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If a mistake was made when grading exams, does the prof have to fix it for every student?
I took a university course where the final exam was a multiple-choice type with the answers going into a "scantron" sheet that gets fed into a machine. This is reasonable, since there were about 600 students taking it.
My final grade for the exam was such that I was about 1% short of the next letter grade for the course overall. After all the marks were posted, the exams were made available for pickup to students. I picked mine up and found two questions that I was sure were right but were marked wrong, so I went to see my professor to review the exam and ask about them.
He gave me two answer keys to check - one was the master scantron that was fed into the machine to tell it the correct answers. The other was the master paper exam with the questions (same thing the students got on the exam), where the correct answer was circled. I checked the two questions I was interested in and sure enough the paper exam agreed with my answers, but they were marked incorrectly on the master scantron that was used to grade every student. In other words, whoever filled out the answer key scantron made an error on at least 2 questions and filled in the wrong bubble.
I showed the prof the error and he seemed completely unfazed and not surprised and simply said that yes, he agrees that I picked the right answer and since this actually bumps me up a letter grade he'll fill out the form for the university to adjust my already-posted course grade. He then simply put away the two answer keys and bid me good day.
While I have no concrete proof, I feel like he already knew about the errors and me finding them was not a surprise. However, it seems that he does not intend to regrade all 600 students and is only dealing with the ones that actually come in and spot the error. Is this an acceptable approach? So far he has sent no communication out to the class regarding this and to my knowledge most of the students are unaware of the error.

In his place, I re-did all the markings. Not 600, but 93, written answers (statistics). A hassle, to be sure, but the only way to be fair. And yes, I had to do that every time a student managed to change my opinion on the markings...

Would you have a way to know if the professor individually contacted students who were at borderline grades about reviewing those answers? Contacting the whole class would be unnecessary.

@cactus_pardner I wouldn't know, but at the very least he didn't contact me. Although it's possible that I saw him before he got a chance to do so, or that I was actually the first to spot the error. His behavior made me think that he already knew about it, but I'm just guessing.

you could spread the information and make 600 students come to the office to see their results ;-) - re-grading will be a matter of minutes ;-))))

@OBu and isn’t social media wonderful...

Consider: Most grading schemas with +/− grades have increments about every 3 percentage points (e.g., C+ 87-89%, B− 90-92%, etc.). The OP says that the two questions made a 1% difference which changed the letter category. So I estimate that 1-in-3 students will fall in this situation, generating around 200 separate sets of paperwork that would need submission for all the grade changes. Let's be honest, that's not going to happen.

@OBu I've considered it, and faced an ethical dilemma of my own. I think it's unfair for other students to have a lower mark for no fault of their own. On the other hand, I'm directly competing with many of them for admission to a program that this is a pre-req for, risk having my grade re-normalized back down due to the class average going up, and risk drawing the wrath of the proff for doing something he clearly wanted to avoid. It's a hard choice.

For me, all the papers should be re-graded with the corrected marking scheme - ethically correct and supported by any future checking.
Edit: And as per Fabio’s comment - have had to do similar corrections due to my error or poor question so it happens but not too often...

Ethically, of course he should regrade. I don't even see how this is in question; how could it possibly be fair to assign grades based on faulty information and fix it only for those who complain?
This is a huge hassle. I'm not going to defend the professor; he made a mistake and he should fix it. But my guess is that regrading would bump most people up by two points, so he would have to adjust the curve by two points, and only a small number of students' grade would change (some up and some down). Then he would have to submit grade-change forms which, in this quantity, could raise some eyebrows. It's easy to see why the professor would rather just fix it for the small number of students who complain.
Whether you can force him to grade it properly is largely down to your individual university administrators. The department chair, the dean, and the ombudsman should technically be concerned about this, but it's anyone's guess whether they'll choose to care given that it will only affect a few students with borderline grades anyway.

You're assuming the exam is graded on a curve, which might not be the case.

True. In fact, either way, I doubt the prof would want to lower students' grades weeks after the fact -- he would probably do grade increases only...which makes doing regrades even less appealing for him (though he should do it anyway).

It’s not that big of a hassle; he only needs to regrade the exams of students whose course grades could be changed by a regrade. Even in a class of 600 this is likely in the small dozens.

Since these exams were graded by a machine, it should be easy to correct the grading of those exams that the professor still has. If that's a large proportion of the total, then the exams should be re-graded. But if most of the exams have already been picked up by the students, then there's not much the professor can do to achieve fairness.

They actually keep the originals on file. If you come in to pick up your exam you can either review it right there and give it back or you can ask for a photocopy of your answer key and they'll print one out for you.

With all the originals available, I'd certainly prepare a corrected answer key and feed it and the exams through the machine again.  The only issue I'd find difficult is whether I should lower any grades as a result of the corrected grading. (Probably very few students will be so close to a borderline between two grades, so there will be very few grade changes in either direction, but, as long as a machine can do the tedious work, I might as well take advantage of that to try to repair the error.)

The effort that should go into correcting things is proportional to the magnitude of the problem. If the mistake on the exam is a one-point error that amounts to, say, 0.1% of the final grade for the semester, I’m only going to look at the exams of anyone who would be directly impacted by such a small change. If it’s 5% of the final grade, I’d need to look at everybody’s exam just to make sure everybody was graded fairly.

The exam is 90 questions, so this was 1/45th of the exam. The exam is worth 50% of the course grade, so it's just over 1% of the overall course grade.

In that case, I'd look at the exams of everybody within that 1 point above or below the grade cutoffs. (We only use A/B/C style grades at my school, so this would cut down my work about 80% or so.

At our institution, the instructors have access to the Scantron key after the exam has been graded. If they determine that the key is wrong, they can change it online without having to request that the paper be re-scanned, and without any input from students. Once they change the key, any score report subsequently requested will be adjusted appropriately.

