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Colleague stole my work and is publishing it as his own; my PhD supervisor supports him; I got the paper to review. How to proceed?
By chance, I am reviewing now the paper which I recognised as a paper of my colleague. We are from the same institution and I am surprised that I got this paper to review, but, on the other hand, I am lucky to see it before it's published.  My colleague mentions in this paper the methodology like it was his idea but actually, I am the one that developed it, made it work and applied it,  together with the help of my supervisor. In short, he wants to be the author of the idea and the methodology. This is, in fact, what comes out from the paper.
I am now preparing my own paper about this methodology and my work, and I don’t have any publication on it, so far, just a poster from when I participated at a conference six months ago.
I talked to him about it but he doesn’t feel that it is wrong or ethically incorrect.
On top of that, we have the same supervisor. I talked with him as well, and he was threatening me, in a political correct way. He claims that it is okay, and in my paper, I will have just to cite their work in the introduction. He also stated that my work has a different approach in a small detail, so I will criticise their method and put mine as the better one. However, it isn’t true, because my approach is based on the methodology mentioned in the paper which I am reviewing now.
I really don’t know what to do. I was thinking to not review the paper, but it doesn’t solve the problem. If I reject it, I will have to write the reason why I am doing that, and it may turn my supervisor against me.
I would like to act in the most appropriate and ethically correct way. Just don’t know how. I would be grateful for all insights.

What does "threatening in a political correct way" mean specifically?

while talking with me or writing to me he uses the dominant position and uses a very aggressive language. Also, he threatened to go to the project manager to deal with the situation , but the project manager is his colleague and friend. Also, it means, that either I will listen to my supervisors' "advice", the only right one because he is "the boss" here, or he won't support my thesis' defence.

This sounds horrible, but I'm having trouble picturing the mechanism which allows this to happen.  The person who stole your work is a fellow graduate student with the same advisor as you?  That sounds like a much closer connection than "from the same institution": shouldn't you be in the same research group / lab / project / etc. and thus working in close proximity to each other?  Didn't you have a lot of conversations about your work (e.g. at the time of the poster session) with both your fellow student and your common advisor?...

..Concerning your conversation with your colleague: "I talked to him about it but he doesn’t feel that it is wrong or ethically incorrect." He doesn't feel that stealing your work is wrong or ethically incorrect?!?  I feel like I am missing some nuances here.  If it is all really as bad as it sounds: I think you should get the heck out of your PhD program.  You don't want someone who stabbed you in the back as your former thesis supervisor -- in my opinion starting from scratch would be less bad.  And if you start from scratch you can still pursue your intellectual claim to the work.

Something majorly wrong in this research group.

Your question needs retitling because it's unclear what was the role of both your supervisor and colleague: which of them came up with the idea for him to publish your work under his name? If it was the supervisor, there's no point in complaining to the supervisor about it. Also, it's a much bigger problem than whether to review their paper. I retitled it "Colleague stole my work and is publishing it as his own; my PhD supervisor supports him; I got the paper to review. How to proceed?"

Schedule a physical meeting with the other student, your supervisor, the project manager, and a neutral witness.  At that meeting, present your evidence for priority and ask to be given appropriate credit for your work, either as a co-author or by citation/acknowledgement; warn everyone in advance that this is the purpose of the meeting.  If the faculty in question either refuse to acknowledge your evidence or refuse to schedule the meeting, don't walk, run.

Did he independently develop the process, or did he knowingly copy your work?

Either 1) plausibly slow down and start handing crumbs instead of cakes and keep the good stuff to yourself or 2) get out as fast as you can.

@PeteL.Clark - In my experience, I have met people who honestly believed they had done work that they hadn't based on reasons which only made sense to them. In my capstone project, we did a group project (computer science), and at one point late in the year, I mentioned that I felt bad, because I felt that I was doing a disproportionate amount of the work. My teammates agreed, but one argued that some of the work I mentioned was actually his work because he thought of the method (which he didn't), so I was just building on his work (which I wasn't). People are weird and vain.

Does the OP has documentation of the research progress? I think it might help OP prove ownership of the method written in the paper.

Academia, at least in the US, where I work, is a composition of loosely coupled authoritarian organizations. Your group is a medieval feud with an undisputed dictator who is the only authority over truth. If someone plagiarized your work and your professor says the work is theirs, then the work is theirs and not yours. The explanations are left as homework for places like this SO. Pick your favorite one. The sooner you accept the fact that facts do not matter, the more successful you will be.

I see two possibilities here.
1. The poster doesn't prove decisively you must be credited for the developing the method
In this case, you are in quite a bind. You see, nothing you've told us can be established as fact, as it lacks corroborating witnesses; it will be your word against your colleague (and perhaps even the word of your advisor), since nobody is ever going to examine the details (like source commit logs) to determine who's right. The situation is indistinguishable from the outside, without much effort, from you just trying to claim credit that you are not due.
I would suggest, in this case, to write the PC chair, inform him/her that you are certain this is a paper by your colleague, and that you can't review the paper since you're biased - without saying a single word about the ethical issue, or why and how you're biased. Then go tell your colleague that you've done so - but show him a printed copy of the email, don't send it beforehand, so that s/he doesn't misconstrue anything and try to use it against you somehow. When you talk to him/her, try to make use of the fact that you did not take the opportunity to claim right-of-authorship vis-a-vis the PC, as psychological leverage against him: "I didn't tell them that XYZ because I think the fair thing is that we resolve this issue between us, but how could you submit a paper behind my back like this? etc. etc." You might even go as far as threatening to claim his paper is taking credit of your own work, as a way of pressure him/her: Even though you won't do it, it's still the danger for him/her of a lot of hassle and a question mark on his/her reputation. You could also threaten going to the faculty management, or whoever is in charge of graduate studies (i.e. not through your advisor), or taking it up with the graduate researchers' union for an internal resolution dispute (I hope you have such a union) etc.
Note: I'm suggesting this somewhat aggressive behavior since your advisor won't back you. If he had been at least neutral I might have suggested something different involving him/her.
2. The poster proves you must be credited for developing the method
This next piece of advice is, again, due to the fact that your advisor has threatened you and has acted in a generally underhanded way; had that not been the case I'd make another suggestion that would be more forthcoming and open.
Anyway, in this case, write the PC chair. Inform him/her that you are certain this is a paper by your colleague; and explain how you can't review the paper since you're biased. But write the explanation so that it is clear that you did a lot/most of the work - without suggesting you should be listed as an author, but in a way in which any reasonable academic would think that you should. Most importantly - refer the PC quite early on to the poster and relate your explanation to what appears on it, to lend your description more credibility. If there's some publicly-available source code which has not been covered by the poster, of which you are the author - refer to that as well.

You shouldn't even think about it, do not review that paper, it's a clear conflict of interest, even more because the author is your direct colleague. And the only solution is to sit all together and explain to them that your contribution to said article is significant and you would like to be a co-author. If they have problems with you being a co-author and you have done substantial work then I would seriously consider if you want to be in this research group.

How can the OP "sit all together" with anyone about this without disclosing that he was given the paper to review?

@einpoklum i think the disclosure ship has already sailed when he mentioned reading the paper to his colleague. If they were doing it behind his back as it sounds, they would not let him know of the paper before its too late.

@einpoklum the reviewer is refusing to review so that is not an issue, this has helped the OP uncover this nasty behavior, which would have came to surface anyway when the paper got published.

There are two different questions here. One is easy, one is hard.
The easy question is: "Should I review the paper?". No. Definitely not. It goes against the ethical standards of every respectable journal I can think of, and you should contact the editor immediately.
The hard question is: "What should I do about the authors not recognizing my contribution?". It sounds like you have already approached them regarding this. You should try this again, bring a copy of your old poster, and clearly state that your goal is to be a co-author of the paper.
If you are unsuccessful, you can try to approach a department head or similar, but that will most likely not give you anything but grief. If you think it would be possible to actually publish a similar paper yourself, you can of course do that. In my field it would not be possible to do that, but I guess it varies. At least you will have learned the valuable lesson to write up and publish your stuff if you want to be recognized for it.

However feeling sorry for the OP, I must agree with the last sentence. Leaving the topic dormant for 6 months really gives a feeling that the author does not care for it too much any more.

@TheVee Having a poster six months ago doesn't automatically mean that the topic was dormant for six months.

@BioGeo That's right, I just read again that the paper has been in preparation (at first I understood it that "I am now preparing" was a reaction to this event).

@TheVee: maybe that depends on subject.  In my field (and some others, going by what I hear from friends) it may very often take well over 6 months between the initial development of an idea and the point where the results are ready to write up — either because of a lengthy experiment that needs to run, or simply because one’s juggling other projects in parallel in the meantime.  It certainly wouldn’t suggest any loss of interest or priority on the method.

They are in the same working group, and they have excluded him and used his methodology to publish something, totally unethical!

