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How can I convince graduate students in China to not copy/paste from the Internet into their research papers?
I'm posting from an anonymous account, for reasons that will be obvious.
I'm an associate professor in China at one of the top 10 universities in China, and have been working in China for a number of years. Most research in our lab is respectable and unproblematic.  We get some papers in top journals and conferences.
As a native English speaker, I help on papers from graduate students.
Some of these papers are conference papers, and some are journal papers.  The conference papers I work on are international.
However, probably between 30% to 50% of the Chinese graduate students I work with copy and paste from the Internet into their research papers (from Wikipedia, from other papers, from software documentation, and so on).  The amount ranges from a sentence here and there, to whole sections.
It's usually easy for me to notice copy/pasted material (it's where they suddenly write like a native English speaker with 10+ years of research experience).  Yesterday, I encountered the worst instance of copy/paste I've ever seen, and I flatly refused to be listed as a co-author.
What's become clear:

The students generally think it's acceptable to copy/paste; they're unconcerned even if it's published.
Part of the motivation behind copy/pasting is that English is their second language.
The Chinese professors (i.e., their supervisors) mostly do not read their students' papers; they might take a quick check before submission.
The Chinese professors push the students into rushing to meet conference submission deadlines, and I feel this has a negative impact on both their research and paper-writing quality.
The university doesn't outright condone plagiarism, but they don't seem to think of it as a negative.  I get the impression that it's considered efficient use of time.  The focus is on getting it published, while significance, errors, and plagiarism are less important.
Many of the students do not intend to have careers in academia.  The paper will not have much significance, but it's either required for their degree, or their supervisor is pushing them into writing it.  They don't care much.

I've explained how serious a matter this is, over and over.  And honestly, I'm fed up repeating myself – it makes me feel like the university (and research in China) is a joke.  It makes me feel ashamed to work here.
I've tried repeatedly explaining this to everyone, but the seriousness is not getting through.  They just think I'm overreacting.
Q: How can I convince graduate students in China to not copy/paste from the Internet into their research papers?
I'm looking for an answer along the lines of "the negative consequences of copy/pasting from the Internet in publications are blah".  I have no intention to pack up and leave; I just want to get the message across and convince them that plagiarism matters.  So I'm thinking about writing a document entitled e.g. "why we shouldn't plagiarize" and sending it around.

Is plagiarism or even cheating in exams seen as an issue like it is in other parts of the world?

@SolarMike AFAIK, no. I have quite a few friends who go to Chinese universities, and sanctions against cheating/HW plagiarism range from failing the course in the top universities (usually just temporary, as you can still make up the course later) to more or less nothing in average universities. It's not even uncommon that instructors deliberately exit the exam room after distributing the exam papers so that students can cheat :-) In China, students not doing well is much more serious than students cheating.

@Roland Unfortunately, this will probably not work in China, given what usually happens to researchers who engage in academically dishonest conduct :-) (nothing, you've guessed)

Spending some time analysing why plagiarism (and copyright violation in general) is considered bad in most of the rest of the world might give you the ammunition required to convince your students of the problems that it causes.

I do not know Chinese culture, so I won't make it an answer, but could you state that you won't review papers and won't be associated with paper that are detected as plagiarized (by the use of a software)? A kind of carrot & stick principle where the carrot is being associated with you...?

@Roland I wanted to have done exactly that, but my responsible PIs discouraged  the idea, dismissing it as not essential to my objective (i.e. n their heads, getting them free authorships on papers in English).

https://blog.tanyakhovanova.com/2011/10/plagiarism/

Could you clarify "The university doesn't outright condone plagiarism but they don't seem to think of it as a negative"? It seems to me that a refusal to think of (and treat) something as negative constitutes condoning it.

You might ask your students which is more important to them, who they look like or who they are.

Have you considered the fact that the Chinese definition of plagiarism is perhaps different from your native English definition of plagiarism? Perhaps copying sections from other texts is not such a big deal in China as it is in the English speaking world?

Perhaps you could show them the other side of plagiarism... ask them how they would feel if they spent a long time (potentially years) creating something only to have someone else come along and steal it, put their name on it, and sell it as their own? They stole your painting, novel, vegetables from your farm... you name it. Tweak it to fit their circumstance.

"They don't care much." - Given the previous sentences, nor should they.

See this and this. My point is that if you cannot get through to your students, you really should consider voting with your feet.

It is also (probably) a copyright violation, but that is another issue. But do you and your colleagues know the difference. It may be copyright that they don't care about. Copyright infringement: using someone else's work without permission. Plagiarism: Passing of someone else's work as your own. They are very different, and the method to avoid them is very different.

"Citing sources" is 10% about giving credit and 90% about providing integrity to your argument.

This might also be partially a cultural thing. The Chinese culture in general does not stigmatize plagiarism as much as the Western culture does. Copying someone's work is generally seen as an act of respect for the original creator, not as an attempt to hide one's own inability.

@Philipp Oddly enough even when no credit is given.

@Mast: It's an excuse; see the links I posted.

"What is the minimum amount of work I have to do to pass?"

Have them watch The Emperor's Club. And since your student's don't care about copyright, they can watch it here: https://vioozgo.org/movies/13137-the-emperors-club-2002.html

Would it be possible to have them cite there work?  Here in the US there is the MLA format, and I am sure there must be something similar in different countries.  At least then the original author would get credit and it wouldn't be plagiarized.  Then at least others will be able to see that the majority of there work isn't there own, and they can judge for themselves whether or not they added anything worth while to the research.

I think your best way out is to relocated to a different academic environment ...

Um, are you taking co-authorship just for correcting the English? I hope you didn't mean that.

@Araucaria please move this to an answer and  don’t flood comments

I am amazed such a popular question had no answer chosen as correct.

This - and other forms of not citing sources properly when describing "our conclusions" - are exactly why I scrutinize very closely any Chinese papers submitted to Western journals.  It just increases the amount of scrutiny the entire community faces, including the students.

OK, it's getting weird now. I thought this would be much less common in top 10s.
There's a simple path here: tell them plagiarized papers are not going to get published, or will be retracted in the future, and this will hinder their graduation & will create trouble for their advisor (+ advisor would lose face) if they insist on submitting such papers.
When your students (and everyone else) care only about the "pragmatic", give them "pragmatic" reasons! Chinese people generally do not like creating trouble/making others lose face, so that's a good path.
Convincing them that plagiarism is morally incorrect and not right would be harder, and students would likely not buy into that. But the pragmatic path gets the job done :-)

From the situation you described, I infer two things about your situation. Correct me if I am wrong:

The university you're at is likely not top-tier. I would be surprised if even the researchers at Tsinghua or Jiaoda (Shanghai Jiaotong University) engage in academically dishonest conduct frequently. I suppose you're likely at a local (provincial) university.
Your colleagues/students are mainly targeting domestic conferences/journals (and likely not the top ones). Otherwise they will surely know that academically dishonest practices will get their papers rejected.

If both are true, I'm afraid little could be done. You could try very hard to at least make your students not plagiarize, but this will probably have a very negative impact on future recruitment, and even your students are not going to 100% listen to you. The best option at hand is trying to move to another university (preferably in another country) if this bothers you (it would bother me for sure).

The ranty part: I decided to delete this, but just keep two key points.

Plagiarism is not dealt with seriously enough and people let it happen. Awareness of what constitutes plagiarism is low, but for reasonably experienced researchers this should be obvious. So, as you see, the problem is not that people don't know it is plagiarism; they likely do know, but they have no reason to care.
The quality of most domestic journals & conferences are questionable, so the problem is even more serious at this level (because not even the editors care).

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

The OP could also point out that in the long run lots of plagiarized papers will damage the reputation of the university and cause their degree to lose value.

@arp I'm not sure this would work in the OP's specific case, as the students in question seem not to be interested in a research career after all (esp. an international one). I doubt that employers would bother to care about the research quality at all (in most countries, people generally evaluate universities by how hard is it to get into the university as an undergraduate, anyways).

Also along the ideas of pragmatism: A student can legally include a paragraph or two from another paper, as long as it is accurately quoted and referenced. References are good, so making that small change might turn an illegal paper into a legal one, without negatively affecting its chances of being published. Additionally, reproducing and testing the work of other researchers is a worthwhile practice in science. As long as the author is clear that that is what they are doing, it can be valid research.

@joeytwiddle The problem is exactly that the students have no reason to care about what is good research, though. But yes, telling them citing properly will increase the chances of their paper being accepted would work.

"tell them plagiarized papers are not going to get published, or will be retracted in the future" - ha, if only that were true. In many fields and many conferences/publications, the quality of peer review is so low that it is entirely possible that plagiarized content gets published and not retracted. I don't have statistics to back this up, but in your place, or OPs place, I would not assume the opposite to be true.

HW? what does that mean, hardware plagiarism?