There should be a spreadsheet with the data, so that a rescan is unnecessary and a correction easily carried out.


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Should I Wait for a Journal's Decision Before Revising Authorship?
I have submitted a paper to one of the Elsevier journals. My senior asked me to put him as a corresponding author, but I put myself as a corresponding author assuming it is possible to change corresponding author. However, she asked me to request journal editor to revert this immediately. I sent a request as my senior suggested, and I got response from the editor like this:
"There is a 90% chance your paper will be rejected, in which case it doesn't matter, and a 10% chance you will be invited to submit a revision".
The journal impact factor is 4.034, and their acceptance rate is 7%.
This is my first experience submitting paper to any journal, so I am afraid and wondering whether it is worth withdrawing the paper and proceeding to another journal.

Wow, that's an equally honest and unfriendly response. (but of course it's factually correct - worry about this when the paper actually is on the track to being accepted)

You have been given the answer by the editor: That it doesn't matter yet.
Tell the other author of the paper that you asked, and the editor said to deal with it if/when you're asked to revise the paper.
Then move along with your life and work and wait for a reply. You absolutely shouldn't withdraw the paper for something like that when you've already been told how to handle it by the editor.

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Is it right to ask, "On what basis am I not selected in interview round of Int. Ph.D.?"
Lately, I have given a couple of interviews for Integrated Ph.D. programs in Physical Science. On some I was selected, while on others I was rejected. But I find only trifling differences between these interviews. Whenever I gave answers, they'd say,  good and so on. I gave all of the questions asked a similar response. I don't quite understand how they actually selected the candidate then?
The ones where I'm not selected are the important ones for me, I have another chance and I don't want a similar case as before. If they give a similar response, I have no way of knowing what's going on?
So is it all right if I mail them and ask why they didn't select me? Is it appropriate to ask something like that? I just want to improve my chances, that's all.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/124140/should-i-provide-feedback-to-a-phd-application-i-have-received

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/105031/how-do-i-get-feedback-after-a-failed-tenure-track-job-search

A lot of our successes in life, and a lot of our failures, are due to little more than pure chance. You may be looking for a causal explanation where there simply isn’t any. Related video.

It could happen that two places have exactly the same opinion of you, but one has another stronger candidate and the other doesn't. Or it could happen that one selection committee has a member who particularly liked your answer to a certain question, but another committee has a member who particularly disliked the same answer. So, as @DanRomik said, there's a lot of randomness involved.

Good interviewers know that giving "instant feedback" during an interview is a bad strategy to discover what the interviewee is really like. They will "say 'good' and go on" even if your answer was complete nonsense.

Interviews aren't typically to see how many questions you get "correct", they are about making a comparison between different applicants.

To follow up on @DanRomik's excellent comment, I recommend Kahneman et al.'s Noise, which is not comfortable reading, but enlightening.

Maybe it is about the other documents submitted? Like your GRE is lacking, or undergrad marks or the letter of recommendation?

@lalala That's rare, As I'm always have been good at getting good marks, same goes for other possibilities.

Well, there are not enough details, but lets assume the for you more important institutions are the more prestigious ones. Then good marks are ok for the ones you get response from, but for the other ones you might need excellent marks instead.

An interview isn't a test or exam - it's a competition. If you are not successful, it's because someone else was.  It's not that you did anything wrong, necessarily - only that there was someone else who did things better, or at least made a better impression on the interviewers.

As mentioned in this answer, you can say:

Do you have any suggestions for how I could be a stronger candidate in the future?

I think it is unlikely you will get a useful answer, but you might.

Just one data point, but: I've asked this once, and I did get a useful answer.

@gerrit You came in that rare likely cases. As for me, I even didn't get a reply.

You should not ask. It is extremely unlikely to produce anything useful, but will probably make the interviewer uncomfortable. Instead, try to arrange for a mock interview with a mentor who is familiar with your background, and get feedback from them.
Many potential weaknesses would require long-term actions for improvement or are even unchangeable, and thus feedback there isn't going to be actually actionable for you. Better grades in your previous studies, more research experience, etc.
The most useful information for you would be situations where you've failed to bring your existing strengths across. Learning of this is immediately actionable for your next interview. But an interviewer cannot identify these situations, because by definition they remain unaware of the relevant strength. Keep in mind that PhD admission interviewers are trying to determine whether you are a good fit for their PhD programme, not whether you interview well. So if they can isolate a pure interview mistake, they'll probably attempt to correct for that anyway.
Besides the issue that discussing someones failure is awkward anyway, interviewers might also be worried that you want to hear the reasons for rejection not in order to improve yourself, but in order to either argue with them about the decision or to appeal it. Given this risk, and given the difficulties in providing useful feedback, I suppose that you'll hear some variation of "Unfortunate we cannot provide detailed feedback to unsuccessful candidates. We wish you all the best in your future endeavours" if you ask.
(I would expect my answer to be broadly applicable, but my concrete experience with this is UK-based.)

Is this India-specific experience? I believe in UK-based universities, any interview decision comes with an offer for feedback (tho as many answers here point out, it might be very vague and not useful). However, one of my best interview experiences (unsuccessful unfortunately; in the Netherlands) not only encouraged me, the candidate, to schedule a call with the head of the interview panel for feedback, but the head of the panel actually provided very useful, direct, and on-point feedback (gotta love the dear, direct Dutch).

@penelope No, my experience is actually at UK universities.

Interesting. As I said, all my UK interviews came with offers for feedback (mentioned before the interview itself I think). Nothing as direct as "we will highlight the areas where you were lacking" (which would be a bit inappropriate to ask I think), but asking if you could "the panel/chair has any feedback about your interview" would be completely normal and acceptable. Acceptable to ask that is; to which degree it will get answered depends... on many things.

