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What happens when a instructor really goofs up a course?
Given how many college courses are taught every academic semester in the world (or even just in the U.S.), it simply must be the case that some portion of the instructors badly goof up their courses, to the point where it is not really able to be recovered from--in essence, the course is ruined. This could be things like:

Provably unfair or wildly too strict (or too lenient?) grading.
Losing exam scores (this has to be particularly common) for some or all of the students/exams.
Missing a large number of class sessions, or somehow leaving mid-course.
Etc.

I taught for a while and luckily never had such a catastrophe, nor did I know of any from my colleagues. But what typically happens when this sort of thing does occur?

Life goes on. The instructor/department figures out what to do (if anything) on a case-by-case basis. What kind of answer are you looking for here?

@ff524: I think useful answers would include some of the techniques that departments typically use.  Of course the decision of exactly what to do would be case-by-case, but I think many academics (perhaps especially department chairs) would find it useful to collect some possible strategies, which may include options they wouldn't have considered.

The instructor is never heard from again.  There are piercing screams from the College of Animal Husbandry.

At my school (lack of data, so just a comment) losing exam scores means those students re-take a modified version of the exam. Prof leaving mid-course means a replacement is brought in to replace them and continue minimizing disruptions for the students. If grading were too easy, we would re-grade by a better grader.

Losing exam scores?! This is a particularly serious fault from the part of an instructor, a clear sign of disrespect towards the students and the institution, and it mustn't be accepted as common. In every stage of the grading process I triple check all the papers to be sure that none got lost.

@MassimoOrtolano And still things happen sometimes. Note that the OP explicitly asks for cases when the instructor "really goofs up", so I don't think that the OP assumes that this is a triviality.

This question seems likely to elicit a series of anecdotes as "answers". It seems like a better fit for a forum then a Q&A site (also see the [help/dont-ask]).

@ff524 We have many questions here that typically lead to a number of anecdotes as answers. I disagree that this necessarily makes these questions unsuitable for this site.

It somehow irks me that this question was closed when there were already 4 answers written.

@xLeitix If you believe this should be reopened, please cast a reopen vote. (And there's no rule against voting to close questions that already have answers, it happens all the time.)

@ff524 Why don't you just ignore xLeitix's comments there (the two comments right above) and delete them when this thread is already closed? Shouldn't they go to meta? I thought that was the "consensus" of this SE and what you had been doing as a moderator.

@YuichiroFujiwara Assuming you are asking in good faith, here is a good-faith answer: While a question is closed, comments discussing the potential reopening of that specific question are posted on the question because it facilitates people voting for or against reopening. After the question is reopened, if there is nobody advocating for its re-closure, these comments will become obsolete, and further discussion about the whole process should go to meta.

@ff524 Thanks for clearing that up. So, if a thread gets closed or reopened in the way comments asked, then those comments are considered obsolete. But they may stay there if the status of the thread in question doesn't change or they are considered obsolete when they are made (e.g., explaining how closing/reopening was not appropriate when the action has already been reversed). Do I understand it right? That makes sense. (And you can delete my comments here, too.)

@xLeitix: I have to say that I very much appreciate ff524's waiting to cast the fifth closure vote.  If you feel like the question should be reopened, in my opinion you should be able to post that here, but if you feel really strongly you should probably open a question in meta about it.  Especially, if the latter happens then comments about the closure / reopening of the question will probably be moved there rather than simply deleted, which in my opinion is a poor way to administrate questions that have already been contentious.

@xLeitix: the OP explicitly specified, about losing exam scores, that "this has to be particularly common". If this is really common, I don't know, but if it is, universities have a serious problem with their professors: on one side universities can't punish cheating among students up to the point of banning them from university and on the other accept that their faculty members commonly get away without consequences for losing official documents. Indeed it might happen, but if in a university it's not rare, then there is a serious issue that should be addressed.

@MassimoOrtolano: I don't think it's actually common. It never happened to me all through my schooling, nor while I've been teaching for what rounds up to two decades, nor heard any stories of it at my institution that I can recall, etc.

@DanielR.Collins Yes, that is my experience too. I've just found it astonishing that the OP thought otherwise, but they've never specified what made them think so.

By and large, ff524 as usual has it right: if there is a problem (even a serious one), the responsible people deal with the problem and its immediate consequences, and then life goes on. Smart people will learn from their goof-up, and it will not happen again. Less smart people do the same crap all over again until a higher-up steps in (in the worst case, this may mean getting fired). I am not sure if there is anything much more general to say about this topic.
Some examples from my personal experience:

Losing exam scores

In the university where I did my PhD, a young professor once lost track of 400 final lab exams in a programming course (that means multiple large stacks of paper - not exactly easy to lose). Apparently, he locked them in for the weekend, and on Monday they were nowhere to be found. As there were no traces of a break-in, the theory was that the cleaning lady has thrown them out for whatever reason (as she was the only one with access to the room besides the prof). Following, an entire lab was digging through garbage for one morning, without success.
The prof. sent out a very embarrassing apology, announced a make-up test, and gave students the chance to just get their mid-term grades if they could not / did not want to participate in the make-up test. Following, all people in this lab were extremely paranoid with ungraded test sheets.

Missing a large number of class sessions, or somehow leaving mid-course.

In another course in my old alma mater, an external lecturer apparently entirely lost interest in his course and basically stopped going to his own lecture after the second or third week. He was kicked out fast and unceremoniously. As nobody was available who could teach this course in his stead (it was very specialised), the course was cancelled mid-flight with the promise of a make-up course in the next term, leaving behind a number of understandably pissed students. A policy was put into place that external lecturers should not be allowed to give classes for which no replacement person was available, should something similar happen again.

Provably unfair or wildly too strict grading.

Sadly, the common way to deal with this problem is "better luck next time". That is, in my university, the best one can hope for in case of a very difficult or unfair exam is that the dean talks to the lecturer in private and asks him to make the test easier next time.

"better luck next time" — My department has a standing Capricious Grading Committee specifically to deal with claims of "provably unfair or wildly too strict grading".  When the claims have merit, course grades are changed.

I really find the sentence hilarious about losing interest in his own lectures.

I have a personal story, where something like this happened in one of my classes. I was taking CS at a Canadian university in my third year and I have a course on Databases. Its our prof's first year at the school and even in the first class I remember some weirdness like how much cared about people being late. This goes on until the first assignment which was literally just the practice problems from the book, then instead of getting us to hand them in she goes through the answers in class except she cannot complete even a single question without help from the students. The midterm rolls around soon enough after this and the exam is questions from the book printed out, and half the class fails badly and the other half does rather well depending on how much of the book you memorized. After this most of the people in the class complained because she didn't know her material and apparently this happened in her other classes as well. She ended up being fired halfway through a semester and was replaced with the chair of my program, as he was the only one who could teach the class. I'm not sure how common of a response this is but it is the only time I've ever seen a professor get fired.
Normally I'd but I don't have enough points yet and I know this isn't a real answer as I have no data.

And what happened to the students in the class?

About half ended up failing and retaking the course, those who failed got 60% of their money back. Similar to what happens if you drop a course halfway through. The ones that managed to passed still got a credit. The other class she taught was a web design course where the replacement prof changed the grading scheme to make the final project worth the majority of it.

I can't explain for all of these answers, having never been an instructor, nor experienced them. However, one of my professors in college lost my exam. Neither of us know where it went, and both of us knew I took the exam and submitted it. We had tests every 2 weeks, and this was towards the end of the semester. In addition, I showed up to class all the time, so it would have been really out of character for me to pull a fast one anyways.
So, this being a calculus course, and neither of us wanting to have to sit through another hour of me re-taking an exam, came up with a compromise:
She'd assign me a grade. I would get a floored borderline grade of my test average.
My test average ended up being an A, so I was assigned a borderline A (90%) as the score for that exam.
In the end, it was also my lowest test grade for the semester, so both me and the professor were satisfied with the outcome.
However, the benefit of the outcome, at the very least, should be favorable to the student if it is not the student's fault. Not automatic 100% benefit, but the student should not leave at a disadvantage as a result of a mistake outside his control.

Many hundreds of years ago I lost a student's exam.  I recorded a grade of 100% because I could not show that the student would have earned anything less.  (And I've never lost another exam.)

Since a number of up-voted answers are just personal experiences, I can share one of my own (though it's not really a goof, it's a similar situation).
In undergrad I was in an intro to ethics course. About halfway through the semester the professor was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive cancer, and the oncologist told him his only hope was to drop everything and hop a plane to Johns Hopkins. He finished that week of classes, and his last day he explained what had happened, apologizing profusely. The department had found a medical ethicist from the local hospital to come in and take over. He was a nice guy, but unfortunately not nearly as good as the first guy who had been a cornerstone of the department.
The students complained that, although the grading was fair by both people, the course style and expectations had totally changed mid-way through. Technically they had a point- the original syllabus was not followed too closely, and we didn't cover all the material we had been promised. Those who complained were told that we were all expected to cope with the unforeseen and truly exceptional circumstances.
Nobody I talked to had actually argued themselves into a higher grade. However, myself and a few compatriots suspected we were graded extremely leniently. I remember being very dissapointed because the grading outline in the syllabus said I should get a middle-B, but I ended up with an A minus.

