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Difficulty in admission to online software engineering graduate programs
I am currently in my junior year of undergraduate work at Creighton University and have found out that my employer may possibly pay for me to work towards a Master's degree. I don't know all the specifics yet, but I have been browsing schools that offer Graduate programs in software engineering (or computer science with a focus in software engineering). It appears that the only school near me is the University of Nebraska-Omaha, so I have been checking out online programs as well, since I would have to stay in the Omaha area. It looks like USC has an excellent program in computer science, and I have also looked at Penn State and Drexel. So my questions are:
How difficult are these programs to get into?
Is it worth it to work towards a Master's Degree right after undergraduate?
What other programs should I be looking at?
I currently have a 4.0 GPA in my Computer Science Major, but I still have 4 classes left to take. I am also minoring in Business Administration and Interactive Web Development(basically Graphic Design classes).
Thanks ahead of time!

Kgvnova,
Congratulations on all of your success so far and your decision to consider furthering your education.  I'm in a very similar position as you and I'm currently considering distance education for a Master's degree in Computer Science or Software Engineering.  I'll do my best to answer your questions the best that I can.
1)  The difficulty of getting into programs varies, but I would say it's probably easier to be admitted into an online program than the live/in-person program.  I was accepted into all programs that I applied to.  (I graduated with a science degree at the top of my class, have good test scores and work experience, so I'd say I'm a strong candidate for most programs.)  Just be careful about some "diploma mills".  Some schools are "for profit" and let everyone in.  Just try to find an established school that has a distance education component and you should be in good shape.
2)  Whether you go straight to a Master's degree or not depends on you and your life situation.  You can consider your situation from a few angles.
Job Opportunities/ Return on Investment:  I think that most computer related careers are available to people with a technically-oriented bachelor's degree so the return on your investment might be neglible since you already have a bachelor's.  You mentioned that your employer may pay for it, so your investment might just be your time and energy.
Timing and Other Life Events:  If you are willing and able to invest 20-40 hours per week for the next 2 years or so, then getting a Master's could be a good idea.  If you're planning on having a family in the next few years, maybe it's a good time to get this done.  If you're just starting a family or have other commitments, then maybe you should wait.  Graduate schools aren't going anywhere.
Certainty:  How certain are you that this is the career/industry for you?  Do you have significant experience working in software engineering?  I just ask because you may find that this is not what you actually want to do, especially if you've never done it before.  I've changed my mind a lot in the past.  Since I've graduated a few years ago, I've worked in sales, health services, teaching, insurance, and web development.  I always thought I was going to enjoy those fields until I actually worked in them.  Once I started doing web development and LOVING it, I decided it's worth pursuing an education to take me a step further.
3)  There are a lot of programs to consider.  I started by looking at US News to see a list of highly-regarded schools.  I then visited their websites to see if they had distance programs in Computer Science.  Another few schools that I've considered are:

Brandeis University - Master's in Software Engineering
University of Bridgeport (CT) - Master's in CS with Software Engineering Concentration (ranked in top 10 online CS programs nationally)
Harvard Univerisity - they have an Extension School where you can get a Master's in Liberal Arts with a concentration in Software Engineering

You should also consider the finances and "pacing" of programs.  Some programs are really expensive.  Also, some degrees are accelerated and take 18 months, while some programs take 3-4 years to complete.
Sorry for the long response.  I just wanted to give you the information I've been researching this for several months.  I wish you the best of luck with everything.

Great Answer! I will have to look into those programs you mentioned. After thinking about it, I am not planning on starting a family or anything like that soon. I'm currently doing web development as well, and I'm in the same boat as you. I am confident this is what I want to do. Thanks again for your answer, it was very insightful.

One other thing I neglected to mention is that I really recommend you look at the curriculum and see what the actual classes are like.  Some schools will post the syllabus for each course.  I want a program that teaches theory AND applies that knowledge with projects.  I'm surprised by how many software engineering courses rely on having students read PowerPoint slides and writing essays without actually reading and writing code.  I think there's a big difference between the two.  Also try searching Google and YouTube for student reviews of SE programs... their feedback could be helpful.

I'm completing an online Masters in Software Engineering from Penn State. I have 17 years professional experience and started the program when I had 15 years experience.
Having the benefit of past experiences I would recommend spending a few years (<5) doing hard core software development and moving up the technical ranks to Senior Engineer before pursuing a masters.
The main reason why is you'll have the practical real-world knowledge that will help anchor the theory they will thrust at you in the Master's program. If you decide to pursue your Master's right after your undergrade, be forwarned that much of what they teach you in academia is theory which means it won't make much sense to you until you start to use it. Even then, you'll have a conflict since the real-world != academia and it's the real-world that is the truth and academia is just a nice cozy padded room.
One con to waiting to take on your Master's is the double workload you'll be carrying. It was extremely difficult for me to handle both a full work load (50-60hours a week since no engineer worth their salt only works 40hours a week.) and be full time student. Another con is the fact that companies typically advertise educational benefits, but they can be very hard to obtain. It took me three companies before I finally landed at one that would pony up the cash. The other three companies said they would, but never did so after a few years I told them to suck it and moved on.
That being said, looking down the long road and if I had it all to do over again, I'd of pusued my Master's ~5 years after completing my undergrad. After 15 years (17 when I finished my Masters) of experience, much of what I learned earning my Masters was nothing new. I think you'll get the best mental and career boost if you follow the timeline I mentioned.
That all being said, I am happy I pursued my Masters and obtained it. The company paid for all of it (minus books) which was just south of $36k.

How difficult are these programs to get into?

It is going to be different with every school.  Some will require you to take the GRE or GMAT, while some will admit you as long as you had a halfway-decent GPA in your undergraduate program.  Some won't admit you unless you have a few years of experience working in the field.

Is it worth it to work towards a Master's Degree right after
  undergraduate?

Again, it depends.  Is it going to advance your career?  Perhaps.  Having a Master's Degree as a software developer (assuming that is what you are aspiring to be) does open some doors that might otherwise be closed to you.  Will you get a raise or better pay increases because of it?  Probably not.  And I don't know if I agree with going to graduate school immediately after finishing your bachelor's degree, but that is a decision you need to make for yourself.
For me, I needed 13 years before I was ready to go to school again...and it paid off.  I found that I had  an easier time with my classes, because I had already worked with most of the technologies that I studied in grad school.  Not just because of familiarity either, but because I had worked with them enough that I already understood why they worked the way that they do.

What other programs should I be looking at?

Not all computer science/software engineering/IT-based graduate programs are created equally.  Many are geared more towards IT management, and go little into the technical side.  If a technical deep-dive is what you want, you need to look really hard to find it.
Also, many programs will be either practicum or thesis-based (or give you an option to choose).  A thesis-based master's program may sound daunting, but again, it opens doors for you.  If you are considering an academic career path at some point, you will want a program that requires a thesis.
Another thing to consider, is to work at least a year before going back to school, just to get used to your workload.  You will probably find that your employer will want 45-50 hours per week out of you (maybe more).  Going home on a Friday night to work on a paper is a lot tougher to do after you've already been writing code for 10 hours.

You may want to check out Virginia Tech Online. They have Master's degrees in Computer Engineering and Information Technology (in which you can specialize in Software Development) and it doesn't look like their admissions process is too hellish. I actually spoke with the Director of Admissions for their IT program and he's a really cool guy. Spent time going over the whole admissions process with me and answered all of my questions.
Virginia Tech Online Master's Degrees


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Possible causes of confusion and mistakes in technical terminology in bilingual settings
Disclaimer: This question is probably on the brink of off-topicness; maybe, it is also opinion-based and I don't exclude it is way too broad. Nonetheless, I'm asking this out of curiosity: so, if you close this question, I won't complain; but if you answer, I'll appreciate.
To try to stay on track, let me state clearly the rules of the game.
First, I'm interested in the following bilingual settings or situations:

Courses which are taught in a language which is not the local language (e.g. a course taught in English at a German university).
Courses which are taught in the local language that adopt textbooks written in a different language.
Students, researchers and professors who collaborate with people speaking different native languages.

Second, here is the question:
Have you got any example of technical terminology or symbology (from whatever field) which has been, in your experience, cause of confusion, misunderstandings or mistakes in the above given situations?
Let me give you a few examples I've come across:

In English, the term voltage denotes a common electrical quantity. The Italian term for voltage is tensione. Many Italian students who have been exposed to English classes, however, instead of using the correct term when speaking in Italian, use the mistranslated term voltaggio, which looks similar to the English term, but is incorrect.
In German and in several East European countries, the symbol used to denote voltages is U instead of the more common V. But this wouldn't cause much trouble were it not for the fact that the symbology employed to indicate the polarity of a voltage is opposite to that employed in US or in many other European countries. It took me a while to realize this, but now, if I have a technical discussion with someone from those countries, it's the first thing I point out to avoid many headaches to everybody.
A Czech researcher told me that the common low-pass or high-pass filters are actually called high-reject and low-reject filters in the Czech technical literature, and this was a major source of confusion when he started reading the English technical literature.