While not quite the same I have interviewed many employees for industry positions. The few times they asked why they weren't selected my answer was always "We had a stronger candidate apply." Which was always the truth and an answer which could not be used against us in a lawsuit, but also always probably distinctly unhelpful for them.

I believe specifically for UK based interviews, you have the right under GDPR legislation to request feedback as to why you were rejected for a position.

It is quite OK to ask for feedback after an unsuccessful interview. Ask the lead academic who asked the questions - not the HR administration.  Yes, academics are overworked and get too many emails, but most of them recognise that if they've turned someone down for an important position they at least owe the unsuccessful candidate a couple of minutes to write a quick email.
The answer may well be unhelpful:"You were OK but another candidate was better" or "We were looking for someone with a deeper theoretical background" (or perhaps "a more practical background"). But there is a small but nonzero chance of getting some useful information, about your CV or your interview style, and if that happens it will be really valuable.
What you must absolutely not do is argue with their advice if they give it. It won't be pleasant and it may seem to you that they've misjudged you ("How can they say I don't have a theoretical background when I got 95% on
QM345! Didn't they read my CV?") Don't argue, just thank them and move on.

On your last point: when the feedback seems off the mark, this might be an occasion to think about communication style. Interviewers want to find good candidates; if you're strong in a relevant area and they couldn't see that strength, perhaps you need to be a little clearer in highlighting it.

+1. I know it's not academia, but in our provincial government (Ontario, Canada), we offer a debrief to candidates that request one. This helps candidates understand where they could improve and what skills/experience to work on. They have been very helpful for me.

You can ask, but I doubt that you will learn anything that would make you a better candidate in future. The reason is that there are probably a limited number of slots and some competition for all of them, especially at the margins. My best guess is that they just thought more highly of someone else. They might say that much, but would probably be restrained from saying anything more. In particular, they won't discuss any comparisons with the person(s) who end up being accepted.
Very few institutions can accept all applicants and you probably wouldn't want to go there if they did.
The differences between candidates can be very subtle, and depend on the individual views and preferences of interviewers and others in the process. So, it isn't that you are "bad" in some way, probably quite good or you wouldn't get an interview at all. But someone else was judged better, perhaps on somewhat intangible criteria. In some places the competition is very steep.

Other people have given some great answers. I know which place you got rejected from and why it matters a lot. I also got rejected from there and I would like to tell you certain things I have found out since then:

The interview committee you get matters more than you think. I have heard that very experienced professors may underestimate the knowledge of their undergrad interviewees, and their grade tends to be inflated. Young professors on the other hand make things too stringent sometimes. Let me give you an example: I talked to a friend who got selected and (s)he gave me a list of questions (s)he had been asked:

a) What is the partition function?
b) Calculate mean energy of this system from the partition function. Also calculate Cv
c) Random walk problem in one dimension.
d) Solve the SE for a particle in a bound state of a finite potential barrier, what is transmission probability. e) Problem on blackbody radiation considering Stefan's law.
I forget the rest.
What was asked of me?
a) Where do electrons reside in any element, say silicon? b) If I take a piece of silicon and shed light of a constant intensity on it with a potential applied around it, draw graph of frequency vs current. c) (Dis)Prove that there will always be a bound state in a potential well of arbitrary shape. d) Draw the ground state wavefunction for an arbitrary potential well. e) Why do we keep using the momentum eigenfunctions in calculations when they are non-normalizable. (The answer was not just that for simplicity, a wavepacket with a good spike can be approximated to be a plane wave) e) Question completely unrelated to physics, related only to  logic, mathematics and calculus, which took me around 3-4 minutes to grasp completely.
Now I could be totally biased, and I am sure to a certain degree I am. But I think the second set of questions was considerably harder than the first one. In no way do I claim that my knowledge is more/less than my friend. That is irrelevant. But interview committee really matters.

Your score in the qualifying exam carries a weightage. Even if you were the best during the interviews, a low score in the qualifying exam hampers your chances of acceptance.

Online interviews, personally for me can turn out counterproductive. I was solving things on shared screen, and most people were solving things on pen and paper and only showing results. If you get stuck on a shared screen, that has a way of sending a bad message to the committee. Stuck on paper, who knows?

I hope this answer helped you.
Of course there is the fact that you and I were just not competent enough for the place, but that is not the only thing we should be thinking of while analyzing rejections in academia.

Do I know from somewhere?

you from somewhere?

Do I know, Why did you said,  I know which place you got rejected from and why it matters a lot. I also got rejected from there and I would like to tell you certain things I have found out since then.

Oh actually integrated PhD and mattering a lot lead you to only one place in India if you like physics :)

And What that is?

I would guess IITB / Mumbai or IIS / Bangalore.  IIS beats IITB for citations but the IITB has better reputation and is a better employer.  cf. https://www.topuniversities.com/university-rankings/university-subject-rankings/2021/physics-astronomy

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Is there any system that enables online office hours?
Can anyone comment on their own implementation of online office hours, ideally with the following characteristics:

Free.  (I'm happy to install software on my own server if needed)
Allows for live text conversations, but, ideally, some sort of white-board as well.
Suitable for around 20 students (although a solution allowing 100 would be better).

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is about work place or a software recommendation question, not about academia.

Your school should typically have a license for this. Something like Sakai, for example.

@EnthusiasticStudent This is about how to hold office hours for an academic institution.

This would not make it academic necessarily, you could ask a question about toilets in a university, this does not mean it should be on here. But maybe you can edit your question a bit, provide more information (such as the e-learning environment(s)) at the institution ed

I agree with @EnthusiasticStudent. Similar questions arise in any kind of online conferencing environment. This would be a better fit at Software Recommendations.SE. Consider flagging it for migration.

I use Skype for the classes I TA - it allows 1-1 communication and can easily see what the student is struggling with (a programming class).

Skype would work fine for a small number of students (say 1 or 2), but not for a whole class, I'm afraid.