As a postscript, the professor lived for a few more years, so it was worth it in a sense. Unfortunately he lost about 150 pounds in chemotherapy and still died relatively young.

I fully agree with xLeitix, especially with

[...] if there is a problem (even a serious one), the responsible people deal with the problem and its immediate consequences, and then life goes on.

However, I would like to add that it might help to take such a situation with a bit of humor. I once took an exam (together with 400 other students) where the exam questions were on a doubly-sided print out. Unfortunately, the assistant responsible for copying the exam sheets messed up and copied only one side, which was only discovered when the exam was handed out. So the professor had to find a photo-copier (the exam was taken in a room quite far away from her office) and make 400 copies. In the meantime, so that the students did not get bored, some assistant provided the current standings of a world championship soccer game to us by writing noteworthy events onto the blackboard.


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Are Shared Office Common for Lecturers
Are there any standards in higher education (any country) on when lecturers (any level, any field) have a private office or a shared office?
I know it's a good idea to provide 'consultation time' for students as one-on-one teaching helps the student in so many ways. However, in a shared office it seems that some of the benefits of one-on-one teaching disappear. For example, the student is less likely to be concerned about how they look in front of others if it's in a private office but if there are other teachers (perhaps with other students) then your student will have those issues again.
So, are there any standards about private vs shared offices for university lecturers?

Are there any standards in higher education... — No.

You're going to find answers all over the map for this one (i.e., there probably aren't "standards").  I personally like having a private office so I can get the most work done, but I'm generally comfortable with a shared space if it doesn't get too loud.  I have found that it is rare for students to worry about how they perform if they are just trying to get help figuring out the material.  If there are conference rooms or open classrooms available, that's sometimes a good place to tutor students, too.
For what it's worth, I never have closed door meetings with students because that has the potential to lead to allegations of improper relationships, etc.  If a student does have something private to discuss, I'll ask them to take a walk around campus where we are visible but can't be heard, or to go into a conference room that has windows into the hallway.

+1 For that has the potential to lead to allegations of improper relationships, etc.

+1 for same reason as @scaaahu. My advisor would never close the door while meeting with students, and my wife's advisor does the same. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of not being accused of inappropriate behavior.

I think there's still a big difference between having the door open and having someone else actually in the room (probably trying to do their own work) during a meeting with a student, though.

I don't think there are likely to be any standards that address this issue specifically.
For example, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, one of the recognized regional accrediting agencies in the US, has published its standards.  The closest they come to discussing office space is Standard 2.G.1:

Consistent with its mission, core themes, and characteristics, the institution creates and maintains physical facilities that are accessible, safe, secure, and sufficient in quantity and quality to ensure healthful learning and working environments that support the institution’s mission, programs, and services.

Obviously this leaves a lot of leeway.  If an institution were to assign 17 professors to a broom closet, an accrediting agency might take note, but private offices versus shared isn't likely to be addressed.
In the US, I have seen places where everyone from graduate instructors on up gets private offices, and I have seen places where even full professors share.
If you're looking for arguments to convince your dean that your department needs more office space, I doubt that standards are the way to go about it.

I can give two views:
In France, quite often you share office with other people from the same department. However, offices are in general a no-meeting space as long as your office mates are there and are not part of the meeting. You have black/white-boards on the corridors, several small meeting rooms etc. Of course, coming into an office and chatting for 1 or 2 minutes is usually fine. On the other hand, people even go to the corridor to answer their cell phone, so that they don't disturb others.
In the Czech Republic, it depends mostly on the space available. However, in general at the universities, silence in an office is less a standard than in France.

Everybody needs privacy;  to really discuss this issue some ambiguities must be removed.
Imagine a chemistry lecturer sharing an office with a political science lecturer? This will only lead to total confusion. Though it might help both lecturers to diversify their ideas, but will not help academically.
I would suggest one senior lecturer with an assistant lecturer from the same field sharing an office. This will help the junior lecturer, and one hopes that the senior academic may learn from his/her younger colleague as well.

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How often do publishers change/tweak articles to achieve visually appealing results?
When reading this question it seems the theoretical answer is that LaTeX is not perfect and manual/human intervention is required. In the TeX Book Knuth says:

But the problem of page make-up is considerably more difficult than
  the problem of line breaking that we considered in the previous
  chapter, because pages often have much less flexibility than lines do.
  If the vertical glue on a page has little or no ability to stretch or
  to shrink, TeX usually has no choice about where to start a new
  page; conversely, if there is too much variability in the glue, the
  result will look bad because different pages will be too irregular.
  Therefore if you are fussy about the appearance of pages, you can
  expect to do some rewriting of the manuscript until you achieve an
  appropriate balance, or you might need to fiddle with the
  looseness as described in Chapter 14; no automated system will be
  able to do this as well as you.

In the LaTeX Companion Mittelbach writes:

For this and other reasons, getting the final layout of the book was fairly labor intensive and even required minor rewriting (on maybe 10% of the pages) in order to avoid bad line breaks or page breaks.

Ignoring the fact that LaTeX is not the only software that publishers use, I am curious if the theoretical answer is actually the practical answer. Specifically, I am interested in:

How often do journals make manual tweaks to their templates/layouts
when typesetting articles?
How often wording of the text is changed to increase the visual
    appeal of the article?

Since some journals provided me not only the final typesetted result but also additional documents that captured the editing (for example a scanned document with the remarks or the copy editor or even a diff of the "source code" (actually a mix of text and source code for the formula)) I can say, based on this sample size of about a dozen: Always.
To be more precise: The text has been changed always, but I can't really tell if this was for better visual appearance or because of the text. Also the figures have been shifted  around in all cases (and I guess that this was for the visual appearance). I can't say whether the journal tweaked their template (because I don't care too much about the templates in the first place).
Maybe I should add that I have been more or less always pleased with the editing. In most cases I did not notice the changes from the typesetted version, but only after a closer look at the diff. At a few places the editing introduce a wrong wording (most cases there was a note to check this passage) and in some cases the typesetting of the formula was worse.

+1 this is the correct answer, based on a (personally observed) sample size of several hundred.

@Allure I am not even sure what this answer says. For question 1, it says they change the text, but I don't know if it was for visual reasons or because of the text. For question 2 it says I don't know or care.

@strongbad I understand. So you are really looking for an answer by an employee of some publisher, right? (Because who else could know an answer for your question.)

@Dirk probably, but maybe an EiC would know. I can take a stab at 1 since in my field the typesetting proof comes after the copy edit changes and presumably they are not linked. For journals that use LateX  and make their template available one could see if the submitted CRC matches the actual output.

A partial answer because I'm not a typesetter (i.e. I can only base off my memory of the un-typeset article vs. the completed one), and it's been a while since I personally handled production of journal articles.
The answer to question 1 is very often, perhaps always. Completed articles always looked different from the original; however I also handled a lot of non-CRC articles so it's expected that the completed one looks different. Still even with CRC papers they look different. Figures move, referencing style changes, a license is added to the first page. I also remember a typesetter telling me they run checks. I didn't ask for details, but I know that one result is that if there's a referencing error (e.g. "see Ref. (??)" which is moderately common) it's caught and fixed.
The answer to question 2 however is almost never. It's dangerous to heavily modify the text without the author's approval, plus my experience is that typesetters are almost always able to fix issues without changing the text. How they do it I'm not sure, but I'm regularly able to say things like "hey, the left-most word of these three lines are the same, improve it" and they'll manage without changing any word. I also remember two relevant incidents, both for books not journals:

One was an equation overrun. The text nearby was already too tight and the only way to fix it was to add a new line, which would however move every later page. If we'd noticed this earlier in the production process it would've been fixable; as it is the book went to print with the flaw (damn).
The other was a case where the author wanted to typeset the entire book himself. I remember I spotted a serious issue in the completed PDF (don't remember exactly what - could've been a figure caption that split across two pages) and the author rewrote the text to eliminate the issue. We eventually persuaded him to give us the source files, and the typesetters fixed the issue without rewriting. I don't know how they did it.

You might also be interested in the production timeline. If I gave a normal-sized manuscript (up to 20+ pages) to the typesetters, they'd usually give it back in 3-4 working days. If I said it was urgent, they'd usually return it in one day. This is imperfect data however: it's possible they pushed down the time taken by e.g. having two typesetters to the manuscript. Not having worked in the typesetting department, I don't know the internals.

