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IRB-questionable research from places that does not require IRB process: How publishable/contributing?
Some entities, when carrying out research, do not strictly require Institutional review board (IRB) approval (or may be doing the whole thing in a place where IRB does not exist).
If we believe that a piece of contribution has ethical concerns that may fail an IRB inspection but see no IRB requirements on both where they are from (where they work) and where they are going to (where they publish),

Is it OK

to endorse this work?
to use this work in another research (without ethical concerns)?
to use this work in another research that requires IRB approval?

What should we do?

Who is "we"? A publisher or other.

In the situation that raised this question, a reviewer, but I think this question applies to other groups of people (publisher, reader, general public) too.

"Is it OK to use this work" is opnion-based and, I believe, much debated among philosophers.

What's IRB ? I mean I can guess and Google, but I haven't come across this acronym before.

@Marianne013 In this context, IRB is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_review_board  .

@xxbidiao Could you please add the meaning of IRB to the question? Comments sometimes disappear.

@Stef I see. Added the meaning of IRB.

"What should we do?" Consider all actions carefully and make an informed decision. Don't let strangers on the internet dictate your actions.

It is (or should be) a principle that any research involving human (and some animal) subjects should be subject to prior independent ethics review, such as is done by IRB structures. If you are reviewing for a reputable journal, I would expect (or at least hope) that the journal has such a requirement on anything they would consider publishing.
Whether they have such a requirement or not, you would be wise to note the lack of a statement of ethical review in anything that you examine. Let the editor know that there is a missing, ethically required, piece.
If you seem sure that no review was ever done, rather than just a missing statement, then you would probably also be advised not to review the paper further. Ethical constraints on such research isn't something that can be patched up after the fact. People have died. People have died horrible deaths after long illnesses. Doing such research without independent prior review is not ok.
Note, of course, that there are some kinds of research that don't require IRB approval. But it is usually an ethical board that makes that determination. See this for example.

This certainly good for e.g. medical testing, and other subjects where ethics review is clearly crucial.  However, there’s a large range of fields/topics where it’s now standard but much less essential — e.g. a linguistics study where human subjects just read a word-list into a microphone will still require IRB review at many US/European institutions today.  In such topics, “if no review was done, don’t review further” seems a bit overly strict — it’s not unreasonable that some institutions, especially under-resourced ones, draw the line of requiring review lower than others.

Just to be clear... doing research that results in death isn't bad because of the lack of IRB review, its bad because someone died. Research isn't automatically bad because IRB didn't rubber-stamp it.

If you are asked to peer-review human subjects research, and the paper does not state that the research was approved by an ethics board, you must recommend that the paper be rejected.


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My professor thinks I deceived her, but it was miscommunication on my part. Should I send an apology email?
I will try to keep the situation short, but I am currently not on the best of terms with a graduate school professor.
The term is over now and I have been on good terms with her until today. As part of this course, students must attend an extra set of lectures outside of class and write a very brief report (mainly as proof we had actually attended and analyzed the topic). There was one lecture I was unable to attend due to a conflict with a class and thus informed my professor (in person) on two occasions. She had told me that she would upload the transcript for the presentation online. Yesterday, I had read the transcript and submitted my brief report.
However, she soon contacted me via email and requested I call her. During the phone conversation, she had accused my of deceiving her by pretending I had attended the lecture. I had explained to her that I had read what she posted online as I was unable to attend it. She said that, since I had not explained this in my email, she does not believe me. I do not think our phone conversation ended very well.
This is a very "subjective" course in that her opinion determines our grades. I am wondering if it would be wise to send her an apology email clarifying that it was simply miscommunication on my part?

Is it possible for you to meet with her? This sounds like something better discussed in person, because there dies appear to be a communication issue. Also, is there another faculty member you're on good terms with who also knows her, that you might approach for advice?

Unfortunately, I do not know any faculty member that know her. She does not come into school very often at all. Now that class is done for the year, I doubt she will be at school for the remainder of the year. She has had an experience with a student decieving her in the past, which I think may have made her look for it.

Then it seems like the best you can do is email that apology. Make sure you're not defensive, and that you acknowledge a mistake, even though deception wasn't your intent.

@Jeff is right, a meeting in person is more approachable. But do not worry so much about this. What do you mean by "This is a very "subjective" course in that her opinion determines our grades."? In my opinion, this is the real problem with your professor.

@MikeyMike What I mean is that there are no quizzes or tests where there is a right/wrong answer. This is a very small class (15 of us) and she marks based on her own view/opinion. Thus, there is opportunity that, if she is not fond of me, to take that out on my papers.

Can you get the other class's professor to write a short note that yes, there was a conflict and that you attended the class that day?

By the way -it isn't uncommon for professors (or anyone) to have a hard time remembering what students 'tell' them in passing  in the hall, or in classroom (when they are busy trying to get lecture going or packing up). While it may seem more respectful to 'tell' the faculty in person, the respectful thing to do is to talk to them when they have their 'calendar', 'to-do' list, note-taking handy (i.e., talk to them when they are in their office so that something in writing can be generated - or mention it in class, but do a followup email that they can have for later).

Since the term is over now, you can indicate the issue as a concern through the department. You can tell them about your situation which makes you uncomfortable, and recommend them to avoid issues to other students in the future.

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What tasks can undergraduates research assistants do effectively in the social sciences?
I'm a new faculty member and I have a number of undergraduate research assistants. I'm having trouble using up all the hours that they are assigned to work with me. Most weeks I run out of tasks to assign. I don't want to assign busy work, and want their work to be exciting and rewarding for them, and valuable for me.
Literature reviews with a clear structure seems like a reasonable task. Data cleaning or analysis could be reasonable, but only if the student has appropriate training. If I were running data collection, I could train an RA to do daily quality checks. I don't run a lab, but I imagine for people who do there would be good jobs there for undergrads.
What other jobs do people see as potentially valuable for undergrad RA work?
I recognize that this will vary by field, and from student to student, but I'm very curious to get people's thoughts and advice on what tasks to assign to undergrad RAs to benefit both me and them.

Why do you have URAs if you don't have a need for them?

Saying I run out of tasks for them is not to say I don't benefit from them. I have found their work to be helpful so far, but I'm sure I can make better use of their time. Also, more UGs are now asking to work with me as URAs and I want to be able to say yes. So I'm looking for ideas.

Gotcha. Your "assigned to work with me" made me wonder whether you had a certain number of URAs that you had to manage each semester or something. In my departments, it's up to PIs to accept applicants. Expectations might be different if you had to take X hours of URA labor vs you hired four and now are winding down.

Are they paid or for credit?

They get credit. Once I agree to take them on as URA they are required to work a certain number of hours each week as part of receiving the course credit

Are they required to take research credits to graduate?

No, just regular ol' credits that can count toward getting enough total credits to graduate

Ask your colleagues. If this is common in your department they should have suggestions.

Yes @EthanBolker I'm chatting with them as well. Curious for the input of a broader community as well

This runs the risk of becoming an opinion-based question, since it's not entirely clear what tasks you have already made them do, and what kind of tasks might actually benefit you. It's also not clear if your university privileges research work, or if they are mainly trying to prepare students to work in companies, etc. So I can only offer my 10 cents.
I would say that there are 3 crucial abilities that undergraduate students should develop from the onset: (1) the ability to organize their ideas in a coherent, focused manner; (2) the ability to communicate those ideas to other people who are coming from a completely different background; and (3) the ability to have an adequate understanding of what is going on in other fields outside of social sciences. It might just be me, but I am sensing that students are reading nothing but social sciences, and are dangerously ignorant of other fields.
My proposed task would be a variant of the literature review activity: get two students to search and select one book that introduces methods from social sciences and history, applying them to real-world cases. Get them to read at least a few chapters, and have them make a Powerpoint presentation (10 minutes). Get another 2 students, have them find a book that merges social sciences and digital humanities/GIS, and repeat the process; then get another two people for a book on social sciences + natural sciences/STEM, and so forth... Then get all students to meet regularly, and have each group present their book to the other groups. Have them discuss how each field looks at data differently, what are the merits/demerits of each approach, and so forth. Get them to hash out ideas with each other as much as possible so that they may reach a decent understanding of various fields, and how social sciences can productively interact with such fields in order to solve real-world problems, and build bridges between people of completely different backgrounds.
One last recommendation would be to have them understand the basics of Appreciative Inquiry to help them comment on each other's work, and not just have them learn about Critical Thinking, which often becomes just an excuse for finding flaws in other people without offering constructive solutions or advice.

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Funding (mathematical) theory research in a computational world
I'm a postdoc in engineering who is interested in doing more "old school" mathematical theoretical research than computational research (i.e., running large simulations on a computer). Theory seems to get negligible funding in my area, but computational projects seem loaded with funding. I haven't seen any hard data on this, but my impression is that theory in engineering broadly seems to have been in decline since the 1970s or so.
The research project I'm working on right now is mostly computational, as were the vast majority of postdocs that I applied to. In the past few years I haven't seen any postdoc position in my area that was primarily theoretical.
How can one fund theoretical research these days? Am I wrong about getting funding for theory being difficult? It could be that few try to get funding for theoretical projects.

