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How to prove/deal with plagiarism that is hidden behind bad synonyms?
I have had more than one undergraduate student who I have very strongly suspected of routine plagiarism that I cannot prove. There is a certain style of writing that is just inexplicable except as an effort to avoid plagiarism detection.
I will give an example from a case I was actually able to prove. The student wrote:

Free enterprise prejudice is changing in the current period as another U.S. racial conviction framework at a moment that African Americans are a vigorously urbanized, broadly scattered, and occupationally heterogeneous group; when state arrangement is formally race nonpartisan and focused on anti discrimination endeavors; and when most white Americans lean toward a more volitional and social, rather than innate and organic, translation of blacks' burdened status.

This was clearly an attempt to plagiarize from one of the readings in the course:

Laissez Faire Racism is crystallizing in the current period as a new American racial belief system at a point when African Americans are a heavily urbanized, nationally dispersed and occupationally heterogeneous population; when state policy is formally race-neutral and committed to anti-discrimination; and when most white Americans prefer a more volitional and cultural, as opposed to inherent and biological, interpretation of blacks' disadvantaged status.

This kind of plagiarism is totally missed by SafeAssign, the detection tool that I have access to. When I am able to prove cases like this, it's only with much effort. Of course, I can just give students F for writing incoherently, but I would like to have these students removed from the course. I can only do it if I can prove the plagiarism.
Can anyone recommend any strategies for dealing with this?
EDIT: I of course do try to explain to the student that this is not an appropriate way to paraphrase. They typically say that they understand... and then they do the exact same thing on the next assignment.

One possibility you should consider is that the student thinks making sufficiently many changes is not actually plagiarism.  (In fact, if there are sufficiently many, it should not be.)

I think the question also needs to state whether the student's native language is English (or, in general, the same language that they were asked to write in). I have found the phenomenon described by @Kimball to occur particularly frequently when it was about texts written by non-native speakers of the writing language, as they often seem unable to find a large number of synonymous alternative constructions for a given statement. Hence, their "paraphrasing" resorts to essentially copying sentences from the source material and replacing some words.

Did the student properly attribute the source from which the text is "paraphrased"? If not, I think your case is clear-cut. Either way, maybe you can elaborate on why it is difficult to prove these cases. To whom do you have to make your case? In general, what is  the process for adjudicating plagiarism cases at your institution?

@NateEldredge, indeed part of the motivation behind this question has to do with the institution, a for-profit offering courses online. Plagiarism is especially rampant here and the burden of proof for formally warning a student her is higher then I am used to.

It is quite obvious staring at both paragraphs. The use of the semicolon, especially, is a major tell. I don't find it very natural to place a semi-colon there to begin with. Having both the source and the target material use it? More than mere coincidence.

Re "I can just give students F for writing incoherently...": I dunno about that, though.  It's not THAT much less coherent than the original :-)

To me it is not obvious that your example is a "clearly an attempt to plagiarize". It looks to me like an attempt to paraphrase. Most students that I see who cheat are too lazy to be bothered to change any words. If the original source was referenced, I would not pursue the academic misconduct route. Instead I would give a poor mark for writing incoherently and not showing any depth of understanding. I might also focus an activity on proper paraphrasing and how paraphrasing does not generally demonstrate depth of understanding.
If the source of the paraphrased/copied material was not referenced, then the situation is more difficult. I would probably first consider if the simple lack of a reference is academic misconduct independent of the copied material. If it is not, then you need to decide if the two actions are academic misconduct. Again, I would probably give the benefit of the doubt and conduct a referencing activity. After the activity, I would let the hammer fall.

I especially like the suggestion for an activity on proper paraphrasing. Thanks @StrongBad!

I see my students doing this from time to time. In their case, I am quite sure they are trying to defeat the plagiarism check (which they later admit 90% of the time). I am amazed to see a student willing to put hours of work to defeat a plagiarism check but they will not spend even 50% of that time to read. Still, I do think it is better to give extra chances along with educating how to do it properly.

Doesn't paraphrasing still require proper attribution?

@RBarryYoung yes, paraphrasing requires proper attribution. If the source isn't referenced, then it is a very tricky situation.

Approaching me it's not clear that your instance is a "transparently a try to copy". It regards to me enjoy a try to paraphrase. The majority of pupils that I see who trick are too lazy to be irritated to rearrange any terms. In case the primordial river-rising was referenced, I timber not chase the school insulate way. Instead I would present a socio-economically disadvantaged mark for inscribing incoherently and concealing any fathoms of understanding. I strength also sharpen image an activity on correct paraphrasing and how paraphrasing does not mainly devildirect fathoms of understanding.

@colmde You seem to have some familiarity with this issue ;)

The nature of the passage makes me wonder if there is some sort of software available for automatically (albeit poorly) 'obfuscating' plagiarized text. It would make sense that there is an arms-race of sorts between those making a profit from plagiarism and those making a profit from detecting it.

@colmde F-, see me after class.

@earthling because the student has to learn how to defeat the automated plagiarism check once for all courses that use it, instead of learning through all courses. Putting ethics and proper conduct apart, economically speaking, learning to cheat well pays off.

Yeah, that's not paraphrasing to me.  Word for word then replace words with bad synonyms is plagiarism, not paraphrasing.  Paraphrasing should use normally-used words (with usually a lower vocabulary level if anything) and should have a more compact sentence structure.

@DanBryant, I've wondered that. And as the most extreme cases are in my totally online class, I've also wondered (briefly, but quite seriously) whether some "students" are actually software bots. Maybe this is all just a kind of reverse Turing test by some education researcher trying to prove that online courses are bogus!

@DanBryant Yes there is. I've made one a few years ago.

@colmde: That comment was brilliant. Thanks for the laughs.

@Mehrdad not quite as funny as the OP's original example ;)

@Mindwin learning to beat plagiarism software is only valuable if your goal is to get good grades. It is a terrible way to actually learn the class material.

@StrongBad and do the students that go to that kind of trouble want for themselves, if they are willing to throw ethics and proper conduct aside? And I would not even assume that they want good grades. They just want passing grades.

Paraphrasing is a form of plagiarism. http://library.csusm.edu/plagiarism/howtoavoid/how_avoid_paraphrase.htm

@che_kid Paraphrasing is not always plagiarism, in fact the link you provide says "Incorrect paraphrase is perhaps the most common type of 'accidental' plagiarism."

@StrongBad "While it is true that you do not have to enclose paraphrased information in quotes, you are still responsible for giving proper attribution to the original source of the information and for making sufficiently substantial changes that the paraphrase is a genuinely new expression of the idea, not merely a trivial rewording of the original passage." The writing in question is a trivial rewording of the original passage and does not give attribution to the original source. Some paraphrasing is plagiarism.

@JLRishe I do not see your point. I am not arguing that the example text is not plagiarised. All I am saying is the student may not have intended to plagiarise, but rather may not have understood how to correctly paraphrase.

Moss page states:

it shouldn't matter whether the suspect code was first discovered by Moss or by a human; the case that there was plagiarism should stand on its own.

If you want an automated method of discovering every cheat, wait until the Singularity. Lazy students will always find the way to get past the alarms with minimal work. You can spend months making your software understand synonyms, and they will just spend ten more minutes reordering the sentences.
I think you have sufficient evidence to start the procedures, it doesn't matter it was you or the software who detected it. Anyway, I hope there are not too many individuals like this, in which case you should do something public education at a larger scale.
Also, consider having a talk with the student. Maybe he doesn't think that it is plagiarism.

Well, in this case it sounds like you caught the plagiarism without needing to use the software.  How?  Because the student plagiarized from one of the course readings, and as it happens you are very familiar with the course readings.
It seems to me that this "human plagiarism catching" can be generalized: you don't have to be able to have software to trawl the internet for copying if you yourself know -- or even have a sufficiently good idea -- which material is likely to be plagiarized.  In my experience the average student is remarkably bad at getting academic information from the internet: they don't know enough to rapidly and accurately sift through the deluge, so they hold tight to whatever was high on the first google search screen and succeed or fail accordingly.  If you are concerned about plagiarism, I think it would be time well spent to search the internet before making the assignment and bookmark the most plausible sources to be plagiarized.  This won't catch everyone, but then again nothing will.  If you feel strongly enough, you might even design some initial assignments as "plagiarism bait".  As long as your goal is to teach your students right and wrong rather than a priori to get them in trouble, I think this is an entirely justifiable thing to do.  Also showing someone that they have already gotten caught and gotten in some trouble can be a great motivator for keeping their nose clean in the future (or, sure, digging much deeper in their dishonesty, but again one has to play the percentages here).
Good luck.  I don't work in a field in which plagiarism in papers is common -- I am a mathematician -- and the idea that university students regularly commit such dishonorable acts disgusts me.  Anyone who wants to take a harder line (and of course who informs and educates the students in advance) has my full support.

