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Use of secondary findings to motivate novelty
I have a paper on machine learning with a clear research objective and goals. Further, our experiments show that our proposed methodology actually meets those goals and perform better than the state-of-the-art methods in the field.
After two rounds of review, so in the third feedback, one reviewer for the fist time mentioned that the paper lacks novelty. Without pointing to the overlapping literature. We are sure this is not the case since our section Related Work covers most, if not all, of the methods in our research field.
In order to improve the novelty in our work, I have been playing around with our proposed model, and found some interesting results. These results are of course the consequence of our proposed methodology.
So my question is can I use those findings to motivate novelty in our research? As I mentioned before, our experiments show that our proposed models solves the research objectives. So I dont want to miss that focus. I just would like to point to future research based on the new fidings, and ideally use those findings to improve the novelty of the manuscript. So the one reviewer that mentioned the novelty part suggests to accept the paper. The other two reviewers have already suggested acceptance.

Do you mean "novelty"?

"So I dont want to miss that focus. I just would like to point to future research based on the new fidings, and ideally use those findings to improve the novelity of the manuscript" When you don't present the findings as part of your paper, you cannot use them to argue for novelty. A better strategy would be to kindly ask the reviewer to clarify his doubts about the paper's novelty -- which previous works with the same findings exist?

@lighthousekeeper we have already asked, via the EiC, about a clarification, but we did not get a concrete answer. Just a "please review the manuscript accordingly". I am planning to include the findings in the paper, but I am not sure how to present them without missing the focus of our research. Further, I am not sure how can I argue that the findings are some sort of novelty.

"We explain the novelty of our work in the introduction and in Sect. <Related_Work>. To the best of our knowledge, our discussion of related work does not contain any omissions. If we are wrong, we kindly ask reviewer X to specify the omitted works."

If you plan to include the new findings, why do you mention future work in your question?

user1571823, how complicated is the new methodology that you introduce in the paper? I've seen a couple of times that if something surprisingly simple solves an important problem, then some reviewers feel that this is not worthy of publication because....well hard to say why exactly. Perhaps because they feel that the technical contribution just isn't enough for a good venue? This is a just q a question to figure out what the reviewer may really want.

@lighthousekeeper because I feel that the fidings point in a different direction than the main focus of the paper. Hence I beleive that if it is some value on it, it should be investigated in a research with a different angle. But my point is if we can argue that our proposed methodology, in addition to perform better than the state-of-the-art, has opened a new avenue for future research based of the new findings.

@DCTLib well, we beleive that we have made contributions to core machine learning literature, and we dont find any other similar work out there. We will submit a revised manuscript, but given that the reviewer rising the issue about novelty did not provide a concrete example, we are highligting the contributions of our paper. Additionally, I would like to add the new findings to support the novelty of our methoddoly, but I am not sure how to do it.

@user1571823 Note that I was not asking whether you made good contributions, but rather whether they look complicated or like a "deep insight". I know that this doesn't matter, but I just have the guess that the reviewer may be uneasy suggesting acceptance of something that works well with simple methods. That being the case would at least be consistent with the reviewer being unable to give a concrete example - he/she wants one so-called "deep insight" and may be unable to find any insight in your paper that classifies as "deep", measures by how complicated they are.

@DCTLib I see your point. Difficult to answer, but we have introduced concepts that make our proposed model more complex than other methods in the field. Actually we present two models, one more complex than the other. Whether the reviewer see our model simple or complex is relative I would say. But I see your point, and that might explain why we did not get a concrete feedback.


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Does it have a bad effect on my career if I publish in Frontiers journals?
Recently, one of my articles has been accepted in Frontiers. At first, I thought, Frontiers' journals are reputable and they acted like a reputable journal by just assigning an associate editor and then 2 reviewers to take care of my article. Last month, they sent the reviewers' comments. It was easy overall for both reviewers' comments. I sent the revised version and it got accepted. You know, Frontiers show the name of reviewers after that article is accepted. I checked the profile and research interests of both reviewers, but unfortunately none of them had any interest or published materials in the field of my article. Even one of them was from a really distant major that I study, which makes me think that their comments were easy cause they did not have any expertise in this field. Right now, I have a really bad feeling about it and want to know does it have any bad effect on me when someone looks at my article and see it got reviewed by some people without knowledge about this field? Any suggestion or recommendation is appreciated.
Update
I used financial hardship ground to withdraw my article from publishing and thanks to not paying their publishing fee as well as not approving the proof version of article and not transferring copyright to Frontiers, it seems they accepted to withdraw my article. In fact, they act pretty much like a predatory journal. I checked several published or accepted articles in that particular journal: "Frontiers in Materials" and indeed it seems there is no connection between peer-reviewers background and the reviewed articles. Also, the interesting thing, which I'm not sure how to interpret, is that usually the peer-reviewers of their articles are from same country or even same university as authors that might introduce high chance of conflict of interests... Anyway, I have a plan to submit it in a more prestigious journal in my field (definitely not OA).

It might depend on the particular Frontiers journal. They got some initial flak early on for some predatory practices (mostly for spam requests for submissions), and they are certainly for-profit, but I've published there and so have many colleagues and I read and cite papers from Frontiers. The reviewers in my experience have had reasonable suggestions and I never felt like a paper just waltzed in there. There are other questions here asking about Frontiers journals for you to read through.

@BryanKrause, I have no opinion on the question at hand or on Frontiers, but will note that "for-profit" and "high quality" are not mutually exclusive. It is when the profit is more important than the quality that it becomes problematic.

@Buffy I don't think my comment made any implication that they are mutually exclusive, but the charge levied against Frontiers by others is that they favor publishing over rejecting work due to a profit motive that may impinge on impartial review. An alternative view is that their open peer review system leads to more productive review and less grandstanding by reviewers. Judging which motive takes precedence is difficult.

@BryanKrause, just a warning to the readers not to conflate the two ideas.

In my field they seem to be a relatively high impact factor outlet for decent ideas or efforts which didn't yield particularly great results. If you have a result that you think is very promising or exciting, I'd seek a better journal. But I certainly don't hold put them in the same category with the fake journals.

@ASimpleAlgorithm This journal's impact factor is 2, which is not bad in my field. But now, I have a doubt that that's a real 2 or just made up...

@AloneProgrammer Does the specific Frontiers journal you published in publish work you read and would cite? That's a better indicator than the impact factor.

@BryanKrause Yes, I read their several works and cited as well in my previous articles. But, I'm not sure why associate editor chose two reviewers that do not have any experience in my field. By the way, associate editor is a really established professor in our field but the reviewers no...

I don't have any knowledge of this particular journal, but will offer a general comment:  The easiest way to avoid predatory journals is to publish where you read. Look at the papers that you're citing as references. What journals were those papers published in? That's where to publish your work.

It pains me to say this as a Swiss but neither Frontiers nor MDPI journals are really worth publishing in. I'd personally rather have an article only on a pre-print server than peer-reviewed by one of those fake peer-reviews. Unfortunately we live in a publish or perish world, so there is that...

The short answer is, you shouldn't be too worried, but you should make some deliberate choices with your next submissions.
As @BryanKrause mentions, the quality of Frontiers in depends on the specific journal. Some have better editors than others, who will/are able to recruit better reviewers, and therefore have a better review/editorial process. I have heard Frontiers in Neuroscience maintains higher standards.
Frontiers seems to revolve around 'special issues', so you will always need to consider who the specific editors of the issue are. I have noticed in some cases, these special issues are used to create an 'easy' venue for a specific community to generate papers out of a workshop or symposium. In other cases, the special issues can be considered quite serious.
Overall, Frontiers in, and the open-access publishing model in general, is very young. They are also trying out some rather radical ideas for the review process. Many people will be skeptical for a while, regardless of the quality. Some will embrace it, and also have a better opinion of others who embrace it. My expectation is that in the long term, Frontiers (or some other open-access journals) will win out, but this will take some time.
As a consequence, I'd say it is unfortunate if you published your best work in a Frontiers in which isn't of the best quality. But if you have other publications in more established venues, it is unlikely to count against you with a future hiring committee. My advice is to make sure your next paper or two are in very established journals, after which it is up to you if you want to push the open-access model more again.

"I have heard Frontiers in Neuroscience maintains high standards." Not really. My work is partially related neuroscience and I read a lot of papers in Frontiers in Neuroscience and I could say those works have lower quality for example in comparison to American Journal of Neuroradiology.

That's too bad, since that's actually the only example I've heard very positive things about. Nonetheless, I do know good researchers who publish somewhat regularly in Frontiers, and I also know people who have advised me against publishing good work in Frontiers, yet some of their most cited papers are in Frontiers.

I think the problem of Frontiers journals generally is that reviewers do not have enough experience in papers that they are assigned to review. I'm not sure there is a intention to choose reviewers in this way but usually reviewers do not have any published material in that particular field of papers that they are trying to review. One example was my paper that reviewers had nothing to do with my field at all and another one was an article from my PhD adviser that is published in Frontiers in Physiology, which is full of errors because reviewers did not have any expertise in that field.