This is in my view irrelevant to the question but based on my experience talking to people, I know some will wonder. Why I'm interested in theory in short: Computational research in my area tends to produce very expensive pretty pictures of little value. Theory in contrast is cheap, and frequently of comparable accuracy to far more expensive computations. It also returns a lot of information that is uncommon (and often difficult to obtain) computationally like global trends and insight into the structure of the problem.

Research in string theory is very mathematical, but gets a lot of funding from private donors who look for some meaning in that theory. They also get funding because they tackle "big questions" like the formation of the universe. So, if I were you, I'd look for areas of theoretical math that are well funded compared to yours and see what is it they do differently. Or you could just pair up with some computational counterparts on projects you do the theoretical stuff.

Where is this? Funding differs in different places.

@Buffy: US, but I'm interested in advice relevant to anywhere in the world.

You say theory gets little funding even though it is cheap.  Funding agencies say theory gets little funding because it is very cheap.  It produces results without funding.

@AnonymousPhysicist I'm sure that some people would continue doing experiments or computations if those areas had as little funding as theory does. Then those areas would look very efficient. So I'm not really sure what you're suggesting. My point was that theory (unlike computation) involves no expensive equipment like supercomputers and consequently will cost a lot less.

"some people would continue doing experiments or computations if those areas had as little funding" Yes, about 1% of physics experiments would continue.  It's a much larger percentage in social sciences, and social science experiments get lower funding for that reason.  I don't think your point makes sense from a funding agency's perspective.

Theory is cheap: that’s a problem if your organization gets overhead on grants.  If you are an admin, would you rather collect 40% of $200k or 40% of $20k?

I nearly did an Applied Math PhD (ended up just doing an MS) and there were a lot of analytic projects with physics and engineering applications. You couldn't avoid a computer completely, but a lot of work around PDEs, just to give one example, is still largely analytic until you have to use a computer to check how good your approximations are and that sort of thing. Do you think it would be possible to collaborate with a mathematician, physicist, or anyone who does more analytic work? I know my department really liked to collaborate with engineers.

Any chance you can convince some part of some industry that your research is interesting? Maybe you will recall various interesting research done by IBM or other large companies. Research that, at a shallow level of thought, seems to have no connection to the business of the company.

The cynical ---but probably correct--- answer is that you camouflage the research you want to do inside a grant application that focuses on the research they want you to do.  So in the situation you describe, where computational projects get loads of funding and theory-work gets negligible funding, you could construct a theory-based project, add a computational element to it, but then write up the application in a way that makes it look like the computational element is the major part.  In fact, given the situation you describe, you are probably lucky that your existing work is in the hot area, and it would be best not to squander that advantage.
When I worked in a school of physical sciences in Australia, there was a running joke among the academics there that if you wanted funding for your project in mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, oceanography, etc., all you had to do was add something about climate-change into it.  So if you gave a talk on your research, sometimes one of the academics in the audience would use the question period to (jokingly) ask if you could connect this to climate-change, even if your topic had nothing to do with it.  This was because the funding preference at that time (and still now I think) gave high priority to research on climate change, but low priority to much other scientific research.
Now, this is just the cynical answer, and I'm not sure if the academics in my department actually acted on this kind of reasoning, or if it was just the running joke around the traps.  Similarly, this is not something I've done myself.  In any case, I've seen this attitude around and seen anecdotal evidence of it being applied to secure funding.  It shows a recognition that it is much easier to get funding for some things than others, and the strategic response that this provokes.

This answer might be both cynical and true: identifying eventual applications of theory requires a wide knowledge of the field. The problem with many theoretical projects/papers is not that they are theoretical, but the fact that the authors do not bother to learn anything beyond a very narrow topic.

This is a technical answer for the US.  As a research administrator, I have submitted more than 100 applications for Computer Scientists at a world-class university in the last 6 years.  I have successfully justified tens of millions of dollars across various fields of CS-- data science, AI, HCI, CNS, theory, etc.  I have applied for funding to about 15 federal sponsors and dozens of non-federal ones including Silicon Valley.  I hope to draw some distinctions between the CS and more classical math tracks, but please know that some of what applies to CS applies to math too; however my direct experience is mostly with CS and not math (which does have less funding overall).  Lessons that I impart among all new faculty (and even some senior folks):

Applications to federal sponsors are no longer based on one person's research.  Teams and centers are the new normal.  If you want to go solo, there are still some options, e.g., NSF has the CISE Core Programs (our theory folks tend to fall under CCF, primarily under AF "Algorithmic Foundations").  However, NIH has nearly eliminated the solo R01 project--interdisciplinary teams are nearly always more compelling unless you are applying for a small project (R03), or a class like DP2 that focuses on a single PI's research.  The average age of getting an R01 as the PI (the basic independent research grant) is famously old -- mean 44 y.o., median 42 y.o.  So this all being said, I find that my current CS folks (mostly AI and HCI at present) are always part of teams.  They can cobble together millions of dollars over 5-10 funding sources as part of these teams.  It's all about taking a small to middling chunk out a large project.  It is possible that you have to contribute to a topic that you are less interested in, but often my folks work with hospitals who have may get 75% of the budget on the application.  For us, 25% of a multi-million dollar application is still a lot of money for one project.  My folks are almost always subcontracts or non-lead collaborators (i.e. "Co-PI" for NSF).  I have someone who is a sub on DOD MURIs -- that is a lot of funding for the individual, but only a small percentage of a huge application.  You have to figure out your niche; find people who will plug you into their projects.  A junior PI can be very well-funded by playing a small role on other people's projects.  In my institution, it is customary for senior faculty to give their name to a junior PI's project (i.e., senior PI is lead PI helping fund junior PI's work), and the senior PI prioritizes 1 month of supplemental salary for the junior PI as well as giving them a graduate student or postdoc.

Be sponsor independent.  CS faculty tend to apply to NSF of course, but they also find ways to hook into various DOD sponsors, NIH, DOE, Census Bureau, really any agency with a solicitation, their skills are probably valued in some small way.  Again, $50k here, $300k there, it all adds up.  You have to figure out which agencies fund basic research and through what mechanisms.  You can search for open solicitations across all of the US government on grants.gov.  If you are interested in US gov't contracts, you want sam.gov.  I suggest finding PIs in your institution who can tell you what they submit to.  You can also look them up online to see some of what they have been awarded (often on their own websites).  Funding is a relationships game.  I know folks who are friendly with the Program Officer/Program Manager, and this is how they get their funding.  They know when to apply; they know what the agency wants to see in applications.  They write for this relationship and they get the funding.  This is very common with DOD, DOE, and NASA; somewhat with NSF.

Unlike in the wet labs, funding in CS is based on paying higher salaries and low to no "other direct costs".  We generally don't put computers on grants because too many projects run on them to spend time allocating percentages.  Some faculty get cloud computing resources donated.  We instead write $500k grants to fund our very large indirect cost rate as well as postdocs starting in the $70-75k range plus about 25% in fringe.  That doesn't go very far.  We want to compete with Silicon Valley, but we can't.  This is the best we can do.  This is actually about $20k above the NIH minimum for postdocs.

When considering building a lab, I tell my faculty to consider two types of resources in particular: money and their time/patience.  I have a PI (HCI is the focus) right now with over a million dollars (NSF funding split over about 5 grants, non-lead on 4 of them).  I have to help them figure out how to spend in two years.  This PI has less than 5 years as an assistant professor, with 2 years under COVID. Their postdoc just got a new job; they have two graduate students in their lab, one is 90% funded by a fellowship.  What are we going to do?  I have told them to hire at least 2 postdocs, but I won't let them hire just anyone.  The reason is that CS labs tend to be small, especially ones bent on theory.  At my institution, the theory labs like intimate groups and PIs do not expand them even when they are funded.  So I ask my PI how they handle bad relationships -- if they are willing to part ways with a bad hire.  If they hire someone who is just passable, they will have mediocre results for two years (possibly a third), and will end up feeling drained by having to support a postdoc who is supposed to be helping relieve the leadership role.  So what can we do then if we don't hire a middling postdoc?  I ask them if they have colleagues with students or postdocs who they can support on their project.  Maybe a graduate student in a theory group, perhaps an ML person, etc.  We chip away at that funding with small percentages on different projects, and this is the essence of successful resource sharing in CS and theory groups that I have found.