I'll disagree with one part of this comment. Plagiarism of solutions to exercises is relatively common in mathematics at the undergraduate and graduate levels.  In my experience students will often attempt to copy solutions to homework exercises from solution manuals (some of which may have been prepared by third parties that  the author and instructor don't know about.)   Some ways to stop this include modifying textbook problems before you assign them to students or assigning exercises drawn from other sources or just writing your own exercises.

Actually it was a colleague unfamiliar with the reading that helped me spot that particular match. But in general it is very true that certain sources are most likely to be the source of plagiarism and it helps to be familiar with them.

@Brian Borchers: Yeah, I have to agree with you.  Copying exercises from textbooks isn't quite the same as plagiarizing a paper, e.g. because the exercises and their solutions often appear in a very similar form across many textbooks.  But believe me, I am well aware that this phenomenon occurs and have adapted to its existence in several ways.  (For instance, in courses at the advanced undergraduate level and beyond I always write my own exercise sets.)

@Brian Borchers: I really don't see how you can show plagiarizism/copying in most math or science problems.  There is, presumably, only one correct answer, and only a very limited (often only one) way to obtain that answer.

@jamesqf: At least as soon as students are responsible for proofs, they are also responsible for producing clear, coherent arguments (I would argue that this comes earlier but it seems many institutions disagree with me). Then you immediately end up with the multiplicity of stylistic possibilities present in any discipline outside the "hard sciences". Within two or three assignments, I (as a TA) can usually detect a student's emerging voice, and it is very clear to me when it changes abruptly. I don't know a way to present quick evidence of copying, but with time, it can be shown convincingly.

@Eric Stucky: Ah, I guess we're thinking about different kinds of math.  I wasn't thinking about proofs, but of e.g. finding solutions to a differential equation.

@jamesqf: if it's a one-liner then sure. There's not a lot of scope for personal style in just writing down the solution to f = f'. But hopefully most courses will aim to ask at least some questions for which the answer is not obvious ;-) Even where the answer is obvious to everyone on the course, if it's long enough it'll show variation. All students are expected to produce essentially the same proof of e.g. Lagrange's Theorem: if you ask that question you expect to get back the proof from lectures. But their precise expressions of that proof vary.

@jamesqf: Even with purely computational problems some cases of copying are obvious. My favorite, from an in-class exam. The source paper had a mostly correct solution with one computational error that resulted in a distinctly odd answer, but the student in question had rather bad handwriting. The student copying from behind and off to one side, writing what he thought he saw, turned it into nonsense ‘leading to’ the same odd answer. The answer was odd enough to ring a bell when I saw it the second time, and one look at the papers made all clear, especially when I recalled where they’d sat.

@BrianM.Scott: Sorry for the comment pollution, but I had a similar one: on an in-class calculus exam, Student A had unusual handwriting, with cursive "r"s whose left-hand stroke was very small.  Student B, sitting next to her, apparently thought they looked like the numeral "2".  So A had a nice solution in which she took the derivative of something with respect to r, writing "df/dr".  B had a similar solution involving "df/d2"...

If I was the instructor...
I would first strike out all wordiness:  e.g. in the current period; at a moment; or... at the present time etc.  There are numerous "wordy" lists available on the Internet that you can refer to for this part.
Then, to detect hard to prove plagiarism, I would search only on significant or weighty phrases and ignore the adjective fluff--except for superlatives and qualifiers (few, most, many--which many students/people have trouble changing into different words).
Focus on phrases that wouldn't seem to matter to a student who is copying, rather than comprehending/understanding what he/she reads... like "most people", "few people", "many Americans", "few Blacks", etc.  Also focus on the "meat"--phrases that students would strive to retain because it sounds more sophisticated or more academic.
So from the student example, I would pull out phrases like these, adding plus signs between them:
U.S. racial+urbanized+occupationally heterogeneous+anti discrimination+most white Americans+blacks'+status  [blacks' as plural possessive]
Put only that string of select words and phrases into Google.
The second Google hit shows enough resemblance--all the words are present.  That hit goes to Google Books:
Racial Attitudes in the 1990s: Continuity and Change, pg. 18
 edited by Steven A. Tuch, Jack K. Martin
In other words, don't take a student's full sentence to use when checking Google.  Instead, pull out phrases that sound like the student is a professor-wannabe, words the student would rarely or very rarely string together based on the student's age, college level, past writing assignments, past academic performance, speaking habits, etc.  For example, if a 19 yr old with a C-average turned in that mess, I'd immediately think "plagiarized!"
For in class teaching strategies, professors might assign speaking presentations early in the course. As each student presents orally, write on an index card the student's style and speaking level. e.g. Notes like:  uses simple words; no sophistication; uses few/too many adjectives; uses good analogies; noun/pronoun-verb conflicts like "He run" instead of "He ran".  The cards will be a reference for you when evaluating writing assignments throughout the course.
A second teaching strategy: Print out a paragraph from a textbook, say 5 sentences long, with a copy for each student. Make it 'count'--assign grades for this exercise. Have them silently read it.  Instructions:
Turn the paper over and don't look at it again.  In 3 to 4 sentences (reduced from 5) write "in your own words" what the author said. You may not use any significant phrases or adjectives from the original text except identifiers like age, gender, nationality, etc.  (Men; women; middle-aged; American; Canadian, etc.)  You may not simply replace words in the original with synonyms.   [Alternate assignment:  Same instructions but they may refer to the original and give permission to reuse only 3 significant words or phrases from the original version.  If more than 3 are used, it will result in an F for the exercise.]
Teaching strategy #3:  Review good class note-taking.  Specifically instruct the students to take notes for this class.  Teach for 15-20 minutes.  Stop and pick several students to refer to their notes and re-tell the class the main points you made but they must put the ideas into complete sentences. Their version must re-tell what you taught, as closely as possible.  After several students share their retelling, review with the class how "important pieces" in lecture notetaking is similar to the task of "paraphrasing" points from texts.  Talk about how hearing significant pieces from your lecture for notetaking purposes uses the same skills they need to also 'hear' /listen for significant words/phrases in texts.  Discuss why they must use "phrase quotes" on significant pieces when paraphrasing for a writing assignment, in addition to sentence quotes.  And discuss attribution for both.
I enjoyed writing this and hope it sparks further ideas.

Be careful with comparing oral and written texts style. Foreign students tend to be better at writing than their oral, while native speakers tend to be better at oral than writing, but even this is not certain. Also, for most people, oral tends to use shorter, simpler words than written (one of the best way to detect if someone is presenting by reading off text vs referring to cue cards is to see how much they ramble with long sentences not normally intelligible in spoken language). You'll have a really hard time using your oral reading to detect or prove plagiarism.

It looks like this student was aware of the "five consecutive word plagiarism rule."
S/he is copying strings of four words or so, and taking care to change the fifth (and maybe sixth) in sequence, (hence the "bad synonyms") then goes back to copying another "string," etc. Assuming that you know the underlying material, that's how to detect it.
As explained in other answers to my question, plagiarism consists of "lifting ideas, plots" as opposed to merely words.  Your student is violating the spirit of anti-plagiarism rules while conforming to the letter (or trying to).

"plagiarism consists of copying ideas, as opposed to merely words." - Citation needed.  That's not my understanding.  One way to improve this answer might be to remove that erroneous claim, and then answer the original question about how to prove this kind of plagiarism.

@D.W. See Lauren Ipsum's answer in the link. I replaced an earlier link with the "correct" one. Lauren is a professional editor, and the highest ranked member of the Writers' SE site.

I suspect you have mis-paraphrased Lauren Ipsum's answer in the process of re-wording it.  I read Lauren Ipsum's answer as saying that copying words can constitute plagiarism; and that copying ideas can also constitute plagiarism.  I'm not sure what you are trying to say in the last paragraph of your answer, or how it answers the original question.

Detecting plagiarism has two parts. The first part is to find a possible match, and the second part is to compare the two works. Plagiarism is likely when a work is very similar to one specific prior work, and much less similar to other works.
The problem with SafeAssign here is unknown. It could be that it fails to find a possible match, or it might find the two works dissimilar.
We recognize the two paragraphs from the question as similar because the sentence structures are almost identical, many words are identical, and where the words differ they're synonyms. But you had the advantage of recognizing which text it came from. This part could in fact be automated without major problems.
The main challenge for automated plagiarism detection is the selection of similar candidates. This probably needs to be done on multiple scales. First, transform the text by doing a grammar analysis. Replace any noun by literally "noun", any verb by "verb" etc, and see if you now find long matches. Secondly, replace all words by canonical synonyms or hypernyms and check for matches of smaller length. (It doesn't matter if the text becomes hard to understand or somewhat nonsensical). Finally, for the smallest scale, just sort lists or enumerations.
Taking one step back, how would a plagiarism detector come up with likely candidates in the first place? A good method is to realize that documents about the same subject will typically both use fairly uncommon words. As a simple example, the word "God" is rather common in theological works and much less so in theoretical chemistry. This process will still work as an effective filter for the pair given in the question - both are trivially recognized as sociological works by their word choice alone (disregarding any sentence structure).