I've heard this comment before. I've also heard of at least one case where a colleague got excellent reviews from a Frontiers in submission. (Excellent, meaning, very useful)

I am a mathematician. I have published articles about a mathematical object called the "Swiss-Cheese operad." Today, I was invited to be a reviewer by an editor of "Frontiers in Microbiology" for an article on the effect of some protein on cheese quality. I will let the reader be the judge of what this says about the quality of this journal, and what impression a paper published in such a journal would leave in someone's CV.

Dear mathemathician, I understand your irritation for editors wasting your precious mathematics times, but one anedocte does not make a statistics, it can be as trivial as homonym or as bad as the journal applying machine learning to fish out reviewers from arxiv... would you mind referring us the editor name or at least notifying them of the trivial error?
It would help making the world a better place.

@EarlGrey My name is uncommon enough that a homonym is out of the question (for fun, I looked it up in google adding "biology" or "cheese", no result other than myself). You're reframing this as irritation from an arrogant mathematician. But really, I'm just reporting an egregious behavior. I stated that I am a mathematician and some background context to explain why I don't believe there is any other possibility than the scenario where the editor just picked a reviewer almost randomly.

@EarlGrey Also, I find your tone and formulations a bit strange. Would you mind disclosing if you have any relationship to these "Frontiers" journals? I'm not sure what other reason you would have to ask me to publicly shame a specific editor rather than the journal in general.

Sure, I have no relationship with Frontiers.

Well, it seems I can find you just by searching "Swiss-Cheese operad." and knowing your username here in SE. So, it's pretty clear that editor of that journal had no idea that "Swiss-Cheese operad." has nothing to do with real swiss cheese...

I submitted a paper to Frontiers in Earth Science. I have published over 100 papers in reviewed journals and many in the best journals in my field. The Frontiers reviews were extremely rigorous and we went through many exhausting iterations. The reviewers were not familiar with the exact area I was working on, but their comments and requirements substantially improved the ms.
I have been asked to review many papers for Frontiers and some have been well away from my areas of expertise. It was quite easy to decline the invitations. I would recommend Frontiers in Earth Science but be prepared for some rigorous iterative reviews.

Probably not. The people assessing you can be divided into two broad categories: those who think Frontiers is predatory, and those who don't.
In the former case, they are likely to consider you a victim. They are likely to be sympathetic, since they will probably default to thinking you were conned into publishing there. Even then there's a good chance that if they are able to read and understand your paper they will do that instead of judge by the publisher alone.
In the latter case, the question of whether they'd think less of you for publishing with Frontiers doesn't arise in the first place.
The only time there might be damage is if you're talking to someone who considers Frontiers predatory, and you make it clear that you don't consider Frontiers predatory & you willingly published there. Then they might start questioning your motives, investigating you for undeclared conflict of interest because who else would defend an (obviously, to them) predatory publisher, etc. Example of similar situation with MDPI. Still since you aren't defending Frontiers, this probably won't happen to you, and you have nothing to worry about.

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PostDoc while Serving in the Military
I am currently full-time military, and I am due to graduate in a year with a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering, are there opportunities to do post doc work "part time"?

Was the PhD done at a military institution (Naval Postgraduate School, Air Force Institute of Technology, etc. in the USA)? Was it done on assignment from the military (happens quite a bit)? What assignment does the military have in mind for you once you have your degree?

Its at Colorado state done in my spare time, the military gets nothing out of it unless I'm selected for Professor at the academy.

Congrats and good luck with an academy position. I just closed on a house in Fort Collins…

Without knowing specifics (such as your country, branch of service, etc.), consider reaching out agency's research program.
For example, the US Military has the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering that does and publishers research. Perhaps you could include/leverage some of your official military duties to create a post-doc like experience.

That would be unusual, but you might be able to arrange something, especially if you don't require much compensation for it. Normally, though, a post doc is pretty intense.
But you might be able to arrange some sort of a collaborative arrangement with a professor without an employment contract, but just two people interested in a common project. It would be easiest if you were co-located, but not impossible otherwise.
So, perhaps not a formal postdoc, but something like postdoc work as you suggest. And it might give you some publications and appropriate letters of recommendation for furthering your career if you leave the military.

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What are the ethics of reviewing a paper, spotting issues, not raising them in the review, and then trying to publish a paper on the issues?
I had a paper that went through a long peer-review process (~1 year). One of the reviews seemed to obviously be from a specific individual who strongly disagreed with the paper because it critiques their work, although they didn't sign the review. Less than 24hrs after the paper was published, that specific individual posted a pre-print criticising the paper, which brings up some issues that were addressed during the review, but also several issues not mentioned during the review (e.g., a typo in one of the results tables). Speculatively, it seems like they were using our data/code and withholding issues they spotted to prepare their own pre-print while reviewing my paper. The pre-print even includes a link that only appears in the draft that was used in the review process, not in the published paper.
What are the ethics of this type of behaviour from a reviewer? It seems sketchy, but I'm not aware of official guidelines around this.
Edit: I did not post a pre-print of my own. So the first time my data, code, and results were made public was at the time of publication.

Maybe it was a reviewer that submitted a review, then the editor rejected the review and went on to look for another reviewer? It would be worthwhile to contact the editor where you submitted the paper, by telephon (do not leave a paper trail for now), it seems the reviewer did not break copyright agreement&so, but its behavior is questionable. It may be that they hold a grudge, not with you but with the journal's editors...

@EarlGrey, why not a "paper trail"?

@Buffy you never know who is the editor friend of, maybe the reviewer in discussion here is one of the biggest contributor to the journal and a well-known expert (as well as a jerk)

@EarlGrey, then you also need to question the ethics of the journal itself.

@Buffy you don't know you are on the wrong end of a conflict, until you discover you are on the wrong end.

specific individual posted a pre-print criticising the paper, which brings up some issues that were addressed during the review - Are you saying some of the critique objectively does not apply to the published version of your paper?

Should it be supprising that the journal editor sent a paper that criticized another paper's results to the author of the subject paper?

@Clumsycat It happens to me, too.

This seems very unethical as you describe it. I would write immediately to the editor, informing them of what has happened. The editor knows who the reviewer was, of course.
It is possible that you have the wrong individual in mind and the critique was generated outside the review process, especially if you have released a preprint.
But if your guesses are correct, it is pretty clearly unethical.

Thanks for the response. Are you perhaps aware of any official "peer-review guidelines" that I could direct the editor to?

The editor, if established, will be experienced in these things. They won't need "pointing".

you might find something in 'COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers' https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers

Suppose the originator of the paper has a history of rejecting or ignoring reviews, or the reviewer has experienced their review of other papers being ignored or rejected. It would be logical to convert the review to a critique as the originator would then, in my view, be acting unethically in wasting reviewers' time.

I appreciate your knowledge. I agree with your conclusion but I am not sure exactly how did this conclusion is reached. What specific action was unethical and what specific code of conduct is violated? Like COI or confidentiality?

"It is possible that you have the wrong individual in mind and the critique was generated outside the review process" - since OP told  in comment that there was no preprint published, this seems very unlikely to me. The critique was published within 24 hours of the first ever public appearance of OP's article.

@Neinstein, I agree that it is unlikely, but not impossible. If another had been doing parallel work they might be pretty quick to criticize. It is also possible that a copy of the work "escaped" somehow though hopefully not from the journal review process. Still unlikely but not impossible.

There is not necessarily anything particularly unethical going on here. Sometimes as a reviewer you will disagree with the arguments/methods/conclusions of a paper you are reviewing without there being anything objectively wrong about the paper that should stop the publication of this paper. Peer review ultimately is not the best place for an extended scientific debate.
In such a situation it is often a better idea for the reviewer to let the paper be published and write their own response to the paper. This seems to be what has happened here. Of course, technically what they should have done is wait for the final published version to be released and base their response on that. But, they can hardily be blamed for starting this after submitting their final review (presumably some time has past between their final review and publication). In any case, the preprint appeared after your paper was published. It is technically possible they simple stayed up all night to write the response in 24 hours. (Incidentally, avoiding these types of ethical gray areas is one of the reason that I only agree to review papers that are already available as preprints.)
You infer the reviewer has purposefully withheld comments from the review to base their own paper on. This it not necessarily the case. As an example you mention them remarking about a typo in your results, but it is at least plausible that they spotted the typo, only after submitting their final report. (Personally, I would consider pointing at typos in other people's work in a preprint the epitome of pettiness, but that is a separate issue.) They may also have concluded that some of their comments were irrelevant to whether or not your paper should be accepted for publication (in which case they would have no place in the referee report).

As far as subjective/opinion-based criticism is concerned, this answer makes sense. But the situation in OP's case contains an example for an objective error (typo in a table).

