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Contract signing session etiquette for student coaches
I am a first time faculty member straight out of grad school and I have been installed as a director for a "learning center". We hire undergraduate and graduate student "coaches" in the learning center to help students who have trouble understanding concepts in physics or math.
Now, I have interviewed students for the "coach" position and I have to have 10 of them sign a contract. How do I do this? I am assuming that I cannot have all of them sit in a circle and sign the contract? Should I ask them to come to my table one at a time and read and sign the contract with them?
I am unsure if this is really a "question" here and please feel free to re-assign it if it isn't.

Is it a problem to have them sign individually? or together? It is not clear what constitutes the problem?

@PeterJansson is there any etiquette that I must follow  when I have students sign contracts? I can't just wave a sheet at them and ask them to sign it ;)

I cannot see any specific etiquette as such but of course provide a good work description and make sure they understnad any terms and conditions as well as expectations before signing.

I would just put them in the regular classroom, come to the board, go over the contract and general expectations, ask if there are any questions, and by the end ask them to sign and submit them to you. The only etiquette with the legal documents is that each party should retain a copy. Normally, when you ask students to sign, the university representative signature is already there.

Your human resources office can surely offer some guidance on this.

I agree with earthling's answer and want to add to it.
Since you have ten of them signing the same contract, there is nothing wrong with first explaining the contract to them as a group. Then, they can ask questions and benefit from the questions each of them asks. Tell them that they have until X date and Y time to sign the contract, that they have to sign it in front of you, and that they should feel free to ask you additional questions in private in case they did not want to ask a sensitive question at the group setting.
Since these ten people will be presumably working together at the same job, there is nothing unethical about them all knowing that they have exactly the same contract.

As with any contract, especially with people who have likely never signed an employment contract before, the best thing is to to give them a copy (hard or soft) so they can review it with someone they trust. Then tell them to bring it back in on/by a certain date.
It is better if they sign in front of you. Then you sign and give them a copy immediately.

From the ethical standpoint, this is the best way. However, from the technical standpoint, there is one minor problem: to have 10 people coming to you separately with signed contracts and to make sure that nobody is late, loses his copy, forgets, etc. may be harder than you expect ;). I followed the same logic as Ben when offering to do it in one room. After your post, I would also suggest to say that whoever wants to discuss things in private should do it right after the session and to send students a sample a few days before the meeting, but I would still finish it in one day :).

Inconvenience does not excuse being unethical.  Do it right.

Ethics doesn't excuse being inefficient either :). This is the world of compromises really. But yes, do it right (to the best of your judgement, at least).

We can have ethics and convenience.  Ask all of your hires to come to a joint meeting where you will go over expectations, what they'll do this semester, etc.  Tell them that you'll also ask them to sign the contract at that meeting, and attach a copy of the contract in that email.  That way, they can review the contract in advance.  At the meeting, have 10 copies, each with your signature already affixed.  After you brief them and ask if there are any questions, ask them to sign the contract and give you the signed copy (and immediately give them a signed copy for their records).

If this is a big university, employment contracts should be administered through HR.  There would very likely be a web app that is supposed to be used.  Check with HR before you do anything.  Ask them if it needs to be checked with university council.  These are the people who will give you a hard time if something goes wrong.
You and the student workers should not be interested in the details of the contract and how it's signed.  Use normal management skills.


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Should a student keep asking questions to a faculty even if the faculty is unsure of the answer?
I am taking an advance course in Computer Science so the class size is pretty limited (8 to be exact). The faculty is very senior and well respected in the field. For past few lectures, I have been asking questions that make the faculty a little uncomfortable which I can guess from the way the answers are given (I am also on a psychology class :-) )
For example, to understand a concept, I say "why X has been used ?". He tries his best to answer "because of A,B,C reasons". During this explanation, occasionally I can sense high level of uncomfort in him and the answers are ambiguous. So, now I have doubt that "if X, then why A ? " and so on. Should one continue with these kind of questions when you know that the faculty won't be able to answer the questions perfectly or isn't comfortable enough to satisfy your inquisitiveness. I do not doubt his competence at all and respect him very much. But how does a faculty feel in this kind of continuous poking (if it is so) or should one resort to personal interaction so that he may feel more comfortable ?
Does that hold negatively for the student that student is trying to humiliate the faculty ?
Note: Questions are not non-sense but are somewhat basic and supported by logic.

If I were the faculty, and was unsure of the answer, I'd say so, and then figure out the answer offline and email you (or announce it in class). I've done this numerous times. Maybe you're reading too much into the lecturer response.

Why not have a private chat with the professor in question, and ask him how he feels about it? Sometimes people like questions, sometimes they don't. If he seems uncomfortable, perhaps it is not for the reason you think. Maybe he is concerned about getting through his syllabus in time, for example. It is easier to ask rather than guessing. +1 for your concern; it is always good to be concerned about people's feelings.

"Does that hold negatively for the student that student is trying to humiliate the faculty ?" - well ... are you trying to humiliate the faculty?

I am not sure how correct your assessment of the situation. Question can be distracting, professor can be annoyed for "you still not get it" or just feel some details unimportant while you keep asking questions about those details. There are many reason why someone is ambiguous or uncomfortable. Note it is nothing to do with if you done anything wrong.

At a slightly higher level, but this may be relevant https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/172829/is-supervisor-bound-to-clarify-the-technical-queries-of-a-ph-d-researcher/172833#172833

You're studying psychology. That doesn't make you telepathic.
There's a wide variety of possible reasons for what's going on:

you are mistaken, your lecturer is not uncomfortable. Crazy, I know, but you just might be wrong.
your lecturer has indigestion, or piles, or tight shoes
your questions indicate you're missing basic knowledge
the questions take the group away from the core material that the lecturer has to get through, and answering them will slow the teaching down
your lecturer doesn't know the answer, and can't bring themselves to say as much, and doesn't have the nous to turn it around and ask you or the rest of the class to find the answer. That's quite a failing in an academic, to be unable to say "I don't know".

Note that repeatedly asking "why A?" "So why B?" "So why C? ..." is something that toddlers do, it's often just time-wasting and attention-seeking and is likely to annoy a lot of people; even if those aren't your motives, be aware that it could come across as that. So instead of just asking questions, look for some answers yourself. You are doing a higher degree, after all, so you should be looking for answers yourself, as well as seeking help from staff and other students.

A healthy amount of "why __?" is perfectly reasonable in any academic setting, and not just something that toddlers do. As long as it's limited and not excessively wasting class time, "why?" questions are very useful.

+1 for "You're studying psychology. That doesn't make you telepathic."

Yes you should keep asking questions. The main goal is learning and it is good you are curious. There is no way to tell ahead of time what will or will not make a teacher uncomfortable. (Anyhow, is a teacher's discomfort your responsibility?) Should you be disruptive, interrupt and ask picky detailed questions repeatedly that require long answers and are possibly going off topic? No, because that isn't fair to the other students class time. Also providing students with answers can be like giving fish away instead of teaching them to fish.
There are a lot of different ways to solve computer programming problems - it may your questions can be answered by a number of ways or don't have simple answers and require deep thought. It could also be the professor doesn't know or can't explain the answer well. Personally, I have no problem saying to a student, "I don't know, why don't you look it up and share the answer with us."
If you are studying psychology then you are perhaps familiar with cognitive load. It might be difficult for the teacher to stay on topic, stay focused on his/her learning objectives and answer questions mid-lecture. I would suggest asking your questions at the end of the lecture.

Asking questions is not a great way of learning unless you also do a lot of finding out answers - ideally you should only ask questions to get you started and when you get stuck. "Anyhow, is a teacher's discomfort your responsibility?" yes - the Golden rule suggests that we should treat others the way we would want to be treated in their position.  The teacher is a human being, not a question answering machine.

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How to argue with postdoc hired for a project, to work on tasks from another project
I have one postdoc hired on a H2020 project for 18 months. Fortunately, she worked rather well and all her tasks are going to finish soon (11th month of the project). I would like to reallocate her to other projects my group is working on now, and which fall a bit outside of the initial H2020 project, but in any case, she has the competence and capabilities to move to the other projects. I briefly talked her about this and she says it would be unethical and illegal to work on something she has not initially hired for. I think that even if these new tasks are not directly related to the H2020 project, if she works on them and gets new publications, it would be a clear benefit for her, and I told her, but she continues to refuse to work on them. How would you argue with her to move to the other tasks when the H2020 tasks are finished?

What is H2020 ?

@GoodDeeds The major funding programme of the EU.

If she starts working on another project would you be able to offer her another postdoc position after the end of this one?

if she responds well and if I have the funds, then I would do my best to offer her a new position, why do you ask this? as a new argument?

Where is her funding coming from?  Is it linked to the H2020 project?  If it is, she's right.

yes, it is linked to the H2020 project, and yes, technically she is right

So what dies she plan to do for 7 months? Nothing?

Maybe her ethical / legal concern is about using funds allocated for one project to work on another?