I give an oral quiz to each of my students, not to find plagiarism but to assess understanding of the material.  I pay close attention when a student of whom I believe to have "paraphrased" their entire paper.  I'm a science teacher which puts me at an advantage.  if the student can't comment on any of the challenging concepts, I find it suspicious.

Welcome to Academia.SE! Can you elaborate on what you do when the student cannot comment on the challenging concepts? The OP is already at the "suspicious" stage: I believe the question is more about how to deal with these students.


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Using anonymized student grades in a publication?
Can I use anonymized student grades for a study that could later be published?  The idea would be, for instance, to investigate if a group of students taught by Method A had a different grade distribution than those taught by Method B, and to conclude on the relative merits of both methods.  It wouldn't be feasible go back and obtain consent from the students since a few years have passed.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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What English expression resembles the German "Tutor"?
In Germany, it is common for students to hold “Tutor” positions, which entail a weekly teaching class (e.g., 90 minutes) and the correction of exercise sheets handed in by students.
I would like to list such a position in my CV, which is in English.
What English expression should be used for this type of work? Is teaching assistant suitable?

Firstly, even in Germany there are different word for this. Besides Tutor there is also wissenschaftliche/studentische Hilfskraft, HiWi (short for Hilfswissenschaftler but has apparently different meanings in other contexts) or Übungsgrupperleiter, for example, and the usage of these words may even vary between different parts of the university and their usage among students/faculty/administration is not always consistent.
However, I think the most widely used term in English speaking countries is TA (teaching assistant).

Yes, but trying to convey the relatively subtle (edit: and university dependent) differences between Hiwis, Tutors, and "Studienassistenten" (we had those as well in Austria) when translating to a different language and different academic system is a lesson in futility, so there is no reason to go there.

While it's true there are different words, Hilfskraft and HiWi are rather more generic than Tutor - Hilfskraft and HiWi often refer to any (normally Bachelor/Master) students with a working contract for the university, whereas Tutor indicates a specific type of job they are performing.

I downvoted because the first part of your answer is just wrong: "Tutor" and "HiWi" aren't related: There are non-"Tutor" "HiWis" as well as non-"HiWi" "Tutors".

@danieljour No, the part is not wrong. Neither Tutor nor HiWi is an official term at the universities I have been.  The official term that is used is only "studentische Hilfskraft". But anyway, that was not what the question is about.

@Dirk Indeed, the official job title is "studentische Hilfskraft" or "wissenschaftliche, studentische Hilfskraft" (as long as you don't have a degree). "Tutor" is though in official use, for example: http://www.kompass.uni-wuerzburg.de/startseite/

Just to clarify. Is TA used outside the United Stated? It certainly isn't common in Australia (see below. What's the status of UK and Canada? If not, then it's probably better to say that it is widely used in United States?

@Dirk: Financial university administration does not care what a studentische Hilfskraft does in their work. In that respect, it is true they do not mention the term Tutor. However, that term is very well officially communicated toward students taking a class in which Tutoren are available.

What English expression should be used for this type of work? Is teaching assistant suitable?

Yes, this is pretty much exactly what it is. If you want to be particularly exact, you can write "Undergrad teaching assistant".

I am not sure where you take the "undergrad" part from. I have witnessed classes who used students for "Übungen" (classes for discussing worksheet solutions) also in higher semesters. But as there is no direct equivalent, maybe "undergrad teaching assistant" is still the closest match.

@O.R.Mapper Sure - I meant undergrad in the sense that the OP was still an undergrad (as opposed to a PhD student, as many TAs in the US seem to be, but much less so in Europe). Anyway, when translating between academic systems some fuzziness will be impossible to avoid, so it may be best to just write "Tutor (similar to TA)" or something like that.

Ah, in that case, it might be misleading in that such TAs in Europe can very well be Master students (and hence, by the American definition, probably "graduate students"), but that just confirms your statement about fuzziness.

@O.R.Mapper Equating German and US master programmes is by itself a fuzzy analogy :) personally I consider Master programmes in Germany part of the undergrad education, simply because they are much closer in nature to a regular college education than to graduate studies (and also partly because the vast majority of students studies 'til Master).

Another problem with undegraduate teaching assistant may be that it is not clear whether undergraduate refers to the one who is teaching or the ones who are taught, i.e., some may miss that it’s not undergraduate-teaching assistant.

@xLeitix Even equating teaching assistants in one US university to another is fuzzy and problematic.

It seems that tutor is a term that varies in meaning between English speaking countries. Teaching assistant is clearly a common term in the United States, however, it is rarely used in Australia.
In Australia, the word "tutor" can be used in a similar sense to what you describe in Germany. I.e., many larger university subjects are divided into lectures and tutorials. Typically the lectures are taken by a PhD qualified academic and presented once for all students. Tutorials are typically more interactive taking place in a classroom (e.g., having 5 to 30 students or so). Tutorials are commonly delivered by students doing their PhD and these students typically mark the assignments of those in their tutorial, and such students are commonly called tutors.
In Australia, the context is used to guide the meaning of the word "tutor". At the secondary level, private tutoring would probably be implied, but in the university setting, probably the classroom setting would be the default assumption. You might say  that you are "doing some private tutoring" or "one-on-one tutoring" if you meant to distinguish tutoring outside the classroom.

Surprisingly, your description almost exactly matches the situation in Germany. The only slight difference (that is probably also referred to by the OP) is that in Germany, tutorials (especially for classes in lower semesters) are often delivered by students doing their Master's or even their Bachelor's (often as little as one year ahead of the students they are tutoring).

It's probably pretty much the same in Australia, I should update the language. You get quite a few masters and other students teaching bachelor-level units in Australia. In some departments there is a rule that the tutor must be studying for, or have, a higher level qualification than the unit that they are teaching. So for example, it would be unusual in Australia for a third year bachelor student to be tutoring a first year bachelor's unit.

An English term for someone who only corrects the exercise sheets of students in a class taught by someone else is grader.
An English term for someone who teaches a "satellite" class and grades papers from that, or the main class taught by someone else, is teaching assistant.
A "tutor" is someone who goes "one on one" with students. In this regard, the (American) English term is different from the German term.

As mentioned by others 'Teaching Assistant' is probably the most accurate job description.  The course itself would be known as a 'Recitation Course' or 'Recitation Section' in American English.
On my own CV, I have Übungsleiter (exercise leader) while I was in Germany, and 'Recitation Instructor' for my very similar American position.

Nitpick, if you want to get it right down to details: Übungsleiter might be misleading even within Germany; especially in setups where one person (usually a postdoc or PhD candidate) manages the exercises and designs the worksheets (who could thus be called "Übungsleiter"), whereas the recitation sessions ("Übungen") and the grading would be done by other people (who are then called "Tutor"). In this setup, the "Übungsleiter" is superior to "Tutoren", but does not necessarily act as a "Tutor" him- or herself.

You could say teaching assistant.  But teaching assistants can do lots of different things.  If the person leads a weekly 90 minute work session connected to a lecture course taught by a professor then I would say more specifically "work session leader"; or "section leader" if there are several such sections connected to the same larger course.  If the 90 minute sessions are a course by themselves then the person teaching them is a teacher.

As a person who has worked in a professional on-campus tutoring environment with many professionally trained and CRLA Certified (levels 1 through 3) tutors, I must object to the loose definitions of tutor being used for American (and Canadian) tutors. I cannot however speak to the definition/role of a tutor in other anglophone countries.
First, a tutor is not a teacher/instructor at all. In fact one of the key guidelines of tutoring is to avoid presenting material that the student has not seen before. The role of tutor is to help the student to help themselves become better students, with the ultimate goal of eliminating the need for a tutor. Tutors respond to learner questions and needs, offering strategies and helping the student to find the answers for themselves.
Second, a tutor is not a mentor or coach. These roles are far more involved that tutoring and often go beyond the academic arena.
Third, a tutor can work one-on-one but they also can work with small groups of students. Some tutors also lead groups in what is called "Supplemental Instruction" (what you might call "satellite classes") but even CRLA acknowledges that SI is not tutoring.
There are many other aspects of being a good tutor but these 3 points are sufficient I think to help correctly define what a properly trained tutor does.

As for the use of "Teaching Assistant" per the original Question, I think that is fine for the college/university environment. However, be aware that the term became somewhat corrupted when it was borrowed by some of our basic education (elementary, middle and high schools) institutions. The role of a "TA" in those schools is more accurately called an "Instructional Aide" (IA) which is also known as a "paraprofessional" and the role often involves much more interaction with the children as well as assisting the teacher. Some IA's are even assigned to work one-on-one with children having special needs.

The word Tutor was borrowed from German into English and is just as valid when used in English as when used in German. It means exactly the same thing in both languages.
The reason it does is because prior to adding tutor as a new word to the English language, there existed no English word that carried a definition that closely met the specific nature of the German definition of tutor and since the word was easy to pronounce it was readily adopted into English. In fact, the word tutor is a classic example of the dynamic beauty of the English language as an uncapped, ever expanding language.