So what I would do is go to NSF's award search and look into what projects are funded for what you are interested in.  Look up the PI's websites and see if their proposals are released on their site (not super common, but happens).  If you really want to look at a successful application, you can submit a FOIA request to read the proposal that was funded.  [ETA: Some folks feel you should contact the PI first and ask if they will share the proposal.  If they say no, then you can submit the FOIA.  Many PIs will share when asked.]  Pay attention to the directorate.  Are your people applying to the traditional MPS (Mathematical and Physical Sciences) or are they getting their funding through CISE (Computer and Information Science and Engineering)?  If you are interested in total dollars each directorate and program awards, that information is available as well.  Hint:  DMS (Division of Mathematical Sciences) is not where the money is at.  I highly suggest finding a person whose work you admire, looking them up in the NSF award system and seeing if you can find someone on a big center (e.g., AI Institutes, STC) and do a FOIA request to see how that person was written into the application.
Try to strike a balance between doing what you love, which may come without a lot of funding, and being willing to do something you don't want to do for much more funding.  Find a research administrator at your organization and ask for advice.  To your point about theory being cheap; that's a lot of your problem.  IHE's (institutions of higher education) fund 9-month appointments for the PIs; they do their thing during the year; maybe in time hire a grad or two with startup funds, and they don't need a lot more than that. A bio-engineering PI would fail within months with a setup like that.  The CS/math world is a much lower-stakes game (no judgement there; it just is).  You don't have to deal with buying consumables, user fees, animals, human subjects, capital equipment, etc. etc.
Best of luck.  The funding road is hard for everyone; even the top PIs.  They spend more time thinking about funding their lab than you can possibly imagine.  You are never "set".

I'm not sure how the situation is in your particular area, but the usual life cycle is of a particular research direction is: people get spectacular results - get famous - get funding for students, postdoc etc. - get even more results - get into funding panels, editorial boards etc. - even more funding flows - ... - Lee Smolin and Peter Woit write books about them the direction is exhausted and people move elsewhere.
Theory in contrast is cheap, and frequently of comparable accuracy to far more expensive computations - if so, then there should be recent high-profile breakthroughs in your area with theoretical methods, recognized by the community. Someone who just made a breakthroughs would not be short on funding. Why not apply for postdocs with them?
If there are no such recognized breakthroughs, then it seems that the community sees the importance of theoretical methods in your area differently from you. Likely there is a reason for that. But it might also be that you are right and they are wrong; a way to convince them is to start publishing strong results obtained with theoretical methods by yourself.

A lot hinges upon how correct you are about the greater accuracy of theoretical results. If theory is demonstrably more accurate/insightful, an idea would be to create a comparative investigation. Ask for computational resources in the grant, keep some money aside for theoretical work, and use the study to highlight the superiority of theory.
The problem could well be that many in engineering do not actually believe that theory can efficiently solve real-world problems faster than numerical simulations. Changing that perspective would be key to you being able to follow your chosen direction.

Fund is a harder question than to be applicable to. Plenty of new mathematics has been invented in the process of helping undergird and understand the techniques of approximating simulation techniques first invented by engineers and physicists without a great understanding of the fundamentals first. Having the aide of mathematicians may speed up or make more trustworthy the results of new and experimental techniques in computing and simulation.


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Is it worth applying for a job to community colleges in the US as a foreigner (no visa)?
Would a small college (e.g., community college) in the US be interested in employing some PhD graduate (as an instructor) that does not already have a visa? Would they bother do the bureaucratic work needed?

The part about your chances is off-topic, since we don't know you and can't predict future for you. The part about visa may be on topic here, but probably better in expatriates.SE.

Sorry, I meant if it makes sense applying to community colleges without a visa assuming I can get accepted. It is the visa part I am concerned about, i.e., if such a college would be interested doing the bureaucratic work needed (I am not sure if it is easy or not to hire someone like me that does not already have a visa) to hire me. Do you think I should post my question somewhere else?

I have posted my question in exapatriates SE, but I think my question should stay here as well (at least for now) since it would provide very useful information for recent PhD graduates that want to start their careers.

Most community colleges don’t have the staff to process an H1B work visa. Given that any job posting attracts dozens if not over a hundred applicants (even at a community college) and given that they only need teachers who are good and not necessarily “the best” — there is no need for them to hire foreign labor.

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Having worked in industry for a few years, do I need someone from the industry to recommend me when applying for MS in CS by thesis?
During my undergraduate studies, I published a paper and gained some experience in research. Unfortunately, I didn't take up my higher education immediately but instead worked in the software industry for 3 years straight.
At work, my nature of job did not involve any research. However, I became passionate about solving a group of problems which I encountered and discovered that there are several active fronts in research. I have decided to go back to academia and apply for a MS in CS by thesis program.
As letters of recommendation are an important component to gain the admission into a good university, I have been sceptical about getting a recommendation from someone in industry since it is for a thesis based program. Will an admission committee of a university be interested in reading a recommendation from someone from the industry or would it be advisable to get all my recommendations from my professors (it's been 3 years since they worked with me)?

Have a read of other similar LoR questions - https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27695/recommendation-letter-from-a-non-phd-referee?rq=1, https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/59548/is-a-letter-of-recommendation-from-an-employer-useful-when-the-company-has-shut?noredirect=1&lq=1, https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/60751/us-master-admissions-lor-academic-vs-employer?rq=1, https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/78552/letters-of-recommendation-only-from-employers-and-managers?rq=1

@Poidah, thanks for sharing these links. They are pretty useful.


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Should I take OSAP (student loans) even if I can pay for my tuition?
This is something I have been pondering for a while. I am currently in my second year at University and my program comes with mandatory Co-op throughout the 4 years of study. I have completed 3 Co-op terms already and those have covered my expenses and tuition for each term at the university. I understand that not every Co-op will provide enough compensation every time but my parents are ready to support me where and when needed.
OSAP is a government program which funds students doing their post-secondary education in Ontario, more here. The loans are interests free until the student has completed his education. Then the interest rate is as follows:

On the provincial part of your OSAP loan, the rate is the prime rate
  of interest plus 1%. On the federal portion interest rate can be the
  prime rate of interest plus 2.5%.

So my question is, should I apply for OSAP and receive their funding and save what I earn from Co-op? Or is it better to not receive any OSAP funding?

This question might be a better fit for Personal Finance & Money SE.

I have a feeling that an accurate answer to this question would be too localized. In other words whether or not taking loans makes sense is very dependent the country/state in question.

I also considered doing this, though I didn't (more from sloth than anything else).
As I understand it, from other students in Ontario, you can pay back the entire OSAP loan in a lump sum at any time. Since the loan is interest free, a rational investor would take out the maximum amount allowed, put it in a risk free asset, and pay it back as late as possible, pocketing the interest.
Now, interest rates are low right now, and OSAP needs a lot of paper work. Being in debt can also be stressful for some people. If you are sure that you won't need any OSAP money, then perhaps the $100 or so you'd make per year in interest is not worth your time.
Also, note that borrowing money now, and then paying it back early will often cause the provincial government to lower your future OSAP payments - since you clearly didn't need the whole amount.

I also heard about the "use OSAP as a free investment" comment from a few people, but this was back in the DotCom era. Nowadays I'm not sure if you'd make your 1%/year back in a consistent time frame. (I didn't get OSAP either.)


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Should a student use the email account provided by the university to communicate with professors?
I am an undergraduate and I do not know much about the rules of writing an email.
The email system used by our university is not convenient at all: it responds slowly, often crashes, and its common to miss important emails.
I need to email profs in our school and other universities.  Is it necessary for me to use the email account of the school? Can I use my personal gmail account? Is it informal or impolite?

In Gmail, go into the Settings (click on the gear icon).  Click the "Accounts" tab.  Under "Send mail as" click on "Add another email address you own."  Follow the friendly on screen instructions.

The issues you are listing are surprising to me. What kind of organization has such a sketchy email service? It's not the 1990's anymore. It's a major problem if students and affiliates are obliged to use commercial alternatives for the university-related communication. Make sure to report these bugs to the appropriate department.

You can use a different email client such as Thunderbird, if you don't like the web-based front end.

In the cases I'm familiar with (U.S. universities), using your own e-mail account should be completely fine, subject to some obvious caveats.  One is that it's best to have an e-mail address that doesn't look foolish or offensive.  People sometimes choose very strange usernames, and you don't want that to reflect poorly on you; furthermore, you should make sure your e-mails include the name your professor knows you under.  Another issue is that if you are asking for sensitive information such as grades, your professor will likely be unwilling to send this information to an outside account without some verification that it belongs to you.  Finally, you should make things simple for anyone you correspond with.  For example, if you use several accounts, you should check them frequently or forward one to the other, so that there are no delays if someone sends something to an account you didn't expect.
One common solution is to set up your university account to forward to your private account, and to set up that account so you can send e-mail listing your university account as the sender/return address when necessary.

The sensitive information bit is important in the US and probably elsewhere, too. My understanding of the rules I work under (i.e. my understanding of HR's understanding of FERPA) does not allow me to send grades to any account except the official university provided one.