Note: I'm not interested in common words that can sound awkward or rude or offensive in another language, just technical terminology which can cause confusion.

Is there any particular reason why you are interested in this?

@Wrzlprmft: Mostly curiosity about the nuances of terminology, but the first two examples I've given actually caused me a bit of trouble. Given that nowadays many universities have courses which are taught in a different language, and that international collaborations are frequent, I'm wondering if these sources of confusion are common or not, and if anyone else has specific examples, possibly from different fields.

Voting to  close as too broad, though "opinion-based" would almost cut it. The problem here is that there is no real "right answer" so no basis for accepting one answer over any others. Perhaps it might be OK as community wiki but I don't see how it would avoid becoming a long, unfocused list.

@DavidRicherby: To narrow a bit more the question, I was thinking of changing it to: "Have you got any example of technical terminology or symbology (from whatever field) which has been cause (really experienced) of confusion, misunderstandings or mistakes in the above given situations?"

@MassimoOrtolano But, again, that's just asking for an unfocused list of examples. What would constitute a good answer? What would be the best answer, which you would accept?

@DavidRicherby wouldn't it fit as a community wiki?

@DavidRicherby: Yes, I'm aware that I won't be able to accept a best answer. As I said in the disclaimer, I'm really aware of the many weaknesses of this question and, in case, I've no objection to close it. Now I'll go to sleep, tomorrow I'll discover what's happened to it ;-)

Actually, I think one of the biggest issues that we have to deal with as scientists is the use of writing conventions. For instance:

The "decimal point" in Europe is normally written as a comma. So a German would see that "a mile is 1,760 yards" might not know if a mile should be 5280 feet or 5.28 feet! (This can cause confusion when translating back and forth.)
Similarly, I have to be very careful with my handwriting, lest my audience think my "7" is a "1."

A lot of what you're talking about, though, I think falls either under the header of "false cognates" (or faux amis, as they're known in French), or of words with multiple definitions. As examples of the latter, for instance, Benzin in German can mean both "benzene" as well as "gasoline," while Neigung can mean both "slope" and "gradient."

In most cases, "slope" and "gradient" mean exactly the same thing in English: the angle of a line or surface to the horizontal at a particular point.

I can't count the number of times I've been frustrated by students writing 1.900 and having to guess if they really mean 1.9 or 1,900. I would add to this dates: 4/3 - is it April 3rd (English) or the 4th of March (most other languages)?

@earthling. Don't blame backward dates on English speakers: that's a purely American phenomenon.

The German word for torque is Drehmoment, which is a composite of Dreh (turning) and Moment. Thus a very literal translation of Drehmoment would be turning momentum. This leads to confusion with the English angular momentum, which is Drehimpuls in German, but which one might easily accidentally translate as Drehmoment.

Dutch is exactly like German here.

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Where can I find academic CV samples containing minor research projects for PhD applications without publications?
Context:

Prof messaged me, interested in my CV
During my master's in mathematical finance, I may have had one "publication" if a quasi-thesis, that wasn't exactly a thesis, counts.
While applying to (more) grad school (pure not applied), I'm currently working in the tutoring industry (I'm not teaching in a university) as I have been since grad school (tutoring industry is very serious in country A compared to country B), and my industry CVs/resumes consist mainly of tutoring jobs (I've never had a finance internship, but I did have a sort of statistics/economics research internship).

I do not believe I have formal pure math research experience, but I have a lot of applied math research experience in our "thesis" (or technical report as Nate Eldredge might suggest) and class projects.
I have so far not found academic CVs for PhD applications that include minor research projects in master's (I don't know the terms. They are "research" projects but are not published or as long as theses. They're simply class requirements that are not exams or "homework"/"problem sets") so please provide references.
Examples:

UTexas - Ella Fitzsimmons

GOOD: has master's, no PhD
BAD: thesis only. no minor research projects in master's here.

UCSF - Rembrandt Van Rijn

GOOD: mentions minor research projects pre-PhD
BAD: has PhD and so mentions minor research projects pre-PhD without further elaboration

Academics - Anna Mustermann

GOOD: has master's no PhD
BAD: For master's: thesis only. no minor research projects in master's here. has publications

Surrey - ROBERT BROADSTONE

BAD: No master's. Has PhD. Has publications

Harvard - Anjan Lo Subramayan, Keisha Thomas

BAD: Has PhD/Is PhD candidate, No master's, Has publications

Wait.  What?  "if a thesis (it wasn't a thesis) counts"?  I don't get it.

@aparente001 It sort of functions like a thesis in other courses in that we had review of related literature, methodology and all of that. We even called. but technically it wasn't

It's YOUR cv. Especially in academia you can pretty much put on it whatever you want. You should definately include your minor research projects. But "publications" usually only count if they are published in international peer-reviewed journals. It may be viewed as strange if you try to include anything else as a "publication".

@LouicVermeer Thank you so much! Why don't you post that as an answer? Also I edited my question :)

@aparente001 I edited my question. :)

Are these research projects that are class assignments novel work, or are they research in the sense of searching the literature on a particular topic? If the latter, this does not seem to fall under "research" in the sense the word is typically used in academia (though I am speaking from a biological sciences perspective; maybe literature review is given a different type of value in mathematics that I am unaware of).

If a professor asks you for more information about you, just give him or her an accurate picture of yourself.  S/he's probably asking in order to get an accurate view of where you are in your journey.  Not necessarily using the response in order to weed out potential students.  (It's possible I have completely misunderstood your question, though.)

@BryanKrause Some are expository I guess, some are RRL, and some are applying what we learn to data we choose like copulas on recent financial data

There is no need to follow a standard or template unless the specific job you apply for explicitly states that you should do so (which is rarely the case).
I am a biophysicist, not a mathematician, but from what I have seen you can put on your CV whatever you want, especially in academia: it is your CV. You should definitely include your minor research projects. You can have a look at templates for some inspiration but it is up to you how you organise your CV and which sections you include or not.
Publications usually only count if they are published in international peer-reviewed journals or books. You can possibly stretch this definition a little by including conference proceedings, abstracts, application notes, and so on, but it may be viewed as strange if you call these a "publication" (mathematicians, please correct me if this is different for you). In any case, this is the topic of your other question and is better discussed there.

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What kind of PhD proposals should I read?
I am finishing up my master's in mathematical finance and am hoping to pursue a PhD in stochastic analysis.
I was given a sample PhD proposal from an education office that helps people apply for universities in the UK and some other countries (some of those countries require specifically a PhD proposal so you can tell that the US is not one of them). I was told I should look at PhD proposals outside of my field and thus was given something in Chemistry.
Relevant links at this point:

No. 5 here: With a background in mathematical finance and desire to apply for a mathematics PhD in another field, do I need a second master's?
How do mathematicians conduct research?

As mathematicians do not really collect data or conduct experiments for their research, I think I should countersuggest something in theoretical physics, theoretical computer science or something of the sort. Do you think that's okay? What would you suggest?

The education office's advice seems bizarre to me. If you want to write a proposal in mathematics, read mathematics proposals.

@NateEldredge Thanks. Any suggestions of what to say without offending them?

Ask them the purpose of not providing a mathematics proposal. A hard science looking at a similar science might get tunnel vision, but I doubt a mathematics PhD would face the same problem seeing as they're less experimental method than other fields.

@Compass EXACTLY. However, I think theoretical physics and theoretical computer science is also not so experimental?

@Jack for sure. The first result for a phd proposal theoretical yields: http://www.ifsc.usp.br/~hoyos/Thesis_Alet.pdf They all seem to be at most a few pages long, and it probably wouldn't hurt just skimming a bunch of these before you have a good idea of what you need to do.

@Compass Cool. Thanks. What search engine are you using? It doesn't show on google's first page (I did find it in second though)

@Jack I forgot to add "physics" to the comment on retrospect.

@Compass You wanna make your comment an answer so I can give you the bounty?

@Jack I guess, but maybe someone will have a better answer soon!

Ask them the purpose of not providing a mathematics proposal. A hard science looking at a similar science might get tunnel vision, but I doubt a mathematics PhD would face the same problem seeing as they're less experimental method than other fields.
PhD proposals, unlike theses, also seem to be much more readily accessible online. A quick search for theoretical physics phd proposal on Google, even without Scholar, yields a decent amount of samples that provide a significant amount of differing examples in sufficiently different subjects from math that the content can be differentiated from the style.


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What is the proper etiquette for requesting speakers from industry for an academic seminar?
I am in a program that has a seminar class where the students are strongly encouraged to get people to come and present. I was wondering if anyone else ever had to find speakers and if so had a sample form letter. I ask because I can offer nothing in terms of compensations so I am not sure how to go about doing this.