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Policies on undergraduate students taking graduate courses
I'm curious what policies are common at US universities around whether and when undergraduates can take graduate-level courses.
At previous institutions where I've studied and worked, it was possible for an upper-level undergraduate student (say, 3rd or 4th year) to enroll in graduate courses, and possibly count it toward their graduation requirements.  They had to have the consent of the instructor and/or their advisor, and meet certain other criteria, such as minimum GPA, but it was not an unusual occurrence for particularly strong students to do this.
At my current institution, it is much more restrictive.  Graduate courses are classified by their course number, with 500 and 600 level courses being "master's level" and 700 being "doctoral level".  Advanced undergraduates may take 500-level courses with the instructor's permission, but there is an official policy that they are not allowed to take 600 or 700 level courses, even if the instructor approves.  There is also a rule against counting 600 or 700 level courses toward the requirements for an undergraduate degree.  So even if everyone agrees that a particular student is prepared for the course (maybe better than the grad students) and would benefit from it, they still can't take it.
(The only exception to this policy is for undergraduate students who are going straight on to a graduate program at this same university, and have already been accepted into the grad program pending the completion of their undergraduate degree.  In such cases, they are allowed to take 600-level courses with consent of instructor, but 700-level courses are still off limits.)
I found this policy quite surprising when I first learned about it, but most others here seem to think it is reasonable and unexceptional.  The rationale usually given is that if undergrads were allowed to enroll in higher-level 600 and 700 grad courses, there might be a tendency to "water down" the course content to better accommodate them, to the detriment of the graduate program's quality.
So I am curious what policies are prevalent at other institutions.  Is it more common to have a policy that undergrads are allowed to take grad courses with appropriate permission, or not?  Quantitative data would be ideal, but answers based on sufficiently broad experience would also be helpful.

I find your policy to be unnecessarily strict. But all such policies can be made more rational if someone, such as the department head or dean, can sign off on an exception. But, do you just want data, or do you want support for a more rational (my words) policy?

Do you think there could be a chance that a few undergrads could fill the course and block the enrollment of a master's or ph.d student?

@Buffy: I think that's just it - the policy doesn't provide for any such exceptions.  It's true that there is a general procedure to petition for an exception to any academic policy of any kind, but it's an elaborate process that has to go up to the graduate dean, and I've never heard of anyone using it for this purpose.  And again, at other institutions it is a routine thing that can be approved at a much lower level.

@mkennedy: Unlikely.  Graduate students already have higher registration priority than undergrads (they're allowed to enroll in courses starting a few days earlier).  And at other schools where instructor consent is sufficient, I think there's usually an understanding that the instructor should only give that consent if they expect that space is available.

Is this a place where some courses get "crosslisted" as both a master's level course and a doctoral level course with more or less the same contents but perhaps different assessment criteria/activities?

@Anyon: We do have cross-listing between undergrad (4xx) and master's (5xx) courses as you say: same lectures, different assignments.  But we don't do master's/doctoral crosslisting; if there's a course that should be taken by both levels, it's usually numbered 6xx and the same assignments and criteria applied to both groups of students.

When I took a few grad classes as an undergrad there was no difference in the assignments. The professors may have shaded the curve a bit, but I was not aware of it and it did not seem so at the time.

You describe "...rationale usually given..." but I've never heard a colleague (in maths, at five schools) give that kind of rationale for why undergraduates should not be in graduate courses. Did your colleagues in the department make the rationale or did the College/University make the rationale? That will help guide your understanding.

We not only allow (sufficiently prepared) undergraduates to take graduate courses, we sometimes find that undergraduates are the best students in the class.

While I will answer, I will also down vote. The question asks for a survey of answers. We could be here forever (or at least as long as all universities/departments have their say).

@JeffreyJWeimer: I tried to clarify in the last paragraph that I'm not asking for individual "my institution does X" answers. I would prefer broad data, e.g. from an existing survey with a meaningful sample. But I'm not sure such data exists, so I'd also accept an answer from broad experience; somebody with knowledge of how this works at many institutions, not just their own.

Still a long haul, based on my broad experience.

I have to ignore your last paragraph to consider this an answer, but it is more about what makes policy necessary and what makes it rational, rather than whether it is "common".
Large institutions need policies to avoid chaos. Without policies every case is individual and needs individual resolution. That can lead to unfairness. Policies mitigate that. The rules in such policies cover the common and typical cases.
But one characteristic of universities is that every student is different and one occasional encounters exceptional cases; Norbert Wiener for example. If a policy allows no exceptions then it will be unfair to some.
You already make an exception at the 600 level with "permission of the instructor". That may be fine for that level, but the next "Norbert" may need a higher level exception for a higher level course. If you can allow for that, then the policy returns to rationality.
A dean, say, can have a set of guidelines to help judge such exceptions. Those might involve the student's history, or the instructor's load, or whatever. But those can't be completely firm or they would be part of the policy. Again, the possibility of exceptions for exceptional cases. My personal view is that they should be somewhat permissive, but only "somewhat".
I once had to ask the dean for an exception to a policy of a rather different kind. He asked me to justify my request, which I did to his satisfaction and it made my path to graduation a bit easier. But I had to ask, and I had to provide justification.
If an educational institution lacks the possibility of exceptions to policies, then the faculty as a whole, can work to form better policies and/or draft an "exception policy" and lobby the administration to adopt it. Faculty associations of various kinds have been known to do that and actually have considerable moral/ethical power in such things.

Where I work it is as simple as "having an approval of the (graduate) course instructor", which makes perfect sense to me.
As to "the marginal cost of enrolling undergraduates is next to 0, except the professor has to do more work", this is outright false if you talk about real science and not some blah-blah-blah. There are not many undergraduate students that are ready to take the advanced courses in such subjects (I teach mathematics), so the pool of qualified candidates is always very small, and if you allow somebody unqualified to enter a high level course, it will result in an utter headache and disappointment for both the student and the instructor. I should say that I have had graduate classes in which the best student was an undergrad (as well as undergraduate classes in which the best student was still in high school), but those were exceptions, not the rule.

Let's ask what prohibits undergraduates from taking graduate courses.
In those cases where a course is required in a program of study for an accredited undergraduate degree, a decision on whether to disallow the undergraduate to register instead in a graduate course depends on the administrative accreditation rules. Accreditation guidelines could disallow it institutional wide. It could be disallowed by prohibitions for discipline-specific cases. By example, suppose that course Topic at the undergraduate level is required by accreditation to cover A, B, and C. Absent extenuating circumstances, the student cannot take Advanced Topic at the graduate level when it covers A, B, and D (but not C). To be clear, this restriction is not specifically prohibiting that an undergraduate student substitutes Advanced Topic for Topic because Advanced Topic is at a graduate level and not an undergraduate level, it is prohibiting the substitution of courses that do not cover the required content.
Absent accreditation rules, the next level of prohibition to prevent undergraduates from taking graduate courses should likely be found by reviewing course guidelines at the department level. For example, a graduate course may have its own set of pre-requisite requirements, and the pre-requisites may be "hard", meaning no exceptions are allowed.
After this, the rules are as per whatever administrative unit decides that they will be for whatever administrative reasons they want to give.
Exceptions to the above can be covered by extenuating circumstances. With accreditation, paperwork may be required.
Finally, absent anything else, the only thing that should limit an undergraduate student from taking a graduate course is their own desire and finances.
In summary, presuming that the guidelines from accreditation agencies only limit by content not by level, you have a long haul to ask every department in every institution what guidelines they have that prohibit undergraduates from taking graduate courses, and then asking why those rules are as they are.

Reasonable guesses, but not applicable in my case.  I found our accreditor's rules, and they specifically allow for the possibility of undergraduates taking graduate courses.  (B.1.c: "An institution may allow well-prepared advanced students to substitute its graduate courses for required or elective courses in an undergraduate degree program...").

And I've personally been the instructor of a graduate course which a well-prepared and eager undergraduate could not take despite my consent.  My department has no policies against this; they are set at the university level.  The course in question had no formal prerequisites, and in any case, prerequisite course requirements are always waivable by the instructor here.  Our department has no discipline-specific accreditation.

I would, however, be interested to know if there are any accrediting bodies that forbid this.  If someone knows of one, it would be a lot easier than me trying to search all of them.

@NateEldredge  My edit explains how accreditation limits the ability to substitute courses in a program of study. Outside of this, the rules for what can or cannot be taken are set by the university, the college, the department, or the course itself. These are not "reasonable guesses". These are from experiences working in two disciplines, across 30+ years, in two accrediting agencies teaching across 20+ different courses at undergraduate and graduate levels.

@NateEldredge ... "...  and then subsequently count those same courses ..." Which means, the substitution of the graduate course should if not must only occur when the graduate course will be used to continue the education at the next level. Been there. Done this one too. Just recently in fact.

Where I work (not in US) it is no longer allowed.  The government subsidizes the cost of education and graduate courses earn more per students than undergraduate classes: the logic is that grad courses have lower enrolment so the actual cost of resources to run the course is higher on a per-student basis.
You can easily see where this goes: this created an incentive for universities to enrol upper year undergrads in grad. courses, as the marginal cost of enrolling undergraduates is next to 0, except the professor has to do more work (aka mark more copies, read more essays etc).  For the universities the subsidy differential must have been worth it.

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Adding co-author for a revised manuscript
Is it possible to add a new co-author when requested for a second revision?
Another co-author would help improve the quality of the manuscript, but I am not sure if this is possible.

A revision to a manuscript is a chance to correct any issues raised in the original review. If you and your co-authors feel that adding a co-author would make the manuscript better, then it is of course acceptable to do so, absent explicit instructions to the contrary from the journal (although I am unaware of any journals with such rules).
However, you will also need to clearly explain in your cover letter to the editor why you added the co-author, and exactly what her contributions to the paper were.