In addition, be aware that no matter what address you use, your professor will likely default to your university-issued one (it's what their email client will autocomplete, or what Blackboard-type systems will have on record for you).
If you're emailing a professor from another university, I suggest using your university address. Grants you more legitimacy.
Gmail makes it easy to set up the system Anonymous Mathematician recommends in the last paragraph. You get to use the gmail interface, but with your university email address.

@dmckee: Universities vary in their interpretation of privacy rules. My last institution had a rule that grades could not be sent by email, period. Technically this is reasonable but it was rather inconvenient.

@NateEldredge Well, certainly. That's why I invoke HR's understanding. In any case, I never send grades by email on my own initiative, but if students ask for them over that channel I oblige.

I have linked two gmail accounts before so configuring gmail to use your university email address seems the most effective solution.  When setting it up, be sure to send some test emails to make sure they go where you want them.

In the UK, universities are very strict about information they will release -- for example we would not tell someone which courses a student was on.
This means that any email that comes from a non-university account must be treated carefully -- if by replying I appear to acknowledge the sender's name, and that they are taking my course, I have just illegally leaked confidential information.

FERPA in the US also has rules against releasing to third parties whether a student is in a class.  Who knows whether an email from another address is really the student or is someone pretending to be the student to get information?  It’s not just the law it’s also important for student safety.

At our institution staff are instructed to respond to student emails from non-university email accounts by asking the student to resend from their official university email account.  This provides some confirmation of the identity of the student.

This depends entirely on the rules of your university, the preferences of the respective professor, and your own long-term convenience:

The possible conflicts with rules of the university have been explained by the other answers already.
The respective professor (or whoever you are mailing to) may have specific preferences, as well. As an example, I have met professors who generally announced to delete any e-mail that does not come from a university account, and who explained they'd consider students who e-mailed him from a third-party-account, especially by a free provider, personally responsible if their [the professors'] addresses became known to address dealers to be sold to spammers or phishers. If you intend to have some oral exam with such a professor, it would seem like a good idea to respect that preference for university addresses.
As for your own long-term convenience, that depends on how far you want to separate "work" (studying) and your private life. If you are ok with professors keeping your (private) e-mail address indefinitely, then there's no problem; if you want to keep the option open to "discontact" some professors when you leave the university, on the other hand, you can conveniently do that by only using your university address toward them. (Similarly as to work settings, where you might only hand out your permanent, private address to a few select colleagues when you quit a job.)

Lastly, I wonder what you mean by stating that the university e-mail system is not convenient to use. Is it just the web-interface? Do they not offer a POP3/SMTP or an IMAP interface that you could connect to with any e-mail client of your choice?

Setting up POP3 or IMAP access to either or both accounts, could improve the reliability especially after you become familiar with the software.  If you store the emails locally be sure to have a backup of them somewhere, possibly on the email server.

Use of University's Email Address or Personal Email varies on content being communicated in the email.

If you are communicating about your assignments or discussing something in the capacity of being a student, e.g., discussing topic or classes schedule, you should prefer your University's Email address to communicate.
If you are inquiring something general, e.g., Admissions information, fee structure, etc., you can use your Email. However it would be better to use your University's Email.

This answer seems to completely lack any justification for the recommendations proposed.

Quality email software can automatically prioritize email from certain domains especially internal domains.  Emails sent or received from a non-university account are more likely to go to the professor's spam box or get buried by other incoming emails.

Why???  Downvote due to offering no explanation.

I don't agree. As long as my students receive emails I send to their uni accounts, I absolutely don't care which address they use when writing me on any matter.


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Words to avoid when talking to a blind student
I am currently supervising a visually impaired student. I noticed that quite often I use phrases such as "from X, we can see that Y" or ask the student to "read paper X" or "you need to look at your maximization problem", etc.. Once the sentence hangs in the room I immediately feel awkward. The student is of course capable to perform what I mean. The student can understand that "from X follows Y", can "listen to paper X", can "revise the maximization problem", etc.. Nonetheless, I wonder what the guidelines in such situations are. Should I refrain from using these words? How would a student who is visually impaired want to be treated?

That's an "ask two blind people, get three answers" question. It depends on the person. Most of the affected people I know are in the "say whatever you want, just don't oblige me to soothe your awkward feelings" camp, but they're also low-vision, not blind.

Some blind people I know deliberately use seeing-related phrases, like "You should have seen his face!"

Those are all "non-literal" uses of your eyes. In my experience they should be fine and no reason to feel awkward. Anecdotally, I had a blind person studying with me and once was sitting with him and other together, solving assignments. He was great at maths. At one point I turned to him for help saying "could you look at that real quick". He smiled and answered "Sure, but that won't help." After I apologized he said that it was actually more of a compliment, that I was seeing him as any other person.

Some people might find this question offensive because it seems to imply that blind people do not understand metaphors.  They have the same knowledge of metaphors as everyone else.

@AnonymousPhysicist people who find questions about how to be considerate offensive are probably impossible to please.

They want to be treated as normal - so phrases like “it can be seen that the result changes X “ are fine but “ take this and divide by this” are not if you are pointing at numbers for example.
One of my friends who is in a wheelchair will say "I walked down to..." it's just part of "normal" conversation...

Most English words referring to visual concepts also have broader meanings
Most/all of these words/phrases in English have at least one broader meaning than you are using here (but sometimes also the narrower meaning you are using) that would encompass non-visual forms of the concept at issue.  Your narrower interpretation of the word takes the visual version of the concept, which excludes blind people, but there is often a broader meaning that encompasses non-visual analogies to what your narrower interpretation.  Even in the absence of the latter, communication is highly dependent on context, and the context of speaking to a blind person will generally make it obvious that you intend to refer to non-visual versions of the concepts at issue.
For example, one of the narrower meanings of the word see is to "perceive with the eyes; discern visually", whereas a broader meaning for that word is "discern or deduce after reflection or from information", which encompasses discerning information through non-visual means.  Similarly, the word read is broad enough in meaning to encompass the comprehension of meaning from non-visual sources such as tactile symbols (e.g., Braille).  In both these cases, the concept can be interpreted in its broader meaning to include non-visual referents for the concept, which are applicable to blind people.  Moreover, even in cases where the formal definition of a word is strictly visual, and so would exclude a blind person, the context of speaking to them would imply that you intend to use the non-visual analogy of whatever concept you are talking about.
So, for this reason, I would not stress about your use of words when speaking to a blind person --- if you speak the same way to them as everybody else then the worse that will happen is that you will occasionally use a visual concept/phrase which is implicitly intended to refer to its closest non-visual analogy.  I can't speak to the feelings of blind people on the matter, but I suspect that most of them would like to be spoken to just like everyone else, and they are probably extremely adept at interpreting visual concepts to their non-visual analogies.  In my limited experience, some blind people have gone to the trouble of developing witty self-deprecating humour to respond to speakers who accidentally invoke a purely visual concept when speaking to them, so if you do make a mistake, you might even get to hear a funny retort and have a good laugh together.  (Also, as pointed out by nengel in the comments, this may be an "ask two blind people, get three answers" question.)


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Doing a second PhD in different field instead of a Habilitation
I just started a 3-4 year Post-Doc position in Department A, to work on a topic on the border between two fields on which they also work in Department B.
In some European countries the usual situation is to do a Habilitation in A.
However, theoretically it is also possible to get payed by department A, and working on projects for A, but doing a second PhD department B as an external PhD candidate (as if i where in an external research institute), in stead of doing a Habilitation in A.  Doing a "external" PhD, at an other place than the supervising Professor is quite common in Germany, Italy and a few other EU countries. But only if the other place is a research institute or company, doing that in another university group, or university is very uncommon/rare, especially when it is about doing a second PhD.
I am not easily persuaded by uncommon/rare by itself, so i would like to know the pros and cons of taking this unusual path?
Honestly only see more advantages (more collaborators, shared expertise) especially for topics that are on the border between two fields. A Habilitation can easily be waved if you have enough publications. It seems to me that a second PhD in B will later make it easier to change fields to B, beyond only the topics on the border between A and B. On the other hand i do not know any people who did something like this. And i can not really predict the consequences or reaction of such a unconventional route. And i also do not want to freak out my new boss by mentioning this idea, if the majority of you would consider it as very inappropriate.
What are the pros and cons of extending your research field by doing a second PhD in another direction stead of deepening while doing a Habilitation in the same field?
EDIT: The current Position is in Germany. Although i would be interested in staying in Germany, i would also like to hear about perspectives on this for  other countries. That also makes the value of the question more general.

@Maarten Buis. You are right, i edited the question to add this information. I am in Germany, but in general curious for implications of such a path in other countries to. Because later i might move.

If you can convince someone to be your advisor for a PhD you should be able to convince the same person to do research with you in the same field without doing a PhD. What is the point of having another PhD? If you want to show that you can do x and y, it should be sufficient to have published in x and y.