@user4052054 homework

tl;dr
The majority of students simply will not understand the academic view of plagiarism. There is only so much you can do to help them. At some point you simply cannot help them any further. There's often nothing more you can do than taking care it does not influence your career.
Long version
My wife has graduated from a top-10 university in China (she's Chinese). I was very much involved in the writing of her master's thesis. I also supervised students in China during my time there and did so (and still do so) for Chinese students in Germany and Switzerland.
The issue is actually very simple but in most cases nigh to impossible to tackle. They see no wrong in doing so. When something is published they consider it common knowledge. Science, for them, is about knowledge, not about people. Names come and go, they vanish, many are dead already, so what do they matter? Of importance are the findings, not the finder.
You can (as I do) try to tell them that it will hamper their global career if they keep on doing so. That's a pragmatic reason many do understand. However, many students in China and Chinese abroad simply do not aim for this global career. They will go back, take care of their parents and have a good career there - among other people who think the same way as they do.

This point can be seen in the issue of how style manuals arrange references. If they ask for author first, rather than title first; or worse lexical author order, rather than sequential order of reference within the paper then in some way it's a worshipful hominem fallacy anyway. The use of an acknowledged author is merely a label - they may not even have been the true author (e.g. Haar's Wavelets). Different cultures revere the individual more than others.

@PhilipOakley : Thank you for your comment! I faintly remember from my philosophy lectures that this was named the reason Socrates did not write down anything (given he really lived). I think that work shall be acknowledged - it's not wrong to mention the author. But we should A) not lose focus on WHAT they authored and B) not take it granted that everybody in the world sees this issue the way we see it.

The problem with plagiarism is not only about giving due attribution to someone for finding something. The more relevant aspect is clearly indicating what is one's own work and what isn't. I am not an expert on Chinese academic culture, but this should be understandable even in a culture that considers scientific advances "common knowlede".

"Science, for them, is about knowledge, not about people." To be fair, this still leaves a lot of room for understanding plagiarism.  If science were only about the knowledge, then why should these students care that they get recognition for the knowledge they compiled?  Once it's compiled, apparently the author doesn't matter, so why should their professors grade them for compiling the knowledge and adding to it?  The knowledge gatherer is supposedly irrelevant.  If that really is the reasoning, I would think there is a logical way to make them see the point still.

@JMac I agree: plagiarism is bad mainly because science is about knowledge, not about people. The better we can trace information to its original source (i.e., to the evidence) the better we know how to judge it and how much to trust a given model. That citations also act as reputation-credits for the scientists is an (IMO, unfortunately overemphasized) by-product of the system.

Science is about knowledge, not about people. Plagiarism is bad because plagiarized work is not creating new knowledge. It also makes the source and origin of the knowledge untraceable and unverifiable. Scientists are just a by product of knowledge, not vice versa: we have scientists because human need and long for new knowledge, not that we generate knowledge because we have scientists.

Actually, it should not make it unverifiable. If anything is scientific then given the circumstances of experiments done the findings should be repeatable by independent researchers.

@xuq01 If science is about knowledge not people, why is the origin of the knowledge important?

@DavidRicherby So that people are held responsible for what they do, i.e. their results are correct and truthful.

@xuq01 So, for you, a citation is just a way of assigning blame in case the result is false? That’s an unusual perspective.

@DavidRicherby Of course, also to acknowledge if the result is true. But my point is, it's the knowledge that matters at the end of the day.

tl;dr Move elsewhere. If not, make sure your immediate colleagues feel the consequences of academic misconduct.
I have worked as a postdoctoral fellow for two years in China. I was invited to stay as an assistant professor, and indeed had moved in with the intention of learning the culture and adapting for a longer stay. However after mere 4 months I completely gave it up because of a number of issues in Chinese academia, including what you describe and other serious issues.
I only had direct experience with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and South China Agricultural University. However I interacted with a number of colleagues from other institutions, and took part in 4 local conferences. I refrained from living in an expat bubble, and dealt with locals all day. This gave me an overview of how Chinese Academia works, and why.
Mind the premises below:

Plagiarism is not perceived as a serious issue.
Cheating is perceived as being practical/smart.
Cheating is not considered akin to stealing.
Exposing others is not socially acceptable.
Punishing someone is reserved to either higher authorities or a local majority (e.g. a mob);
none of which include foreigners.
Because of fairly recent past events and opinion-shaping education, foreigners are taken as arrogant whenever intruding in Chinese culture and affairs.

This makes your stand quite delicate, and the simplest solution is that you move away. However you say that is not an option. Points (1-3) will neutralise any attempts at lecturing them on this point (or statistics, salami publication, etc). Believe me: I have tried. They will nod and agree, but that is merely point (7) echoing in their heads.
My colleagues in China would change posture, albeit momentarily, when they got exposed. But the problem is, exposing them yourself incurs in points (4 & 5) and reinforces (7), and you cannot rely on administration to do it because of (1-3). This is an endless circle which will drive you crazy and isolate you further. (That was I few months ago.)
However you will see some change if somebody gets exemplary punishment and exposure from perceived higher authorities. Since you're decided to stay and want them to change, I suggest you report a number of (the most obvious) local cases to responsible editors and expose them anonymously online. If you know how to blow a whistle well enough, at least a couple of retractions will ensue. If enough media exposure is given to such frauds & retractions, the local government will punish someone to save face. Then you should see your colleagues trying to avoid being caught on obvious plagiarism, though I highly doubt that mean they acquired a difference stance on cheating.
Be extremely careful with being a whistleblower in academia, anywhere, but especially in China. Don't do it openly, especially as a foreigner. Best of luck, and just reconsider moving elsewhere.
P.S. An important point: be mindful that most Chinese academics strive to publish with paid publishers (Frontiers, Nature SciRep) through Chinese editors and reviewers. This greatly increases the chances of manuscript acceptance (e.g. peer review agreed over phone/wechat calls), and also that whistleblowers are prone to take the bitter end. Do not approach editors in such cases.

Understanding the concept of face is central to dealing with Chinese. This is very hard for a foreigner, and essentially incompatible with serious academic research.

Suggest replacing "most" with "many", since you've only described some specific fields, and did not cite statistical findings on this matter. Otherwise +1.

You already ruled out the best answer, which I think you should reconsider:  If the cheating and plagiarism bothers you as much as you say (and it would bother me, too!), you should find someplace better and go there.  Those places exist.
A friend of mine who was a social worker once remarked to me that people don't make changes in their lives until the pain of staying where they are is worse than the pain of changing.  If I was as unhappy as you are, I would make a change in my own life rather than expecting everyone around me to change theirs.

The fact that plagiarism is happening is the problem. If the OP leaves, the problem will still exist; they will just be farther away from it.

@Ray Yes, but there are lots of universities where plagiarism is not rampant.  If you're someplace that makes you miserable and you could move someplace that would make you happy, why would you stay?  It is not the OP's responsibility to stay there and clean up the swamp -- especially when the swamp doesn't really want to be cleaned.

It isn't the OP's responsibility, but if they want to stay and fight the good fight anyway, I won't try to stop them.  Although, there might be a way to have it both ways, if they don't mind burning some bridges: leave, and loudly blow the whistle on everyone who's plagiarized on the way out.

@Ray That's the best way to fix it, in my view. Since in verbatim plagiarism is so self-evident there is little need to do it directly -- perhaps the OP knows someone else farther away who's willing to hold his whistle.

You don't have to solve this problem for a whole nation, or even for your school.  Just insist, up front, clearly, and in writing, that for work submitted to you, or that you collaborate on, copied material must be identified and cited correctly.  They don't need to agree with you philosophically, they just need to understand your personal standard.
Most students --and most institutions --understand that different professors have different "non-negotiables" within their own classrooms/labs.  It may help if you explain that you personally may want to work outside China again someday, and therefore you need to keep your "hands clean" by global academic standards.
Of course, you'll need to establish some fairly stiff consequences --bad marks in the classroom, aborted collaborations for publication, etc.  You might not catch 100% of the plagiarism, but the goal (as in the West) is to make it a better bet for them to just comply than to risk being caught.  You might explain carefully that you don't mind them copying, you just want them to be sure to cite (assuming that's true).

The problem I see with this is in the enforcement. It implies that the professor can effectively check everything. I don't disagree with the sentiment or the need to do this, but it may be less effective than you like. And, you probably need to actually teach them how to comply since cut/paste is so easy.

From my experience, that will result in plagiarised material coming out anyways because agreeing with whatever-blabla-wah-wah-terms is the shortest path to get to the final goal (=paper accepted + degree).

@Scientist - I was assuming that there'd be some consequences, but I've edited to make that explicit.  If the professor is not allowed to set his/her own standards for his/her own classroom, then that's an entirely different and more serious problem.

