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How to move forward after microaggression allegations against my TA
Context: I am an associate professor of mathematics at a small liberal-arts college in the US.
I am teaching multiple sections of a general-education mathematics course this fall, and I have an undergraduate TA who leads optional review sessions for students in the evenings.  A student who regularly attends these sessions recently confided in me that the TA has made two statements to them that they perceived as microagressions.  (The student is from a minoritized group, but the TA is not.  The student did not use the word "microagression", but did use other "Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) terminology" about their status as a minoritized group member.)
I apologized for what the TA said, assured the student that it was not ok that this had happened, and thanked them for being willing to speak to me about it.  I also told the student that I would investigate what I could do to prevent future occurrences of this behavior while still protecting their anonymity.  The conversation between us went well, and they plan to continue their work in the course and with the TA.
Although I am from the same privileged group as the TA, in my interactions with the TA I have found them to be well-spoken, sensitive, and caring, so I am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that these statements (which the unhappy student repeated to me) were not intentionally microagressive.  That said, the TA has no formal training in education, and I could certainly see them making faulty assumptions that would have lead to this situation.  In my (once again, privileged) opinion, this problem is not serious enough that the TA should be removed, but I do want to take concrete steps to protect my students from future microagressions.  (Not to mention, it would be a learning opportunity for the TA.)
Specifically, I am looking for advice about what to say to my TA.  I have a few ideas about where to begin, but I am not an expert on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues, nor do I regularly supervise teaching assistants.  Should I simply start a conversation with them about how best to work with the diverse group of students we find in this general-education course?
To be more specific:

The TA made a comment to the student along the lines of "your English is very good" (the student has lived in the US for years).
The TA asked if the students laptop was obtained outside the US when they were trying to determine why an online HW problem was not accepting their answer attempts.

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Mod's Notice: Please note our guidelines on frame challenges. In this case, OP has posited that the "microaggression" was real but not intentional; unless you have specific cause to doubt this, it is usually best to answer the question as asked. Opinions (on either side) about the validity of concepts like "DEI culture", "micro-aggressions," being "privileged," etc. should be taken to the chat room above; comments containing these opinions will be deleted without warning.

TA is your assistant, how often do you give them a feedback on how they are doing?

@EarlGrey I see the TA a few times per week (they are required to attend the course they are tutoring), but we do not have any formal meetings/feedback opportunities.  They only help with homework and studying, so there isn't a huge need for regular meetings.

Does your institution offer/require any sort of training for TAs, or do grad students just get tapped one day and start TAing?

@shoover There is some relatively informal training for TAs--basically a half-day crash course at the start of the semester.  (Also, if it matters, the TAs are undergrads.  I've also edited the question to say this.)

As you say, you're not an expert in DEI; if your institution does have people that are experts on DEI issues, I would check to see if they can help you.
You mentioned in a comment that your institution has a DEI Office, so that seems like a good place to start; I assume most institutions do these days. Other readers may be at institutions that avoid that label due to political pressures, though. There may also be professional counselling resources that are more broadly targeted at helping resolve interpersonal conflicts or supporting teachers where you'll find people with more experience in this area even if they are not explicitly labeled as such.

Also useful to engage your center for teaching a learning, if one exists. In my experience, most SLAC have such an office.

+1 to Dawn: my university has some CTL/DEI crossover workshops ("diversity competence in teaching") that give out certificates for successful completion. Not sure if this is also the case for SLACs, but could be a win-win (no more micro aggressions, and the TA gets a CV line out of it).

Surely it is not necessary to be an "expert on DEI" to deal with such a minor incident (OP has described what the TA said to the student). Do we need to call in the authorities every time someone raises their eyebrows at something another person said?

@toby544 The severity of the incident was unclear when OP first posted; I first asked in a comment whether there was some office like this that OP could go to for support and others recommended that I make my comment an answer, so I did. OP themselves seems concerned with mishandling things so yeah, I think it can be valuable to get some support.

@BryanKrause OK, thanks. I am glad you seem to agree that the severity of the incident, and what the TA actually said, are relevant factors.

Check if "experts in DEI" can help you... why though? Does this not feel cringeworthy? If a female student disliked the fact that a male TA complimented her intelligence, would you pull in "experts in women's studies" (or whatever the analogous experts would be...), or would you just try to handle it? Is the intent here to help the student, or to cover the instructor's rear?

Unfortunately DEI is one of those things where ideological bias is pretty much impossible to compensate for, so what guidance you might get from the "experts" at your university could vary greatly depending on their personal biases.

@user541686 You are pretty smart for someone with an anonymous username!

Do not preempt the complaint process (especially with something as nebulous as an alleged "microaggression")
Unless there is a compelling reason to the contrary, complaints from students should be dealt with under the complaints process at the university, so you should read the relevant complaints policy to see what role and authority you have as the course lecturer.  Even assuming it is your role to be the first point of contact for a student complaint, it seems pre-emptive (and administratively dangerous) to me that you have already formed a view on the alleged behaviour and communicated what is essentially a complaint outcome to the student.  Going forward, you should look up the complaints policy at your university and be conscious of what role and authority you have in this process.
You are obviously free to talk to your TA about this matter, but you should bear in mind some reasonable entitlements that the TA has as a fellow employee at the university.  Firstly, like yourself, the TA retains some academic freedom as a teacher at the university.  They may disagree with your own personal conception of what constitutes a microaggression, whether or not the concept of a microaggression is valid and appropriate to workplace/educational interactions, whether a microaggression is bad/micro-bad/innocuous, etc.  (Since you are using terms like "my privilege group" and other similar nomenclature, it is evident from your post that you are heavily steeped in DEI/identitarian ideology, so bear in mind that many others are not.)  This could potentially lead to you being at loggerheads with the TA, if the latter views the behaviour in question as being okay.  Secondly, the TA is likely to be protected by the normal due process requirements of the complaint system at your university.  It is possible that by having already formed a view on the outcome of the matter and communicated this to the student, you have already failed to give due process to the TA.
In this situation, my recommendation would be to talk to your TA, but stress that the view that you are communicating (regarding the alleged microaggression) is only your own opinion, formed without the benefit of having spoken to them.  Solicit the opinion of the TA about whether or not they agree with your view and whether or not they wish to do things differently in regard to his teaching.  If they agree with your view, you will be able to proceed with a shared understanding of how to deal with this student.  If they disagree then you will need to decide what to do next, but adverse action against the TA should generally be reserved as a consequence for a successful complaint under your university process.  Finally, don't make promises you don't have the authority to keep: Are you absolutely sure that the student can maintain anonymity in the university complaints process?  Are they still entitled to anonymity if they decide to pursue this as a formal complaint against the TA, or would this breach the due process rights of the TA?  If the TA were to make a formal complaint about your own approach to this matter, would you be compelled by the university to reveal which student complained to you, and would the TA be entitled to know this?  (I don't know the answers to these questions myself, but they are the types of questions that it would be useful to consider when deciding whether to make an assurance of anonymity to a student.)

Update: The question has now added specifics of the alleged "microaggressions" at issue.  These details confirm the legitimacy of my initial scepticism towards the approach taken by OP.  The first act decribed as a microaggression is neither rude nor aggressive, though one could argue that it could get annoying if it were heard repeatedly over time from multiple sources.  The second act described is entirely innocuous and probably a helpful inquiry for a technical problem.  The fact that these are classified as aggressive actions says far more about the DEI/identitarian ideology at issue than about the TA.

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I agree that the update confirms your initial scepticism. But maybe we could also gently acknowledge that if a person is repeatedly told their English is very good, when they have been living in an English-speaking country for many years, then in some cases it could start to get irritating. Telling the student that is 99% innocuous but not 100%.

@toby544: Agree --- edited.

This question's conception of a "microaggression" is different from the one I have usually heard.  (It's always a vague word.)