As has been covered in other questions e.g. Is doing two PhDs a good path? or After PhD in Aerospace Engineering, could I be admitted into a top university for a second PhD in Computer Science?, there is rarely a need to pursue a second PhD to change fields. Once you have acquired the basic research competence, you can shift fields at any point in your career (as indeed you are already doing by publishing in a CS field).
Moreover, the volume of research required for a PhD thesis and a Habilitation is quite similar. Rather than going back and doing a second PhD, would it be possible to start pursuing more collaborations with the CS department and publishing CS research, so as to eventually obtain your habilitation in CS? Or interdisciplinarily with research from both fields, if you would like to keep your options open?

Shifting the field of publications is one thing, getting a position or funding is another. It was not easy at all to get a Post-Doc position in another field, even with some publications in the new field (but not of the same quality and quantity of a native PhD in the field). I think that such a situation is common for the few working on the border of 2 fields. The requirements for funded Post-Doc positions are obviously different that the requirements for a PhD Positions. The idea i am asking about is to have a position at one department, but do the PhD (or Habitation) in another.

Well, you're going to have to talk to your current department to figure out how much CS research you can do before they stop funding you (maybe not in quite those words). And talk to the CS department how much research you have to do before they start funding you. Hopefully there'll be a point where the two cross...

Ofcourse should talk about this with the involved people. But since the idea is new, unusual, and because i am still new in the department, i was hoping to get some advises here in advance.

In Italy for example, if you have a scolarship for a PhD you can't do a second PhD with another scolarship. So you will work other 3 years without any refund.

The position is funded by a project. I am in Germany, but in Italy it could be for example the hypothetical situation that you will have an assegno di ricerca, or Ricercatore tipo A, for 3 years at an engineering faculty, but at the same time you try to do the doctorate, as an "external" PhD student at the Computer Science department (as if you were in industry, or a research center). The idea is to do the work and publications both for the Project of the funding and for the second PhD.


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Citing published papers while using their pre-print versions
Is it unethical if we cite a paper with mentioning the publication venue (e.g,. author, "paper title," journal name, year) when quoting or mentioning some idea from it, while we have not even seen the paper in its final published form and what we have read is indeed previous versions of it (e.g., because we got it from the author's homepage, arXiv, etc., which are not copy-editted and may have some differences with the final version)?
If yes, what is the solution? (Having many references without any publication venues and e.g., by mentioning the url of the file we have, makes our paper ugly)

All journal style guides I've seen allow for compact citing of papers on arXiv and similar using the identifiers they provide (which are really not much longer than a volume/issue format), you don't need full URLs or anything, so I think that concern of yours makes little sense. I think there is still a good question here about citing preprints when you don't have access to the final version.

But I think not mentioning the venue names and just citing many arXiv papers is odd. Have you seen such a paper!?

arXiv is a venue.

But, here, by venue I mean e.g., conference or journal name. Have you ever seen a paper that has e.g., 100 references and 80 of them do not have any conference or journal names? I think it's against the norm.

arXiv is cited similarly to if arXiv was a journal.

What is the solution? — Read the final published version.

I'm going to answer from a (theoretical) computer science perspective.
For historical reasons, in computer science, the "published version" of the paper is likely to be much lower quality than the arxiv preprint. Conference proceedings typically have terrible page limits. Usually 8-12 pages are allowed, but I have heard of 4-page limits. Formally, the published version is not a full paper, it is an "extended abstract".
The standard practice in has become to cite the conference paper but to read the full version on arxiv. It's the only thing that makes sense given our publication system. I rarely bother to find the published version of papers I cite, even if they are readily available.
If it's standard practice in computer science, I struggle to believe that it is unethical in other fields. The arxiv version should be good enough and, if it isn't, it's the authors' responsibility to update it (or withdraw it).

I would be careful of citing one version while referring to a result in another. It has happened before that an ArXiv version contained a result that a preliminary version did not, or that the ArXiv version indicated a problem/bug with the result in the older version.
The reason one should be accurate about citations is because they are essential to understanding the context of your work! If you don't cite accurately, you may be shooting yourself in the foot.
Think of this from the perspective of a future grad student reading your work and trying to retrace your steps. If you refer to a version that does not contain the updated result then the student will be (rightfully) confused by the situation. They may disregard your work, or misinterpret your findings.
I had a similar situation happen to me: we had an updated version on ArXiv with a much better result. A paper came out that rediscovered the same result - I was the one reviewing it, and had to point out to them that the ArXiv version already contained that result...

This approach might result in only citing arxiv, if that is the version people find most useful. That's not really a problem, but it makes you wonder what the point of publishing is if no one cites or reads it.

But this may result in a paper that has e.g., 90 references, among which 80 are arXiv or homepage papers. Do you think an editor accept that? Or, even do the authors themselves feel happy with that?

It’s not about feelings, it’s about proper citation of sources

If results appear both in ArXiv and conference cite the conference. If just in ArXiv, cite ArXiv!

I don't believe there would be any ethical issue. But it is far better for your work and the work of others who read your work if you cite some final, official, version of it. The other versions may well disappear.
If you are in the stage of paper preparation, you can depend on a period of time to update any tentative references if better versions of the papers become available by the time you need to produce a final version. Your tentative citations are likely good enough for your reviewers, but it is better if you update them for final publication if at all possible.
But if an author publishes something, even informally, you can certainly cite it. If you cite things found on the web, however, and for some other places, include the date at which you retrieved the information in the citation. This lets future readers know that things may have changed.
But you should only cite something to which you actually have access and have read. If you read A but cite B there may be a minor ethical issue, but a larger practical issue. Things may have changed and you don't know about the changes. You could wind up both looking foolish and misleading people.

Can you clarify whether you are suggesting they cite the preprint or the final version? My interpretation of your answer is that you are saying it's okay to cite the preprint when a more recent/final published version exists; I think the OP is asking if it's okay to cite the final published version when they have only read the preprint - those are different questions.

The question was about the ethics @BryanKrause, and I don't see a problem. But I also answered about the advisability, which I think is problematic. I'll update a bit to clarify.

At least in the case of arXiv, even if the version you cite isn't the "final official" version, you still have pretty strong assurance that it won't disappear.

"But you should only cite something to which you actually have access and have read." This goes against standard practice in mathematics, where people do cite a lot of sources they haven't ever managed to locate. The honest solution is to be explicit about it ("We were informed that the theorem was also proven in [Antedeluvius 1839], but have not seen this source" or such). Likewise, you can cite a journal paper but refer to "[15, arXiv version, Theorem 3.2]" from the main text of your article. If editors or referees mangle such references, it is their fault ...

... (though, to my knowledge, this doesn't happen near as often as editors mangling bibliographies).

(Agreed, though: This is 100% not an ethical issue.)

@darijgrinberg, what you are describing is hearsay. I have no problem with it when so labeled, but it is hardly a true citation. Euclid once proved in Elements.... It is valuable to do this, of course, as it aids other researchers, but it seems to be a different category.

Yes, hearsay isn't anywhere as good as sourced information. Still, it is the best one can give in many situations. Most attributions in mathematics are hearsay (and often false); being explicit about that in your paper is already a significant improvement.

Citing the published work is to be preferred and to do so you should have read them.
In case this is a problem due to paywalls, there are several possibilities:

Ask the authors to for a copy. Most publisher provide a pdf to the authors that they can (and are supposed to) share.
Ask the authors to update their preprint. Some publisher allow this and sometimes it is even requested.

Do really all the authors who cite some papers in their papers have access to the final version of each paper (possibly pay for them), and they see themselves responsible for reading the latest version of each paper, before they cite it? I guess many of them, if not most of them, don't. According to this can we say that it's acceptable and ethical to do so because many, or most people, do that?

If someone asked me for a copy of my paper that is available on arxiv, I'd either ignore the email or send them a LMGTFY.

@thomas That's kind of rude (unless the arxiv page states that the arxiv version is identical to the published one and in that case you could just say that in your email). I guess in most cases the arxiv version is not identical to the published one.

@Shayan I'd say they should  Well, I for one try to read the exact version I am going to cite - it is just too often that the preprint and the published version differ (even the numbering may differ, which make citing the wrong version a headache). As I wrote: people should always cite the version they read.

And, what should they do when they do not have access to the final version? Not cite it at all!? (Probably in many cases an email to the authors is ignored)

I would assume the opposite: In most cases an email to the author is not ignored - you are likely to get cited, at  least. Backthe days, people had pre-printed postcards with their names on and a pre-printed text saying something like "Dear sir or madam, may I request a copy of your work..." so sharing papers has a history in academia - maybe it's forgotten...

@Dirk I am very happy to share my papers. That is why I put my papers on arxiv. I disagree with your position that only the official published version will do and anything that is not identical is unacceptable. If someone requests my paper, I will point them to the arxiv version, not the official published version, even though these are very different.