What does her work contract say?

The legalities of project funding aside, it strikes me as extremely odd that a supposedly bright post doc would not jump at a chance to gain the additional experience and publications. Have you considered the possibility that she tried to finish early to work on other projects? Have you asked her if she has a scientific preference?

Could it be she simply doesn't want to work in these other projects and is using ethics as an excuse?

@nabla well that is mostly european way, if it is not under your job description, you should NOT do it, that is why many PI love and adore ppl from 3rd world countries they can push them a lot.

@SSimon: I am European myself, and I don't think one can make such a general statement. But: Post docs are supposed to build an independent research profile, and this they cannot do if they are just pushed to do menial tasks by their supervisor.

@nabla she finished her postdoc in 11 months instead of 18. I think she is independent enough

@SSimon: She finished assigned tasks (from the project) within 11 months instead of 18. Irrespective of the funding question On the one hand, it is not clear whether "her postdoc" is complete as soona s those tasks, and only those tasks, have been completed. And on the other hand, at least in my understanding, "independent" means precisely to not just do tasks pre-defined by someone.

@O.R. Mapper most PI use postdocs as lab technicians. What is your point?

@SSimon: My point is that both of your claims - that "she finished her postdoc" and that "she is independent" - seem speculative at best, given what we have been told. But seeing your latest comment, maybe your experience with what postdocs typically do simply differs from mine. My impression was that postdocs usually get to lead their own small teams, devise and give their own lectures, and independently manage their own sub-projects. Not sure whether that is what you meant by "lab technician", the term seems to evoke a different image for me.

Not in H2020 where there is exclusivity of work @o.r. mapper

@SSimon: So you now agree that she cannot possibly have "finished her postdoc" or worked independently, for the simple reason that the H2020 project does not allow her to gather the described core parts of postdoc experience? With that said, there are of course ways: If she was already involved with applying for the H2020 grant, the situation is a bit different. And if more than one person works on that project, that's the small team she can lead. And the idea that she would refuse to e.g. give advice to colleagues from other projects asking for help sounds rather absurd, anyway.

H2020 postdoc experience is not in any case related or similar to US postdoc experience. @O.R.Mapper you don't have to do things that you are not paid for, it sound mind boggling for Americans and Asians to hear that, but it is how it is. become PI or coPI and than you can lead teams

@SSimon: No idea what US postdoc experience is like. I was describing the role pretty much all the postdocs seemed to have I got in touch with during my time at German universities. From that perspective, the only "mind-boggling" part would be that anyone would stick to the rules to the extent that it would prevent them from growing beyond the pre-defined minimum rather than trying to somehow integrate as much extra experience as they can.

@O.R.Mapper so what do you want from him? to break a contract and possibly if he triggers her somehow get into legal trouble?

@SSimon: Not at all, maybe a different funding source has to be found so she can "finish her postdoc" and "build an independent research profile". But maybe not fafter all, as someone already noted in a comment, reality is significantly fuzzier than you make it sound. Doing tasks that are specific to another project may be a step too far (although realistically, it's probably illusory to assume none of the work for that H2020 project had any influence from other people in the institute, thus who works forvwhat project is not 100% clear-cut in real life), but there should be plenty of ...

... opportunities to do sub-projects that can be argued to be related to the H2020 project, including collaborative efforts with colleagies from other projects, or even efforts where it's not even clear in the beginning which project the end results will be most useful for.

@O.R.Mapper yes you are right, that is what  I suggest in my answer, to pay her our of his pocket if he wants her to continue working.

You can switch her to another project if you have the funding for it. What you cannot do is to have her work paid by one H2020 project to carry out work for some other separate project. If that's what your postdoc says, she is right.
However, even in your existing project, there should be sufficient leeway to do work on good publications, research etc. and improve the work that you have carried out on the core project. Research never stops.
Alternatively, if you have funding for another project, then you can ask for the budgets to be reassigned (Edit: if she agrees) so that she is paid through the budget of the other project. That's perfectly acceptable, albeit you may have to return some of the budget of the original project she was hired for if that is not used in its entirety.
What you cannot do is to have the original project budget pay for work carried out on another project.

And, you can't force her to switch. That would be, at least, unethical, and possibly illegal.

@Buffy I didn't imply to "force" her. I referred to her qualms of her workforce being used for something else than specified by the project. Do you think the answer is misleading and I should make that clearer?

The answer is fine. The message was to the OP.

"What you cannot do is to have the original project budget pay for work carried out on another project." This is fuzzy in practice. What if the project has a close relationship to the H2020 work? For example, using the same technique to work on a related application? Or working on an analytical method that could be applied in the future to the H2020 project topic? It would seem unnecessarily limiting for grant-funded work to be restricted to be ONLY exactly what was proposed in the original project plan.

I'm just guessing, but she probably has the right of it. I would cease arguing with her entirely but suggest that something additional might be done on the original project that might also result in additional publications, etc.
Don't be the bad person here. And, especially, don't find some way to punish her for being both competent and ethical.

I did not say I am going to force or menace her. No, that I am not going to do. I am just looking for another rationale, since her tasks are almost finished, and if she switches, it would be benefitial for her and for the group.

Why not let said post-doc propose an alternative? A good postdoc should be perfectly capable of coming up with publishable projects, especially after having worked on the subject already. If the postdoc fails to do so, you may have the argument you were looking for.

@Louic Fully agree with you. Giving a little bit of a freedom for postdoc is very stimulating. There are many ways to use the time productively, even to write/ prepare for a new project.

Funding agencies usually understand that circumstances may change during the life of a project and have the ability to authorize changes in the project’s scope. A postdoc finishing all her predicted goals ahead of schedule seems to me like one of those situations where such a change is certainly justified and desirable.
I suggest that you write to the program managers of the program that funds your project. Describe the situation and the alternative project you are proposing to reassign the postdoc to. Ask (as an informal, hypothetical question at first) if they would allow a change of scope of the project to authorize this reassignment. If they say yes, you can show the postdoc this pre-approval - it mostly counters her argument that the reassignment is unethical or illegal (perhaps still leaving a bit of room for argument, though, depending on the laws in your local jurisdiction).
If she then agrees to the change, you can go ahead and obtain formal authorization through whatever formal process the funding agency requires you to go through, if such a formal process is required (typically filling some web form on the funding agency’s grant management website and having the program manager submit approval on their side, something I had to go through once or twice).
Now, if upon your initial request the program managers don’t want to authorize the reassignment, well then you have your answer, even if it’s not exactly what you wanted to hear.

No, sorry, you may not be familiar with EU funding, but in my experience this would be a bureaucratical nightmare...

@MassimoOrtolano It's possible and has been done. It's not fun, but was not exactly as bad as every bodies war stories claim it to be.

@MassimoOrtolano it’s true I’m not familiar. So what do EU researchers do when they need to make changes to the project scope?

Limited changes to a project can indeed be negotiated (not really to the scope, but to some of the activities, deadlines etc.), as pointed out also by @CaptainEmacs. But, at least in my experience, they are such a burden that people try to avoid them as much as possible. I'd really consider this as a last resort.

Also, you shouldnt write, but if you really want call. An email which states that all work has been completed might be very difficult to undo (and could technically lead to that you cannot bill hours anymore)

The most probable response to "we've finished the work that you've given us X years and Y dollars to complete in less than X and Y" is "Great, please send us the difference between Y and what you've spent"

@ScottSeidman Not necessarily. Despite having a reputation for being a bloated bureaucracy, the EU commission can be quite reasonable when a good case is made that additional relevant work can be done for the remaining time. They already have reviewed the project, approved it, earmarked and allocated the money, they'd rather have some good outreach, publications, impact or the like than the money back whose good use has been agreed upon already.

if you finish job before deadline, you would need to return difference @CaptainEmacs that is a fact

EDIT: This answer is wrong in the specific case of Horizon 2020 funding where you must sign a declaration of exclusive work, or keep a timesheet
Legal and ethical are not necessarily the same thing.
Legally its going to depend on whether the funding is your name or the postdoc's name. I can't speak for H2020, you'd have to check the funding agreement, but for UKRI funding would usually be in your name, and the agreement is that you propose some reserach, the funder says "what do you need to do that?". You say I need a postdoc for 3 years and they say fine. The deal is the reserach in return for 3 years of postdoc.
The postdoc will be an employee of the university not of the EU, just paid using money that EU gave to get that reserach done. And the research is now done. You provided the research, you kept your end of the bargin as far as the funder is concerned.
You don't say what country you are in, but every postdoc I've seen in the UK basically has a job description attached to it that says the postdoc's duties are to design, perform and interpret experiments, prepare manuscripts, present at conferences, and any other reasonable task required by the employee's line manager. (that last clause is always there, even my contract, as a permenant faculty member, has that clause). This means, you would legally be witin your rights to force the postdoc to work on something else. You could probably, in theory, start disciplinary proceedings against them if they refused.
That absolutely does not mean that doing so would be a good idea from ethier an ethical or a practical point of view. From a practical point of view, its takes around a year to conclude a disciplinary case, and even then you are going to be stuck handling someone who will very definately not want to work with you at that point. From an ethical point of view, this sounds like someone who has worked very hard and achieved well in furthering the aims you set out for them, and thus deserves to be rewarded for that by having some say in what they do next. Also, as a postdoc, you need work that is yours and you can take with you to start your own group to apply for a fellowship. This is hard if you've been working purely on someone else project.
If they really believe it is unethical to work on any project other than the H2020 project, and that is now finished, I don't see how they can continue to take the salary in a way compatible with their ethical beliefs. Perhaps they don't agree that the project is finsihed?
I would ask the postdoc what they want to work on. The project you hired them for is finished. And you clearly aren't going to pay them to sit around doing nothing for the next 7 months. As they will need experimental resources, its going to have to be something you both agree on, because you are not going to give them your resources to spend on something you are completely against.