I don't know what the ethical culture of your department is.  (I realize that his can in turn depend on the ethical culture of your country.)  If you judge that the climate where you are would make it difficult to work this problem out successfully, then you may be best off keeping your head down, graduating as soon as you can, and looking forward to working elsewhere on future projects and future papers.
Otherwise: Schedule a meeting with your supervisor.  It might be best to meet at a neutral location such as a seminar room or a quiet coffee shop.  At the beginning, state that you have a concern and a proposal.  Lay out concisely the basic problem and then lay out your proposal:

The work my fellow student (let's call him Jay) and I are doing is closely intertwined.  We have each benefited from the group collaboration.  Nowadays, all around the world, the ability to collaborate and work well in groups is highly appreciated.  Jay and I can credit the role cooperation in the group has played, by including each other as secondary authors on our respective articles.  Each one would be the primary author of one article, and each article would make reference to the other article, since they are both coming out of the same research group.

Ask him to think about your proposal and then make a quick exit.  It's best if your supervisor doesn't have an opportunity to say or imply anything nasty in this meeting, and you'll come out the best in the long run if you don't say anything negative either.  Resist the temptation to have the last word (and run out saying you are late for an appointment, if that's the only way you can extricate yourself).
It could be helpful to find an ally in your department to speak with your supervisor on the side, so that you are not facing this completely on your own.


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Is it offensive to ask my PhD advisor for permission to record our research/technical discussions?
I will be joining a graduate program in the US this fall. To keep track of important technical/research discussions with my advisor, I think it would be a good idea to record conversations with my advisor on a voice recorder/camera. It would be very helpful as I (and my advisor) will not forget/miss anything important. Also, I could listen to my advisor's comments again if I do not understand something in the first go. So I would like to know (from an advisor's perspective) if it is bad etiquette to request my advisor to have our research discussions recorded on my voice recorder/camera. I do not wish to breach anyone's privacy but only wish to keep track of my own research. And I only want to record if my advisor is happy with it.
Update: As mentioned in one of the answers below, sometimes it is hard to keep up with the advisor as my field is highly technical and mathematical (theoretical physics). It has happened to me before that some things my earlier project advisor discussed went completely over my head. I found it hard to even jot down such things since I did not understand what he was trying to say (like lots of mathematics jargon). An example:  If I am just starting as a PhD student in US and I see my prospective advisor (and his collaborators) discussing about something I feel to be very interesting, I do not think I will be able to pick up all the "deep and subtle ideas" that come up during such discussions (being only a beginner). And if I do not pickup what is deep and what is not, I might miss those important ideas and consequently not jot down. It is very important for me to understand those ideas. I do not think my advisor will be able to clear doubts in such situations as I would not be familiar with such advanced stuff at the time of those discussions. This is why I think it is very helpful in such situations to have a record so that I could go back to it later on when I understand all that jargon. It would save a lot of our time as well if my advisor does not have to repeat things multiple times.

With respect to your update - what is essential is that you do not let the jargon go by without clarification then and there. If it is going over your head, you need to bring it back down to your level immediately, otherwise you are wasting your time and your adviser's. Perhaps you think you will feel embarrassed to ask questions, or think it will demonstrate vulnerability. Get over that now - If I found out that a student or post-doc was smiling and nodding their head in a conversation that they didn't understand, I'd feel deceived - if there is an issue we'd better straighten it out now!

@JonCuster.. It is not that I feel embarassed. My project advisors have been very friendly so I always tried to clear my doubts. But it is hard to clear doubts in some cases. Example... If my advisor is working on a big theoretical physics problem which requires very advanced mathematics and I have been assigned to work on a small portion (which I could understand), it would be hard to understand anything when the advisor is talking of all the advanced stuff only. Obviously, I would like to take part in those discussions (curiosity) even though I do not understand anything.

So, you need to start understanding it. Ask for clarification. Ask where to start. Ask what books or papers to read. This isn't a case where you should play and replay a recording of the conversation alone in your room. The expert is in front of you - ask then and there!

What I don't get is why you cannot ask him to explain the things that you "found it hard to even jot down [...] since I did not understand what he was trying to say (like lots of mathematics jargon)". If you don't understand, you have to ask! If you ask but he doesn't explain or give you any references to look at, then maybe he is not a suitable advisor for you.

@user21820 ..Thanks for your comment. I definitely can ask. Okay I can tell you this If I work in a field like string theory, it takes years of reading and studying books to understand current string theory research and terminology. If I want to do a small rotation project in string theory, it would be very hard for my advisor to explain everything since I do not have any advanced knowledge of the subject...and even if my advisor provide me with references, it would take months to understand all that............continued below

@phd-applicant: You said yourself that you found it hard to even jot down some bits. Are you saying that your advisor is too lazy to write those bits down on paper for you? If not, why can't you ask? Whether or not you can get papers published is irrelevant to whether there is a problem with the way you ask your advisor to guide you.

@user21820.... I found it hard to jot down some bits because I didn't know what I am supposed to write when I do not understand all that advanced stuff. My advisor cannot write everything for me I think since it would take huge amounts of time in many situations. The literature and the field itself is huge. Example...if we are in a collaboration and he is explaining something to another professor...it would be difficult for him to find enough time to repeat everything to me again. It is hard to keep up in such situations. He is not lazy but very busy...which is my point !

@phd-applicant: Ok here is my bit of advice for your more specific situations that you mentioned in your comment. (1) When talking to your advisor alone, you should ask him to write down the important terms or formulas for you to look up on your own if you do not know how to spell it. Then if you face difficulty when learning, ask specific questions to resolve it. (2) If he is really so busy that he has no time apart from the time he spends talking to other professors to explain things at your level, then I think your advisor is not suitable for you, exactly as I suspected earlier.

To mitigate that problem, you should try and find someone else who is familiar enough with your field of research and willing to help you learn enough so that you can understand your professor. Otherwise there is little that can be done, since recording is not going to help much if you still face the bigger problem of lack of guidance.

I would find the request disquieting, and would be more comfortable if the student sought another advisor.

If you can't follow a technical conversation with your advisor without taking notes, you are not qualified for the professional relationship with this person that you seek. Consider a degree program in something where your background is stronger.

@user21820...Thanks again for the helpful response. I forgot to mention that I experienced these difficulties during projects unrelated to my PhD (basically undergraduate level). I guess it would be hard for any student at this level to do research and understand topics like string theory. I will be joining a PhD program now so I have more than a year to find a suitable advisor for me. I will take lots of advanced courses and work on rotation projects. All I am trying is to be very careful about not missing anything my future advisor says during any kind of research discussions.

@Jeff .. It is not about taking notes. I always take notes. I am talking of certain situations. An example: If I am just starting as a PhD student in US and I see my prospective advisor (and his collaborators) discussing about something I feel to be very interesting, I do not think I will be able to pick up all the "deep and subtle ideas" that come up during such discussions (being a beginner). And if I do not pickup what is deep and what is not, I might miss those important ideas and consequently not jot down. It is very important for me to understand those ideas.

Everyone learns differently.  There are times when I want to sit back and try to take in the big picture.  Sometimes, if I get too nitpicky about getting down the details, I find I miss a lot.  The point of the notes is for you to be able to work intensively on this between apppointments, and that time will be spent more productively if you have correctly notated equations, terms, references, names, etc.

@phd-applicant, Let's also recognize the anxiety factor.  When a person is feeling anxiety about not getting something down, that very anxiety will occupy parts of the brain that would be better kept free for optimal communication, understanding, thinking.  I want to reassure you, however, that as you get farther along, you will gain more experience in picking things up on the fly, you will become naturally more assertive about stopping someone when necessary, and you will gain confidence in yourself.  You'll probably see this kind of anxiety decrease.

I might ask my student to give me a copy of the recording afterward, so I can have a record of all the great insights I had.

@phd-applicant - Please don't edit the question too many times. People posting answers will read the question once, post an answer, and likely not return. Continuously editing the question makes it very confusing for future visitors, who may have a question unrelated to the answers (since so many edits were added to the question). Thanks!

I do this routinely. "anyone mind if I record this with my phone in case I miss some details" as long as there are no objections I then place the phone on the table and hit record and forget it's there until the end. it's often handy and means I can double check what was said. It's not about initial understanding, it's about making sure you don't miss something minor mentioned by one of the people there 25 minutes in. There's pretty much no good reason no to record such things.

Though I'm not a professor, I have asked professors to record their notes in class lectures. Here's my insight:
Asking a professor to record lecture notes is socially acceptable (ahead of time; not on the spot), and I think most professors would be understanding and accommodating to someone whose grasp of English isn't level with everyone else in the course or program (not that your English isn't; I'm just stating as a matter-of-fact).
Now, for 1-on-1 meetings, there are two concerns that your professor might be wary of: security and funding. The professor might not completely know what you plan to do with his/her comments, and even if you haven't yet given the professor a reason to distrust you, the professor would rather not find out the hard way as to what might happen with that recording. Furthermore, depending on the area of research (some are more sensitive than others), the recordings might breach or lead to breaches in certain provisions of grant contracts, thus resulting in financial losses for you, your advisor, and/or the university.
Now, is it reasonable that you are an innocent student who just wants to keep the professor's comments accessible for future academic use, where only you use the recordings? Sure. However, that's a lot of added work for the professor to make sure what he/she says isn't used in the future for ulterior purposes, or taken out of context. From what I understand, many professors just don't have that time to take on that extra burden.
May I recommend an alternative? Take a pen and paper pad to your meetings, and let your professor know you'd like to take notes. This is a custom most professors are used to, and are highly likely to have no problem with it.  Jot down the bullet points, and then after you leave the professor's office, send him/her an email thanking them for their time, and a quick summary of those bullet points with any questions or clarifications you need. It's more professional, and having track of a two-way conversation that both parties can access is likely to leave the professor more comfortable.
Unless your advisor is shady, but that's a completely different matter.

