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Team member has done the work but won't write it up - what to do?
One of the people in my group does very good work and is very productive. This person generates publishable results but, instead of writing them up, jumps to the next problem. I have been encouraging them for over half a year to start writing one particular paper, and we have had during this time a shared manuscript draft where I sketched the contents of the paper using bullet points, to help them get started. But nothing happens. At every meeting I tell this person how good the results are and why we need to publish them for practical (career/grants) and fundamental reasons - if we don't share the work with the community it's like it didn't get done at all. They agree with me in principle about writing up, but then nothing happens (not even small additions to the text). I got tired of waiting and started writing it up myself (keeping them as first author, I'm last). They seem ok with this, but I'm not, I would rather share the task of writing up. However, at this point I need to capitalize on all the work we've done and it looks like the easiest way to achieve that is if I write the whole thing.
I have heard about this issue (people complete the work but don't write it up, instead jumping to the next project) but this is the first time I have to deal with a situation like this directly. I would like to know if there are strategies how to incentivise this person to write, or if I should just give up and we're both better off splitting the work like that.
P.S.: The relationship with this person is perfectly fine, I insist on writing up every now and then, but don't get too pushy. I'm otherwise very happy with their performance.

Are you a team member or the group leader?

@RichardErickson Group leader

"I have heard about this issue" what was the solution from the story you heard?

What is the person's status in your group? and their future plan?

Is this holding back others? Holding back the team in any way?

@Miguel If, as you said, you're the group leader, just say: "please, write the paper". If they don't, you're not, I'm afraid.

Write the paper yourself.

Would you have authorship?

Is this person a graduate student of yours?  A postdoc?  An established collaborator from another group? Something else?

This person may just like to do one thing rather than the other and might not feel competent in writing. You've apparently given them space to do this. But, it also seems like you don't have a team, per se, but a bunch of individuals doing individual work.
I have two suggestions.
First, if the lack of writing isn't holding anyone else, or the team in general, back in any way then there is really nothing to resolve. They may be hurting their own career, of course, and you can advise them of that, but if the overall work gets done and communication of results to other team members is adequate, I'd suggest you can let it go. If their strong point is the research and they are very good at it, then you may be able to let that happen naturally and solve the publication problem otherwise.
Second, you can opt for a more cooperative team work environment. In programming we use a technique called "pair programming" which puts two people together on every task. They don't form a mini-team and partners switch for different tasks, but it brings two minds together on every task. Note that the two members of a pair have different roles at any given moment and those roles switch frequently.
We have found that this technique translates to many other situations and you might think about employing it. If two people are responsible for some overall team task then each can take a different role in completing it, though they work together at all times. It isn't just a different way of dividing up work. So, your non-writer will often be paired with a person more comfortable in the writing and both can benefit if the person you are concerned with is a "deep diver" into the actual tasks. The learning and skills transfer can go both ways and each can become more comfortable with the various requirements.
In general, though, teamwork doesn't mean dividing up tasks into individual assignments. If you do that then you (a) have a work integration problem and (b) require all members to have equivalent skills in all aspects. Both are sub-optimal.

I had myself trouble writing up, and I still do. As a graduate student, and later, as a postdoc, I only wrote a few papers by myself, and the people I have been working with didn't like my writing.
What I wish those people did for me was to force me to read/write/present my results for all the conceivable audiences.
"Force" is the key word here. If all the other great advise people gave you here doesn't work, you need to make it clear that 1. you are not writing papers for him anymore, 2. He has to present something written up every week, or you'll just disregard his research results, 3. You're doing this so he can finally learn to write his results and be an independent scientist.
You should make it clear there is no way around it. You need to write not only to publish results, but also to apply for grants, in case you need to keep a research group alive. There is no way for him to skip writing if he ever wants to be a PI.

What if they don't want to be a PI, ever?

@Lodinn I don't think OP would have asked the question if that was the case. But, for the sake of argument, if that was the case, why is OP still unhappy with his team member? If a team member finds a way to turn himself in a liability for the team, the recommendation is still to correct the issue, which is not writing things up, or, failing that, to fire the guy.

You appear to have tried to work with them to publish their work.
That's great!
Using gentle approaches, I see two options going forward.

First, I would set smaller goals for each regular meeting (e.g., weekly, every other week).
For example, outline the introduction this week.
Hopefully this works.
If it doesn't, you might try to figure out why and mentor the person through their challenges.
Do they have language problems (e.g., writing in a 2nd or 3rd language)?
Do they have writing anxiety?
Is there an external factor limiting their writing?
Either help them directly or connect them to outside resources.
Second, if option 1 does not work, you may be forced to write the paper yourself.
Authorship depends upon your field's conventions (I'm in the biological sciences) and your generosity.
If this was a student, I would keep them as first author  and be senior author myself because I am suppose to be mentoring them.
If this person was a technician, I would probably be first author because I am paying them for their time.

Using harsh approaches, you could fire or remove them from your group for not writing.
Document your efforts to mentor them through writing and show you made a good faith effort to train and help them.
Personally, give your comment:

The relationship with this person is perfectly fine, I insist on writing up every now and then, but don't get too pushy. I'm otherwise very happy with their performance.

I would try to work with them and be willing to accept that I might need to do all of the writing.

Leave a hard, written trace that you are asking to take over the publication and "this person" will be co-author of the work. Check their reaction.
If they will be cool with this, well, you have some writing tasks in front of you, but also some publication coming.
If they are not cool, ask them what are their plans with their future careers. Tell them there are for sure no internal additional fundings available if they do not publish these results... and also external fundings may be difficult to obtain.

I'm assuming that this is at a university? At one point, my professor made it clear that producing knowledge in the form of published papers is literally what university researchers get paid for, just like other people get paid for producing food or electronic devices. He gave a rough number - something like 50,000 EUR per paper IIRC. Maybe you should make that clear to the person in your group - make them aware that not writing up a worthwhile paper is the equivalent of growing tens of thousands of dollars worth of produce and then letting it rot because you're too lazy to sell it. That might be enough motivation.

That's not how it works in the US. In an indirect kind of way it is, but this direct correspondence of a paper yielding thousands of dollars to the authors is not how it goes. Instead the money in excess of your professorship salary is from grants. You'll need publications to get those, but the actual chain of causality is not so simple that it makes a good direct motivator.

This figure seems like... A lot. Wish I had this kind of funding :)

Ian: It doesn't directly work like that in Germany either - professors mostly get paid by the state through the university, grad students get paid through grants (often also by state authorities), and there is no direct correspondence between pay and output, but the whole system is based on the expectation that researchers produce (published) research, and if they don't, they're not holding up their end of the bargain.

that would be me for many years throughout my career!
There are several potential obstacles they might face. First and foremost, they may be struggling with writing altogether. This is the most unfortunate scenario for you; ideally, this should have been resolved during their undergrad. Making them write reviews seems to be the approach then: it helps both with reading/exposure to how papers are written and sets the scope narrowly. Speaking of which, the second potential issue is something I struggle with a lot personally. That is purely a writer's block; when setting a figurative pen to a figurative paper, my mind inevitably wanders off and starts considering future work. Bullet point outlines DO NOT help.
At least for me, rapidly sketching the outline is the only way to get started. It involves phrasing like "Unorthodox twig arrangement for underwater basket weaving is still facing issues of alignment despite decades of research effort (refs). We propose to (fix this issue) by (making the arrangement even more unorthodox), which will then (lead to peace and prosperity for all of humanity)". Bracketed parts will get replaced later, but it seems important to get the flow of ideas fleshed out at least a bit, as it is hard to remain grounded otherwise. One thing you can and should do to test if this is a problem is to write the main parts yourself, but make them write the materials and methods section entirely. Documenting the experiment is one hell of a lot easier than surveying the implications while still getting the paper written reasonably soon.
Finally, there is a question of motivation. I would strongly advise not to threaten to remove funding unless you mean it (which you seemingly do not). Instead, try to figure out what their goals are and nudge them towards writing by offering some interesting projects on a condition they do the writing. State you would not be able to handle all the workload otherwise. If they agree to that, it would be a lot stronger motivator than "uh I guess I should indeed" kind of reluctant acceptance you have now.

It is important to realise that some extremely able people who perform outstandingly in some areas are nevertheless unable to write synthetically in the way I think you need. This is not laziness, incompetence or unwillingness: it is a diagnosable condition that I believe to be a form of dyspraxia (I am not a specialist).
I have at least one acquaintance of high standing and performance in the medical profession who is extremely well regarded by their peers but has never published an academic paper because of their difficulty of mentally assembling the material in the time available. They and their intimate working colleagues did not recognise the condition until well into their 40s, because their other abilties had masked it with a multitude of coping mechanisms.
This being the case, your attention should be on finding out if this is the case with your colleague. It is a condition that they may not even realise they have, so a sensitive approach is needed.
The comments and parts of answers that assume you to have merely a motivational or management issue should be disregarded for several reasons: they ignore the possibility of a real and diagnosable condition; they overlook how useful such a productive person is when complemented by others who can write; they are a little inhumane; and they overlook the possibility of legal action for unfair dismissal and similar institutional wrongs.
Think very seriously before proceeding, and ask for specialist health advice first.