If that postdoc does work unrelated to that project for these 7 months, then you can't fund these 7 months postdoc's salary from the project budget. (You could use that freed-up money to fund some other employee for the project goals, though, with appropriate paperwork.) That's a strict contractual obligation for the institution and the PI in a H2020 project, this gets checked in an external audit in every single H2020 project, and faking documentation to say that the postdoc is working on the project when in fact she's working on someone else would not just be unethical, it's felony fraud.

H2020 projects compensate eligible costs. You have your costs (salaries, equipment, etc) and EU compensates them afterwards if the expenses if they're appropriate. If someone's job is finished faster than expected and comes in under budget, that's great, but the "saved up" money for the seven months of postdoc's work is not yours to spend as you wish. You only get funding to cover the actual eligible costs (i.e. the salary paid to the postdoc while they worked on the project) that you spent on the project, if you didn't spend something, then you don't get funded for that.

To put it shortly, I'm asserting that "You provided the research, you kept your end of the bargin as far as the funder is concerned." is very much not true in this situation, you're required to document what specific expenses you want to be covered by the EU funding and demonstrate that they're eligible to be covered; achieving the project goals is not sufficient to demonstrate that all the costs were valid and should be funded.

As I commented in the my answer, I only know the specific rules for government funded and EU Marie Curie funded projects. In those situations you have to say "£X on staff, £Y on research services, £Z on chemicals.." etc, and you have to stick to that, and will be audited, but not what you spend within those categories. However, it does seem that for H2020 you have to sign a "Declaration on exclusive work".

This answer is based upon observations from computer science at German universities. Experiences in other countries and fields may easily differ.
As other answers have explained, legally, she is right. H2020 projects require that people funded from them work exclusively on the project. Working on tasks that are explicitly and specifically meant for another project is not permissible and can only be done based on another funding source.
However, that does not mean everything has ended up in a desirable way in the described situation.
First, the practical angle: As has also been noted in a comment, things are much fuzzier in reality. For anyone who works in an institute with other researchers, the following appear to be typical professional interactions1:

Regular status updates by telling each other about one's current progress or interesting new results in one's project(s).
Brainstorming meetings to help one or more colleagues to find solutions for current problems in their project(s).
Colleague A helping out colleague B with topics or skills that A knows about and that B needs in their project(s).
Collaborating on joint publications, challenge entries, supervised student projects, presentations, etc.
Doing organisational work useful for themselves but also for the entire institute, e.g. creating document templates, taking care of certain mutually used technical equipment (no matter whether that's a server with research-related data or being in charge of the institute's coffee machine), etc.
And of course, tentatively taking part in various efforts that maybe end up contributing to the project, maybe not. This is sometimes not clear from the onset.

Now, most of these can be argued to yield some results related to the project, though they certainly also contribute to other projects. They are simply a normal part of daily interaction working in a team, and the idea that colleagues in the same institute ignore each other because they are working on different projects seems simply out of touch with reality.
Second, though, there is another aspect that I'm more worried about in this case - let's call it the intended goals: The postdoc in question seems to be under the mistaken impression that finishing a project as early as possible is a commendable result. In contrast, my impression is that the goal generally seen as more desirable among researchers is to conduct as much research as possible within the parameters defined in a project grant.
That does not mean resources should be squandered or abused. But it does mean that, if considerable amounts of resources are left, one should think twice whether there really isn't anything worthwhile left within the scope of the project that could be further explored.2
It may be too late to change anything in the described case here, especially if the postdoc in question has already reported their project work as complete to the grant agency, or conducted finalizing steps on their project (such as finishing a concluding report that would have to be redone, were some earlier steps in the project to be retroactively enriched with additional studies, experiments, or aspects). For the future, though, two things may be important:

First, the OP should have a conversation with the postdoc to clarify the above. A research project is not a race for time won by the fastest researcher, it's a race for content won by the researcher with the most comprehensive, reliable, and useful results.
And second, something that I'm actually somewhat worried about: As said postdoc seems to be so convinced she has absolutely finished all of her requirements, maybe a part of the problem is that the grant application was too restricted in its focus? As far as I have been told, a crucial part of the art of writing grant applications is to find a good balance of being concrete enough to gain the grant, but being vague enough so as to allow those working on the grant to still do what makes sense for the project, even though it isn't known at the time of applying for the grant (many months earlier!) yet. This question leaves me wondering a bit whether the grant in question failed to create sufficient opportunities, so after finishing a couple of items on a checklist, there is nothing left to do for the postdoc.

1: I'm not saying every institute will feature every single one of these, or only these interactions. But they are typical examples of what arrives during the workday at a university in my experience.
2: The reasons appear to be threefold:

It's beneficial for both the institute and the involved researchers to conduct more research.
It's beneficial for the project to produce stronger or more comprehensive results.
And, as I have been told time and again, whoever finishes a project while leaving considerable amounts of granted resources (time and/or money) unused will get granted less in the future (because, from the point of view of the grant-giver, "obviously, they can achieve their goals with less than they claim").

I think User Peteris wrote a wonderful answer in comment to answer,

If that postdoc does work unrelated to that project for these 7 months, then you can't fund these 7 months postdoc's salary from the
project budget. (You could use that freed-up money to fund some other
employee for the project goals, though, with appropriate paperwork.)
That's a strict contractual obligation for the institution and the PI
in a H2020 project, this gets checked in an external audit in every
single H2020 project, and faking documentation to say that the postdoc
is working on the project when in fact she's working on someone else
would not just be unethical, it's felony fraud. – Peteris Jun 14 at
23:16  3

H2020 projects compensate eligible costs. You have your costs
(salaries, equipment, etc) and EU compensates them afterwards if the
expenses if they're appropriate. If someone's job is finished faster
than expected and comes in under budget, that's great, but the "saved
up" money for the seven months of postdoc's work is not yours to spend
as you wish. You only get funding to cover the actual eligible costs
(i.e. the salary paid to the postdoc while they worked on the project)
that you spent on the project, if you didn't spend something, then you
don't get funded for that. – Peteris Jun 14 at 23:30 3
To put it shortly, I'm asserting that "You provided the research, you
kept your end of the bargin as far as the funder is concerned." is
very much not true in this situation, you're required to document what
specific expenses you want to be covered by the EU funding and
demonstrate that they're eligible to be covered; achieving the project
goals is not sufficient to demonstrate that all the costs were valid
and should be funded. – Peteris Jun 14 at 23:38

What does it legally mean for you? You can have potential legal issues if a dispute between you and postdoc arise.
Not to mention that you would need to return the money.
Also exclusivity of work is pretty clear

For this purpose, "working exclusively" refers to an uninterrupted period
of at least one full calendar month during which all the hours worked by
the employee for the beneficiary were dedicated to the H2020 action.

you question How would you argue with her to move to the other tasks when the H2020 tasks are finished?
I wouldn't argue her, I would offer a raise or extra income, depending on university, country and legal system, in case of my country, I would pay on hand.
Im not sure how it is regulated in your  country.

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How to equitably divide the economic benefits of a licensed patent among academic inventors?
I am PI of a research group and in different projects regarding sample analyses, it looks like we will be able to license 4 patents to 4 different companies. I can tell you this success was not neither expected nor planned. And now the problems come; the money we receive from each patent, how to distribute it among the different participants. In order to avoid problems, I decided to distribute it equally between the number of people involved on each patent, which varies from 5 to 7, including me.
But some people are disappointed because they consider that other people did much less and should receive less percentage. In addition, I do not like this completely since I got all the funding for the projects, infrastructures and negotiate it hard with the companies, so I think I should deserve it a bit more, but I know that with this I will have problems in the group. Of course, I should have written everything down, the regulations, before starting the projects, but now it is too late. In order to solve this I thought about preparing a document, in which everybody writes down what they think they did, and how that part contributed to the invention. Then I think we could start a reasonable discussion, so people that did less, could not say the opposite, and finally we would reach an agreement. Another solution I thought would be to leave my University to decide on this.
My questions here is, how would you solve this problem, and if you think (and why) that a PI should get more part of the contribution.