I'm sorry if this answer is a bit contrary. However, you are judging people on the basis of European cultural standards that they don't necessarily accept. Those standards are not part of their history or traditions, which are themselves long and deep. Europeans, and places strongly influenced by European culture have had a long held and deep belief in the concept of personal property. What's mine is mine. Perhaps the Magna Carta was an early expression of this.
China's history is very different. Before the revolution, China had a strong feudal system in which the peasant couldn't be said to own anything - not even their own bodies. Communism introduced its own beliefs and norms, but strong defense of personal property wasn't one of them. What's ours is ours.
Even in "the west", we don't believe in the ownership of "ideas". You can't copyright an idea. You can't patent it (though software patents are a strange case).
But we, in "the west" do believe in private ownership of "words." That is copyright. We also believe in the ownership (for a limited time) of the realization of ideas in inventions. That is patent.
However, words are little but the expression of ideas. We (Westerners) treat words and expression as very distinct. But it can be a hard sell to make that distinction in a culture that hasn't had the same history of private ownership at all. In a hundred years it will, perhaps, change, as China is changing.
That doesn't give you a solution, though I hope it tells you why you have a problem. If you can convince the students that it will be useful for them to adopt Western standards of behavior in order to more effectively communicate their own ideas to Western readers you might have an effect. "You don't need to believe this way, but it will be useful for you to act this way." Long term it may be beneficial. But, long term, it might also turn out that the concept of plagiarism just goes away.
The question of cheating on examinations and in student work generally  is a different issue but it also has cultural roots. In authoritarian regimes, if a person with authority over you asks for something - anything - you give it to them. You don't ask or even consider why. It is their right to ask it. It is your duty to deliver it. No matter the motive. In medieval times in Europe, if the local lord wanted to sleep with your wife on your wedding night he did. You had no basis for refusal. It can be very strong.
Teachers have authority over students. If a teacher asks a student for a piece of work or an answer, the why and the how aren't part of the considerations of the student (assuming authoritarian principles). You just find a way to deliver it. In fact, in the US, not all students really understand, unless they are told, is that the reason you ask them fo complete a project isn't that you need the project itself, but the change in the brain that completing it will induce in themselves. I've never (well almost never) given students a task I couldn't do myself, usually better. But that wasn't the point.
But in an authoritarian structure, the subordinate just gets the job done - no matter how. It is a deeply felt duty. "Sir. YES Sir." quoting a Marine recruit.
If this is the problem (duty to authority), then you need to educate the students as to what it is you really want from them. Not the completed project, but the change in the brain that actually doing it the hard way will induce. But if you are countering their traditions, it still won't be an easy task.
Even if a regime isn't authoritarian generally, it may be that academic traditions in a given place put the teacher in such a "high" position that is at least locally authoritarian. And even in some academic cultures that are not generally highly authoritarian, an individual professor may be able to impose such a structure. It is counterproductive, but it exists. Don't be that professor.

In my experience plagiarism of ideas (e.g. removing an active participant from authorship, abusing honorary authorships, misappropriating data and suggestions) seemed also widespread in Chinese academia. Thus I do not think the issue is rooted in a different perception on copyright ownership of words/images.

The translation of plagiarism in Chinese is 剽竊. It rooted from quite many years ago.(I'll have to dig more if you want to know how long ago) It's not a foreign concept in China. Chinese do understand its meaning. .

@scaaahu, I wonder, though, if it is understood in the same way.  Many concepts in Chinese culture are related and similar to those of European culture, but not in exactly the same way. It is part of what makes translation such hard work.

Even in "the west", we don't believe in the ownership of "ideas". — No, but we do believe in giving people credit for their intellectual contributions, which is subtly but crucially different from ownership.

@Buffy No, I don't believe the translation of this one is hard. Just like Test is part of Chinese culture (started in around 605 AD),  plagiarism is nothing new in China. I don't think the concept is much different between Europe and China. The execution may be different.I think the OP's problem is that he thinks it's a murder crime, those graduate students think not.

I should mind there is no need to be too Politically Correct (PC) when discussing issues in China as locally they are no fans of PC speeches either. The issue is, Chinese people do not appreciate foreigners criticising their ways because they take that as proof that foreigners arrogantly believe they know what's best for a 5,000 y-old civilisation.

Marines say "aye-aye, sir", means "basically: I hear the order and will get it done", or "Yes, sir" (or Ma'am as it is applicable). Marines in the movies are the only ones with "sir sandwiches" ("sir, yes, sir"). Saying a sir sandwich in boot camp incurred shift punishment actually - as did not being able to explain why it was a legal order that you were carrying out. Note, I agree with not having an authoritative classroom (doesn't foster engagement at the least and runs into "foreigner" problem in China in this case) - but it always bugs me when people say that we say that :)

@JGreenwell, thanks for the clarification. Presumably you've been there, as I have not.

@JGreenwell, In some places the distance between profs and students is more extreme than others. I once had a group of grad students from India tell me that teachers were nearly god-like to them. Above their families in the hierarchy of respect owed. The guru is just short of divine. It is a heavy responsibility to behave ethically when students feel that way, of course. This happened during office hours as I was giving them some help. I had too few chairs so they were kneeling at my feet. I said it made me uncomfortable, but they assured me it was perfectly acceptable in their experience.

It is not a cultural issue at all. Cheating was considered a huge deal in the Chinese Imperial Service Exam system. Those exams were much, much more strictly proctored than modern standardized exams. Chinese people should know very well that cheating isn't OK, right? But then it's all about enforcing the rules: cheating was a crime under the Imperial system and can have pretty bad consequences, but in the present day people just aren't enforcing the rules.

The dishonesty associated plagiarism is about taking credit for work you didn't do. That is dishonorable in almost all societies - not just 'the west'.  Yes, giving credit where credit is due is important but the dishonest and deceitful aspect of plagiarism is what needs to be emphasized.

Both @xuq01 and I are Chinese. Please take our words seriously. In particular, what xuq01 said "It is not a cultural issue at all. Cheating was considered a huge deal in the Chinese Imperial Service Exam system." and "cheating was a crime under the Imperial system and can have pretty bad consequences". In those times, if you committed cheating on writing or assisting with cheating exams, you could be sentenced to death. No kidding here.

Yes, cheaters used to be sentenced to banishment, death or even "slicing" (Google that, may make you feel uncomfortable). If the universities were enforcing rules as strictly (not saying we should behead cheaters), I'm sure the OP wouldn't be asking this question here. These days "pragmatism" has taken precedence over integrity, unfortunately, but it's not like it couldn't be changed.

@Buffy I agree. However in the first part of your post, you are conflating copyright etc with plagiarism. These are very different ideas, and the method to avoid them, the philosophy behind them, and who the “victim” is, are different. This confusion is often part of the problem, with understanding why plagiarism is wrong.

@Buffy Best answer I have read in a long time. Not sure i like it or completely agree with it, but certainly you mention concepts that are worth pondering over

the ethical disdain for plagiarism is almost entirely independent from a person's view of personal property, and the socialization to abhor it - in European cultures and elsewhere - is not based on a strong view of what is "mine", but much more on presenting such action as being otherwise harmful and indicative of character flaws.

“In medieval times in Europe, if the local lord wanted to sleep with your wife on you wedding night he did” Not actually true. There’s no real evidence that the right of the first night ever actually existed; whenever it’s mentioned in period texts, it’s always in the context of slandering the enemies of the author.

@nick012000, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Droit_du_seigneur

@Buffy Uh, yeah. Did you read your own link? It's basically supporting my statement.

@nick012000, not entirely. Also, the larger question is about property rights and how a given society respects them or not - or even thinks about them.

“In medieval times in Europe, if the local lord wanted to sleep with your wife on you wedding night he did” The only thing we have any evidence for is that that was a legal threat if you didn't pay the lord the money that it was customary to pay them for the wedding, and that only seems to have occurred at the end of medieval times as a justification for those fees. (You have to pay me so I give up my ancient droit du seigneur). https://books.google.de/books?id=0lBJ0nUmYCYC&pg=PA251#v=onepage&q&f=false

To keep things simple, I will only talk about journal publications here. Everything should translate to conference publications. Also, note that I have no hands-on experience with Chinese academia.
As already noted by xuq01 and Nicole Hamilton, it seems that your colleagues only care for short-time practical consequences and are unwilling to change their conduct unless they see that the consequences are severe. However, right now, they do not feel any consequences – their approach is working for them. This could have multiple reasons, which all lead to different conclusions:

Evaluation criteria and similar do not properly account for journal quality, giving value to journals that do not care about plagiarism, even if they know it.
→ You would have to effect a change of the evaluation criteria.
The evaluation criteria and similar would favor publishing in quality journals, but your colleagues ignore this.
→ Educate your colleagues how they could get secure more resources by giving up plagiarism.
The journals would care about plagiarism, but they do not notice.
→ Anonymously report some prominent case.
You are removing all the plagiarism before it can backfire.
→ Let your colleagues hit the wall, e.g., by refusing to work on that particularly bad paper.