"It means exactly the same thing in both languages": I disagree.  At least in US English, as used within academia, "tutor" is used to refer to a person who teaches students individually.  It would not be used for a person who teaches students in a classroom setting, as in the OP's question.  Note that in general, the linguistic origins of a word are not necessarily an accurate indication of how it is used in practice, and how it is likely to be understood by readers.

To illustrate @Nate Eldredge’s comment: If your argument were true, the American word entrée would mean appetiser.

And by ordering a latte at the cafeteria, you'd get a glass of milk...

Wherever the word comes from, in Spanish "tutor" is also somebody teaching, with a strong overtone of one-on-one.

But we're talking about English, where "tutor" very much can and does refer to, for example, "A university or college teacher responsible for the teaching and supervision of assigned students", and would be used for a person who teaches students in a classroom setting. That it may have other meanings as well doesn't invalidate the claim in the first paragraph, and this piling on is just absurd.

@MichaelHomer: That it may have other meanings as well doesn't invalidate the claim in the first paragraph – Yes it invalidates the statement that those both words mean “exactly the same thing”. Also, the other meanings are extremely relevant  to the question: If I write on my CV that I worked as a tutor (English), this could mean that I was payed for individual coaching, private tutoring or similar. If I write that I worked as a Tutor (German), it cannot mean this.

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text:
What are the moral and legal consequences of "not thanking" government for not providing viable grants?
Recently, on various social platforms, an image containing an unusual acknowledgement in some paper have been circulating. This is about the following paper RF fingerprint measurements for the identification of devices
in wireless communication networks based on feature
reduction and subspace transformation by J.L. Padilla, P. Padilla, J.F. Valenzuela-Valdés, J. Ramírez, J.M. Górriz, Measurement 58 (2014) 468–475, which has the following Acknowledgement:

 "This work has been carried out despite the economical
difficulties of the authors’ country. The authors want to
overall remark the clear contribution of the Spanish Government
in destroying the R&D horizon of Spain and the
future of a complete generation."

Another interesting example provided by @Federico Poloni is the paper  Rumour spreading and graph conductance  by Flavio Chierichetti, Silvio Lattanzi, Alessandro Panconesi,
where the authors write:

"Unacknowledgements

This work is ostensibly supported by the the Italian
Ministry of University and Research under the FIRB
program, project RBIN047MH9-000. The Ministry
however has not paid its dues and it is not known
whether it will ever do."

Another paper recently published offers a sad story in the acknowledgements,(I will just put the reference here "On functional representations of the conformal algebra", by Oliver J. Rosten, Eur. Phys. J. C (2017) 77:477
DOI 10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-5049-5)
In "A New Horned Dinosaur Reveals Convergent Evolution in Cranial Ornamentation in Ceratopsidae by Caleb M. Brown, Donald M. Henderson, Current Biology, Vol. 25, Issue 12, R494–R496
DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.04.041, there is a proposal:

 Funding for this research was provided by the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology and the Royal Tyrrell Museum Cooperating Society.
C.M.B. would specifically like to highlight the ongoing and unwavering support
of Lorna O’Brien. Lorna, will you marry me?

In "Rotational splittings with CoRoT, expected number of detections and measurement accuracy" by M. Goupil, et al., Caleb M. Brown, Donald M. Henderson, Current Biology, Vol. 25, Issue 12, R494–R496
, where is the following text:

 We do not gratefully thank T. Appourchaux for his useless and very mean comments

There are also more:
Van Valen (1973). A new Evolutionary Law. Evolutionary Theory 1:1-30.

I thank the National Science Foundation for regularly rejecting my (honest) grant applications for work on real organisms (cf. Szent-Gyorgyi, 1972), thus forcing me into theoretical work

Although I fully empathize with the authors view, I wonder about the legal and moral consequences of considering adding of such an acknowledgement in one's
future career.
P.S. If you have discovered a similar story in a different paper that it is not listed here, please feel free to add it. Thank you!

not worth an answer, but morally, it would raise respect in almost every university of the country, a majority of university direction councils has raised concerns  and official protests against R&D underfunding  since 2011. almost every  prince of asturias scholarship grant winner ( being the top student (highest GPA) of their field in the country on graduation date) rejects to shake hands with the minister of culture due to only a small portion of them ever recieving even one assistant grant .  legal? none, it's freedom of speech.

Another interesting example (paywalled unfortunately): https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1873601.1873736

Academic publications are in general not the right place for politics. And especially not for personal vendettas. Doing the latter is deeply unprofessional (though I'd wager some great scientists did this as well).
However, government officials and institutions are public not private actors and as such are in democratic societies put to more scrutiny (in their official function) than private actors. Addressing StrongBad's concern of people starting to "not thank" your publisher,supervisor etc, this is definitely a difference I would see.
For contemporary major moral discussions - like "should we start a genocide or not" - I'd say the bigger moral question can trump the professionality aspect by far though.
Now that we covered the general and extreme cases, back to the dirty middle ground.
Criticizing a political official or institution who acts in a researchers opinion damaging to science (or to society by his stance to science) or who likes to claim supporting science while his acts paint a different picture, I'd consider a borderline case.
It's a public body and it affects science, thus to some degree relevant for the audience and the author. Especially when there is no official body properly representing the scientific community in that country, such a statement may be a reasonable approach to inform the public about the opinion of the broader scientific community. But it comes off as petty easily if it's just general critic for a particular agenda that doesn't suit your own ideas or if it seems you are just angry because you in particular didn't get funding while others did.
So legally, it's irrelevant in most countries, as long as you don't include libel or insult (depending on country). It is, in general, unprofessional, but sometimes the bigger issue at stake may still validate it morally.
It's basically your individual choice to break with the professionality in order to further your political agenda. It may hinder your scientific career and cost you reputation, while helping your agenda. However, if you're unlucky it may also have the opposite effect and along with your own reputation loss, cost your political movement reputation with conservative people/voters/observers. In the end, it is very context depending - who are you criticizing, for what reasons, who is your audience and how receptive may they be to your message. Same for your career. If your scientific peers agree with your opinion they may ignore your breach with professionality - but does that also hold for international colleagues who may have no idea what you are ranting about?

I personally find it out of place. Many journals have policies about acknowledging individuals (and possibly agencies). I doubt an individual/agency would willingly agree to a negative acknowledgement. While insulting the government might be fine, what about a funding agency

The authors want to overall remark the clear contribution of the NIH in destroying the future of a complete generation.

or a subset of an agency

The authors want to overall remark the clear contribution of the NIH NIMH in destroying the future of a complete generation.

or maybe even a study section

The authors want to overall remark the clear contribution of the NIH NMB study section in destroying the future of a complete generation.

which of course leads to an individual

The authors want to overall remark the clear contribution of Dr Borzan in destroying the future of a complete generation.

If not thanking became the norm, then people might start insulting journals where they have been previously rejected, or collaborators who have turned them down.

No downvote, but this sounds very much like a slippery slope argument. 'It all starts with a snarky footnote, and it ends with anarchy.'

yeah, this answer adresses imaginary aknowledgements instead of actual ones, or even just realistic ones

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text:
The fate of an accepted paper not being presented
If no author of an accepted paper registers for the conference, the paper is simply dumped from the conference.
If, however, the authors duly register but fail to present it at the conference, what is the fate of the paper? I have an accepted paper at a European conference (IEEE), but due to lack of travel funds, our team has decided that we will not be travelling to present the work (I am not based at Europe).
I wrote to the General Chair of the conference, and he writes to me that if the paper is not presented, it will not be indexed in the IEEE Xplore library.
What I wish to know is, will the paper still be published in the 'Conference Proceedings' booklet or CD? My guess is Yes, since these must be printed before authors arrive for the conference. The General Chair has not responded with an answer on this.
Question two, which happens to be my real inquiry- does such a thing count as a valid 'publication' for me? Will my work get indexed somewhere (wherever it might be) or not, would it be searchable via the Internet or not?

Ask someone else to present the paper on your behalf.

Just to clarify.... It is a Poster paper. It would not be possible, I guess, to present it via Skype. Although @JeffE's option is viable, Charles' remarks on it are important.

I agree with @JeffE;  ask someone else to present. It is very bad form to have a paper and not show up to present:  as someone else paying the expense of going to the conference TO SEE THE CONTENT it would be annoying if a bunch of folks just blew it off.  I know at least one person who did that, and whenever I see their name I think of them as someone who just got their paper in so it would be "published" but then blew off their responsibility to present.  So, it could come back to hurt you in the future.

@JeffE -- the new IEEE policies does not allow a non-author to present the paper! My paper was not published for this reason.

@AJed What the IEEE doesn't know can't hurt them. No IEEE official will attend the conference to make sure every speaker is an author. For most CS conferences, proceedings are produced months before the conference. Just don't tell them that you're not coming. But make absolutely sure that someone actually presents your work on your behalf.