Would the downvoter care to explain their reasons? There are some human behaviours that are foolish and even destructive to handle with the “Pull yourself together and get on with it!” approach.

Writing up a paper is putting the final effort towards the work and properly finishing it. for academics this is how we are sharing our work and also how we are being evaluated.
Not finishing can be a sign of perfectionism or another issue of fearing judgment or failing or very simple not like writing up, which the team member doesn't really need to like writing up. But if the not writing up is happening because of a negative emotions, i.e. fear, avoidance and if the team-member wants to change  this then you can assist with identifying the problem and solving it.
In academia they expect from us to do everything, being good at coming up with experiments and research questions, having time management and organizational skills, being good at explaining our research, being good at writing, being good at finding money etc. But in reality, one person doesn't have to be all these in order to be a good scientist.
Also, team leaders not necessary are good at everything or knowing all the ways that each member needs to be managed, guided and inspired.
I would try to understand first what is the reason that the team member doesn't write up. Identifying the reason why something is happening or not happening is the first step to changing something. But for whatever reason this might be happening if the team member wants to make a change and start writing then needs to create a new habit which is the writing up.
A couple of things that have helped me are the following:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wcs2PFz5q6g A neuroscience podcast, this episode is about making new habits, stop others. by Huberman Lab.
https://drchatterjee.com/how-to-build-good-habits-and-break-bad-ones-with-james-clear/ another podcast on how to make good habits and stop bad habits by Dr Rangan Chatterjee.
breaking the activity into very very very small steps that can be achieved and like that can create a positive emotional connection with the new activity and slowly can become a habit. And I guess you might be able to help your team member with that step.

hope at least the podcasts are useful! :)


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ScholarOne Manuscripts status is 'Awaiting Referee selection' for nearly 3 months
I submitted an article to a journal using ScholarOne manuscripts on 20th February. it is now nearly 3 months and it hasn't got beyond 'awaiting referee selection'. I have emailed to ask, politely, if it will be sent to reviewers and if I can help by suggesting reviewers' names. I have received no reply.
Do people think this is normal / reasonable?
What, if anything, should I do next?
Thanks.

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How to deal with inconsistencies in my last name spelling on official documents?
In my native language, my last name contains a letter, which can be transliterated into English in three different ways. Namely: ja, ya and ia. When I tried to transliterate my last name to English for the first time, I checked the results of several online translators, and they all transliterated  my last name to English with ya. I kinda liked that option as well and decided to stick with it.
After some time, I was issued my first passport, and it contained the other variant. I didn't want to drop my initial choice, because I liked it more and didn't want to rename all my Internet accounts either.
Yesterday, I had gone to a translator agency to translate my transcripts for the Master's program application and the translator asked me to write my last name exactly as in my foreign passport. I have realized that I have a lot of documents with the initial variant variant, which can't be reissued. For instance, all my award certificates and TOEFL results. Now I'm going to change everything I have to make consistency with my foreign passport, as it might cause problems with visa issuing.
I have two questions:

How I should cope with documents with the old last name option, which can't be reissued?

I think one way would be to add a footnote in my CV (which contains links to all certificates) which will notify the referees that I have written my last name previously in a different way.

Do you think that referees of Master's program admission might invalidate my TOEFL results because of this inconsistency?

Welcome to Ac.SE. I changed "translate" in a few places because "transliterate" is what we would usually say in English to describe names being changed to a different alphabet.

It's very unlikely that your application gets rejected directly because your name is spelled inconsistently.  The main concern would be that parts of your application get lost.  The risk depends on what software is being used.  If the software does not make it clear that all parts of your application are present, just ask the admissions staff to check for you.

I think this problem is widespread enough that it shouldn't be a problem, provided that you make people aware of it. You suggest a note in your CV and that should be fine. It could appear elsewhere also.
If you are questioned on it or someone makes a mistake in thinking you are acting improperly, just inform them of the issues. I think people will, in general, try to be reasonable, though I can't predict for everyone.
I know one person who immigrated to the US from China. His brother did also a bit later. They have "different" family names when written in Roman letters because of this issue. Most English speakers even pronounce the names a bit differently now. My own family name is spelled in at least three different ways in the US because my ancestors coming from Ireland were illiterate on arrival and people wrote down a spelling for them when they arrived based on pronunciation.

Thank you very much for the response!

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Issues with Master admission because of transfer to another university during undergraduate studies
This year I'm trying to get into the Master's program. There is one particular university where I want to get into, say its name is X.
X is asking me to provide transcripts of my all previous higher education programs, even uncompleted ones.
The thing is that during my undergraduate studies I've transferred from one higher institution to another. The first university was one of the best programs in my country, it featured many hours of great courses and so on. However, because of my not very good performance there I had to transfer to another university. During my studies in the first university, I got 6 Bs and 2 Cs and a couple of passes which yielded a GPA of 2.85.
Now, I'm in the last (4th) year of bachelor studies in the second university and got a GPA of around 3.4. It is worth mentioning that while transferring some grades from my previous university got matched to classes of the second university (and thus some Cs and Bs from the first university were added to the transcript from the second university), so I can be admitted to the second year.
Fast forward to the actual question. As I am highly dependant on scholarship, I feel like if I mention my first higher institution experience and attach a transcript for it I won't be able to get a scholarship here. If I don't mention it though, I will create a chance to be rejected because of a discrepancy in my portfolio, as in the transcript from my second university it is mentioned that the standard period of study on my program is 4 years. And it is also stated that I was enrolled in 2018 and will be graduating in 2021 (3 years here), exactly because I was admitted to the second year.
I don't want to violate any rules, but, even though I have a solid portfolio (in my opinion), I feel that If I will attach a transcript from my first university the race for a scholarship will be pretty much over for me, so I don't really have anything to lose here and it's might be worth trying to take a risk. I also think that there is a small chance that admission committee members won't notice the discrepancy.
What would you do in my situation?
Thank you

Don't lie.  They asked for all your transcripts, so if you omit one then your application is fraudulent. Even if you're admitted to this masters program, fraud in your application should be sufficient reason to expel you if it's discovered later.

The second university should note on the transcript that credits were transferred.  This will allow the masters program to detect the fraud before admissions.

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Special journals for young scientists or regular peer reviewed papers
I am a 16 year old researcher and was wondering whether to apply to publish my paper in a special journals for young scientists, which have a higher chance of acceptance, or to apply in a regular peer-reviewed journal which might have a less chance of acceptance. I am confused between the quality and impact factor of the two journals and don't know which will be better. My research is completely original and not to show off but kind-of revolutionary.

If your research is revolutionary, why submit to a lesser journal? Send it to Nature or Science or some other appropriate big journal with a wide audience.

Why settle for less, if you can get more? Good luck! Take care, however, if the lingo and similar factors also add up. There are normally senior co-authors for this, but I understand you as you are writing the article alone. You might also want to use arXiv to secure a time-stamp on your research.

@Allure yes I plan on sending to one of those journals you have mentioned. Can not tell which.

@OlegLobachev I have consulted with 3 researchers, all at high posts in research institutes, but none have seen the actual initial submission. Please do tell me about arXiv, like does it cost money, like Elsevier, and does it take interdisciplinary and applicative rather than theoretical papers. Thanks fo the help.

Err... arXiv is free, you can find the category that suits you and upload virtually anything there. https://arxiv.org

@OlegLobachev is it effective. Can I send my paper to a journal and upload it on arXiv as well

When I supervise student research, the dream is always that it can be published in a professional journal, like where I publish my own results. However, that dream is often not realized, because it's very unusual for an undergrad (let alone a high school student) to produce work at that level.
Still, getting published looks good for the student, and this is a chance to learn the ins and outs of the publication system. So, I encourage my students to submit their papers to undergraduate journals, of which there are many. Often these journals require the author to be an undergraduate (this is to keep out papers by grad students and professors; if a high school student submitted a good paper, it would not normally be prohibited), or to have been a student when the work was done. These journals are easier to publish in than a professional journal.
A student researcher should consult their faculty mentor to determine if their results are at the level of a professional journal, or at the level of an undergraduate journal, or not publishable at all. If the faculty mentor decides the work is publishable, then they can help the student decide which journal and which editor to submit the paper to.
Lastly, there was some discussion in the comments about arXiv. I teach my students to put their papers on arXiv. This is a good practice, but it's not the same as a publication because the work is not peer reviewed in any meaningful sense. Still, it's good for the student to learn how the arXiv submission process works, and also to get "endorsed" by me so they can get their first arXiv submission accepted, which then makes it easier for them to upload more submissions later in their research career.

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Should I tell about my inexperience in my cover letter?
I am a 16 year old with hardly any experience in the academic field and have shown a certain degree of unprofessionalism in the initial draft of my first paper. Should I state this in the cover letter and probably apologize for that?