You are doing good in being supportive to the student, but to be fair to the TA, you should not take the student side fully-hearted.
From the description of the TA, you are actually describing a lose-lose situation, where students are subject of microaggressions, while the TA is doing some micro-oppressive acts just because of social pressure, to close the gap with the students or to make the lecture a bit more interesting (yeah, explaining the derivative of exponentials is as simple as boring, even more during evening hours when everyone, included the TA, is tired after a day of work), clearly failing their intended goal.
You should mention verbally to the TA that you received some complaints about them. You can say exactly what the student complained about, or something vaguely related to preserve anonimity, if the TA is dismissive of the complaint you can reinforce your statement telling them the act can be defined as micro-aggression. Try to keep an amicable tone and stress that you are not doing a review or evaluation of their job.
If mantaining anonimity of the student may be difficult, you may consider an embargo time, i.e. wait for the current batch of students finishing their activities with the TA.
It is up to TA sensitivity how to react to realizing how their actions are perceived, but do your best in being supportive to the TA as well while giving this feedback.
If the TA proves to be condescending or generally insensitive to your remarks, well, you can consider them being "well-spoken, sensitive, and caring" as a façade (I hope it is not).
However, in your question there is one point that need to be abstracted and that deserves more of your attention. You state that

TA has no formal training in education, and I could certainly see them
making faulty assumptions

and at the same time

I am not an expert on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues,
nor do I regularly supervise teaching assistants

What about yourself making false assumptions? You have been thrown in this topic by a student complaint and you have been caught off-guard. Do not react only based on empathy and emotions.
Instead of thinking about possible punition for the TA (since you mention "this problem is not serious enough that the TA should be removed" I see that in the back of your brain there is already lingering the thought "what is an appropriate punishment for TA?"), do one step forward, put yourself in TA shoes: you are a caring person and you receive a feedback about your acts, who cares about the punishment you receive, how can you learn more?
You cannot protect the students from future microagressions, they will happen and they have to learn to defend themselves alone, nor can you undo past microaggressions, but now you have a golden learning opportunity for yourself and for the TA how to be proactive, to identify your own thinking that lead to producing microaggressions.

Folks: this is a Q&A site, it is very specifically not the place for debate about society's challenges. As advertised by the giant banner at the top of the page. If you must argue, take it to chat.

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Seems like I have to be the one to address the obvious again. Let me quote:

To be more specific:

The TA made a comment to the student along the lines of "your English is very good" (the student has lived in the US for years).
The TA asked if the students laptop was obtained outside the US when they were trying to determine why an online HW problem was not accepting their answer attempts.

In what universe are either of those possibly deemed offensive let alone "microaggressions"?
For the uninitiated, the first one is what is known as a so-called compliment. You should try it sometime, it helps befriend people.
The second one clearly was a genuine attempt at troubleshooting a problem. This is a process where you often try to rule out different potential sources of a given problem, such as the one described above. A (university) website being inaccessible from outside the country (or even network !!) is an entirely realistic scenario. (For example, some of my university's websites are only accessible via a special VPN).
Needless to say, there is nothing to move forward about and nothing to be done. Except, perhaps, that the student needs to be kindly, and politely, told that the statements in question do not constitute any kind of offense whatsoever.
This will also help the student go through life with much more ease as they will hopefully learn to not suspect an ill-intention behind every other comment coming from other people.
And I say this as a student from a "minoritized" group.

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Since the student has an issue with a couple things the TA said which are, perhaps, mildly offensive or annoying, the student should discuss this issue with the TA. There are two advantages to this approach:

it avoids making a mountain out of a molehill;
the student, who is presumably an adult, learns how to act like an adult and talk to people that he or she has an issue with.

Involving diversity tribunals or firing the instructor would be extreme over-reactions and would teach the student to not deal with his or her own problems but instead to always tell the teacher, so to speak. This approach may be appropriate in primary school but after that, people should be expected to be mature enough to at least make an attempt to work things out themselves.

"The student should discuss this issue with the TA." I feel like—the merits of this aside—if the powers-that-be disagree with you on whether you should communicate this to the student, it might be asking for trouble as an instructor. (Welcome to 2023.)

Maybe, just maybe, the student in question has already explained it a hundred times that compliments on their ability to grasp the English language even though they don't look like whatever the predominant group in the area looks like are not really compliments and just had enough.

@Marianne013 GIven that there are only two complaints about this TA and they aren't the same, that doesn't seem to be the case.

@Marianne013 Why do you assume the student looks different?

@Marianne013 Here’s what was said to me some time last week: “What is that f***ing German doing in my room”. Literal quote except for the ***. Reading this discussion, I could see heads exploding.

@ReinstateMonica Marianne is not saying that the TA has said things like this many times, Marianne is suggesting that the student has had it happen to them many times, and has done what you suggest here, but 1) It's exhausting to explain to so many people why this is a problem, and 2) Not all of them will react like it's not a mountain. Some will react like several of the answers here suggest: defensively, arguing that the student has no reason to be offended and is wrong for even bringing up the possibility that they might be offended.

As a general rule, I don't think it is helpful to add speculated facts to the situations described in posts.

Most likely, this is just a thing you need to deal with.
Not a Thing that you need to Deal With.

A student who regularly attends these sessions recently confided in me that the TA has made two statements to them that they perceived as microaggression

Note that there isn't enough context to discern what's going on here.
There are lots of possibilities (not all equally likely). For example:

The TA genuinely meant this as a compliment, but the student was offended/genuinely upset.

The student isn't even actually upset, but they Saw Something, so they Said Something. Likely because some entity (like the university) has taught them to report such things.

The TA disliked the student and intended to insult them, and the student (rightly) reported it.

The student disliked the TA, and so is trying to get revenge somehow.

Your response to the student seems to have been as if this was (3), but your response to the TA seems to be with the feeling that this was most likely (1)... when in reality it could be either, or something else entirely.
It's likely too late now, but what I would have done is to follow up as follows:
"I'm sorry about that, I can look into that. To help me understand this better—from your perspective, did you feel this was an innocent/well-intentioned misunderstanding on the TA's part? Or do you feel the TA already understood that this would not be received as a compliment?"
This has a few important effects:

It helps you distinguish which of the above possibilities (or others) you may be dealing with, which is important in deciding how to handle this.

It helps the student do the same if they hadn't already, which they might find useful to think about in future interactions with this TA (and others).

It helps the student see that you won't immediately overreact or underreact.

Specifically, I am looking for advice about what to say to my TA.

Obviously this depends on which situation we're dealing with. Since (1) seems like the most likely from your description, this is how I'd respond:
"Hey, so I just had a small bit of student feedback I wanted to relay to you. From what I understand, you complimented one of the students at some point. I'm sure you genuinely meant well... but unfortunately, they didn't seem to have appreciated it, so I just wanted to let you know so you can be more mindful of it moving forward."

If the TA asks what the incident was, you can provide details as much as you feel you're able to.

If the TA is genuinely surprised and doesn't realize why their comment may have come across poorly, you can reply with something like: "My guess is that the student might have already grown up speaking English (which you might not have realized), in which case the compliment would've seemed out of place."

If the TA still seems genuinely confused at why a compliment can come across negatively (not too likely, but possible): "I'm not sure, but say, if you can imagine being complimented on counting correctly from 1 to 10... perhaps that's kind of similar to how it might've come across?"

And honestly... for something like (1), that ought to be more than enough.
Someone made a well-intentioned comment, someone else didn't appreciate it, you communicated the problem, and everyone (hopefully) understood what went wrong and things will improve.

Most answers are addressing how to interact with the TA, and have offered a variety of fine suggestions.
Aside from that, I believe your first consideration needs to be to the student, who needs to be directly asked if there's anything that is preventing them from getting the help they need with the course, and if they feel that there is, work with them to find them the support they need and are entitled to.

I am not an expert on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues, nor do I regularly supervise teaching assistants.

Your first step should be to seek training on how to supervise teaching assistants.  I do not know about your field, but training materials are available for my field.

the TA has no formal training in education

Your university is failing your students by providing untrained TAs.  The place to "start the conversation" is to speak with administrators about fixing this.
To directly address this particular incident, you might follow my previous answer; question the TA about their comments with an open mind and then educate them.

"Your university is failing your students by providing untrained TAs" This seems like a strong exaggaration, based on a very specific perspective on tertiary education.

@JochenGlueck I have been taught by the untrained TA, I've been that TA, I've been taught by the experts on TA training, and I've read a few of their journal articles (in PRPER).  I am not aware of any scholarship supporting the use of untrained TAs.  Some data sets suggest the TA is the most important factor in student success.

Please note that I'm not saying it were better to use untrained TAs. I'm saying the claim that using untrained TAs would fail the students is a strong exaggeration. For what it's worth, I've also been taught by untrained TAs, I've also been that TA, and I also had such TAs for courses I taught. I did not get the impression that this would fail the students. I wouldn't object against getting the TAs some training, though - it might make a bit of a difference. I'm just not confident that, given realistic conditions for such training, the difference would be large.


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How do you convey your idea when you can't convey your idea?
I am PhD student works in a computer science. I have given lots of presentations in the institute level and one or two at the conference level. I have been told by my fellow researchers that they did not get much from my presentations/talks. Even I have presented one paper in the conference also and got the same feedback. I spend more time on making slides as well practise at least two three times on the projector also. I think I am kind of person who is worst at presenting the work. Assuming this Is there any way through which I can deliver a good talk?

There are a lot of reasons that this might be true and a proper answer would depend on more information about what the "objections" are. We can only speculate.

Yes, it's hard to say without more detail. For example, "not get[ting] much" could be either a failure to communicate the key contribution (the "intellectual merit" or "broader impact"; they see the detail but not the "so what" or the two-sentence version of what you're doing) or a failure to communicate relevant details (they can't follow your explanation; there are details obvious only to you).