I don't think using or even adapting a sample form letter would be very helpful, just as a canned letter wouldn't be very successful in a job application.
A couple of thoughts:

In cases like these, a good network definitely helps. If you know someone, even only slightly, that gives you a better starting position that just cold calling someone. Think through your network, and even if you don't know anyone you could meaningfully invite, maybe someone from your network knows someone she or he could introduce you to.
Can you at least offer reimbursement of travel costs? If not, look for people working close to you. Budgets are tight, and your speaker may have a hard time getting reimbursed for such a talk from his company.
Just as for a job application: when you do contact someone, be brief and to the point. Introduce yourself (if necessary), briefly describe your class and ask whether your candidate would in principle be interested. Offer to follow up with details - don't include them in the first email. People in industry are busy (just as everyone else).
However, you should definitely include a tidbit that (a) makes speaking interesting for your candidate and (b) helps him/her get permission/budget from the employer. Are your classmates close to graduation? Then the company can present itself as an interesting employer. Do you have any interesting projects? Are you working in a field that is related to your candidate's employer or even better to you candidate's own work? Are you perhaps potential customers? Any kind of motivation is good.
Above all, don't worry overmuch. Everyone's ego is tickled at being invited to speak, even if they don't accept the invitation. And established people, whether in industry or in academia, often are happy to accept such invitations and help students out. The worst that could happen is a polite refusal (or no answer at all). The best would be a nice talk and an interesting contact for later on.

I kind of wonder whether this question wouldn't be better at workplace.SE.com. You'll get more answers from industry there than at academia.SE.com. Perhaps you want to consider flagging it for migration.


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APA: How to cite chapter and edition in book
I was wondering the correct format for citing when including both book edition and the page range of the chapter.
From owl purdue on citing chapter (APA):

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of
  chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Title of book (pages
  of chapter). Location: Publisher.

Would the correct format then look like this?

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year of publication). Title of
  chapter. In A. A. Editor & B. B. Editor (Eds.), Title of book
  (Edition, pages of chapter). Location: Publisher.

It is possible (I know at least of one journal, giving such recommendations in addition to the APA style).
But in this form, according to my experience, it's more common for the MLA style while rarely used with the APA. What you also might want to do is to include two references: one for the chapter (only pages in parentheses) and another for the edited book (only edition in parentheses).

Yes, that would be the correct format. Though I couldn't find any guidance from APA, I did find a citation in that format in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a journal that uses APA.
Here's the citation:
Bronfenbrenner, U., & Morris, P.A. (1998). The ecology of developmental processes. In W. Damon & R.M. Lerner (Ed.), Handbook of Child Psychology: Vol 1. Theoretical models of human development (5th ed., pp.993-1028). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
This citation appears Volume 38, No. 4, p. 778.


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In a scholarship application that asks about "overcoming challenges," does this refer to financial challenges or other kinds?
I am applying for a university scholarship program, and as part of the application I have to write some essays but I don't understand what they want exactly in the first essay. The question is written like this:

Household information and Statement of Need
Describe the challenges you have faced in your path to education until
  this point. Please include the following:

Who has supported your academic achievements until now? (financially and/or other)
Which challenges did you overcome during your secondary education?

So my question is: when they ask "Which challenges did you overcome during your secondary education?" are they only asking about financial issues/challenges or also other kind of challenges?
Is it OK if I talk about family problems(non financial) that have negatively affected some moments of my education?
I would like also to ask if anyone could give me a link to an article or some other other online resource that has tips to writing a good essay, I have already googled but I can't find anything very useful.

It says "financially and/or other", which means that it can be financial or can be otherwise (or both).

They're leaving the question open-ended intentionally. They will use your answer to judge whether you're a good fit for the school's culture.
Generally when you see questions like this for things like admissions essays or in interviews, the interviewer wants to give you an honest and complete answer. You can discuss any kinds of challenges here, be they personal, financial, or strictly academic, but only bring the challenge up if the way you responded to it either taught you something or reflects a positive character trait.
The goal for your essay should be to show the reader why you deserve the scholarship or why you are most likely to use that money in a better way than another recipient might be. Because of this, keep in mind the kind of scholarship it is. If it's a minority scholarship, for example, remember that the scholarship is, at its core, designed to help underprivileged kids have the opportunity to go to school, and those kinds of scholarships are especially relevant to bright kids with decent test scores who come from places with limited academic resources or families with low income. That kind of situation might give you all sorts of stuff to talk about, from disrespectful kids and xenophobic teachers to insufficient access to technology and school supplies. If you can show that you faced some or all of these kinds of challenges but still got a 29 on your ACT (because you worked hard and applied yourself, naturally), the Minority Office might be more impressed with your application. Review the mission statement of the department that will be receiving the recommendation before writing it, and always tweak essays for other departments before you send out the letters.

It's hard to know for certain without knowing more about the particular scholarship that you are applying for, but many scholarships are designed to very specifically target particularly disadvantaged students and try to turn them into success stories.
If you, for example, faced discrimination and prejudice, or other institutional barriers, that would likely be an excellent thing to talk about, as this is the sort of problem that many scholarships are designed to help mitigate.  If it is a more personal thing, e.g., you had an older brother who you just didn't get along with, that may not be as compelling a narrative.


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Is it possible for an individual's TOEFL score to decrease between exams?
I heard that if you take TOEFL exam several time your score will never  decrease. Is it correct?
It seems rational, if TOEFL is a standard test, its difficulty level should be equal in all exams. For example if in your first try you get 28 in reading and it shows your good skill in reading, it's not rational that ETS assign a lower  score in successive exams.
I took exam for second time after ten days of my first attempt. I feel the reading section was harder than my previous exam. If TOEFL is a normalized exam, its evaluation of my skill in reading should not be decreased in such short period.

If you didn't read as well the second time, why would it be irrational to give you a lower reading score?

@JeffE My skill could not be degrades during such short  times. By the way TOEFL score are valid for two years. A degradation can only show a flaw in exam design.

Of course it could!  Maybe you had a headache.  Maybe you slept badly.  Maybe you ate something that disagreed with you.  Maybe your glasses were dirty.  Maybe you got lucky the first time.

@JeffE Yes, for all of possibility you said, I thinks the score for last TOEFL should be maximum of all previous exams during last two years.

Sure, but why is an opposing opinion irrational?  If having dirty glasses adversely affects your reading ability, and your glasses are often dirty, then the lower score is arguably a more accurate reflection of your reading ability in practice.

Altough your English skill determines what score you get, other factors, like you do not familiar with the topic you read, as well as random events, like @JeffE mentioned, will also influnece your score.

It is possible.
As an International student, I have taken TOEFL 4 times in one and a half year. Personally, I increased my score in every section at every exam.
However, it does not suggest you will always improve your score. The reason is simple. Assume you do not spend time on learning English regularly between two exams. In fact, your score is a random variable with constant mean and variance. You may have got 28 in reading last time and 26 next time.
If you spend a lot of time on improving English skills, you may still get a lower score in writing and speaking sections. For those secitons you can apply for rescoring service.

+1 for "mean and variance". Remember that the exam itself has "mean and variance" of the difficulty level. High quality exam like TOEFL should have a low variance, but "should have" and "do have" are quite different.


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Asked again to review a paper, when the authors don't wish to modify it
I have received a manuscript to review for a journal. The interesting thing is, I had already reviewed this article (exact same title, abstract and author list, almost exact same content) for another journal a few weeks ago where I recommended that it be published, but only after major revisions of both form and content. When I first reviewed it, I wrote a two-page review, listing some questions and several “actionable” comments, ranging from some concerns about exactness of the text (some conclusions didn't seem fully backed by the results) all the way down to trivial stuff (grammar, a few typos, graphic issues with the figures, etc.).
Now, the manuscript has come to me for review again, but it is almost unchanged from the first version. None of the serious stuff has been addressed, and even most of the trivial stuff was not fixed (there's at least one remaining typo, and the figures still aren't fully legible). However, I think this behavior from the authors is clearly a bad signal, which should be somehow conveyed to the editor: they're not willing to amend their work, and would rather do some journal-shopping.
What would you suggest me to do? Should I just re-send my earlier review? Add a note to the editor about my knowledge of the “history” of the paper? Or maybe even include it in my review, so the authors are aware that people know of their behavior, and maybe feel bad enough to change their ways?

PS: I wrote it in the present tense, but it's actually a story from my past. I'm not sure I did the right thing at the time, and I think it's better to actually formulate it as an open question…

What was the recommendation made to the authors for the first journal? Was it also major revisions, as you suggested, or a rejection?

@Pedro I do not know… in my field (I don't know how field-dependent that it), editors very rarely communicate their final decision to the reviewers.

Is it possible they submitted the same paper to multiple journals at once, before they would have received the first rejection, so were unaware of the suggested changes?

@ernie: that seems very unlikely if the journal requires transfer of copyright; usually the submission guidelines explicitly disallow submission if the paper has been submitted in an archival publication.

Personally, I would inform the editors of both journals. For the new editor, I would attach your earlier review, and recommend rejection.
Then it's up to the new editor to decide what to do in this situation. This falls in the category of ethical problems, and I think most journals recommend that reviewers contact the editor immediately in such a situation. Perhaps the journal has a policy for this, or the editor may discuss the matter with other editors or the chief editor.
Let me add why I find it unethical. Peer review relies upon the volunteer labour of anonymous reviewers. Reviewers may invest significant time, and do not really get anything in return. If authors of a manuscript completely ignore reviews, and instead submit an unchanged manuscript somewhere else, I would, as a reviewer, be quite annoyed. At the very least they could reply to the reviews, state point-by-point that they disagree, refuse to change anything and then submit it somewhere else; but completely ignoring is wasting peoples time.