@lighthousekeeper: But I don't think we (or OP) can know whether the reviewer might have spottet this specific typo only much later after their review had already been submitted.

Good idea, in general, to only agree to referee things already available as preprints.

The fact that the criticizing paper was submitted within hours of the publication of the original seems suspicious to the least, since there was no preprint submitted. It is very implausible for someone to read, analyze, review in-depth an article, and then write a well-sourced, in-depth critique about an article within 24 hours of it's first public appearance ever.

Also, even if the reviewer hasn't purposefully withheld issues, there's a huge conflict of interest in using the content of an unreleased article he is reviewing as the base for his new publication. I don't see room for any ambiguity in that there's a big ethical issue here.

@Neinstein Who said the response was a "well-sourced, in-depth critique" rather than a quick rebuttal of the criticism of the auhtor's work in the paper of the OP?

@lighthousekeeper It could be the case that the reviewers spotted these typos/mistakes after submitting their reports -- I sometimes do this too.

There are three separate issues here that I can see, and two of them suggest a problem with peer review in your case.
First, most (all?) reputable journals and conferences have policies requiring confidential peer review. That is- reviewers are not allowed to share the work or discuss the work with until it is published. This gives the author the opportunity to present their best possible work to the community, and prevents low-quality work from entering the academic discourse without the validation of peer review. If your work was shared outside of the peer review system, it indicates a major breach of protocol.
Second, most (all?) reputable journals also have policies about conflict of interest in peer review. At a minimum, all such conflicts need to be declared to the editors involved, and ideally anyone with a conflict should not be a reviewer. This is not always possible, such as when the topic concerns a very narrow specialty, but at a minimum it is a sensitive situation that the editors should have known about.
In order for this person to have gotten your work, it would seem that one of these two best practices was not adhered to. If your field is actually incredibly narrow in scope then perhaps the review was allowed to be conducted by the person you were critical of. It is certainly worth a letter to the editor and they certainly should not be surprised by it.
The third issue is the timing. This is not a problem, except as it implies a breach of protocol in points one or two above.
Once the work enters the public discourse then it is free game for comment. The person you are critical of did the right thing by delaying their publication until your work was published, and that is all you can really ask of anyone. If we are to have confidential peer review then there must be a point at which the restriction of confidentiality drops (in part because the reviewers are often the best qualified people to participate in the public discussion that follows the private review). You can see this especially with high-profile papers when they are published- all of the people who you think would normally be commenting are silent, then suddenly the paper is published and they all give a big sigh of relief and say, "OK, now I can talk about this."
As an author you might understandably want your work to have a "grace period" where it can be discussed freely without rebuttal, but as far as I know that's never been a thing. If you have to pick a point in time to drop confidentiality, then the public publication seems to be the best.

Hi David, I totally agree with point 1 and 3. Regarding your second point: so if I write a critique on paper A, then the authors of A should not be referees due to COI?

Conflict of interest policies usually only require disclosure, not recusal. It's up to the editors of the journal/conference to examine the COI and determine how it should be handled. Generally, if a paper was going to be a direct rebuttal and/or damaging to reputations, then the authors of A should not be reviewers. However, there are many fields where different groups will constantly "one-up" each other's work, and that's not a critique in a direct sense, nor is it a reason to exclude others from being reviewers.

Many thanks for your teaching. So explicit criticism should not be reviewed by the original authors (usually). However, implicit "one-up" paper can be reviewed the original authors. Is my understanding mostly on track?

That is normal in my field, yes. Extending another author's work can be reviewed by that original author, and in fact they're probably one of the best people to do so.

Why "it would seem that one of these two best practices was not adhered to"? I don't see a violation of confidentiality, as the preprint was issued after publication of the paper, and I don't understand what disclosure of conflict of interest was needed as, I assume, the paper clearly criticized the referee's work. I conclude that the editors were aware of the conflict of interest, furthermore, they wanted to know the opinion of the criticized person. Eventually, they accepted the paper, so they probably did not think the referee's objection warranted rejection.

@akhmeteli That's just my reading of the situation on how it should have / would be handled in my field.

I am not sure the reviewer's behavior is unethical. Technically, they did not violate confidentiality as their preprint was published after publication of your paper.

it seems like they were using our data/code

But again, they did not publish anything before your publication. After that, a preprint using your data/code looks OK (if your work product is properly cited). They probably were preparing their preprint before your paper was published, but I am not sure this is unethical, as the preprint was published after your paper was published.

it seems like they were ... withholding issues
they spotted to prepare their own pre-print while reviewing my paper.

I assume the reviewer recommended rejection of your article. As others wrote, the reviewer could just make arguments that they believed were sufficient to warrant rejection.

The pre-print even includes a link that only appears in the draft that
was used in the review process, not in the published paper.

If, as I assume, the link is accessible to general public, providing it does not violate confidentiality either.
In general, you criticized the reviewer's work, they published an objection as soon as they could. I would say, this is understandable.

This is an interesting question and I think it depends on which ethical framework you are operating under.
If you subscribe to a consequentialist ethics framework, then you would judge the ethics of this reviewer's actions by what the consequences are likely to be. If the reviewer did notice an error in your paper, but chose to withhold that information from you, then the foreseeable consequences include a paper possibly being published which contains one more error than it would otherwise. That's a bad outcome for the wider pursuit of knowledge (and for you as an individual), and the outcome is a foreseeable consequence of the reviewer's actions, so the reviewer has an ethical duty to inform you of the error via the review process.
On the other hand, if you subscribe to a deontological ethics framework, then you would judge the ethics of this reviewer's actions by what rules the reviewer was supposed to be following, or what the reviewer's responsibilities were. The purpose of a review is to make a recommendation to the editor regarding whether the paper is suitable for publication in that journal. If the reviewer honestly believes that the paper is unsalvageable, that fixing every error would not result in a paper suitable for publication, then their ethical obligation to make a sound recommendation using their best judgement does not entail mentioning every error they noticed in the paper. Keep in mind that although the review is sent to the author and the author is expected to respond to it, the purpose of the review is to help the editor make an informed decision about whether to accept or reject the paper.
Note: I've answered by assuming the premise of the question, which is that the reviewer did notice these particular errors before submitting their review to the editor. It's quite possible that they noticed later, in which case the question is more hypothetical. There is still a related question of whether they have an obligation to inform the editor about minor errors they discover after submitting their review; I'm not sure what the standard practices and norms are in such a situation, but even a consequentialist might say that if the reviewer sincerely believes that the editor will reject it based on their recommendation, then as far as the reviewer knows, informing them (and you) of additional minor errors would be inconsequential.


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PhD interview (Switching PhD)
I have a PhD interview in a few days. I am already registered as a PhD student at a university, however I am planning to switch to a different PhD program. My reason to switch are related to the issues with the previous work of my present supervisor that are facing retractions and comments (on pubpeer) for scientific misconduct.
I think that it is better for me find a better lab to prevent any damage to my profile. Should I let the interviewers know that I am already a registered PhD student who is planning to switch due to these reasons? I am not involved in any of these questionable studies and have not published any research with my supervisor. Can this affect my selection chances during the interview?

Whose misconduct? Is it your? Partially yours? Third parties?

Do you want to change fields (as the tag implies) or simply change programs?

So not an interview with another professor in the same department, but a wholly separate department?

What does "registered as a PhD student" actually entail? Often a PhD position is tied to an employment or stipend and may include obligations towards the university or a funding body; are there any such conditions that affect if and how you can actually start working for someone else? Your previous question suggests that you haven't just registered but are actually a PhD student for several years, so at the very least your CV would have an obvious gap if omitting your current PhD studies, wouldn't it?

Thank you everyone for your comments. The misconduct is purely from my supervisor and her previous students. I am nowhere involved, neither during the research work nor do I share any authorship in these papers. Her previous papers started receiving the comments after I joined the lab. My interview is scheduled in a different university (so of course in a different department). And yes, I am a PhD student from the past couple of years; however, given the circumstances, I find it safe to switch. I am planning to refund my present funding (the fellowship), if I get a position.

If I were the person interviewing, I would be very sympathetic to your predicament and would not use your current supervisor's misdeeds against you. I'd be happy to have a student who left their previous lab due to credible accusations of misconduct.
I would, however, avoid using derogatory or judgmental language that might make someone worried you have something against your current advisor besides their misconduct. Instead, speak factually and dryly about it and focus on what you want and what is good for you. For example, avoid saying "I'm leaving Professor F's lab because he is a fraudster" and stick to "I've recently become aware of credible accusations of fraud raised against my current lab, and feel that I would have a better experience training in a different environment."
I do think it's possible you'd receive a different reaction from friends and colleagues of your current advisor, who may have a hard time believing the accusations or believe in some alternative explanation, but I think it is probably to your benefit to screen out advisors who would defend the sort of behavior you're trying to get away from.