Thank you for your detailed response. Very helpful !...I do have some previous research experience so I am used to of using my notebook to jot down things. But as mentioned in another answer, sometimes it is hard to keep up with the advisor as my field is highly technical and mathematical (my field is theoretical physics). It has happened to me before that somethings my earlier project advisor discussed went completely over my head....I found it hard to even jot down such things since I did not understand what he was trying to say. Apart from that, I am sure my topic is not at all sensitive.

You could always ask your advisor to write whichever formula/thing is problematic into YOUR notebook and look things up afterwards - sometimes things are explained a lot easier in writing than in speech (in particular if you dont know the language/jargon)

You need to ask first, and you need to ask without the recording device in your hand.
But sure, why not ask?  If I were asked, I would find it a little strange at first, and then I would think about the fact that this shows a real commitment and diligence to keeping track of what is said during our meetings.  One of the biggest issues with student/advisor meetings is that it feels like they should happen very informally, but information is often being provided in a way which the student cannot easily or perfectly understand or even take in.  So there is often a lot of repetition over a period of weeks, months or years.  (Not just between students and advisors, come to think of it.)  With that in mind I would be inclined to say yes.
I also strongly disagree with another answer which suggests that an advisor might drop a student for making such a request.  This seems to contribute to a sentiment that students should be afraid to discuss things with their advisors, which I see so much of on this site and think is very unfortunate.  It would be incredibly unreasonable behavior to drop a student for making this request or really any request which has anything to do with the student's academic or professional life.
Added: My response is not meant to apply to interactions with other people aside from the OP and the advisor.

Thank you for your kind response. I am very glad to hear a positive perspective on the issue. As you said, I have had previous experiences where I did not understand what my project advisor was saying to the point that I could not even jot down things in my notebook (lots of mathematics jargon). I think it becomes necessary in such situations to have some record so that I could go back to it later on when I understand all that jargon.

On the other hand, if the advisor says no, it is probably best to accept that immediately.

@Nate: Sure, I agree completely.

@phd-applicant: I actually don't agree that it is necessary to do this. In fact I tend to agree with other people who suggest that it could be better for you to learn how not to want to do it. But whether to do it is between you and your advisor, and perhaps doing it for a little while will give you the ability / inclination to come back and ask questions about things you didn't feel comfortable doing before. Once you get used to asking questions, maybe you won't need the crutch that got you there anymore.

@PeteL.Clark...My apologies for using the word "necessary" there. I just meant it would be very helpful in some situations. I am not very stringent about recording the stuff. It is perfectly okay for me to use better alternative methods for keeping track of discussions but I just wished to know what professors think of my idea. And people seem kind of polarized on this issue here. So I think I will definitely look at alternative methods. Thank you for the input again.

Years ago, one of my doctoral students asked me for permission to record our regular meetings. I said it was OK.  Also, now that phones contain cameras, several people have photographed my blackboard at the end of conversations (or in the middle if the board was about to be erased).  I have no objections to any of this as long as it's done openly.  I would be unhappy if I found out that someone was secretly recording my conversations without asking me for permission.

The blackboard (actually white) photography happens to me on a regular basis, usually at the end of a period when everybody is in a hurry to get to their next class. They do ask me for permission - good manners. ;-)

On blackboard photography: I've been in a math class where the professor actually asked the students to photograph the board for him.

If you ask first, then there should be no problem. The supervisor can always say no. Personally, if one of my student ask for this, I would probably say no because (1) I expect my students to be able to take notes, (2) if they don't understand, I expect them to be able to ask for clarifications, and (3) I don't like to be recorded. But some other professors may disagree. At least it shows that you are interested in your research.

No, just no. You do not record other people. Even if your advisor somehow agrees (which he probably won't), what if there are other people in the room (e.g., in the lab when he comes to discuss something with you) or you want to discuss a collaborating paper with another student or discussing a undergraduate thesis with a student you will supervise? Are you planning to record those other people too? There are many countries where it is illegal without permission to do so.
Use a pen and paper or your laptop and take notes like the rest of the world. Academia is exactly like a corporate job in that matter. You do not use recording devices on your colleagues or your supervisors. Even it is not illegal, it makes many people uncomfortable. Moreover, taking notes at meetings is a crucial skill you will need to practice sooner or later.
UPDATE: Some of the other answers do not take under account that the OP is not an experienced academic. Entering his PhD now, his advisor (and implicitly we) are the ones who should introduce him to best (or common) academic practices. And although one may argue that 10 years ago some grad student was freely recording his interactions with his advisor, it is not at all common nor considered best practice. Also, as others have stated it is field-dependent, jurisdiction dependent (for legal issues) and I might add country or culture dependent. So, implying that he can freely ask academics to record their interactions with him, might a) alienate him from them and b) this is not for the OP's best interest.
In this sense, as a wild analogy, it is not different than the OP asking his advisor if it is OK to wear a clown suit everytime they meet. a) Clown suits are not illegal b) He should be able to freely ask his advisor about anything (as @PeteL.Clark suggests) c) The advisor may always say NO. d) Someone might saw someone 10 years ago that wore a clown suit on his defense or during Halloween talking to his supervisor. But is it common? Is it considered best practice? Does it offers any benefits? Might offend some people?
And we (academics or not) all know the answers to these questions. Same as asking academics to record our interactions with them. It is not common, It is not normal practice, it offers no true benefits than pen and paper and some people might get offended or estranged by such request. So, those are strong reasons why the OP should not do it.

Thanks for the response. I obviously do not intend to breach someone's privacy. And I do not intend to record without permission....ONLY if my advisor is happy with it. I actually would like to know if it wrong to even ask for permission. I only wish to record research discussions and nothing else.

-1. It's not illegal in every jurisdiction. In many states in the US and under US federal law, if you are a party to the conversation, you may legally record it without the permission of any of the other participants. You should look up the difference between 1-party consent and all-party consent before giving legal advice.

@Alexandros, I am perfectly aware of that, it's your first paragraph and its last sentence that is too absolute. It's not illegal in my jurisdiction, so how can you say "It is illegal without permission to do so" in such absolute terms?

@PeteL.Clark Discussion between advisors and students do not necessarily happen always at the universities (e.g., conferences). Suggesting something that is illegal in some jurisdictions and borderline legal in others, is not a wise idea.

@Alexandros, nobody, including OP is suggesting that this was to be done surreptitiously. OP intends to ask. No where I know of makes it illegal to record people with their consent, and incidental or accidental recordings of passersby often get a pass. Furthermore, if OP lets folks around know that they're recording, I'm sure it'll work out. Also, I would happily agree to being recorded by a student, especially if there were apparent language issues which there often are with between foreign students and their advisors.

Eh. This is kind of a hard one for me. I agree with Pete and Alexandros. Someone in our group records our advisor in lab meetings. The advisor was a bit weirded out at first but gave in, and now regularly jokes about being recorded, so I think this person is used to it.

continued: However, we as a group were not consulted as to whether we consented. A couple of us do have a problem with it (me included) especially since student in question is notoriously irresponsible with confidential data. Not that there is anything bad said in recordings, it just makes us uneasy. I'd prefer she not record us. Don't know if everyone in a lab group would dissent if the PI agreed, so you kind of put people in a tight spot. I'd ask lab mates individually before bringing it up with PI, if they will in fact be recorded.

continued: But I do hope whoever made the comment about dismissing student for asking was kidding or being inflammatory. That's a ridiculous reaction.

@fredsbend, you can be sued for all sorts of things if you owe a duty of confidentiality to someone. I doubt an academic conference counts, but who knows. What I was talking about was criminal law, which is what most people are talking about when they say something is illegal. To the best of my knowledge, you can't go to jail in a a 1-party state in the US for recording a conversation you are a party to. Privileges are about who owes a duty of confidentiality to whom and the remedies are in a civil court. You don't break a confidence by recording a conversation unless you release it.

Just to be clear though: No one here is saying that the OP should record his advisor without his consent.  In fact we all agree that he shouldn't, including the OP.

Also, this edited answer is a lot better.  Just a few points: (i) "which he won't" is counterfactual in view of Andreas's answer.  Let's do the good academic thing in which we modify our beliefs to fit the facts. (ii) "in the lab" The OP is in theoretical physics, so there is probably no lab.  (iii) Let's inject some nuance here: recording every single thing your advisor says at all times is a non-starter, yes.  But recording a weekly one-on-one meeting in which the advisor throws out  a lot of technical stuff at top speed?  Really not a problem if both parties are up for it.

@PeteL.Clark...I agree with not recording "every single thing". I have edited the question as well to be clear on that. I intend to record only important major research discussions but not every single conversation we have.