Please elaborate what you are meaning by "unprofessionalism" regarding your "initial draft" of a paper. Why was that a problem?

What are you writing the cover letter for? Remember that most 16-year-olds have "hardly any experience in the academic field" and also would probably be "unprofessional" (because they have not yet learned to do it) when writing a draft for a paper. Also generally in a cover letter you do not add much detail but try to "sell yourself". Picture yourself in a positive light, everybody does.

@J-Kun I might have made errors such as making useless citations, and explaining points that I believe are useful but might not be that liked by the editor. I also sound kind of childish and hopeful about my research. I have shown my paper to 3 college level professors and each pointed out a new mistake.

@skymningen Thanks, I'll keep that in mind. Should mention my age or inexperience anywhere, if at all.

What you say about your paper draft... happens to every researcher. We usually are hopeful about our research, up to a point where it can sound childish to others, we get lost in details, we make mistakes others find easily. Don't beat yourself up on that. Do not mention what you perceive as inexperience. About age, I don't know. In some places, it is preferred if you don't mention age (so you cannot be discriminated for it), but for some things, it might be an important factor (People would not give an internship they fund to help high school students gain experience to a Ph.D. student.)

No, you should not mention your inexperience. It's simply not going to factor into the editor's decision as to whether to publish your paper. Papers are (at least in theory) published purely on their own merits. It doesn't matter whether your paper is a good paper for a 16-year-old, it matters whether it is a good paper, full stop. So it won't get any special consideration.
When you use the term "apologize", it makes it sound as if you are thinking: "I'm sorry for wasting the editor's time". If that's the case, just don't submit it. If you submit the paper, you think it's worthy of their consideration. It doesn't have to be perfect.
Note that a number of journals have special awards reserved for excellent papers from young/early-career scientists. If this journal is one of them, you may want to advise them of your age if/when your paper is accepted, but not before, so that they are aware of your eligibility.


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Is it fair to offer students a chance to improve their grade on an assignment
A large portion of students in a class I'm taking did very poorly on the first project that was assigned in the class. The professor has decided to allow students that did not get full points on the project to increase their grade on project 1 by a percentage of their project 2 grade.
However, the way the that increase is calculated does nothing for the people that did project 1 correctly and received full points. I feel that this is an unfair application of extra credit as it only rewards those that didn't do the first project correctly. Am I being reasonable when I see this as unfair?

If the issue is about competition or comparisons between students, and if this scheme had not been previously announced, then, yes, it is "unfair" in a sort of game-theory sense. On the other hand, if the goal is to get as many students as possible to keep working, rather than being disheartened, sure, why not? Is your own grade determined in part by others' numbers? If so, then, yes, this is not fair.

I would suggest it would be better to make the first assignment contribute less to the total than the second and subsequent assignments. But that detail needs to be set at the beginning. Changing for some like suggested is not fair IMHO

I've done something similar in the past, but applied it for all students.  If, for example, there was a 10% "boost," the student with 100% on an assignment could end up with 110% added into the grade for the end of the term, which could help offset a poor grade earned later.  As there is no grade higher than A at my institution, the very best students did not benefit in their final grades, but all received the same opportunity.

It depends on why so many people did it wrong. Did they misinterpret the directions the prof admits may have been unclear, and others happened to interpret it correctly? In that case, no I don't think it's unfair if the error was on the prof. If the error was only on the students, then I think it's a bit sketchier.

Talk to your professor about the Grade it again, Sam pattern. I think it's a clean way to achieve the goal of avoiding discouraged students who submitted poor quality work on the first project.

Put yourself in the shoes of the students who did poorly, it's not about punishment or unfairness, but rather about offering more practice to the more unexperienced.
If you are worried that your hardly earned grade loses value because your teacher decided to give another chance to those who did poorly, just think of it this way : Learning is personal and should be about self-development and inner growth. Not about comparing your medals.
Giving another chance is like giving more practice. More practice may lead to a better understanding of things, and what have not been understood in project 1 by some students, may be crystal clear to them after finishing the project 2 (I'm kind of exaggerating, but you get the gist).
This allows for a better global level in the class. Let's make an analogy with the army, the physically "weakest" should always be pulled up by the physically "strongest" recruits during physical activities. And sometimes, the physically weakest are also the mentally strongest.
If you think it is unfair, you may not have the right mindset, learning is personal and the learning curve depends on each and every individual. There should be no competition when learning something.
We see this kind of competitive mindset very often in the academic world, it can be sane as long as people use their strengths and advantages to help others out, but it can also be pretty toxic if it's just a "size comparison" kind of behavior and people stomp each other.
I've personally been called things during my computer science studies (where students are usually pretty cruel to the less experienced ones), for example, I'd often break my Linux distribution, and have to repair it, and the other students would make fun of me about it.
This makes them feel socially safe and accepted by using mockery. By mocking someone in difficulty, you try and place yourself above them, because you are probably lacking confidence and have the need to express yourself as superior in one field or another.
That said, just use the occasion to practice more on project 2, fine tune things, get experienced, and even "master" the topic of your subject. There's never too much practice.

Well put. Here's another analogy: You can fail the driving license and retry. Although the second attempt does nothing for those who breezed through the driving test on the first try, this isn't considered unfair, because driving school in general is not framed as competition but as a means to an end.

Yes, that's a great analogy as well @henning, each individual has their own learning curve for things. And everyone should respect that. We all have our own strengths and weaknesses.

You don't indicate where you are, but I'm going to assume the US or places with similar systems.
What is the meaning of the final grade in a course? You can generally look in your handbook or catalog for the definitions. You won't find "was better than classmates" in the definitions, I'm quite certain. (Which is why I detest curve based grade assignment.)
Instead, grades are supposed to indicate a level of performance or degree of learning. Say a course had only two exams. A midterm and a final. If someone gets an F on the midterm and an A on the final, how do we reconcile those grades? If the course is progressive in nature like mine, I may be inclined to assign a grade of A because that represents the final mastery: I don't care, actually, that someone couldn't do X at the midterm if at the final they demonstrate X and Y.
A different student who made an A on both might be mad, but why? In both cases, at the end of my course, they demonstrated X and Y which was ultimately the point of my class.
If a professor allows students to redo work, in effect they are saying "well, you didn't demonstrate proficiency, but for this course it is necessary for you to do so, so let's see if you can on a second chance".
At the end of the day, if you feel your performance was better than theirs, and make the same or higher grade than them, why should you be concerned?

Offering students a chance to improve their assignments grades is something I have done for every weekly assessment in my teaching course. The underlying idea behind offering a chance to improve grades is in the instructor offering an incentive to students for giving the test a second thought, thus putting more work in, likely resulting in better understanding of the topic. The reason why I did for all tests and students was to avoide "unfairness".
However, it can happen that most students fail miserably at a test. When this does happen, the most likely explanation is that the instructor prepared a test that was simply too hard for its audience. This happens rarely, but regularly (professors are not omniscient gods, professors learn just as you do, professors regularly move to new courses and then they have to calibrate the material on that particular student body). In that case, giving a second chance is a way to correct for this effect. This correction should be designed in such a way as not to change the "leatherboard" in student grades. If that is the case, then the entire class benefits, and there is no unfairness.


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Should I take an interruption
I am currently in my first year of PhD at a good university, and despite everything being "in order" (my supervisor is happy with my progress, I am doing well with the teaching, a have a good life alongside my studies...) I feel that, below the surface, stuff isn't really so "in order".
For the past 3 years I have been followed by a psychiatrist and a psychologist and diagnosed with OCD, Anxiety, ADHD and Autism. These conditions led to me taking an interruption during my Master's (which I then completed with top marks) and to having "special arrangements" in my previous job before starting a PhD.
For the past months, in fact since I started my PhD, my conditions have been an ongoing issue affecting my quality of life on a daily basis. (I have difficulties developing a relation with my housemates, I barely manage to be in the office because of social anxiety, etc.) Anxiety has not improved and, in the past weeks, I feel it has been worsening and can feel I am flirting with a burn-out.
On a couple of occasions, the student advice service has advised I took an interruption. Speaking to my "advisor" (each student is assigned a staff member as advisor alongside their main supervisor), they seemed to hint at the fact it wouldn't be as big a deal as I might be making it to take an interruption.
Part of me really wants an interruption. I feel I need some time off to "catch my breath", the past years have been extremely demanding and I feel I'm not able at present to work at my best. However, part of me also feels guilty about it. I know that there are a lot of students who would like my same opportunity (academic offer, funding, etc..)
In short, I guess I'd just like some advice. Should I apply for a 3-6 month interruption?