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How to deal with an inadequate paper reviewer
We have submitted a paper to a peer-reviewed journal.
The paper was accepted subject to revision. Reviewer A gave superficial, general comments without any specifics. Reviewer B was slightly more detailed in their comments.
I want to note that our "policy" is not to argue with reviewers but to try to understand their points and address them to the best of our extent with maximum respect and politeness. This means that our rebuttal letter pretty much starts with words of gratitude and then detailed explanations of what was added/changed to address a particular comment.
It took approximately another month of full-time work to address every single comment in full. The rebuttal letter contained detailed explanations along with excerpts from the edited paper of what was added to address the comments. My supervisor, who is an experienced professor and well-mannered gentleman with perfect command of British English made sure our ESL rebuttal letter was respectful, detailed and on point.
One month later we received another round of revisions. Reviewer B was very satisfied and approved the paper for publication. However, Reviewer A was super pissed, their second-round feedback was very chaotic with many typos and strange sentencing that we couldn't quite decipher. They wrote that we ridiculed their comments. However, again, no specifics were given. They demanded another revision without specifying what needs to be redone or paid extra attention to. Just, do another revision! Of what though?
This is not my first paper and I'm confident we did not in any way ridicule or show any neglect. However, here we are, not knowing how to deal with this petty tyrant.
I would appreciate your help! I'm getting really depressed as I'm wholeheartedly invested in this project.

What does the editor think?

Hi Bryan. Thank you for your timely reply. I did not talk with an editor. Do you think I should talk with them?

This is a case where I think you can benefit from the editor's privilege of judgment.
First, let this sit a little. Read the odd review in an unemotional state, with a mindset that is as open as possible to interpreting their review from a considerate perspective. Perhaps have some other trusted colleagues compare the review with your paper and look for any possible basis to their criticism, however unartfully delivered.
If after all this patient consideration you still find it as odd and off-putting as your description here, go to the editor. Mention to them the previous (reasonable) comments from this reviewer, what you did to address them, and how surprised you are at the response. I would avoid any accusations or language like you've used here (super pissed, chaotic), just state calmly that you're puzzled/surprised by the review and unsure how to proceed given the other review is positive, and ask the editor for guidance on which comments they feel you should address in the next submission.
Of course, do this in consultation with your coauthors.
Likely if the editor finds the review similarly puzzling (and they probably will if you've exhausted all attempts to find sense in it) they'll proceed based on the original reviews and the new review from B. Of course they could also say you need to somehow appease both reviewers, but I think it's worth a try.

thank you so much Bryan <3

@MonteNero side comment, please remember that the review is visible to the editor and that the reviewer are giving suggestion to the editor regarding your paper ... so your response can be done on two levels, both finally arriving at the editor: one to the editor via your response to the reviewer and one directly to the editor.
Politely share your concerns with the editor (it is called peer review because it is among peers, even if you find chaotic the last review, note that the reviewer probably does not share your opinion).

@EarlGrey To be clear, in this case, I'd recommend a more informal discussion with the editor rather than addressing them via comments to the reviewer. Usually this would be by emailing the editor directly, rather than through any submission software, etc.

Editor decides. Ask the editor for a different reviewer if you really want 2 independent reviewers. Reviews can vary, I like long detailed ones. Some reviewers have axes to grind, certain hobby horses or even are just cantankerous old curmudgeons. If you have a good paper and the editor is not receptive it's time to look for another journal. But as others indicated an informal Convo via email or Zoom is a way to discuss this.


text:
Advisor is using my ideas as grant proposal
I am having a hard time deciding what to do or feel so I wanted to ask this question here.
For background, I am a PhD student and am doing pretty well overall. I also happen to have a fellowship that covers my tuition and stipend for the next two years. At this point, I have a very clear and novel research agenda that I will most likely work on for the rest of my career and that I have presented at different venues.
My advisor has recently watched a talk I gave and told me that she would like me to write a grant proposal based on the ideas in my talk. Now, I feel uncomfortable doing this because I feel like she had absolutely zero contribution in the development of any of these ideas in this talk, and, if she gets the grant based on these ideas, I would lose "authority" over my own research agenda.
During my time in the Ph.D., my advisor has contributed very little intellectually to my work, (although I admit he has been a great editor). When it came to publications, I never had an issue regarding this because I would always be the first author, and it was clear that I was the expert on the topic (giving talks, etc...). However, if I understand correctly this grant proposal will only have his name on it, and it would not mention that the ideas developed in the grant belong to me (other than references to our past work).
Am I right to worry? What can I do?

Would you enjoy collaborating with the professor long-term? If an idea is good enough, there are often many pieces of it that require work. I always have more ideas than time to fundraise, do paperwork, manage students, and write.

Relevant PhD-Comic Not 100% true, not 100% your situation, but close enough.

Are you sure advisor isn't indirectly trying to teach you how to write grant proposals? Did you ask them why they need YOU to write a grant proposal? Are you sure this grant proposal will be submitted?

"However, if I understand correctly this grant proposal will only have his name on it" --> can you confirm that you indeed understand this correctly? I know of different countries (e.g. UK, the Netherlands), which do allow including Named Researchers in the proposals (e.g. naming the postdoc -- presumably you -- who would work on the project), and even allow Research Co-Investigators (you) to be included as the proposal authors.

Here are two simple reasons why you should encourage your advisor to write the research grant with your idea:

In your own words:

I admit she has been a great editor

Editing a scientific manuscript seems like a trivial thing, but depending on the context sometimes it is the task that requires the most effort. This is not something that you can ignore.

Your advisor asking you to write a grant proposal means that she finds your ideas valuable enough to convince a funding source.

Since you are a member of the project, this is a great opportunity for you. At the end of the day, the funds will not be spent on your advisor's personal purchases. It will be your travel money, conference registration fee, research visit compensation, etc.
I do not believe that the ambition of getting the credit that you think you deserve is a feasible goal here. In the best case, she will say "OK then, I won't write a grant based on your idea." And then what? You are back to square one.
In the future, you will have many brilliant ideas, and most of them will be way better compared to the one that you have today. So, the best course for you (I think) is writing the proposal, and enjoying the grant both by putting an item in your CV and spending the money to travel around.

+1 but be alert "At the end of the day, the funds will not be spent on your advisor's personal purchases. It will be your travel money, conference registration fee, reseearch visit compensation, etc." Do not take this for granted. Maybe these funds would cover just one year of a PhD position, but then the work promised in the grant will need two years of a PhD position ... but professor&dept head would be happy to show the university board "look, we got $$funds$$ for a PhD for one year!"

Is it in the US the same that: you cannot use grant money for your own salary, meaning yes while a phd student could apply for a grant they could only use it to fund equipment and other people. So practically a person on the payroll of the uni basically has to be the person applying.

I understand your concern, but you have a couple of things backwards.
While, in theory, when it comes to papers, you could write these yourself and you don't need your supervisor*, when it comes to grants, however, it's a completely different story. I'm speaking from a UK perspective and terminology here, but I assume similar practices apply elsewhere.
Unfortunately, in practical terms, there is absolutely no way for you to apply for a traditional grant as a PI at your stage, and are unlikely to for a long time. This is because funding bodies tend to have strict eligibility criteria, of which the most common is "permanent academic position in a recognised higher institution", closely followed by the often unstated criterion "demonstrates experience and an established presence in the field, and is the most suitable permanent post academic to lead this particular proposal"
In other words, it is probably not possible for you to be writing a grant at this stage. Which means, your best bet of actually continuing this line of research that you're banking the rest of your entire career on, may in fact well be to convince someone grantworthy to apply for a grant on the basis of your ideas, for you to continue working with them. Otherwise, once you're out of the phd and looking for a job, your most likely route is that you'll have to join a project based on a grant that someone else proposed, which is unlikely to be your particular niche topic that you so love. And this doesn't even address the whole "even if you apply for a grant yourself to resurrect this line of research once you've made permanent, say, 7 years down the line, this research may no longer be grantable, based on current trends and buzzwords".
Having said that, there are ways for you to be an official contributor on the grant proposal, rather than simply be a person that your PI happens to hire with the grant money. Many funding bodies allow the concept of a "named researcher" on the grant. This is typically someone who is at a stage in their career that is ineligible to apply for the grant per se, but it is understood that they are an integral part of the proposal (typically understood to mean the project is largely their baby and they will be the ones pouring all the work on it), and is therefore named on the grant. This is great for your CV, because it shows you have experience submitting grants and getting funding. Plus it saves the university time and money because they won't have to go through the hiring process.
So if I were you, not only would I encourage your advisor to write the grant, but I would try to find out if you can be a named researcher on the grant and continue your research with them in that capacity.
Ok, I am lying a bit, because there is in fact another, more straightforward way to go about this after your phd, which is to apply for a postdoctoral fellowship. This is an award that allows you to work as a postdoc for a few years working alone on your own research. But at the end of the day, these grants are far rarer than traditional grants (which are already in high competition), and are thus even more competitive than normal grants, are much less flexible (e.g. in terms of creating a partnership), and still require finding an interested supervisor to supervise the work. If you do get one of these, it may be seen more favourably than a named researcher route (in that you won such a grant directly), I'm not too sure. But in reality, if you are a named researcher on a grant, this is already great, much easier, and will still allow you to control and continue your research.
These are all personal opinions, and I'm also still learning the ropes and shortcuts of the system, so I may be wrong on a couple of points. But more or less this has been my experience. Happy to be corrected in the comments below. Hope it helps.
PS. The cutting edge novel stuff I was working on during my PhD that I thought would change the world and I was ready to base my entire career on? Haven't managed to touch that in 7 years now. Now that I'm getting a permanent post I may go back to it, but I've already got other projects in my hands already, which are far more practical from a funding point of view.