Jumping in late: "it offers no true benefits than pen and paper " - seriously ? I have students photograph my whiteboard as a matter of course, and I'd really be happier if they record our discussions, so they wouldn't keep forgetting things I say :). Some people are very visual/aural and can't take notes on the fly. If they can record and take notes at leisure that's a major benefit over pen and paper.

Well, I should probably stop commenting on this one question, but just to end on a relatively mild note: yes, it is not problematic for a student to ask if they can wear a clown suit to our meetings.  My answer would be no, and depending upon how well I knew the student I might follow up with a discussion about why that would be a bad idea more generally.  But saying "I am no longer advising you because you asked me if you could wear a clown suit" is so much weirder than the request itself.

@Suresh. Taking a picture of a whiteboard (which is very common), is not the same as recording people.

Students exhibit all kinds of behaviors that I find strange or don't understand.  I advised a student once who was, I think, a fundamentalist and/or born again Christian.  For me personally, that's weird beyond taping or circus clothing.  Was it a problem for us?  Absolutely not.  It had nothing to do with our professional relationship, and in fact she was a wonderfully professional student.  It is a big part of academia to tolerate a large range of personality types and styles as long as they can they can do the work.  I can think someone is weird and still advise them.  I have...

Finally, the clown suit analogy breaks down because it does not have any potential positive professional component.  The recording might: people record academic talks quite commonly because they could be useful to others.  If I found out tomorrow that my advisor and I had signed forms 15 years ago to agree to have our meetings recorded and then had forgotten about it all the while but that now the files were available and did I want them sent to me...That would be surprising but very interesting, and I might find some long forgotten ideas.  There is potential positive professional value here.

@PeteL.Clark I find it quite flattering that my clown-suit example, interests you enough to actually try to find an argument against it. This is exactly what I enjoy in this SE site.

@Alexnandros: Yes, like many SE sites this one is a haven for people who really really like to talk, discuss and argue: no stakes too large or too small.  Cheers.

Although the clown suit is well outside my experience, my father once described a student (not one of his advisees, just a student in one of his classes) as "dressed as if he just stepped out of an operetta or has at least the rank of cardinal."

There is a style of advising/mentoring in which the advisor/mentor writes notes on a piece of paper as he goes along, and then gives them to the advisee/mentee at the end of the session.  The notes won't read like an article or a book.  They'll have key equations, some vocabulary terms, perhaps an outline or to-do list, perhaps a question.  They are very helpful for an advisee/mentee to review later.  If I were in your shoes, I'd rather have written notes, as described, than a tape recording.
It's easier for the one doing the explaining to notate the most important topics.
Your advisor might be persuaded to do this if you explain how it works (or show how it works) and why it will be so helpful for you.
If English isn't your first language, that would give you a built-in excuse for asking for this.  Or if your advisor has an accent that's relatively new to you.  If you have any suspected or documented learning differences, you can work with the Disability Services office in your institution.

Thanks for the great advice. I didn't know advisors do that too. I will definitely ask my advisor if it is possible for him to write down notes as well (in addition to my own notes). And yes, English is not my first language but I think I have been in the English environment for very long to not require any help on that.

Don't let your pride keep you from asking for help!  If your advisor gets it, and helps you out this way, great.  If not, please don't be afraid to play the "non-native speaker of English" card.

This might be subject-dependent. If your field has any social or political relevance, then you might well find that trying to film your supervisions will cause problems. Asking about it will lead your new supervisor(s) to wonder why you want to record everything.
If you don't understand something in a supervision, say so there and then. Don't try to proceed based on a lack of comprehension. Often these things build up on top of each other: the latter half of a supervision can be built upon the foundations put down in the former half. It's foolish to try to wade through a supervision having failed to understand key elements of it, so sort out gaps in your comprehension as soon as they arise. And trust your memory: it's how your memory will become more trustworthy.
A supervision must be an environment where you and your supervisor(s) are able to talk freely about your subject. If your supervisor is put in a situation where anything said in a supervision is recorded, and could be taken out of context later and used against them, then would make supervision harder.
Even if your reasons for recording everything are completely innocent, only you know that. And present-you can't guarantee what future-you will do with the recorded material. Asking to film everything might be interpreted as declaring mistrust. And mistrust is infectious. Injecting mistrust into the supervisory relationship right at the beginning would be extremely unwise. So if your supervisor has the the luxury of walking away, then don't be too surprised if they do.
As you'll have seen from other respondents, academics in some other subjects can see this differently. I guess most maths, and most theoretical physics, feels so sufficiently detached from any social or political relevance, that Climategate (where excerpts from illegally-obtained emails between scientists were taken out of context and used against them, in attempts to destroy their careers) must seem like a different universe. From that perspective, recording supervisions must seem completely risk-free and harmless. That detachment can be an illusion: to take an extreme example, Hardy published "A Mathematician's Apology", in which he celebrated contemporary maths for its supreme detachment from war, after the sending of the Einstein–Szilárd-Teller-Wigner letter which birthed the Manhattan Project.

I was about to upvote this answer until I got to the strange, gratuitous swipe about mathematics at the bottom.  If you're going to condescendingly suggest that academics in other subjects don't know what they're doing to the extent that they cannot be trusted in their descriptions of their own interactions with their students, please (i) use contemporary examples, not examples from more than 70 years ago and (ii) please fact check: the chronological statement you make in your last sentence is false.

@PeteL.Clark the Manhattan Project started in 1939, no? And AMA was published in 1940, wasn't it?

No, the Manhattan Project started in 1941: see e.g. http://americanhistory.about.com/library/timelines/bltimelinemanhat.htm.  However, this is not the point.  The point is that the risks of recording communications are for individuals to evaluate.  Your suggestion that you know better than entire academic communities is quite remarkable.

Nowhere do I say that "academics in other subjects don't know what they're doing to the extent that they cannot be trusted in their descriptions of their own interactions with their students", nor that I "know better than entire academic communities" and I really can't see how you've construed either of those things.

You mention that academics in mathematics and theoretical physics can have an illusory detachment (followed by an example which is achronological and nonsensical: the mathematics championed by Hardy played no role whatsoever in the Manhattan Project).  The clear implication of your answer is that Andreas Blass and I are deluded when we find nothing problematic in having student/advisor mathematical conversations recorded.  That is very insulting.  If that is not what you meant to say, please edit heavily.

No, I don't accuse any individuals of delusion. It is very clear that the detachment of maths and physics from social and political relevance can be illusory, even for as weighty a mind as Hardy: he does claim detachment for contemporary maths, and some theoretical physics, beyond his own specialties.

Hardy, having died in 1947, obviously claims nothing about contemporary mathematics.  You are certainly not making any friends with your broad brushwork here.  But none of this is very relevant: the point is that a student/advisor relationship is up to the student and the advisor.  Suggesting that an advisor might drop a student for making a reasonable suggestion seems very irresponsible, but I've said that already.  I also asked you directly whether you actually advise students and would implement such a policy.  Until I believe that you do, I have little stake in further discussion.

@PeteL.Clark You know that many times we shared the same side on various debates here. But this "I also asked you directly whether you actually advise students" is not very polite. So, let's not make it personal and we can just all agree that we disagree. After all, we are all friends here.

@Alexandros: In a subject like mathematics, answers can easily be vetted by anyone in the world with sufficient expertise.  Academia is not like that: I find out every day that there are parts of the academic world which do things differently from everything I've seen, sometimes shockingly so.  But a certain percentage of the answers on this site seem to come from people who do not have the corresponding experience.  When someone says "If I were in this situation, I would do X" then asking "Are you in a position to ever be in that situation?" is a fair question.

As commented-on by @PeteL.Clark, that last paragraph seems less well-founded than the rest of the answer, and is probably not the most useful part of it. The incidental presumption about "what other people think" is unfortunate, yes, but it wouldn't be the first time that such a thing has happened in the world. I myself would indeed advocate a cultural relativism (e.g., within academia and this site) in which people speak for themselves, but not for others, etc.

@paulgarrett I was actually trying to sympathise with other answers that had come to the opposite conclusion to me, and explain why other people might reason that that filming all supervisions was always completely harmless, and that this could be related to whether or not the subject was perceived as being socially and politically relevant. ironic, huh?

... typically risky to speculate on other peoples' reasoning/rationales, though, as it seems all too easy to offend ... e.g, by over-simplifying, if nothing else. Context, etc.

This is a list of reasons why an advisor might not want conversations recorded.  If a student asks for permission, clearly the advisor is free to answer No, and that'd be the end of it.

It's not a breach of privacy if you have asked and received permission. That being said, the only way you can get permission is if you ask. It should not be considered rude if you ask, at least not if you are willing to accept a no for an answer. Be polite when you ask, explain thoroughly and honestly your reasoning. Offer, perhaps ask if they want to know, the procedure you will use to record (will you be using a iPhone or tape recorder? a large microphone complete with boom, spider mount, wind breaker placed over head.... etc). Be forth coming addressing any concerns they may have.
If they say no, then no, don't do it. I have known some who have secretly recorded even when they were told it was not OK. Personally I don't know why a professor would have any objections, many are now making online course material along side other graduate students.
Good luck to you.