Where are the ethical problems? Is it unethical to review in both places or unethical to sequentially submit unrevised manuscripts?

I think it's unethical for authors to use reviewers time to get constructive suggestions for improving a manuscript, and instead of improving it, simply submitting an unchanged manuscript somewhere else. This is a waste of reviewers time.

Reply point-by-point...where?  It would be very odd, and come off as whining, to reply to a rejection from the editor with a list of disagreements with the report.  Also, note that the article wasn't unchanged (I agree that that would be much worse), it just didn't take into account the most important---but likely also the most subjective---suggestions.

@Henry True. I wouldn't like such a response either, but at least whining (a.k.a. rebuttal) acknowledges that the reviewer has been working on it.

@Henry to be clear: some changes were made, but they were really minor (and didn't cover even “trivial” mistakes like typos, grammar and nonmatching figure captions)

"Peer review relies upon the volunteer labour of anonymous reviewers. Reviewers may invest significant time, and do not really get anything in return" they aren't paid? O_O

Peer reviewers are not paid, at least not in money.  Sometimes they are "paid" in journal access — one journal I reviewed for would give the reviewer access to its journal, as well as all journals cited in the reviewed paper, for one month.  This is for atmospheric science / remote sensing, it might be different in other fields.

This is one of the mysteries of the scientific community: Authors don't get paid, reviewers don't get paid, and publishing companies make huge profits by selling the papers to libraries.

I would say that working for a for-profit company without getting paid is nonsense, but I am doing just the same when I answer and comment on stackexchange...

What about confidentiality? I do not think it is (allowed not sure) ethical to talk to the other journal what you got to know from journal B.

@lalala Fair question. Clearly I can't distribute a paper I'm reviewing, nor disclose I'm reviewing it as long as it's under review.  Maybe I should only contact the editors of the second journal, not forward them the previous review, and merely state that I have reviewed this exact manuscript for another journal before.  That's the minimal amount the editors need to know, so it's arguably justified to inform them, but perhaps telling them any more is not necessary and therefore not ethical? Indeed a good question.

I was recently on the something like the other end of this: a paper I wrote was rejected with a number of comments and one major objection to the content.  I made the small changes, but not the big one, and resubmitted to another journal.    The new journal sent it back to the same referee.
The referee may well have felt I was engaged in journal shopping; in fact, in response to the report, I'd consulted with other people in the area, and gotten very positive feedback in support of the way the paper was written.  I therefore thought it was reasonable to try again with a different journal, since there seemed to be genuine disagreement over the right approach.
The situation was handled quite well, and I'd recommend something like it to anyone on the other end: the editor was notified, and made the decision to ask for the report from the original referee, but also got a second opinion from a new referee.
In this case the story has a happy ending: the original referee didn't just resubmit a variant of the original report, but went above and beyond by explaining their main objection more clearly.  The new explanation actually convinced me, where the old one hadn't, and I made the changes.
The moral being, the author may have actually taken the referee report seriously but honestly disagreed.  That's not always the case, but in that situation you should consider the possibility---and that's why you definitely want to notify the editor, who should probably get a second opinion.
added: Just to be clear, I'm trying to address the general case of a referee in this situation, not just the particular instance that happened to F'x.  There's a range of possible behavior by the paper author which could sound similar to what F'x is describing, and which some future referee reading this question might be experiencing, from the case where the author has resubmitted a paper unchanged to the case where the authors have incorporated many minor suggestions and given careful consideration before not taking some more important ones.  F'x is describing a situation which sounds like it's closer to the first, I'm describing one which leans closer to the second.
A particular referee, in a particular case, may be able to judge which scenario is more likely, but it doesn't matter for the referee, because the correct answer is the same: notify the editor.

the author may have actually taken the referee report seriously but honestly disagreed, in that case, they could at the very least have informed the referee, via the editor. No loss in replying we disagree with major point X, and if the editor then rejects it, to then submit it to another journal. That's different from what @Fx describes.

@gerrit: If the editor asks for a response, the appropriate thing to do would be to explain why the suggestion hasn't been taken.  But I think we're discussing the situation where the editor has already rejected, in which case a rebuttal is no longer appropriate.

Yeah, that has happened to me as well once or twice. What I then do (and advise others to do) is first to make your case to the editor in a reply (list what you are willing to change, and what you want to keep unmodified). Then, either they accept the amended manuscript, or they reject it (ask you to modify further than you want to). If you arrive at that point, resubmitting to another journal is fair game, I think. But that's a pretty different situation from the one I ask about in my question…

This is by far the best answer to the question, because it addresses it from both sides

I see nothing wrong with authors choosing to submit to a new journal instead of making changes suggested by reviewers, although not fixing typos just seems silly. I also think that if authors choose to go this route, they deserve to get a new batch of reviewers. While I like to think of myself as reasonable and impartial, I am happy to have authors confirm this by submitting someplace else. When I receive requests to review a manuscript that I have already reviewed, I turn the review down with a note to the AE that I have already reviewed the manuscript for another journal. I do not to say what journal or anything about my recommendation.
If for some reason I agree to review a manuscript and later find out that I have previously reviewed it, I would immediately contact the AE and explain what has happened. I would offer to provide a revised review. I would acknowledge in the review that I was reviewer N for the previous journal.

There is something wrong with merely submitting the paper to another journal, which is that it is very likely to be wasting the time of another set of reviewers.  As a reviewer I would not be very pleased to find out that I had worked hard to find errors and suggest improvements only to find out someone else had already pointed out these issues to the authors, who had simply ignored them.

@Dikran You might simply not agree with the reviewer’s assessment. It happens. Indeed, reviewers can be wrong (gasp!). But yes, not fixing typos and figures is a bad sign.

@Konrad, I thought i had expressed my disagreement in quite moderate terms!  Yes, sometimes reviewers do get things wrong, but the aim of a good reviewer is to help the author to present their work in a way that will maximise the take-up of their idea by the research community.  So authors that pay only lip-service to the reviewers comments (or less in this case) show a poor attitude to their own work.  I always try and incorporate the reviewers comments as fully as I can.  We are getting for free advice from someone whose time we could not afford to buy, and should make the most of it! ;o)

@Dikran I totally agree with that. I just wanted to clarify that one point.

@Konrad, cheers, non-verbal forms of communication often come across as much more aggressive than intended, so I just wanted to be sure.  I had this situation recently where a paper was rejected for utterly ridiculous reasons - I implemented the suggestions that made sense and submitted it somewhere else.  I am grateful for the good suggestions they made! ;o)

I'll add here as an answer the course I did follow, so people can comment on it and help me see its pros and cons (obviously, I saw more pros than cons to it, as I did decide on it after some thought).
I went the last option mentioned in my question: I sent a review which consisted of my earlier review, with an added text clearly delimitated at the top explaining that I had already reviewed the paper for another journal (I didn't say which, as it seemed a breach of reviewer ethics). I also insisted that even uncontroversial changes hadn't been made, and I thought this shed bad light on the author's good faith participation in the peer-review process.
Finally, I watched later to see where the paper had been published: after being dropped from journal A to journal B (and maybe others), it ended up being published in a third, obscure journal with very few changes (but at least the typos were removed).
As a side note: given that I was not such a big name in that particular subfield at the time, and the two editors who picked me for review didn't know me personally, I believe I was twice listed by the authors as “potential reviewer” upon submission of their work. Which means, either they didn't really think it through the second time, or they naturally assumed that the review they had received wasn't my type.

The only situation where this is halfway reasonable from the authors' side is when the main author left the project, and the others didn't have the time to make revisions. But then it deserves being published in an obscure journal only...

@silvado I think it funny that the ethicality of an action would be dependent on the visibility of the journal concerned

I wouldn't say that the publication venue has anything to do with ethicality, but rather quality.

Another possibility is that someone they did list (or someone better known) kept suggesting you when they got requests.  I don't know, but have always suspected a lot of my referee traffic comes from one senior person in my field who suggests my name when he is asked.

@F'x I am not sure in this case, but I think in general it is reasonable for the ethicality of some actions to depend on the visibility of the journal. There is the old saying: "if you can put in 20 minutes of work to save readers 1 minute of time then you should do if you expect 20 or more readers", unfortunately different venues still result in different number of readers (even if you submit identical papers), so different amounts of work can be expected.