This isn't really an academic question. Perhaps a legal one. Perhaps a workplace question.

I disagree since it is happening not on any workplace, but on Academia. And it is not just legal, since law does not regulate these situations; each University or research group could have different regulations or agreements.

Something is wrong here; doesn't the university take part of the money?  Is there a university policy?  It is very strange that you get to decide by yourself.

the University gets 70% of the money, and then the groups get 30%.I know this because I ask other researcher that licensed some patent previously. And he told me that the University said to him that he could decide totally about contributions.

I don't think you really mean "efficiently". Maybe equitably.

I agree with you now

I fear that the approach of having everybody write down what they contributed and then having a reasonable discussion is unlikely to work. First, it may well reward egotism and self-promotion more than actual contributions. Second, although it would be wonderful if the whole group could agree on a fair division, it seems more likely that you would have to make a decision that leaves some (perhaps all) people unhappy. You would just be postponing the unpleasantness that you face now.

At a US national lab, I have had the joy of trying to determine this for patent royalty sharing. At low $$$ (or your local currency) amounts, nobody really minds that everyone gets $100. Once you start getting into $1000's or more, things become dicier. I dealt with that by talking to many of the folks, as well as their managers at the time the patents were worked on. It helped that I had no financial stake in the decision (I got no $$$).

I think this question meets the criteria for quite a few closure reasons.  Can we close it despite the bounty?

If there is a large sum of money involved, I suggest you hire a professional mediator to help you solve the problem.  If there's not much money involved, then don't worry about it.

Not worrying about legal matters is a recipe for getting sued, especially in the States

(Expanding a bit on Buffy's answer)
Short answer: Use some math to make everyone happy.
This is actually a well-explained problem in economics for which there is a solution.
It is possible to mutually assess everyone's contribution, without anyone unfairly boosting their own contribution, so that the proceeds are distributed in a way that everyone is likely to be satisfied with. This is, as Buffy said, a type of cake-cutting algorithm.
A Tool
If you'd like to skip the theory and go straight to a solution, check out spliddit.org/apps/credit. They provide a web app for everyone to subjectively assess everyone else's contribution and computes the fair proportions. The theory behind it is pretty clever, and you will likely find that everyone finds the splitting to be satisfactory.
A Theory
If you're looking for a more principled answer (other than "try this tool"), here's the paper that describes the theory and method used by Spliddit in rigorous depth: Impartial Division of a Dollar - Clippel, Moulin, Tideman
The method satisfies two formalized criteria:
Impartiality - no one assesses or covertly influences the assessment of their own contribution
Consensus - the ultimate division is compatible with every individual's assessment of others' contributions
Good luck!

This is very interesting! I wonder if you have some thoughts about the risk that two of the agents participating in the division might try to form a secret coalition and vote each other’s contributions up. This seems like a potential vulnerability of the method to manipulation, and I didn’t see it discussed in the paper you linked. The impartiality property only covers individual participants if I understand correctly.

@DanRomik, the literature is pretty broad. Note the edit to my answer here, which suggests open access to much of that lit.

Thanks @Buffy. Fair division theory is indeed a large and fascinating topic.

Research has been done on questions like this.
The Cake Cutting Algorithm is about fair distribution of a resource. Perhaps you can apply it here, or a modification of it.
In fact, the current (April 2020) issue of Communications of the ACM has a new article that also gives background on the problem: Aziz and Mackenzie, A Bounded and Envy-Free Cake Cutting Algorithm.
And, because of the current pandemic the ACM Digital Library has been opened for free access for now, though it is a temporary action. It contains essentially everything published by the ACM. Recent things, at least.

Google translation of original:
First clarify what right the university can have. The balance is distributed. That is easy. Now, each invention can be quantified by the scope and number of claims. A list of the participants indicating their participation in each claim would be a starting point. This would be worth 50% of the patent. The rest of works, direction, administration, investigation. writing, experiments, would complete the other 50%. Then each participation is valued over 100 and calculates the individual percentage. This may be the combined result of various participations. In this way, a more objective map of the situation could be obtained. Differences and means by error are compared, and a value is attributed to each participant. Then each can negotiate with the group, which for this or that reason should touch something else. By vote the claim is granted or not. Previously, limits were set to the percentage negotiable with the group and determined the percentage of votes that approved a claim. It may be a low percentage. eg 30% if there is trust and camaraderie.
Original Spanish:
Primero aclarar que derecho puede tener la universidad. El saldo se reparte. Eso es facil. Ahora, cada invento se puede cuantificar por el alcance y numero de reivindicaciones (claims) . Una lista de los intervinientes indicando su participación en cada claim , sería un punto de partida. Esto valdría el 50% de la patente. El resto de trabajos, direccion, administración, investigacion. redacción, experimentos , completarían el otro 50 %. Luego se valora sobre 100 cada participación y calcula el porcentaje individual. Este puede ser el resultado combinado de diversas participaciones.
 Asi se podría obtener un mapa más objetivo de la situacion. Se compara las diferencias y las medias por error, y se atribuye un valor a cada participante. Luego cada uno puede negociar con el grupo, que por tal o cual razón le deba tocar algo más. Por votación  se concede o no el reclamo. Previamente se pone límites al porcentaje negociable con el grupo y determina el porcentaje de votos que aprueba un reclamo. Puede ser un porcentaje bajo. ej 30% si hay confianza y camaradería.  Abrazos.

Hi and welcome to Academia SE. Sorry but this is a site in English: could you please write your answer in English?

As others have said, a lot will depend on your legislation since it may prescribe a particular way of arriving at the fractions for each co-inventor.

I thought about preparing a document, in which everybody writes down what they think they did, and how that part contributed to the invention

In germany certain questions are asked and particular answers decide scores each of the co-inventors gets.

This is not only how much "brilliant ideas"/work/other ressources each co-inventor put in, but also
how much guidance they received (someone who solves a problem they identify on their own gets more "points" than someone who's told to solve a particular problem and maybe given a literature list/guidance how to approach a solution), and
how this compares to the expectation according to their job.

The proverbial contrast is the R&D engineer whose job is to develop an instrument solving problem x vs. the janitor seeing high-tech problem x when cleaning the lab and developing the solution in their free time at home.

But some people are disappointed because they consider that other people did much less and should receive less percentage.

The questions above won't completely solve the issue (even though in Germany even lists of scores for particular situations are prescribed), but they may help in the negotiations.
Speaking of negotiations, if you as PI have an interest (are co-inventor) as well, I'd think it proper to have a professional mediation here. At least if there are students involved you may have a conflict of interest if you have a duty to make sure the students are not exploited due to their dependence on you/the institute (that would be the case e.g. for a German professor and their Bachelor or Master student until graduation)

In addition, I do not like this completely since I got all the funding for the projects, infrastructures and negotiate it hard with the companies, so I think I should deserve it a bit more, but I know that with this I will have problems in the group.

The special stakeholder who gets credit for providing the infrastructure is usually the university rather than the PI as person - and the percentage may be fixed/non-negotiable.
Universities here in Germany have rules how that money is distributed between university, faculty and research group.
As for the PI position from what I know of the German system, a group leader will usually get rather less unless in addition to providing guidance they put in substantial amounts of work (this is about the money the PI gets as person, not for their group). The reasoning behind that is that guiding R&D work is their job for which they are paid their salary. So a patentable invention sticks out of what is expected of them less than it sticks out of, say, a not-yet-graduated student Master student who isn't paid any wage for their thesis work.

How to equitably divide the economical benefits of a licensed patent among academic inventors?

First and foremost, you must abide by the law:

Establish who owns the patent, it mightn't be the inventors;
Establish how ownership is distributed, according to the law; and
Distribute accordingly.

You'll probably need to hire an attorney, since you may be liable if you get it wrong.

Without an agreement asserting otherwise, ownership will be defined by patent law (my emphasis):

Under patent law, each co-inventor...owns [the patent]. In the absence of any agreement, each co-inventor owns 100 percent of the patent, regardless of how much each individual contributed to the invention. Patent law gives co-owners of a patent the right to make, use, license, sell and import the patented invention within the United States in whatever way they please, without the consent of the other co-owners.

Thus, under US patent law, it seems the OP has the sole right to license and collect royalties, unless an agreement asserts otherwise. The OP believes the university gets 70% of royalties, since that's what other researchers have said. To be sure, contractual agreements must be checked, and ownership is then defined under the terms of any such contractual agreements.

Only when the law has been followed can royalties be further distributed. For instance, supposing the OP collects all royalties, then they may choose to gift their newly established wealth, noting that royalties and gifts may be subject to tax.

For small royalties, the costs incurred in establishing who gets what might well outweigh the royalties themselves...

This answer is wrong.  Economic benefits are not the same as ownership.  Since the inventors are employed by a university, we can be sure the university owns 100% of the patent.  The OP said the university gets 70% of the money, not 70% of ownership.