Personally I don't know why a professor would have any objections, many are now making online course material along side other graduate students. — Most (if not all?) of the material covered in courses is in the open-domain, but some details of research may not be; for example, some academic research projects deal with sensitive information, such as those in the US which are ITAR-restricted. In these cases, a professor will most likely not approve of having research meetings recorded.

@MadJack, so don't record export controlled conversations! I don't understand why we've twisted ourselves to find conversations that  can't be recorded so that we can object to the idea of recording generally.

@BillBarth I personally think that a student asking to record conversations with an advisor (and doing so if the advisor agrees) is an acceptable course of action.

What is wrong with taking notes by hand? You are not a reporter, and don't need to remember your advisors words verbatim. At this point in your career you should be able to take notes while discussing and record the points of the conversation that way.
But, if you insist on recording it I don't think it would be poor mannered as long as you approached your advisor about it first.

I won't be insisting in anyway. I would be only doing anything the advisor's permission only. I like good coordination. If the advisor is not okay with it, it is all fine for me. I will take definitely take notes though.

Some professors in my university spoke fast, unless you recorded and replayed bit-by-bit you wouldn't grasp what they said. And later she would come and say "we had this already covered, lets move forward..." Unless you are a stenographer, sometimes the wrong in taking notes by hand is that the hand is not faster than the mouth.

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Does a Meta-Study contribute to the Body-of-Research and how?
The website sciencealert writes the following in one of their entries:

The new meta-analysis of 20 studies updates the body of research regarding the phenomenon by including studies conducted more recently than 2007...

While I do see the value in a meta-analysis I am a bit unsure how it can add to the body of research since no new information/data is obtained.

It depends on how you define the "body of research". If you see it purely as a collection of all raw data, then no, a a meta-analysis would not contribute to it. However, I would argue that most people use the term "body of knowledge" much more widely, to mean all research that has been conducted and all knowledge that has been generated and published in a field.
In order to be publishable, a meta-analysis should produce new knowledge (e.g., through new experiments or analyses, or by increasing our confidence in previously-published analyses through comparison over a larger sample size), and in that way contribute to the sum of all knowledge in the field, even if no new data points have been collected.

I was not sure whether the term body-of-research (and not knowledge) was intentionally used.

A meta-analysis could be considered useful if it provides one or more of the following:

Synthesis: A research domain may have tens or even hundreds of papers. A meta-analysis could provide a synthesized summary by providing classifications and catalogs.
New perspective: Summarizing the existing studies from a new perspective could be very interesting. It could be from the technology side (for instance, how a new technology affects the previous results) or from the people side (for instance, how existing methods are seen by a manager vs by a student).
Research opportunities: A meta-analysis may also explain not only how the research domain has evolved (in say, last 5 years) but also reveal gaps in the field.

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University club executive committee
As a Mathematics student or a student in general wishing to go into research in the future, does being a member of the executive committee for the relevant club matter that much in terms of gaining positions in the future in research?
I have generalised anxiety disorder, and as a result I find it extremely difficult to join such clubs, and some of my fellow students who are on my level are gaining these positions with ease. Will this give them a large edge over me in the future?

hard to say. However, building a network is important. So try (I know easier said...) to interact with people socially! It will help you down the road!

Personal reaction: It matters -- it's a chance to develop and demonstrate leadership skills -- but it's a low-level effect. Election is something of a crapshoot anyway; not all good candidates get elected. It's more important as worthwhile experience than anything else. If you can't or don't, that's OK; if you can it may be good for you.


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Should I include non-English textbooks in the course?
This is set up in a Russian university with English as a working language, but may apply to any university with a large share of international students.
Suppose I'm listing a set of course materials, including textbooks and educational resources, for a graduate course. Should I include textbooks in Russian / any other language that might be useful to a part of the students cohort, or should I stick to English only?
Pros of providing additional materials in Russian:

some students might benefit from them, and additional materials might make the course content clearer for these students,

Cons of providing additional materials in Russian:

students that don't know Russian might fear they are missing out some course material.

I think you can distinguish between required and optional materials
For required materials (students will be expected to read regularly, have exams on the content, solve exercises from the book, etc), I'd say they should by default be in the "working language" of the university, unless there is a clear educational reason to do otherwise (e.g. the course is studying a foreign language).  In the latter case, students should be advised before signing up for the course that knowledge of the other language is a requirement.
For optional materials, I see no problem with offering materials in a variety of languages, either for the convenience of the students, or simply because it's a good book that happens to be in another language.  Those who know the language can benefit, and those who don't still have everything they need to keep up with the course.

Optional needs to be really, really optional. My teachers often have optional reading which does help you to understand it better. If that's the case, then English students should be given the same chance (or whatever the working language is, if not English). Only if there coincidentally happens to be an untranslated Russian article/book which you think is interesting (but not really helpful for course material, other than going beyond it), I'd recommend it.

"variety of languages" part seems the most important. There musn't be exclusivety on the other languages, even if it's optional material there must be a decent amount of english (or main language) content.

@NajibIdrissi Yes. If some get an advantage from it, it should be available to all students equally. Giving native speakers an advantage on the exam is a dick move when the university claims to be an international one with a working language of English. Foreign students have a big enough disadvantage without this stacked on top of it. (I'm speaking as a Dutchman in a Dutch university. I notice foreign students here have it harder. We should make it more fair, not less.)

@NajibIdrissi You can always search online and find more info for yourself, but that a teacher supplies it, implies it will help you to read it (unless it's clearly stated that it goes beyond the course material and will not help you understand the exam material, as I said earlier).

Depends on the subject. In Humanities it is quite common to add course material in languages the students are not required to know. Mostly because there are no equivalent English sources available. Students should learn to get the important information from the articles despite not knowing the languages.
E.g. Students are required to know Latin and the sources are given in French or Italian.

I don't see how somebody who knows Latin is going to get much use out of French sources. I know English, and that's not adequate to let me read Old English or German.

I would definitely say no to this one. Put in some effort and find good English equivalent of the Russian sources.
It is just unfair to non-native speakers.


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Why do papers found online often not say their publication date?
I have noticed that it can be hard to figure out how old a paper is from the paper itself. It is not that it is impossible: most of the time it can be found by a Google search. But why is there usually no publication data on the first page of a paper?
Here is an example: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~fritz/absps/imagenet.pdf

I changed your title to better match the question; please change it back if you feel it doesn't match your intent.

One thing that may be causing the phenomenon that you are seeing is that in fields like computer science, authors are frequently allowed to put preprints online on their website, but not the final "official" version.  Such preprints often do not carry a date stamp, while the official version available from the publisher's website does.

I would not agree that there is "usually" no date on the paper. Most published papers do carry a date. The one you link to was apparently published in 2012.
Manuscripts can of course come without a date, or even without an author. After all, nobody forces a manuscript author to date his work. (I guess that is the answer to your question.)
Style guides tell you how to cite an undated manuscript, typically as "Foo & Bar (n.d.)".

Many of the papers that you can find on the internet are what are called  "preprints".  A preprint is a manuscript prepared by the author (usually before the paper is submitted for publication, but it can sometimes also include corrections that were made during the review process, in which case it may be called a "postprint.")
When a paper is eventually published in a journal or conference proceedings volume, the publisher will often reformat the paper and typically add headers or footers to the pages that list the journal, volume, page numbers, etc.  These headers/footers also typically include a copyright notice from the publisher.  These published versions of papers are often unavailable to the public and can only be read by people who have personal or institutional subscriptions to the journal or conference proceedings.
Because of this problem of lack of access, many authors leave preprints up on their web sites so that anyone can read the paper.  Thus you'll often find that a paper exists in a published version (with full citation information in the headers and footers) and a preprint version (usually without this information.)
The particular example that you linked to is a paper that was published in the NIPS 2012 conference proceedings.  The published version is also available from the NIPS web site.  Surprisingly, NIPS didn't format the paper with information about its being from the NIPS 2012 conference proceedings- this is a bit unusual in my experience but not unheard of.


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Journals that require IRB approval as a matter of policy
In a number of questions raised here, it has been implied / asserted that research involving human subjects which has not received IRB approval cannot be published. In my own area of research (which is not experimental), I know of no evidence for such a restriction by journal policy. I am therefore curious about the mechanics and nature of such restrictions. Are there journals with explicit policies of this type? I would especially be interested to know of examples in areas outside of the social sciences and medicine. I do, however, want to restrict the question to reputable journals (leaving it up to the experts to make the distinction).
There are a number of underlying questions that motivate this question, so I'm looking for the tools to answer them myself. For instance, in two highly-regarded experimental journals in my field, there is no public statement about requiring IRB approval, so I wonder where the enforcement comes in, and whether authors (especially independent researchers) are given fair notice prior to submission. Right now, I just want to know where there are (non-biomedical) journals that positively do have such a policy.

Outside the social sciences and medicine, human subject experimentation may be rare enough that journals don't bother to state an explicit policy.  But that doesn't mean editors can't enforce it anyway.

Regarding enforcement, the main mechanism is retraction if lack of IRB approval comes to light (and presumably, threat of retraction may serve as a deterrent).