This has actually happened to me a couple of times in the past. This really depends on the policy of the organizing professional group (ACM/IEEE) and even within sub-groups of that body (SIGWEB/SIGCHI within ACM)
Generally, I have found that if your paper is accepted in a conference and you or any of your co-authors register for that conference, then the paper will still be published in the conference proceedings and indexed in the relevant digital library. e.g. IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library etc.
If you or a co-author do not register for the conference, then your paper, in general, will not be indexed.
If an accepted paper is not published in the conference proceedings (and by extension not indexed in the appropriate digital library), then it generally does not "count" as a valid publication. You are better off, in that case, by withdrawing your paper and submitting it at a more acceptable conference venue (or a journal where there is not travelling involved)
PS: You can always link to such a paper on your personal website or put it on arxiv for comments. Google Scholar will obviously index it but such indexing has limited practical value.

Thanks for the answer. Would you mind sharing your experience with IEEE, since mine happens to be an IEEE conference?

I registered for the conference and did not go because the travel expenses were too much for me as an undergraduate student. The paper is in Xplore. No problem.

From what I know in CS field, most conferences care only about Registration. That means if one author registered before the deadline then the paper will be included in the conference proceedings. This mostly due to the fact that many conferences send their papers to the publisher before the conference take place. It happens all the time where during the conference sessions some papers have no presenter.
Now some conferences make it explicit that you need to to come and present your paper in order to include it in the final proceedings. Such conditions are usually available in the conference website or after-acceptance emails.
For the second question, it is really a good and rationale question since your paper passed the peer review process but at the same time you do not have hard evidence for that. Personally I can't comment on that since I am new to conference organisation and academia.

"Now some conferences make it explicit that you need to to come" - and even then, I wonder how seriously that rule is applied. It would seem rather scandalous if researchers from single countries were systematically given a hard time to get their submissions published just because either the conference country happens to impose difficult-to-master restrictions on granting a visa, or their home country/the consulates therein is/are inapt at establishing an efficient visa retrieval process. ...

...  I am saying this because one or two talks per conference getting dropped due to speakers (very often, though not always, from China) not making it to the conference for visa problems seems much like the rule rather than the exception to me.

It very much depends on the conference regulations. As an example I know that Eucap indexes the paper in IEEExplore if one of the authors registers and the final paper passes the checks in IEEE PDF Express.
Some conference management systems like Edas.info have a special page called "Explain no-show". It's a common issue for authors who are unable to obtain their Visas to enter the country where the conference is held.
Also, it's a good idea to consider submitting to arXiv

Just to have your and @Shion's opinion- it was a two page 'Extended abstract'. Such things go to arXiv??

Yes, such things can go on arXiv.

Whether or not a paper appears in IEEE Xplore is very dependent upon the sponsoring society and conference's own policies. In general though:

If none of the authors have registered for the conference, this should be spotted by the organizers. In this case, it is unlikely your paper would be in the proceedings, as often the deadline for paper submission coincides with the deadline for author registration (for this reason).
If one of the authors of the paper has registered, the paper would appear in the proceedings handed out at the conference (the USB stick or similar). This is on account of the fact that, until registration is completed, the organizers are not aware you have not attended.
If an author is registered for the conference, but does not present, this depends upon the policies of the conference. I can say with 100% certainty at the conference I am involved with, that failing to present will lead to the paper not being indexed on Xplore - we have a team of volunteer session chairs who submit a report for each session.

The ComSoc policy [1] on no-shows is quite clear, and is one that many conferences are modeled around. While some people may be lucky and get their paper on Xplore, that's incredibly unusual in my experience, given the role of session chairs and room monitors.
[1] http://cms.comsoc.org/eprise/main/SiteGen/Confs_P_P/Content/Home/No_Shows.html


text:
Made an arXiv submission too early; How to minimize the damage?
A confession first: This was our first attempt at a journal paper.
The story so far:
We had submitted our work for possible publication with a reputed journal in our area. Some time later, while the review was still on, I checked out whether this journal allowed self-archiving of author's version of the paper. Feeling glad that it did (and being quite confident that our paper will get accepted), we decided to upload our pre-print on arXiv.
And now...
The decision arrived from the journal. It was a reject. Amongst the other things written by the reviewers, one of the points happens to be:

...I am a bit concerned with what appears to be the same paper
  published and made available from: arxiv.org/xxx/yyy. I would
  recommend that the authors clarify this potential duplication.

I do not think that this was the only reason for rejection, but might have contributed to it.
My questions:
I know I did a mistake due my lack of awareness of the proper rules. How to rectify my mistake?
Should I consider that this work of mine cannot be published to any conference/journal since its pre-print happens to arXived already?
As far as I understand, arXiv does not allow us to remove papers. I can request a withdrawal, but even then the previous version(s) will remain available online (for any future reviewers to bug us).
What is the best course of action for me?

update based on answer by @F'x:
Adding this from the Journal's website, Guide for authors page:

Copyright is retained by the Publisher. Submission of an article implies that the paper has not been published previously; that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere; that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out; and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, without the written consent of the Publisher.

@dgraziotin Maybe i could not make myself clear. The journal in question clearly allowed archiving author's version on their personal website and on arXiv or similar.

If the journal allows it, it shouldn't make a difference. If you're worried, you can just write in the cover letter when submitting to the next journal that you uploaded the preprint on arXiv.

@dgraziotin To be more clear, I had checked with SHERPA/RoMEO, and not really with the Journal's website. And now checking it with http://rchive.it/, i confirm the same

If the preprint was the real reason for rejection, the editor would have most likely told you off.

@DanielE.Shub That's some relief for me. The editor just said that based on the reviews, he has decided not to accept it for publication. There wasn't any mention to the preprint.

For what it’s worth, I find the referee’s comment very surprising!  I’m in mathematics (specifically, logic/category theory), and most articles I’ve either submitted or refereed are already available beforehand as preprints, either on the arXiV or on individual homepages.  I would have understood “published previously” in the journal’s policies to refer just to actual journal publication, not to dissemination as a preprint.

"I am a bit concerned with what appears to be the same paper published and made available from: arxiv.org/xxx/yyy. I would recommend that the authors clarify this potential duplication." To me it looks like a post-hoc rationalization of an already decided but difficult-to-justify rejection. I definitely do not see any mistake done by the OP and it looks like the damage has a different origin. (There is a famous folktale of an editor cut-and-pasting the negative parts of three positive referee reports in order to justify his rejection of a paper.)

Also, good job on avoiding a journal that seems to have evil policies! Count yourself lucky. Publish somewhere that allows an open access source (either on arxiv or offered as open access by the publisher)! Don't contribute to these leeches.

The answer to your question depends on the exact details of the journal's policy (and it would be good for you to quote them exactly, or give us a link). More precisely, it depends not only on the journal's policy regarding self-archiving, but more importantly on the journal's policy on prior publication.
I know that might sound weird, but these are actually two separate questions. Self-archiving is a question of copyright, a legal issue: it's a question of what rights you retain (and what rights you transfer) according to the agreement you have with the journal's publisher. This copyright agreement is not something that influences the peer review process, it only governs what you agree with the publisher should they actually accept to publish your paper. (The agreement is void if the paper will not be published, obviously.)
Now, the journal's policy on prior publication is not a legal issue, it is a question of scientific (or editorial) policy. It is decided by the journal's editorial board, and should be explicitly spelt out in its guidelines for authors, journal policies or another similarly titled document. Some journals, like those of the American Chemical Society, have a very strict policy on prior publication:

The Journal of the American Chemical Society considers for publication only original work that has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. When submitting a manuscript, an author should inform the editor of any prior dissemination of the content in print or electronic format. This includes electronic posting of conference presentations, posters, and preprints on institutional repositories and any other Web sites. Any content that has been made publicly available, either in print or electronic format, and that contains a significant amount of new information, if made part of a submitted manuscript, may jeopardize the originality of the submission and may preclude consideration for publication.

Thus, this journal would reject any manuscript that was posted on arXiv (or anywhere else), because it is not considered original material.

Now, what about you? Well, you have to find out what your journal's policy is, and act accordingly. If the journal policy forbids prior publication, then accept that you made a mistake, find a journal that doesn't have such requirements (it depends on fields, but it should not be too difficult), and submit it there.
On the other hand, if the journal policy does not forbid such prior publication, then you only made a smaller mistake: not informing the editor. Thus, if you want to appeal the rejection, you may want to write an apologetic letter to the editor with that information (along with answering the other comments of the reviewers). As you say that this was not the main reason for the rejection, I wouldn't advise appealing though (chances of success are very slim).

I added some details from the Journal's website. Your answer throws in quite a different perspective. Just because the work is arXived implies that it is not original material sounds a bit strange to me...

@pnp well, it is true, the content will not be “original material” when it appears in the journal. The paper you submit to the journal has been published (as in “made available to the public”) just as if you had posted it on your website or had published it in another printed journal. Of course, considering the nature of arXiv, not all journals take such a strong stance, and many allow submission of manuscripts that are published on arXiv (some of them require that both are submitted at the same time… it would be weird to publish in a journal a paper that you had put on arXiv three years ago)

@F'x What's wrong with publishing a paper you put on arXiv three years ago? This may just be me or just my field, but I referee such papers once in a while and have never let such a thing affect my opinion about the results presented in the manuscripts. Neither have editors or other referees, it seems. One paper I recommended for publication had been on arXiv for seven years when the editor asked me to referee.