@MaartenvanWesel Your argument is ridiculous.  Toilets do not need text conversations or have multiple students using them at the same time.  I am interested in conferencing environment for a specific academic purpose ... I have altered the question a bit to clarify this, but I really do not see why this is off-topic.

This was an illustration to show just because something is used at an academic institution does not mean it has to do with academia, which is a response to your "This is about how to hold office hours for an academic institution.". (p.s. most institutions have toilets used by multiple students, hopefully one by one)

Personally, I think that (1) this use case is specific enough to make this a respectable question on this website: for instance, in typical online conferencing setups, one assumes that all peers have been configured by a professional, while with students you have to rely on their laptops and aim for maximum compatibility. (2) Software recommendations.se is a horrible idea and shouldn't exist. There isn't such a thing as a "software expert". If I want to ask which computational chemistry textbook is the best one, I ask a computational chemistry expert, not a book expert.

I was rethinking your question. Given the "Suitable for around 20 students (although a solution allowing 100 would be better)" remark, are you looking for 'office meetings' or for 'online classes'? I suspect the later (and my answer below is geared to this as well)

I'm interested in office meetings, where students can come to ask questions and get advise, not online classes.

Out-of-band responses have suggested the Adobe Connect is a good venue for these kinds of meetings, although it is not free (my school has a license).

Is there any system that enables online office hours?

Yes there are multiple systems; for instance blackboard collaborate (previously Elluminate), which would require your institution to have a license. Blackboard Collaborate is a Web conference tool (video, speech, text, white board, screen sharing etc) which is can be integrated with the Blackboard Learning System. However, it is not necessarily bound to it, and you can get a licences, and use it, without the Blackboard Learning System. You can even get a 30-day trial; http://try.bbcollaborate.com/trial/register.go
More off these systems exists, often bounded to or provided by sellers of Learning Management Systems (LMS), also known as e-Learning Systems. However there are also systems which are either used without LMS (as also is the case with Blacboard Collaborate) and systems which can be used with, for instance, Microsoft Sharepoint (such as Adobe Connect, which can also be used stand alone).
It would be helpful if OP could answer which Learning System (and possible other products) his/her institution uses. As this could indicate what is available. If OP would answer this question this answer will be edited if this would lead to new information.

Could you expand more? What are other examples of these multiple systems? How is this dependent on the e-Learning system?

Blackboard Collaborate requires that your university use the Blackboard learning management system.  Instructure's Canvas LMS has an online office hours feature called "Conferences."  Of course this requires that your university subscribe to the Canvas LMS.  You could also make use of general purpose online conferencing systems like Google Hangouts or Skype calls.

As Brian rightly indicates these systems are typically bound to a learning system. Skype is indicated to be insufficient, as it does not support up to 20 students (which would not make it office hours, but an online course...).
However OP doesn't seem able or wanting to answer the question about the learning system. It was asked, by me, in the comments above as well.

Did you answer a question that you thought was off topic? This answer feels half-hearted and bit disingenuous. This answer doesn't even explain what "blackboard collaborate" is and how it answers the OP's question!

I have not indicated it was of topic, I have indicated that it being in an academic setting doesn't make it necessarily an academic question. It was 'Enthusiastic Student' who made the 'off topic' remark.
I will edit my answer to explain what Blackboard Collaborate is abit

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Supervisor getting another PhD student with the same project?
I just started a PhD supervised by a clinician and a bioinformatician. The bioinformatician informed me they have received funding to get another PhD student to work on the same disease/ broad question of machine learning.
I love this PhD topic, but I am very concerned about a new student working on the same question. I wonder about how we will divide up our research. I do not like the idea of it as I do not know how our research will grow organically, and I had big plans for what I wanted to publish during this PhD, which is longer than average in duration.
Is it usual or right for 2 students to have the same question? Has anyone got experience of this and how did it work?
When I was doing my Master's I had a similar thing. A different clinician wanted to add another Master's student to my exact project, but in the end the other supervisor blocked it. In retrospect, now I know the topic better,  there could have been space for another student and I to go down different routes. I think it would have occurred in the much longer term however (after the 1 year mark), and would have limited and been to the detriment of my research. Of course the commitment of a masters is much smaller.
I suppose I also wonder if it's a reflection of their perception of my capabilities.

I routinely set the same topic for starting students.  The advantage is that students can support each other.   From my point of view, I treat these students as 'one' student; so less load on my part.   Along the way, I/they usually find interesting sub-topics.  That's when they branch off.    As the supervisor, I do have to be very careful that my students do branch off; otherwise, it will be disastrous for them.

Can you talkk with your supervisor about your concerns?

Experiments in particle physics might have dozens of students working on the same experiments. They just do different things.

Having a close colleague with whom to discuss tough sticking points, potential research ideas, etc. will be INVALUABLE for you.
There is nothing quite so lonely as being one of the experts of the world on a very narrow subject and never having the opportunity to discuss that subject with another person who shares your understanding.
You will likely produce better work as a result of having this other student around. And you two can collaborate.  Don't think of this as zero sum. Think instead about collaborative potential and about this student as a sounding board. Some of the greatest research I can think of was produced by pairs or groups.

Projects can be broad. Research topics are narrow. I see no problems arising here as long as the advisor is responsible. A project at its inception has a lot of potential. That potential results in unanswered questions. Those questions may be closely related but distinct. They may also be individually very important and support the overall project.
But at the start, little is known. If a team works on the project all will start at about the same place. As more becomes known and the questions emerge there is room for different threads to be developed by the team members. This can result in dissertations.
So, I think your use of the term "question" is too narrow. The "project" is broader than any question within it. It is ok to work on the same project, but not to put students in competition with one another on a narrow question within it.
Think of a really new project like the Big Bang. Initially there is nothing. Almost immediately there are worlds and worlds to explore.
When I was a student something close to this happened to me. A friend and I worked with the same advisor within a small research seminar group. We studied the "same thing" but wound up with very different doctoral dissertations. But our advisor was wise enough to separate us when it became appropriate.