*  Though in practice, even here, I think you're probably underestimating the impact that your supervisor will have had, both in terms of what they contributed to the research in indirect terms, as well as how the impact of the paper may have changed from the network effect of having their name on it.

An idea can be put down to a A4 page. Writing a superb 20-50 page grant proposal, project and financial plan is something completely different. Managing a project successfully is another different career step.
What you have to decide is not who had the idea or is the "owner", but what is the likelihood to get funding for it without your advisor and that someone else doesn't have the same idea at another place/how long you can save it up.
This is a poker game. You know what professional poker players do? They invest in other poker players (to get some ratio of their win) even playing the same tournament as their opponents to maximize their winning chances.
I was also thinking like you once. Maybe there are branches and periods within a research career within you can work and manage a project/idea/proposal completely on your own. But this cannot stay your modus operandi to become professor and stay profressor. You have to share ideas and success, delegate responsibilities, divide labour to stay successful.
If you idea is more than an idea, then patent it. Universities often ask their coworkers to come with patent-ready ideas to their patent departments. Then it will also be clear who had which share % developing the idea.

Research is not a poker game. What you describe (betting on one's opponent in a tournament) sounds unethical, and I'm having trouble understanding what the analogy in the academic world would be. Give some of your grant money to your competitors? This only makes sense if you don't think about it.

@N.I.the analogy is quite simple and obvious. Time is money and risk evaluation to invest time and share ideas with other researchers/opponents concering funding money essential to be more successful than others. But this question is not meant to explain game theory basics...Poker might have higher standards and rules of behaviour than the research game, when many research results are not reproducable nowadays. You think research is more like chess? :-) Then we strongly disagree and I take your downvote happily. Alone your assessment that poker is an unethical game is kind of strange...?!

@N.I. "Give some of your grant money to your competitors?" that's exactly what you do when you participate in workshops and conferences organized by other institutions ...

@EarlGrey Not all fields have registration fees

@N.I. not all fields have grant money for research.

@EarlGrey Not sure what point you're trying to make.

@N.I. you mention there are no registration fees. However, there are expenses involved (for example travel, remote conferencing infrastructures ... ) and costs: I understand that (often and unfortunately) time has no value in science/research, but someone participating in a conference/workshop is spending time, time that is paid from somewhere (even without grant).
I hope you are oblivious to the costs of workers (yes, being a researcher is the best possible job in the world...) but not to the other side of the medal, that costs of workers must also be a fair salary...

In the short-term: a grant may expose your idea to third party, so you may loose some ownership on it. However, if you published the idea, there is no doubt about the ownership.

it would not mention that the ideas developed in the grant belong to
me (other than references to our past work).

A grant is a funding request. You have to write it based on solid proof that what you plan to do will work, so what you downplay as "references to our past work" is of the uttermost importance. The rest of the grant (PI, name of the person proposing the grant, etc) is 20% politics and 80% bureaucracy.
So publish as much as you can, but if your advisor is involving you in grants' writing it will be a good learning experience (unfortunately, even if your idea is good to guarantee you a career in the future, you will have to write more and more grants...)
In the long-term: I urge you to consider you are among peers[1]. You may have had a great idea, and you may have a plan for the future, since you state you have

a very clear and novel research agenda that I will most likely work
on for the rest of my career and that I have presented at different
venues.

Be realistic, there are many good ideas out there, not all of them get the required fundings. Additionally, if you were to have the absolute scientific breakthrough idea in your topic, you would be busy managing your own funds, not asking how to proceed to random strangers on the internet.
Being ambitious and knowing the own capabilities and value is good. But what is coming out from your writing/question is the usual self-entitled behavior of "succesful" PhD students. I am not saying you will not have a successful career, I hope you will have one.
What I want to stress is that if it will happen only because of your merits and ideas ... it will only happen this way in your head, because your head will trick you in ignoring all the support you received and that you will be given, from your current and future peers (see your curent advisor doing a great job, supporting and setting you free to pursue your ideas).
[1] if you feel you are significantly smarter than your peers ...
A man is driving down a highway when he hears a newsflash:
"A warning to all drivers: We've just heard that a vehicle is driving down the highway in the wrong direction!"
"What do you mean, 'a vehicle'? grumbles the driver. "There's hundreds of them!"

I don't think "ownership" is the right word here - it's not possible to own an idea. There are issues of getting credit for the idea, as well as having control over the direction of research, but the OP cannot gain or lose ownership of the idea no matter what they do. Publishing a novel idea means the OP gets credit for it, but that doesn't mean they own it.

@NuclearHoagie I agree, idea has no ownership, I just wanted to tag along the OP concept, if they are smart enough they will understand the concept you expressed ...

dear editor of the answer, I am not quoting anyone, so please do not edit the final joke

(Moved from comment to answer)
I see two major concerns from your side. 1. You are afraid that you will "loss the authority". 2. You are afraid that you cannot be one of the authors of the application.
For 1: I am not sure what do you mean by "authority". Do you mean that you used to be the single author in these papers, and now you have to share authorship?
For 2:
I personally think you can be one of the listed coauthor of the grant application. I personally know quite a few PhD candidates coauthoring grant application with professors across different institute (with or without the involvement of their advisor). So I am not sure if there is rule prohibiting students to be listed as coauthors.
PS: Besides proof-reading, I think there are some other value your advisor might be able to give you. For an incomplete list:

Share his network capital
Identify good citations and potential referees
Share the skills in communication with editors and other senior academics
Identify the "taste" of editors and potential referees
Share his experience in paper submission and grant application

At this point, I have a very clear and novel research agenda that I will most likely work on for the rest of my career and that I have presented at different venues... My advisor has recently watched a talk I gave and told me that she would like me to write a grant proposal based on the ideas in my talk...

You are very worried that, by winning this grant, your advisor will somehow "scoop" all credit for the research agenda you've identified... but you seem completely indifferent to the notion that audience members from any of those multiple other venues (or readers of your first-author publications) might just as easily scoop you by writing their own grants.
Even if it plays out exactly as you most fear, working with your advisor on this will lead to funding and more publications (presumably where you are still first-author); whereas some other group beating you both to the punch might lead to only a couple citations or footnotes.

What your advisor is offering here is a way for you to start the ball rolling on your research agenda at a very early stage in your career.  Will this lead to some future confusion about "priority"?  Maybe, maybe not.  It sounds like you've given plenty of talks on the subject and have a good number of first-author publications under your belt so I wouldn't be too worried about one grant tipping the scales (particularly not if this grant leads to more publications where you are once again first-author).

Also, since we are talking about a "research agenda that I will most likely work on for the rest of my career" who's to say that this one grant proposal must give away the entire plot?  Presumably, if this research territory is unexplored enough to build an entire career out of it, then some first exploratory forays can likely be packaged as post-doc projects, PhD theses, or even MS theses.  Your advisor's editorial/administrative experience should actually be invaluable here - both in terms of knowing the project scopes most likely to be funded, as well as knowing how to maximize the amount of strong publications from a project of a given size.

(Moved from comment to answer)
I am just a PhD student myself (so take this with a grain of salt) but I don't think one should conflate a grant proposal with a publication. Also, isn't it likely that a successful grant application would bring more funding to the research group, thereby benefiting you? Finally, I would think that one needs to trust their PhD advisor's judgment on these kinds of things, otherwise your degree may be a rocky road.

A couple of years ago I took a "Researcher Management and Leadership Training" Coursera course from the University of Colorado.  In it they said that a good advisor will have you write a grant with them as the PI, and commit that if they get the grant and you go off to a faculty position somewhere else, you can take some of the money. This way, when you are on the job market you have a little pot of money to make yourself more attractive to potential employers.  See if your advisor will do something like that.