@YuichiroFujiwara well, if the editor's happy with it, it would not influence my opinion of the manuscript. But I can understand that many journals would rather publish new ideas, results and opinions. Seeing it the other way around: what's the point of re-publishing something that was already published years ago? (apart for its historical significance, with an added note and possibly comments on its impact in the field and following work)

@F'x >what's the point of re-publishing something that was already published years ago? | Isn't it the same as any other submission? 1. To have your paper reviewed by anonymous peers to get honest feedback and get a quality stamp. 2. To give your paper more visibility. 3. To make bean counters happier. I may have missed some, but I think it's exactly the same as in any other submission...

@YuichiroFujiwara yes, but why publish it a first time, then wait some years to say “I really should get more people to read that paper”?

Of course that's because the purpose of quick publication with no review is quite different than that of slow, peer reviewed publication. In many cases (at least in mathematics), it requires a serious commitment to read and fully understand a paper, especially when it contains a deep result. Just because you claim that you proved something and put a proof online doesn't mean everyone including non-experts will spend months or years on your paper. If you're an already established researcher, the arXiv-only policy may work. But not everyone enjoys such a privilege.

And when to submit is all up to the author. If a journal has a policy about "freshness" of some sort which is different from originality, then you should respect that. But if there were a universal time limit of some kind, for example, then, if the asker of this question (http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13590/complaining-about-an-isi-journals-unreasonable-behavior) had followed the norm in his field and put his preprint on arXiv, he wouldn't be able to publish it anywhere after rejection that came after 26 months.

let us continue this discussion in chat

@YuichiroFujiwara: a big difference is also with the fields. Mathematics and Physics journals have almost always been very accommodating toward arXiv postings. Whereas historically journals in Medicine and Chemistry have some of the strictest rules about "prior publication" that are known to man. As with many "cultural" things, it is often not worthwhile to dig too deeply into whether it is "just". You are not going to bring about a change in culture by convincing people what they have been doing for the past 20 years is "wrong".

@WillieWong You're right. I'm sorry if I came out sounding like correcting someone else's belief or calling a different culture wrong. I just meant that the claim "it would be weird to publish in a journal a paper that you had put on arXiv three years ago" is not correct as general advice. There are many cases where it takes three or more years for a paper to appear in a journal after uploading on arXiv, and the word "weird" sounded too strong to me...

While you may not have done anything wrong, violating a journal's preprint publication policy is a big deal. In fact it is such a big deal that if you did something wrong and this was the reason for rejecting the paper, the editor would have told you off in no uncertain terms. More likely the editor got a recommendation of "reject" from one or more reviewers, quickly looked at the reviews and decided that the decision was warranted and forwarded on the decision. The editor's review of the reviews may have been so cursory that he/she didn't even notice the comment about the arXiv preprint.

I suspect that your guess is perfectly right. The decision of reject was coming anyways. Thanks..

Maybe too late to answer. You can check the archiving policy of journal here http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/search.php

why voted down?


text:
Open-source the project code before or after publication?
I recently completed a part of my project and communicated a paper to a conference. Let's call the paper's title as "project x: for this and that". Now, I wish to open-source project x to facilitate reproducible research and to have more (at least some) people use it (and cite it!).
Are there any specific drawbacks or risks involved in open-sourcing project x on, say, Github or Sourceforge? Do note here that I would still be improving on project x, and possibly sending the extended version to a journal (my area of work being Computer Science).
I understand that if a conference/journal requires double-blind review and my project is searchable on the Internet, I am revealing my identity to the reviewers. This is bad, right?
Are there any other cons I should be considering? And are there any pros of open-sourcing before a making it into a publication?

The double-blind review is sort of a joke in a lot of smaller fields. You generally know what everyone is working on, so it's easy to figure out who wrote a paper.

Double-blind reviews are usually more common in conferences. For example, I don't know of any journals using double-blind review in my field (machine learning). I'm going to assume revealing your identity is not an issue (if it is, circumstances differ).
Whenever relevant I provide an implementation along with a paper. This also helps reviewers, in case they want to fiddle with an algorithm under slightly different circumstances than those reported in the paper (which is a good thing!). When an implementation is provided, the option is there.
The pros are increased visibility, reproducibility and (in my opinion) credibility since you allow everyone to try for themselves instead of taking your word for it in the paper. On rare occasions, your software may become quite popular during the review period, which may positively impact the paper under review.
A potential con is that someone may discover a critical bug in your implementation. From the perspective of software engineering this is always helpful since you can then improve the software. For the associated paper this may be a good, bad or irrelevant thing, depending on the type of bug:

One that does not influence the results reported in your paper: no big deal. Simply fix and move on. Best case this improves the user experience of your software, worst case you lost a bit of time fixing something unimportant.
One that does influence the results: big deal. This will at least delay a potential publication. Ofcourse it is better to find such errors and fix them instead of publishing erroneous conclusions, but this may have an impact on credibility.

"One that does influence the results: big deal. This will at least delay a potential publication. Ofcourse it is better to find such errors and fix them instead of publishing erroneous conclusions, but this may have an impact on credibility." I understand why that would be unpleasant for the author, but is it acceptable to hide something because you are afraid someone will find a fault in it?

@Ri49 I find that unacceptable, but I am sure it happens. This is one of the key reasons why I always provide implementations.

"This may have an impact on credibility": that's a big issue with academia, and is only happening because of software (and human nature) illiteracy. In any software, bugs are bound to happen. Noone can prove a software to be bug-free, Church-Turing proved that. Publishing the sourcecode, even if bugs are found, are in my book proof of seriousness and scientific rigorousness, because you can reproduce experiments and the authors accept the possibility to be wrong and be corrected. This is totally the scientific methodology, so why should this possibly impact credibility is beyond me.


text:
Is taking ideas from an art critic plagiarism?
A student submitted a paper in an art history class that contained some ideas from art critics she read about, and whose ideas she agreed with. The student didn't cite the critics as source, but claimed it wasn't plagiarism because their ideas were merely their own subjective judgments, or opinions, not facts or findings; furthermore, they were opinions she agreed with.

It happens that I have the same ideas about Mercedes-Benz cars that John Cadogan ( https://www.youtube.com/user/AutoExpertTV) has for years but only knew about him recently. Is it plagiarism too?

It appears to be plagiarism because she knew enough to find additional resources to add weight to her opinion, but didn't acknowledge those resources.

@CelticWarrior: no, it is still your own original idea, and you can still write that. Nevertheless, the homework or thesis policy of your university may say that you need to cite Cardogan as you are aware of his work. So you can e.g. say "my opinion is O, which agrees with Cardogan [1]". Depending on the context and circumstances, it may be worth while to emphasize that you arrived at that opinion independently and long before Cardogan published his opinion. I'm not convinced that is is a good idea to use a plagiarism policy that implicitly discards the possibility of a student having own ...

... ideas, but if your course has such a policy you may complain about it - but as long as it is in place you need to obey it. If you are just talking about publishing another youtube video or blog post with opinion about cars, plagiarism is less of an issue: I'd say the expectation there is that 3 people have about 5 own opinions and there is also no novelty expected when expressing such an opinion.

You might want to show her how to strengthen her writing by citing authoritative sources, art critics that she admires.  Yes, this is plagiarism, but not of the worst kind, so it would be great if you could motivate her to take a more professional approach.

Are you the student, the parent, or the teacher?

Yes, it's plagiarism if she learned novel or interesting ideas from an art critic and then used them in her own paper without crediting the source.  It doesn't matter whether the ideas are facts or opinions.
For commonplace opinions with nothing novel or interesting about them, there's no need for a citation.  However, that's presumably not the case here, since one couldn't attribute such opinions to a specific critic.

... nor does it matter whether one agrees or disagrees with the source. And, as always, the plagiarism definition of the particular university should be consulted: there are various definitions around, some including that the citation is omitted in order to benefit - which would be a point that needs to be judged carefully here. However, it seems this benefit aspect is mostly used by people working about plagiarism but not taken into account in university code of conduct definitions (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism#Academia).

pla·gia·rism ˈplājəˌrizəm
noun
the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them
  off as one's own.

So, in this case, the source (art critic) or destination (art history class paper) are irrelevant; it is still plagiarism.
It might seem unfair that ideas get accredited to the first author, but that is the game. Publish (early and often) or perish.
Technically is it not plagiarism if someone honestly arrives at an existing idea independently (reinvents the wheel). Not the case here, and impossible to prove anyway. That would be considered negligence, since a disciplined researcher would find any existing references.