I can see the constructive side of this question, but at the same time, "tell me all the journals that require IRB approval" is kind of a "shopping question." Can you rephrase it so that the answer is not just a (potentially very very very long) list of journals? For example, something like "What is a typical journal policy statement indicating that submissions must have IRB approval?"

I'm curious - what is your field?  And these experimental journals - do they regularly publish studies involving human or vertebrate subjects?

Just another piece of information: No only publishers, but I my funding agency also requires IRB/ethics... (FAPESP)

@NateEldredge, your point about editors enforcing unstated policies is correct, and I am pursuing that via emails to colleagues – the question would be, what policy would they enforce? My area is descriptive linguistics, where publications might be based on asking a German speaker "What's the German for 'two houses'?" (more sophisticated, of course, and other languages). It was in the last 10 years, maybe, that such contact was considered to involve "human subjects" in the field, and even now such interactions with professional colleagues are not thought to require approval.

List questions are generally not a good fit for this site.  Asking for a list of journals with such a policy is not a good match for this site.  There are a zillion possible valid answers.  How will you select one as the objectively correct answer?  And, what research have you done?  It's not that hard to find journals with a policy on this (just look in the HCI community, for instance, or in medicine....)

@D.W., I have no idea what HCI is; as I indicated, no journals in my area have such a policy. I am only interested in reputable journals, which I can't judge outside my field. Answers which actually point to such a policy statement, such as the 3 currently provided, are good examples. I suspect (see the question) that there are no such policies outside social science and medical journals, so an example refuting that conjecture would probably be "the best answer".

If that's what you want, then you should edit the question to say "Is there any journal outside the social sciences and medicine that has such a policy?  Please provide an example if one exists".  That's a much better question.  Right now you just ask for a list of all journals, which is open-ended and there are a zillion possible answers, all valid.

For my own edification, is there something with my wording "I would especially be interested to know of examples in areas outside of the social sciences and medicine" that doesn't do what your wording does? It's true that I wanted to verify the existence of such a policy in social science journals, which is maybe covered by the Springer answer. Perhaps I should say "Please do not give examples from medicine"?

@user6726 I've edited your question slightly to make the non-biomedical focus explicit and to make it not "please list examples." Please feel free to revert/improve if you have problems with my edits.

For example, here is the bioethics policy for the Nature journals.  It includes the sentence:

For experiments involving human subjects, authors must identify the committee approving the experiments, and include with their submission a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all subjects.

From Springer:

When reporting studies that involve human participants, authors should  include a statement that the studies have been approved by the appropriate institutional and/or national research ethics committee and have been performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

http://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/journal-author/journal-author-helpdesk/before-you-start
Notice that those policies are not from any journal, but from the publisher, therefore encompassing all their publications.

This is an interesting example, because one of the journals that I looked at was a Springer journal. The policy doesn't seem to trickle down to the level that authors are likely to interface with.

This policy is potentially problematic since the 2013 amendment to the Declaration of Helsinki requires preregistration of studies, which has not cught on n in many fields.

As I said, they are still valid for all their publications, not only journals. In the authors guide, somewhere, they will mention the general rules for springer...

Some journals may not expressly have a policy because it's actually assumed that a lack of IRB approval would halt a research project from taking place well before the publication phase. For example, several Schools of Public Health require all work to go through IRB determination before they begin. Similarly, many funders require a statement of IRB approval.
Given that, some journal examples:
American Journal of Epidemiology: "If a study has involved any contact with human subjects or if it is otherwise appropriate, authors should state in their Methods section that their institution's review board has approved the study proposal, as well as the manner in which informed consent was obtained from subjects (if applicable). Authors should follow the principles outlined in the Declaration of Helsinki (41st World Medical Assembly. Declaration of Helsinki: recommendations guiding physicians in biomedical research involving human subjects. Bull Pan Am Health Organ. 1990;24:606-609)."
Epidemiology: "It is the authors' responsibility to verify that any study involving human subjects has been approved by the committee on research ethics at the institution where the research was conducted, in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki of the World Medical Association. State in the manuscript that such approval was received and, where applicable, that study participants gave informed consent."
New England Journal of Medicine: "In appropriate places in the manuscript, please provide the following items: If applicable, a statement that the research protocol was approved by the relevant institutional review boards or ethics committees and that all human participants gave written informed consent"
The Royal Society: "For experiments involving human subjects, the committee approving the experiments should be identified and the research conducted according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki. The authors should confirm that informed consent was obtained from all subjects."
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: "Research involving Human and Animal Participants and Clinical Trials must have been approved by the author's institutional review board. Authors must include in the Methods section a brief statement identifying the institutional and/or licensing committee approving the experiments. For all experiments involving human participants, authors must also include a statement confirming that informed consent was obtained from all participants, or provide a statement why this was not necessary. All experiments must have been conducted according to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Helsinki. Authors must follow the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' policy and deposit trial information and design into an accepted clinical trial registry before the onset of patient enrollment. For animal studies, authors must report the species, strain, sex, and age of the animals."
The last two are definitively not social science/medicine only journals.

examples in areas outside of the social sciences and medicine

For an example far out side those areas, Physical Review journals require IRB approval "when applicable."  Here is a somewhat rare example paper where IRB approval was obtained.

authors: Nɗírã Bôƴ Tz


text:
Do professors procrastinate?
I'm a Masters student and graduating in two weeks. I need to admit that I procrastinated A LOT while working on my thesis. If I do my Ph.D. I expect myself to procrastinate a lot there too. However, I'm wondering if this habit vanishes as the individual gets more senior in academia. So maybe as the person gets more senior in academia, they learn to handle this habit better.
My questions:

Is true that the more senior you become, the more you are able to handle this bad habit?
Do professors procrastinate too?

You don't just magically grow out of procrastination. You have to resolve it one way or another.

Do professors procrastinate too? Too broad; I don't know each of them.

You know, professors are human beings, and they do anything human beings do - for the good and the bad. Once I was shopping in a supermarket, when I run into one of my students. He looked definitely astonished.The next week he went to take the exam and told me: "Yes, at the beginning I was really surprised, but then I thought: oh, they have to eat too, after all". So professors eat, drink, have good habits, bad habits -  they can cheat, plagiarize, harass people etc. - and, yes, they do procrastinate.

Let me come back to give a more thoughtful comment later...

academia.stackexchange is probably a pretty darn good example of professors procrastinating (but it is also really useful to all of us)

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not specifically about academia.

I was going to leave the same comment that @Penguin_Knight left, but I guess I waited too long to make the joke first.

No. I think that procrastination is a lifetime problem. I'm doing it right now, and while not a professor, I'm a senior researcher at a university.
Yes. Everyone procrastinates.

I suppose that some people manage to never procrastinate, but my brain doesn't work that way. Don't worry, it's normal.

The trick is learning to manage your procrastination -- limit it, and/or spend that time doing something elsebthat needs doing. I deliberately made getting to SE more difficult to limit how much time i spend here...

Never knew this about you, @bill. But watch me do the same as I write this! ;-)

@WolfgangBangerth, I tend to do almost everything at the very last minute. This is not good for my health, but sometimes it produces my best work!

@BillBarth, I think a lot of us are in that boat :-)

(1) No and (2) Yes.
Evidence to support both claims is the fact that I am a professor and I am writing this answer to you as a way of procrastinating from writing two syllabuses, several research papers, and a grant application.

Dammit, you stole my answer! And probably the answer of a lot of us on this site... it's just that here I feel like my procrastination is more productive overall.

@jakebeal I think many of us apply the same self excuse.


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Are vacations counted for student research assistants in Germany?
I'm working as a student research assistant (HiWi) at a research group in a German university. My job is based on hours and it's mainly programming. In my contract I have to work 20 hours a month. Since I can work anywhere, then I usually work at home. Also things are so flexible, so some days I work 5 hours a day and other times 2 hours a day. My supervisor trusts me, so basically I just tell him how many hours I worked a month or so. Because sometimes I work less hours in one month but then I have to compensate for it in the next month.
However, when I'm counting my working hours I usually don't count the days where we have vacations. If you divide 20 hours by the days of the month then I would usually need to work 1 hour everyday. So if I was working in a normal job, then I would have that day off. But because of the flexible way of the job, then I'm not sure if I should subtract that time-per-day vacation time from my official working hours.
Does anyone know if HiWis in Germany are subject to vacations? Or should we work the full working hours mentioned in our contracts regardless of how many vacations are there in the contract?!
Edit: yeah I know that I can ask my supervisor, but I don't want to open such a dialogue now with him. I know that HiWi contracts are standard in Germany so I guess any professor or postdoc in a German Uni here can answer this :)

Student research assistants in Germany (studentische Hilfskraft, or HiWis) are paid according to a fixed number of hours per week worked throughout the semester. They are therefore expected to complete a set number of hours over the course of the semester.
In principle, HiWis should work the same number of hours every week. However, at many universities, the contract only says that HiWis are paid the same amount each month, with no further subdivision demanded. The factor (at my university) is 4.348 weeks per month. So the number of hours expected to be worked in principle does not depend on the presence of holidays.
With respect to vacations, HiWis are allowed the fraction of time proportional to what a full-time employee would earn. If you worked 8 hours per week, you would be entitled to one-fifth of what a full-time employee earned in vacation time per year (roughly 3 hours per month).
(It should be noted that there has also been discussion that HiWis should not try to concentrate their workload too much, as there is the possibility that by doing so, they may work too many hours in too short a period, in which case in principle their income would become taxable under German law.)