This is quite common. Authors take in an additional author to help sort out a specific problem and add that author to the paper. It is of course customary to provide a detailed account of this change as well as any other revisions made for the review.

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


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How does one submit an article "informally"?
Although I have read a lot in my area of interest (plant taxonomy and botanical nomenclature), in am no academic of it, having only a Bachelor of Translation degree.
It has taken me two years of waffling back and forth before I worked up the courage to write up a quick note (something not entirely dissimilar to this in nature, mostly bibliographical, but necessary nonetheless) which I'd like to submit to Phytoneuron. I call it "informal" because it is an independent, one-man journal with a relatively unelaborated review process where one sends the prospective article straight to the editor.
However, I have NO idea what sort of language one in my situation can be expected to address to a journal editor. That I am diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome and have been told before my writing can be overly formal to comical or insulting degrees at times is not helping my crushing nervosity about the whole thing.

You could write something like the following. Short and sweet.

To the editor,
Please find attached an article for consideration for publication in the journal Phytoneuron.  I assert that this is an original contribution and it has not been submitted for consideration elsewhere.
Could you please acknowledge receipt of this submission?
Best regards,
Your name
Your Affiliation
Title of Article
Authors
Abstract
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Proin egestas odio non mi mattis rhoncus. Vivamus ultrices urna a ante tristique pellentesque. Nam tincidunt lacus a mi sollicitudin tincidunt. Curabitur malesuada, quam sit amet iaculis lobortis, enim lacus commodo turpis, nec elementum mauris libero ac enim. Quisque justo mauris, eleifend id ornare vel, luctus eget tellus. Etiam auctor ultrices tincidunt. Curabitur diam nulla, aliquam nec gravida a, consequat non nulla. Cras viverra massa id felis blandit gravida. Pellentesque enim mi, convallis vitae ornare quis, ornare sit amet dolor. Pellentesque velit urna, feugiat non tincidunt in, sollicitudin sed purus. Phasellus laoreet ligula nec odio mattis fringilla. Fusce sed arcu mi. Pellentesque dictum erat sit amet sapien pharetra porta.


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What's the best way to offer/publish a corrigendum as an independent party?
Context: I do volunteer work doing data entry for an online database of organisms name (not Wikispecies, though I have edited there too). When entering data from published catalogue catalogues, it is not uncommon for some issues to be unearthed. Usually I'm happy to signal them to the authors, even if the corrections never actually see print.
The paper I'm currently handling, however, seems to have an unusually high ratio of errors. I have handled two pages of names out of ca. forty and already I have found that seven references were missing entirely from the reference section. Combined with various other issues, I feel like this warrants more than merely contacting the authors with my findings.
Additionally, I know the authors have access to a database that lacks the errors in question: I've used it to find the problematic references to begin with! So signaling the errors is not likely to be seen as useful to them. However, I'd like to avoid other readers falling afoul of these problems I have to solve, so it's kind of pointless if it never sees print.
I'm not sure I'm confident with either contacting the authors or addressing a corrigenda (which I expect to take a while to compile anyway, I have to handle of 1.4k names here) directly to  the editor. Am I overlooking some third options or should I just bite the bullet?

The authors will be annoyed if you only send the corrections to the editor. You might as well give the authors a chance to explain why they made so many mistakes, and fix them.
And if you send them to the editor, are you sure that they will publish them?
Maybe you could send the corrections to the authors, saying that you think these corrections definitely need to be made public. If they don't reply, contact them once more, and if they still don't reply, send the corrections to the editor. In any case, if a few months go past and it doesn't look like they are going to be published, take action and make sure they get published somehow.


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Do I have to sign a copyright transfer agreement to publish an article?
In my experience with publishing in some journals, those journals require a signature on a copyright transfer agreement before an article can be published online or in print. Do I have to sign this agreement in order to publish or are there alternatives to this? What do I gain and/or lose by signing (or not signing) such an agreement?

If you're feeling cheeky you can try editing the stock copyright transfer agreement they send out, to a wording that is more agreeable to you. I tried this for a book chapter once and I think I got away with it. Few returned CTA forms are actually read in detail by anyone.


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How common are 'monitors' (class leaders)?
I have found that in Asian universities, there is a concept I am unfamiliar with: The monitor. The monitor here is not someone who monitors but rather one student, usually elected by the other students, to speak for the group and to perform administrative tasks. This is a position of leadership and signifies that this student is special (and might get preferential treatment from the teacher).
From my other university teaching experience (outside of Asia), I have never seen this. I'm wondering, is this common across Asia to have these 'monitors?' Is it common in other (non-Asian) parts of the world?
Does anyone have any insights on things to be concerned with (for someone new to the idea of monitors)?
Note: It seems the monitor position starts in the earliest years (pre-K) and are not just at the university level but they also go up all the way to graduate-level classes.

In Canada and in the United States, you often have the concept of a "Student body" or a "student representative council" of sorts. However, they are known to a small number of students and are often not considered that important by most of the student body. In some departments, you have representatives as well; they are usually students who attend faculty meetings and ensure student interests are represented. It's rare however that the representative actually speaks for the group in class though.

I can provide details in Taiwan. I know the situations in many other countries in Asia are similar. Hopefully users from Asia on this board can confirm this.
In Taiwan, the role is called class leader in elementary school, middle school and high school. They are usually assigned by the teachers of the classes.
In college, it is called the class representative. The representatives are elected by the students. The length of the term usually is a year.
Upon entering college, students already select their major. The university groups all the students having the same major into one or more classes depending on the number of students (the standard class size is 50). They take all the required courses together if possible. The students in the same class know each other very well. The class is like a big family. Naturally, you have a representative who speaks for the class and handles all the administrative matters. You also have a deputy representative in case the rep is not available. There are other students responsible for other duties such as purchase, sports, etc.
The rep gets elected usually because he/she is popular in the class or a good student. I would not say he gets preferential treatment from the professor/department because he is the rep. Sometimes it is the opposite. I once declined a rep nomination because I wanted to concentrate on my study.
However, being a rep can be advantageous. You learn how to be a leader. You learn how to communicate with other people who are sometimes superior, such as the professor, department chair or even the dean. Leadership is not something you can learn it all from the books. You have to do it. Two of the four reps in my college class are very successful in their late career.
It would be much easier for the professor to talk to the class rep when he wants the whole class to do some unusual assignments. Once you can convince the rep it's the right thing to do, the rep would then pass the message to the whole class. You are more likely to get the cooperation from the students. I would not recommend you to use him very often, though. He represents the class, not you. He would lose the trust from his classmates when he becomes your pet student. In general, the class representative concept is more like the department chair of a university department.
Hope this helps.


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Getting in between another teacher and his student
One subject I teach is also taught by another teacher at my university. Usually we do not both teach this subject during the same semester but sometimes we do. Students do not get to choose their teacher, the are assigned into one class or the other.
This has introduced a strange dynamic in that some of the other teacher's students have come to me asking for information about the subject, since they know I also teach it. So far, I've been quite hesitant to answer any such questions because I am worried about getting in between the other teacher and his students. I can imagine that I might have an answer that is different than the other teacher (perhaps my answer is wrong, perhaps my answer is right, and perhaps both of us are right but we have different ways of looking at a problem). The issue is compounded by the fact that I am from the West but the other teacher is Asian so there are cultural issues at play here (and I'm in Asia so it's not my culture).
I imagine this would be less of an issue in subjects like math where there is a specific formula but in management subjects the perspective of the teacher can change things significantly, especially if one teacher might be less strong in the subject than the other.
So, what should a teacher in this situation do? Refer the student to their teacher? If they feel they cannot get an acceptable answer then refer them to a search engine? Should I jump in if they feel they are lost and their teacher is not helping them understand (this seems like it could cause serious problems, even if handled well)?

I do not teach so I am not coming from a personal experience, but have you tried to express your confusion or hesitation to your colleague/fellow teacher over a cup of coffee or in a similar (read: casual) atmosphere? He/she might have some insight as to how to handle that situation, besides then you'd have you'd be out in the open with it.

I presume you're using English to teach the class. Is the other instrucor also using English to teach? Or the student's native language?

@scaaahu Yes, we both teach in English.

I've been a student in this situation a few times. Short version, my instructor wasn't as experienced as the other instructor. Having had the other instructor, he gave clear, concise, helpful answers. My current instructor required a lengthy dialog to get unclear, unfocused partial answers. Eventually, I just stopped talking to my current instructor. If my current instructor was the only option, I would have hated that class, wouldn't have learned as much and would have complained as high as I could up the chain. To get an instructor that can actually teach for a course I'm paying a lot for.

My first question is, why are you (the faculty) both teaching the same class at the same university without talking to each other?  I can understand the cultural differences, but this is even more of a reason to talk to your colleague about the class!
I would suggest (as posdef does in his comment) to talk to the other instructor about the class, offer to have him sit in on your class, and ask about collaboration.  You could also ask to sit in on his class if you'd like, but you need to be careful to phrase your request so it is clear that you're there to gain insight into his class and not to provide criticism.  I can't tell from your comment, "...if one teacher might be less strong in the subject than the other" if you believe he is the weak one or if you are, but regardless, you can both learn from each other.
Finally, it is in the best interest of both classes of students that you collaborate with the other instructor -- if both courses are listed as the same in the course catalog, the students should be able to expect that the class will cover roughly the same material.