@Thomas So that seems to be quite field specific. I am in math and we also use arxiv a lot, but I try to keep the arxiv version as close to the published one as possible. If they differ, they are (in my view) different resources and one should cute one, the other or both according to what was used. But again, this may be different in your field.

But journals may forbid authors to put the final proof-read version on arxiv.

@shayan Maybe some, but as I wrote in my answer: Many publisher allow this. So I would encourage you to just ask the authors.

Yeah.  Just cite the authors and as much detail about the paper as possible.  If you know the eventual journal, say "submitted" or "in press" or whatever describes the status.  (These words make it obvious that you did not have the final version.  Also it covers you if the thing never makes it through.)

I've never seen a reference cited as submitted or in review anyplace but a CV for someone's own papers.

@Bryan Krause: I've seen "submitted to" many times, maybe 5% to 10% of all published papers I've seen (in mathematics). Nearly always these will be to a publication by the author (or one of the authors, as the case may be), but I have seen a very occasional reference to someone else's paper as submitted (more often, in the case of another author's paper, it will be something like "manuscript" or "preprint"). Also, I did a google scholar search with a well known math notion and got quite a few hits.

@DaveLRenfro Thanks for the correction; seems like it might be fairly specific to math, though.

Normal in material science and chemistry in my experience. Even "unpublished" (e.g. for a manuscript from students a couple years ago, never sent in).

This does not really work. Editors will ask to replace, or have their assistants replace, the arXiv references by journal references for all papers that have been published. If the journals versions differ from the preprints significantly, your citations may easily lose sense. Of course, the editors then get the blame instead of you, but it's not much of a difference for readers :P

I would cite to the eventual journals.  It is understood by anyone, even 20 years later, that a submitted paper or even in press paper might not make it through or might have changes in authorship, venue, etc. Even "in preparation for J. Umpti" or whatever (see that a lot in self cites).  So what.  Better is the enemy of perfect.  Not citing something is a lot worse than making an imperfect (because perfection impossible) cite.

I have seen references to 'submitted' papers in my field (glycobiology) as well, generally it refers to a result that is known in the specific research group but not perse by the same authors. This happens especially if the group focusses on a specific field/subject


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E-mail address of the conference organizer is not valid?
Currently, I am trying to find a suitable conference to submit my research work for them. I am trying to get in contact with the organizer of this event to answer some related question regarding appendixes and extra attachment in submission.
So, I just searched for the contact person email and sent him my inquiry. In fact, I got a feedback email from the mail system indicating that no user associated with this email address!
I even tried to get in contact with a professor who is involved in this event. Unfortunately, no reply since the last week. I've even mentioned why I am contacting him not the main organizer since the announced email is not working.

In fact, I have submitted my research paper to their platform and I managed to answer my questions by myself. But I wonder how such a thing is possible.
Normally, what is the proper way to contact them? I tried by email as I said before but no one answers. I tried to call them but they don't have an English speaking person.

The mail is not valid and they do not have any english speaking person but accept english work to be submitted? That does not sound good to me.

@skymningen yes. In Germany it's work like this. Becuase the organizers are some people from management while the professors the only who can speak English.

No, honestly. I am from Germany. It does not work like this, if it does it is highly unprofessional. "No such user" looks quite like a scam where someone made up a university mail address (because they are usually standardised) that does not actually exist.

@skymningen Actually as we are international students, NO-ONE can deny that Germans don't use English as other countries do and even if they know, they will express it differently. In fact, this question is not about Germany nor any land, it's all about how can an organization put an email to an international event with non-valid email! you can try by your self. http://webintelligence2017.com/

I am not going to discuss with you the opposite problem I have had of international students not being fluent enough in english. I still think this has large warning signs all over it about being a scam. Where I work, even the secretaries are nearly all multilingual (at least one other language spoken besides German and English). Who is organising an international conference has to speak English, in any other case I tend to disregard the conference as scam.

@skymningen the only reason I am writing for them because of my German supervisor desire, he wants me to publish with them since he is doing the same over many years. So, it is not scam!

Let your supervisor contact them if he knows them well.

@skymningen will be considered as a waste of time...

I guess it depends on how badly you want to get in touch with these people.  If it's very important, you could spend a few days learning the basic phrases you would need in the target language.  Also, explore the People section of the appropriate department(s).


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When do researchers decide to be listed as last author?
As I see, most if not all Ph.D. students strive to be listed as the first author of the research paper, then followed by coauthors and finally the Prof who is responsible for the lab.
While I am checking my professor previous publications; I noticed that over the last 30 years my professor name slides from being the first author to second and lately the last-mentioned name in the affiliation list.
For my understanding, the first author is always the person who contributed the most to the manuscript. So when/how do these professors decide to stop being first authors and be listed as the last author?

This is very discipline dependent. And even within disciplines there are differences. I have colleagues who cannot imagine how one could publish with co-authors. So they are always the first and the last author. Even if multiple authors is acceptable, the meaning of the order differs from discipline to discipline: If you don't have a lab, then the last author cannot be the prof responsible for the lab...

In my field (atmospheric remote sensing), there is no tradition whatsoever for the Prof to be listed as the last author.  So your statement is a bit too strong in the first sentence.  As @MaartenBuis stated, it depends.

You need a coin... heads tails etc....:)

Related questions: When is it most appropriate to transition from first to senior author?,
When is it appropriate for a post-doc/grad student to be the senior author, and What author position on publications is best for early-career academics in physics: First or last author?

This depends a lot on the field, but for many sciences and engineering the following is (at least to some extent) true:

The amount of work invested into the manuscript decreases with position in author list.
The amount of responsibility/funding for the project increases with position in author list.
If a publication has many authors, the ones in the middle are probably the ones with least significance.

The first author usually wrote the most of the manuscript and submitted it. These are PhD students. For some programs, first-authored publications are a requirement, therefore it is desired by many PhD students to get the first place.
The last author(s) are usually the supervisors and professors overseeing the research effort. They probably took part in discussions, maybe even drafted some text. In most cases, they just supervised the process/project. The "big boss" will most probably be the last, though.
For everyone in between, the contribution can be very diverse. It could be someone who did experiments, someone who helped by discussing the matter (mostly these people get an acknowledgement, not authorship) or in some cases even everybody who worked in the building.
Therefore, in an average academic career where somebody progresses from PhD student to professor, they will advance in the author list. This is because they do less practical work and more coordination and organisation. This is some kind of established system that has no written rules to it. I know of professors who demand they be the first author on every publication of their PhD students. While strange, it is not forbidden.

In Australia, only the first point is legal.  The bottom two do not qualify someone to be a co-author.  That is in theory, but in practice, all points are valid until such time universities enforce the policy.

I think I can say that for all of my papers, I have contributed equally with all of my co-authors, and so the order of authors on my papers is not determined by how much work I have put in. Rather, I have always subscribed to the idea that the person who stands to gain most from it should be first author. In my case, given that I'm a full professor, I let my students and postdocs be first author (in all but a few of my papers). I've been doing this since I was an assistant professor -- I had my position secure and knew that I would get tenure, and so it was my job to make sure that others get the benefit from these papers.


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Do the yearly (worldcomp) conference recognized by Scientists?
I am planning to submit for a conference that organized by the (World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, & Applied Computing https://americancse.org/events/csce2018) located and held every year in the US. Looking at their invited speakers over the last 10 years, they managed to attract many top scientists from NASA, SAP, Google...etc
The conference that I am planning to submit my work for named The 20th Int'l Conf on Artificial Intelligence (ICAI'18) and ranked-B according to Qualis. After I checked the dblp database, I noticed that they stoped indexing the Congress proceeding on their website. Do that indicate or reflect any bad signs?

Have you tried asking your supervisor or colleagues if they think this is a good conference?

Yes, they refused it only because it not ranked by Core rank. I do not believe that their judgment is correct...

I have trouble deciphering exactly what you mean - the title : do you mean "is X conference recognised" or should you "do" ie go to that conference as it is recognised?


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Makeup exams and posting solutions
Suppose you are an instructor and you have given a (midterm or final) exam. This is a substantial portion of the grade; a student who misses it has little chance of passing the class. (I have in mind a college course, but maybe this a question in high school as well.)
Suppose that a few students don't show up for the exam. Of course, if the students were ill or had personal emergencies, you would like to give them a chance to make up the exam. You send them an email after the exam, but hear nothing back for a few days.
After those few days, you grade the rest of the exams, and would like to return them to the class and post solutions online so that your students can learn from their mistakes
However, if any of the students who missed the exam will later ask for a makeup, then they will have the advantage of seeing the solutions. While you certainly wouldn't give them an identical exam, it seems like this would still be a substantial advantage.
What is the fair thing for you to do here?
EDIT:
I thank Peter K. for commenting. However, the referenced question is about a quite different situation; it has nothing to do with discussing or posting solutions for the rest of the class.