Some obvious disclaimers: Reality will likely be a complicated combination of these effects. Also, some of the suggestions may be impossible or risky for you, depending on what level things happen.

+1 Bullet 1 may be hard to do - the OP may not have control over the evaluation criteria. I think The OP can definitely do bullet 3 and 4.

#4 with outright refusal would be very difficult in China. I've been trying to learn how to say no without saying no for years now.

@axsvl77 In my humble opinion, the way to say no is by saying no. Of course, you may have some situation we don't quite understand. But, I think saying no will not bring too serious consequences for foreigners in China. They are aware of the fact that if they drive you out, others will not come because you are the model. I know there is at least one exception I learned from this site, but I think you should be okay if you just say no. Again, you know your situation the best.

@scaaahu I agree; but IMO building a guanxi should require more than just being a foreigner. Also, my comment was a weak attempt at tongue-and-cheek humor

@scaaahu There are foreigners, and there are colleagues from world-class institutions, and Americans. From my experience Chinese academics worship the latter two. These guys are free to do as they will, say what they will, and get loads of opportunities to engage further. Others, say, Latin Americans, or French from mid-tier institutions, Pakistani, someone from York University, etc, will get some special treatment as foreigners but will still face a number of passive-aggressive boundaries.

@Scientist For Americans, in my experience this "worship" thing might apply to dinner and loose collaboration.  I doubt it applies to funding and other resources allocation? That's one important purpose of developing a guanxi - access to resources.

@axsvl77 I had the impression my colleagues were up to anything regarding getting American names on their papers, and their papers to top journals. They believe all top journals belong in the US and thus that "American guanxi" is the way to get there. Having spent time working/studying in the US and walking around in the company of US citizens gave them a lot of pride (mianzi).

Could you not withdraw your name by explaining that you would lose face in front of your colleagues abroad ?

@scaaahu Feel free to contact me via chat. I don't really know how it works.

@Scientist I just created a chat room

You could report to the senior management, however, academics cheating is common in China. There's a decent possibility that you will just land yourself into troubles. Unless you could expose the scandal to the media, the Chinese people don't care. Cheating is everywhere in the Chinese culture.
It's not something you can do about it. There're Chinese companies for writing the entire PhD thesis for money.

Join a higher tier university. The top Chinese researchers don't cheat and very good in research.
Keep quiet, but don't do it yourself.
Report to the senior management but you probably won't get anything in returns

I have to say this is very unfortunately the case at the moment. Having grown up in China, most teachers and parents considered doing well on exams much more important than cheating, i.e. "if you can cheat and not get caught, why not  do it?" (fortunately, most of my teachers and certainly my parents do not think this way) The media would likely not care as (1) they're not supposed to shed a negative light on Chinese universities and (2) plagiarism in 2nd-tier (or below) universities isn't even news. The only real option seems to be [1]: join a top level (preferably 985) university.

@xuq01 Do they not foresee any problems arising when they attend a job interview and are unable to answer any of the questions? It looks like a serious problem with forward planning to me.

@DrMcCleod Technical interviews for jobs are quite rare in China. Even the technical interviews for the major tech firms are mediocre at best. When it comes to jobs, connections (guanxi) and the brand of your school/major, as well as willingness to work long hours rock everything else. Despite the recent tech boom, China is still a dominantly relationship-driven society.

It is my experience with CAS Beijing that plagiarism is also widespread there. I believe that one is a top-tier in China. I should emphasise that disguising plagiarism by rearranging synonyms or paraphrasing is still full-blown plagiarism. I have the impression "smarter" students from top-tier do that, so they are seldom exposed.

Oh so many answers already before this university professor from China got to it :]
The reason they copy/paste stuff is because they don't know how to do it properly + they don't have incentives to do it properly. I work at a smaller university with solely business focus, but whenever some requirement trickles down here from the top everyone normally just tries to get it out of the way wasting as little time as possible.
I don't know what you teach and what format your classes have, but it helps if you ask your students about their future plans and how they plan to use what they learn in their careers. Chances are they have it pretty well figured out already and the publication requirement is one of a thousand check marks they have to tick to get their diploma and on their way to make money while the music is still playing because they hear the music is getting quieter.
A possible approach is to make the requirements stricter, which will push the publication higher up that check-mark list and force them to spend (or waste?) more time on it. I don't like this approach.
What I prefer is find what they really need for their careers and try to adjust the requirement so they can learn to do what they need, what the market needs them to do, what will bring them the most money when they join the workforce. I don't know how much administrative freedom you have over those requirements. If not much, you might be confined to a pretty stinky solution #1

It's not plagiarism if you put it in quotation marks and cite the source.  So just tell them to do that.  They can still save time by copy and paste, but won't infringe academic norms about copying without attribution.

Problem is, what others hear when told that is "I can say my mistake was merely forgetting a couple quotation marks".

@Scientist: That may well be true (if you replace "mistake" by "failing" or "misdeed"). OP did not say those students we're copy-pasting the parts of their work which are the actual contributions.

The elephant in the room: you probably cannot convince them. That is, they correctly see their pragmatic options, etc., and act accordingly.
The reason I think my remarks here are more than a "comment" is that the correct answer to the question involves strongly denying a premise that it makes sense to achieve the espoused goals. Yes, by many "Western" standards it makes sense, but that's not the question. These kids are behaving rationally in their context. How in the world could anyone persuade them otherwise?
And, no, you certainly cannot change the ambient culture.
You are a "fish out of water", and you cannot change those things...

Find out where they are submitting the papers, and tell the students that you will contact the editor/organiser about the plagiarism.

So, I would condone this, but only in conjuction with many other steps and with due prior warning.

Given the post by @scientist it would seem that this would most likely be laughed at.

There have been lots of great answers here, but I have another one about teaching people about why we cite our sources: Kate Williams & Mary Davis. (2017). Referencing and Understanding Plagiarism. 2nd edition. MacMillan https://www.macmillanihe.com/page/detail/Referencing-and-Understanding-Plagiarism/?K=9781137530714
Open it up to pp. 36-37 and make a big poster with these words:
“You need to reference when you:

use facts, figures or specific details you
pick from somewhere to support a point
you’re making – you report
use a framework or model another author has devised – you acknowledge
use the exact words of your source – you quote
restate in your own words a specific point, finding [or] argument an author has made – you paraphrase
sum up in a phrase or a few sentences a whole article or chapter, a key finding/conclusion, or a section – you summarize.

You don’t need to reference if you:

believe that what you are writing is
widely known and accepted by all as
‘fact’ or common knowledge in your subject.
can honestly say, ‘I didn’t have to research anything to know that!’

But
If finding it out did take effort, show the reader the research you did by referencing it.”
Make sure your library has copies available, and use it as a textbook. It is not expensive and the entire booklet is great!

A point I make to my students here is that they are expected to write their own work, and take care to cite others as needed (out of courtesy). Do summarize other work only if needed to understand the topic at hand.
This is mostly when writing their final theses, we have rather draconian page limits. But that is also true in journals and conferences, and the same applies: write less, but better.

dunno why no one else up-arrowed this answer.  help the nascent scholars understand the concept of citation, besides that of plagiarism.  if some other author says it better, repeat and cite what the other author says.  i have no problem repeating wisdom of others.  that doesn't make me look bad.

Point out how it's in their favor to examine things, even if they end up making it less "proper English" in the process. Even if they don't care about the academics of it, they still want to learn, get a degree, and get a good job. I'd suggest attacking it from the angle of personal growth - Something like...

"If you simply copy and paste, you aren't checking the veracity of the claim, and you aren't synthesizing the information into something new. When you find information for your paper, you'll improve yourself more by first making sure the claim is true, and then digesting and re-working the claim into your own words, so that you can be sure that you've internalized the claim that you're using. Once you've done this, doing the actual additional work of citing the source is not much of a time or effort investment."

It seems like learning from writing the paper "properly" is not required to get the degree or the job.

Also "I want the degree - the veracity of blahblahblah and the synthesising of flurbflurb, and improving glubglub.... who has time for that western weird idea stupidity? I'll "improve" myself by having a piece of paper that says I have a degree, thank you.

@Stilez You got the mindset right there. OP must realise this is what he's dealing with, in China.

@Stilez, you'll see exactly the same elsewhere. It is (unfortunately) our job to straighten that out.

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


text:
Why might researchers distinguish their interests between applied math and computational math?
I often see PhD students and faculty members describe their research interests on their web pages as something like:

I am broadly interested in applied and computational mathematics.

What is the difference between applied math and computational math?
Do applied mathematicians not necessarily work on computations and computational mathematicians not necessarily work on applied math?

I guess one way to (potentially) see the difference would be to ask yourself: was all math theoretical until computers came along?

"Applied" math is in opposition to "pure" mathematics: that is, applied mathematics is used for a specific ("real-world") problem, such as fluid mechanics, statistical physics, or even the biosciences. This need not be computational: in many cases, it involves the study of differential equations and other analytical tools (expansions and other techniques).
In contrast, "computational" mathematics implies mathematics that cannot be solved by "pen and paper" techniques but instead require the use of a computer—either desktop or cluster—to solve.