@AnonymousPhysicist The answer is correct. Economic benefits are legally irrelevant. The inventors being employed by the university is irrelevant. Only contracts are relevant. The OP did indeed say the university gets 70%, that's my mistake, I'll edit. But, it really doesn't matter what other researchers get, it matters what contractual agreements state. That should be clear from the quoted explanation (which I haven't fact checked).

"Economic benefits are legally irrelevant."  What's legally relevant does not matter on this stack exchange.  What is relevant to the question does matter.  The question asks about economic benefits.

@AnonymousPhysicist What's legal matters everywhere. Regarding the question, the OP explicitly asks: "how would you solve this problem"? (My emphasis.) I clearly provide an answer to that question. Please do downvote if my answer is not useful, I see no value in commenting further.


text:
Submitting an improved result before the acceptance notice of another result
I have submitted RESULT 1 to conference A. The notice of acceptance/rejection of conference A is in 1 month. This is the kind of conference with a rebuttal phase. During the rebuttal phase my paper got very good reviews, and all referees recommended acceptance. But that does not mean it is accepted yet.
Some months after submitting RESULT 1, I obtained RESULT 2, which generalizes RESULT 1, but whose proof requires completely different techniques. I want to submit RESULT 2 to a conference B whose deadline is in two weeks.
I'm hesitating in submitting RESULT 2 to conference B before receiving the notice from conference A because of the following:

RESULT 1 gets accepted. Great!
RESULT 1 gets rejected. This is bad, not only because of the rejection, but also because since RESULT 2 implies RESULT 1, I think this would invalidade the possibility of submitting RESULT 1 to another conference
while RESULT 2 is under review, or if RESULt 2 is accepted. I trully believe that RESULt 1 should be published independently, since the proofs therein are much more elegant, although not being the strongest result.

My impression is that from the reviews RESULT 1 has a good chance of being accepted at conference A. However, I have had papers in the past with three recomendations to accept and which where rejected at the end.
Additionally, I am afraid that by submitting RESULT 2 to conference B, my chances of being accepted at conference A would be decreased. For instance, a common referee could point out that a paper with a better result is being submitted to another conference before the acceptance notice, and this might influence in the decision of the programm commitee.
QUESTIONS:

What is the best way to proceed in this kind of situation?
Is it correct to think that submitting an improvement to conference B would decrease the probability of acceptance to Conference A?

Personally, when it comes to conference publications I don't worry about this type of issue.
First, there is typically a fairly low chance that the second submission will affect the chances of the first: even in the unlikely chance that the same reviewer is looking at both papers at the same time, they are likely to understand that the second paper builds on the first: if they like the second, they'll probably suggest accepting the earlier result as well.
Second, and more importantly, conference publications are typically not the final form of a strong result.  Rather, the final form is the "extended version" journal paper that follows and supersedes the conference paper.
As such, if the second conference accepts while the first conference rejects, then there is still a clear path to publication for the results sent to the first conference: combining them together with the other results into a strong journal paper.  If the two results are related, the I think that you should be considering doing this in any case, given the typically larger scope of journal papers.
It is true that, in the worst case, it will give you one less conference publication for your C.V. If you're doing good research, though, that's not a big loss, since the work will be superseded by the journal paper in any case. Certainly it is less of a loss than not submitting to the second conference and getting rejected from the first (assuming both conferences are relatively similar in quality).

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


text:
Ethically, do I need to include as coauthor a person who provided basic knowledge to fill a gap in my research?
Consider the following scenario.
I am researching on a problem in a domain and I don't know anything about the existence of Pythagoras theorem.
After so much time of my research I figured myself that if a fact like:

the square of a side which is opposite to the 90 degrees in a triangle is equal to the sum of squares of remaining sides

exists, then my research completes and I can publish a good paper. But I never encountered Pythagoras theorem during my search of literature.
If I came to know about its existence during a discussion with a colleague or any random person, then is there any ethical need to keep him as a co-author since I struggled a lot of time and didn't find by myself?

In your example, you already pinned down the exact fact that you needed to complete your paper; so the other person didn't have much of a contribution except for giving you a pointer for that fact. In reality, such situations can be more messy: the other person may map your required fact to the vocabulary of another domain, or they may help you pin down the required fact in the first place. These would be more substantial contributions.

The International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has established four criteria for being considered an author. The person's contribution should fulfill all four criteria. If not, they need to be considered as a non-author contributor and their contribution acknowledged, such as in Acknowledgements section. You can read about the different criteria and designation here. To directly answer your question, the person would be a non-author contributor.

But surely only if the paper is published in a medical journal...

@astronat, I think the opinion expressed in the linked article is pretty widely shared, independent of field, though not universal. And where it is not held, there is controversy about it. Hence we get a lot of questions here from unsatisfied grad students.

I am not sure how this is a full answer. The first criterion on that list is that the contribution has to be "substantial". As soon as this is the case, offering to work on the manuscript together and thus fulfilling the other three criteria is just professional courtesy. The heart of the question, which is still open, is if providing basic knowledge counts as substantial. (I think the consensus for this is a resounding no, but talking about it should be part of an answer.)


text:
Is the practice of keeping written papers or presentations for delivering lectures recommended?
Professors of my institution use PowerPoint presentations or written papers or some other aid material for delivering a lecture in the classroom.
But doesn't it indicate less expertise?
I have this doubt because it will be easy for an expert professor or well-prepared professor to handle a class of a couple of hours with his preplan instead of using some reference material.

I'm confused how this could indicate less expertise: would you prefer a professor to ramble with no visual aids whatsoever?

I'm not a big fan of power point, but then, I'm not a big fan of lecture in general. But others are fine with it. It has become common practice for many.
It gives the professor a way to think about the lecture, and the course, as a whole so that they are assure that (a) no essential points are missed and (b) that misstatements don't accidentally confuse students or mislead them.
But no, it doesn't imply less expertise. For some, though, it might imply less comfort with speaking in public generally or, at least, extemporaneously.
There are some famous examples of professors getting off track in lectures and, for example, forgetting essential steps in a math proof. But that need not mean less expertise, but just distraction caused by other thoughts intervening.
I usually encourage professors who want to use powerpoint (and can't be convinced otherwise), to distribute the decks in advance.

+1 Always keep in mind that professors are experts in their topics. They are not necessarily experts in presenting those topics in the optimal educational fashion. Any help they might need with respect to pedagogical things tells you nothing about their expertise on the topics of the class. I can ramble on expertly about my favorite topics incessantly for hours and hours, but if you want me to teach you as much as possible about a certain subject within the limited time of a lecture, I need my notes, so that I know what to tell you and how, and what to leave out.

Slides are also a way to include material that one just can't do on the board: graphics, videos, music, pictures.

"getting off track in lectures" a pastor once told me how he suddenly got stuck in the middle of the christmas sermon at the nth of his villages and did not know whether he had said there already what he was going to say or whether this "I know I said it" feeling was from the sermons before...

My evaluation of PowerPoint is that it seems to be intended to make presentations as boring as possible. Every slide with a title, all the same font, all the same format, bullet point text, etc. and etc. It's more suited to presentations of accounting stats than anything else.
But generally, I like prepped slides of some sort for any kind of presentation. When I do lectures though, I also keep written notes. Usually the notes have extra stuff that is not necessarily in the slides. Extra details, extra explanation, answers to predictable questions, bibliographic notes, etc. etc. And I nearly always prep with the idea that these extra notes can be handed out, at least to the "keeners" in the audience.
On the other hand, I do have fond memories of the prof who taught me quantum mechanics in the 4th year of my BSc. He would put his notes down on the table at the front of the room, and turn to the board and start. He could fill 8 very big blackboards with equations, by hand, in impossibly neat script, from memory, in 45 minutes. While explaining the material "over his shoulder" in great and clear detail. We joked we needed water cooled pens to keep up with him. I can still remember when we were doing the ground state of the Helium atom. The class had those up-down chalk boards. And he pulled the board down on the left to erase board-full number 1 to start writing number 5. And EVERYBODY in the class shrieked "NOT YET! NOT YET!" because they were still copying board number 1.
That's a prof who knows his material.
There is probably no "one size fits all" solution here. Not everybody is the kind of person who can do that. I do suggest that PowerPoint needs to have a lot of support to be anything other than a sleeping pill. But prepped slides are probably required for most people.

My quantum mechanics lecturer was exactly the same!

I was going to suggest that, rather then erasing board 1 to make room for board 5, your quantum mechanics professor could have provided you with a superposition of both boards. But then, reflecting on the resulting entanglement between everybody's notes, I realized that your desire to copy board 1 indicated that you hadn't really made your peace with the no-cloning theorem.