Remember Jake's Aphorism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN43sCyEanA

I don't think we can answer this; you need advice from people who have seen your presentations and understand what the specific problem is.

Consider joining a group like Toastmasters. They can give you practical feedback in an encouraging environment.

I'm also not great at presenting. One method I've found useful is to present to and get feedback from people who have around the same level of knowledge as your intended audience (i.e. people who are not too heavily involved in your project, but are in your research field). This means they will be able to tell you which parts you need to explain in more detail.
Also, look at other people's presentations to see what's the standard level of technical detail in your field - I've seen presentations where the focus should be on the scientific analysis and results, but instead too much time is spent on the minutia of how the analysis was performed.

Yes, it is usually an error to be overly pedantic. If that is the problem, then focus on the main insights to be gained from the work.

The truth is you need more detailed feedback than "I didn't get much out of it". Why, and when, did you lose your audience? Did they not understand your problem statement? Did they not understand your approach? Was it a language problem? Were you speaking too fast, too softly, or too unclearly? Did you use too much jargon without explaining it? Was the talk too technical (or, much more rarely, not technical enough)? Was the talk too boring to pay attention to?
What you need is to practice your talk in front of a small audience of people who are willing to give you direct and detailed feedback, ideally slide-by-slide. Only once you know what the most important problems are you can work on resolving them.
If your problem is literally about conveying your idea (i.e., describing the technical contribution of the paper in an understandable manner) my experience is that people undervalue two concepts:

Having a really good illustrative example. Ideas are hard to follow if they are presented in the abstract, with As and Bs and Ns. Have a good, plausible (if small) example, and show how your approach works for it.
Having good visualizations (that are made specifically for the presentation, not just a figure from the paper). Powerpoint animations have a bad rep, but for some types of research (e.g., some algorithms) a couple of animations make it much easier to work out what's going on than a code listing or a couple of text bullets.

I find Simon Peyton Jones' talks immensely useful. They offer practical advice and tips, and are catered to a CS audience. Apart from that, as @Emma says, there isn't really much cleverness to it - just practice until you're at least a passable speaker. Solicit feedback from your peers and advisors, and don't get discouraged.

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Production team ignored me for over 30 days and went ahead to publish article (online, not yet in print) - what are my options?
Summary: My paper was accepted to a journal; I realized they missed a handful of edits (which do not alter the findings or conclusion) and emailed them right after to change these things. They ghosted me for two weeks, posted an unedited version of the article online (not assigned to journal yet) and ghosted me for another two weeks. I spent about 20 hours trying to contact someone from the publisher, including calling offices across the US and the UK, and 30 days in total without contact until just this week. I'm super frustrated/angry. What can I do to get my paper corrected? Should and can I withdraw the paper?
My paper was accepted to a journal I like and have supported in the past with peer reviewing and the like. I am a post-doc. It's my dissertation work so I feel quite wed to it. I signed the authorship agreement once it was accepted - and to be honest had never really thought too critically about these agreements until now. I had some technical issues with the correction proofs, but could not get ahold of anyone for three weeks to assist, and noticed once the edited proof was available, it was missing a handful of edits I had made in the correction/editing process.
This was Nov 8/9 when the proofs were available online for the author (me) to view (and apparently approve).
Immediately, I contacted them:

on November 10th - asking them to implement these changes, followed up once after this to the production editor (who I was previously conversing with) and heard nothing.

Without any contact, it was e-published on November 28th without the corrections - e.g. available online and not assigned to an issue, but has a DOI.

I continued to follow up with the production editors and the editor of the journal. The editor of the journal felt very bad and tried to help me get in touch with the production team. Various secretaries from the publisher also have tried to help and "escalate" the matter. Outside of this, no contact from any of the production team.

I have a log of over 30 attempts to get in touch with someone from the production team over these 30 days. This includes a whirlwind of suggested people I contact, calls, and emails. Throughout this, the editor of the journal has been in touch and apologized for how unreachable the publishing editors have been.

Over this final week or so, I have been and am quite frustrated as the lack of contact continued. This is now almost three weeks after it has appeared online. As no one contacted me, I asked the journal editor and publishing team / editors for the article to be withdrawn, and that I no longer wished to work with this publisher. The Journal editor apologized for the lack of continued radio silence.

Finally, on Dec 9 I received a response from a contact I received through the chain - someone on the publishing team. Her response was really great, it acknowledged the unprofessionalism of what had occurred, said she would follow up to ensure it didn't happen again, and said she can already see the withdrawal request is being processed, as it should not have gone to the e-print stage without contact, and she would keep me posted.

The next morning, Dec 10, another woman contacts me to say she is taking over the case and that it cannot be withdrawn.

She said they will work with me to make the edits and issue a correction - however I made clear in an earlier email I was leaving for a personal / mental health leave as of Dec 10, and although I tried to resolve this before then - I no longer wish to move forward. She said since I would be on a leave they would just review my email chain and implement the changes. If I proceeded with the later (though I don't want to) I believe it's reasonable that I'd need to look over the entire article, my notes, and the correction proofs in detail to trace all the missed corrections.

Is it odd to feel this mistreated by the publisher in this case? I have spent 20+ hours calling and emailing the publishers NY, Philly and UK offices, staying up late at night to try to reach individuals in the UK (I'm in Canada) during work hours, and sourcing new people in the chain to contact.

I don't feel they deserve to capitalize on this work considering they essentially ghosted me for 30+ days and proceeded with e-publication without contact. Also, this has caused quite a bit of stress and anxiety which likely elevated my need for a mental health leave - tied into other work/home issues.

This is my first publication, but I am leaving academia and don't really care to publish this work right now, so I am inclined to want to stand my ground. I really don't think authors should be treated this way. But this is my only experience, really - is this typically and I just need to deal with it?

My big questions are:

is withdrawal ever an option in a case like this, where the author feels mistreated and wants to pull the publication? If not, are there any other courses of action that function similarly?

Can I leverage the fact that one email said they were already implementing the withdrawal process, only to be rescinded the next day?

Do I just edit the paper, spill into my personal leave to sort this?

Do I escalate this to a copyright lawyer, if so - do I need to first contact my institution? Should it be the institution's law team or can I hire someone to send a letter? Am I completely bound by the copyright agreement or is there ever a case for authors withdrawing their permission?

I write for national newspapers and have a blog on a national media site, is it reasonable to tell them I will work with them on the edits if that is my only option, but I will make it extremely known to my colleagues, networks and social media platforms what this process has been like, and that they proceeded with publication against my wishes?

Social media pressure is very effective - lots of « big » institutions react to that faster than individual emails...

Any chance to summarize this?

What was the nature of the missing edits? Are the results or conclusions weakened or invalid without them, or are they mostly cosmetic (typos, grammar, style, clarity, formatting, image quality, minor errors in equations and the like)?

Yes the TL;DR is my paper was accepted to a journal; I realized they missed a handful of edits (which do not alter the findings or conclusion) but I emailed them right after to change these things; they ghosted me for two weeks, posted an unedited version of the article online (not assigned to journal yet) and ghosted me for another two weeks. spent about 20 hours trying to contact someone from publisher, including calling offices across US and UK, and 30 days in total without contact until just this week. Super frustrated/angry with publishers.

@JayBallerit Maybe push the TL;DR into the main body of your question. Regarding your question, is it plausible that the journal posted the "unedited version...online" as a preprint, rather than the final version? Hence, they expected to replace that preprint with the edited version once it was finished?

Depending on your legal jurisdiction, they violated your author's rights of (1) choice of publication date and (2) integrity of the work. It is important to figure out if you agreed to waive these rights (implicitly in terms and conditions or explicitly in a contract). I did not read all the specifics of your previous communication due to length.
If you did not waive your author rights and these rights apply in your jurisdiction [1] you could indicate you're considering legal recourse unless you get a chance to copy-edit your article and provide them with a timeframe to reply. If they don't, you could follow through with it.
This happens frequently and needs to be changed IMO, so it is worth considering the public outreach you're mentioning. Publishers love their copyright and legal frameworks when it comes to sharing articles, so they should also be kept to it in their production processes.
[1] continental Europe has a strong tradition of these, Anglo-Saxon countries like UK and USA less so, I am not knowledgable about other regions

In the US, copyright is generally considered to take the place of authorship rights for most things.  In this case, it would be necessary to know what OP had signed off on.  If OP retains copyright, and had not yet agreed to publication (and check any contract and correspondence to see if it didn't sneak in), the author would have a legal case in the US.  Any damages awarded would be insignificant, as (unless the work was registered with the Copyright Office) the OP would have to show actual harm in monetary terms.

I did sign the standard copyright agreement which grants them copyright, and also agreed to publication. This was before the editing process started.