This situation has happened to me in both directions. As a reviewer, I always inform the editor first, and then only if they insist do I send them the earlier review. But I prefer to avoid it because otherwise  it constitutes double jeopardy for the authors.
As an author, if I resubmit to a new journal, I expect to get a new set of opinions. There's no point in resubmitting if you're just going to get the identical comments. As to whether one should or should not revise a paper before resubmitting, that depends on many factors. Obviously factual errors or typos should be corrected. But I don't necessarily agree that one should go through a huge revision to address concerns raised by one set of reviewers, because a new set of reviewers may have a completely different set of issues, and maybe even object to some suggestions made by the first set of reviewers. Moreover, the second set, not knowing what issues were raised by the first set, won't know why certain things were included. For instance, if one reviewer asks me to add a paragraph favoring a particular interpretation (theirs of course) and I include this, but the paper is still rejected and I then send it to a new journal with a new reviewer, that person might completely disagree and reject the paper based on that interpretation which I only put in for the now-irrelevant reviewer in the first place!

"interpretation which I only put in for the now-irrelevant reviewer" I am not sure if I would find it ethical to include something in my manuscript which I genuinely believe is only for appeasing a reviewer. I would include that sort of stuff in my response to the reviewer, with an explanation of why I don't think this is relevant to other readers.

@Artem: if different journals have slightly different focus within the field, isn't it reasonable that a reviewer for journal A would say, "you need more detail on X", then a reviewer for journal B would say, "all this stuff about X occupies more space than it should"? Likewise, if the editor of journal A trusts the opinions of one reviewer on a particular matter (perhaps of focus, perhaps of something else), whereas the editor of journal B trusts another, the two flatly disagree, and the authors of the paper find the whole controversy inessential to their work, why not humour them? ;-)

Since you're being asked to review exactly the same object that you already reviewed, your task is simple: simply respond with exactly the same review. Your review is a function of the content.  That function should produce the same value when applied to the same input. Just like when a browser is asked to load the same page twice, it can just fetch it from its cache (subject to expiry checks, which are clearly not applicable in this analogy).

The statement that the review is a function of the content is overly simplistic. The expiry checks from your browser analogy are in fact very important when reviewing a paper.

This is just not true; if nothing else, a review depends on the journal, as well.  I've even heard of referee reports that said outright "This paper isn't good enough for this journal, but it would be great for journals X or Y."

Henry is right.  Depending on the scope of the journal, some articles are more suitable for particular journals than others.  We actually had a paper submitted that was rejected by an editor specifically for the reason that he did not think that the article was of scholarly work but that it belonged elsewhere.  We submitted with no changes.  Whether or not the editor was right in his opinion that it was not suitable for the original journal is a matter of question.

@silvado Expiry checks exist because a page can change; they protect against continuing to load a stale one. This question is about reviewing a paper specifically when its authors refuse to change it.

@Henry: That's a different function: a function of the review (which doesn't change for a given paper) and of the journal. For the same paper and same journal, it should be the same.

@Kaz: So you agree that the function depends on both the paper and the journal, and so in the case being asked about - where the paper is the same but the journal is not - the review might change.

Serious issues need to be addressed. If it is good enough for X or Y without the flaws being remedied, then such advice is tantamount to saying "they will take any old crap"

@Henry I see that now. The same reviewer is being asked to review the same paper for a different journal. That could be game changing. Say it's a math paper and the first journal is about psychology or veterinary medicine. So that gets rejected for being off topic. Then the same reviewer somehow receives the paper again, this time for a math journal. Now it may be a good fit for that, with no other issues.

Yes, resend your earlier review, just as verbatim as their MS. An explanatory note, no matter how diplomatically phrased, can be misconstrued / dismissed as you moaning and complaining, so I would not bother if I were you.

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


text:
How do recruiters consider parental leave in one's career path?
It used to be that mostly women would take maternity leave, and in the field where I work it would be accounted for by a hiring committee. Most likely, someone would say “yeah, there is a dip in X’s scientific production during years XX-XX, but that's around the time she got 2 kids, so it's not worrying”. It might not always be put very delicately (I heard of a committee member once saying “so, let's decide in advance: how many papers is one kid worth?”), but there existed some sort of positive bias.
Nowadays, more and more fathers take parental leave (around me, it seems to be usually 6 to 12 months when the kid is young). Thus, the situation is getting more complex. How do hiring committees in academia handle these cases? Should one consider a parental leave as “lost time”, professionally speaking? Or are recruiters in academia more understanding than that?

Edit: more specifically, I'm talking about the US system. I know that standards of parental leave are more generous in Europe than in a typical “welfare is communism” country :)  So, I am worried about how academic employers might react to a woman having a 2 years parental leave in her curriculum, or a father having taken a 6-month leave in the recent past.
Of course, the situation in others countries is also interesting… So please don't hesitate to leave comments!

I believe men and women are equal.

@scaaahu So do I, but I am not a representative sample of academic hiring committees :)

In most places, it is required by law that men and women are treated equally. Your question is probably location dependent.

To expand on @scaaahu's comment, this will be strongly dependent on the location. Americans tend to take significantly less time for parental leave than many other nationalities. Within the EU, there are significantly different social mores that vary by location. You'll have to specify where you're talking about to get a useful answer.

@eykanal yeah, I can see how that will depend on location… I have edited the question to be more specific

Although this doesn't fit into your question: Swedish universities view having taken parental leave as a positive thing. It even says so on the criteria written in job announcements.

@DaveClarke though it could be merely political correctness… written but not really applied

@F'x People already having taken paternity leaves may be less likely to take more paternity leaves.

The US hiring committees I've been on generally don't handle this issue, because it's mostly orthogonal to the hiring decision.  We can't legally discriminate on the basis of gender, age, martial status, sexual orientation, parental status, or fertility.  We can and do discriminate on the strength of the applicant's cumulative research record (including recent productivity) and their reputation in the research community.  Short gaps in an applicant's research record are inconsequential; everybody has off years.  Longer gaps, even if they last multiple years, can be ignored if their post-gap work is sufficiently stellar.  (And if their work isn't stellar, even without the gaps, why would we want to hire them?)
However, this is an issue that promotions and tenure committees have to address.  At my university, parental and other leaves extend the tenure clock, and tenure/promotion decisions are based on the candidate's cumulative record since their last promotion, not their cumulative record in the last n years for any fixed value of n.  The committee usually knows that the candidate's clock was extended, because we can figure that out from their CV, but we are usually not told why, because it's none of our business.
There are many reasons why a researcher might take a leave of absence / stop their tenure clock / have a gap in their publication record.  I've seen all of the following:

Parental: having or adopting a new child (either or both parents)
Medical: serious injury or illness, of either the researcher themselves or a close family member
Bereavement: death of a researcher's spouse, child, or other close family member
Entrepreneurial: building a startup company
Administrative: holding a service position, either at the university or elsewhere (for example, at a funding agency)


text:
How successful are publication agreement addenda?
I work in the field of chemistry, where some of the prominent publishers have very invasive (or restrictive) copyright transfer agreements. Thus, I'm considering the use of amendments (or addenda) to publication agreements, such as the one proposed by the MIT libraries. However, I don't really want to spend a lot of time on an unwinnable pursuit, so I was wondering: is there somewhere a decent review of the success of such amendments? I expect that it may vary from publisher to publisher, and from field to field, but is there any data at all? (My own searches couldn't turn much.) In particular, what about the “big names”, such as Elsevier, Wiley, etc?

Interesting. The MIT addendum seems heavy-handed but I like the message it sends to publishers: "This thing you are asking the authors to sign away also belongs to MIT, and MIT will not sign away its rights and forbids its employees to do so also."

I am 1/3 (all submissions to applied math journals).  I gave in in two cases since they have lenient author rights policies anyway.

I finally managed to take a bit of time today to research this question further, so here goes:
First, there hasn't been much data compiled on the topic. Science Commons's FAQ on publication agreement addenda says:

Anecdotal evidence from a variety of sources reveals that many scholarly authors have had success over the years in altering the terms of a publication agreement. Sometimes this has been done by marking up the publisher’s agreement; other times the change has been done through use of an addendum. However, we are not aware of any statistical data concerning the success rate.

while the more recent Creative Commons Science page fails to mention success statistics at all.
However, we can measure the “success” of such addenda (or its influence) by looking at the reactions of various publishers to it. The MIT Libraries actually maintain a list of publishers and their stance. In a similar vein, the useful (and by now, well-known) SHERPA/RoMEO online database maintains a publishers statistics:

If you look at these lists of publishers/journals, and you cross that information with the hottest and most common journals in each field, you see that things are very field-dependent:

In mathematics, the status of publications is quite different from the other hard sciences listed below. I do not feel competent enough to comment on it, but it seems to be working okay, with most mathematicians able to publish preprints or postprints on their personal websites, or to publish outside the “conventional model” (read: arXiv). This summary of various publishers' policies in the field is quite good (and recent).
Physics: due to the success of arXiv and the open-friendly stance of physics publishers (both American Institute of Physics and American Physical Society), physics seems to be one of the favorable fields for open publishing.
Traditional biology journals tend to belong to the big-money editors, who don't favor open publishing. However, open journals seem to have made good progress in this field in the last few years.
Chemistry is simply a nightmare. Most quality journals in chemistry are published by the American Chemical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, Wiley and Elsevier. All four of them have taken a hard stance against the open publishing movement. Open access journals have very little (read: absolutely no) success breaking through in the field of chemistry :(

Above are the fields I felt comfortable enough discussing. I welcome edits (or comments) that add information on other fields (including humanities)!