This is a highly opinion-based question, and difficult to answer. A more suitable question might be, "what are the negative effects of interrupting and how bad are they?". My short answer: you will delay your PhD when compared to a healthy version of yourself not interrupting, but not necessarily compared to your current self continuing. So, the first thing to assess is "will it actually go quicker if I stay, or will I burn out?". The second thing to consider is how bad taking longer on a PhD is. Short answer: not that bad, many students take long, sometimes many years longer. These students still end up with post-PhD work.
Concerns over other PhD students should be cast aside, you are comparing apples to oranges. The other students are presumably psychologically healthy, they do not need a break, whereas you might need a break. The taboo surrounding psychological and similar problems means we, somewhat irrationally, treat the issues differently from other health concerns. But you should address this in the same way as any other serious health issue.

thank you. I know the question is very opinion-based, and really appreciate the time you took in answering it. To be honest, I'm not in a rush to finish the PhD, and the prospect of delaying it by 3-6 months doesn't upset me at all.


text:
What will happen if I do not follow publisher(IEEE/Springer) format for one page?
One conference has accepted my paper, but I'm unable to follow publisher format for one page, I have to change some margins for this page.
Actually I've to insert a table and table is slightly bigger in size so I have to change margins and I've tried almost all the possible ways to fit it in that page and I've only one page I can't use more space/page.
If I do this, will they reject my final submitted copy of paper? What will be the effect of this in the printed copy?

Change your table!

@ShakeBaby any other solution?

Talk to the editor. There is no answer we can give that is more authoritative than that will be.

It's likely that the typesetter will fix the margins, etc. when it's published. Otherwise, could you slightly reduce the font to make the overall table smaller?

Yes, exactly. Using a smaller font in tables is common and perfectly acceptable; changing the margins is usually not.

IEEE conference papers are not typeset separately and it is the author's responsibility to follow the templates.

IEEE has a web-based tool to check if the camera-ready version complies with the format. You are allowed to submitted 3 times (I don't know what happen if you fail 3 times). If the tool says OK, then it is OK, I don't think any human can recognize a small change in the margin of 1 page.
For Springer, I don't recall they have any similar tool. I think if your changes are not recognizable by human eye then it is OK.

If your paper fails the check three times, you can just create a new instance named slightly different and try again. It has never been an issue in all the years I have been using the checker.

Springer has an offshore team of typesetters that try to fix some things based upon the .tex files submitted by the author - and thereby sometimes break others, make sure to check the version they send you.

@o4tlulz I just submitted a camera-ready version of a paper, it seems they allow 10 times now.

There are a few possibilities which depend on what sort of conference you are submitting to.

Usually well-known and flagship conferences require submission of
either the .doc or .docx file for conversion to a compatible pdf file
to pdfexpress (The IEEE pdf checking tool). You can also generate
your own pdf and submit it for checking. In this case, conferences
provide you with a password that you need to use when preparing the
submission, and the tool actually checks for correct margins.
Smaller conferences might have someone checking the files manually so
it is quite possible that they will not notice it, especially if it
just only larger than the actual margins. So you can get away with it.

Having said that, it is for the best to follow the templates and submission requirements. It is not uncommon for conferences to add page numbers and copyright information to the pdf at which point you might end up with text over other text and a bit of a messy situation.


text:
Academic Honesty for Teaching Staffs (Case Study)
I want to share a case study with you.
Peter received a Bachelor's Degree from ABC University.
Later, he wanted to pursue a higher degree (e.g. MPhil degree) and found a potential supervisor in the field of topic that he felt interested in ABC University.  Let's call her Susan.
Peter read some papers suggested by his potential supervisor (Susan) and worked with her to draft a research proposal in the topic relating to "A" for his MPhil degree application.
At the same time, she was preparing a draft conference paper in the topic relating to "B" with her research group members and some researchers from other university for paper publishing.
For some reasons, she told Peter to use this draft as his research proposal for his MPhil degree application, so he could be admitted easily, and explained that the research topic could be changed once he got admitted.
Later, Peter followed her instructions, got admitted but worked on the topic relating to "C" (not "A" or "B") and the paper relating to "B" was published successfully.
Although the paper relating to "B" was unpublished when a certain portion of its draft was used as the research proposal for Peter, the paper was published some months later.
Other authors for this paper may not know she used this draft as the research proposal for Peter.
Was it just an ethical issue?
Was it related to academic dishonesty?
You can search in the web and find any universities in any countries.
Their web sites will give some guidelines or information for Academic Honesty for students only.
Can I assume all teaching staff understood these guidelines when they were students?

Too many variables to follow. Can't you tell the story referring to yourself and use fake names for your colleagues, students etc?

Explained what were the guidelines I mentioned before

I will assume that Peter's research proposal was used internally only.
It seems Susan did some slightly fancy juggling.  Unless Peter's university policies say otherwise, I don't think anyone would get in trouble for this.  Peter's options (not all mutually exclusive), as I see them:

He could let it be water under the bridge, reasoning that research proposals often undergo substantial changes before a project is completed and published
He could choose to avoid working with Susan long term
He could continue to work with Susan, but plan to be on the lookout in case Susan tries to cut any corners in future in projects he is involved with
He could have a frank, respectful conversation with Susan, share his concerns, and listen to her point of view
He could meet with the director of graduate studies in his department, share his proposal and the published paper, and ask if there is a problem

I have no personal opinion about what option(s) Peter should choose.
Now, your question:

Most of the guidelines for Academic Honesty are for students only.  Can I assume all teaching staff understood these guidelines when they were students?

This question is really not clear to me at all.  Assume that all teaching staff understood which guidelines when they were students?
Please edit the post to make the question part clearer.
(I'm posting this as an answer rather than a comment because I needed more space for my bulleted list of options.  Even though you didn't ask what Peter's options are, I guessed that this list might be helpful for you.)


text:
Is a Master's degree in Europe valid for a teaching career in the USA?
I'm currently an undergraduate student in the US but looking seriously into some master's programs at European universities for the international experience, cost difference in my field, and exposure to different styles of study. I'd also like to become a high school teacher someday at a public or private school, most probably in the United States.
I understand that each state has license requirements for public school teachers, but as far as where they get their higher degree, would it be disqualifying if the graduate university is outside the US? Does the type of accreditation matter (like if it is accredited in the US, or by the government of the country in which it is located, or another authority)?
For context, the universities I'm looking at are in EU countries and the UK and middle-to-well-ranked.
EDIT: For clarification, I am a US citizen by birth and will earn Bachelor's degrees in the US. And as far as why I mentioned I'm looking into US schools, I would totally be open to pursuing a career abroad but I know attaining second citizenship can be difficult and I have know idea what job markets are like abroad... the US just seemed like the more realistic option.

@astronat lookin' ahead a couple years yeah :( sucks

Having a higher degree gets you a higher pay packet once you're getting one, but it doesn't get you the pay packet in the first place. That said, if you can get a master's degree from a decent European university, and an educational qualification to satisfy requirements, why are you looking at USA public high schools at all, except on purely ideological grounds? Even USA private schools for that matter...

Please also consider funding a master's in the US by working as a teaching assistant. // I suggest you select a state where you might want to work, and look at the certification requirements to familiarize yourself with what's to come. // You'll be more employable if you can build up some teaching experience.  This is another good reason to consider working as a TA while pursuing the master's. // All that said, study abroad could be a very positive thing in and of itself.

The short answer is that your EU Master's degree would typically be about as useful as a US Master's degree in your subject area, which is not very helpful by itself.
Most of the requirements to be licensed as a teacher in most states in the US have more to do with what training you've had in education rather than your subject matter expertise.
A further important point is that if you aren't already a US citizen and unless you can immigrate to the US through some other pathway (e.g. by being married to a US citizen) you'll find that it is difficult if not impossible to get work authorization to teach in a school in the US.

Yes, indeed, perhaps counter-intuitively to some degree, in the U.S. most college-level "X-education" programs (with X="math" for example) do not emphasize subject-matter expertise in X, but do emphasize "X-education", grounded in general issues of education, cognition, psychology, sociology, rather than issues of the subject X. The "X-education" programs in the U.S. aim at meeting accreditation requirements to (e.g.) teach X in high school. Perhaps counter-intuitively, having a Ph.D. in X would get you nothing at all in this regard. It's about "education" certification...

@paulgarrett I think it makes more sense instead of being counter-intuitive...high school teachers are typically not teaching subject-specific masters-level content. Even if you're going to teach something like calculus in a high school, is it more important to know how to explain mathematics to a diverse high school audience, or is it important that you have a mastery of graduate-level mathematics coursework? That said, some states are moving cert requirements in the other direction, to bring in more subject-matter expertise over education training.

@BryanKrause, oh, I don't disagree that the challenges of high-school teaching (both my parents taught math in high school) are not much about math, but about communicating with adolescents. But the general public does not seem to know that high school math teachers are not at all assured to be subject-matter experts. Also, the occasional more-capable or more-interested kid in high school may put too much stock in the mathematical expertise of their math teachers... and some teachers seem not to know their own subject-matter limitations...

@paulgarrett Understood, thanks for the clarification of your comment. Although I think that kids that are interested in a particular subject very quickly find the limits of high school education in whatever their preferred field is - their expectation might be that their math teacher has mathematical expertise, but I don't think it takes long for them to realize when that expectation is violated. It's pretty much impossible to have a system that works well for the 25th-75th percentiles and also for the 99th.