I feel your pain.  I have had to be satisfied with insufficient credit a few times and have even once had an entire final form paper outright stolen from me by researchers higher up the food chain.  It happens.  Don't listen to anyone who says it doesn't.
But you have to consider your position.  The awarding of grants is a notoriously subjective process.  (WHAT???  SUBJECTIVITY in SCIENCE???  Surely you jest!  Ummm ... no.)  Granting agencies will look at a proposal from an established researcher much more seriously than they will from a newbie, even a potentially talented newbie.  I remember speaking with a someone who sat on such boards from time to time who said, "Seriously, I just don't have time to read these proposals.  Last month I granted money to this one proposal just because I like the guy!"  Now, don't blow a gasket; she went on to say, "Of course, one of the reasons I like the guy is that he does good work!"  Point being, if your grant -- a first time effort -- had come across her desk in a stack of 10 others when she was already up to her nose in her own work, you wouldn't stand a chance.
In short, you need to ask yourself if you can get this funded without your advisor's help.
Also, for my money, whose name gets put on the papers that come out of the research will be more far more important than who is the lead on the grant.  If your advisor is a decent person (Beware!  Not all of them are!) she will put you as first author on the papers, as long as you actually do the work.
One last thing: It's not necessarily a binary thing; you don't necessarily have to tell her all or nothing.  You don't have to tell your advisor your every thought.  You can be cagey.  There may be ways to keep the good stuff under wraps until you are ready to reveal it in a way that mark it as unmistakably yours.  (Does your research group publish pre-prints, for instance?)  It can be miserable having to go through life thinking like that, but sometimes that's what you have to do.


text:
Being a peer reviewer: does it positively affect the chance of getting a Ph.D. admission?
Does anyone know how being a journal peer reviewer affects the chance of getting a Ph.D. admission? Note that I majored in mechanical engineering.
I've published a few papers in some prestigious journals in my field. Additionally, I've reviewed papers for three journals (two Q1 + one Q2) for nearly three years. I have also been acknowledged as a "star reviewer" in one of the Q1 journals for two years.
Could anyone (preferably, a professor) tell me whether being a reviewer can increase my chance of getting a Ph.D. admission, to a prestigious university in the USA or not? Should I include these in my CV?
Many thanks

Yes, it can help & certainly won't hurt, but there are some issues. You can list in your CV that you are a reviewer for International Basket Weaving, but it is hard to verify. And you can't, ethically, reveal which papers you reviewed in any blind process.
Don't overrate the importance, however. In the US, at least, other things, such as coursework, research, and letters from professors, are much more valuable and important. But every professional action is potentially helpful, at least at the margins.

Your answer is kind of weird to me; the reviews are definitely certifiable, at least by Publons! there is bound no need to reveal the details of each paper I've reviewed in my CV.

" the reviews are definitely certifiable": you are technically right, but no prof. in a jury discussing PhD admission will ever check those claims, as getting a definitive answer generally requires to reach out to editors or program committee members. That being said, publons partially solves this, yes, and if it is listed on some website that you are a star reviewer, then by all means add a link.

If you are qualified to do peer review, you should have no problems getting admitted to a PhD program. You don't have to list it (since it should be obvious from the rest of your CV) but you might as well, because why not.

"since it should be obvious from the rest of your CV": I disagree. Having the trust of editors and colleagues in assessing somebody else's work is quite orthogonal from having published, in my opinion. Of course, the latter facilitates the former, but does not imply it.

@Clément considering many PhD students don't get reviewer invitations even until after they have graduated, to have reviewed papers for three journals + earn an award from one of them before earning a PhD is definitely not common, and one would expect the CV to be outstanding.


text:
Can I use other people's data for comparison?
I have done an experiment on fake news detection.
Now I want to use other approaches' experiment results for comparison using the same data set.
Do I need to redo their experiment to obtain the experiment results?
Or can I use their experiment results in their paper with citations?
If so, please leave the relevant rules to let me refer to.
Sorry for my confusing writing.
In my research, I use machine learning to predict fake news.
There are some metrics to evaluate machine learning performance, such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score. What I want to do is compare our model's performance to the others(on the same dataset and the same ratio of train set and test set). Can I use their experiment results, which are accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score, in their paper with the citations?

Can you try to clarify your question? I am having a hard time understanding what you mean.

The rules in academia are not codified like laws. Mainly because there is no body, like a parliament, who has the authority to codify such rules. Many disciplines, but not all, have associations who have rules concerning ethics and best practice. However, many would not be specific enough for your question.

The title question asks about using their data. The body asks about using their results. These are not the same. What do you want to do, actually? (a) redo your own experiment on their data, (b) compare your results with theirs, (c) other.

Of course you can compare to their data. I would even go as far as to say: you should compare your results to published data. That is the entire reason that scientific research is published.
Obviously you should cite all the papers you compare to, and make it absolutely clear where the data comes from.

Absolutely correct, but I think OP is seeking suggestions on reproducing others' experiments vs using their published results for comparison, assuming that both options are possible.

@AppliedAcademic, I don't read it as reproducing the other's experiment but as extending their own.

@Buffy- OP stated, "Do I need to redo their experiment...", hence my interpretation.

I can't answer confidently without knowing more about the situation, but as a general principle, using their published results for comparison is entirely appropriate.  Redoing their experiment is also appropriate, but you just need to think about the cost/benefit tradeoff.
If their published results contain all the information you need and you're not worried about their correctness, then redoing their experiment probably doesn't provide much benefit to you.  I would probably start out by using the results given, and then consider redoing their experiment if/when you run into some specific issue with it.  If you do need to redo their experiment for some reason, you might want to start out by getting in touch with the authors of the original paper, because there's always more to an experiment than can be fit into the final published paper(s).

Comparing results is not the same thing as reusing data.

@Buffy, true, but I'm not totally sure what you mean.

The data is used to obtain results. But the data itself isn't the "results". An experiment attempts to decipher meaning from the data. That meaning is the "results".

@Buffy, I don't think those words have such a cut-and-dried meanings. Typically I would say that an experiment produces "the data" and then some combination of data analysis and human interpretation produces meaning

In numerical/computational work, the line between "experiment" and "analysis" can get a bit blurry, but doesn't sound like the (already publicly available) input data set is the data they're asking about.


text:
My university is forcing me to take required classes at a different campus, which will be very expensive to me. Do I have any recourse?
I am a 4th year undergraduate physics major. At the beginning of my college career, I made a spreadsheet showing which classes I would take each semester. My advisor told me every semester that the plan I put forth is a fine plan, and I followed it exactly.
The problem is that when I went to register for 4th-year classes, I learned that two of these required classes are not actually offered! Class A is only offered in the fall, while my campus does not offer Class B at all. My only option seems to be taking these courses at another campus. I am a full scholarship and aid student at this university, so taking these classes elsewhere would cost me $6K.
Unfortunately, my university is relatively new, so I am probably the first person to ever have this problem. Is my university allowed to not provide classes required for graduation and force me to pay for them on my own at another campus?

Law will depend on your jurisdiction and any contracts signed, etc.

Seems like something to discuss with your university administration. I'd expect that a program would want to make clear if students with a particular major need to take courses outside that campus. I doubt they are legally required to do so, though, and you'll need a lawyer to tell you otherwise.

I don't understand how a course required for graduation can be "never offered..  Are you absolutely certain of both parts of your statement?

I took a stab at consolidating the various edits and comments; feel free to make further edits if I botched anything (I also added the US tag, since I'm assuming you are there). Two questions for you: (1) any reason you can't take Course A in the spring? (2) If you did not have a full-tuition scholarship, would there still be an additional cost?

Related: Last Course needed to graduate suddenly not being offered

@BobBrown study away is mandatory at my school, so apparently it's a rule to take this specific course during study away. however, most students naturally do this because you would usually take that course in your third year (when study away is required) so it never comes up as an issue. however, I switched my major, making me set to take this course in my fourth year. so yes, I am sure that the university doesn't every offer this course but they do require it to graduate.

@cag51 1) it's not offered and also I have a full courseload that has to be taken in spring and is inflexible (I pushed off core courses until my last year because, due to covid, I couldn't get back to my university until now, and I need to take the core courses there {my home university is a dual university between China and the US, so as you can see this situation is just really complicated and has a lot of moving parts}) 2) if I didn't get offered aid, I'm assuming id still be told to study away and pay out of pocket, but that would be "normal" because everything would be out of pocket.

my university is an american university, but I'm based at the Chinese campus. i hope this doesn't call out my university, I just want to give enough information to get some information on this so I know if what I am expecting is reasonable.

that would be "normal" because everything would be out of pocket -- might be worth checking this; I suspect taking a 3 classes at home + 2 elsewhere would cost significantly more than taking 5 at home. This would put you in a stronger position to argue, since the admin will have this same problem with every student, not just with scholarship students.

Your comment to Bob Brown seems like essential information left out of the original post... It isn't that they don't offer the course, it's that they offer the course as part of a third year program you missed due to changing a major. That makes this seem like something you should have considered before switching majors, and definitely switching majors isn't something your university needs to prevent from costing you any time and money - your responsibility, not theirs, you're an adult.

before i decided to change my major I sent in a plan for approval to determine if it was possible and if i wanted to and could afford it. this plan was approved which states that i take the courses in the semester i specified above. i was new to the major - if professors and advisors approve it, how am i to know that its not a possibility? its also not noted in our course catalog anywhere - it says my school offers this course in the fall. please dont insult me with condescending remarks like "you're an adult". it doesn't add anything to the situation except being rude. @BryanKrause

our school also has one other physics major in my year, so word of mouth is not reliable.