You mentioned you’re from the West teaching in Asia. The school invited you from the West to teach while they already have instructors who can teach the same subject. I would think they all want to learn from you. Here, they are not only the students but also the faculty.
As posdef suggested in his comment, I would talk to the other instructor in some kind of informal meetings if I were you. You can talk to him about the class, the students and the department. You two are teaching the same course. There must be a lot of things you can share. In particular, you can ask him exactly this question and see what kind of solutions he would recommend. I think he would have a more insightful answer than most users on this site because he is in the same environment as you are.
Whether or not the other instructor is willing to talk to you is another issue. From what I know, most Asians are nice to the guests. If you are  there for a tenure track position, he might see you as a competition. Then I think you should handle this matter in a formal manner. If you are not there on a permanent basis, I think informal meetings would be enough.
The most important thing is, what is the best interests for the students? Many Asian students believe there is always only one standard correct answer for every question. We know this is not always the case. Even for math related subjects, you can have multiple approaches to solve a problem. I suspect the students from the other class came to you to confirm the answer given by their instructor is the standard one. If that’s the case, you and the other instructor need to coordinate. Both need to explain to the students that there may not be only one standard answer per every question.
If the students came to you because they doubt their instructor or they don't get acceptable answers, you need to handle this with care. Respecting the teachers is an integral part of Asian culture. However, the best interests for the students is even more important. Talking to the other instructor in person is the first step to resolve this issue. You two together need to figure out how to tell the students the correct answers. Again, learning together is everybody’s goal.

[Edit] I'm assuming the questions asked are not ones where there is a consensus about the answers.
Here's the advice I give to students who come to me from the another instructors of the courses I also teach (sometimes the other instructors are teaching assistants): The person grading your exams is the other instructor, therefore it's in your best interest to get the answers from the other instructor.
The answer sounds perhaps like we're brushing off the student, but if we contradict the other instructor, it won't help the student.
Put yourself in the shoes of the other instructor. What if a student answered an exam question according to advice from the other instructor, but out of context, or according to another perspective. How would you grade it if you disagreed with the answer or point of view?
I teach software analysis and design at an undergrad level. Some students rarely come to class and answer questions based on analysis or design methods they used before. Some get upset when I qualify all questions "according to the process learned in class" because they can't write any old answer from their past experience. One instructor's style or method could be different (not necessarily wrong). But much of the evaluation in a course is based on what the student learned in that course.

This attitude seems very strange to me.  I agree with the reminder that the other instructor's judgment is the one that counts, but that doesn't justify not answering the student's questions.  Hearing multiple perspectives on the same  material is a good thing for the students.  What if a student answered an exam question... according to another perspective?  If their answer is correct? Extra credit!!

@JeffE If it were a question about the complexity of a sorting algorithm, I'd answer. If it's a question about how to find domain objects from requirements (use cases), that's not so black and white. There is no consensus on what is the best way. I see this as the same problem in Management style discussed by the OP.

Maybe this is a cultural difference, but even if the grading criteria are subjective, I don't see any harm in telling students "Here is my perspective, but be warned that your instructor's may be different."

@JeffE Not a bad way to qualify an answer. However, I have had a few students who will invest huge energy to exploit contradictions between instructors for full "drama" potential, with complaints to department chairs, etc. I have seen it happen with colleagues, and had it happen to me early on when TAs or lab instructors are in contradiction. The students aren't always motivated in seeking the truth, but rather seeking maximum points.

That's why you need the warning (and a supportive department chair).


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Keeping your throat comfortable after hours of lecturing
After lecturing for 3-4 hours my throat is often quite sore. Some days, I must lecturer for 6 hours (in past semesters, I've had some days which require lecturing for 8 hours). The problem is that for my later classes I have difficulty speaking comfortably.
I drink a lot of water, don't smoke, and use lozenges from time to time (when I'm in pain).
Are there any other known (scientific or folklore) solutions to this problem of getting a sore throat after lecturing for 3-4 hours?

honey? I used to do honey + lemon juice mix (as much lemon juice for it to become a drinkable liquid) as a little kid whenver I had a sore throat, and it did wonders. I've heard a grown-up variety includes rum, but I don't vouch for that :)

Go for prevention rather than treatment. A course on improving the use of your voice might help. Some people have permanently lost their voice by neglecting this problem.

@ChrisWhite No, only a whiteboard. I can imagine chalk dust would make things much worse.

@reinierpost Do you have any studies you can cite for your comment? I would love to read them (and use them as an argument to balance my class load).

@earthling, no studies, but some Gogling found: http://www.hazards.org/voiceloss/ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/education-silenced-by-classroom-abuse-voice-loss-is-driving-teachers-to-early-retirement-julia-hagedorn-reports-1502025.html  I also know a teacher who went through several years of severe voice problems.

Very useful link. This should be required reading for all lecturers.

Make sure you can lecture without having to raise your voice, ever. When I did lecture a lot, I sometimes used a microphone even if the group was rather small, if only to be sure that I wouldn't raise my voice more than the minimal.
Drinking is good: I find that hot beverages heavily loaded with sugar are the best. I usually drink some light-flavoured tea (green tea, jasmine tea, …) with lots of sugar or honey. If the weather is hot, lemon-based drinks make you salivate more and help preventing dry sore throat.
Deal with your boss to avoid those horrible teaching conditions in the first place. He might not care that it's not in your best interest, but explain to him that it's not in the students' best interest either! (Sore throat aside, I don't know anyone who can teach with as much passion on the 8th hour as on the first.)

hot beverages heavily loaded with sugar <- Just be careful you don't start gaining weight.

@JoeZeng don't know if we have the same lecturing “style”, but if I had to lecture for 6–8 hours straight, I'm pretty sure I'd be loosing weight no matter what!

For future readers: I found the first point (lecture without having to raise your voice) to be the most important (and the one I most overlooked).

A very often overlooked piece of advice: maintain correct posture while you lecture.
If you are, for instance, looking down at your lecture notes while talking, this places additional pressure on your throat and vocal cords, making you more tired as you go through the day. It also helps in the sound production itself—the sound will carry better when it's being projected outward instead of downward, which means you don't have to speak nearly as loud to be heard. (This will again help you over the course of a long day of lecturing.)

First, it sounds terrible to do so many hours straight, it is not really a good situation. I otherwise think voice coaching could be part of a solution. Many professional singers (particularly classical ones) need to go through rigorous training to be able to cope with a concert day after day (my partner is a singer so I get good tips from her). But, no training can prepare you for sustaining so many hours in the long-term. I am in the fortunate position of setting my hours myself and I never do more than 2 hours straight and then max 2 before and 2 after lunch.
So advice: talk to a voice coach or singing coach to see what they suggest.

Attention all voice or singing coaches! See above for details.

While other answers are largely prophylactic, here are some thoughts on the cure.
Remedy: For any throat infections, gargling is the way to go. There are many ingredients one could add to gargling water: common salt, pepper, turmeric, cumin, ginger, etc. Cayenne pepper, for example, supposedly contains capsaicin that could alleviate pain receptors and diminish the pain. Ginger is another antibacterial and antifungal analgesic that could work wonders on your throat. Given here and here are the recipes for a common Indian potion for sore throats made using ginger.
This Wikihow article has comprehensive list of treatments.
Rest: Nothing is more efficient than a few days of rest: if not physical absence from the school, you could at least rest your vocal chords - they deserve it!

Make sure you're well hydrated at all times just before, and during, the lecture.  Lecturing while thirsty means bad lubrication for your vocal chords.
Make sure you're lecturing in not-too-much-louder-than a normal speaking voice.  This means using a microphone if the room is large.
You also have to learn to talk from the diaphragm.  It's the same thing good singers do.  Google searches will help you with this concept.


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GRE Math Subject test for admission to statistics grad programs?
I am an international student from an unknown school with a sub 3.0 gpa. I am a CS major but I certainly have a deep interest for statistics grad programs. In the future I want to work on algoritmic trading and want to involve with topics such as time series, machine learning and other statistical techniques used in finance.
Some people I have talked with about this issue recommended me to get a PhD from a top 20 statistics program. But I don't have much math classes on my transcript, actually numerical analysis and ODE's are the most advanced math classes which I had. Also I had a traditional probability and statistics for engineers class.
Currently I am self studying through Walters Rudin's principles of mathematical analysis book and plan to involve further with math. I plan to self study undergrad level topology from munkres, abstract algebra from artin, and some advanced linear algebra and functional analysis may be some measure theory based probability etc. I can attend a university for these classes but it would be extremely difficult for me to manage it just because money constraints which I have. I have to admit that I learn better when I self study and I usually try to attempt  most of the exercises in the books.
The problem is that I can't prove that I studied these topics except a good score in math subject gre test. But this test is not a good indicator of abstract math knowledge and most of the test is about calculus.
Does a good score from Math GRE carry a value in MS level admissions to a decent thesis based statistics program with some funding which will help me to get a PhD from a top 20 school later. I don't have any intention of applying to CS grad school because I do not want to get any systems related course as a requirement and majority of the classes I am interested in are mostly offered by math or statistics departments except some machine learning classes offered by CS departments.
So what is your point of view for GRE Math subject test results ? What score you love ? May be I can pay to a college some money for attending to one or two advanced courses such as differential geometry and a grad level real analysis course. If I do well on these courses in what level will they help for admission with some aid ?