This is consistent with my experience also. A new PhD student joined my lab early in my PhD and begun a topic under the same project. At first I saw this as a threat and was anxious. Over time I realised how district our topics really were. Overall, our dissertations obviously ended up having some minor overlap in terms of the broader theory, but beyond that are fundamentally very different in nature. It was actually synergistic to have someone else to bounce ideas off. We now write papers together.

Don't think of the other PhD student as a threat. Assuming they are intellectually as capable as you (+ you get along), they are likely to be a massive help. The point is that your PhD studies are going to be hard. They're going to be hard enough that at various points you'll run into roadblocks and have no idea what to do next. Being able to talk to someone who's very familiar with your work is a massive help. It's not just "what do we do next", you can also discuss "what's wrong with my code" or "how do we calculate X", crosscheck each other's work, etc.
Without another PhD student, you can still discuss things with your supervisor of course, but your supervisor is likely to be less available + less familiar with the nitty-gritty of your work.
I suspect the main reason most PhD students work on their own topic isn't because it's better, but because there is no funding to have multiple PhD students working on each topic.

We had two people working on the same project and almost the same research topic. They both graduated very succesful and founded a company together. Why am I saying this? Because their work formed a great friendship and not a competition. You should not see this as a threat, you should see it as a great opportunity. Of course this solely depends on your personalities, but you can benefit a lot from each other if doing correctly. Also for publications, you can co-author each other or write papers 50/50. You can find out one problem, discuss it, and each other tackles a different portion of this problem.

I strongly recommend you to talk to your advisor before you hand her/him your thesis proposal.
I faced this kind of problem once.
What my advisor did is she divided my thesis proposal and shared it with another research fellow.

Hey Lucus, when you say "my advisor divided my thesis proposal and shared with another RF" -- was this the solution to your problem or the cause of it? It seems a bit unclear as it is now. Absolutely agree with "talk to your advisor" :)

Sorry for my unclear comments. I think the situation discussed here could result in both good way and bad way.
My intention is to describe the worst consequence that could happen by giving my case as an example. At first, I was given the "broad topic" by myadvisor. And my advisor asked me to specify my project. So, I came up with my "narrow topic". After that, my advisor have another student to work with my "narrow topic" idea. And my advisor divided my thesis proposal (which I carefully writing by myself) to the new student.


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Submitting a paper without having a review from the supervisor
I am doing a PhD with the aim of publishing about 3 papers. One is already submitted, with my supervisor being listed as a co-author. My second paper will be submitted soon. However, the subject I am treating now is beyond its scope, so he cannot help, except on improving the writing to make the paper more understandable. Recently, I spent an hour to present and explain him the entire concept of my research plus some details on calculations. He hasn't really said anything, nor provided advises.
Now, I'm worried. I would like to submit the paper without his name on it. However, I have perhaps 2 problems:

the last time me and my supervisor talked about publications, he told me something like "... I don't do research anymore, I rely on my PhDs for that...and publishing...", plus adding that he really wanted his name on my manuscripts. However, this is in conflict with a course I got about ethical principles in research at my university, which stipulated that one should not publish with someone that has not provided any input (reviewing being set apart).
my research aims at making assessment of natural resources (at the Earth scale), that will potentially be reviewed by worldwide experts in my discipline. I have faith in what I'm doing, and am pretty confident, but would a journal accept this type of work from a "simple" PhD candidate?

Is it the same paper as the one you are asking about here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/92906/publishing-a-paper-without-supervisor?rq=1 ?
I don't really get how you can do a complete PhD on a topic that your supervisor apparently doesn't know anything about. Are you sure he isn't helping you? It's not that he needs to sit next to you when writing some code, supervisors most often help through discussions and commenting on manuscripts.

It is usually (I'd guess it depends on the institution, but I haven't encountered any that doesn't adhere) the case that advising a student is sufficient ground for co-authorship. Depending on different fields and individuals, there are cases when the adviser encourages or even insists on students publishing at least something by themselves (I observed it usually in theoretical fields).
If the work passes the peer review, the journal will accept it. It doesn't matter whether you are a "simple PhD candidate" or a part of a team of researchers. There are even double-blind peer reviews, where the reviewers don't know your identity.

All that being said, it is often the case that you, as a student, are more familiar with the narrow thematic of your PhD research than your adviser (perhaps more than anyone in the world) and that is part of the PhD. However, your adviser guided you and it is partly due to his experience that you are able to publish something let alone to work on original research by yourself.
You said that he "hasn't really said anything, nor provided advises", could that be an indicator that you are on a good track and that he only intends to intervene if he feels you are sidetracked?
Further, I don't know any details about your research, but I can assume that you used your adviser's lab. Perhaps you were funded by his grants or worked on his projects?
Advising PhD students is a hard job and your whole PhD experience largely depended on your adviser. If you don't want to include your adviser, I would think very hard if that is merited. You could even discuss it with him. The ethical thing for your adviser is to insist on you publishing by yourself, if he feels that this is your independent work. If he does not, however, due to the lack of experience and perspective, you might not agree. At that point, it is really up to you and (the preservation of) your relationship, but I would definitely err on the side of caution and trust in my adviser's judgment (after all, he got me so far, didn't he).

Advising a student being grounds for co-authorship is definitely a field dependent thing. In math, it would be unheard of for that to suffice.


text:
Weighting Grades based on group size
I am having students complete a presentation as a group project. Each student's grade will have two components: an instructor grade, from me, and a group grade from their group.
The group grade is calculated as the sum of five elements, each graded out of five, for a maximum of 25 points from each member of the group. Each student's 'group grade' is then calculated as the average of scores from the group.
The problem I have is that some of the groups have 4 students, some 5, and some 6. This means that weight of the score for students in larger groups is less than for those in smaller groups.
I plan to compensate for this by weighting the instructor grade more heavily. But as I think about it, even this doesn't cancel out the discrepancy.
How can I weight, or adjust, my grading scheme to make sure it's as fair as possible?