Every state in the US has slightly different requirements for obtaining a teacher credential. Many states actually have a list of oversea degrees the recognize. However it is always possible to have your degree and transcripts examined by the local state government. You would need to have your documents recognized by the issuing country's embassy before submitting them to a state government.
Once the documents are approved you would need to obtain the actual teaching license. This involves passing a test and taking a year of classes focused on pedagogy . Many states will allow you to teach while completing these tasks.
Given the general shortage of teachers it is fairly easy to complete these steps. With a graduate degree this would put at an advantage to obtain a position.

"General shortage of teachers"? Where? How so?


text:
UK PhD application, is having the professor helping with the research proposal a must?
all
I am writing regarding research proposal requirements in the UK PhD applications. I am checking biology+CS CDT programs, where the professors list possible research topics with a one-page description. And a 3-4 page research proposal from the applicant is required for the application.
I heard a lot of people saying the "common" practice is to reach the supervisor first, draft the proposal, and have the potential supervisor revise the proposal before submission.
However, I have problems getting replies from the possible supervisors. I guess it's partially because my first contact emails are not attractive enough, and partially because they are busy or on holiday. It could also be they have been helping others with proposals for the same project.
My questions are:

For such programs (where a research project has been provided), is having the supervisor's help with research proposals a practically MUST?

What level of help do you usually receive from the supervisors? One-paragraph general comments on the proposal, or having them comment on the doc in detail, or even further?

Since the project is posted and funded within a CDT, does it mean if I get the professor's detailed help with the proposal, then I am 'almost' selected? The rest of the application is just administrative?

If they are not responding to me, does that mean my proposal will be thrown into a pile of applications and never get the chance to be read?

Thanks for your reply.
PS: I saw some similar posts but with different focuses, such as this one. I hope this won't be considered as duplication.

I'd guess what you were told is false. See the UK answer for this canonical question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/176908/75368

Caveat that I am not in the same field: but it will depend on who the proposal is for.
If the proposal is for use by the University as part of application process, then I would not contact the professor your applying to for help. Instead look for help from people you are friendly with in your current institution. How much help you get will depend on the person and your relationship with them. For my masters students I would provide help with structuring, reading it multiple times, providing suggestions etc. For some one I was merely acquainted with then I might only read a final draft and provide comments. Getting help for this version is not a must but is very helpful in terms of knowing what someone would be looking for in the proposal.
If the proposal is going to an external body, to ask for funds, then you definitely need to be in contact with the professor as there will be University requirements for the application. In this case I would also expect to get/provide a lot of help to the applicant and getting the professors help is a must.


text:
My professor never answered my email. What should I do?
I'm having trouble submitting an assignment into turnit in and my professor never replied back to my email. The assignment had 3 different parts to it and I was only able to submit one of the parts because I tried to submit them separately instead of together. I asked my professor if I could just email him the other 2 parts of the assignment and he never answered back. I emailed him 4 days ago.

You can 1) send a reminder, 2) stop by his office in person and ask, or 3) ask him after a lecture.
If it's urgent I'd do #2, otherwise it's up to you.

Or (5) contact his secretary if he has one.


text:
Should I include all authors for in-text citation if I cite a source with three (or more) authors in a different chapter again?
According to this site, when you're using the APA reference style, if a source has 3-5 authors, all authors should be mentioned in the first in-text citation, while only the first author need to be mentioned in the subsequent citation. Does "subsequent" applies to the whole work or just the current chapter or section?
I am writing a master thesis.

I'm pretty sure you could just look this up in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition, but I don't really want to spend $25 on the ebook version to check. You might be able to find a copy of it in your university's library, though.

Though not explicitly stated in the original post, the question pertains to the use of "et al."
This is mostly a nonissue for APA 7th edition because three or more authors are now cited as "et al." from the first mention, whether parenthetical or not, except where it would create ambiguity.

The website seems pretty clearly to refer to "document", not chapter. You should believe them and assume that they probably thought about it and didn't make an exception for a reason.
The intent is to clearly reference back to a particular source without unnecessarily making the document harder to read.
Document.
An exception might be assumed if the "thesis" is really just a collection of papers, possibly already published. Then, it might be assumed that "document" and "chapter" are the same thing, rather than "document" and "thesis".


text:
Visa application for PhD studies Australia
I want to commence my PhD studies in Melbourne as an international student. I have come to know that I need to enroll my child in australian school for submitting visa application via homeaffairs website.
Can anyone tell me any government or affordable school in melbourne?
Also tell how to submit my application for admission online for my 6-7 year child?
Please advice soon.

All state schools in Australia are free. Just enrol your kid in one that’s close to your house so that it’s convenient to drop them off.
Australian schools fall into one of three categories: state schools run by the state government, which are free (though they might charge a small enrolment fee), independent schools which might or might not charge their students for tuition, and Catholic schools which also may or may not charge tuition fees.

Can you please suggest a flat/apartment/home in muslim community in melbourne australia? And accordingly a state school near that region? My income is 2000 $ per month.

@anonymous090 I'm pretty sure that'd be outside the scope of this site. I'd recommend talking to a real estate agent based there.

Try the Whirlpool discussion forum @anonymous 090. Stop asking the same question and spamming this group - https://forums.whirlpool.net.au/search?q=melbourne+schools&f=&fg=-1&w=&p=


text:
I am good in my topic and field of study, but I am clueless about the rigor expected in other related fields. Is this normal?
My area of research is thermal spray modeling. I have used various places' modeling techniques to simulate the process. I have a decent amount of publications in decent journals. I have collaborated with people from other universities and research institutions. But as a postdoc, I feel ignorant about other related fields.
I received a postdoc interview invitation the other day. They forwarded me few papers to study before the interview. The PIs field of research is related but still distinct from my expertise. They work in additive manufacturing.
I was reading their work and it seemed so rigorous and well researched. I have published in the same journal as they have, and our research area was different. However, I felt I could never write such an excellent paper or even work so rigorously.
Now, I don't know if I can perform confidently in the interview knowing I am not intelligent enough to perform well in their research topic. I am even having a hard time understanding their paper.
Is this normal or I am just too dumb to be in academia or research world in general?

It's (sadly) a very normal feeling. I think you should try searching this site for "impostor syndrome".

It's good to be impressed by potential colleagues - working with them would help you learn those skills. But what you really want from those papers is an understanding of what they are working on. Are there ways in which your expertise and skills could take the work in new directions. You can talk about those ideas in the interview.

If you meet excellent people, there are three responses: 1. envy them. 2. become depressed because of them. 3. learn from them. I recommend 3. Not by chance there is this saying, paraphrased, surround yourself with excellence and it will permeate you.


text:
Is it possible to protect a paper before publishing it?
In an answer to the question How to protect scientific open research from being patented? one reads

...if you publish your research, this protects from anyone subsequently filing a patent on it. Even if they had invented it previously, your publication would invalidate a future application.

Now, consider the field of Mathematics. Say a mathematician has obtained a nice result, but for whatever reason can't publish a paper on it momentarily.
Can they do anything to hold some kind of priority over anyone else that comes up with it and publishes it before them? If so, what happens in practice if someone else does indeed publish it before them?
The practical result of this "protection" should be the ability to make the journal take your paper (which you should quickly write) instead of the one by the researcher who published before.
In particular, would time-stamping work?

Priority for what purpose? If your concern is patents, then filing a patent would be the thing to do.

@JonCuster Can a mathematical result be patented? I don't think so

If the math result is an encryption algorithm, why not? But, the point is, you started the question talking about patents, then went to priority of results without indicating just why you think you need priority - patent, glory, what? Different goals will likely have different methods.

Possible duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/66052/what-do-researchers-mean-by-the-priority-of-an-idea

@StrongBad But I want a practical solution, I'm not asking for a definition of "priority"

@JonCuster I see. I'm talking about priority over the publication itself. That is, the practical result of this "protection" should be the ability to make the journal take your paper (which you should quickly write) instead of the one by the researcher who published before

@glauc doesn't work. "If you have a sealed envelope that is postmarked with a date, that only proves that the envelope passed through the postal system on that day. It says nothing about what the contents of the envelope were at the time; notably, the envelope could be mailed unsealed and then filled and sealed at a later date." (Via Law.SE.)

Can you be more specific about the situation you're referring to? Sometimes it is possible that "retroactive priority" can be given to an author, but usually only under truly exceptional circumstances. For example: declassification of defense-related research that was conducted during wartime.

Now, consider the field of Mathematics. Say a mathematician has obtained a nice result, but for whatever reason can't publish a paper on it momentarily.

This bears further explanation.  Publication in mathematics does not happen so quickly, but if you have a "nice result," you should be able to submit it for publication.

Can they do anything to hold some kind of priority over anyone else that comes up with it and publishes it before them?