@BryanKrause Very rude comment coming from a mod.

@Relativisticcucumber If you switched majors though, why did you have this plan on your spreadsheet from the get-go?

Is my university allowed to not provide classes required for graduation?

Assuming this is in the United States, yes, they are allowed to do that.  It probably says so in the course catalog.  If the university is unable to pay someone to teach the course, there is not much the university can do about the situation.

and force me to pay for them on my own at another campus?

No, they cannot force you to pay.

I am a full scholarship and aid student at this university.

Do you mean that, if you pay the $6,000, you will get a degree for only $6,000?  If so, that's an amazing deal.  If you shop around and get a loan, you might be able to do it while you have no money for a lower price than $6,000.  Check out physics starting salaries.
If you did not pay the university any money yet, you likely do not have standing to sue them (get your legal advice elsewhere).  If you do not have standing, they can break all their promises without legal consequences.

My advisor told me every semester that the plan I put forth is a fine plan

That was a mistake.

Some explanation/source for these claims would be appropriate, particularly the legal ones. For example, you don't address promissory estoppel: OP has spent three years of work and possibly turned down other scholarships on the promise of a full ride; suddenly being told they actually don't have a full ride but need to pay $6K probably does not seem like an "amazing deal" under the circumstances.

@cag51 I am still not a lawyer, but:  "on the promise of a full ride"  A "full ride" is a vague term, but I take it to mean they have free tuition for courses that exist.  There's still free tuition.  No legitimate university promises a student will receive a degree until after the degree requirements are met.  "OP has spent three years of work and possibly turned down other scholarships"  Universities generally only promise one year of scholarships to undergraduates at a time, so that seems wrong.  Renewal is usually contingent.


text:
How to add Copyright Notice Code?
I have got a paper accepted in a conference, they have told me add a copyright notice code at the bottom of page 1. This is my first time in conference and I am confused whether the code is same for every paper based on the government/country or unique for every paper.
Eg.
For papers in which all authors are employed by the US government, the copyright notice is:
U.S. Government work not protected by U.S. copyright
For papers in which all authors are employed by a Crown government (UK, Canada, and Australia), the copyright notice is:
979-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/23/$31.00 ©2023 Crown
For papers in which all authors are employed by the European Union, the copyright notice is: 979-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/23/$31.00©2023 European Union
For all other papers the copyright notice is (Majority of papers will fall in this category):
979-X-XXXX-XXXX-X/23/$31.00 ©2023 IEEE
As shown below on 1st page of paper.

It's the same notice for all papers in this conference that do not fall under crown / government notice.


text:
Should I report someone that acted against the university policy about diplomas and transcripts?
Background: The graduate school in our university, which is a public university in the US, has a policy about international students and their original diplomas and transcripts, which may be written in a different language than English. It is clearly stated that all the new international graduate students should inform their previous universities outside the US to send their original diplomas and transcripts in a sealed envelope directly to the current university in the US. But, unfortunately, according to some problems between my origin country (which is the same as the origin country of my friend, cf. Problem section) and the US, that's not possible at all and it's an already known fact in all the US universities. As a result, people like me as an international student, just turn their original + translated diplomas and transcripts to the graduate school by themselves without sealed pocket. I did this exactly at the end of my first semester and the graduate school accepted it. I turned the original diplomas and transcripts as it is clearly stated in the graduate school email that if my diplomas and transcripts are not written in English, the original documents + translated ones should be turned at the end of first semester.
Problem: Recently, one of my friends (he is also an international student from my country), who is in the same program at the same university as me, did not turn his original documents + translated ones by himself to graduate school. He just copied all the documents by himself and bought an envelope from Walmart and put them together and just turned it to the university and surprisingly, our graduate school accepted it in its current form!
Question: Today, I am informed that I need to have my original documents for some other purposes related to US immigration services and I went to our graduate school to get them back because according to my friend's story it should not be a problem for graduate school to return the original documents to me and accept the copies. But, graduate school officer refused my request and when I gave an example about my friend that just turned the copy to them, they just stated his university may just send the copies and if that's the case we don't care! Their words clearly says that I was just a stupid guy that followed their written rule and turned my original documents to them! And now, they don't care and even said they may have discarded them! As a result, it seems they just believed that the $1 Walmart pocket came directly from my friend's university! I believe it's not fair because they applied the rules differently and it could seriously affect my future. So: Should I inform the graduate school about that fake pocket? I mean it seems that it's my last way to deal with graduate school but it really drives me crazy about their rules and how they think and how they deal with documents! In fact, my problem is without informing the graduate school about my friend's case I cannot convince the graduate school that their system does not work properly and they serve different people randomly without a unified approach.
Update: I talked to associate dean of graduate school today and it was a really nice meeting and he was really friendly and helpful. I believe I transferred my purpose to him successfully without mentioning my friend's name and he was promised to do some investigation and then hopefully he will return my original documents to me.

I have applied to several different institutions (not in the US fortunately...) and always sent copies NEVER the originals - in fact many institutions explicitly state "do not send the originals"... I do have the originals and have, rarely, been asked to show them as proof for the copies, but they were never taken away from me.

But unfortunately, this one clearly stated that "original" documents are needed and I turned them at the end of my first semester when I just blindly believed that the US is the utopia in all the world and I will not have a problem in the future. But right now, it seems it was just a stupid delusion!

Most of my certificates are labelled as "irreplaceable" so I take very good care of them...

@SolarMike That's the case for me I believe...

You  seem to believe that if you inform the grad school about your friend's case, they will be more likely to return your original documents to you. That's not how it works, though, so your friend is not relevant to your real question - "How do I get my original documents back from my university's admissions office?"

I think there is some confusion about the word "originals" in the comments here because it is almost certainly referring to transcripts directly from the university rather than the first documents given at the time of graduation. Within the US the standard is that a student requests that University A send transcripts to University B, which they do either directly or they provide a sealed envelope for the student to mail themselves. These are freshly printed at the time of request.

@BryanKrause That's true in the US, Europe, or other countries I think, but not the case for my original university in my country.

@AloneProgrammer Yes, so I think you misinterpreted the US university's meaning of "original" documents. For your sake, I'm worried they've been destroyed and that's why they won't give them back. Throwing your friend under the bus does you no good here. Have you informed your graduate school why you need the documents? Also, I know this is serious, but take a breath for a second and don't start by accusing your university of treating you like you are a stupid guy, if they don't have a document how do you expect them to give it to you? Best to be polite with people who you hope to help you.

@BryanKrause I talked to our graduate coordinator and she said they should not destroy any document but it seems all the documents that are turned to the university, are considered as university's property and won't be returned under normal conditions. She suggested to talk to associate dean of graduate school and that may help. Surprisingly, I just said some people, without mentioning my friend's name, turn just the copy not the original and she said we are aware we don't have any solution. By the way, it's not about misunderstanding cause she said documents should be real "original"

@BryanKrause Also, I said to graduate school that I want to show those documents to USCIS but no difference.

@AloneProgrammer I think you just haven't found the right person to talk to yet, I have a feeling there is a communication barrier here, there is absolutely no reason for the university to hold these documents. I still think there is a misunderstanding about what "original" means no matter how many times they say "original" I don't think they are gathering that this is literally the true original, again, because this is not how things work in the U.S. There isn't even a true original, my printed diploma I have from my universities in the US is worthless as documentation.

If your graduate coordinator suggested you talk to the associate dean, then that's who you should talk to, rather than asking StackExchange if you should tell them your colleague submitted a copy to try to twist their arm. As suggested by DanRomik's answer, focus on what your actual goal is, which is presumably getting documentation to help with visa/immigration requirements.

@BryanKrause I'm really confused cause your arguments about "original" documents and my really "original" documents in Persian are worthless in the US make sense to me but I believe even graduate school also is confused about their interpretation. I mean let's say even I didn't finish my PhD in the US successfully or for example I changed my mind and wanted to go back to Iran. With their rules, I don't have PhD diploma and also I don't have my Iranian diplomas, so basically I should go back start from bachelor again! That sounds ridiculous...

@AloneProgrammer In the US context, "original documents" are not necessarily "unique original documents". For example, I can get five sets of "original diplomas and transcripts" from my university registrar. They are "original documents" because they are issued directly from the registrar, but they don't have to be the only set in existence! When they ask for "original documents", they mean "documents issued by your registrar and not altered", they don't mean "the only set of the documents".

@ff524 OK, but really confusing for me.... I mean I know what you mean but it looks strange in my context... Do you think is it possible to convince associate dean to return those unique documents to me and inform him about this misunderstanding? At least, I could argue your definition is something maybe in the US people's eyes look trivial but it's not the same for me... and perhaps it's not written somewhere explicitly.