What does "violated your author's rights of...choice of publication date" mean? Specifically, when do authors ever get to choose the publication date?

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


text:
Export Google Scholar search for fine-grained analysis
Problem
I recently started to survey an algorithm described in a paper. I would like to include some variants of this algorithm in my survey.
One natural choice is to use "cited by" feature in Google Scholar. It could return a new search of the papers that cite the previous one (see below).

Since there are 1342 papers, it is not feasible to read all of them (even just abstracts) within short period of time. I made a heuristic for selecting "interesting" papers

Only read the papers that have more than some number of citations (say K).

which means I will only have to read papers that in turn have more than K "cited by" number.
Even though this heuristic is unfair for newly published papers, I believe it could indeed help me narrow down my scope.
However, the issue is Google Scholar does not have features to support my heuristic (something like advanced search supported by other databases might). So my problem is

How do I download the search results from my Google Scholar query with all the meta data, including "cited by" information.
If the previous point is not possible, is there another tool that could help me?

Could someone help me. Thank you in advance!

Answer to the similar question with code example: academia.stackexchange.com/a/147115/10624

Google scholar is a commercial product developed by Alpha. Please address your concerns to them.
Please remember that if a commercial product is for free, you are paying for it in some other way.

There is no API for google scholar data. They do that on purpose ...
 Here are links to some possible workarounds

https://pypi.org/project/scholarly/
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-04190-5
https://serpapi.com/google-scholar-api

Answer to the similar question with code example: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/147115/10624

You can scrape Google Scholar Search Results using BeautifulSoup web scraping library.
Check code in online IDE:
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
import requests
import re
import json

headers = {
    "User-Agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/103.0.5060.53 Safari/537.36"
}

params = {
    "hl": "en",     # language of the search
    "q": "covid",   # search query
    "num": 100,     # number of results per page. In this case, 100 results per page
}

response = requests.get(
    "https://scholar.google.com/scholar", params=params, headers=headers
)

soup = BeautifulSoup(response.content, "lxml")

organic_results_data = []

for organic_result in soup.select(".gs_r.gs_or.gs_scl"):
    title = organic_result.select_one(".gs_rt a").text
    snippet = organic_result.select_one(".gs_rs").text

    cited_by_match = re.search(
        r"Cited by (?P<cited_by_count>\d+)",
        organic_result.select_one(".gs_or_btn.gs_nph+ a").text,
    )
    cited_by_count = int(cited_by_match.groupdict().get("cited_by_count"))

    organic_results_data.append(
        {"title": title, "snippet": snippet, "cited_by_count": cited_by_count}
    )

print(json.dumps(organic_results_data, indent=2))

Example output:
[
  {
    "title": "Thoracic imaging tests for the diagnosis of COVID‐19",
    "snippet": "Background The respiratory illness caused by SARS‐CoV‐2 infection continues to present \ndiagnostic challenges. Our 2020 edition of this review showed thoracic (chest) imaging to be …",
    "cited_by_count": 186
  },
  {
    "title": "An overview of COVID-19",
    "snippet": "… 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) officially named the disease resulting from \ninfection with SARS-CoV-2 as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). COVID-19 represents …",
    "cited_by_count": 333
  },
  {
    "title": "COVID-19 and multiorgan response",
    "snippet": "… COVID-19 has demonstrated a wide spectrum of clinical … multiorgan impact of COVID-19 \nreported since its outbreak. … If a paper is reporting on many aspects of the COVID-19, then the …",
    "cited_by_count": 729
  },
  # ...
]

Alternatively, you can use the free open-source package scholarly.
Example from its documentation.
>>> search_query = scholarly.search_keyword('Haptics')
>>> scholarly.pprint(next(search_query))
{'affiliation': 'Postdoctoral research assistant, University of Bremen',
 'citedby': 56666,
 'email_domain': '@collision-detection.com',
 'filled': False,
 'interests': ['Computer Graphics',
               'Collision Detection',
               'Haptics',
               'Geometric Data Structures'],
 'name': 'Rene Weller',
 'scholar_id': 'lHrs3Y4AAAAJ',
 'source': 'SEARCH_AUTHOR_SNIPPETS',
 'url_picture': 'https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=medium_photo&user=lHrs3Y4AAAAJ'}


text:
Do the students have a right to know the name and quealifications of the person that marks their work?
A student hands in his coursework. When he gets it back, the comments on the paper are incorrectly stating that the student exceeded the word count (they didn't). They are also incorrect on specific items.
The student points out these errors and asks

who marked the paper and
whether the mark could be improved, given the wordcount wasn't exceeded.

The university refuses to give the name of the marker and to improve the mark even by a single point.
Can they get away with that? If they are not giving the name of the marker, then there must be something wrong. Are there any justifications ?

So what is your question? (I can't see one in the body of your post, and the answer to the question in the title is obviously "It depends (on the country, the university, ...)")

Unfortunately this is likely going to depend on your university regulations. There is almost certainly a formal appeal process that can be followed.

Who did you contact? Since you refer to "the university" I assume you contacted some administrative unit within the university. In all universities I know, they would be the wrong persons to contact; they cannot do anything in situations like these. So that is good news: you are not in conflict with the university (yet), you just asked the wrong person. The person to contact is the person teaching this course (or coordinating this course, if there are multiple people teaching that course). This is the person to speak to, not the person who graded your work.

Sometimes I let TAs grade work. However, in that case I am still responsible. For starters, the TAs are still learning to teach. So, if some mistake happend, you would have to talk to me, and not the TA. Moreover, I would not tell you which TA graded your work. I would talk to the TA myself. So that would be a case where you would not know who graded your work.

Is not the right thing to do is let them mark the paper and you moderate it?

What do you hope to achieve by finding out who did the grading? What would be your next step, once you had that information?

I decide the grades. If the TAs grade, then they do the work, but I, and only I, make the final decision. So you only talk to me, because I am the only one who can change your grade. My talk with the TA if (s)he made a mistake, is only there to be a learning experience for her or him. Learning experiences of other people are none of your business.

No, you don't have the right to the name of the marker if they are another student. The professor is ultimately responsible for the actions of TAs, so the first appeal is properly to them.
You have a moral right to a fair judgement of your work, but that is really all. If you don't get that, then you have a right to complain and seek redress, but what happens depends on university rules and such.
You can make an assumption, of course about the qualifications of graders, but only in general. They are people who are trusted by the professor and have enough knowledge to settle most (but not all) issues. But privacy rules/regulations/laws don't require, or possibly even permit, the names to be released. This is to prevent harassment, especially of people who are caught in the middle and have little power to affect things.

Hi Buffy - There is no professor and nobody is taking responsibility - International students are paying 15 K - is it right their papers are marked by TA and if they were that is not a problem if someone puts their name to the paper - Uni's are public bodies and therefore have a duty of care

Why is there no professor? That isn't making sense to me.  Someone must have overall responsibility.

It does not matter who marked. There is one person or entity who is responsible for the integrity of the mark, and that's where you appeal and, if unsuccessful, OP has to escalate the appeal process.

No all modules have a professor - if you mean the head of the school - yes there is. However, the point I am trying to find out is - what justifications are there to withold the name of the marker. And it is not just the mark Uni's are public bodies they should be open and accountable by hiding the name of markers I think they are in breach of that duty

@HCochrane which country are you in? What I think is causing some confusion here is that in the academic world most of us are familiar with, any class has a professor (or lecturer) who is in charge. There is no such thing as a class with no instructor who is accountable for grading decisions and whose name students will know, but maybe in your country there is. This is important for the purposes of offering you useful advice, so maybe you can clarify?


text:
Why are faculty positions in Management Information System (MIS) going down?
A few years ago, for every fresh PhD graduate in Management Information System (MIS), there were three open faculty positions. Then the ratio of graduates to positions dwindled to 1:2, then to 1:1.5, later to 4:1. Finally, MIS departments all over started shutting down or being merged into Management, Operations or other departments and today hardly any schools offer a PhD in MIS.
It is possible that there are still many fields where for every PhD graduate there are two, three or more open faculty positions. Are there any areas with faculty shortages these days? Animal Sciences? Genetics? Psychology? Sociology? Wildlife Sciences? Mechanical Engineering? Computer Science? Statistics? Any field at all?

well, I can tell you that's a negative on psychology

I'm pretty sure that's due to economy.

Here's a little exercise you can do: estimate how many Ph.D.s are produced per faculty member over the course of that faculty member's career. Assume some fraction of these students want faculty positions.  Calculate the expected number of open faculty positions per Ph.D. graduate. You write "A few years ago for every fresh PhD graduate in Management Information System (MIS), there were three open faculty positions." If so, it implies that the field is (was) very new, which is the way around the "equilibrium" above.

Having a faculty positions to PhD graduates ratio of more than 1 is very very unusual. It only happens if there is a new and extremely hot area. Inevitably the ratio will return to normal which is considerably below 1.