Peter K. - Thanks for commenting. That question is about a quite different situation though; it has nothing to do with discussing or posting solutions for the rest of the class.

OK!  But all the answers are still relevant, I believe.  As they speak to the same issues you raise (just not directly mentioning solutions posted).

Related: Are Identical Make-up Exams Fair?

I am not sure what you're asking. You send them an email after the exam, but hear nothing back for a few days. and then After those few days, you grade the rest of the exams, At this point, what's the reason you don't fail those students who did not show up for the exam?

Don't give the same exam as a makeup exam.  Rather, write a separate exam to use for makeups.  Even if you haven't given out a set of solutions or returned graded papers, students  who took the main exam are likely to have shared information about the exam with students who need to take a makeup.

Thank you. How long would you wait to hear back from a student before allowing them to take a makeup exam? I suppose this is the fairest thing to do, but I still find it rather unfair that the makeup students get to see complete solutions to a (different but necessarily quite similar) exam.

I don't give makeup exams without an excuse that has been certified by the Dean of Students.  Sometimes these excuses come in very late in the semester, and I've sometimes had to give makeup exams months after the scheduled date.  However, once the semester grade has been posted it's final and there isn't any further opportunity for the student to request a makeup exam.

@Anon it depends on what the syllabus and departmental policies say.

@Anon: "I still find it rather unfair that the makeup students get to see complete solutions to a (different but necessarily quite similar) exam" - unless this is the very first year during which you give the class, wouldn't students have seen exams from previous years, anyway?

This might surprise some but young people don't use email that much. Yes they have an email address and yes the will send you an email because they know that that is how you communicate. But they rarely check it because of the spam and the other ways of communicating that are available to them. If I need to talk to a student I literally have to talk to them face to face if I don't reach them through social media.
I would suggest waiting to give the exams back until you have literally spoken to the students who missed the exam. After this you can make a decision that is fair for the context

Hopefully you are providing your students with enough review material that they understand the format and content of the exam such that seeing an additional complete exam (with solutions and feedback) will not provide an advantage. If that is not the case, then you need to address that and not when you will post the solutions.
The other thing to consider is what the concern about "advantages" are. As a teacher, the goal of the exam is two fold. To accurately assess what students know and provide feedback to the students so they can improve. From this vantage, it is quite possible that a student who has additional review material specific to the test is actually at a disadvantage since the grade and feedback will not reflect what the student knows.
The "advantage" you are probably concerned with is if the student's grade will be artificially inflated. Keeping a level playing field regarding grading on make up exams can be incredibly difficult. Again, the presence of a solutions to a past exam is essentially irrelevant to solving the issue. Further, while the student taking the makeup exam may receive a benefit, it does not disadvantage the other students.

Thanks for this answer. You are right that the format and content of the exam is not meant to be a surprise in any way. I will likely follow both your and Brian Borchers' advice.

Here's what I do.
For midterm exams, complete answer sheets are distributed immediately in the next class session; but no makeup tests are given for any reason. I give 3 such exams throughout the semester and drop one of them to mitigate for any illness, etc. If you have only one midterm and went on the same path, you could consider replacing the midterm with an identical final exam grade.
For final exams, makeup tests are possible up to halfway through the following semester (by college policy); but final exams are not returned and answer sheets are never distributed (again, college policy: completed final exams are kept in a Vault maintained by the registrar on campus for 1 year, in case of disputes, etc.).
The more assessments you give, the easier it is to have a "no makeups but drop N" policy, I think, which supports immediately handing back tests with feedback and answer sheets.

authors: Александр Нефедов


text:
Published paper containing well-known results
I recently found a paper published in an high-impact journal containing as a main contribution a result which is rather well-known among the people working in the field. (In fact, this result has been firstly established in a paper in the 60s).
On the one hand, I think that the authors of the paper did not do that on purpose. In fact, they are not expert in that particular research field, and so, they probably were not aware that this result was already established when they wrote the paper.
On the other hand, being myself a researcher working in that field, I would like to
point this out to the authors and/or to the editorial board of the journal, so that the readers can be referred to the original paper establishing this result.
At this point, I was wondering what the right thing to do is. I would really appreciate any comment/suggestion.

That reminds me of the 1994 "rediscovery" of calculus.

I'd advise caution since its also common for a reader to miss the nuances of a result and presume it is not novel. Particularly when they're reviewing my manuscripts.

I wanted to say the same as Anyon :))

Isn't this simply called "replication"?

A replication should include a reference to the original work, right?

The result is well known, but what about the proof or method? In mathematics, novel or even slightly-modified ways to show an old result can be valuable. Of course an author should be aware that he or she is "rediscovering" an old theorem.

@o.m. In this case the proof is based on a standard argument, which has been also used in the original paper of the 60s.

It is simple enough and not rude to just send them a note with a reference to the older work. "In your recent paper, you haven't discussed the relationship to ...".
And note that even if they have some fault, which you don't suggest, it is shared by editors and reviewers who, themselves, missed the older work.

There's seven billion people in the world and many of them are pretty smart. Independent discovery should be less frowned upon in my opinion. But if I ever did it on accident I'd appreciate such a note.

@some_guy632 This happened to me in the reviewing process. A result of mine already appeared in some paper from the 60's, with a totally different notion and naming. It was somehow hidden behind another question that was tackled in this paper. I must confess I would not have stumbled across this myself, at least not at this point. Luckily the other paper had a somewhat different approach and viewpoint, which helped me alot and I was able to strengthen and extend the result, wrote a new paper, and it got published.

This is not an unusual occurrence.  You do not need to do anything.
Some journals allow the submission of comments.  You could submit a comment comparing the new paper to previous results.  I would only do that if it were somehow more interesting than a simple case of inadvertent duplication.

As far as the readers are concerned, there is no way you can bring this before them without sounding rude or unconstructive or worse. You risk sounding as if you're just jealous that they've got publicity that you haven't.
But as far as the authors themselves are concerned, being constructive is easy and quite possibly even your duty. Write privately to them and say that in their excellent paper they have addressed some questions which (it seems to you) have been addressed before by workers in your field. You are writing to them to encourage them to have a look round that field to see what else has been covered, because it may be beneficial to them and save them trouble in their future work.
With care you can phrase it so that if they do want to look into this further, they know that they can ask you for some suggested reading.
Thus you help to improve their work; show a proper attitude of collegiality; and you may even be laying the foundations for future communication and collaboration.

While contacting the authors first is the polite thing to do, and gives them the chance to look good/better, I fail to see why I as a reader would necessarily consider a published comment of the form "The authors appear to have rediscovered a result by Smith (1960)." rude. Providing proper credit also isn't unconstructive (especially if the authors haven't been responsive). Unless Smith writes that comment and words it poorly, it wouldn't come off as jealous either.

I think it suffices to write "The Sibling-Steering-Difference Theorem was proved independently by Dewey (1927), Cheetham (1969), and Howe (2004)."


text:
IETF RFC: Ask question to the author
Is it common for a graduate student to ask a question directly the author of an IETF RFC?
I have a subtle doubt about an aspect of a protocol addressed by a certain RFC and I have already searched online and posted question on stack exchange but I haven't found an answer yet.
Should I contact the author directly to the address shown in the RFC?
Thank you.

I’m voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not about academia. It may be on-topic on [programmers.se] or [networkengineering.se], but please read their guidelines before asking.

@Wrzlprmft I strongly disagree, as IETF RFCs are a peculiar form of scientific publication.

An IETF RFC may often be thought of as a certain peculiar form of scientific publication: they are frequently cited as such, feed research programs, and can indeed significantly count toward the evaluation of one's research career.  Certainly that has been the way of it for people who I have known who have authored RFCs or otherwise participated in the IETF.
As such, contacting the author of an IETF RFC is not particularly different than contacting the author of a scientific paper: make sure you do your homework first (as it sounds like you've done), so that you don't embarrass yourself or waste the authors' time, and then feel free to contact them.  Their contact information is there for a reason.


text:
Contacting a paper author: best way to address an engineer
I would like to send an email to a paper author, but I'm not sure how to address them.
The author is not a professor,
their google+ profile says "Network Engineer" (in an important network company BBTW).
As far as I know has a degree and has several publications like articles, conference papers, RFC's.
I'm a Master degree student.
What form of address should I use?

Default to "Dear Mr. [last name]" (assuming you're sure the person is male).  If you're not sure the person is male, use "Dear [first name] [last name]".  Don't worry about other titles unless the person specifically uses "PEng." or other professional association designation after their name, in which case include that.

I ended up following your suggestion. Everything fine.

I strongly recommend "Dear Dr. [Lastname]". Most people who publish scholarly papers do have doctorates (or are in the process of getting them). Those who don't have doctorates are unlikely to be offended by the upgraded title. Those who do have doctorates may be offended by a downgrade.