If two different mathematicians or groups of mathematicians obtain results at approximately the same time, they should both be able to publish.  The gap between submission and acceptance of most math papers is typically 3-18 months (with anything less than six being quite speedy), and the gap between acceptance and publication is another 6-24 months or so.  So if a rival paper gets published before you submitted yours, there are three possibilities: (i) the other paper was in fact first; (ii) you delayed submission for a significant length of time, or (iii) you experienced substantial delays in the publication process (including rejections of your paper).
For most mathematicians, the best way to hedge against getting scooped is to (i) write up your results in a timely manner, and (ii) post the paper to the arxiv as soon as (or even slightly before) the initial submission.  In the mathematical community, an arxiv preprint will have the same effect towards establishing "priority" as a formal publication.  It also has the chance to alert a rival group to the overlap of effort before the works have been published.  When this happens, the two groups should examine each others papers and decide how best to proceed.  In some cases this means that each paper cites the other and they both get published.  In some cases the work is combined into one joint paper.  And yes, sometimes one of the groups decides that what they have done is "majorized" by the other group and decides not to try to publish their work.
From the way your question is framed, I have the suspicion that you are not very familiar with mathematical publication culture and may be thinking about things in somehow the wrong way, but I can't put my finger on what it is.  But in particular you write

If so, what happens in practice if someone else does indeed publish it before them?

and

That is, the practical result of this "protection" should be the ability to make the journal take your paper (which you should quickly write) instead of the one by the researcher who published before.

With regard to the first quoted passage: with very high probability, the prior publication will stand without formal comment and you will be left to try to explain/establish why your paper should still be published.  I have seen "statements of priority" published about math papers, but probably fewer than ten in my entire life.
With regard to the second quoted passage: first of all, no author has "the ability to make the journal take your paper" in any circumstance whatsoever.  I'm not sure I completely understand the situation you contemplate: if the journal has already published the other paper, then it is too late for them to take your paper "instead."  If you're saying that they should retract the published paper and publish yours instead...well, I have never seen that happen. The only circumstance in which I think that could even be plausible is if the authors of the other paper literally stole your work and passed it off as their own.
Also...what do you mean "which you should quickly write"?  If you see a published paper on work that you've completed but haven't even written up yet, then as mentioned above that other paper was probably written 1.5-3 years before yours.  So how could you have priority in this situation?

Thank you for your answer, sir. As for the last paragraph, I would say that while the paper was not totally written, it just lacked just a few things. But I get the overall conclusion that such a "protection" is not possible

@Richard: Unless you know the authors and the timeline of their work, I still don't understand why you would even think that you have chronological priority in that situation.

Here's what I had thought: "if I could prove that at a given time (proof of existence) I produced the said result, maybe I'll have priority over someone else who comes up with it, submits to publish it (but hasn't published yet) and produces a preprint, but can't prove they had found it before me". I now understand this is not true, and I wasn't crystal clear in the OP

"Comments: While this paper was being written up, the preprint [blah] appeared. The author(s) feel their approach warrants [... etc]" <-- if you want to finish and put the paper on the arXiv, which no one will stop you doing. Publishing is a separate question, but at least your work is made public, and may still get citations and, better, possible feedback.


text:
Online tool for receiving student files
I'm a TA in several modules and one thing I couldn't find yet is a system to help me manage student lab submissions. Most online collaborative tools I've seen do not allow me to, or make it quite complex to receive files from students and download all of them at once.
Note that in my university, there is not such a strict discipline, in the sense that late submissions are often tolerated; if students forget to send their files, I'd like to gently remind them to do so; etc.
So far, I use e-mail for managing student submissions, but there are several limitations:

Students forget to send the e-mail, or send it to an incorrect address, or simply quit the course, but since I do not know in which case they are, I have to manually e-mail students from which no submission has been received;
Students have no guarantee I actually received the email, so I have to ACK them;
Students sometimes send an e-mail but forget the attachment, so I have to check each of them and notify the student;
Students sometimes send multiple versions, and if there is a deadline between them, it might change the grading criteria;

So far, I have to manually open each email, download the files to a separate folder, and ACK the student. This is quite boring.
Something that would help me save some time and automate things (like sending reminders, one-click download of all files, etc) would be of great help.
So far I've seen Moodle and Piazza, but none of them seem to actually help much with student file management, or I missed something. Any indications of tools for the job?

Did you check that your university has not already implemented such a tool? I have experience with Moodle and ILIAS (popular among German-speaking universities) which would solve most of these issues.

Wait... You want something that you don't have to install on your own servers, that also does not rely on any third party servers? I think that's called paper.

I am assuming that the OP has checked and found that their university does not have any learning management system, like Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, or Sakai. All universities I am familiar with in the US do have these systems, just in case you are visiting from Google and are not the OP. This is why there are few practical answers, and why I can only suggest likely options.
If you are an instructor without an LMS, how can you track student uploads? The equivalent I am familiar with is middle school and high school teachers who want to collect student assignments. The most common tools these teachers use are Google Drive using scripts, and Edmodo. Here is the little info I know on these tools:
Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Drive, and scripts/addons like:

Doctopus, which creates folders for students on Google Drive
Autocrat, which makes mail-merge from Sheets and Gmail
Goobric for automated grading

I've never used Edmodo, but it is free, allows you to create groups for students to join, and allows students to upload assignments. I'm guessing it has some sort of messaging function for your emailing needs as well. Here are some vaguely current posts on Edmodo's functionality:

15 things you can do with Edmodo
Seven reasons to use Edmodo

Very useful answer. Just to remark: it is neither hard nor expensive to install e.g. Moodle for instruction management, even if it is not done by the university.

One thing to consider is do you really need student assignments to be downloaded. I say this because I used to but I recently started using TurnItIn. However, I only use this for plagiarism detection, I do not use it for marking (university policy is that I MUST mark the paper copy...yes I know the dangers there, but that's for another day).
Since you didn't mention the larger issue you are trying to solve, I'll continue just with your direct question about how to download many student assignments without a million clicks.
What I did is simply setup an email account for students to email to (not my main email account). I instruct the students to use specific filenames (StudentID_StudentName_AssignmentName.docx) and they email me. I use a standalone email client (not webmail) so it all downloads to my computer. My client has a preview pane so I simply drag-drop to my assignment folder, move to the next message, drag-drop, repeat. I do this for 200-500 students per assignment per semester and find it does not lend itself to much more automation than this.
In all, it takes me 2 clicks per student (literally) and I end up with all student assignments in one folder. It handles ACK'ing the student on the server (auto-responder) but I could also use read-receipts but those don't usually work with webmail.
If you want to email students who did not submit, that's more complicated. I handle it during the marking process (let's see the file...ooops, they forgot...time to email them...or fail them for not submitting properly). TurnItIn will tell you which students did not submit.
As for students submitting multiple versions, as long as they submit with the proper naming convention, you will overwrite the older with the newer. I'm not sure if that is what you want or not but I would assume so.

You did not mention your field of study, but this works pretty well at least in computer science. Most institutions grant their students disk space for a personal university homepage, usually available via address like http://institution.edu/~username/. Now, all you need to do is to ask the students to provide each of their weekly/monthly/whatever answers in a zip-file at their personal homepage in a specific format, e.g.
http://institution.edu/~username/course/week1.zip
http://institution.edu/~username/course/week2.zip

After the deadline for returning the answers has passed, you just run a simple shell script like this
for STUDENT in ($cat ./students.txt)
do
    mkdir $STUDENT
    wget http://institution.edu/~$STUDENT/course/week1.zip
    mv week1.zip ./$STUDENT/week1.zip
    unzip ./$STUDENT/week1.zip
    echo $STUDENT >> returned.txt
end

where the file students.txt has one username on a line, e.g.
john_smith
mary_jones

and you will have the files neatly organized, and a text file "returned.txt" having the names of the students who returned an answer, which can be emailed to the course mailing list.

Well, moodle CAN do it (you can define a task "file upload" which has a due date). Give it a try and if you like it you are fine.
I did not like it and wrote my own solution... (but I heard moodle improved the functionality so this might be sufficient).

This link: http://docs.moodle.org/23/en/Using_Assignment#File_submissions summarizes the file submission feature of the moodle. You need "assignment" module for this. All the submitted file for a given assignment are available in one folder on the server, and a zip can be downloaded from the moodle web interface by the teacher. Neat!

We use an online tool at my school called Blackboard. I think they host it in house on their servers. There's a teacher - student relationship where the teacher adds students based on their login id to the course they are teaching, and students login to view content. Teachers administer content and can control everything in the course.
It supports (but is not limited to) quizzes and tests (timed, untimed, multiple attempts), storing downloadable files for students, message boards, wikis, and a gradebook that has all previous scores, etc. There's many more options, I've just included some of the important features.

You can create a dropbox account for assignments and use a tool which allows anyone with a link to submit files without accessing your dropbox account. It will be a browser window where the student uploads the file. Ensure that you communicate to students a 'file naming' format like: StudentName_AssignmentName.doc
Some ways to upload to dropbox without access: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-ways-send-files-dropbox-dropbox/

The idea is good, but depending on your data protection and copyright protection policies you might run into problems since you don't have control over the dropbox-server. If you take it very strict, you would not be allowed to do it this way in Germany (which I think is ridiculous, but that's a different point).