A key point the answers so far are missing: the questioner is applying to funded MS programs as a route towards a PhD. To me, the question is asking if the math GRE can make up for any shortcomings in the rest of his application. It may also be worth addressing if a PhD from a top 20 school is necessary for his goals.

I would say that a good score on the Math GRE subject test is always a good signal. That being said, test scores in general have relatively little importance in PhD admissions -- they can disqualify you, but barring that, won't do much to get you in the door. Its something to optimize only after you have optimized the other, more important parts of your application. In your case, it might be helpful to alleviate any concerns someone might have about your math background.
By the way, you might want to check out CMU's PhD program in Machine Learning: http://www.ml.cmu.edu/ -- none of those pesky systems course requirements!

Oh this is a very interesting program! Do they value CS backgrounds stronger / programming skills more so than proficiency with statistics?

You should check with the statistics departments in question about their admission requirements. In some cases, it may be required; in others, it may not be.
As for recommended scores, that's even harder to say. Different schools will expect different results, depending on the caliber of students they attract. In any case, though, you should aim to get the highest score you can, rather than aiming for a particular target. But at a minimum, you won't want to show a score that results in a below-average score; that probably won't help you at any competitive program.

Main corcern is funding I need funding badly. Otherwise it would be easier.

If you are pursuing a PhD at a major math, science, or engineering program, funding should not be a problem. You will be supported by some combination of fellowships, teaching assistantships, or research assistantships.

1) Most stats programs do not require math GREs.
2) The majority of math GRE is not from advanced mathematics. I strongly suggest you read up on it.
3) Stats programs generally do not require a lot of math background. A solid background in linear algebra, calculus, and multivariate analysis, along an upper level stats sequence is more than sufficient.
4) Your references and any research you've done are going to be the important factors. Did you distinguish yourself in your math classes? Were you the top student? If not, applying to a top 20 school may be an unrealistic goal for you.

I would certainly agree with the 2nd. IIRC, when I took the Math GRE it was a slight step beyond what was tested on the SAT.


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Is there a difference between a Research Report and a Report?
In my reading about undergraduate student assignments at my university, I have run across the word report quite a bit but the writer is not clearly talking about a research report (but the author might be, without me understanding that).
I'm used to thinking of student assignments as being either a research report (where the student must collect primary and secondary data) or an essay (where the student writes based on understanding without any actual data (though in an essay the student would often cite theories and the opinions of others).
Is there another meaning of the word report in the context of a university student assignment? Can students write reports only based on secondary data (is this a task commonly assigned)? Can someone write a report without data?
I'm wondering if a journalist's investigative report would count as a report using only secondary data (or perhaps not using data at all).
Any clarification would be of great help.

To answer the title question: No.  There is absolutely no way to tell what sort of document a "Report" or "Research Report" or "Technical Report" is without actually reading the document.  Standards vary across disciplines, across universities, and even within the same department.

@JeffE Thanks but I'm wondering if one would ever call a student assignment a report without it being a research report (are there other kinds of reports?).

I don't know how to answer that question, because I don't know what a "research report" is.  Does a literature survey count?  Minutes of a classroom discussion?  A written code review?  A list of open problems?  A white paper?

@JeffE One example of a research report is researching consumer preferences. For example, researching if customers would like to see more purple iPhones or are they happy with the existing choices of white and black. The research might be done through surveys/questionnaires/interviews (online or in person) and the results  (along with the methodology, etc.) would be written up as a report. This would be a 'research report' because it is driven from primary research. The closest thing in your list would be a literature survey but even that would normally only be included as a literature review.


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Should one highlight an article's positions in the journal issue if it is first?
I just had an article published and it was the first article in that issue of the journal. At first, I wondered if that had any significance. I had an article given the cover of a journal before but this specific journal does not have "cover articles." However, clearly only one can be first.
I did a little searching and I found this paper named "Do First-Articles in a Journal Issue Get More Cited?". In this (very short) paper, they claim that articles with higher importance, more creativity, etc. are generally chosen to be earlier in the journal.
My question is, should I call this out on my CV or not? I worry that, at some point, highlighting things like this starts to look a little desperate.

In a lot of journals I follow, the area is so wide there might be only one article per issue I actually care about. To me, it makes it hard to compare between articles within an issue if the scope is wide

@AzorAhai-him- I also had in mind while writing my answer journals that have enough different "themes" with articles published under those headings that there is frequently only one or two articles per theme. E.g., the current issue of JNeuroscience: https://www.jneurosci.org/content/42/24?current-issue=y the first research article comes first because it's the only "cellular/molecular" paper in the whole issue and because "cellular/molecular" is always the first section.

A quick sanity check you could do, is to look at the other papers in the same issue. The respective dates of acceptance should stated somewhere. If they are roughly chronological, than the order might simply be the one in which they were ready for print. This would also be a possible explanation of the findings in your reference, as on average, articles which have been around longer will naturally have more citations.

For many journals I read (say Applied Physics Letters) the content is arranged by topic area, and the order of topics is consistent from issue to issue. Being the first article is a byproduct of that ordering, not any inherent quality of the article.

No, I would not highlight this.
It's not typical to do, and there's no guarantee that the journal did actually intentionally set your article first - it seems to me like it would be embarrassing to claim an award not given.
As far as cover articles, maybe it's different in your field, but in mine the paper on the cover is usually selected because it had a particularly nice picture to go with it - that might be something to be proud of by itself, but doesn't necessarily mean the work is more influential or important than other articles in the journal, it's just that some studies make good pictures and others don't.
Congrats on your paper!

"It's not typical to do" says it all. Thanks for this.


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What are the impacts on learning of allowing students to eat in class?
My school has a recommendation, but not a requirement, not to let students eat during class. I am wondering if I should make this a rule or not for the classes I teach. I am concerned about my undergraduate students.
On one hand, the noise from rustling bags and crunching chips and bottles falling on the floor can be distracting. On the other hand, hungry students are distracted by hunger. This is a particular problem for my classes which start before 8 AM as students often skip breakfast and want to eat it during class (because they do not want to wake up early enough to eat before coming to school).
Since my main concern is on the learning, I would like to know how the issue of allowing eating during class actually impacts student learning.

When I was taking courses, I could not stand the smells and sounds of other student's eating activities. If there are folks in your class like me, then I think it's safe to assume that learning will be negatively affected in some way. The "food allergy angle" is also another important consideration.

@user11192 of course earthling's point about how not eating during class might negatively affect other students is also a valid one.

When it comes to actual impact on learning http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/ might be a better place. (Not exactly the same question as "best practices" in the classroom.)

My personal policy is not to make rules, except concerning how they're to do and turn in their work, unless I really have to. Some of my colleagues have explicit rules "no cell phones", "no eating", etc., but in my opinion this is at least a little disrespectful to the students -- unless, of course

My department has short, informal lunchtime talks twice a week, where everyone listens while eating. It's certainly not a lecturing environment. I think asking your students to not eat noisy or smelly foods is only fair -- those who are there to learn don't want to be distracted by food.

In the longer classes, we've made policies, such as, only eat on breaks, or in the first 15 minutes of class. And any one who made a mess and didn't clean up, would lose the privileges. This generally worked, especially for the early morning classes where people would pick up a fast-food sandwich and coffee on their way to class.

This is a very interesting question. I never ate and never saw any of my classmates eating in the classroom when I was a student and never saw my students eating when I was an instructor decades ago. However, eating in the classroom seems to be a common serious problem, at least in my location. What heppened in the past decades? I think the root of the problem is students' life style(using internet all night) and discipline when attending class.

Being pragmatic, if it ain't broken, don't fix it. If you allow to eat, and it doesn't disturb the class and no one complains, it is all good. If there are complaints, act specifically on them.

EDITED: As you mention, there are two competing issues here: Running low on carbohydrates and especially hydration leads to decreased cognitive ability; but eating is a distraction from attending the lectures. I have found mostly opinions and little hard data on this, for example

http://www.ludlowcub.com/opinion/2012/05/01/allowing-students-to-eat-in-class-helps-with-learning-ability/
http://www.breakfastintheclassroom.org/pdf/BIC-Fact%20Sheet_FINAL_1-07-11.pdf
http://policy.federation.edu.au/learning_and_teaching/ub_tec/classrooms/ch01.php

The consensus seems to be that water (in sealable bottles) should definitely be allowed, and that students should not go longer than three hours without a chance to snack. This would suggest treating the classroom like a study place in a library: Water (or anything that doesn't leave a mess when spilled) yes, snacks only during breaks.
One thing to keep in mind that diabetic students will have more strict requirements on when (and what) to snack, which should be accommodated, see
http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/6/2/180.full.pdf.
Not allowing other students the same opportunity to refuel might be seen as unfair.