@AloneProgrammer Yes, as ff524 says. When your school in the US says "originals" they have absolutely no idea that there is a concept in your home country where you actually only have one unique original copy, and they are probably even more surprised that you would actually give them that unique original copy that you can't get another one of without starting school again. When you say "original" that word means something different than when they say "original."

Probably the reason they don't understand your problem is because they are using the US idea of "original" meaning "copy from the university". The mistake you made was giving them your actual unique single copy in the first place, which they had no need of and which you never should have done. Now your problem is trying to resolve that situation.

@BryanKrause OK, I see... I wish I asked this question 2 years ago...

I think you should explain from this perspective to the Associate Dean. Say that when they requested an original, you mistakenly understood that to mean your unique original diploma which is the only one you have and the only one you can ever get from your home institution. You did not realize that they just expected an official copy and intended to keep the irreplaceable document, and you now need it for immigration reasons.

@BryanKrause Thank you! I will edit this question cause I think it should be rephrased as "What is the meaning of original documents in the US academic context?" and I believe your comments worth an accepted answer. Thanks again!

@AloneProgrammer I don't think that meaning "original documents" is really broadly applicable, it is just language your institution used (perhaps to also mean "not translated"?), there is just no way a US institution would ask for such a precious document and keep it for themselves. You should not have let such a thing leave your sight. This is really just part of the definition of "original" meaning "not copied": https://www.google.com/search?q=original+definition

I doubt that much, if anything, would be gained. You are describing a technical violation, not an ethical one, I think. You don't seem to claim that the other student forged anything, and that s/he interpreted a, perhaps unreasonable, requirement incorrectly and tried to compensate for it. It would be different if you were claiming the other student acted dishonestly with respect to grades or courses.
The problem seems to be with the university and rules that are hard to carry out faithfully. This is affecting you and you should deal with that directly, rather than involve the other student. You may, in fact, have to ask your original university for assistance in sending documents. But that is all between people other than your fellow student. Involving them won't help you and might hurt them unnecessarily.
I'd suggest that you seek guidance from the university as to how you can make immigration happy. They may be following other rules that are imposed by other agencies.

"You may, in fact, have to ask your original university for assistance in sending documents" that's not possible at all cause my original university is in Iran and those people are more crazy to deal with in my original university in comparison to my current university in the US! I don't remember but I believe my original university in Iran just took a legal statement from me that I would not request for any other original document never! (You can imagine their logic and how much they are rational!!!).

Take that correspondence to your current university. Find an "ombudsman" or student services office and try to work with them.


text:
How to deal with a famous speaker that gives a terrible, factually incorrect talk?
I often attend talks given by famous presenters in which I’m pretty sure that the presenter has no idea about the topic. By have no idea I mean if you are an attendee that just attracted to this talk because of its title or somebody else told you this is a interesting talk you will be impressed deeply by the high quality of talk, pictures, video, etc. But for me cause I’m part of that research I know that’s just a show and the presenter is not aware about our real problems, concerns, accomplishments, etc. So I would say the whole presentation is just like a movie show not something really scientific. I could understand sometimes these kind of presentations will be given to broader audience to just impress people and maybe attract new opportunities like funding. At the end of the talk I have a lot of questions about the topic and how the things works and I know a lot of things are not clear, accurate, or simply is just wrong, but I give up my question cause I know it will not change anything and it will just create a bad reputation for me.
So my question is should I give up my question because of fear of creating bad reputation or politely ask my question which in most cases I know a general answer without any details will be given by the presenter and no further discussion is possible cause again will create bad reputation that I don’t agree presenter and may think I know more than him/her. Any idea or suggestion is appreciated to give a method to how to deal with this kind of situations.

This comes across as more of a rant than a question.

Some "old" speakers are being honored for their past, not current, contribution. Be very careful before you denigrate someone who is famous, but not up to date, when they are famous because they helped create the field you work in.

@Buffy of course if they talk about their old stuff that they’re good at or they got their reputation that would be fine but these guys use their network to build a whole new research topic that they have no idea about! That’s the problem!

I took the liberty of editing your question; feel free to edit what I wrote if you think I changed something important. I strongly suggest you spend some time working on your writing skills -- this is an interesting question, but people were having a hard time getting through the long rambling wall of text.

I agree with @cag51 and I think your re-edit has again muddied the question, it is very difficult to read.

I often attend talks given by famous presenters in which I’m pretty sure that the presenter has no idea about the topic.

The fact that you say the presenter "often" has "no idea" about the topic does not have the ring of truth.

I can believe this happening occasionally
I can believe famous professors giving talks without enough preparation, making simple mistakes, etc.

But for them to "very often" have "no idea" about the entire topic under discussion is difficult to believe. Is it possible that you are fixating on a few minor errors or a poor presentation and missing the significance of the talk?

So, my question is: what should audience members do in such a situation?

For now, let's assume that you're right and the talk is truly awful. I wouldn't comment on low-quality talks; everyone in the room likely knows that the talk sucked, no need to point it out. Instead, I would ask "clarifying" questions.

"I was under the impression that..."
"Didn't [blah] show that..."
"How does this topic relate to..."
"Sorry, I'm not understanding. Are you saying that...? What about...?"

that kind of thing.
It's worth giving the speaker a chance to address your questions and perhaps they'll be able to connect the "missing link" that was preventing you from enjoying the talk. But if they can't address your concerns satisfactorily after one or two questions, then I wouldn't engage further; either you are talking past one another or the presenter is an idiot, but debating in the conference will not accomplish anything.

I think now it’s more clear. Please edit your answer to align to the edited question.

@AloneProgrammer - I don't think it's clearer at all, and I think you have a lot to learn about technical writing. Good luck!

"for them to have "no idea" about the entire topic under discussion is difficult to believe" - I've seen it quite a few times, often along the lines depicted in https://www.xkcd.com/793/. Somebody becomes eminent in one field and starts thinking they're an expert in everything. See e.g. Linus Pauling's foray into quack medicine, or That Rocket Guy in diving rescue, or Unnamed Celebrity Astrophysicist occasionally trying to reinvent entire disciplines in humanities without acknowledging what's already been done.

oh I agree -- my favorite example is the unfortunate, recent talk at CERN in which a physicist became an armchair sociologist and gave a talk about how women are inherently less capable to do physics (!). But I suspect OP is conflating this with just giving poorly-prepared talks.

Something similar to this happened recently. Michael Atiyah, a famous mathematician who has won the Fields Medal & the Abel Prize, claimed to have proven the Riemann hypothesis. He gave a talk on it. Suffice to say, few others believed him. You can read about how others dealt with it at e.g. Science and New Scientist.
My summary would be, you're allowed to be critical, but you don't have to point it out to the speaker in person during the talk.

IMHO this depends very much on context. In the case you mention, this advice is fine. But if a distinguished speaker is promoting something likely to cause real harm (say, a phony cancer cure) that ought to be challenged on the spot.


text:
What Types of Content Should Be Included in A Poster Presentation of Unfinished Work?
I am preparing my first research poster for a conference at my school that allows for participants to present on unfinished work. I would be interested to know from more experienced researchers what they would want to see in terms of content if they were to view a poster that does not have any results yet. I have also included below a couple of headings that I feel could be included in the design of the poster with a brief description of what I think they ought to contain. The ones that are surrounded by ?? indicate subject headings I am not confident should be worth including, but the first three seem somewhat standard.
To offer some context, I have a model but just have not been able to get preliminary results because we were waiting on data for a long time through a data sharing agreement.

Summary --- One or two bullets that can justify the project and is easily digestable
Introduction --- Offers some background and motivation to the research and ends in the research question trying to be answered
Data and Methods --- Points to the data used in the research project and methods used to answer the research question
?Expected Results? --- Because I don't have any actual results, I am thinking that I could supplement those with what answers I might expect to find.
?Implications? --- Because I don't have any results, I can't really draw any conclusions. However, I think that answering my research question will have broader implications

Do you at least have preliminary data?

Yup! I have all the data that is required now for the model to run, it's just that I won't have time to get preliminary results for the conference.

It is unclear what you are asking because the answer seems to be in the question.  Your supervisor should help you with your poster design.

Rather than 4, you should say something about your hypotheses. You don't have "expected" results. You only have hypotheses and results. The results may support your hypotheses or not.
And rather than 5 you should say something about the potential significance of the study. Why is it worth asking the question and posing the hypotheses?
These two items should be #1 and #2, actually. Your #4 and #5 can only be discussed properly after you know more.

In a poster session for incomplete work, the attitude should be "What do we hope to learn (not show), and how do we go about testing it?"

I think those are very constructive comments. Just to clarify though, are you saying that your version of #4 and #5 should be moved to positions 1 and 2 from that original list I posted?

Well, I wouldn't call them versions of 4 and 5, but replacements and yes, before your original first points.