Are you open to increasing/decreasing the grades of individual members of a group, based on evidence that their contribution was higher/lesser than their peers?

I could do that, but I don't see how it would solve my problem. The 'student grades' of those in the groups with more people would still count for less per grade than those of students in smaller groups.

Why is more people means lesser weight? Have you considered the extra work needed to schedule meeting, reaching consensus, etc.? Also, before applying any weight, do the students i) willingly join a group with higher or lower number of members and ii) know that this decision will affect their grade? If you have not declared anything from the start, I'd suggest just take this as a lesson and give every group equal weight for the group grade. Once you have the first batch of data, then you can derive a lot of schemes according to within-group variance and such.

I don't see a problem with two-part grades where all instructor grades are weighted equally. Your issue seems to be that individual teammates' opinions carry less weight in the larger teams. But I don't see why that is necessarily unfair.
My suggestion would be to calculate the grades based on the same instructor weights for everyone and then make sure, before finalizing, that people in larger or smaller groups didn't get systematically different grades.

Thanks. This is probably the best option, I think. As @Najib Idrissi said, I don't think it's a soluble problem.


text:
Computer Science master's vs PhD
I'm about to graduate with a BS in computer science, my question relates to even higher education.
I generally found most of the topics (Aside from the post calc 2 math) pretty easy and am graduating with a 3.5 GPA. I had the chance to get into an early entry MS program but applied over winter break and 2 of my instructors didn't send their recommendation in time. Now I don't have enough credits to double count as masters level credits for the next semester. I plan on working and letting my employer pay for my Masters degree after a few years, but they won't pay for a PHD.
Would it be worth the extra time, work, and money to get a PHD? I don't want to be "overqualified" and denied jobs because of the extra salary and I'm not super interested in working in academia (At least not until I'm about to retire). If there is someone with a PHD who would offer their input I'd love to hear from you. Thanks!

When you say "I'm not super interested in working in academia (At least not until I'm about to retire)", what do you mean. What is academia to you? Teaching? With a MS degree, you can likely get into teaching after a 20+ year career at the community college/undergraduate level. You may want to start as adjunct a few years to a decade in advance to build relationships with your local college leadership. If instead you mean you want to be primarily doing academic level research, then the PhD will be important.

In the US with a BS you can teach in some community colleges for CS so PhD, masters aren't really required for that. I think it really depends on your goals and how much you really like research. If research and theory aren't your thing I would stick with just the BS or Masters, if that is what is required in your little part of the CS world. Beware not a lot of employers are really getting on the "pay for school" bandwagon any more. So your employer may change their mind if you hold out too long. Mine will only pay for certain certificates and even then it's a pain to get anything covered.

What does "worth it" mean to you? Generally there would be three reasons to get a graduate degree -- you are really interested in a particular specialty, and want to spend a lot of time studying it; it opens up jobs that you wouldn't otherwise have access to; or it gives you a chance to make more money. In CS, you probably won't be making a lot more money, especially when you factor in the years you aren't earning while studying. Opening up particular jobs depends on the specialty. You need to figure out what you want from the degree before you can make a decision.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's about work prospects outside academia.

By looking at the wording of your post, I suggest you to run away from a PhD degree as fast as you can.
A PhD degree is one of the milestones in an academic's life and is not something to pursue if you don't know it's worth it.
Getting an extra salary and having a PhD is two different things. A salary is based on your value for the company. A PhD is something that you earn by conducting quality research. It seems you try to have a PhD degree just for some extra money. That is not the way to go.
PhD would not teach you how to be a good employee and an inevitable member of the company. If you want to earn more in the industry, you should keep away from academia and start putting all your effort into your job.
Your employer of course would not pay for your PhD because i) it is usually 4 years long, ii) a PhD student will have numerous opportunities to earn scholarship and iii) pursuing a PhD will require some time, which means your productivity for the company will drop.

A master degree and a Ph.D are two completely different things.
The master degree has the intention to specialise you in a field, to know what is already there and allow you to build new things (applications, webservices, ...)
The Ph.D has the intention of teach you how to do proper research (in a given field, but the main idea is to know what is research). This includes how to experiment and treat data to come to a conclusion about a problem, publishing papers etc.
Ph.D are not specific to academia, in fact, many doctors are working with industry or leading their own firms.
At the end, the choice lies in what kind of job you want to work. A master level job will probably be about creating innovative product, manage a project, whereas a Ph.D level job will mostly involve managing a research project, dealing with specific problems and looking for ways to solves them, then eventually coming up with a product.

Yeah, I over-generalised a bit I think. Is it frequent though ?


text:
In a CV, how do I list my status of a PhD if I completed the oral exam, but not awarded officialy?
I have recently successfully completed my PhD Viva (oral exam) at a UK university. This means that my PhD project is formally over and I have a formal promise from the university that I will be awarded a PhD, under the condition that I submit a corrected version of my thesis, adding those corrections requested by the examiners, in due time.
How should I list this state in applications eg. for postdoc positions? Given how different university procedures are in different countries and faculties, will it be acceptable to state “viva passed with corrections” for applications elsewhere in Europe, or are there better and clearer ways to phrase this?

Do you need more than a week - 15 days to actually implement the changes? It should not take longer.

Likely not, if it was not Christmas coming up. My formal deadline for submitting the corrected version is in 6 months.

You could say something to the effect of "expected graduation date" with the formal (end of term/year) future date of award and put the date of successful defense/viva. So, obviously adjusting to the the layout you use in your CV... "PhD Magic Hogwarts University (expected award date: 7 May 2016). Dissertation: "Fancy spells and fancy language" (vita passed 15 Nov 2015).