Okay then that means there is no holiday for us .... oh no :(

The concepts of "paid hourly" and "vacation days" are rather orthogonal to one another.

@JackTwain, yes, there is!

@JackTwain: I was incorrectly conflating Urlauben and Feiertage. The former count; the latter do not.

that's right. Feiertage (bank holidays) only count when you have contractually fixed work-days and the bank holiday coincides with one of those. For example, if you work on Wednesdays and the first of May (labour day) is on a Wednesday, you have a day off. (But try to explain to your boss that you are not obliged to make up for «lost» working time…)

@aeismail Not only that, we now need to very carefully monitor and note /actual hourly working times/ for HiWis, while the same thing is generally not true for the other groups.

On  your first question: Yes, research assistants (studentische Hilfskräfte) in Germany are legally entitled to vacation. The number of vacation days varies by region, in particular it depends on whether or not they are covered by a collective labour agreement (Tarifvertrag). Thus, in Berlin, there are 31 days, whereas in the remaining states (Länder) the legal minimum of 24 days per year applies. Have a look at your contract!
On your second, implicit question:

I'm not sure if I should subtract that time-per-day vacation time from my official working hours.

The fact that you are entitled to holiday does not mean that you can take a week off whenever you like. Typically, you have to hand in a formal application for leave. That means you can't simply deduce the vacation form your working hours without prior notice. The procedure depends on your local administration. If you don't want to bother your supervisor, ask her secretary.
You may also ask your local student board (AStA) for more information.
If you speak German, have a look at this trade union brochure:  https://www.gew.de/studium/studium-und-job/

The link is dead as of now. Repair URL and add the title of the document such that the reader has a higher chance to find it in the future even if the URL changes again.

@Leon Meier updated, thanks for the hint (but I don't think retaliatory downvotes help much).

Nothing retaliatory, since before the update, the quality was low due to the reasons mentioned above. If you add the document title to the URL, I'll remove the downvote.


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Is it accepted to refer to your own published result by your own name?
Assume that Jane Doe has published a paper in 2010 where she has developed a model or a theorem or a similar result, let’s say, that it relates to growth.
Now assume that Jane Doe is writing another paper in 2015, where she refers to the model/theorem from her paper in 2010.
Is it acceptable for Jane to write something like the following?

Doe’s growth model (2010), implies that ...
  Doe’s growth theorem (2010) implies that ...
  The Doe growth model (2010) implies ...

As you can see from the answers and discussions about it, you might want to add your field and if double blind reviews are common there or not.

'Doe's growth model' could be 'the growth model used/created by Doe', so could be read as not assigning a name but referring to posession. On the other hand, 'the Doe growth model' leaves no question that is is assigning a name.

"Our previous growth model (2010), implies that..."

@DirkLiebhold, I wasn't asking because I was planning to do this. I was asking merely out of general interest. (I'm not going to publish anything).

I see this now and then. I do feel mildly annoyed that the author's own name passes without special comment among the other references, but I also see it as the convention. Could be different depending on the field.

Well, Tai does seem to be talking about  Tai's model ...  More info: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/9602/11907

"The growth model in [Doe, 2010] implies..." is the standard way. Avoids appearance of vanity naming.

@DBB Maybe (Doe, 2010) for easier searching? Otherwise wouldn't you go back to the title page to check the author's name before searching in the bibliography?

I come from an engineering and chemistry background and that is how I would write it (with a numbered reference at the end of the sentence linking to bibliography)

I seem to recall a paper by Benoit Mandelbrot, where he refers to "the so-called Mandelbrot set".

This is, unfortunately, a case where English grammar can be tricky and exactly how you phrase things is going to matter.
It is often seen a presumptuous to name something after yourself: "Newton's Laws" and "Hawking radiation" and "Rayleigh scattering" are retrospective judgements of significance by the community.  Claiming a similar name is an assertion in advance that your work will be at a similar level of significance.
The problem, then, is that if you say "Doe's growth model", it is ambiguous whether that is intended to be a construction like "Hawking radiation" or whether it just means "the growth model that happens to have been developed by Doe."
This potential problem can be avoided by rephrasing to avoid the parallel construction: "the growth model by Doe et al (2010)", or better yet, "the growth model presented in (Doe, 2010)."  The point here is that the significant item under discussion is the growth model, not Doe, and the sentence should be phrased to make that as clear as possible.
Finally, note that these sorts of phrasings can work both for double blind review and for review where the authors' identities are known: even when the identity of the author is known, the important thing should be the relationship between the work, not the fraction of authors that are shared between two papers (unless you are specifically trying to talk about independent co-discovery).

"Doe's growth model (2010) implies that ..." definitely doesn't read to me like "The Doe growth model (2010) implies that ...". Can you really read it as a name rather than a mere reference?

@Mehrdad It's less so than "The Doe growth model," but still potentially ambiguous given its parallel to a construction like "Newton's Laws." Since there is an equivalent sentence without any potential for confusion, I recommend making the safer choice.

Ahh... I would substitute that example for "Hawking radiation" in your answer; it's a lot more convincing.

No, this would be odd and appears presumptuous.
In your own paper you would write something like "Our growth theorem (Doe 2010) implies..." or "Our previous growth theorem (Doe 2010) implies..."
It is up to your peers to refer to it as "Doe's growth theorem".

@Magicsowon The underlying question of this solution is: can references be treated as grammatical objects in a sentence? In some fields, the answer is yes, in some fields no, and in some fields in depends on the reviewer.

On the other hand, I did not know that a theorem was called "Doe's Theorem" because I learned it from Doe's textbook where he unpresumptuously did not call it that.

Yes. It is even mandatory sometimes.
When preparing a paper for double-blind peer-review, references to the authors' prior work must be anonymized,* hence, it is perfectly reasonable to write "Doe's growth model" and "Doe's growth theorem." Moreover, it is expected that you do so.
*MJeffryes better describes the purpose of anonymizing references:

The point isn't to remove the references, but to refer to them in a
  way which doesn't make it blindingly obvious who the author of the
  manuscript under review is. If you say 'Our growth model' then it is
  clear that the author of the cited paper is the anonymous author.

Double-blind review isn't used in all fields. E.g., mathematics, as noted by
the L.

Programmer2134 rightly notes that

you can always send "doe's growth model" to the peer reviewers, and then change it before publication to "my earlier model (2010)"

and lighthouse keeper rightly adds

[the above answer doesn't consider] the more involved question of how the final version should look like

In my experience, many anonymized references remain anonymized. I'd speculate that this is possibly because it requires additional time to change them. (Yes, it can be easily achieved with \ifanon Our \else Doe's \fi growth theorem (Doe 2010) ..., but that requires additional time too.)

"When preparing a paper for anonymous peer-review, references to the authors' prior work must be anonymized". This is never the case in the field of Mathematics for example. Actually, I don't understand at all how could this work - if I anonymize references that are required to understand the paper, how can the referee read them?

I have no experience with publication, but it seems to me that anonymous peer review should not affect this, because you can always send "doe's growth model" to the peer reviewers, and then change it before publication to "my earlier model(2010)" or something, right?

@theL The point isn't to remove the references, but to refer to them in a way which doesn't make it blindingly obvious who the author of the manuscript under review is. If you say "Our growth model" then it is clear that the author of the cited paper is the anonymous author.

I see. In any case, at least in math, this is not something being done. The referee is anonymous, but the author is not. Given the arxiv, it is unlikely to be changed.

What you're describing as "anonymous peer review" is usually called "double-blind peer review". In all peer review, the reviewer is anonymous. The point of double-blind review is that the author is also anonymous (hence the need to avoid a citation that explicitly says "I am Doe"). And, yes, many fields don't have double-blind peer review. It's often pretty easy to guess who the authors are: a paper that extends three existing papers by Doe is probably also by Doe.

@Programmer2134 Your comment is spot-on. The answer correctly points out a case where you're conveniently required to refer to yourself in the third person, but it doesn't answer the more involved question of how the final version should look like.

@theL arxiv doesn't prevent double-blind review when reviewers haven't seen the preprint. Of course, it does when they have.

@DavidRicherby Yes, you're right. Thanks for editing. You're also right that "It's often pretty easy to guess who the authors are: a paper that extends three existing papers by Doe is probably also by Doe."

@user2768, it does prevent double-blind review, because the reviewer can just google the paper title.

@theL When using double-blind review you have to accept this possibility. Regardless, I like to think that reviewers don't do this, because it violates ethics.

@DavidRicherby You say “In all peer review, the reviewer is anonymous” but that’s obviously only the case in anonymous (blind) peer review. Just as peer review needn’t be double-blind, it needn’t be blinded at all. Single-blind, editorially organised peer review is currently the established norm in most fields but it wasn’t always like this, and unblinded peer review is almost certainly the second most common type of peer review.

@KonradRudolph Is there any field that uses non-anonymous (nonymous?) peer review at the stage of journal submission?