I'm an undergraduate student with diabetes, and I've definitely gotten the "why does he 'get' to eat" question or look from other students. I'm fairly open about handling my medical needs, and I don't hesitate to eat or do injections in class when necessary. I still appreciate it though when a professor doesn't make a big issue out of eating in class, because it avoids other students perceiving it as "unfair" and being jealous of me for simply taking care of my medical needs.

I don't have any data on this, just an idea.
You could mention the rule (and justification), ask students to please come fed, and say that if you're really hungry you would still prefer that they attend class and be discreet: sit near the back, don't make undue noise, etc..  That would hopefully minimize the disruption to student learning without making you seem unreasonable.
(If I were the university administration, I would probably do away with 8 am classes; younger people (especially teenagers) have circadian rhythms that run a bit later than older or younger folk.  I do not think it speaks that ill of students that they don't want to wake up early enough; it's probably quite difficult for quite a lot of them.  High schools are beginning to adjust.)

I am not sure if there is any hard data on this but reflecting back on the undergrad years I think we can all provide some perspective on the effects of food consumption in class.
If there is a clear cut school policy (not your case, as you indicated) then there is little you can, and should, do. Otherwise as the teacher you should make the rules of the game clear for the students from the first day. If you intend to allow eating, then ask first for any allergies that might be relevant. At our university, we had some students who had severe allergies to peanuts. Thus there was a campus-wide ban on peanuts.
If the classes are longer than 45 mins it might be tricky with the morning lectures. As the OP mentions, many students skip breakfast on occasion, willingly or otherwise. I believe you can get away with banning eating, would probably be better off actually... Food that speaks to one or more of the senses besides visual (smell, sounds etc..) might be distracting to others.
But be vary of drinking; both coffee (in the morning) and water (all day) might be vital for students to be able to keep focus, and extend their attention span.


text:
How many class room hours does the typical university teacher teach per week?
I am wondering, for full time university teachers (not those who also have research responsibilities), what is generally the number of hours per week that they teach? I currently teach 20 hours per week and find the load quite heavy giving me little time to prep new modules with quality. Adding to that the responsibility of marking and it is not uncommon that I end up working more like 50-60 hours per week to teach 20.
Are these numbers average? High? Low?

What is a "typical university teacher"? What subject do they teach? How long have they been teaching? How quickly does their subject change? How many of their classes this year did they teach last year? Are they teaching Masters or Bachelors?

@EnergyNumbers - Your questions are good, my question is across the board...how do they vary? I teach undergraduate now but am starting to teach some graduate modules and wonder what I should expect as time goes on.

There is no “typical” number in this matter. Let's take a few examples:

UK, lecturer: it's usually a full-time position, so you have to put in 35-40 hours per week. The ratio of lecture time over all the rest (preparation, departmental committees, etc.) depends on the contract, but I have rarely seen it pushed past 1:1 (which means roughly 20 hours of teaching, maybe 25 at most).
France, "PRAG": this is the position of a high-School teacher detached to a university, and the closest one to a lecturer position. Their nominal teaching load is 384 hours per year, with a weight of 1.5 for lectures and 1 for exercises sessions. But for one the year is very short, from about 23 to 26 weeks, so that means about 15 hours per week, and this is only the nominal amount. In any cases, they (voluntarily or not) have to teach additional hours, which are paid in addition (to a lower rate than nominal hours).
As a point of comparison: a French high-school teacher would have 18 teaching hours per week.

Other comparison points, less relevant to the question as they are for teaching+research positions:

France, associate professor (maître de conférences): junior-level position, supposed to be half teaching and half research. This has a fixed number of 192 teaching hours per year. If you consider that those are spread on 30 weeks, it gives 6.4 hours per week. Even considering it is not a teaching-only position, that number is lower than the one you quote.
France, full professor (professeur des universités): same number of hours in theory, but as you gain seniority you can do more full-class teaching (with bigger groups), of which every hour counts as 1.5 hour in your yearly total. Through this, and other mechanisms, senior professors usually have fewer hours to teach.

Typically, a UK lecturer would also be expected to be research active

20 hours per week for most teaching only positions is normal. I have seen Profs with major research responsibilities that at times have had 20 hours of teaching as well.
My rule of thumb for a course: You will spend 2 to 3 times the amount of teaching you do preparing the first time you teach a course and this decreases as years go on for that same course (a new course requires considerable amount of time for preparation again).
First time I was teaching advanced thermodynamics and fluid mechanics courses I was spending two full days per 2 hours of teaching actually! but then after three years it was down to preparing 2 hours for 2 hours of teaching.
Your numbers seem right to me. In short 20 hours of teaching = virtually no time to do research.

and this decreases as years go on — [citation needed] 15 years into the job, it still takes me 5+ hours to prepare a 1-hour lecture for the first time.

@JeffE Well said! I meant it for the same course. If its a new course as you rightly say it will still take considerable amount of time. I updated the answer.

It depends on the type of institution. at my university, a post 1992 UK university in Newcastle, myself and some other colleagues teach on average 14 hours a week! yes and you have to research and engage in administration, including marking (lots of it) meeting students, supervising both under and post graduate students. I have broken down finally. it was too much to bear and I am currently on sick leave. Hopefully, my hours of teaching will be reduced after this incident.
In pre 1992 universities, I understand the typical teaching load is 6 hours a week.

I assume you are talking about in term time teaching per week and not total teaching per year/52. I have never heard of a permanent full time position having a heavier teaching load than a 5-5. Some people then choose to teach summer courses (but this wouldn't effect you teaching hours per term week). Often this type of load includes some repetition so you might only have to prep 7 courses of which only 1 might be a new prep. The amount of classroom contact time for each course might be as low as 3 hours but could climb to 6. There might also be some office hour contact (which you might count as teaching contact). Many full time teaching jobs have lighter loads and can be as low as 3-3. Research intensive departments can have typical teaching loads as low as 1-1. Adjuncts often teach as high as 6-6 in order to make ends meet.
There is so much more than just the number of taught hours that influence teaching load. I think you need to look at number of classroom hours, number of unique preps, office hours, and marking.

What do the two numbers in "1-1", "5-5" mean?

@FedericoPoloni: I think e.g. "1-1" means 1 course one semester, 1 course the second semester, assuming two semesters in the year. It is US terminology.

In my university in Australia, my 60% time is teaching which translates into 360 hours for one year so about 10 hours per week. The other 20% is research and 20% admin (committees etc.) I feel exhausted.

In the US teaching load is assigned in terms of courses or credit hours per year and varies heavily between "teaching schools" and research schools.  For example, I currently teach undergraduates at a teaching school (i.e., it does virtually no research, but has the name university attached like most institutions) that has a load of 30 credit hours per year, and am moving to another teaching school that has a load of 33 credit hours per year.
At a research school nearby I know lecturers (no research) teach 3-3 (3  courses in the fall semester, 3 courses in the spring semester, and mostly 4 credit courses).  Professors (researcher and teaching load) at the same school taught 2-2 (2 courses in fall, and 2 in spring).
A credit hour is approximately 15 lecture hours over the course of a semester, so these loads vary from 33*15=495 teaching hours per year (9.5 hours / week on a 52-week year), to 6*4*15 = 360 hours per year (6.9 hours / week on a 52-week year). For this spring semester I am currently teaching 11 hours of lecture per week and an additional 4 hours of lab sessions per week.  My load is usually lighter in the summers, but not by that much.

This is enough time to prepare properly for courses I have taught several times before, but not enough for to teach new courses as well as I would like, particularly since I work in a fast-moving field.  In a field with well-established curricula for undergraduates I imagine this would be easier.

I expect a combination of factors to make this more manageable at my new school.

Depends to different parameters, but university generally expects each academic staff works

40% research
40% teaching
20% involvement in committees and university meetings

Of course, different personalities have different interests to focus on either of research or teaching activities. That's why, some take more courses than others.
In addition to personal interests, needs of school is another issue. For instance imagine one of the lecturers needs to stay at hospital after injury in accident. Head of school asks one of the academic staff to cover his/her absent colleague.

A full teaching position is different from a general position. If they pay someone to teach they will make sure he teaches to the max and 60% of his time will not be spent on other things. The percentages you refer to in my understanding are for a normal research and teaching post not a teaching only position.

Yes, percentages are for a normal position, which contributes in all areas.

A university teacher teaches 10-12 hours typically a week. Although this job has vast roles and preparation time for the lecture may vary depending on the topic.
My university lecturers had different teaching hours depending on the additional work assigned to them by university like assessing test papers, results, grad management.


text:
How to efficiently get multiple outputs for a given set of inputs?
Background: I was reading about Google's Hybrid approach to research. This prompted me to think about how in academia I try to get multiple output from the one set of inputs. For example, I might try to

Present a talk and and then write up a journal article
Write blog posts and question-and-answer combos on StackExchange to force me to learn something that I need to know in order to write a journal article.
If I learn a new technique in the process of writing a journal article, then present a tutorial on how to apply the technique.