I will just add that computational math need not be applied math.

My father worked on algorithms for calculating millions of digits of pi. That's computational, but not applied, since it's hard to find applications that require even twenty digits.
I used probability theory to find a strategy for making use of imperfect information in order to sample a rare population as cheaply as possible, while meeting certain accuracy requirements. This is applied but not computational, since I didn't use a computer to help figure out this strategy.
In practice, the line is often blurred; methods developed for "pure" mathematics often turn out to have practical applications (one of my father's other hobbies is factoring integers into prime numbers...) and computers are often handy for implementing methods developed by non-computational means.

Factoring prime numbers or semiprimes?

I guess the sentence was meant as "factoring integers into prime numbers".

@PeterTaylor whoops, fixed!

It's possible to work on the development theoretical analysis of numerical methods for differential equations (and other mathematical problems) without any immediate application in mind or in response to specific problems posed by other applied mathematicians, scientists, or engineers.  Researchers who do this typically call themselves "numerical analysts" rather than applied mathematicians.  You'll also see "computational science" used to describe research that might focus on applications to particular scientific or engineering disciplines and "high-performance computing" to describe research on how to effectively use supercomputers to solve problems in scientific computing.
It's also possible to develop and analyze mathematical models without using computational methods.  Researchers may use analytical methods and study the qualitative behavior of models in ways that don't require computation, or they might work with specialists in numerical computing when necessary.  There are many mathematicians who engage in this activity and call themselves "applied mathematicians" without adding "computational."

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sort: votes


text:
Music with lyrics about academic world
I am curious to know if there are musicians or music bands whose compositions (in any musical style) have lyrics that talk about our "academia world" with songs, for instance "my manuscript was rejected twice", "happy day, my grant was accepted", "the nature paper that wasn't there", etc.

Not exactly about papers: https://youtu.be/60bU7K941nw

https://youtu.be/FID8pWyle0o

This is probably better for a chat room than a question on the main site, seeing as it's only tangentially related to academic pursuits, and it's collecting a list of indefinite length.

"we have been unable to identify the particle shown in the image below"

This would be awesome. 'Academitellica'?  'Pub Floyd?'  'Jay-Zscore?'

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What is the effect of a journal going open-access on its impact factor?
I recently saw this reasonably interesting graphic regarding journals and open access.

As many of you know, there is a large discussion about open access. It appears to be most strong within biological sciences, though that may be more of a side-effect of their style of publishing. An interesting "timeline of open access" unfortunately stops at 2008. Obviously the graphic, while interesting, is a single data point.
What is the evidence regarding the effect of going open-access and a journal's impact factor? I am especially interested in utilizing resources that have undergone some kind of peer review and scrutiny.

I am looking forward to see answers! Since the Impact factor is based on the two years prior to when it is set it seems the break is partly fortuitous. The foundations for the 2007 is in 2006 and 2005 publications which are prior to the switch. Very interesting graph.

impact factor — Um... Who cares?

@JeffE You don't, and I don't either as a measure of a journal's impact, whatever that means. But it's a fairly reliable measure of how often articles in a given journal would be cited within the 2 year window because that's the very definition of Impact Factor and the data set they use is quite large. Now I'm interested to know if making my papers open access improves the visibility by widening the potential audience that otherwise I'd miss, regardless of whether Impact Factor represents a journal's impact or not. I don't think your comment is relevant to OP's question or helpful at all.

I would be very interested in seeing some of the answers as well since I am quite involved in these kinds of analyses already. Also, this article is quite relevant here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2492576/

@Shion If you've done some work in the area you could try taking a shot at answering the question. ;)

@Irwin Alright. I will take a shot here although you may not get the complete answer. :)

@JeffE People who pay me, or could pay me, do.

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text:
How do search committees use feedback from one-on-one faculty meetings during an academic interview?
I am wondering how the search committees take into account feedback that is provided by faculty members who meet one-on-one with a candidate. I am curious about both the process as well as how the committee considers the feedback when making their decision.
So, for example, does the faculty member who meets with the candidate email the committee as soon as the discussion is done to write about how the meeting went? Are they evaluating the candidate on "culture fit", technical prowess, teaching/research, etc.? Do they have veto power over a candidate? Do they meet with the search committee and discuss candidates after everyone's met with each one? Is it the same faculty who meet one-on-one with the candidates, or does it depend on who's available that day?
I'm rather interested in the process of how it works, for those who have been on search committees, and that is why I ask this question. I am most interested in responses for research interviews for institutions in the United States but experiences from other locations would be valuable as I am sure that the process is not identical even within one country (or even one department).
This question is highly related, but isn't specifically addressing what I am wondering.

Your question seems to presuppose that the search committee makes the final hiring decision, which isn't necessarily the case.  In my department, all the tenure-track and tenured faculty vote on hiring.  The search committee's special role is finished by the time the candidates visit the campus.

@mark meckes: your point is well noted. I may modify my question later - I can't do it now as I have a faculty interview to prepare for. :)

I am in a US R1 institution in a department of computer science.
All departments have their own style. Ours is something like this:

Each candidate is "governed" by a search committee (we often have multiple searches in different areas) consisting of 4-5 faculty.
Each candidate is "hosted" by one specific person on the committee: the host's job is to be the candidate liaison to the process, as well as managing the interview schedule, and making everything run smoothly from the department's point of view
Immediately after the interview, the host sends out mail to the faculty requesting formal feedback via email. The host will also typically buttonhole people in the hallway to get informal "vibes" as well.
after the formal feedback is collected (and anonymized depending on how things go), and after all candidates have been interviewed, the search committee sits down to assess the pool.

At this stage, faculty feedback plays the following role (the committee has already discussed the technical merits and strengths/weaknesses of the candidates):

Is there a clear consensus in favor of a candidate ?
Are there candidates that are drawing strong (and well-founded) opposition from the faculty ?
If the committee decides to choose one particular candidate to put forward to the faculty at large, will there be significant opposition,
  and why ?
what is the overall sense that the faculty appears to have about the candidates in general ?

After this is done, the committee might choose to:

present a candidate as a consensus choice
present two candidates as co-consensus choices that the faculty at large can vote on
decide that no candidate has crossed the bar for a faculty-wide vote.

To answer your specific questions that aren't covered above:

no one person (not even the chair!) has a veto over hiring someone, but obviously people closer technically to the candidate will have a "weightier" opinion. The way our structure works, it's possible (though unlikely to happen) that the committee will nix someone that the faculty all like, which is a sort of collective veto
faculty are assembled to meet the candidate based primarily on possible match of interest, and occasionally also for tactical reasons :). The host will make sure that people who are stakeholders in the hire meet as many candidates as possible. But there's of course an element of "who's available that day".

I've been on a hiring committee twice. We don't typically have formal "one-to-one" meetings, but we do make a lot of time for informal discussions with the candidate and one or more faculty.
Each time, we have hired in an area which I'm very interested in but only know a very little bit about. So, I always have "stupid" questions in the back of my mind which I can ask to the candidates. This gives me a good opportunity to be favorably impressed by them.
Another thing I like to do is start talking about my own research area. Sometimes candidates will know at least a little bit about it and will ask very interesting questions. This also makes a positive impression, especially when it leads to a long discussion.
I don't care much about "culture fit", but candidates do, and they often ask a lot of questions about my university, the department atmosphere, and what the city is like.

This does not answer the question (how the information gained during one-on-one meetings enters the hiring decision process) but merely describes the sort of interactions that happen during one-on-one meetings.

@user2705196 I described opportunities that I deliberately give the candidates to give a positive impression. Later, when we meet to discuss the merits of the candidates in question, I talk about what impressed me about each of them.


text:
No evaluations from past teaching
I am applying for tenure-track positions in the US and Canada. I did my PhD in the UK during which I ran tutorials for students for a few years. However, I never received any official feedback or evaluation and now find myself looking at an application asking for teaching evaluations.
What are my options? Would it be inapropriate to search for my former students and solicit feedback? It's now been over a year since my last cohort. I know one went on to do a PhD in my former group, how would it look if I asked them to write a reference letter for me?

What materials are you asked to provide by the institutions you are applying to? If they ask for a teaching statement, you can just provide the narrative of your experience. I doubt they would ask for a whole bunch of teaching related references or past teaching evaluations at this point - at least for an R01.

They ask for a teaching dossier comprising teaching statement, teaching materials and teaching evaluations. I can make teaching materials specifically for the application but I'm stuck on the evaluations.

Maybe you have an entry at ratemyprofessors.com or similar, though they aren't always flattering.

Do you have another faculty observing your teaching? In any case, in your situation I see would have added an explanation in the cover letter and/or teaching statement as to why you can't provide evaluations.