If I am delivering a lecture just once, then I might use slides (but never PowerPoint) to show in pictures what I could never say in words.
If, however, I am giving  a course that
 1. I shall give again, maybe many times
 2. includes complicated algebraic derivations that the students need to think about,
then there is a case for some kind of handout that they can keep and I can use to make sure I cover everything that I wish to cover.
But far more important than these considerations is to hold the attention of your audience. You will not do that with formulaic PP presentations any more than you would reading without slides from a prepared text. Given that you are human then you must engage the human beings in your audience. PP or not is a secondary issue.


text:
Is my university using TA's excessively?
Currently, at a broad level, the scenario I am observing is as follows:
Tasks by Instructor (assistant professor, associate professor, professor)

Collecting presentations from either the internet or asks TA's to make a presentation or rarely prepares a presentation for a given topic and presents it in front of students.

Doesn't deal with coding

Clarifies the theoretical doubts asked by students during class timings only.

Tasks by Ph.D. TA

Prepares content for instructor class (sometimes)

Prepares coding and theoretical content for tutorial class

Clarifies doubts in tutorial class

Deals with both theoretical and coding aspects for the tutorial sessions.

Receives more doubts from students since students work on the topic after a (theoretic) introductory lecture by the instructor.

Prepares assignment questions and also answers keys.

Evaluates the submitted assignments, makes result sheets, distributes grades and deals with grade discrepancies.

Most of the time, postgraduate TAs assists in the last two steps. (It is not happening during pandemic days).
In general, for every couple of weeks, there will be a tutorial class. It takes at least  4 full days to complete all the tasks with satisfaction. Covering both mathematical and coding aspects in great detail is a challenging task. And even if one prepares with so much effort,  it may not be useful for the research work.
So, I am wondering whether the workload is the same for a Ph.D. TA's in other universities or is my university is using them excessively?
Note: Although there are guidelines regarding TA work, no instructor follows them in strict sense.

You could also look on this as an opportunity. All of those skills are needed if you want to be an academic.

You don't say anything about the time requirements (or the expectations). Points 3., 4., and 5 in the second list don't require additional time commitment.

@Buffy updated...

I think that professors are down-voting... :P

Who can say about down votes. Not me in this case. Lots of questions get down voted for reasons I haven't yet figured out. This one, perhaps, because it has a certain "rant like" quality to it, even though it does ask a question. Some because the answer seems obvious, but I don't think that was true here. And some questions (not this one, I think) just seem to be "litter" on the site. But unless the vote is explained it is best to just ignore it. And, professors can get overworked too, of course.

At my university, the load for TAs was not framed in classes, it was framed in hours per week. Courses were then given designations like “10 hours” or “20 hours” based on expected tasks and number of students. Is there anything written down about expected hours per week?

@hanugm Is there a typo in your comment about guidelines? Maybe include any information about guidelines part of the question and not a comment. That would make the question less rant like and maybe more about a specific issue.

As one of the students - which tasks are you willing for the TAs to give up?

@Dawn Yeah, guidelines are there but not followed...

@JonCuster it's okay to do them along with the presence of the professor. If he just takes one class and leaves all the other work to TAs then it causes issues.

How many TAs are there for the course? The tasks seem mostly reasonable provided there are sufficient people.

@GoodDeeds one TA for a week. 2 TA's.

Absolutely. Especially since everything went online for my school. All the instructors do is post videos from the previous years and "unlock" them on a weekly basis. I am only glad that I don't need to handle many student emails.

@hanugm - in my experience, most students would think those are core TA responsibilities...

@JonCuster Sorry, i commented partly.

How many hours per week is each TA spending on these tasks, and how does this compare to your department's guidelines? This is "the only thing that matters" when assessing overwork. You seem frustrated that the TAs are doing all the work while the instructor is lazy, but that's a separate issue. I'm surprised that people feel comfortable answering without knowing this...4 full days is 32 hours, and the sessions are "every couple of weeks"....so that would be 16 hours/week?

Actually, I don't think it is excessive, though it may be a bit steep. It was a long time ago, but when I was a PhD student in mathematics at an R1 in the US, the "load" of a TA was about half that of the teaching load of a professor (1 course equivalent vs 2 for a professor). I don't see anything in your list that is really out of bounds, assuming #1 is occasional. In fact, all of it is good training for anyone wanting a career in academia. You need to practice all these things to get good at them.
I was thrilled (thrilled, I say) when, as an advanced TA, I was given complete responsibility for one section (of many) of an elementary course. The course was pretty standard so there wasn't much course design prep and the final exam was common to all sections, but, otherwise, the course was mine.

For what it's worth, I had complete responsibility for 2 courses each semester during a 2-year Master program in math during Fall 1984 to Spring 1986. There wasn't even a course supervisor I had to report to, although the director of graduate studies did oversee things.

Yes, because this is unfair to the students.
Simply put, every student should have exactly the same opportunities, regardless of who their TA is. As such, every TA should be working off of the same lesson plans, the same example questions, the same homework problems, etc.
If each TA is responsible for creating the material for their own tutorials, then this isn't possible, and you have a fundamental problem of equity. Either the instructor in charge should be organising meetings for the TAs to share the material they've prepared to finalise the plans for each week's tutorial, or the instructor in charge should be the one deciding what is being taught in each tutorial.
Similarly, all students should be getting the same items for their marked assessment, and there should be moderation sessions for each piece of assessment where the TAs get together, show each other examples from the work submitted to them of what they think each letter mark looks like, and then discuss this with each other to ensure consistency in their marking.

True... and, also, having everyone re-invent their own wheel is inefficient. Still, "equity/fairness" is not quite the same as demanding that everyone be in lock-step. Yes, lazy faculty/TA's dis-serve their students... but it is hard to legislate fairness without corrupting the system, in particular, squelching the initiative of fac/TAs who want to do more than the minimum. Not a trivial puzzle to solve. Students are sensible to "vote with their feet" and enroll for classes with better fac/TAs.


text:
As an evaluator in mathematics, how should I grade responses that answer the question asked, but in less detail than desired?
I want to know whether there is a need for responding to students who ask for points/marks by arguing that they only answered the question that was asked., a.k.a "literalism". So, I am giving a simple hypothetical scenario.
Note: This is a simple scenario and the questions can be different.
Consider the following simple question and the three classes of responses by three hundred different students.

Question

Define "finite set." (5 points)

Answer #1: (150 students)

A set with a finite number of elements is called a finite set.

Answer #2: (100 students)

A set with a finite number of elements is called a finite set.
Example: {1, 2, 3}

Answer #3: (50 students)

A set with a finite number of elements is called a finite set. All the    finite sets are countable. The sets which are not finite are infinite sets. Any given set is either finite or infinite and neither both nor otherwise.
Example: {1, 2, 3}
And the set of natural numbers is countable but not finite.

As an evaluator, suppose I decided to give three points to answer #1, four points to answer #2, and full points (5) to the last answer.  Is it not recommended to do it that way?
The reason for such awarding is to encourage the students who understood the concept well and are presenting the answers that show their understanding.
But the students who answer with #1 might argue that their answer is worth all five points, and it's unfair to take off points since the question was "Define 'finite set'" and not "Define 'finite set' and 'infinite set' with examples and their relationship with countable sets."
Although I have complete authority in awarding grades, I am not sure how to respond to those students. Is it recommended to simply ignore them by saying it is a subjective evaluation based on the presentation and clarity of the answer? Or should all answers presented here earn all five points?

Discussion on this answer, on math, and various answers-in-comments have been moved to chat. Please see this FAQ before posting a comment below this one (but discussion can continue in the chat).

I don't think this is an issue with "literalism", in the sense of students taking some farcical literal interpretation of the question. For example, a prompt to "Write a definition of finite set" and the student responds "a definition of finite set".
Rather, this is a poorly worded question that does not make the expectations clear if your expectations were for a particular level of detail in the definition. If the third answer is the answer the instructor(s) wanted, they need to make this clear in the question as asked.
I question the value of asking this question at all, as I don't see what knowledge it demonstrates beyond an ability to regurgitate something from memory. Something more meaningful might be to ask to distinguish between finite and countable sets.
Since it's too late for this particular exam, I would assign full points for any correct answers, even if they are brief and not as comprehensive as was desired, and change the wording for future versions of the exam.

(+1) for I question the value of asking this question at all, as I don't see what knowledge it demonstrates beyond an ability to regurgitate something from memory. This was my thought also. If the word "finite" is allowed to be used in the answer, then I don't see what purpose this serves, as this is like asking students what a novel is in an introductory literature class -- if they don't know this term, how can they follow anything in the course? Maybe for a more advanced class one could ask for a definition that doesn't make use of the word "finite", but that's not the case here.

I question whether the third answer reflects superior knowledge. It sounds like a student who is flailing around, grasping for the answer, and trying out all the answers that might work, without being able to judge a credible answer. I give it a lower score than the first answer. On appeal I would ask the student to write brief statement, based on the text and lectures only, why their answer is at least as good as, or better than, the basic information needed, eg, as shown in answer 1.

Making sure students understand a rigorous definition of finite and infinite with respect to cardinality is valuable, in my personal opinion. Of course the answers listed as acceptable by the asker are almost entirely without rigor.

Regurgitating something from memory is a useful skill.  It is also much easier to memorise definitions and proofs if you understand them so it’s also a useful test.