So, all in all, statistics pertaining to publication agreement addenda specifically are hard to find (if they exist). But, we can measure the success of the open publication model, and it  varies widely between fields.


text:
Is Math GRE not worth it?
Finished bachelor's and master's in mathematical finance. Applying for PhD in math, which may or may not be in a university that requires General GRE or Math GRE
Based on my other questions (like this) and what I read online, the General GRE and the Math GRE are taken only as required for application or taken with the intention of possibly applying somewhere where it is needed. Like a high grade helps little in admission but a low grade helps a lot in non-admission.
So showing a high grade in Math GRE to a school that doesn't require it in general would be all the more not very helpful in applications?
Let's say I apply to a set of universities in different countries where none of them require any GRE.
It seems to me that the only reason for someone to take for example the Math GRE other than being required is to strengthen your application based on your bachelor's or master's not being math.

Are you asking if the Math GRE is worth taking if it isn't required for any of the schools you are applying? And are you asking if you should send you Math GRE score or mention it in applying to programs that don't ask for it?

Given the answers and discussion from your other questions on various standardized test (including the Math GRE), what is new in this question?

In my experience, folks who had higher math GRE scores had much greater success gaining admission into various programs. I would challenge this assertion that it is not helpful in gaining admission.

@BrianDHall Yes. No, not really, but any advice would be helpful

The vast majority of math Ph.D. programs in the US will require both the general and math subject GREs, so unless you specifically avoid those schools specifically, you probably will have to take them.  How schools use the GRE varies a bit, but for someone whose record isn't as strong, it can play a valuable role in reassuring schools, since it's the only thing they have which is uniform across schools and recommenders.
For schools that don't require them, they will likely assume that you have taken the subject GRE, and will assume that not sending in your score means it is really bad.  If your score is really bad (less than 30th percentile), then it's probably better to not send it in, but if it's not abysmal, then probably you should send in the scores.


text:
How should I ask for letters of recommendation whose strength is dependent on intended program?
TL;DR I finished bachelor's and master's in mathematical finance but want to pursue pure mathematics, particularly in probability theory. I'm not sure if I should apply directly for a PhD. I might apply for a second master's first.
I think the strength of the letter of recommendation (or whether or not there will be a letter of recommendation) from my professors may depend on the program to which I am applying. How should I ask for a letter in this context?

My past questions: 1 2 3 4

[Details removed following suggestion in comments]

So how might I ask for a letter of recommendation under this context? What I think to ask so far is to first request a consultation asking for advice in applying for graduate programs. At this point I explain I'm not sure if I'm going to apply for a second master's or a PhD. Then of course I ask for a recommendation letter. But how? These are what I have in mind:

Would you be uncomfortable writing me a letter of recommendation?

or

Would you be uncomfortable writing me a letter of recommendation? Would the strength of the letter depend on the program to which I am applying (whether second master's or PhD)?

or

Would you be uncomfortable writing me a letter of recommendation? Would the comfortability of writing the letter depend on the program to which I am applying (whether second master's or PhD)?

or

Would you be uncomfortable writing me a letter of recommendation? Would the strength or comfortability of writing the letter depend on the program to which I am applying (whether second master's or PhD)?

Uh... I think you are much more likely to get people to read your question and consider answering it if you remove the highly personal details in between "How should I ask for a letter under this context?" and "So how might I ask for a letter of recommendation under this context?" Also see this suggestion and this one.

Would you try another option? Get rid of the word "uncomfortable". Use the positive one "Would you feel comfortable writing me a letter of recommendation?" instead.

@scaaahu I am not sure I am comfortable with that. I used a tag question so that rejection word is "yes" instead of "no". well anyway, assuming I use "comfortable" instead, what else do you suggest?

I agree with @scaaahu that "uncomfortable" is a weird way to ask this kind of question, BTW. Anyway, you care about how strong the letter is, not how comfortable the writer is when writing it, so I'd go with "Could you write a strong letter" :)

@ff524 "would you have problems writing a strong letter?", "do you mind writing a strong letter?"...are there any problems with phrasing the question in a way that "yes" is the rejection word?

You sound like you're trying to make a sale, not asking someone for a favor. Whatever benefit you think you're going to get from this game of rephrasing the question, I don't think you're going to get it.

To me, the following progression seems more natural than either of your suggestions:

I am interested in further studies but I am not sure whether to go to a second masters or a PhD program from here. [Here is my background and here are my career goals.] What are your thoughts?

then

Do you think you could write a strong letter of recommendation for me for [the kind of program you suggested would be best for me]?

and then, if the answer is yes,

If I decide to apply to [the other kind of program], do you think you could write as strong a letter of recommendation for me for that program?

basically, the question I would ask depends on how it goes when I first ask for advice in general for grad apps?

@JackBauer Yes. Make your potential letter writers think you are actually interested in them for their knowledge and experience, not just their letter-writing ability :)

@ff524 ...assuming, of course, that you are, in fact, interested in them for their knowledge and not just their letter-writing ability.

@JeffE of course :P "What I think to ask so far is to first request a consultation asking for advice in applying for graduate programs."

thanks ff524 :) follow up question hahaha http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/72465 @JeffE


text:
When is it wrong for students to ask about previous exams known to change?
Variation of When is it wrong to look at previous exams?
Suppose students are taking a certain subject and are divided into classes A and B at different times but under the same professor.
Say the students are assigned an exam that is said to be sometime in a certain week. Is it wrong for the students of the other class B to ask the students in class A about the exam if they know that the teacher will change the questions in the exam?

I'd say that gives B an unfair advantage over A, and is thus unethical. If you want to make study tests available, use tests from past years so A and B have equal access to them.

@keshlam Even if it's different? I mean, the whole point of changing the questions is because of the assumption that students will talk, is it not? Btw, similar to the previous question, no mention of such is in the CoAI (I think). Well, what if such was the case? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everything_which_is_not_forbidden_is_allowed

@BCLC Yes, because it still gives an unfair advantage to students in the second class. Students should not be penalized based on which class time they are in. There's also a different between ethical and "not explicitly against the rules." Just because something might be technically allowed does not mean it is ethical.

@keshlam What unfair advantage is given? The purpose is to get an idea of what kind of questions will be asked similar to looking at previous year exams? Not all departments release previous year exams particularly if they are just minor quizzes.

@RogerFan 1 "Just because something might be technically allowed does not mean it is ethical." --> Why? 2 But it would be technically allowed if not mentioned in the CoAI? 3 Btw, what unfair advantage is given? The purpose is to get an idea of what kind of questions will be asked similar to looking at previous year exams? Not all departments release previous year exams particularly if they are just minor quizzes 4 "Those are the rules, there is nothing wrong with taking full advantage of them." http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/19440/21026

@BCLC Because students in the first class don't get to see what kind of questions will be asked, but students in the second class do. Doesn't seem like a difficult concept. That is also a very different situation, where someone with a diagnosed medical issue gets to take advantage of an explicit provision for people with that medical issue.

@RogerFan By that logic, people of year 2015-2016 have the same advantage over people of year 2014-2015? The purpose of the analogy is that if those are the rules, well then why not? How can it be right if it's not against the rules?

@BCLC As I said before, ethics are not the same as rules. There are plenty of things that are unethical but legal. In addition, every single code of conduct that I've ever seen has been open-ended in terms of defining cheating/unethical conduct. "Including but not limited to" is the usual phrase, which means that the code is not to be interpreted as an exhaustive list of prohibited activities.

This is an artificial issue, creating an unenforceable rule, stress for students, etc. The teacher should create a situation in which people have enough information about prior exams to (rightly) feel that they have an idea what will be on the upcoming exam. And if two exams are given at two times, they should not be identical, certainly. It should be arranged that students in the later exam should find nothing surprising or particularly in formative in seeing the first exam. That is, the marginal information content of seeing the first-given exam, with all prior exams visible, for example, should be close to zero.
Edit: it is never genuinely wrong for students to get information about past exams. It is not the obligation of students to "refuse" to give information about exams they have taken. It is not the obligation of students to "not ask" students who've already taken exams about their content. Students should be allowed to behave sensibly. It is, instead, the obligation (if any) of their teachers to create contexts in which the students do not have to worry about artificial (and extremely awkward) constraints on information.
Unenforceable rules create stress, trouble, and fatigue, to no good purpose. Students shouldn't have to think in such terms.

Agreed, but what exactly is your answer to the question?

Oh I didn't notice your edit. Still, same question.

It should be fine for students to ask each other for information. That should be taken into account in advance by the instructor, and perhaps even acknowledged. It should not be "required" of students that they keep secrets, nor that they risk accusations of collusion due to better or worse performance of their peers... without other evidence, etc.

The ethical answer for students is easy in this case: if it's not clear, and remotely borderline, ask the professor.  Ideally, ask the professor publicly, so that everyone hears the answer.
That said, the real problem is that in this situation, the professor should be dealing with this publicly in one of two ways: either clearly instructing the first class not to discuss the exam until the second class has taken it, or making the exam available directly to the second class (so as not to benefit students who have friends in the first class over those who don't).