@guifa Can you please turn your comment into an answer so that I can vote for it?

I don't know if there's an "accepted form", but when I was in this situation I simply noted in brackets "Viva passed, graduation expected $date".

I was advised by my supervisor that on completion of the viva, I would be informed immediately (orally) of the outcome, and from that point I would 'officially' hold the PhD qualification.
The corrections/amendments and the committee/Senate meetings are effectively rubber stamps, providing you actually submit the corrected version.
And so in your position I would state that I have achieved my PhD on the date of the viva within my CV.

Welcome to Stackexchange! The "when can I use "Dr"" question is an interesting one, that I think we've discussed here before, but it doesn't answer the question asked here. This is not about the title, but about how the PhD is described on somebody's CV.

@Flyto - I agree, and I will edit my response above accordingly - what I meant to say was I would assert that I have achieved my PhD on the date of the viva within my CV, since the oral promise from the examining panel constitutes exactly that.

Hmm, fair enough. I disagree, because some people get that far but then never complete their corrections.

Downvoted. Until you submit your thesis, you have not “acheived” a PhD. You get the PhD only when all requirements have been satisfied. The viva is just one step.

The way you describe your status in your CV should probably depend on where you are sending it. If you're applying to a UK institution, you can explicitly say that you "passed the viva with minor corrections"; for a European institution or a private company you'd say something more vague like "defended the thesis".
Now, depending on where you're applying, they may or may not be able to hire you before you make the corrections and get your official award. UK universities will normally hire postdocs that are still waiting for their award, but will pay them a smaller salary. In France, on the contrary, you normally need to be awarded your PhD before you can sign a contract (but thankfully, you don't need to wait for the award ceremony). Private companies, obviously, can do whatever they want, but I don't see a reason for not hiring someone who has defended and does not have much else to do.
For the overseas students, there's also the question of correctly switching from the student visa to a work visa, but I don't have up do date knowledge on that.

I would do it after you have defended the thesis and have submitted final paper document (approved).  I don't think you need to wait until month on the diploma.  For example my school gave the the formal degree semiannually but obviously people finished all during the year.  That really was just a diploma getting mailed to me.  Ideally you really should have the thesis turned in as well.
I am a little leery of asserting you are :done" if there are still corrections being done.  Even worse if corrections have to be reviewed by someone other than you, but even if you are the only arbiter, I don't see how you are "done" if you did not actually complete the work.  Usually this stuff is pretty simple so I would just jam the document through.  If it's not simple and takes much time than that's another argument you're really not done.
Of course you can still apply for jobs even if final paper thesis not turned in, but I would use some parentheticals to explain.  Wouldn't just assert done.


text:
Is it a good idea to escalate if my masters advisor is incompetent?
I would like to know whether to escalate the issue when my masters thesis advisor is very careless, disorganized and does not provide anything useful to me.
I have started with him around 9 months ago. Following some disappointment over his choice of research topic, I have worked very hard, and now, after 9 months of my research, I am almost done.
However, my advisor is very unresponsive to me:

I have sent him tons of emails with no responses.
I have requested to meet him more than 15 times and I was only able to see him 3 times. However, he has confirmed most of these appointments and I ended by wasting my time waiting him in front of his office for 30 -60 minutes before I got the same exact answer every time (I have emergency case sorry)
Last week I was able to meet with him, and he did not remember the topic or when I have to defend my thesis. (I have sent him more than 10 drafts of my work during the last 9 months.)
Now, he promised to review my work and give me his feedback by end of Saturday. today is Sunday and I still did not hear from him.

Is it better to escalate the case? Or live with it for the time being and wait for my thesis result?
If I try to escalate later, will they ask me, why you did not speak before, it is too late now?

While I'm sorry you're having such a frustrating experience, you need to give us a specific, answerable question to answer. (See "Here's my situation, any suggestions?" is not an answerable question and Take a deep breath before writing). I've put this question temporarily "on hold" so you can [edit] it to fix this.

"my second target is to punish him": If I were you, I'd reconsider this target. I doubt you'll find anyone willing to help on this and, moreover, there are more constructive ways to spend time.

Yes, am just frustrated from being ignored

I have edited the question heavily to focus on the main question: whether to escalate at this point.

No, I did not speak to him but I show him that I am not feeling good with his way.

I did not speak to him but I show him that I am not feeling good with his way — Sorry, what?  Either you've spoken to your advisor about your concerns or you haven't.  Do not expect him to read your mind through your facial expression, your posture, or your tone of voice.  If you want to be heard, you have to actually speak directly.

As a general advice: Talk to your discipline’s student body (if such a thing exists). They know what your university allows you to do in such a situation (e.g., to switch the supervisor) in theory and practice, may have experience with similar situations and are arguably the right people to escalate the situation – in particular if more advisees of your supervisor face similar problems.

I think you should find a new advisor.  You should definitely discuss the situation with an appropriate faculty member, perhaps the one in charge of the master's program, so that nobody will think you were not proactive in solving your problems.
The word "escalate" is vague and negative.  Don't use it.

Escalation usually works out badly for the person lowest in the hierarchy.
(That feels like such a truism but apparently it bears repeating.)
Your department should have an academic tutor with whom you should consult. Some departments have a "no fault" policy where students are allowed to switch supervisors, quietly. However, there are students who do not do any work until the very last week when it finally dawns on them that it was all the supervisor's fault. To guard against this, there is often a point of no return. After x weeks, you have to make it work with the supervisor you have got.


text:
Forum for discussing research paper
I am trying to implement an algorithm given in a paper. I have some questions which I would like to clear out since implementation requires complete clarity on all the concepts/algorithms/arguments introduced the paper. I have contacted the authors of the paper multiple times(5-6 times) through mail but I do not receive any response and it's been close to a month now.
I would like to know if there is any forum/website in which a reader of a research paper can submit questions that he/she faces while reading it, which is also subscribed by the authors of the paper and authors of papers citing that in their reference section.
P.S.: This question may seem to be duplicate of:
Whom to discuss research papers with?
But in my case, I am not from academia and do not have any advisor/mentor sort of person to discuss paper with.