I believe in economics they call this "supply and demand". High demand + low supply (new field) --> lots of people enter the field --> high supply + high demand --> positions rapidly filled, but many people still in pipeline --> low demand + high supply --> fewer jobs to go around.

Another point is the reduction of direct state-provided research funding. Temporary PhD or PostDoc positions can have funding allocated and at the end, there is no obligation to keep this people on if the funding dries up. In contrast, a researcher with a permanent position will still need to be paid. (Though more and more of these positions are also dependent on obtaining funding...) - Add to that, the direct cost of employment for a PhD-student or PostDoc is also lower than for permanent faculty staff.

@Raghu Parthasarathy this should be the answer.

At least for central Europe, the number of faculty positions is definitely going down, but instead there is more money for project-based PhD positions. Unfortunetly these are usually just for three years, a timespan in which, at least in my field, most students are not able to finish. So PhD students employed in a project often become project hoppers or are unemployed towards the end of their PhD.
In general, this development from faculty positions to project-based positions is not all bad, since it requires the PIs and professors to constantly improve. The downside is the time lost for writing grant proposals and the uncertainty if a position will be funded or not.

I don't think this answer applies to all fields and all countries.  Can you be more specific about where your answer comes from?

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


text:
Can I ask my supervisor how long would it take to complete my PhD before beginning my PhD studies and post getting acceptance letter?
Can I ask my supervisor how long would it take to complete my PhD before beginning my PhD studies and after getting my acceptance letter? If so, what would be the best way to do so?
Country: US/Canada
Duration: It is not open ended like Europe. Depends on Professor here.

What country do you intend to study in? Some places it is quite open ended. Others it is strictly time limited. But the most likely answer to such a question is that it is entirely up to you, but non-zero years.

@Buffy Added details in question. I am looking for US/Canada.

Actually, in some places in Europe there is a strict limit.

@Buffy Yes, I am aware. I am not looking for Europe. But, in US/Canada and would like to ask my supervisor how long it takes to graduate.

You seem to think that if you have done the time, you get a PhD.  It doesn't work that way.  If there is a time limit, you will be kicked out when time runs out.  The time duration of a PhD depends on the student (his/her background), and experience of his/her supervisor.

If you say something about why this question is important to you, I might be able to provide some general advice.

Scientific PhDs in some European countries like France and the UK have quite strict time limits.

@MisterMak True, but these are for enrolment/stipends. If you fail to finish within time, payment is at the discretion of your PI and you'll no longer be enrolled at University but you can re-enroll to submit your thesis, mostly without any hassle (at least in the UK) at pretty much any time.

It would be simpler and best to ask "what is the average time of completion for your PhD students?"

This question doesn't really make sense, the supervisor has relatively little control over how long it takes for a student to produce a thesis.  Questions you could ask which do make sense:

How long is funding guaranteed, and in practice what happens when students run out of guaranteed funding?
Do you have any additional standards or requirements for a thesis, such as requiring it to include an accepted paper, or requiring it to consist solely of singly-authored material?
How long have your students typically taken to graduate, and what factors played a role in that time?
How does a students career choices effect your advising process?

(The reason the last point is relevant is that if you want a research job it's quite simple, if you have good enough research to get a postdoc and you've actually written pages then you'll graduate.  But for a student with teaching or industry career goals there's more flexibility in trying to get a student out more quickly with a more minimal thesis.  Some advisors may be more understanding about a student's prioritizing getting out quickly for career reasons rather than produce the most compelling thesis.)

In the US anyways, you are probably best off consulting the program first, rather than the supervisor. PhD programs will typically advertise some statistics on time to completion, like mean/median completion date, and possibly "% complete by ____ years". I would look for this information first.
In most cases PhD durations in the US are indeed open-ended, in contrast to what your question suggests; unless otherwise specified, there will be no strict duration either for an individual advisor or program. There may be upper limits, but most students will strive to graduate well within these limits.
If you do ask your prospective supervisor, I'd start by asking about their past students rather than a prediction (or promise) for you. As mentioned by others and in the comments, PhDs are not about putting a set number of years in and walking away with a degree, they're about taking the necessary time to grow as a researcher and write a suitable thesis. Different people complete the process at different rates. Time limits tend to come as funding runs out and although they can sometimes accelerate process towards a degree (and convince a committee/advisor to help you expedite things a bit) they also represent the point of failure, the date at which you no longer have support to continue and must leave without a PhD. This scenario is not really in anyone's interest: the advisor, the student, the committee, the graduate program all want you to succeed.

You can ask, of course, but don't expect to be able to hold anyone to a definite answer. You should probably just ask for a "typical" time to completion provided that you pass comprehensives. They can tell you with some accuracy how long it has taken other students of theirs, provided they have some supervising experience already.
But if they say three years (or seven), it is very tentative. There can be many delays along the way, which is why I mention comps. And, once you take on a research project, there is no real way to schedule a successful end. That is because research is inherently open ended. Some questions are "too easy" and have no substance and then need to be abandoned. Others are too hard and little progress can be made.
If the supervisor has a lot of experience they can make a better estimate than otherwise, and is probably better at helping you find the right project, but it is up to you to stay focused and make proper progress. But they can't predict with certainty how long you will take because there are too many indeterminate elements.

Definitely good to ask about typical times and what happens if you run over.  Note in North America that some forms of funding run out after a certain duration; for instance the department might only guarantee full funding for the expected time of 4 years.  Funding agencies may also not accept to pay students much after the expected time.

Yes, you can, but you can't trust him. That's my experience of professors. It takes just as long as he likes, and that depends on your personal qualities and the needs of the lab. Of course, this may be different in the US if the period is limited by the university. Then a good guess is that it takes just as long as it can.
College life is full of as***les, and you should accept that fact, if you embark on this career. Later on, if you make sufficient friends and establish yourself, you can gain success pleasantly fast, but do not accept that in the start of your career.

Well, unfortunately, I should agree with you because the things you said are pretty much correct.

Well yes.  But you may well encounter similar people in industry as well.  And other people doing PhDs won't necessarily have the same (bad) experiences as you.  (I didn't!)


text:
How to write formally about skipping one year of highschool on CV
I’m writing a CV to apply to graduate schools right now. I’ve ran into problems translating some things in the CV.
How do I write the fact that I skipped one year of highschool formally? Should I just write -2016~2017: Highschool (skipped one year)? Or does this seem too informal?

What's the reason you need to mention high school?

Oh the school was a gifted highschool that is very competitive to get into. (Government funded Science Highschool in Korea) Therfore I just thought that it would work in favor of my application. However in retrsoepct, I’m pretty sure Americans wouldn’t know about that..

Is it weird to mention my highschool in the CV?

If your undergraduate performance doesn't match or exceed the prestige of attending that high school, then it will look as if you are not living up to your potential. If your undergraduate performance exceeds the prestige of attending that high school, then it doesn't matter -- and even then saying you attended could hurt, since even if you exceeded the prestige of attending that high school, some people might assume your attending that high school provided you with advantages not provided to others in the application pool, thereby possibly lowering their assessment of your aptitude.

Ahha thank you! I have been persuaded by your logic. I will remove them in the CV, thank you for the insight:)

That said, there can be times when it is appropriate to mention something from high school. For example, if someone received a bronze (or higher) medal in the IMO, then it's almost certainly to that person's advantage to include this in an application to a graduate math program (indeed, I can't think of an exception), regardless of what that person accomplished as an undergraduate.

@DannyHan If you mention if in your CV, it might suggest that "skipping high school for a year" was one of your most important accomplishments so far. Is that what you want to tell the grad school?

Is skipping a year of school the same concept as skipping a day in school?

I assume the OP refers to skipping a grade, i.e. completing high school in a year less than normal.

Is this a US-type grade school application, i.e. you come from college, or have you done a full 8-10 semester university education?

@Karl It is a US grad school application (i.e. I come from a 8 semester university education)

@alephzero: I'd be surprised if the majority of phd appliciants had skipped a year in school or had one bigger acomplishment. I, for one, had neither.

High school attendance is not mentioned on an academic CV.

Well, the first time I was asked for a CV, I was in high school, so there are exceptions ...

I would say that it depends on the country. Mentioning Louis Le Grand, Henri IV or Hoche  as your high school in France would not be surprising. Unusual yes, but not surprising (these are elite high schools, with Hoche being obviously, of course and by far the best one (I therefore announce the war open /s))

quietly deleting high school from my CV

I don't really know about the American system, but I think it depends. For example if your only academic achievements so far are, say, a BSc and a MSc and you have no work experience, and you also got a German Abitur with average grade 1,0, then I would definitely include a line like "2011, Abitur mit Schnitt 1,0". It still wouldn't matter if a grade was skipped because you would just use the year of the diploma.