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Does anyone know of an international postdoctoral association?
The number of postdocs is increasing worldwide. Because of their technical expertise and dedication, postdocs are rapidly becoming the backbone of most large science laboratories.
I am aware of institutional associations for postdocs, which are venues for networking, exchange of ideas, solving problems. At the local scale.
Examples:
http://www.nationalpostdoc.org
http://jhpda2.jhu.edu
https://uwpa.wisc.edu
However many postdocs move from their original departments, and became international. And it is my impression that similar challenges are faced by postdocs around the world, and it is quite hard finding out how things are going with colleagues abroad. Especially on delicate matters, via cold emails.
Please, would anyone be aware of some international association where postdoctoral fellows worldwide could meet, and discuss their difficulties and experience?

Aren't you posting this question on it?

@arboviral Indeed I feel SE is the best place for the moment, but it would be so much better having a true association with files, outreach, true names and addresses, and possibly meetings in flesh.

Ah, I see. Normally this would be field-specific, and you mention science labs - are you really asking about a general postdoc association, or something in a specific field?

@arboviral I am asking about a postdoc association, like the ones in the links. They are typically interdisciplinary and local. I was part of one in my last job, and the association took effective action to fix an institutional issue over postdoc salaries (got to newspapers). I am searching for this kind of association in an international scale. Like 'International Association of Educators' but for 'Postdocs'.

It's a great idea Scientist/Tommi but there's none yet that I'm aware of.
A lot of issues are common to different countries, but there are many important differences too. A good reason to look up your national/sector/discipline association, and a possible roadblock to the establishment of an international group.
In Australia it's the EMCR Forum*. They recently asked about similar international groups that advocate for and represent early and mid-career researchers and got a few bites: https://twitter.com/EMCRForum/status/950530138491400197

full disclosure: I am deputy chair of the EMCR Forum in 2018


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Is it standard to include a photo of yourself in a CV for a Swedish job search?
I know it's normal in a lot of European countries, but I don't know which way the Swedes roll.

Swedish Wikipedia does not mention a photo: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_vitae
This website mentions that a picture is not required in the cover letter and does not mention the issue at all in CV: http://www.yourlivingcity.com/stockholm/work-money/living-sweden-swedish-cv/
No pictures at https://www.cv-mallar.se/ or https://akademssr.se/dokument/cv-exempel
From nearby countries, photos are not be assumed in academic settings in Denmark, Finland, or Norway (based on personal experience). They do seem to be more prevalent in German-speaking countries, which do have close cultural ties to the Nordic countries.
Overall, it seems that a picture is not required, but, according to a comment from xLeitix, it would not be unusual to have one.

I teach in Sweden. The Swedish usually don't include pictures, most foreign applicants (of which we tend to have many) do. It's certainly not unusual, but if you don't it won't matter.

@xLeitix Thanks, edited accordingly. Though an answer from you would be even better.

No, it is not common in Sweden to add a photo on your CV. I have even heard that it is not advised. The reasoning I have heard was to keep the CV barebones and down to the facts. They should evaluate you based on whats on paper, rather than how you look. It goes a bit hand in hand with general Swedish approach of neutrality/objectivity.
In Denmark, on the other hand, it is almost expected to have a photo on your CV. The reasoning there, albeit anecdotal, is that when a hiring manager or a recruiter has your CV they know who to look for in a room/career fair etc. You sort of establish a first contact, of sorts.
That being said, in academic context, it does not really matter much. Most academic labs recruit internationally (at least on paper) and would not expect you to follow the local traditions in job applications.


text:
How to cite an old poem which appears in a new collection/anthology put together by a different editor? (Chicago)
According to CMS, we should cite a poem in an anthology as we would a chapter in an edited book. But, what if the poem was orginally written in another year?
eg.

Hàn Mặc Tử. [1939] 2009.“Hồn là ai?” (My soul, who art thou?). In Hàn
Mặc Tử. Tác phẩm chọn lọc [Hàn Mặc Tử. Collection of poems] edited by
Nguyễn Đăng Điệp. Hà Nội: Nhà xuất bản giáo dục Việt Nam.

Is this correct? Putting this way might be confusing to the reader as they might think this collection was reprinted in 2009. The correct understanding should be that this poem was written in 1938 and published in 2009 as part of a collection.
Following this, should the in-text citation for the poem be

(Han Mac Tu 1939)
(Han Mac Tu 2009)
(Nguyễn Đăng Điệp 2009)

Please help!!

I don't know anything about Chicago, but if you misled the reader into thinking the poem is from 2009, that would be bad. Also always cite the original source of any information, and the oldest version you were able to get you hands on, plus a newer one that might be more accessible to other readers.

Can't give you an authoritative or complete answer. But you must include a cite of the anthology if you quote text from the anthology. They may have translated, edited, etc. After that, I can't tell you what is correct. @Karl seems to be giving good advice.


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What does "activated" DOI number mean?
I would like to know what the difference is between a DOI number and an activated DOI number. Additionally, I have a DOI number for an article of mine to be published in a TUBITAK journal in Turkey. After the actual publication, how long does it take the DOI number to be activated in the system?

Because DOIs are often fairly predictable, and it's useful to have a single ID, many publishers assign them at an early stage of publication, well before the article is online. At this point, though, they're just a string of digits and don't really "become a DOI" until they're entered into the CrossRef system. I'm guessing this is what your publisher means by "activated".
When the publisher has submitted the metadata to CrossRef, the central system at dx.doi.org now knows that doi:10.1234/5678.910 should resolve to www.example.com/journal/article, and the link can start working. Once the metadata is submitted, the DOI should be active fairly quickly - within a day, if not sooner, is my experience. However, some publishers delay submitting this metadata for a while even after the article is first published online in an 'early view' status or similar - I have no idea why, but I've seen it done.
Right now, there is nothing technically stopping publishers submitting the metadata before making the article live, but it's recommended to do so at or shortly after publication - so your DOI probably won't work until shortly after the article is posted online.
It would be nice for DOIs (especially for high-profile material) to be live at the moment of publication... and it may happen fairly soon. CrossRef recently held a consultation on how best to do 'advance registration' of DOIs for unpublished material, and from comments I saw at the time I suspect the responses were fairly positive. This suggests we'll see a more robust approach to this in the near future, with DOIs that are live and resolve to something in advance of publication.

Has anything happened in the four interveining years? You might want to edit so that "recently" is replaced by "in 2016" in the last paragraph.

@Tommi it looks like they implemented it shortly after I wrote that reply, but I'm not sure quite how widespread pre-publication submission is now. Will update when I can figure it out.


text:
How soon do I need to submit the reference letters? (TT job)
I'm applying for tenure-track positions for the first time (STEM). One of the schools (School A) contacted me today, saying the committee would like to see my reference letters. The application deadline for School A was only ten days ago. They did not ask for the letters up front, and I did not have a phone interview with them. So this is quite unexpected.
I contacted my references only last week, told them I am applying for the TT jobs. All of my references already told me that they could write my letters by the first week of December.
Would it be too late if I submit the letters to School A in early December? It's not easy for me to ask the references to write the letters sooner.
Thanks!

It is not that odd to request letters before a phone interview.  The search committee can do whatever they want.

@AnonymousPhysicist Thanks... but how soon do they usually want to see the letter after the request? Does the committee expect the applicants to have the letters on their hands even though the job ad didn't ask for it? :(

The only people who know the answer are the committee at School A.  It is reasonable to ask them.

"Dear School A Professor,
Thank you very much for your interest.
My references told me in advance that they'd be able to finish my letters by the first week of December. Will this be enough time, or shall I ask them if they can finish sooner?
Thanks, eggfry"

Yes, and while the time frame may be unknown, there is certainly some leeway. The committee isn't going to make decisions on the deadline day. And the better you look otherwise, the longer they may be willing to wait. Conversely...


text:
How to not get lost during bibliography research?
After a phd and a 1 year boring job in a private company, I finally found a postdoc position than looks very interesting to me.
I am very excited to perform research again, but I would like to avoid the mistakes I did during my Ph.D. to be more efficient.
I would say that my main waste of time was that I was too disorganized.
Often I did measurements, forgot to write all the parameters, and had to do it again. I think I will now be ok on this point, with but if you have advices here, I will happily read them.
Then, my main problem and one of the things I felt very inefficient at, was bibliography research. For example, when I wanted to get information on a very precise topic, I searched through google scholar or science direct and found several articles. I tried to picked the most interesting ones, but then I often got lost in the different references cited by the article. I always felt that I had to read every of these references to get things perfectly clear and become confident on the topic. Of course this never worked, because there are usually many references and references in those references (would take ages to read them all) ... So I often ended reading only parts of all the articles cited by the main article, barely remembering what I have read.
Does someone have an efficient method to avoid getting lost in all the articles cited in one article, and all of their references ... and so on?

There is a difference between articles you must be familiar with to understand the one you're reading and articles which constitute "further reading" (further reading will also have varying degrees of relevancy/interest to you). As a first step, identifying the articles you absolutely must read (as opposed to the articles you might want to read) might be a good approach to ensuring you don't get too lost in the literature.

I think its a good idea to focus on the most cited articles on the topic. After going through these, you should get a general feel for the key articles. Another way is to make a note of key authors in the field and read their articles.