@DavidRicherby I don’t think it’s restricted to individual fields. At any rate, it’s a biggish trend in biomedical research/life sciences at the moment. But that’s not even what I mainly mean: peer review is not restricted to journal submissions (even if traditional journals love to pretend it is). Scientists’ blogging about research is common, and is peer review.

@KonradRudolph To some extent, I agree, but using the phrase "peer review" to essentially mean "any occasion on which one person expresses an opinion on another person's research" renders the phrase so broad that it's barely useful. In most contexts, "peer review" means "evaluating the suitability of a submitted work for publication" along with similar reviews of grant proposals and so on.

@David Well your paraphrase isn’t quite the same as mine, which doesn’t render the term useless (especially given some peoples’ belief that traditional science journals are dying). But, as mentioned, even if we restrict ourselves to journal publishing, open peer review exists. If you’re curious, check out the journals F1000 Research and PeerJ, which spearhead the movement (but many other journals permit open peer review even when not demanding it).

@DavidRicherby I think you've misunderstood: I claim that double-blind peer-review is possible even when reviewers can reveal author identities by searching for the paper's title, because conducting such a search violates ethics. I do not claim that searching for other papers (i.e., papers that aren't under review) violates ethics. (Reviewers should check references.)

@user2768 Right, I see what you mean. Comment deleted.

You can also use "The author's growth theorem" or "The author's growth mode"l if you want to avoid using your name.

Writing "Doe's growth model" or "Doe's growth theorem" suggests that the community has agreed to name Doe's results this way. When this isn't the case, drop 'growth' and write "Doe's model" or "Doe's theorem".
This solution works when later works are written alone or with co-authors. It also generalises to the case when the original work was co-authored, e.g., "Doe et al.'s model" can be used by Doe et al. (same co-authors), and by Doe and new co-authors.

This solution was inspired by a previous one, which notes writing "Doe's growth model" or "Doe's growth theorem" is "odd and appears presumptuous" and suggests that "[i]t is up to your peers to refer to it as 'Doe's growth theorem'."

The best researchers I know find another name for the concept. Tony Hoare often speaks about "assertional logic", while it's "Hoare's logic" since many decades for everyone else, for example. I suggest that you do that same, e.g.,

The Main Growth Model (J. Doe, 2010) implies that self-advertisement need not pay off.

Invent a name. ("Main" above is simply a placeholder.)

This reminds me of the Wikipedia article on Paul Dirac: "Most physicists speak of Fermi–Dirac statistics for half-integer-spin particles and Bose–Einstein statistics for integer-spin particles. While lecturing later in life, Dirac always insisted on calling the former "Fermi statistics". He referred to the latter as "Einstein statistics" for reasons, he explained, of "symmetry".

In general no, but it could be.
a) If "Doe's growth model" has become standard nomenclature in the field, it would appear odd to keep referring to it as something else. One should at least add a note saying that this model is well known as "The so-called Doe model (referring to people calling it that)".
b) If Doe made her model along with Cane and Dower, and is now writing a paper with two other people, it would be ok to write in third person:
"The growth model introduced by Doe et al. (Doe, 2010)"

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How to say no to more work as a PhD student so I can graduate
I am entering my 5th year as a PhD student. The "understanding" with my advisor is that I need three journal papers accepted to graduate. I think I have enough material (designs/ measurements/ analysis) to write the three papers now, but so far have only written one. In a normal situation, my next step would be to write the other two papers.
The issue is that my advisor received more short-term funding for my project, and he plans to ask me to do one more "design" before the grant expires. This "design" will extend my PhD by 1.5 years at the very least and I will have to delay my paper-writing to meet the incredibly ridiculous deadline associated with the short grant and design deadline.
Naturally, my advisor being who he is, he will use the fact that I do not have the three papers to impose more work on me instead of allowing me to actually write the papers I need. He does not have a problem hitting the maximum duration allowed by the Institute to keep a PhD student (6-7 years), even when the student has done enough.
This is further complicated by the fact that my advisor lacks experience in my specific field and only understand that "more designs = more papers".
I need advice on how to address this. How can I make a compelling case that I have done enough and I just need to focus on publishing so that I can graduate? I would really appreciate realistic advice.
Note: My advisor is very powerful in the department. This makes approaching the department unrealistic. I will be on the losing side if I approach the department. I am in a North American Institute.

a) Assuming you are on a (student) F-visa, and thus tied to these guys, correct? b) what happens when you hit the maximum duration allowed by the Institute to keep a PhD student (6-7 years), do you flunk out having been his cash cow? c) What is this advisor's and dept's track record on PhD students: how do students actually manage to graduate? d) Best solution I've seen is you calculate how many full days a week you'll work on papers (2? 3? 4? 5 even?) then tell them that's what you need to do to graduate, stand firm, mention the working hours of other current and previous PhD students.

a) I am tied to these guys due to funding, not a visa. I receive funding from my professor for being an RA b) The institute will not allow me to register and I will have to wrap up and graduate. c) He keeps students for 6 and 6.5 years. Longer than other professors in the department. Usually, students get in a fight to force graduation and end in bad terms with my advisor. D) Yes, I agree. I decided to draft a timeline with milestones, publication plan, and then talk to him about it. I want things to end on good terms with him so I will try to reach a good middle ground.

c) An advisor like that is guaranteed to end up on bad terms, take that as given, esp. if he's been acting like this for years. d) So what happens if you simply say "I am only available 1 day a week, I will be writing my thesis the other 6", stand firm, document it, do not back down? Yes you must draft a timeline for protecting your own productivity; sandbag it a little too. a) Good, so you're not totally at his mercy. Whatever happens, start your thesis today, and do whatever you need to do to prevent all interruptions 6 day a week (e.g. work from library, with phone/messaging/email cut off).

I think your most realistic option is to have an honest discussion with your advisor about your goals and expectations.
Tell them that you’d like to graduate by 20xx, and you think your work on A B C was fulfilling and interesting. You feel like you can really build a narrative around these projects that would culminate in a good thesis within the timeframe set above. Given your goal, you feel like starting a new project at this time will be detrimental to your progress.
Ideally your advisor would totally see it your way and you’ll graduate into the sunset. Realistically: advisors tend to be overzealous at times and can exert a lot of pressure over their students. A reasonable advisor would leave the choice to you; a clever one will make you believe that it’s a really good idea to start this new project (you don’t have enough material now, your CV will be amazing with the new project accomplished...). So a lot of this depends on the dynamics you have with your advisor.
I would not go over their head unless you’re willing and able to switch advisors. Its hard to get back to a good working relationship after something like that.
I will try to establish my own independence and capacity to successfully graduate with a plan (by 20yy I plan to submit these results, draft by Jan 20zz and so on).
Good luck!

(+1) This is the right answer, but the sad truth is that the probability that it works (i.e., PI complies) is very field dependent due to grant structures. My PhD is statistics I don't think I've met a stats professor for which this conversation wouldn't work. My wife's is biology and in that field, since professorships live and die by grants approved, I'd guess 50-50 odds of working.

Thanks for the detailed answer. I will try to have "the graduation talk" with my advisor. I hope it works.

@user18244, good luck!

Lots of good advice in @Spark's answer.  I would add that you might suggest mentoring an new student to take over the project when you are gone.  You can advise them on the design while you focus on writing your last two papers.  This is a reasonably common practice, at least in the fields I have worked in.  This should have a number of advantages from all perspectives:

Your adviser will get your help training the new student to take over which means they will have 5 more years of work on the project rather than just the 1.5 they can get from you.
It takes the burden of the new project off your shoulders while still providing a mechanism for the work to get done.
If it isn't worth your adviser's efforts to recruit a new student for the project, then it shouldn't be worth your time either.  Making your adviser have to make the first effort toward moving the project forward will demonstrate how much they really care about making it happen.
By helping the new student, you might be able to get your name on some of their papers even after you graduate.

Thanks a lot for the input! I would be more than willing to mentor some students to take over if my advisor agrees to let me off the hook.

Adding on to Sparks answer, it would be helpful to provide context to your planned graduation date. A reason to graduate by a certain date presented with reasoning from a different angle makes it more difficult for the professor to counter argue.
Drawing reasons for example from:

Family - presence needed, marriage or impending split/divorce, pregnancy or desire to get pregnant by a certain age due to fertility
Work - money needed, job offer, etc
Visa - although this is specific to your case
Relocation - plan to move elsewhere for some reason or another

Whether you actually are going to carry through with the reasoning and how truthful the reasoning is up to you. Just try not to be blatantly false that you'll get caught

"Because reasons" can be a dangerous approach here.  From the student's side, this is a bait and switch.  "I thought I was done, and I would like to finish up", without explanation, is the approach to take.

I agree with Scott. As an advisor, It’s really none of my business why one would want to graduate at a certain time. I may gently ask (to establish a sense of the urgency), but would not expect it.

Might be worth seeing if you can infer the advisor's potential reaction from prior grad students' experiences.

While it isn’t the advisor’s business why a student would want to graduate on a certain date, it is the advisor’s business to push for completion of his design and improvement of his project. Student should come prepared to counter the advisor’s arguments particularly if the advisor is adamant that student is not done yet

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