5 -6 mails within a month to a (probably more senior) colleague or professor, who you do not know personally is rude. If you want to get a reply next time, please do not do that again.

@Alexandros Thanks, I will keep that in mind.

No, such a forum does not exist (even though it actually sounds like a reasonable idea in theory). The closest I can think of is the Questions & Answers section at ResearchGate, though to be honest I have stopped checking in there because most questions in my fields are simply not very interesting. Depending on your topic, you may also be well served posting in a topically appropriate Stack Exchange site.

I explored ReasearchGate Question & Answer section and it seems appropriate for my purpose(found discussions about my topic of interest).

You might also try the Scientific Computing StackExchange.

Agreed, [scicomp.SE], or whichever Stack Exchange site is appropriate for the topic of the paper, should be a good place to get guidance on this.

PubPeer serves similar purpose.

I believe PubPeer is the most correct/ relevant answer to this question, but can't post due to the question being protected.

this is probably the best ressource on the internet  , they are phd grad student forums such as phinished , maybe few discussion on research gate , and some groups on social networks , but nothing organised like stack exchange.


text:
As a postdoc, should I expect my PhD adviser to fund my conference travel to present my PhD work?
I am scheduled to present part of my PhD research
at a conference in a few months.
This will be my first conference after graduating from my PhD.
I am now a postdoc at another university,
but my current adviser's policy is to fund conference travel
only for postdocs presenting research done by with him,
i.e. he would not fund my travel to this conference
to present research I had done during my PhD
which did not involve him.
Is it normal for a PhD adviser
to fund conference travel for graduated students,
if the students are presenting work they have done during their PhD?
If the graduated student had tenure-track jobs
and their own source of funding for conference travel,
then clearly the graduated student
would be expected to use his/her own funding.
However, in my case,
when I do not have funding for conference travel,
is it normal to expect my PhD adviser to provide funding?
I will ask my adviser about this directly,
but I was wondering if there is a standard expected behavior
for PhD advisers that generally applies in my situation.
If my PhD adviser is unable/unwilling to fund my travel,
is it unreasonable for me to say that I cannot attend the conference?
(I estimate the total cost of attending the conference to be ~$1K.)
Update:
I asked my PhD adviser whether he could fund my conference travel,
and he said yes immediately.

It's quite common for research grants to fund travel only for research done on that particular topic as part of that project.

Is it normal for a PhD adviser to fund conference travel for graduated students — Not generally, no.  It's virtually impossible for me to reimburse someone who is neither a student nor an employee of my university from my grants.  On the other hand, if I'm not willing to a postdoc's conference travel, I shouldn't hire them.

With some flexibility you can reduce your conference budget. Avoid staying at fancy hotels, stay at a hostel, or do couchsurfing or airbnb. I am amazed at how some phd/postdoc complain about the lack of conference funds when they want to stay at a $100 a night hotel, especially these days.

One should always figure out the funding issues before submitting an abstract to a conference. Presenters withdrawing from a conference are a major headache to the conference organizers and it is unreasonable to expect them to reorganize the conference program because you did not figure out your travel plans (either timing or funding) in advanced. There are cases where there is nothing you can do (e.g., having a child), but in general when you submit an abstract you are committing yourself to presenting the work.
As to who should fund your travel, the best would have been to ask when you submitted to the conference. There really isn't a standard for who should pay. The first issue is to determine if your PhD advisor or Post Doc Advisor has money that could be used to pay for your travel. They would have to have money that could, if they desired, be used to fund your travel, and be willing to fund your travel.
I would ask both people and see what they say. No one is going to be offended by you asking. I wouldn't be surprised if both said no, but nor would I be surprised if both said yes.

Regarding the first paragraph, maybe the OP had not yet changed affiliations when submitting to the conference? I think this happens quite commonly, and it is often not possible to take the related funding issues fully into account when planning where and when to submit.

You might see if there are other sources of funding available from your current university.  Commonly they do have some travel funding available for their researchers who don't have grant money, and you might be eligible.  It might not cover everything, or there might be some sort of competitive application process, but it is worth checking.  It may be administered through a unit called "Office of Research" or something like that.
In my field it's pretty common for postdocs to be allotted some funding of their very own from the university, that they can spend on travel, etc.  I assume if you had this, you wouldn't be asking the question, but it's just possible that if you didn't read fine print, you might have overlooked it.

As a PhD student, I disagree with some of the advice here. Students (and post doctoral fellows) can be pressured by their university/advisor to publish and present at conferences. At my university there were specific PhD sub Courses that had to be complete and this involved presenting at different level conferences. So essentially, you needed to at least submit papers to these conferences or else you would not get your PhD. In  my case, I applied (submitted a paper) to an international conference and my paper was accepted. I soon wished it wasn't because my university did not cover all costs and going would cut into my own funds by about 1000 dollars. Do not blame students for backing out or for 'disrupting' a presenter list when the universities themselves often do not tell the students what 'conference travel' entails. To the person saying to sleep on floors etc, NO. Students should be able to say "i do not wish to go" without ANY PENALTY. simple.

Ask yourself who gets the benefit? Will your previous instutition as it is work related to your time there, or your present instuitution, or just you. To fund they will want to know it's going to be advantageous to them. You will need to convice them.
Or, chat to someone else who is going to the confermce and arrange to sleep on their floor, cancel the hotel booking, miss the formal dinners and boldly wander into buffets to get them free. Still do the networking, present your paper and plan ahead next time.
But always remember that life can change overnight as it did for me, and ill health stopped both the conferences and my working - then who pays for a conference is a monor issue!