Fun fact I agree, but then again a company asked me for my highschool grades, after having a bachelor. I politely declined to proceed.

I disagree. I have it on my CV, briefly. As in "1888–1900: Went to school X, passed final exam Y". At least on my German academic CV, in the full version – that thing listing all your papers, all your lectures, and spanning pages and pages on. Admittedly, it got carried over from my student times, but no one ever told me it's that irrelevant. This might be a US thing, thus, EU perception might be different.

Oh, and as a matter of fact, commercial companies were asking funny things. Interim school grades. Interim uni grades. High school diploma when already showing MSc diploma and PhD diploma. sighs Fun!

It also depends on the school system and on what „high school“ means in that context. The same term means different things in the UK and the USA, for example, and it is often used when translating from German school system even though it does not exactly match the system there.

What's the difference between the UK and the US?

I recommend this link to get some idea of the differences: https://www.buzzfeed.com/jameskicksa/i-have-broken-down-the-differences-between-us-and-uk-school

If you absolutely want to mention your high school with a skipped year, maybe because your CV would otherwise be a bit meager or because you went to a very prestigious high school, I would reference it as "accelerated". Academic Acceleration is a formal enough term for a CV, and most academics would probably be aware of the concept and can probably read enough into the term to understand you reference grade skipping.

And you don't have to mention the skipped year. You actually wouldn't even mention the start year! Nobody is interested in it. Simply stating the graduation year is totally sufficient. It's basically the starting point of your academic career.

No one cares about high school once you have your college degree, either in grad school applications or in professions - it's simply not relevant. I'm currently working on my second master's degree and have been working in industry for many years, and I only recall one employer that asked about high school.

Can you mention the countries your experience is about? I had different experience..


text:
"An additional review"
I have recently recieved the reponse from the editor of the submitted journal. At the beginning, the editor wrote "The manuscript requires revision and probably an additional review before a decision can be made on its suitability for publication." . I'd like to know "an additional review" means the editor will find another reviewer? Or just after recieving the revision, he won't make a decision himself but send the revision to the present reviewers? Thanks a lot.

The editor is probably referring to another round of review - more than likely sent to the same reviewers, though this statement does not explicitly say so. Essentially, based on the previous round of reviews it seems the paper need not be rejected outright but requires some major revisions such that reviewers need to evaluate whether those revisions alleviate their concerns.
If the editor meant that it was to be sent to a new reviewer they would have said "an additional reviewer" rather than additional review.
Of course, it's also possible that the editor messed up the English, though I think that is unlikely in this case; the situation sounds pretty clear because of the need for revisions. If a paper needs to go to another reviewer for an editor to make a decision that would usually happen before any revisions (this would normally happen if the previous reviewers disagree, or if the previous reviewers indicate in their review that there are parts of the paper they did not feel qualified to assess).

Thanks for you answer. Excactly as you say, there are 2 reviewers, one thought the work is interesting and worthy of publication, yet the other criticized the lack of novelty and it is not enough for publication.

In addition, the 2nd reviewer gave some comments, franchly according to which, the revision seems somehow infeasible, such as modifying the math model with additional physical quantity. Yet the editor asked me to adquately address the concern of Reviewer 2 about the novelty and highlight it via stronger arguments in the Introduction of the article. Does it mean it is acceptable for Editor that I do not make some structural modifications according to the Reviewer 2?

See related posts like https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27445/how-to-respond-to-an-editors-post-review-comments-suggesting-major-changes-im and https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/89419/what-to-do-when-a-referee-asks-me-to-do-something-impossible-unreasonable/89426 if you think the requests are not reasonable. Otherwise, the sentence you quoted in your OP suggests that the editor expects you to make revisions to appease reviewer 2, and will send those revisions back to both reviewers for their input.

I have found numbers of wise advices in the related posts, it is very helpful, thank you very much.

I read it as 2 reviews that didn't reach a definitive conclusion, and the editor was suggesting a 3rd review was necessary.  In addition, if the outcome were positive, that would mean revision and presumably additional reviews.

@FredDouglis Hmm I can see that reading possible, but I disagree with your order of events. I think if anything the editor is saying revisions are definitely necessary and after revisions, perhaps an additional review ("probably" modifies additional review, there is no "probably" referring to revisions)

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


text:
What grades do I have?
In a two months I will have a bachelors degree from a German University with an degree average (Notendurchschnitt) of 1.8 or 1.9 . My programme uses ECTS Credit Points.
I am in the process of applying to British MSc programmes. They mostly require a Honours degree of "2:1" which, according to one university, is equivalent to "GPA 3.0".
Do I pass these requirements? And is it legit for me to say in my application that I have a GPA of 1.9?
I tried to get my head around these degree specifications but was unable to.

Depends what university you will apply for. However, because the Msc is expensive in the UK, even for the British students, the students tend to look for jobs after Bsc; and therefore some universities accept students with lower grades.
Little bit of advice: Look for the courses in details to cover your interests; For example an Msc in Computer Science at one university might involve more than theory; than the same Msc at another university.

I have covered my finance and will be able to pay the tuition. However I still have the problem that I don't know how to convert my German grades to British grades.
And my question shouldn't mean that I apply just about everywhere. I have a selection of 5 prefered courses on which I have done some research.

2.1 is getting an average of 60% to 70% over 100% of all marks. Is your GPA from 3 (being 100%)?

I am not sure what "GPA from 3" means. In Germany grades are between 1 and 6 with one decimal digit. 1 is the best, 6 is the worst and 4 is the minimum passing grade.

This might help: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9058/how-to-convert-from-one-grading-scheme-to-another


text:
Do graduate admission committees include persons from outside the field?
I am applying for a master's programme in Computer Science in the UK. In my application I am using the term "penetration tester".
Can I assume that everyone in the committee knows what that means? Computer Scientists should, but administrative staff probably won't. Should I explain what the term means?

Always assume there will be people from outside your field on the committee, as well as ones inside your field.

@JessicaB However, any outside people probably won't be the ones making decisions.  (Staff are not on typically on search committees, but there may be an external member for internal oversight.)

You asked one question in the title, but asked a somewhat similar but not the same one in the subject.
Your original question: "Do graduate admission committees include persons from outside the field?"
I'm not really qualified to answer that one.
Your second question, however: "Can I assume that everyone in the committee knows what that means? Computer Scientists should, but administrative staff probably won't. Should I explain what the term means?"
You don't have to explain what it means, but you should explain what you did. I know what a penetration tester is, but I don't how much of a penetration tester you are or if you just sat at a keyboard trying to put in 1234 and other generic passwords at a log-in screen all day.
You can follow the who/what/when/where/why/how guidelines when discussing any role you have taken, even in or out of field. Being too clear, versus not being clear enough, have entirely different effects on your application.
The blurb probably should cover:

Who you are (your position)
What you did (your tasks/projects that you completed)
When you did it (month/year to month/year)
Where you did it (company, who your supervisor was, city, state)
How you did it (if you implemented technology, you can mention it)

The why is not quite objective, so I normally keep it out of the job blurb and in the personal statement or statement of purpose.
I've pulled up a snippet of my own resume (with non-important details removed) of my time as a clinical researcher as an example, so you can see it in action.

University of Someplace Family Medicine, Someplace, SS
Under auspices of Drs. John Doe, Jane Doe, and. John Doe, research mentors,
  as part of a clinical research study analyzing novel testing equipment for [disease] and [disease], June 2009 – June 2010
  Clinical Researcher

Designed and maintained a secure, encrypted database
Took a direct role in obtaining patient consent forms
Evaluated and used novel testing equipment and obtained results
Informed health care providers of procedures and the workings of the equipment
Coordinated work between the clinical site and the research lab
Was critical in determining the effectiveness of a rapid clinical test for [disease] during the [disease] outbreak

I asked the question in the title because I may want to use other technical terms in the rest of the application. So I want to know who I am talking to.
But I can follow your advice there too.

authors: Инженер Касу


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Plagiarism detection software – comparing two long documents
I would like to find out whether one of two long documents plagiarises the other. I’m looking for software or a website that does this but does not store the documents on the server (i.e., the documents should be kept private if possible).  Does such a software exist?
Note that I’m not looking to compare to millions of possible documents, so I don’t need a service like TurnItIn.

You can see my answer here. There is a link to a piece of software that will work well for this purpose. In fact, I think this question is really a duplicate of that question.


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Pedagogy for trustworthy versus untrustworthy news sources through free datasets
Teaching students to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy sources of news has taken on an increased urgency recently, and the Chronicle of Higher Education recently described this as a higher education trend for 2017. Are there any freely available datasets on this issue that are amenable to the pedagogy of statistics?
In particular, I am looking for any dataset on trustworthy versus untrustworthy news sources, or on related issues, such as how the use of different media sources is associated with how well informed a person is. My goal is to integrate one or more datasets into undergraduate statistics courses in psychology, one course for 2nd year students and the other for 4th year. I'm certainly willing to simplify the data for teaching purposes if necessary.