I always thought part of the fun was getting lost in the literature, eventually to re-emerge with a bunch of new ideas. Understanding, synthesizing, and then extending into new areas takes time and effort.

Your university should have a study skills center.  I realize it may be primarily aimed at undergrads, but since you did not pick up these organizational skills as an undergrad, you'll be well served to do so now.  Also, see a doctor and get yourself screened for ADD/ADHD.  Your question raises some possible red flags to me.  It couldn't hurt to see if there's anything going on with you along those lines.

Hello all, soory for my very delayed reply, but thanks for all these interesting advices and the link to the related previous asked questions that I did not found

I believe you are on the right track. Of course you don't need to read everything, only what is more important for your research. Hence, the most important thing would be to be focus for long periods of time and not to question the time spend. AT first, probably the best start would be to read  the review articles, which discusses different approaches in the field, and then to move to a particular direction. After one have an onset of the phenomenology one can start to digest the mathematical details, and to find the most pedagogical papers which explain the basic details. Do not hurry in your research, keep in mind that there are also research projects also for long time, for 2-3 years for example, or even for decades. Looking at my senior peers, I think the best thing would be to have an continuous effort for many months, every-day(of course, you can take short vacations). Finally, getting lost in the literature makes you adapt more quickly to changes and to different ideas, it is a normal thing.  Good luck!

I think one advice is (as often in research):
Regularly step to a meta level and ask yourself: "What I am doing and why?"
If you look at the list of references and think "Must read this,… will read that…" stop for second and ask yourself "Which papers look like relevant to my current research, which look like helpful background, which are likely to contain valuable ideas, which are just general background reading?" Then decide which one to read according to the "research mode" you are currently working in. To clarify the last sentence: You should also switch to a meta level when doing research and be able to deliberately switch between modes like clarifying ideas, coming up with new ideas, idling around, doing experiments, writing up,…


text:
Should I write an email to a Latino teacher working in the US in English or Spanish?
I found the website of a professor working in the US, and I'm studying some of the class notes and exercises he uploaded there for his students (they are a bit old, making reference of courses he taught in 2010). Some of the notes are missing though, and I wanted to write him an email asking if he still has them and if it was possible he could share them with me.
I read on his CV he studied his bachelor and even worked a few years in a Latin American country, and I'm almost certain his mother tongue is, as mine, Spanish. I don't know then if I can write my email in Spanish (which will be better for me, since my English is not the best), or if it would be inappropriate and I must stick to English. I don't want to sound cocky or fake writing in rusty English when we clearly could use our native language, but neither to come out as over-friendly or rude for assuming things.

I'm a professor fluent in both English and Spanish with relatives who natively speak each language and I have lived in latin America.  For me if I received an email like what you're mentioning, it wouldn't make any difference if it was in one language or the other.

I would consider writing the email in Spanish, getting a good machine translation into English (editing it a bit yourself if needed), and then sending an email with both. Personally, as an English speaker with access to good machine translation, these days I would rather receive an email from someone in their own native language than a doubtful translation into mine.

However you wrote your question here, your English seems fine (even looking at the original version).

What if his mother tongue is Portuguese? :)

(Responding to my own comment -- I wasn't paying attention to the quality of the English in your question when I wrote it. I was thinking about the hypothetical general-case situation in my head. I agree with the people saying your English is fine, and I didn't mean to imply otherwise, whoops.)

If this professor is working in the US, then English

If the lecture notes are in English, I would write your request in English as well. That way he can e.g. delegate the task by forwarding your email to someone in his group.
I work as a non-native speaker in an English speaking country, I only use my native language with other speakers of this language if a) I know them and my question can only be answered by them (e.g. "Are you planning on attending meeting X ?") or b) they work in a country that uses my language and my question relates to work they've published in said language.
The goal is to try to avoid them having to translate my email should other people need to be involved. If you are making a request, you should always try to minimise the work for the person you are making the request to.

If you really are sure that his native language is Spanish, then you can write in either Spanish or English; both would be equally acceptable.  Perhaps a middle ground would be to write the first email in English, but mention that you're also a Spanish speaker and offer to switch to Spanish in subsequent communication.
It also depends a lot on the culture of the particular language in question. For example, French people are quite proud of their language and will always speak French to each other. Chinese people also tend to speak Chinese whenever possible.  Germans, on the other hand, seem to be quite happy to speak English, and it's fairly common to see Germans talk to each other in English in academic environments. I'm not sure what the situation is with Spanish.
The other answer by Marianne013 mentions a reason to use English in case the professor wants to delegate the task to other members of his group. I respectfully disagree: email is private communication, and the standard assumption is that the email will be read by the owner of the email account.  Even if there is some task that comes up (e.g. like in your case, gathering lecture notes) that involves other people, the professor can very quickly write a new message to whomever needs to see it.

With respect to the last paragraph - there is a reason that my admin has full read/write permissions on my email - so they can immediately take care of various things that I would delegate to them anyway. Sure, national lab and not a university, but the point stands - email to me may not be read and acted on by me.

email is private communication, and the standard assumption is that the email will be read by the owner of the email account - I somewhat disagree with this comment if you mean "only read by the owner".  If the email is purely a professional/academic email, it's common to forward email requests to relevant people.  (Also my university can technically read any email sent to my work address if they want, though I doubt they do.)

I agree with @Kimball, I work at a university and the only emails that I would not forward to other people are marked "confidential and not for distribution" and typically concern budgets. I would expect my emails to be treated the same. Business here would grind to a halt if everyone had to ask for permission before e.g. getting the local expert's input on a query they received.

I would bet that "willingness to speak English" depends less on "cultural pride" and more on "English proficiency" as an explanatory variable. That would explain your anecdotal observation (because Germans are on average more proficient in English than the French or Chinese - see e.g. the EF EPI). Invoking language cultural traits sounds iffy to me (three natives of Montréal, Abidjian and Paris might all speak French, but they probably have little else in common).

@UJM Not to start a relatively pointless tangent in the comments, but Aqualone wrote "French people," which isn't the same as "French speakers," which is what you referred to. Not to endorse their second para (I don't know the academic language habits of any of these groups).

@UJM I think it's a combination of both factors.  In case of France, there certainly is a bit of a "cultural" aspect--the stereotype that the French don't like to speak English is not entirely baseless (I mean in general, not in academia). In the case of China (and similarly Japan, Korea, etc) low English proficiency is probably the bigger factor

In the case of Chinese, I would add: it is not so much "cultural pride", but there seems to be general agreement that it seems very weird for two Chinese people to be speaking to each other in English.  If the OP were Chinese instead of Spanish (-speaking), they most likely would not have even asked this question.  Of course, there is chicken-and-egg question here—probably the situation arise in the first place due to low English proficiency among Chinese speakers

Email should not be considered private. Security issues aside, for employees of government-run universities in the U.S., anything they do on their university computers or accounts is considered public and subject to FOIA requests.

The safest option is to use English.  The recipient is working in a US school; presumably the person's website is in English, the person teaches in English, and the person publishes in English.
Anything else requires more questionable presumptions on your part.  For example, sometimes people who have spent time working in a country never bother to learn the language of the country.  Or, maybe your presumption that Spanish is their native tongue is simply wrong.
So, to me it comes down to "how awkward would it be if I wrote a note in Spanish and got back an 'I don't speak Spanish' reply?"  I'd guess that 999 times out of 1,000, this would be no problem, and maybe even 900 times out of a thousand, the recipient might be tickled by your effort.  I can certainly imagine cases where getting a persons Native Tongue wrong could be perceived as insulting rather than awkward, though, so some care is indicated.

A Us person with latin-sonding name couls be second/third generation and not knowing spanish that well

Although there is nothing wrong with writing it in Spanish, it's probably best to write it in English, especially if English is the official language of your countries and you are both proficient in it. To start off all in Spanish may cause him to wonder if you doubt his English ability.
That said, there's nothing wrong with dropping in a Spanish sentence or two - perhaps referencing your possible common native language - to establish rapport. This can also be an invitation for him to use some Spanish in his reply if he wishes to.
Also, since you stated you are "almost certain" (but not certain) that his mother tongue is Spanish, it may be best not to rely on his understanding of Spanish in your communication.
Finally, your English ability is totally sufficient. Don't be too hard on yourself. When I read your post a second time I found a couple of small details I could pick at if I wanted to, but there's certainly nothing about your writing style that's difficult to understand. Be yourself - a person who has a command of their second language at a very high level. That will come across as genuine, in my opinion. Besides, nobody communicates perfectly 100% of the time, even in their native language.

Simply using Spanish equivalents to "Dear Dr X" and "Best wishes, Ameliebe" would likely be sufficient to indicate your willingness to communicate in Spanish, without creating any difficulties if the recipient prefers English.

I don't see anywhere in the question that OP says they also live in the US.  Has it been edited?

OP did not state where they live. I've updated the wording to assume they live in different countries. Hopefully everyone will be satisfied. But whether they live in different countries or the same country, the main idea remains the same.