Can a professor prohibit students from the first class to discuss the exam if no mention of such ability is mentioned "Code of Academic Integrity" handbook?

@BCLC: That really depends on the institution, but at most institutions, yes, that's a thing a professor can do (in the sense that students who get caught violating that could likely be punished and have it upheld by the relevant university bodies).  That said, it's hard to enforce, so it's generally not a great practice.

Henry 'ask the professor' --> but it's easier to ask exoneration than permission? If we do this 1st and are 'caught' then we can say 'hey wait a minute. why is it our responsibility?' if we ask 1st then then there may be a explicit rule and then we'd have to argue. in either case we argue but at least in the 1st place we've done it before the rule was made so we have an advantage. what's the harm?

@BCLC The potential harm is that the consequences of losing that argument are much more serious if you wait to after - instead of not getting an advantage on a single exam, you’re risking the consequences of being found to have cheated on it.

I do not believe that this is ethical, as it gives students in the second class an unfair advantage over students in the first. As keshlam mentioned in his comment, if you want to give students access to previous exams, then both classes should be given access to the same set of prior-year exams.
This is less of an issue if the exams are graded by separate professors (which does not seem like the case) or if the grades will be curved separately, though I would still lean towards it being wrong in the latter case.
Though, when it doubt, the answer is the ask the professor (as this answer suggests). If you aren't comfortable asking the professor this question, then that is a sign that it is almost certainly unethical.

It's not ethical as a one-timer, but can be ethical as a long-time trade. When one time group A has earlier exams and shares questions with group B, and next time it's the other way around, then it should be ethical.

You mean professors should alternate who gets the exam first?

It usually naturally comes to this. One time this group has this exam earlier and the other time it's that group. From what I know setting times and hours for exams [and class plans in general] is like trying to fit badly knitted sweatshirt on a live octopus - always someone protests, someone dislikes the schedule, someone is not a morning person and someone is very self-entitled to better hours because of something. I don't know where professors can have a luxury of scheduling their own preferred hours. So I wrote from this perspective - that exam order naturally changes anyway.


text:
Is it advisable to give a handout with the slides to the jury of my PhD defense?
I am preparing for my PhD oral defense in engineering. It consists of two parts: first, a 40-minute long (public) presentation; then, Q&A with the jury.
Question: Is it advisable to give a handout with presentation slides to the jury?
In such a document, there would be 2-3 slides per page plus a large margin so that the jury could take notes, as well as the bibliography with references I cite in the slides. There are about 30 slides, which are very illustrative (i.e. without complex equations, but rather made of diagrams with little text).
The pros would be to make it easier for the jury to take notes, follow the slides (slides are  projected above my head in the amphitheater) or go back if they missed a step. Moreover, most of the jury are not native speakers, and both the slides and the talk will be given in English.
The cons would be that they could be tempted to 'fast-forward' and/or get distracted instead of concentrating on my talk. (Even if I do acknowledge it's hard to be fully concentrated during 40 minutes straight.) They would also not benefit from the explanations (i.e. the step by step construction of diagrams using beamer's slides).

There are no fixed rules, neither by the University, nor by common practice in my sub-field. My supervisor has no opinion on the topic.

There's another theoretical con that they could apply more scrutiny to minor mistakes on the slides if they can continue looking at them after you've moved on, but I doubt that would lead to significant negative consequences in reality unless you really have a problem that needs to be addressed.

My answer: do provide the handout.
There are two cases that I considered before giving the answer:
Easy case
The answer is easy if handouts are traditionally provided at PhD defenses in your department. You do not want to spoil the mood of your committee by taking away something they are used to. They will not fail you over this, but who knows how they come up with any extra work they want you to do before signing the dissertation.
This is the case in my department; traditionally, each member of the committee is given a handout with six slides per page and a pen.
Harder case
If handouts are not traditionally provided in the department, I would still opt to provide them. To me, the pros you provided outweigh the possibility that a committee member gets distracted. Every professor in your committee has sat through hundreds of academic talks; if they want to pay attention, they will be able to do so.
Final note
Make sure that the handouts look good; this may mean making a separate version of your presentation for the handouts. Specifically, make sure that any animated slides show up well in the handout. Depending on presentation software used, animated slides tend to either get compressed into one slide on the handout, or split into dozens of them—either case is usually not what you want and needs to be fixed.

In my department, students usually give out a handout with slides to members of the committee. Many seem to find it helpful - they use it exactly as you said:

to take notes, to follow the slides (slides are projected above my head in the amphitheater) or to go back if they missed a step

They also use it in other ways - for example, if they want to ask you a question about a previous slide, they can refer to the handout to say "Can you please go back to Slide 5" instead of having you flip through the slides one at a time and saying "Stop!" when you reach the one they're looking for.
Some don't use the handout at all.
In all of the defenses I have attended, I have never seen a committee member get distracted by the handout, or read the handout instead of paying attention to the speaker.
So, based on my experience I would consider the handout to have some potential benefits, and very little or no disadvantages.

This doesn't take into account the psychological factor - appearing to be prepared in the first few minutes sets the tone for the entire encounter. This is true in all interpersonal interactions, but is especially important for high-profile meetings like a defense or an interview.

Since it's a PhD oral defense, I would say no. The jury has read your entire thesis and probably took notes from the text. They don't need additional material.
Note : This answer is only applicable for system where the jury received the thesis before the defense (obviously).

For information: In my case, the jury indeed received the thesis in advance (~2 months). Most of the diagrams presented during the defense are to find in the manuscript.

This also assumes that committee members will have read the thesis. In my experience, this is not a great assumption. In this guy's experience, too: http://www.thespectroscope.com/read/dont-stress-over-your-thesis-no-one-will-read-it-by-lenny-teytelman-318

@AJK in my domain and country, I never seen a committee member not having read the thesis. I've seen more than 15 defense. But this is certainly field specific.

I would be very (unpleasantly) surprised if the examiners had not read the thesis. I agree with Emilie's answer for the reasons stated, but I'd also like to add handouts are a sure way to distract your audience. If you really like the idea of handouts, give them out AFTER you have concluded your presentation. You get their full attention for your talk, and they get to peruse and question slides when appropriate. Best of both worlds.

@Rapscallion If you'd hand me the slides afterwards I might assume you forgot to hand them out beforehand. I'd typically use printouts of slides to take notes during the talk - if I use them at all. So getting them afterwards would be useless to me. It's something different with a summary handout, sure, that fits perfectly at the end.

80percent of case, examiners DONT read a thesis

@SSimon as I said, this is highly field/country dependent. All my examiners had to  provide a written evaluation of the thesis before the defence. The comments and questions they wrote made it clear they read the thesis.

@Emilie it is called peer reviewed thesis, I heard that some have it. not all very rare

Print the handouts, staple them, put them somewhere visible on the table at which the opposition panel are to be seated, facing up.
If the opposition panel members want them, they'll take them. If they don't, they won't.
Problem solved without even deciding whether they should or shouldn't have them.

@NajibIdrissi: A conference room without a table?

@NajibIdrissi: Oh, so many mini-tables. Fine, then put a copy on each mini-table. Or on an empty seat next to them. You're kind of splitting hairs here.

Providing slides is probably excessive, and as you suggest, may be distracting. You've already avoided several potential issues by minimizing text and equations in your slides. That being said, if your goal is to aid your audience in following your presentation's flow, provide a single-page outline instead of all slides. (Or, even better, incorporate such an outline into the presentation and skip the printouts.)

An outline does not need to be a single slide. I have seen outlines incorporated quite well as headings, icons, and/or minimal animations.

No one in our department ever handed out printouts. I did not hand out printouts and did not experience any issues.
To address some of your pros:
The pros would be to make it easier for the jury to take notes
-- In my experience, the jury takes notes just fine on the notepads (which I'm sure they'll have if they are interested in making notes). Additionally, making comments on particular slides is easy to facilitate by including slide numbers in the corner of the slide (I have to imagine there is an easy option in the Beamer package to do this).
follow the slides (slides are projected above my head in the amphitheater) or go back if they missed a step.
-- The will ask you to show them something again if they are curious about it
Moreover, most of the jury are not native speakers, and both the slides and the talk will be given in English.
-- But they are working in an environment where english is being spoken, right? I'm sure this is not their first defense or scientific talk, I think they will likely be ok
I think some of your cons are likely. I think they will indeed be tempted to look ahead and may miss some of what you're saying while they are flipping through it. I think for sure it will give them extra time to scrutinize your printouts, which I definitely would not want. I also think having the papers there and seeing my jury flip through/ahead while I'm speaking would have been very distracting for me as well.
Unless it has been standard practice for other defenses in your department, or you have some compelling reason to provide it, I would skip them. I will echo what someone else said. If you are going to do this, you'll need to make a special "slide printout" version of your presentation. Slides that reveal things bullet by bullet (especially if each bullet reveal is a new slide, which for beamer I imagine it is), will need to be compressed into a single slide. This will also be confusing then, because they'll say go to slide #5, but it won't actually be slide #5 for you, leading back to just not providing printouts.


text:
How was this weird paper accepted?
The following paper was published in Annals of Medicine and Surgery.
How to approach supervisors for research opportunities
It has nothing to do with medicine or surgery.
How can one think of submitting a paper like that (to such a journal)? And how can one accept a paper like that?