Maybe your question fits better to http://opendata.stackexchange.com ...?!

What exactly should that dataset contain? Whether or not this is being taught at university, or are you looking for examples that could be used while teaching this topic?

There are trustworthy sources of news?


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Etiquette with regard to email consolidation
Background: I am a fourth year math graduate student in the US.
I currently have three active email accounts: personal (gmail), graduate university (windows live), and undergraduate university (also windows live).  Shortly after I began graduate school, I set up the latter two accounts to forward everything to my gmail account.  I vastly prefer gmail's interface to that of windows live, so I almost never even sign into the other two.
I coordinate a student seminar within our department, so I regularly send email messages to the department's list of graduate students.  In an effort to prevent people from spamming that group, the department secretary must approve all messages before they are passed onto the list.  After I sent a message last week, I was reprimanded for not sending it from a university account.  This exchange led me to the following questions:

Do universities/departments ever a formal policy in place about the use of "non-official" email accounts?
Do people find it personally bothersome when colleagues don't use their university account for professional correspondence?
Is there anything I absolutely should not send via a "non-official" account?  (There's a good chance FERPA could be involved here...)

Any responses to these questions or related comments are much appreciated.
Note: I am aware that options exist within gmail that allow it to send email via another account that I own.  It is likely that this will probably be my solution to this problem, but the question I'm specifically asking is about the ramifications of continuing to send mail without the use of this feature.

Not a gmail user, but I am pretty sure that the "option that makes it appear as if gmail is sending mail from another account" is just gmail actually sending emails via the SMTP server of the other account, just like any desktop mail client would too.

From the little I've read, I would believe that to be the case, yes.  I deliberately avoided being specific in that statement since I don't yet completely understand how that mechanism works.  I've revised it to hopefully be more accurate.

A word of warning: if you use your personal email address for academic stuff, you'll never stop receiving academia-related emails. If you choose to use your personal email for academic stuff (that would make it easier to deal with moving institutes), I recommend using an alias.

I only care about number 2 if the email didn't add enough information to identify the sender, or if it a situation where I really need to make sure I am replying to the right person. So, if I am asked "which day does Calculus I start", I don't care about the sender; if I get "when was our meeting?" is OK as long as you say who you are (and the meeting is not classified). If you ask about how you did in your exam, better use your official.

Related: E-mail address to use in publications and Which email address to use in a publication? and As a graduate student, is it better to use a Gmail address or name@mywebsite.com?, with 29 answers in total. We seem to have a thing about email addresses.

Exercise caution assuming gmail can "...send email via another account". I've seen a situation where I did this but one recipient only saw the gmail address and not the university address in their email system. Look up how email headers work for the details.

@kabZX: Correct. The To and From headers will appear as you expect, using send email via another account. There is however, a Sender header that will show the originating Email account.

Two technical comments: (i) With our lists, emails that come from the university network are automatically allowed, and other accounts require manual activation. So not using the university account creates extra work for mailing list admins. (ii) Many people switch institutions along their academic career, and lose accounts through this process. It is more convenient to use a private (non-university) account, as that's more persistent. I've seen especially AP's do this more often than tenured professors.

Basically, in rare circumstances (e.g., I am in a train), when my university account does not work, but I need to send the mail nevertheless, I send it from my private account and CC my university account. Now, the people I write to at least know, that my official account is informed of this email, regardless of other identity issues.

Do universities/departments ever a formal policy in place about the use of "non-official" email accounts?

Yes, at least in Europe most universities seem to at least frown upon using gmail etc. in professional contexts. Whether there is a formal policy against it will differ from place to place. I would not even be able to tell in my current university, as the thought has not really crossed my mind so far. However, our department head is occasionally reminding people informally that they are expected to be using their official mail addresses.
That being said, whether universities with a formal policy exist isn't overly important for you. You should primarily care whether your university has such a policy, and this we cannot answer for you.

Do people find it personally bothersome when colleagues don't use their university account for professional correspondence?

Yes, I personally find it somewhat unprofessional, although I have no particularly strong feelings on this. I do occasionally wonder why people who clearly have an official account of my university specifically choose to send emails to collaborators and students via an account like cookiemonster93@gmail.com. It can't be that they prefer the gmail user experience, because, as you say yourself, it is very easy to use gmail also with non-gmail accounts.
However, note that even using the gmail web client as a frontend for your regular university accounts may already be a breach of policy. At least here in Switzerland, universities are not happy about the mailings of their employees being uploaded to Google (but then again they certainly wouldn't use Windows Live either, so maybe your universities care less about data privacy than the ones over here).

Is there anything I absolutely should not send via a "non-official" account? (There's a good chance FERPA could be involved here...)

I'm not in the US, so I cannot comment on FERPA, but in my university basically everything that has to do with students, assignments, tests, or grades needs to be sent encrypted with the certificate that is bound to our university identity. This also automatically excludes sending it over a different mail address. Every "official" communication needs to at least be sent digitally signed using said certificate, which again excludes other mail accounts.

In my experience in Sweden and Spain, many people combine their professional and personal emails and no one seems to care. Furthermore, my two professional emails in Sweden are provided by Google and Microsoft.

I would encourage you to use the university account for all university-related mail, especially when sending mail to other university accounts or lists.

It looks more professional, anybody who answers to you is sure not to clutter your private inbox (although this does not seem to be a problem for you, the sender does not know).
The university spam filter should produce no problems whatsoever. This is not true with other accounts. Well, a good spam filter should let a well phrased gmail through, but you never know.
I've heard that some universities explicitly do not allow to forward mails from university accounts to any other provider. (In the end the university is responsible to ensure information security and if somebody forwards "business" email to some other account, the "employer" can not guarantee anything.)

The second point can be extremely important. If you send some "notice of removal" or some withdrawal from some exam you really, really want that this message does not end in the spam filter.
Personally, I keep private and professional accounts separated and feel slightly weird if I, accidentally, send a university email from my private account. Since I am aware that this can happen accidentally, it does not feel to strange to receive emails from personal accounts of colleagues but I usually assume that this was by accident. I have very few colleagues who use a non-university account for email communication (I guess less that 1%).

One area not touched on yet is the open-record laws of wherever you may be. In the US, if you are a GRA or GTA and your university is a state-university and they classify you as a state employee (full-time or part-time), it is possible that your work-related emails could be subject to an open-records request (may be called a Sunshine law in your state).
There's a lot of maybes in there because it depends a great deal on the laws of the state and how you might be classified. But, as a student organization president when in undergrad, I had many open-records requests for my emails by the campus newspaper and a few others related to funding of events and budgets. The campus legal department made me turn over access to my account for review (we knew this was possible and so we maintained our own server/email addresses for organization business). It is possible that as a grad student, similar requests could be made and it is possible that you might be obligated to provide access.
Generally the scope of such requests is limited to content related to work, but having somebody go through your emails to decide what is personal and what is work related may not be desirable, and that may be enough of a reason to ensure all work-related emails go through a university account.

As mentioned by a few, one of the most important considerations (from an American perspective) is that if you are at a public university your e-mails are often considered to be public record and may be obtained using a FOIA or (or at the state level, FOIA-like) request.  Attempting to work around that to avoid public disclosure may itself by a legal violation.  If as a student I got an e-mail from a professor from a non-university account with the worksheet, etc, that was needed, I could simply not do it and have relatively easy grounds to appeal a 0.
The annoyance, for me, in receiving e-mail from colleagues from the personal accounts is simply that I have filters to help me through the hundred or two e-mails I get a day.  While Department_Head@myschool.edu gets flagged bright red and transferred automatically to a high priority folder, and students' e-mails go into a special folder based on class, an e-mail from lolzkats1993@yahoo.com for me will be stuck in the murky general inbox that may or may not be read for days or weeks (if ever).
But with FERPA an important consideration is disclosure of academic records.  By using an e-mail system that lacks the blessing of the school IT / legal department, you could potentially be leaking those records.  The bigger concern is for the flip side, though: sending e-mails to people that don't use their university e-mail account.  Consider the e-mail from a student's personal address, we'll say, JaneDoe@fubar.com.  Jane Doe is in your class.  How should you respond?  You should not disclose that the student is enrolled in your class, and you should definitely not give grades over that e-mail — you don't know if that actually is her account.  It could be former abusive spouse trying to track her down, could be a private investigator trying to phish the information, etc.  I always a respond to anyone in such circumstances:

Although I read all e-mail sent to me at this address, due to FERPA concerns, your e-mail appears to be one that, if you are a student, should be sent through your official university account to receive a response.  If you are related to someone who is a student, you should contact the Dean of Student's office instead.