As an evaluator, suppose I decided to give three points to answer #1, four points to answer #2, and full points (5) to the last answer. Is it not recommended to do it that way?

Absolutely not. You should give full points to any answer that correctly answers your literal question. In your example, all three answers meet that criterion.
If you want students to give examples of finite sets, you have to ask them to do that. It is incumbent upon us as instructors to give students clear and precise directions about what knowledge we expect them to demonstrate. If you perceive that students are using “literalism” as an excuse to not show some knowledge you want them to show, the solution is simply to make your own instructions more precise and in line with your actual wishes.
Edit: I see a lot of discussion here on the question of whether OP’s perception that answer #1 is a technically correct definition of a finite set is actually correct. This seems like a side issue and tangential to OP’s actual question. My answer starts from the premise that this is a course teaching set theory concepts at an intuitive level, such that “a finite set is a set with a finite number of elements” is actually a correct definition in the context of the course.
Some of the other mathematicians here seem to be of the opinion that one should not teach such a naive definition of a finite set. Well, we could have a debate about that, but as I said, I think it misses the point of what sort of advice OP is actually asking for. So I’ll stay out of that particular debate.

I'm surprised you consider the first two as valid.

@Buffy I wonder what definition the book/instructor gave. If "a set with a finite number of elements" then what more is there to say? We don't know if there was a prior definition of "finite number". Perhaps infinite was defined as the existence of a bijection with a proper subset of itself and finite as not infinite.

@EthanBolker, Bijection is a set concept, as is "element". If that path were taken then a definition of a finite set would be one that cannot be put into a bijection with a proper subset of itself (or the empty set, for which proper subset doesn't apply). But the answers given in the question are just circular.

@Buffy I think OP is describing a course teaching set theory concepts at an intuitive level, where “finite number” is assumed to be a known concept. In that case, saying that a finite set is a set with a finite number of elements can be a correct definition and not circular. Of course, for a course in axiomatic set theory one will develop a more robust definition.

A similar set of questions in a different field: "Define Totalitarianism", "Define Totalitarianism and provide at least one example each from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries", and "Define Totalitarianism, provide at least one example each from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, compare and contrast it with Fascism, Stalinism, and Mao Zedong Thought, and then answer the following: Is the current government of Ruritania Totalitarian? Explain your answer and give at least five reasons for or against."

@DanRomik, yes, but this would seem to me to demand too much of the students' "playing along with the rules" created in the course, as opposed to a "mathematical reality". That is, I think it is not reasonable to attempt to "control" the ambient reality in math courses, so that there are unpredictable rules in play. :)

I appreciate the desire to not get into the mathematical wrongness of the OP's sample answers. That said, it's very hard for me to imagine any math source that accepts using a word in its own definition. E.g., I teach a liberal-arts math appreciation course, not even junior-high algebra being a required prerequisite, and even there (Pirnot) the definition is "A set is finite if its cardinal number is a whole number."

@DanielR.Collins the example here is not "using a word in its own definition". It is defining the notion of a finite set in terms of another concept (assumed more primitive in this context) of finite number. If you think this is a problem, do you also object to an open map being defined as a function mapping open sets to open sets? Or to the definition of a compact operator being logically dependent on the concept of a compact set? There's countless other examples of this sort of definition pattern in math. Honestly, this whole side debate seems like a storm in a teapot to me.

Previously you guessed about, "concepts at an intuitive level, where 'finite number' is assumed to be a known concept", which would not have the same status as those examples you're mentioning now. I agree with the answer by @AndreasBlass that such a state would be an unlikely event.

@DanielR.Collins thanks for your thoughts. I agree it’s not exactly the same as the examples I gave, and like I said this could be the topic for an interesting debate, but I’d rather not pursue this discussion further at this point.

To further amplify the point of Dan's edit: if you check the edit history, the OP more strongly emphasized that this was a sample exam question, in a line that was edited out by another user.  The question here is about the grading practice, and debate about the mathematical content of the sample exam question belongs somewhere else.

In the unlikely event that "finite number of elements" was previously defined and can therefore be used in a definition of "finite set", all three answers deserve full credit.
In any event, answers 2 and 3 should not get more credit than answer 1, because the additional information they contain is not part of a definition. (It doesn't even have the form of a definition.)

It is pretty hard in the modern world to define "finite number of elements" prior to defining finite set. After all, what is an "element"? What is "finite".

@Buffy  I didn't say it's easy, but here goes: The "number of elements" in a set X  is the smallest (von Neumann) ordinal in bijection with X. An ordinal is "finite" if it is a member of every limit ordinal.

I like that definition, but somehow don't think that was the path here. Maybe the OP can clarify the level of the course and what is supposed to be known by the students. Occam's razor suggests a different path was followed.

@Buffy: What is "finite" --- Without using the word "finite" in the definition (aside from the term being defined), one could say that a finite set is a set such that there does not exist a bijection to a proper subset of itself, and other possibilities exist. But in light of the answers given in the OP's question, the 2nd or 3rd year undergraduate level (U.S. standard) in doing something like this is not the case here.

How about "a set whose cardinality is a natural number"?

@user253751 That presupposes a definition of cardinality, of natural number, and the connection between the two. Probably not what this student has been taught ...

@EthanBolker: That is precisely the presentation in the liberal-arts math appreciation text my department uses (Pirnot, Sec. 2.1).

If answer #1 is a correct answer to your question, then I would argue that answer #3 deserves fewer points than answer #1, not more. This is something that I see too often on students' exams: they don't really understand the concept they are asked to define, so they regurgitate every sentence from the course notes that contains the needed words and hope something sticks.
To me, this is analogous to answering, "What is the first sentence of the most famous soliloquy in Hamlet," with the complete works of Shakespeare, rather than "To be or not to be, that is the question." This is not an acceptable answer, and it demonstrates a worse knowledge than a student who answers straight to the point.
As for answer #2, I'm on the fence. I always try to explain to students the difference between a definition, an example, a theorem, and a proof. This is, after all, the most basic thing about logical reasoning that you can teach; but you would be surprised at how few get it quickly and how long it takes to settle in most students' minds. (This may be a failure of me as a teacher, though.) Giving full points to someone who answers a query for a definition with an example flies in the face of that. But the answer does contain the definition, and the example is clearly demarcated, so this is perhaps acceptable.
In any case, I would not give points to students who answer a question I haven't asked. All the others would have an outcry for unfairness, and I wouldn't be able to do anything but sympathize.

I'm not sure if this was your intent, but "To be or not" isn't the first line in an Act, and isn't even from MacBeth (it's from Hamlet).

Agreed with the point here. Related question: Test answer rejected for saying more than asked for

@OwenReynolds It turns out I'm an idiot. Thanks for the catch!

It at least shows a lack of ability to distinguish between what was asked and what not.

I agree with the other answers that this is not an issue of literalism at all, but a lack of clarity in questioning.
Let's consider another field, and three possible exam questions you might ask:

Define Totalitarianism.

Define Totalitarianism and provide at one example each from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.

Define Totalitarianism, provide at one example each from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, compare and contrast it with Fascism, Stalinism, and Mao Zedong Thought, and then answer the following: Is the current government of Ruritania Totalitarian? Explain your answer and give at least five reasons for or against.

The more detail you can provide as to what characteristics make up a top-notch answer, the more your students will be able to focus on providing just that.
One might argue that a student should just provide everything they know, but that is problematic too - your students are not going to know what "additional" details you want or how far they ought to go unless you tell them.
Now, this instruction does not necessarily need to be expressed on the test itself if it is otherwise provided in the course. You could make a note in your course syllabus providing,

Exams for this course will include questions asking you to "define" or "explain" some concept. To receive full credit for a "define" question, you must phrase your definition with respect to another concept covered in this course, as well as provide at least three examples of the defined concept. For "explain" questions, you must "define" the concept as well as compare and contrast it with another concept covered in this course. The following would be an acceptable "define" answer:

The definition of crancorianism is when pre-reticular osmosis occurs within a transfinite non-orientable matrix with n<3 and m=plus or minus 0.5. Examples of this include Smith's Decomposable Spline, Marvin's Ghostly Gradient in eight-space, and the application of the Wossamotta U Framework of Advanced Best Practices in Pre-K Remedial Pedagogy in the Juvenile Justice Context to NP-hard graph traversals.

Of course, we can also come up with true "literalism" in student responses:

Hey, your test said "Choose one of the following", it didn't say "Answer one of the following"! I chose #2, so I should get full credit even though I didn't answer it.

The question said "Find x", so I circled "x". What more do you expect? If you wanted me to "compute" it, you should have said so!

The instructions said to answer the question, not to answer the question "correctly". How was I supposed to know that you wanted a correct answer and not any answer?

Of course I copied my answers off a classmate, there wasn't a "No Copying Answers" warning at the top of the test!

If one of your students provides one of these comments, you can dismiss them as failure to understand the social context of university study rather than a real issue with your test.