This isn't an unusual situation: In many countries, teaching evaluations are either not done at all, are not public, or are unavailable for other reasons.  This isn't going to be the first time the university you apply to is encountering this issue, and so the reasonable solution is to simply state

At my previous universities, no teaching evaluations were performed,
and so I cannot provide any. However, attached please find the
remaining documents (specifically, my teaching statement and examples
of teaching materials).

They will be able to deal with this.

Thank you, that's reassuring to know.


text:
Surname change during PhD (as a male)
I'm currently undertaking my PhD and I have plans to get married before I complete my candidature. In particular, I will be double-barreling my current surname with my fiancée's current surname. We are indifferent to which name will appear first, and/or hyphenation. I have not begun publishing yet, however, I do have a first-authorship on a conference paper from my undergrad, though it is not likely this will contribute towards my PhD.
The core questions I have are:

How should I identify myself on publications produced before I am married (still >12 months away)?

My goal is to achieve consistency despite my decision to change my surname. My current thoughts so far:

Use my birth surname before marriage (First Birth), and initial my fiancée's birth surname before my own on post-marriage publications. (First F. Birth). In this case, I'll likely continue to be referenced by my birth name (e.g. Birth et al).
Continue to just use my birth name in publications, even after I change my surname. This seems like the lazy option: the option which is most convenient/appropriate at present but will become more inconvenient in the future as I continue to publish. I do have female collaborators in this situation, though they had more publications with their birth name before their name change.

A third option would be to simply change my name before I get married, and use that name on all publications. But, officially changing my name doesn't happen overnight, and I'd like to be prepared should I have to put my name on a publication before my name is officially changed.

This is a lesser concern, but I'd still like to consider: In academia, what are the implications of:

a hyphenated surname?
a double-barrelled, non-hyphenated surname?

I appreciate any thoughts and contributions. If it matters, I'm in STEM, and my surname is already quite unique, ~30,000 according to [1]. My fiancée's is ~300,000.
[1] https://en.geneanet.org/genealogy/

Related, for part 2: How do you handle a double barrel name in citations/publishing?

"I do have a first-authorship on a conference paper from my undergrad, though it is not likely this will contribute towards my PhD." What does it mean for a conference paper to "contribute towards [one's] PhD"?

For your first question, a fourth option may be to start using your new name on publications even before you change it officially.

@AzorAhai-him- Probably means that the content of the paper won't be a part of the PhD thesis? Particularly if it is a sandwich thesis.

@AzorAhai-him- The conference paper is on a topic which is not related to my PhD topic, and so the research contribution will likely not be considered as support for my thesis. I could have worded that better.

@GoodDeeds Thanks, I missed this. The second question was an after-thought.

@thesurnamedilemma Unless your theses (dissertation?) works very different than what I'm familiar with, papers aren't support for it

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9003/indicating-a-name-change-after-publication

Does this answer your question? What are some practices for getting a name change so that people can find me more easily?

Small remark concerning the title: how is your gender relevant to the question?

I think you’re overthinking and overoptimizing this issue. No one cares what name you publish in, as long as there is a modicum of consistency (i.e., you don’t change your publishing name more than a few times during your lifetime), and no one cares what name you choose to adopt as your legal name. So just decide on what names would be most preferable to you based on your own personal preference and sensibilities, and go with that.
Separately from that, if you do end up publishing in more than one name, you could preempt any potential confusion this might create by maintaining a clear online presence where people who want to look up your papers or other information about you can find them regardless of which of your known aliases they are searching for. This can take the form of a personal web page or web site, a google scholar profile, an ORCID ID, or some combination of those things.

I know you aren't considering this possibility, but a lot can happen in a year. What happens if, for any reason, you don't wind up getting married?
There is some advantage to keeping a permanent name throughout your career, but it isn't overwhelmingly important. Eventually your future work will dominate your current work and a few exceptions probably won't be a (serious) issue. Just a bit of inconvenience at times.
I suggest, as a first option, that you just keep your birth name as your publishing identity into the future. It may be "lazy" but it causes the least problems overall.
If you don't like that idea, then a hyphenated name is probably best, though you might use the hyphen only for publishing identity, with some other form in every day usage (and even legal usage).
But neither of these is a firm suggestion, just a way to avoid the inconvenience attached to the alternatives.
A third option is to adopt a pseudonym, unrelated to your legal or common-usage name and stick with it. It isn't especially common to do this, but it has some history behind it.

Journals do not ask for birth certificates or name change forms. I changed my name while a paper was in revision and they said "Okay."
I had a colleague who signed her name "First Birth M." (where M. is her married initial), and used "First Birth" on papers. Really, the choice is yours as to the details.
Hyphenation does make things clearer for everyone, but if you are opposed, you can hyphenate only for papers.

But, officially changing my name doesn't happen overnight, and I'd like to be prepared should I have to put my name on a publication before my name is officially changed.

Name changes don't take that long ... especially not compared to the length of time a publication takes from submission to publication. If you submitted a paper now and started the process of a name change, I would be extremely surprised if the paper beat out the name change.
If I was in your boat, I would hyphenate upon marriage, and put my birth name after my fiancee's.

Just to make things clear, you're suggesting that while the details are rather inconsequential,  hyphenation upon marriage would be your preference despite the inconsistency with my pre-marital publications?

@thesurnamedilemma Yes, because you only have one (and a conference paper at that).


text:
Guiding a mentee towards greater independence
I am a Master's student who is mentoring a recent graduate through a research project in the same field (of astronomy). He is a very good student, but struggles with one of the realities of being an astronomer - coding. Right now, he is just running code others have written, but despite my strong suggestion that he start learning the language, still asks for my help on even the most elementary of problems. His confidence in using computers is lacking, and if he continues in the field it will become a serious hindrance.
I did provide a very high level of assistance early on, but this was mostly due to a couple of bugs in setting my own code up on his computer. In later stages of this research project, he is going to need to write some basic code of his own, so I feel we're getting to the stage where we need to establish a greater level of independence.
One of the key points of difference between a student and a researcher is that a researcher solves their own problems. It is the job of a mentor and supervisor to assist in that, but I feel that my mentee still feels entitled that I should solve his problems for him (I only solved "his" problems before because a bug in code that I wrote is my responsibility). It's time to start taking a more hands-off approach: I'm happy to give advice on how he might solve a problem, but it's his responsibility to sit down and implement that idea.
How should I approach this problem -  (a) with my mentee, and (b) with our supervising professor (we have the same supervisor)?

I am surprised that MA students are tasked to supervise undergrads. Is that a common practice? This should be a professor's job, not the students' job. This is unheard of in my disciplines (statistics and economics).

@StasK I'm not the official supervisor, per se. Just the guy who sits at the desk next to the new guy who is working on the same stuff for a 3-month project. I have no official position or obligation. At my University, at least, it is relatively common that the more experienced postgrads, rather than the professors, show the new guys how things work.

That's a rip-off, I tell you what, unless this is written into your research contract (if you have one at all). You can complain to your supervisor, as this is the first line of action, but (s)he is the person who essentially put you in charge of this undergrad mentoring. You can complain to the department chair, but I am sure that (s)he is happy that your prof is released for more "productive" research work. So basically you will have two immediate enemies by the time you can reach the level of the Dean where something can realistically be changed. I [heart] academia :).

You're right that I am within my rights to do that, but I won't. I do have a responsibility to pass on my experience to others, even if it's not contractual. My time is limited, however, and so is my motivation to teach things that other resources can - hence the question.

Could this question be generalized to other research activities/tasks as coding? Some of the discussion in the answers is very coding specific.

@StasK Completely normal (and healthy!) in my field. As soon as you know something you are supposed to teach and mentor those that know less. I find this practice highly valuable to both sides.

Worth noting that even though mentoring might not be officially required of you, the experience is handy when applying to various academic jobs.

@mmh could you explain what you're looking for that is not covered in the current set of answers ?

Like Moriarty, who posed the question initially, I am in the same situation but with more students (four now). Since our situations are not the most usual ones (e.g. I'm an undergrad tutoring master students and PhDs), I was hoping to find help from this thread. In my specific situation, one of the students is causing me considerable trouble by not putting enough effort in himself. Basically, he expects me to do most of his work. So, given the difficult situation, some special bit of wisdom would come handy.. Hence the bounty. I also thought that a new question would be almost a duplicate one.

@mmh  Unless you're contractually obliged to do so, you can say no. I'm having difficulty conceiving a situation where an undergrad would be mentoring one, let alone four, graduate students. Sometimes you just have to say "that's your problem to solve, not mine".

Wow ! Under what circumstances does an undergrad tutor masters/PhD students? Is this common in your school?

@Shion Like mmh I also "mentored" masters/PhD students as an undergrad, the circumstances being that I had been working on the project for a few months already and they were newcomers.