I've also heard senior academics talk about employing this approach. E.g.,

publishing an article in a journal as well as reframing the content for a magazine or newspaper

Question

What are the most important examples of getting multiple outputs for a given input?
What is a systematic way of incorporating this into your project planning?

Your answer to this question will depend somewhat on your long term goals.  Everything you mention: talks, journal articles, blog posts, tutorials, magazine articles, etc. can be worthwhile in the right circumstances.  Most of what you describe consists of taking variations on the same theme to different audiences.
In what circles do you most want to be known?  More generally, how will you measure success?  Say for example that your primary goal is to get tenure.  If you're at a high research school, then publishing an expository article for undergraduates may well be viewed (by your tenure committee) as a waste of your time.  In contrast, if you're at a liberal arts school, this may be considered just as valuable as getting a research article in a top journal.
You asked about incorporating this into project planning.  I suggest that you decide which audiences you are most excited to reach.  This will likely be largely independent of the particular project.  Then as you start on each project, think about how you can tailor your message to suit each of these audiences.  You may be surprised by how often you find you have something valuable to say to each of your target groups.

I've heard of more than one team who produce for each chunk of research

a workshop paper describing what is planned, the challenges, requirements, etc.
a conference paper describing the results.
a journal version of the conference paper, expanding on the results, providing more detail, etc.

I think this is not a bad approach, as it certainly helps to give better shape to the ideas by the time they reach the journal version. (I don't use this approach, though.)


text:
Submitting conference paper to Google Scholar when proceedings not available
I presented a paper at a conference but the conference never got around to publishing their proceedings. They kept saying it was going to happen "soon" but after six months, I have lost hope.
Is there any way to submit such a paper to Google Scholar? It's not hosted anywhere and Google is an indexing service, not a paper repository. That makes me think the answer is no. However, I know the minds here will have the answer.
The paper is in education so Arvix is not really a solution here.

This is not to your question, but:
You are too impatient. In the publishing industry, 6 months is not an incredibly slow turn-around time.

For a journal I can understand, but for conference proceedings?

Same thing. They only difference between journals and proceedings is how papers are collected, and that at least sometimes proceedings are one-off things. But the time line is not all that different.

@WolfgangBangerth Is it possible that the conference will never make their proceedings available on IEEE Xplore and similar platforms?

@a_sid -- nobody other than the editors can know. Email them and ask!

@WolfgangBangerth I have emailed them several times but they have not responded to my emails. I just wanted to know whether or not it is a possibility.

See this link for some information:

Individual Authors
  If you're an individual author, it works best to
  simple upload your paper to your website, e.g.,
  www.example.edu/~professor/jpdr2009.pdf; and add a link to it on your
  publications page, such as
  www.example.edu/~professor/publications.html. Make sure that:
a the
  full text of your paper is in a PDF file that ends with ".pdf",
b the
  title of the paper appears in a large font on top of the first page,
c the authors of the paper are listed right below the title on a
  separate line, and
d there's a bibliography section titled, e.g.,
  "References" or "Bibliography" at the end.
That's it! Our search
  robots should normally find your paper and include it in Google
  Scholar within several weeks.

If you’re not at a university, I reckon some place like academia.edu or researchgate.net might also be indexed.

Copyright permitting, you could always post it to a  preprint server that accepts publications from all disciplines. I quite like OSF Preprints: https://osf.io/preprints/
Google Scholar will then most likely index it soon after.


text:
Things to do before submitting a manuscript
After having written a manuscript and formatted it to the publishers specifications, are there any additional things you do before submitting it (or right after submitting it) that make the review process easier. For example, for journals that I know the approximate time it takes to review, I make a note in my diary to check on the manuscript around that time. I also print out a hard copy and move the digital files into my lab notebook. Are there other things that I should be doing?

Do this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SYgCsevCLk

"formatted it to the publishers specifications" Seriously, why do some publisher ask that? Why do some author agree to that? This seems like a complete waste of time in case of rejection, and completely indifferent to timing in case of acceptance.

Putting together also some advice from the previous answers, here is my suggested checklist:

Run a spellchecker :)
Prepare a cover letter. If the manuscript has a previous history (e.g., it is a modification of a rejected papers; overlaps partially with a conference proceeding), you should state it. Some may want to suggest possible referees in the cover letter; I find it ethically dubious, so I never do it. In case, you may want to suggest referees to avoid. (maybe we should have a separate question on this point).
submit a preprint, either at your institute or on arXiv, or at least think about it. Check the terms of the journal you are submitting to (this is a great resource) to make sure you can; often the submission is the best moment to do it, since the journal can have no reasonable copyright claim on what happened before it.
Even if you don't submit a preprint, make a backup copy of the .tex and .pdf files. If you use source control, tag the latest version as "submitted". This way it will be easier to recover that exact version when the referee report mentions "line 4 on page 2".
Send a copy to your co-authors, for backup and self-archiving.
Relax and celebrate.

You speak about applying the journal style in the manuscript; I suggest not to do it at this point. Referees won't care; it is really needed only after the manuscript is accepted, or if an over-zealous editor asks you to do it. You might spend lots of time without reason, resizing figures and line-breaking formulas that will be dropped after the referee comments.

It is of utmost importance that, immediately after the submission of the manuscript, you bake a cake and offer it to your co-workers. You might also want to invite close family and others who have indirectly suffered from your hard work. Invite all co-authors that are close enough to reasonably travel to your place and celebrate!

Picture from Wikimedia commons, user Scheinwerfermann.
Otherwise, you don't need to do anything. That's the nice thing about submission: from there on, everything will happen automatically. Reviews, proofs, etc.: everything that comes back comes with a deadline, which means you will do it. Until submission, you can postpone things indefinitely. After submission, you can't.

+1 for CAKE! Relaxing and celebrating are important. Celebrate again when the manuscript is accepted.

At our department we save the cake until after acceptance, although eating cake at submission might be a good idea, especially when a paper is rejected and needs to be re-submitted (more cake!).

Pat yourself on the back, put the manuscript in a drawer, put it out of your mind, and move on to the next thing.

While excellent advice, make sure you do this part after submission.

Send it for approval to all co-authors.
Maybe this sounds obvious, but there are so many examples of people breaking this rule in either small (“they read the penultimate version two days ago”) or very big way (there are many examples of people actually learning when the paper is published that they are a co-author), that I think it is good to state.

If you need to do this, you may be practicing gift authorship, in which case there is a bigger problem.

@DavidKetcheson: No matter what kind of collaboration you have, there is always someone who makes the last edits before the submission. It is absolutely necessary to make sure that all coauthors have noticed the edits, they have enough time to react before the submission, and all coauthors explicitly agree with the submission. Do not assume that things are fine simply because all coauthors have been active with the preparation of the paper.

@JukkaSuomela You're completely correct.  My point is that if you would consider the paper ready for submission without having ALREADY done this, you're probably practicing gift authorship.

Upload your manuscript to the arXiv.
Note: you should check The Romeo website to make sure that the journal you're submitting to won't object to this.

Stated as a universal advice, as it currently is, that answer is very wrong. At the very least, check the terms of the publication agreement you just signed with the publisher to see if they allow arXiv deposition.

Who signs an agreement with the publisher on submission?

All journals of the American Physical Society, American Institute of Physics, American Chemical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, as well as most commercial companies (Wiley and Elsevier to name only two). I'm not saying this is a universal situation, I'm just saying “be careful”.

I've submitted papers to Elsevier journals and never signed anything when I made the submission.  Are you thinking of copyright transfer agreements, which are signed after a paper is accepted?

I have never heard of submission-time agreements. Publication-time, yes...

Re “copyright transfer” vs “publication agreement”: terms depend on the journal/publisher. Many of the articles of the above-listed societies (in chemistry and physics) require the author's agreement to be signed (in print) or accepted (online form) as part of the submission process, before the manuscript is even sent to an editor. In Phys. Rev. Lett., you sign a “right to publish” form upon submission, in ACS journals (e.g., J. Am. Chem. Soc.) you sign a “Journal Publishing Agreement”. Wiley chemistry journals require you to sign a “License Agreement & Copyright Transfer”.

Finally, I have not published anything in an Elsevier journal for years, so I don't know for sure about them. My experience for all other publishers in both physics and chemistry is the same as the examples given above: I don't remember ever signing an agreement after the paper is accepted.

Also, independently of the time at which you sign the agreement, my point is unchanged: not all journals allow distribution of preprints.

In addition to all the other excellent suggestions I would like to add something. When you submitted your paper you could invest some time in ordering your files/notes/scripts. Make sure they have a logical structure, enabling you to easily start working on the paper again when the reviews come back. Especially scripts that you use to process data and generate figures can be hard to understand if they are messy, e.g how did I generate figure 3. Ofcourse, it is much better to organize your files/notes/scripts during writing the paper. But if you have not been disciplined (busy, busy), this is a very good time to correct that mistake as everything is still fresh in your memory.

Relax for a bit.
Also, pretend you're a reviewer and ask yourself if there's a really obvious question to ask (control experiment, comparison with another method, etc.).  If so, maybe you want to get started on it before the reviews come back, so the turnaround is faster then.  But send it out first, then relax, and then get to work on the obvious experiment.