No offense, but this is not good advice. Specifically, 1. It is completely unrealistic to expect students to read and understand complicated explanations from the syllabus of what you mean by “define” and “explain”. Those are English words with a standard meaning. Can you imagine if every course instructor had their own particular, very specific notion of “define” and “explain” that they required their students to grasp in all its nuances? 2. Your third version of the “define totalitarianism” question is much too long to ask in a single paragraph. I’d break it up into multiple subquestions.

Your answer is applicable to fields other than mathematics where a definition is (largely) semantic. In mathematics, definition is a creative act, creating a new concept for study. The closest non-mathematical analog I can easily think of is the term Bunburyist, defined in the play "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscan Wilde. The character Algernon created a new concept and named it, rather than just applying a name to something known. The "namer" of totalitarianism didn't invent the concept. It was semantic only, not creative.

You would expect that students would be guided as to how to answer as expected. For example in seminars. No-one benefits from students not knowing what they are supposed to do (except if they don't have the ability to do so)

Consider that you need to know what a full-credit answer looks like ahead of time, since that's how you decide how many total points each Q is worth.
That Q was 5 points. Let's say that's not much, which means you've decided ahead-of-time that a short simple answer is worth full credit.
On the other hand, suppose 5 is a medium or large amount of points. That means you've considered shorter answers and ruled them out. Let's say you decided the answer needs a contrast with finite vs. infinite sets, plus examples for the full 5 points. Obviously, the Q as written doesn't require that -- it will take a "literal" answer. That needs to be fixed, ahead of time (maybe the Q becomes "what are the 2 major cardinalities of sets, give an example of each"). If a Q slips by where you expected a long answer but a simple one works, that's clearly a mistake on your part, and not a call to grade the Q on a curve.

Answer #1 to the question is correct. Full marks.
Both answers #2 and #3 are not as good as answer #1, if you plan to grade differently, they should get less points.
Students must learn to understand a question and its scope. The scope was to say what a finite set is, and not what an example of a finite set is, or what an infinite set is, or what is the added value tax in Belgium (usually 21% if anyone is interested).
Answering too much to a question can be catastrophic in some cases.

3 point answer:
If you ask a question that's worth 5 points:

Every single answer that correctly answers what is asked should be graded with 5 points no matter the wording or the length
Every single answer that partially or not completely answers what is asked should be graded with 1-4 points, depending on how much of the question is answered

5 point answer:
Grading an exam should always be around what is being asked. If "how the answer is written" is part of the criteria, then it should be stated like that. The way you say you assign points leaves your question open both heavily for interpretation, and for some sort of "unexplainable group-knowledge" i.e. "You'll get full points as long as no other student gives a better answer than yours".
Every student is different, and just because someone has better writing skills doesn't mean they understood better the concept. Not only that; in some cases, beign able to use less words to explain something actually means better understanding of the concept.
Now, if you want to encourage students to use examples and extended explanations, award extra points to those who do so, either by giving 5+1 to them, or by changing the question to 3 for those who "just" answer and 5 for those who answer and give examples; but in both cases you should clearly establish that as the rule for grading the question.

I disagree that any length should get the full grade. If the answer is that long or cumbersome to read that it is hard to extract the relevant part, one may subtract points. Answers who provide several different solutions should also not get the full points. But providing an additional example after answering the question should not be a problem. And sometimes it helps to see the reasoning to give some of the points for incorrect answers which mostly use correct reasoning and only have a minor mistakes that leads to the incorrect conclusion.

Actually, I think you were being overly generous with the first two answers and even the third. The first is simply a tautology, not a definition. Zero points. ("'Finite' is, you know, man, FINITE! Know what I mean, bro?"). The second shows a bit of comprehension, maybe 2 points to distinguish it from the first.
Even the third lacks the key element that a finite set can be put into 1-1 correspondence with a bounded subset of the natural numbers. So, maybe 4 points. That answer says that an infinite set is not finite, but that is also a tautology. A finite set is not infinite: not not-finite.
Not to be too harsh, but 3 is quite literally I can't define it, but I know it when I see it.
So, for the complainers, I'd just tell them to go back and study harder and that you were already a bit permissive with the grading. They lack insight that they need to obtain if they are to advance in math.

Caveat, I don't know the level of the course, but for any college level course, I'd expect more.

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text:
Confusion about writing acronyms in section title
In writing one article, I came across situation where my section title has one long word which I wanted to use with acronym later on. Now should I put acronym in section title or repeat word in text and write acronym there ? Take a following example for illustration...
Option 1

Section 1: Effect of Very Long Word (VLW) in section title
It is seen that VLW used in article sections are confusing part.

Option 2

Section 1: Effect of Very Long Word in section title
It is seen that Very Long Word (VLW) used in article sections are confusing part.

Which one is legal or appropriate in scientific writing ?

The answer is it depends. There are no general rules. What is the real title?

A third option:

Section 1: Effect of VLW
It is seen that Very Long Word (VLW) used in article sections are confusing part.

This is useful if VLW is truly very long, and messes up your titles, and you can trust most people have at least heard of it, and will have a clue of what you are talking about. Placing the full version next to it makes it discoverable.
Note that the operating distinction is "will have a clue", reading the title should give the reader a quick idea of what it is about.
If the acronym is not well known enough, use the full word, and assume people will skip titles when they read the article in detail.

You should not use the acronym in the title, unless it stands alone and is very, very well-known. Otherwise it looks ugly and some journals have policies against it.
Define it the first time it is used in the abstract and in the introduction/main text. You should also include it in the nomenclature if there is one.

Use common sense and don't overthink it. People are way too strict in scientific writing, and not always for good reasons.
The purpose of the title is to describe (in sufficient detail) what the article is about: for potential readers, but also for search algorithms (eg. Google). So the title should contain the keywords people are likely to look for, as well as describe clearly what is actually in the article. If you like marketing (I don't) you could also say: the title should encourage people to go and read the article.
In my field (biophysics) everybody knows what NMR is and it is unnecessary to write "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance" in the title: it usually makes the title less clear, and everybody will search for NMR when they are looking for the subject. However, sometimes journals forbid the use of acronyms in titles, and at the same time impose a character or word limit. If you are dealing with one of those there is not much you can do. Otherwise: PLEASE use the acronym if it leads to a better title.


text:
Etiquette with regard to email read reciepts
Context: I am an assistant professor working at a small liberal arts college in the United States.
Like many institutions, mine uses Microsoft Outlook.  On occasion, I will receive emails requesting read receipts.  Usually these emails are internal (from staff, administration, faculty, etc.) but in this case the email is from a student's parent.
Am I obligated to accept this parent's request to send a read receipt for their email?  Would it be considered rude to decline it?  I certainly won't ignore their email, but I'd rather not have them know exactly when I read it until I know what it says.
Furthermore, is there a certain expectation around read receipts for internal email?  This is probably institution-dependent, but I figured I'd ask anyway.

Read receipts are so annoying. I decline them then respond. Essentially I'm saying 'here's my considerate response but screw your read receipt'.

Am I obligated to accept this parent's request to send a read receipt for their email? Would it be considered rude to decline it?

No, there is no obligation on anyone's part to send a read receipt for emails.
It may be considered rude to the email sender if they, upon encountering those who choose not to comply with the read receipt request, assume that the lack of compliance is a giant "middle finger": it certainly is possible that some portion of email senders fall into this category (but/and there are those who think it is rude, annoying, etc. to inundate email recipients with this additional hurdle, so it works both ways).

is there a certain expectation around read receipts for internal email?

Expectations are not always set in stone. In this case I suggest that, if you do not typically comply with read receipt requests, that you get into the habit early on of not doing that. Over time, people will know that "Oh, yeah, AegisCruiser never bothers with that when I send emails to them!"; some will respect that, and others will get annoyed. Having said that, if you come across some, for instance, powerful administrator at your institution, and you know that they want you to utilize the read receipt, then it's probably better to comply, or, if you cannot tolerate that, stand your ground and see what happens, possibly having in mind some other opportunities should the need arise.

Since you mentioned that you are working in the US:
As a side comment, I suggest that you do not contact the parent of your student directly, since this may violate FERPA rules: it is my understanding that, if a student has FERPA-ed their details, then we instructors are not allowed to confirm with anyone that an individual is a student in our course/enrolled at our institution. In this case, I suggest discussing with your department head how best to proceed.

Regarding your last paragraph:  a student does not have to do anything in order to "FERPA" their details.  If a student is enrolled in your class (at a college or university), then you cannot share non-directory details with outsiders (e.g. whether or not they are enrolled in your class).  There are some exceptions, e.g. if a student is a dependent of their parents (for the purposes of taxation), you might be permitted to talk to their parents; and a student can sign a FERPA release form.  Even in these cases, however, I tend to defer to my dean.

I might also add a bit of advice:  if the email comes from above you, you should probably accept the return receipt request.  Why piss off the boss?  Otherwise, do as you like. :D