Disclaimer: I am a current PhD student and speak from personal experience as one who has guided both masters as well as undergraduate students.
Learning how to code appropriately takes skill, time and confidence (among other things). My strategy for this while mentoring students is as follows:

Develop a small project which will have some significant coding component in it but will still add to the overall project. Lay out the coding expectations and deliverables very clearly. Don't start with something too difficult.
Consider using version control tools (such as git) to manage your mentee's code. Be very clear about what languages/libraries etc. you plan to use and how this code will add to the project.
Lay out a timeline with your mentee with very specific coding expectations.
Achieve each small component with your mentee. Guide (but don't spoonfeed/handhold) your mentee. Make sure that he/she codes everything by him/herself.
Give him/her a small reward. (coffee/sugary thingy/beer) This always makes my students very happy. :)

In my experience, once a mentee has achieved a small project by him/herself, they are usually quick and eager to move onto the next objective. I use this to ramp up the difficulty level slowly but surely.
Regarding the second part of your question, I would definitely keep your supervisor/adviser in the loop regarding this. He/She may have much better suggestions than any that I have to offer here.

One of the more difficult tasks of the mentor is to assess current skill levels, set milestones accordingly, and ensure that the student has the necessary resources (and capabilities) to improve his skills.
At your admission, he is a novice coder, if that. Are you setting expectations too high? Does he have the right resources to learn how to code? There are lots of books/websites/youtube videos/whatever that teach coding; is he aware of these tools? Does he know how to use his IDE? Having watched my wife learn to code as a graduate student, I learned that the ability to represent a theoretical solution in software is a skill that takes a lot of time to develop. He may just need time.
Having said that, if you've done all that and he's still not making any progress (after sufficient time... say, two to four months), then you may have to recommend that he take time off from working on your research until he becomes a more proficient coder.

I understand your points, but I have major issues with people who can't find resources on their own, especially for something so readily available.  I understand people getting stuck, but there's no excuse for not being able to at least attempt to learn for yourself.  For whatever reason, so many novice programmers think that the solution is just to ask someone else how to do something, or look at someone else's code.  That's quite frustrating and unfair to themselves and whomever is attempting to help them.  I don't think it's the OP's responsibility to spoon-feed his student.

@SteveP. - I agree it's that finding the balance between appropriate assistance and spoonfeeding is tough, that's why I said it's difficult. Do realize that "spoonfeeding", "proper training", and "absentee advisor" exist on a continuum, and you'd be hard pressed to find anyone agree on definitions for those terms.

The other answers assume that the mentoring relationship can be saved, and that there are specific actions you can take to help the mentee. I want to add that sometimes, that isn't the case.
As a PhD student who is the main "experimentalist" in my group, I mentor many other students (grad, undergrad, even high school summer research students). Some are very good, some are very bad.
Also, like mmh, I mentored 6 or 7 grad students when I myself was an undergrad (because I was more experienced with the particular project).
Mentoring students is hard when you are yourself a student, especially when your mentees are officially at a "higher level" (of study) than you.
Unlike the official faculty advisor, you don't have the ability to enforce consequences for the student's poor performance. Sometimes you feel that the mentee isn't putting as much effort into the mentoring relationship as they would if the mentor was a professor. A student mentor is more approachable than a faculty mentor, which can be good (mentee feels more comfortable asking questions and admitting weaknesses!) or bad (mentee doesn't respect and value mentor's time because he's "only" a student!) depending on the mentor and mentee personalities.
On the other hand, unlike a faculty mentor, you have the distinct advantage that the student is really not your responsibility. If you feel the mentoring relationship is not working out, you can always say the following to the faculty member who is responsible for the student:
"I've been spending a lot of time working with X and I feel like it's not really a productive mentoring relationship. He is taking up a lot of my time, without putting in the effort that he would need to learn what I can teach him, and then become more independent. Please find someone else to work with him to get him up to speed."

Some relevant questions. What is the computational background of your student? Has he ever done any coding before? If so, what languages? What is his general computer literacy? What language are you trying to get him to use? You just write "learning the language". Programming languages vary greatly in their difficulty for someone without experience.
The first programming language I ever tried to learn was C, in the middle of an already busy semester as a grad student, for a course in numerical analysis, in 1997. I used the famous book by Kernighan and Ritchie. I had zero experience of programming at that time, and in hindsight it was a crazy thing to try to do. The instructor didn't offer any programming help; neither did anyone else. I think the instructor was a fan of Fortran. :-) At that time online forums were probably in their infancy. In any case, it never occurred to me to try and use them. There were easier languages to use even in 1997. For example Python 1 existed at the time, though I don't know how usable it was. Anyway, I think I came last in the programming assignments - I think I didn't hand the last one or two assignments out of sheer exhaustion.
Unfortunately the culture in academia with respect to programming and related computer work is very much - toss people in at the deep end and let them sink or swim. This is caused by several factors - often the instructors/senior people are very ignorant. Second, there is a feeling that programming languages are too trivial to teach people and they should just pick it up themselves.
Anyway, I think, depending on what language you are trying to get your student to learn - consider having him learn something easier and more user friendly. I recommend Python. Have him do some simple exercises and gradually warm up to something more difficult. A language like C/C++/Fortran is probably easier to learn once one has learnt some programming in a language that does not require things like compilation and manual memory management. These days there are many resources online to help the novice programmer - point him to some of them. E.g. Stack Overflow. Also, tell him to give high priority to learning version control. I recommend Mercurial. Git is probably fine, but it gives even experienced people a headache. It might be quite scary for an inexperienced person.

Could you expand on what you mean by "ignorant"? In what respect?

@PeterJansson Ignorant about programming. And more generally software engineering issues. Design and so forth. Sorry if that was not clear. This is not true of everyone, obviously. For example, Daniel Bernstein is a professor but is also a computing expert. But in my experience it is a common state of affairs. Disclaimer: I've not had much experience with computer science people - maybe the situtation is different there.

Your third paragraph contains a lot of editorializing. You should definitely not assume that your experience represents the general case.

I was totally thrown into one of those sink or swim situations at the beginning of my grad studies. People around me consider it normal, but, four years later, I'm convinced that some formal introduction to programming would have saved me a lot of time.

@eykanal It is true that it is all too easy to generalize from particular examples. However, I've been in similar situations in different places and also observed them happening to other people. Also, I've compared notes with other people who have said the same thing. However, this was in the context of a few universities, mostly in a specific geographic area, so maybe it is not typical. I would like to believe that. If people don't agree, feel free to comment.

@Ana Yes, having relevant programming courses in grad school would be very useful. Unfortunately, in my experience people talk about it, but it never happens. Based on your comment, perhaps you have a take on this question too?

@FaheemMitha - I think that all the answers cover what I think is important: acknowledging that coding knowledge has to be acquired over time; setting small supervised goals and gradually increasing the difficulty; pointing out relevant resources. I could rant a lot about how damn frustrating it is to be thrown in just like that, but I'm not sure that would help :)

@FaheemMitha The language is MATLAB. The phrases in my question "elementary problems" and "basic code" cover my bases, in that there should be no issues in completing the tasks. This is not StackOverflow, so wherever possible I refrain from the technicalities.

Since your supervisor put you in this mentoring position, you need to let her/him know that you've run into this issue with the mentee. Then have the conversation with the mentee that "It's time to start taking a more hands-off approach: I'm happy to give advice on how he might solve a problem, but it's his responsibility to sit down and implement that idea." (your words are perfect!)
I supervise Higher Ed grad students - some are eager to work independently, others not so much. Be consistent with your expectations with all mentees you supervise. Help him by directing him to resources that will help him and set a weekly time to meet where you both go over progress made. You're not the one learning here, the effort is required from the one doing the learning. Be nice, but be firm.
Good luck!

Since you are not a professional programmer yourself, it is a poor idea to have you teach programming to your mentee. He should take a real programming course with Python or Ruby or Java, be that online (EdX is offering a computer science course starting Jan 1, 2014), or with a real instructor at your home school. That way, he won't learn your errors (which you admit you make), and will learn the professional tools like the revision control which I think Faheem Mitha mentioned.
Poor programming skills among scientists is an unseen, but a real impediment to reproducibility of research, its soundness, and eventually scientific progress.

In addition to EdX, I'd add the likes of MIT OpenCourseWare and Coursera . No one will become a good programmer on their own; it really does require good training and (real or virtual) mentoring.


text:
Is it ok to include references to a book in a report even if I have not quoted the book in the text?
I am writing a report based on activities performed during my internship as a  webmaster. It is to be written in the format of a thesis in APA format. In the report I reference  examples that I found on the Internet. However, I have been asked to include references to books.
Is it okay to include references to books in my thesis-style report even if I have not quoted these books?

I attempted to clean up the English a bit. Hopefully it still captures your question. If not, then edit further.