I would stay away from Dropbox for any kind of serious work, mostly because the security protocol is unknown and you have no control over the data flow and storage.

Strange! the way people have misconceptions on 'security'. We are surely not building some advanced weaponry for national security in these assignments. If we are, don't use dropbox! Well if you are super rich, go ahead buy a server to host an application to receive student assignments. OR buy an expensive application on the web.

Storing student records on Dropbox is specifically forbidden at my university.

There are free alternatives that you can run on your own servers. Owncloud is one of them, I think.

Can you not set up a rule in your email inbox that takes all emails with a specific term in the subject and puts them in a separate folder? then you only need to download each of them manually, but that takes 10 seconds per email. You can also set up a rule that sends an automatic reply if the student's email adheres to the correct format and has an attachment, and only if received before the deadline.
This takes care of points 2 and 3.
I do not see why point 1 is a problem - if you receive no submission, then you have nothing to do? If the student has dropped the course, nothing happens. If they are still registered, they get the default failing grade with no extra work required from you. Which of the two it is, you can probably see when you have to enter all grades in the online intranet template if your university uses that; or you send an email to the examinations office saying "all grades are attached, if a student is missing, they did not submit".
To take care of point 4: Why would you consider a submission after the deadline? Using the below rules, you do not acknowledge emails received after the deadline (that is what the deadline is for; if you want to be on the safe or kind side, maybe set the cutoff date to 5 minutes after the deadline)
In sum, the only things not covered by this are

that you only take into account the last submission when a student submits multiple versions
that you still have to manually download and save the attachments.

But the still-required manual work is minimal, and the cleanliness of the mailbox and reliability of process is fully established, which is very valuable.
Example of the rules in Outlook:

I found http://dropitto.me is a beautiful app to you with Dropbox account (free 2G). There are also http://submitittome.com with many features that you can config as file name, file type allow, deadline of submission, and limit students that can submit for each task. You can try both and choose one.

Piazza is a nice tool for this.  It's similar to blackboard but without the need to host in on school servers.  The interface is also very good.  It has built in emailing options and discussion forums.  You can have students submit homework from the page you make for the course on the website.

The original poster explicitly mentioned Piazza was missing important features.

You could look at simply setting up an FTP sever (File Transfer Protocol) with separate accounts for each student and administrator accounts for faculty, they can use FileZilla (free ftp software with server version too), which is how we upload files in my university... IT professors should have little problem in setting it up and taking care of security issues, and even less in writing a program or script that gathers up all the files with a specific format in the file name.. There probably is someone in the faculty who can take care of this. In the database with the accounts you will also have the e-mail addresses of the students, it's fairly simple to gather every single e-mail in a file, then copy paste them all to the receiver box and send them the same e-mail. I have not looked much into networks, but from my fair programming experience, it's nothing hard to do.


text:
How can I sell my text book to my students in e-book format?
I would like to be able to sell my text book to my students in e-book format. I know there is the kindle store that takes 65% of the sales price, which is in my eyes too much. Are there any e-book stores for teachers and professors that provide their service for a fair price?

Paypal charges a 2.9% fee plus $0.30 per transaction. You can try setting that up, or alternatively, a service called Payhip has a 5% per transaction fee. Here's their link: https://payhip.com/

@Greg: But Paypal only handles payments, right? The OP likely also has need for distribution and copyright protection, which the Kindle store handles.

Sorry, just a hit and run comment - someone else is welcome to take this and turn it into an answer: lulu.com - 20% commission. More at http://www.ebookpartnership.com/ebook-retailers/

Note: The Kindle store keeps 30%, not 65%, in most countries where you can use it. If it keeps more than that, then it is likely other distributors will also keep more of the proceeds in your country.

Why not just post a PDF on your web page?

@JeffE You mean using Adobe's DRM?

@earthling No, of course not.  Who on earth would buy a book without being able to read it first?  That's just silly!  (Ha ha only serious.)

You might want to read through some posts on ebooks.stackexchange. It is specifically designed for this kind of question.

@JeffE I think the OP wants to sell the text. Are you suggesting a change to giving it away for free or using the honor system where students put a dollar in the jar if they like it?

I'm suggesting giving the PDF away for free, but selling the dead-tree version as usual.  (I'm probably in the minority, but I think it's unethical to require your students to buy your book.)

Don't forget making sure that you pay taxes.

Is this a boat programming question?

To address the ethical issues many people have raised, I've asked this new question: Is it ethical to profit by having my students buy my textbook?

Also you should make sure the campus library has a copy on reserve.

@JeffE, you can make it ethical to buy your own book if you return any royalty you earn from the sale to them.

Fairness is a difficult question to answer. You need to ask fair to who: the publisher, the author, or the students. Publishers provide a number of services (e.g., editing, typesetting, printing, and marketing). It is fair for them to get paid for their efforts. Obviously it is fair for authors to get paid for writing. It is also fair to expect students to pay for high quality learning materials.
The question then becomes what is a fair price to charge students and how much of that should go to the publisher. The fees charged by many publishers depend on the number of copies sold since they have some fixed costs that they need to recoup and some costs that scale with the number of copies sold. If you think the service being offered by the publisher is unfair, you can always self-publish and do the editing and marketing yourself.
As for the selling price, this really depends on the quality of the book relative to other similar books. That said, in my opinion selling your book to students in your class is unethical since the students are already paying for the teaching material indirectly through tuition and fees. I don't think of it as being different from selling lecture slides, notes, and exam keys and in the limit if you just want to make money from your students you could just sell grades.

While I kind of agree that selling text books to students is not very nice, the OP came here with a question, not a need for moral judgement.

@Did not only is it "legal" it is also common and even encouraged by publishers and departments (at least for paper books).

@xLeitix I agree to are extent, but "fair" to me is a moral judgement question.

Daniel: We are talking about teachers forcing their students to buy a book they authored, right? That publishers would encourage such practices is only natural since they exist to make money (but I fail to see why publishers should decide what is the required material for a given course). That some (university) departments would allow it (and you even said, encourage) is a different matter.

If I wasn't a mod, I'd flag this as "not an answer" and hope that someone deletes this. The "answer" part doesn't answer the question—starting your own ebook store is clearly not a viable option here—and the heavy-handed moral condescension is rather distasteful.

@eykanal potentially it is not an answer and likely it is deserving of down votes. I find the behaviour distasteful enough that I could not hold my tongue. As it stands now, somewhat surprisingly, the answer has more up votes than down votes, so at least a portion of the community agrees with me. I may try and rewrite it in a less condescending manner.

@DanielE.Shub Yeah, that surprising observation is why I didn't just delete it outright; I'm too wussy to abuse my mod powers like that. I would be most appreciative if you would edit it yourself and tone it down somewhat. Thanks!

@eykanal I think it is an answer to the extent it is saying "You are asking the wrong question." In that way, I believe it has value. That said, I do hope it will get toned down a bit.

But what if the textbook is a must have in the field?

@eykanal I tried to tone it down.

The rate charged by the vendor depends on the price: the 65% rate usually applies to books costing more than $15 or so. Below the threshold amazon charges 30%. Apple's iBooks charge 30% for all prices, and so provides a cheaper option with a similar service, as long as everyone uses the apple's proprietary hardware.
Personally I would reconsider your pricing to a more reasonable level. As self publisher you get a much larger slice of the profits, and in my opinion academic textbooks are priced excessively. If you cannot give the book away as others have suggested, then the other factor is that a low price would encourage more students to buy outright rather than share, and you also remove the second hand market, thus having many more actual sales. With this model students pay less to learn and you probably earn more money, and in a sense everybody wins.

I recommend Amazon for you. I wrote 4 books which are on Amazon and also have e-book versions of them. On Amazon, you can choose the price/royalties for each book as well.
You can use Calibre to make your PDF, ePub files. Then you can just upload all in a very quick way.
Hope it helps

How about avoiding technology and web-stores - you probably have a very local bookstore selling textbooks, maybe even an in-house store of your university. Go to them and ask them to  sell your book; they know how to do that, students are used to them, and they don't charge 65%.


text:
Should I tell an editor that I believe an article I'm reviewing is not good enough for the journal?
Here's the scenario: I was asked to review an article for a given journal. I did, the authors addressed my comments/corrections, and now the manuscript is back with me for a second time to review the reviewed version.
I don't think that there's anything particularly wrong with the article at this point, but I don't think it has enough merit to be published in a Scimago Q1 ranked journal.
Since the editors sent it to me twice now, I have to assume that they do.
Will it look out of line if I suggest the editors that they should suggest the authors to publish the article in a more "modest" journal?
Again: there is nothing wrong with the article in itself, I just don't think it is notable enough for the submitted journal (considered by Scimago to be a top ten journal in my field).

When you did the first round of review, did you think that it would be of high enough quality if your comment and corrections were addressed?

