seemed very interested in my background and the fact that I took time to research him, and requested more information from me (i.e., marks, certain courses). I sent him the requested information and he emailed me back yesterday morning saying he’s sure I will be accepted into their program and asked me various questions regarding funding (i.e., grants) and plans for the future.
We then scheduled a phone call for this afternoon. I’m not sure what the call will entail, but what are some things I should do to prepare? What are some questions I should ask?
(I am not asking this question at the last minute because I got lazy. My email interactions happened with him very fast. I was usually told it takes prospective advisors weeks to get back to students.)

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17192/what-are-the-right-questions-to-ask-professors-at-a-visit-day-for-prospective/17197#17197

If you're interested in joining the group, then you should be able to show that you've done a little bit of prep work (which clearly you have, since you've talked about his papers).
Questions I'd like prospective students to ask me include:

What projects do you have upcoming?
What is your advising style like?
What are your expectations for graduating students?
Could I talk with some of your graduate students/postdocs?