I personally don't think that anyone that don't use any of my titles is downgrading me but this may be culture dependent.

Thank you, unfortunately he was not a Ph.D. in this case.

Personally I have somewhat of an issue with 'Those who don't have doctorates are unlikely to be offended by the upgraded title'. I often receive e-mails with 'Dear Dr. Bond' because of my published work, but I do not have a doctorate. Whenever I receive such an e-mail I always feel like 'Hey, you didn't even took two seconds to look-up who I am'.

@pbond Yes, that's fair if your easily-findable web profile lists your qualifications or refers to you as "Mr". Many don't, especially outside academia. For instance, one of these two gentlemen has a PhD, the other doesn't. Can you tell which is which? (1) http://www.icewarm.com.au/australian-water-school/presenters/geoff-podger/ (2) http://www.icewarm.com.au/australian-water-school/presenters/gary-jones/

@Significance Geoff Podger (likely) doesn't have a PhD and Gary Jones does. I found their both their LinkedIn profiles within a few seconds. I do agree that in some cases it can be hard to find out whether or not someone has a PhD, but in my case it's fairly easy (I have both a LinkedIn as well as a ResearchGate profile with my papers on it, and both show a MSc, not a PhD).

If I get an email with a title I don't have, for example starting with Prof. while I clearly am not, this definitely adds to my "this is likely a scam/spam email"-sense.


text:
Why are most people so intellectually uncurious
I'm not sure this is the right place to ask this question.
I've noticed that almost everyone I have met is intellectually uncurious. In a world where our daily lives depend on technology that would have been called magic a century ago (cell phones, computers, etc...), it's hard for me to understand why people aren't even interested in how it all works. Perhaps they've hust gotten used to it - I once I asked a friend if he knew how his computer worked, and his reponse was no, and I don't care I just use it".
This lack of intellectual curiosity sadly permeates into academic settings, in my experience. Even my peers who study mathematics and engineering  don't understand my fascination at lightning storms, or an airplane passing overhead,etc. The physics students seem to be pretty curious in general, but I don't understand. My engineering friends always tell me the same thing "we don't need to understand it at a deep level in order to build new things with it".
I thought kids were naturally curious creatures? I would guess it's a result of bad schooling, but i've never heard of teachers actively discouring asking good questions.
So what's going on here? What factors contribute to the apparent lack of intellectual curiosity amongst the general public, but more importantly amongst STEM students.

You seem to say: how come most people don't have the same interests as me?   This is a very narrow minded question.  If people don't have diverse interests, then we would not have the arts for example, and no reasons why the kardashians are so successful.

Although I think this question is bit unfair, I still vote to "Leave Open" because it's legit. I think most people are curious enough to want to know a lot things, but just don't have enough time and energy to do it. I always want to know how automobile work when I drive a car. I always want to know why the airplanes fly when I am flying. I always want to know why the high blood pressure pills I am taking can lower my blood pressure, ...etc. But, obviously, I don't have so much time to understand all of them. So, I just drive my car to the airport, fly an airplane and then take a BP pill.

Well you can not expect everyone to be intellectually curious about everything can you? I mean take the classical generalised example of a Doctor or a Scholar who's extremely intelligent and disciplined in his own line of work. He simply does not care about how a computer works as long as it serves his needs. I feel the same way about cars. I really couldn't care less about how they function if they just take me from A to B.

A relevant quote from Nietzsche's The Gay Science (76): "The intellectual conscience. – [...] I do not want to believe it although it is palpable: the great majority of people lacks an intellectual conscience. Indeed, it has often seemed to me as if anyone calling for an intellectual conscience were as lonely in the most densely populated cities as if he were in a desert. [...] But to stand in the midst of this whole marvelous uncertainty and rich ambiguity of existence without questioning, [cont.]

[cont.] "without trembling with the craving and the rapture of such questioning, without at least hating the person who questions, perhaps even finding him faintly amusing – that is what I feel to be contemptible, and this is the feeling for which I look first in everybody. Some folly keeps persuading me that every human being has this feeling, simply because he is human. This is my type of injustice." / This quote doesn't explain why, but it does affirm your observation is valid - though I don't agree at all we should feel negatively towards people with passions besides the sciences.

I'm wary of anything that starts looking like intellectual elitism, but on the other hand, I do wonder about whether schools and/or stereotypes and/or peer pressure in adolescence end up suppressing curiosity. Janna Levin puts it this way: "All kids are scientists, and all kids are artists. They all read. How is it that we give up such big things?" I'm not an expert so I'll stop shortly, but Ken Robinson has given some well-viewed talks about how to make schools places that champion creativity.

The OP seems to imply that it is a kind of moral failing to not be curious about everything. Plokavian's answer is good for covering why many people simply do not have the time to be curious, but I think that their answer fails to cover two points: 1) people in academia who are, to a certain extent, paid to be curious; and 2) why should everyone need to be scientifically curious?
People in Academia
What do you think drives people to pursue graduate studies in the first place? There are many factors, but in my experience curiosity is one of the top factors.
In applied science I have met researchers who study the patterns that water drops form when they land on a surface. They openly admitted that they have no idea what application it could be used for, but they thought it was interesting so they spent some time investigating it. In other words: purely out of curiosity. Even in areas of research where the application is clear, a lot of research seems to start with the question "I wonder what would happen if...?". That is, curiosity. Why would they care how a computer works? They have other things that they find more interesting that they would rather spend their time on.
Why do people need to be scientifically curious?
The OP seems to define curiosity as a desire to understand how things work, such as technology or physical phenomena and seems to conflate curiosity with intellectual stimulation. But there are many ways to be intellectually stimulated without being curious about how everything works from a scientific perspective.
Consider engineering (my field). I know many students who left their undergrad to work in industry. Of course some of them only pursued the degree for a good stable job (nothing wrong with that!) but many others derived great satisfaction (dare I say, intellectual stimulation) from solving problems. To them, a computer is not necessarily something that needs to be understood down to its finest workings. Instead, a computer might be a tool in a big project that is working towards solving a problem for a client. It is the pursuit of the solution that drives them, not a need to understand how all of their tools work.
Consider a doctor trying to decide on the best treatment for a patient (often many patients). It is a complex problem that requires a significant amount of intellect. The doctor draws satisfaction from solving the problem and restoring health to their patients.
Consider an artist (not necessarily my forte!). They may want to explore new ways of expressing ideas or emotions. Exploration of any kind is fundamentally an act of curiosity. They may be curious about how people react to a piece of performance art. They may be trying to solve a problem of how to abstract concepts or objects to their simplest forms (see abstract art).
Finally, some people simply have other priorities in life. It is not a moral failing on their part! We need scientists and engineers and mathematicians and doctors and artists and many others who push forwards in their fields in the name of intellectual stimulation. But there is much more to society than that!

Another interpretation of researchers who do research that has no practical applications is that this unique activity will lead to a published paper(s) opening doors for new funding opportunities. The claim that academics have a choice to decide on what they want to do is generally quite constrained.

I think there is another point that the other answers have not touched upon, and that is that people may be curious about the world around them but they need to draw the line somewhere.
The OP mentions a fascination with lightning storms as an example of good curiosity. The question I would ask is: at what point is your curiosity satisfied? Maybe you're satisfied knowing simply that lightning is a flow of electricity between the clouds and the ground. Or maybe you want to know more, i.e. that the electricity flows due to a difference in charge. But how was that difference in charge created? How does the electricity flow through the air? Why does it strike certain locations? Why does it make a noise (thunder)? Why is there a delay between the lightning strike and the thunder? Why is light faster than sound? How does sound travel? How does light travel? Why is the speed of light constant for a given material? Ad infinitum.
As I hope is demonstrated from the example above, scientific questions lead to more scientific questions. That's great if your hobby is learning about science, but many people have other ways they would prefer to spend their free time. Therefore, at some point you have to draw the line and say "I don't know everything about how [phenomenon] works, but I feel like I get the idea." Everyone has a differing level of curiosity, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I'll reword the question. Why some people ask a lot of questions and love to explore new stuff, while majority are set in their traditional ways and avoid questioning things too much? To answer this question look into the evolution of the human society and evolution of species in general. It's obvious that the psychological requirements for a successful hunter and gatherer would be quite different from a farmer. The hunter would be trying to survive from day to day and his life would depend on planning for one day ahead only. The rest was uncertainty. It's a lot of risk and requires intense analysis of his immediate situation.
On the other hand, farmers didn't need to be inquisitive in their minute by minute life. They needed to plan and follow established practices. The one who experimented a lot was not likely to survive. Ever since the time when farmers outnumbered hunters and gatherers it's been that way: majority maintained established traditions and stability of the society. Minority was able to find their niche performing various tasks that required intellectual curiosity and risk taking. It's a balanced symbiotic relationship and no need to be smug about it.