Honestly, I thought that perhaps it could with a lot of work. Now that I have the second reviewed version I see that the authors do no intent on going the extra mile, just addressing the comments/corrections as quickly as possible seems good enough for them. I did not tell the editors that they should tell the authors to send it to another journal, but I did tell them that it did not met the minimum requirements to be published. My mistake, I believe, was to add to that "in its current form"...

Did you make clear that the acceptance would be conditioned to them running the extra mile and what that means exactly? Make your expectations clear, please. It saves everyone's time.

'address the comments/corrections ...' - so the authors did address your comments? If yes, then the authors have met your requirements.  At the end of the day, you can recommend what the editor should do, but the editor has the final decision.  Also, be aware that many reviewers make mistake about the significance of an article -- search for the many rejection letters of top papers that later won the authors Nobel prizes, or if you are in the EE field, search for why reviewers don't think Claude Shannon's seminal paper was good.

Since the editors sent it to me twice now, I have to assume that they do. — You really shouldn't assume that.  The only thing you can conclude is that the editors do not think the paper is obviously weak enough to desk-reject.

@Gabriel from your comment, it seems you reviewed what you hoped the paper might be after it was revised in the way you wanted it, not the paper that was in front of you at the time. If your initial review concluded "this is not acceptable for publication unless X Y and Z are changed" it should have said exactly that. Of course the other reviewers (and the editor) may disagree with you, but you can then say "X an Y were not changed, therefore reject" in your second review without getting into your current dilemma.

Yes, you must tell the editor what you think/ how you feel. If other reviewers are positive and you are negative, in my experience, the editors will likely contact you with the revised version even if you recommended rejection. Just keep repeating what you think (stay true). It's happened to me that the editors published the article anyway. After that, it's up to you, but I personally declined further reviews for that journal ("If you're going to publish rubbish, it's your right, but don't involve me").

Referees and/or editors should not invite the authors to submit a revised version unless there's a real chance that the revision will be accepted.  Also, most things could be made significantly better than they are.  If your feeling is that the paper, even though not flawed in any way, does not meet the standards of the journal, then I think you should recommend rejection unless you can identify explicitly which improvements would change your mind.  Even then, in a field with a sufficiently large number of reputable/good/great/... journals (my own field, mathematics, is certainly like this), it would be reasonable to suggest improvements that could make the paper suitable for a journal of the caliber submitted to while rejecting the paper.  A top journal is going to get more than enough papers that are good in every way than it can publish.   And finally, if you revise and improve your paper enough then at a certain point you can justly claim that it's not the same paper.  Nothing stops authors from submitting the new, better paper to the same journal.  (Once I was added as a coauthor on a paper after the first version was rejected by a strong journal in the field.  I saw how to improve the paper so significantly that I thought: why not send it back to the same journal?  They accepted it.)
Having said all that: from the comments it doesn't sound like the authors spent much time and effort making significant improvements to their paper.  So while there may have been a miscommunication of some sort among you, the editors and the authors, it doesn't seem to have caused much harm to them.  In my opinion you should reject the paper for the reasons that you say: there's nothing wrong with it, but it's not good enough for the journal.  A top journal must reject many papers for this reason -- that's what makes it a top journal.
(If they had spent a lot of time and effort: well, I would feel bad about it if I were you, but it doesn't really change the decision to reject the paper.  Anyway the time they spent improving their paper did after all result in an improved paper, which they can then submit to another journal.)
Maybe the lesson is to be more clear in the future.  It feels nice to give people a chance, but in fact you're being asked to apply your professional judgment in a way that's going to have a negative outcome much of the time.  When your judgment is negative, the nicest you can be is to deliver the bad news relatively quickly and with sufficient justification.
Finally, the fact that the editors asked you to referee it again might or might not mean that they are more positive about the paper than you -- you have no way of knowing.  Anyway, their opinions are their opinions, but they're asking you for yours.  Once or twice I have been asked to referee a second draft of a paper that I recommended for rejection the first time.  I did look at the revised versions, quickly, but my answer was essentially: "I told you that I didn't think the paper was suitable for your journal.  If you disagree, okay: ask someone else to look at it."

Thanks everyone for the comments and suggestions.

Actually, don't assume anything. They sent it to you for your honest evaluation and feedback. Give it to them. But, make it complete. Say what is good, but also where you think it fails to meet the standard, either of scholarship in general or the standards of the journal.
Don't make recommendations to the editor about the alternatives, I think. But if you are "kinder than you should be" then it will, over time, bring down the standards of the journal.

+1 put simply: you are expected to offer your honest assessment, even (actually especially) if it may not be the editor’s

One point I have not seen raised here that I think you should pay attention to in the future: if you think the paper is not up to the journal's standards you should say so in your first referee report. Suggesting changes too would be a courtesy to the authors.
Replying just with the list of changes and saving your reservations for later  may cost the editors time and raise false hopes for the authors.
That said, in this case I agree with the other answers that say you should tell the editor you don't think the paper is good/string/important enough for this journal.

This is the correct answer.  The others are at least mostly correct.

As I said, I did mention that the article in its current form did not meet the minimum requirements to be published. I also sent a comprehensive list of corrections. I did not reject it immediately, because I felt it could be improved if the authors did some substantial work (which they did not).

You should. The editors aren't likely to know otherwise. A review that says "there's nothing wrong with this paper, but it uses a well-known method to investigate a not-too-different system and discovers something that's unsurprising" - this is perfectly fine and the editors are likely to appreciate it. After all they're not likely to know all three points. It's up to you whether to check "reject" or "revise", though. With a review like this, the recommendations are effectively the same and the editor will have enough information to make the decision.
Them sending it to you twice doesn't mean they think the paper is good enough to accept - as JeffE wrote in a comment, it just means they don't think it's obviously poor enough to desk reject.

"It's up to you whether to check "reject" or "revise"" No, that is the editor's decision.

@AnonymousPhysicist no, it's up to the reviewer whether to recommend reject or revise. It's up to the editor to make the decision, but the reviewer makes the recommendation.

Your comment is correct, but your answer is ambiguous.

Check if the journal provides some reviewing guidelines and/or assessment criteria. For example, in my field, it's usually expected that a paper argues for its own significance. If the authors don't do a convincing job with that, it's fine to point that out in the review (with a detailed and fair argumentation), give them the chance to improve that in a revision, and recommend rejection if they don't make a substantial improvement.
(However, it would really be important to have pointed out the weakness in your first review already. Raising additional issues late during the review process is a mess, if these issues were obvious from the beginning.)

The editors do not read the paper carefully. They browse the paper and check the general framework of the study to see 1) whether it fits the scope of the journal and 2) to be able to find the appropriate reviewers.
It is the duty of the reviewer to technically evaluate the study and decide whether to accept it or not. If you, as a reviewer, find the quality of the paper poor to be accepted in the journal, then you should clearly state it in your review, e.g. a statement like "the reviewer believes that the novelty of the study is not sufficient for the current journal". Alternatively, you can reject the paper right away (of course with enough reasoning) and write a confidential message to the editor and say that you don't find it suitable for the journal.
Just remember if you review the paper once and the authors address all the issues raised by you then it is very unprofessional to declare that you don't find it suitable for the journal. Unless, you expect something from the revision and you don't get it. In the latter case also, you have to state clearly why you don't find it suitable.

The role of reviewers is supporting editors to enforce their own editorial lines which, more in general, ought to fit the accepeted standards of scientific discourse. In this light, you have to inform the editor of your evaluation and justify it. In other words, the editor's decision must be informed, and delegation is the mechanism of gathering decision-supporting information.
Rather than 'not just thinking that this is notable enough', please provide positive arguments to the editor (and authors, for transparency) as to why you do think that the manuscript does not fit the journal.
Please move away from injecting the suspicion of a false positive towards providing the case for either a true negative or a true positive.
In my view, the yardstick should not rest in the Q-so-much ranking --- which is statistics hence subject to intrinsic uncertainties ---, but on the editorial line of the journal, which should be stated somewhere clearly. Ask the editor for it in case of uncertainty.
In sum, your honest and argumented opinion is crucial to the integrity and transparency of the reviewing process. The final responsibility of a decision remains on the editor. Not to scare anyone, but please also note that the editor might well think that a reviewer is not concentious enough for his/her reviewing team.

What does the 'guide to reviewers' of the journal say? E.g. The Guide to Reviewers of IEEE states, that if you accept with minor changes required, then the paper has to be accepted when the list of changes was completed.
So if the journal you were reviewing for has a similar policy, you made a mistake if you accepted the paper under conditions of minor changes. How come it was not obvious during the first round that the article is not notable enough?

This is not an IEEE journal, and I did not "accept it with minor changes", I sent it to be revised and chose to see the revision.

I understand its not IEEE, but since the journal is not mentioned: what does the section of the guide (for the correct journal) say what the condition/procedures for the evaluation you submitted in the first round (of course you dont have to post that here, since then the journal could be identified).