No one has ever gotten mad about it and all promptly e-mail me back from an official account, often thanking me for showing consideration for their privacy.  For students who have had medical emergencies, etc, the Dean of Student's office can handle many things much better, and occasionally if it's an e-mail about an emergency or similar urgent situation, I'll add something to the effect of "but speaking generally, if a student were in X situation, I'd recommend Y".

You are so well organized!  Very inspiring.  By the way, +1 for the answer.


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Should I mention a magazine article written about my research in my CV?
How does getting into non-submission based magazines appear?  For instance, if R&D magazine took an article about my work (NOT an actual research paper) and published it in their magazine, would this be something I would want to mention on my CV/résumé or would I even bother listing it at all?

I don't understand what you mean by "non-submission-based." Presumably you submit the article to the magazine, right?

No.  R&D magazine does not accept submissions.  They find science they like published elsewhere and then write about it on their website.  I'm pretty sure R&D is well-known though.

Related: How to cite interviews for radio and TV on CV

It's unclear from your question whether the piece published in R&D was actually written by you, or was written by someone else (one of their reporters / contributers) on the subject of your work.  In the former case you could put it on your CV (with some notation that it is not peer reviewed); in the latter you should not, because it wasn't written by you.

@NateEldredge True, but I have certainly seen something like "has appeared numerous times in TV and print media" in CVs, presumably to indicate wide impact of one's work.

It depends on where you are applying to. You should mention it in your CV if you think it would impress the hiring committee. It seems unlikely that mentioning it would work against you.

I saw some researcher having "media coverage" or "general impact" columns in their CVs, see e.g. this example.
Other way to go (which I do) is to append to the respective publications "featured by [The Economist/Technology Review/2014 Highlights of [this journal]/John Smith's blog]".
IMHO as long you are not overdoing it, it should be a plus.

An article about your research in a broad, application-oriented journal certainly highlights the application potential of your research, and this would be something that you want to show in most applications also for academic positions.
However, I'm not sure how this could be integrated well within an academic CV. Usually you also have a research statement that describes your research activities, and I think it might fit better there. You could generally discuss the (potential) practical impact of your research, and then cite such an article to support your statement.
If such an article would refer to a specific research paper you published, it may also be an option to mention it in your publication list as "featured by ...".

I think the key lies in what you mean by "your CV". I personally have a master file for my CV which includes all kinds of information I consider is useful to highlight my person and my work in a wide sense. I then pick and chose from this file to tailor for the specific use and limitations that come up.
So my answer to you will be: it depends. You need to consider what may be useful for each time you are required to provide a CV. In many cases, publications in a popular science context can be considered quite valuable whereas they may not be in other cases. I therefore recommend you to consider keeping a master file where you add the sort of publications you refer to under some appropriate heading. You can then decide if you want to add these in the particular case. If you end up with lots of low impact reports etc. you can consider shortening a list to a sentence stating, for example, that you have written X articles in popular science for the following journals: Journal , Journal Y etc.
So, make sure you save all kinds of positive outcomes you have from your work and carefully select what you submit in the end. A single popular science article may not excite many (depending on publishing venue) but if you aggregate a more substantial list over time, it shows your interest to share science with the general public which is sought after with, particularly, (public) funding agencies.


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How does a graduate admissions committee consider junior/senior grades that are not yet available?
When transcripts are submitted as part of your graduate admission's package, how can the graduate admissions staff consider your junior/senior grades, when your applying to the program a year in advance? Basically, when you submit your transcript, you will only have your freshmen, sophomore, and junior grades listed. How do the committee estimate your senior grades when they have not been completed?

You're right, most programs simply don't take 4th-year grades into account. If you want, you can send them an additional transcript once Fall semester grades are released (some schools will request that you do this), but for the most part that's just how admissions works.

Most schools will also ask that you send a final transcript after graduation.  In the event that something problematic turns up at that point, the graduate school may then take further action.

@tonysdg True, but that's only for extreme situations. For the vast majority of applicants who apply during their undergrad, those grades are inconsequential.

I think this answer's assertion is not quite true, unfortunately, based on direct experience both pre-computer/internet and "more recently"... And, as in my answer, I think it's important to understand that this answer is inaccurate not just "on a technicality"... at least for mathematics in the U.S.

It is true that spring semester of your senior year will not be reflected in admissions to grad school (unless, heaven forbid, some disaster occurs...) Fall semester is a different matter. Indeed, you yourself cannot have a formal transcript sent at the common U.S. grad school deadlines, ... but this transcript should be sent as soon as possible after the fall term.
Your letter writers and you (in your statement of purpose) will be expected to comment on and/or refer to your fall term courses, which will mostly continue into spring term (in mathematics, for example). Most often, one or more of your letter writers will be the instructors for your fall-term courses, whether or not they were your instructors or mentors earlier. Thus, although contemporary fashion for deadlines makes things awkwardly early, these senior-year courses matter a great deal. Especially for students in the U.S., very often the sophistication of courses taken senior year vastly exceeds that of anything earlier, even perhaps of summer projects. Students' encounters with this more-substantive mathematics, and their reactions, are very, very important in gauging their reactions to graduate programs.
To exaggerate only slightly: if in an application to math grad school a student has taken the usual somewhat-thin U.S. undergrad curriculum, I (as grad admission committee person) will scarcely care about what they did before senior year, nor what the grades were. In some cases, too-good grades in dull courses can be a back-handed compliment. Mathematical reality is often only distantly approached by senior year...
Perhaps other fields have a different pace...


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Is it possible to be admitted to a masters in Germany with a 3-year bachelors from another country?
I am a Nepali citizen and I have completed a 3 year bachelors from my country. I am planning my masters degree in Germany. Can I directly start my masters or do I have to do some courses?

Schools in Germany typically have an "International Office" or some other similar organization whose responsibilities include the "recognition" of foreign degrees earned outside of Bologna Process countries. If they approve of your bacehlor's degree as functionally equivalent to theirs, you should be fine. They may also ask you to take some additional number of classes to complete the equivalency. However, if too many credits are needed, they may refuse the request.

There is at least some anecdotal evidence that it should be possible: https://www.tum.de/studium/studinews/ausgabe-042015/show-042015/article/32554/  . The portal for the "recognition of foreign exams" suggests that most bachelor's degrees from Nepal are not completely comparable to german bachelors: http://anabin.kmk.org/no_cache/filter/hochschulabschluesse.html (both websites are german only)

Good question! The Bachelor degree in Germany is also three years, as far as I know, so I see no reason for a problem.
Best way to proceed is to write to a professor you want to work with, and ask him.
Be sure when you write to mention the project title for your "bachelor thesis". This is a six-month research project carried out by German students intending to study for a Masters. If you did any kind of big research project in your third year, for which you wrote some kind of report (anything around ten pages or more) you can quote that as equivalent to the Bachelor thesis.
Good luck :-)


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Is the invited author of an editorial always the first author, even if their co-author wrote the whole thing?
I've recently had an experience where I wrote an editorial at the behest of a distant colleague.  He was invited to write it by a journal and asked that I do so with him (for him actually).  Is it still appropriate for him to be first author even though he did not write any of it (but he was the invited author)?

Related: What does author order indicate?, What does first authorship really mean?, What are the minimum contributions required for co-authorship

So did this invited author contribute anything, besides for getting you involved? Are any of the ideas etc in the paper his?

Posting such a question from a profile associated with your real name is not the best practice, and can create some embarrassment for your coauthor (who would be quite easy to identify by anyone reading this once the editorial comes out in print) and potential trouble/awkwardness for you. I recommend you change your account name.

Thank you for the feedback. No, he asked me to choose the topic and write it. He added one comment and a reference. @ff542

Authorship practices vary quite a bit from field to field, but except in those fields where all publications are in alphabetical order, it is expected that the first author should generally be the one who contributed most to the work.  Thus, if you wrote the bulk of the document, then normal academic practice would be for you to be the first author (I assume you are not in an "always alphabetical" field).
An invited editorial is a bit different, since the people soliciting the editorial were probably wanting to get the opinion of the person they invited.  As such, putting you as the first author may cause embarrassment to your colleague and might annoy the journal.  Your colleague should probably have checked with the journal before asking you to write the editorial, rather than trying to conceal their lack of work by claiming first authorship.
To put a person who hasn't done much work as first author, however, is dishonest and will reflect badly on you as well as your colleague.

Thank you for all of the feedback.  I thought I should post a follow-up so that you would know how it all shook out.  The article was picked up by the journal with me listed as second author.  After great reviews (he was awarded), they asked my colleague "again" to write an editorial.  When he approached me to do so for him again, I refused on the ethical basis.  He went back to the journal and came clean with them that he did not write the original.  They contacted me this week asking me to write another.  Good lessons for me in practicing boundaries!  Thank you so much for the input!!!

@Melissa I am so glad to hear about this positive outcome!