Felix, the short answer is no. Though you can reference a book from which you did not include a verbatim quote, but you must not ref a book you have not read and used.
Books have a legitimate role even in the life of a webmaster. I am sure the information you looked up on Stackoverflow is also covered in books like, for example Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux-7-System_Administrators_Guide, Modern PHP: New Features and Good Practices or Hacking: Beginner to Expert Guide to Computer Hacking. Have half a dozen of these substantial reference volumes at hand and use them. Your teachers aim to build a practice they you will follow later on, the practice of using several reliable sources for the information and knowledge you gather.

Thank you for the answer, i ask the same to my teacher and all they said is "add book references" i'm going to modify the text to add the appropriate references.

If the question is "Is it okay to include references to books in my thesis-style report even if I have not quoted these books?", your first paragraph reads like the short answer should actually be yes.

@O.R.Mapper - Absolutely, provided you actually read those books, you indeed must reference them. What I'd try to avoid is to bloat a ref list to impress people without having earned the privilege.

Although there are a couple of people who practice this taboo of adding references without actually referring them, it is ill-advised.
Nevertheless, references to established books add credibility to your work.If your teacher insists to refer a book, then refer it in your work, then cite it.
Referring it doesn't necessarily mean you have to include in your work any textual content that the cited material provides. You may refer here and here to get an idea of when you could/should cite a material. In addition, you may appropriately cite a source

if you believe that the content of the source would help the reader to understand the foundation/extension of your work.
if you have derived an idea based on the content mentioned in the source.
if the source supports the claim you wish to establish
if it contains an application/use-case of any method you propose

Why is it ill-advised? I have been told numerous times that scanning a bibliography of a paper simply to find a list of thematically related works is a good idea when trying to get an overview of a topic. For this use-case, it seems beneficial to have more references, even though some might not be mentioned in the text. For any other use-case, I do not see how there are any negative effects.

@O.R.Mapper Actually, I support your claim. I meant people who didn't even open a page in the book, but cited it for the mere sake of reference count and portray false credibility. I'll make the points clear in the post.

Aah, sorry then - I suppose the verb "referring" is ambiguous in this context.

@O.R.Mapper Agreed


text:
Is it okay to keep pdfs of journal articles from my previous university when my current university does not have a subscription?
I've been wondering about this for some time. I did my PhD at the big university A. I had access to hundreds of online journals and ebooks. I was downloading papers and ebooks, classifying them, reading them, taking notes on the pdf, etc. At the end of my PhD, I had some 1.2 GB of annotated ebooks, papers, and digital material. None of the material is confidential (no datasets, project material, etc.), just journal and conference papers, ebooks, book chapters, etc.
Fast forward today, I am working at a small university B, that is subscribed to a small subset of the journals/publishers of A. Is it ethical/ legal that I keep the material and use it for my research? Should I delete all the papers from journals my current uni doesn't have subscriptions?

That's a very good question. Could you disclose your country, if you can, in case it mattered? It seems to matter often with any legal questions.

@yo' Hi, I am not sure whether it's a matter of national law or copyright issues of the publishers. Both universities are situated in a northern EU country, for the sake of argument, let's say Belgium.

If you obtained the downloaded files legally, and they did not come with any explicit restriction or license specifying that you may use them only for a set amount of time or only as long as you are employed at your old university, then I don't see the problem - you can keep them until the day you die as long as you're not distributing them or making other use (e.g. of a commercial nature) that was already not allowed even back at the old university. (Source: personal opinion; I am not a lawyer.)

@Corvus Most of the material are papers. Some of them have a print on the side saying "this was downloaded by University of ...". I guess, for making sure that if the papers get redistributed, they know who to blame. How about ebooks though? Is it the same as if I borrowed a book from the library and made an illegal copy out of it?

The key is that you did not make an illegal copy of the materials you accessed. If you made an illegal copy, it would have been as illegal then as it is illegal now. With some very special exceptions, electronic journal licenses expressly permit you to make a paper copy and/or save an electronic copy to your computer for your own personal use. (again, not a lawyer, etc, etc.)

@DanRomik: "as long as you are employed at your old university" - and things might be even more complicated than this. There are various kinds of states for which access to the papers would be required (note that I'm not saying automatically warranted): You might be "employed", or "subscribed as a student" of some kind. And while these are clearly defined, there are also less clearly defined states such as "working elsewhere, but still part of an ongoing project at the university that you're supposed to finish", or "formally working in your startup, but still integrated in an institute", etc.

@Corvus thanks, your answer sounds correct to me. I'll wait to see if any other answers pop-up, otherwise I'll accept it.

@O.R.Mapper well the situations you mention are fuzzy. I'm focused first on a more clear-cut situation where I have no more any connection to uni A.

BTW, though a textbook author myself, I'm not judging with regard to ebook copies. In my opinion, even if the legality of "illegally copying" is clearcut, the morality is not.

This is an interesting question -- and yet when you think about it, it's horrifying that we'd have to consider even for an instant the propriety and legality of keeping our own annotated research materials. But, to provide a proper answer:
In principle, this may depend on the terms of the license under which you downloaded these papers. In practice, you are very likely to be in the right, both legally and morally. In general, I believe that the licenses allow you to reproduce (i.e., print or save) the document for research purposes -- without specifying a time limit or maximum duration of their subsequent use. See e.g. JSTOR's terms of service.
If you are asking about the ethical/moral propriety of what you are doing, you are clearly in the right to retain your collection of papers and notes on those papers. In fact, you may even have an ethical obligation to retain those materials if the notes therein are necessary to reproduce any of your present work.
As an analogy, think about what I did many years ago when moving from one university to another. I had an extensive paper collection of reprints, many photocopied from my institution's library and many extensively annotated. I boxed all of these up and brought them with me. No one in their right mind -- nor even most copyright lawyers, I'd imagine -- would have had me go through those files and discard the articles not in volumes held by my new institution.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. It does seem to be good common sense, though, and sometimes that can be worth at least as much as anything a lawyer would tell you.

+1 for "it's horrifying that...". By the way, it's also horrifying that you need to add the silly disclaimer. Academia.se should have a blanket legal disclaimer covering all answers like the folks over at law.stackexchange.

Continuing on this thread of purely amateur legal advice in the comments and Corvus's excellent answer, I would like to point out the somewhat relevant concept of an unconscionable contract. This is a legal concept that refers to a contract with conditions that are immoral or unethical, such that even if a consenting adult knowingly entered into the contract it would be held to be legally unenforceable due to its unethical nature. See here for a detailed discussion including some country-specific information.
The point is that even in the unlikely event that some of the files you downloaded while at your old university came with some kind of licensing restriction that would require you to delete them upon termination of your relationship with the university, I would argue (again, purely based on common sense rather than on any legal expertise) that this is precisely such an unconscionable and legally unenforceable restriction. My verdict regarding your question is therefore:

Is it ethical for me to keep the material and use it for my research?

Absolutely. Any restriction that forbids you from continuing to use your files for private study or research is unethical and morally void.

Is it legal for me to keep the material and use it for my research?

Yes. Even if it might appear that you are technically violating a clause in some license that you (or your university) "agreed" to, personally I would consider such an obligation to be unconscionable and would feel myself free to ignore it. By my own understanding of the law I would not be breaking any legally binding obligation.

This is a great addition to my answer!


text:
Why would a revised manuscript following very minor revisions appear as "under review" in the journal management system?
I have a paper on an Elsevier journal with "accept, minor revision". There were 3-4 little modifications required by referees. Then, I have made all the necessary modifications and resubmitted.
The status was "With Editor" for three weeks, then it changed to "Under review". What I have heard was that minor revision does not require another round of revision in most of the cases. In this case, does it mean that the paper is sent back to referees again? Or is it just with the editor who evaluates the last version of the paper?

It is not uncommon after minor revisions that the paper is indeed send back to (usually the same) reviewers. In most cases another round of revisions is not needed and they will simply accept the paper, but this is of course not guaranteed.
For some journals, as a reviewer, you can indicate whether you want to see the paper again after minor revisions, I do not know whether this is an option for Elsevier journals.


text:
What does "shortlisting for this post is still in progress..." mean in the context of a UK job application?
I am trying to understand a message for an application in the UK that I received today. Here is the message ;

The shortlisting for this post is still in progress, we hope to be
  able to notify applicants of the final decision shortly.

This message is not clear to me. Does it mean that I am not shortlisted but longlisted? What should I understand from this message?

You should understand that they have not gotten down to a shortlist yet. That is still in progress. Once the short list is put together, they will let you know if you are on it.

@JonCuster. It should probably be an answer.

Not enough for an answer, but in my mind it means that the applications are still on the Prof's desk and he hasn't looked at them yet....

The message means what it says. The shortlist hasn’t been decided yet. Whoever wrote you the message does not have more information to provide you at this time, or if they do, then they are not at liberty to provide it.
Any additional layers of interpretation that you choose to add to this message, such as inferring that you are longlisted, you add at your own risk. Certainly no one here can tell you whether such an interpretation is valid or not.
Good luck!