I don't get it. What's wrong with it? Not all articles in a journal have to be about primary research...

Given the number of questions that we receive here on how to approach supervisors, I wouldn't call such a paper "weird". And probably before submitting the authors had contacted the editor to verify the possible interest of the paper.

Not a duplicate, but somewhat related question here : Is Obama's JAMA paper OK?

@Eppicurt: "What's wrong with it? Not all articles in a journal have to be about primary research... " - but typically, all articles in a journal should be on research from the general subject area covered by the journal. The linked article is not secondary research on medicine or surgery, I think it is rather primary research in quite a different field (hmm, social interaction-something?), even though it may be using (teaching related to) medicine or surgery as a case study.

I humbly suggest to call this type of publication a boat programming paper.

@O.R.Mapper medical journals also cover practice. They are professional journals, not exclusively for research.

@Fomite: As explained in my other comment, I am not convinced a purely organisational aspect of studying medicine could reasonably be counted as "medical practice".

PLoS Comp Biol runs an entire article type called 'Ten Simple Rules', a lot of which are similar to this: http://collections.plos.org/ten-simple-rules

Interestingly, the second reviewer (review freely accessible from the OP's link) also considered that AMS was not the good venue for this article.

There are many things which don't make any sense at all which seem to win world records, and lots of stuff you realize that is great that gets refused. You just have to learn to live with that. The world is a huge bowl of confusion. And that by design.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this question is related to a specific journal and its internal policies rather than academia.

It has nothing to do with medicine or surgery.

I fully agree, and this should probably rule out a publication in a venue focusing on these topics.
However, the crucial detail here is probably that the journal in question includes a little more than these topics. According to the Guide for Authors:

As a general medical and surgical journal, Annals of Medicine and Surgery covers all specialties, and is dedicated to publishing original research, review articles and more all offering significant contributions to knowledge in clinical surgery, experimental surgery, surgical education and history.

(highlighting by myself)
Arguably, the paper in question is covered by the topic of surgical (or otherwise) education.

It has nothing to do with Medicine or Surgery.

This will come as a surprise to the large number of medical students, medical and surgical interns, etc. who are interested in getting some experience in research, either to broaden their base of knowledge or with the mind to transition toward academic medicine.

How can one think of submitting a paper like that (to such a journal)?

You think "Here is a pressing question some people in my field have encountered..." and, for something like this, you likely contact the editorial office to make sure it's of interest. Or you submit to a journal that has a consistent track record of publishing papers on the practice of their subject.

How can one accept a paper like that?

Having been a reviewer on similar types of papers - once the editor has decided it may be of interest you read it over, make sure you think the content is accurate and it will be of interest, make any comments you might have, and submit your review. Other times, the review is internal.

If the editor(s) of the journal think it is of interest to the readership, they are at liberty to accept it. If you're unsure what a journal is/isn't interested in publishing, you can usually email the editor and find out!

@thomasfedb I mention doing exactly that...

Just thought it was worth emphasising @Formite

"This will come as a surprise to the large number of medical students, medical and surgical interns, etc. who are interested in getting some experience in research" - by the same logic, a list of traffic signs would be on-topic for the journal, because medical students and surgical interns might want to drive to their institution by car. It's well possible the journal accepts publications related to some topics not directly in the research focus, but "some people in my field have encountered [a given question]" does not seem sufficient to establish any kind of general topic.

@O.R.Mapper Oh, come on. There's a world of difference between a question that many medical students have wanted to ask about the practice of their field and a question they have wanted to ask about some random other subject.

@DavidRicherby my thoughts exactly. Especially given medical journals are not only research journals, but often involve professional practice in one form or another.

@O.R.Mapper I said pressing question. Getting into research is a somewhat opaque process that can change careers. Your example...is just being obtuse.

@DavidRicherby: I'd agree if the topic were interdisciplinary, somewhere between studies of medicine and studies of teaching. That might, for instance, be the case when presenting teaching or learning techniques specifically suited or developed for conveying professional medical knowledge. But I do not see this connection to "the practice of their field" when it comes to purely organisational or social aspects that also happen to occur during studies of medicine, such as how to contact a possible supervisor.

@O.R.Mapper I'd argue that they are distinct, and indeed interdisciplinary, because the practice of medicine and medical research are not perfectly overlapping. The vast majority of MDs will have done little to no research, and it's not an expectation for their degree. There are also nuances in things like funding for people who also have clinical duties. It may also occur outside a formal degree program (interns, residency, etc.) and the answers are highly specific to the medical field.

@Fomite: "The vast majority of MDs will have done little to no research" - this sounds like how to contact a supervisor is even farther from medical practice than from medical research, and thus even more off-topic. I definitely see why the information in this paper could be relevant and interesting both to medical researchers and to medical practitioners, but that alone does not determine the field the paper belongs to, especially because - other than maybe the mention of PubMed - this particular paper seems to be pretty generic and not at all "highly specific to the medical field". ...

... At least, the advice given therein more or less matches with the various bits and pieces of advice about contacting supervisors in any field here on [academia.se].

@O.R.Mapper Something doesn't have to be exclusively useful to a field to be worth publishing in a particular journal in that field, especially one that has a wide catchment area of people in different career stages.

@O.R.Mapper Your "road signs example" is hugely contrived, and not even in the same ballpark as being interested in gaining research experience.

@O.R.Mapper Have you read enough of the paper to observe that it is written specifically for medical students?

@JessicaB: I have read the entire paper and except for the mention of PubMed, it is entirely unspecific to medicine. (Obviously, terms like medical student and various medical topics are used as examples, but these could trivially be substituted with terms from another discipline without changing anything else about the paper.)

@O.R.Mapper By that logic (to borrow your phrase) no methods tutorials belong in these journals either, as there are no medicine-specific regression models.

@Fomite: If it is as you say (I do not claim to know any medical papers on regression models), I tend to agree. Indeed, one of the biggest problems I encounter every now and then during literature survey for CS research is that some generic concepts are first presented in the context of very specific use cases in a paper from another field (rather than as an abstract, reusable concept, with references to related, abstract concepts).

From the journal webpage:

Scope of the Journal

Audit Projects
Case Reports
Original Research
Reviews, Commentaries, Letters
AMS covers the whole of medicine and surgery - clinical and basic sciences

It would be an unusual article in a journal that only published research articles, but some have other types of entry as well, and this is one of them.

@O.R.Mapper The first page of the paper classifies it as "Review".

@MassimoOrtolano: That makes things even more baffling, given that a review article typically reviews other works. This is corroborated by the Authors Guide that places review articles in the category of publications that may have more references (up to 50, or even more with editor approval) - while the paper in question has zero.

@O.R.Mapper reviews also must have clear introducing and concluding sections

To me, the article in question falls squarely under the 'Commentaries' listing, not a review. Still, as pointed out elsewhere, articles of broad interest to the journal's community are covered by the journal.

@JonCuster I feel like an article titled How to ... falls squarely into the How To type article. That said the journal has 16 different article types, and as long as it is not labeled Original Research I am not sure that readers really care.

This is really very common, especially in high-impact journals that expect to have a broad readership. Science and Nature routinely run editorials and news articles on many aspects of scientific and non-scientific culture.  PNAS includes little biographies of their members. Journal of Virology includes comments from its editor (for example, "the change that is under way in scientific publishing").  A 5-second skim of various medical journals turns up recent papers on Racism in Medicine (Annals of Internal Medicine), Staying Current in Medicine: Advice for New Doctors (New England Journal of Medicine), and so on.
Many journals, especially but not only those published by Societies, see their role as serving their membership more broadly than simply stolidly publishing research. The "advice to a young doctor" theme, like the one the question refers to, is particularly common; Pubmed lists several hundred.
In sum, this is absolutely normal and extremely common. If you read journals for more than a year or so you will see dozens of similarly-themed articles.
(Nature in particular notoriously used to run April Fools articles; I don't think they still do, particularly since a researcher claimed he had spent significant money following up on an April Fools article, since in his country he had never heard of the April Fools tradition.)

You said that this is really very common, but all the examples you gave are related to medicine.

@qsp You are wrong.  Two of the four topics I explicitly listed are non-medical (publishing and members' biographies). Science and Nature write on many topics.

@iayork Agreed. I'd argue most of your examples are medical specific.

Two of seven examples is not "most". Journal of Virology, PNAS, Nature, and Science are not "medical specific". You seem to be reaching to make some kind of obscure point here.  Is there something in the question that says "Ignore medical journals"? Is there some concept that says "Anything with 'ology' in it is scary and must be medical"? If you have a point, make it, instead of complaining about something that is (1) wrong and (2) irrelevant.