text:
Is it unethical to poorly translate an exam from Dutch to English and then present it to the English speaking students?
There are two tracks for my field of study. One is taught in Dutch and the other in English. This is in the Netherlands.  A while ago we had to take a multiple choice exam in English, which looked a bit odd. The sentence construction of the questions makes little sense at first glance, and it took a while to even grasp the content. Furthermore, it seemed quite obvious that the exam was only roughly translated (possibly by a machine) as the exam just sounded as if someone used a thesaurus to make it. In addition some of the answer options were still in Dutch, which made it extremely difficult to understand the content. Moreover, some questions had literally the same answer option twice.
So in summary, the students in the English track took the botched translation version, while the students in the Dutch track took the Dutch version.
Is it unethical to give English speaking students a poorly translated version of the same exam that the Dutch students receive?

You seem to be asking two different questions. The title would apply to a competently translated exam. The body of the question discusses a badly translated exam.

No, this is not OK. Report to the board of examiners relevant for your degree immediately.

Ahh, Aüslander tax (http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/78058/) - deal with it an move on.

It would only be unethical if they did it on purpose - more likely, it's just sloppiness.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor  Of course, it's still worth trying to get it rectified.

@NateEldredge is it ethical for an academic program to treat its students sloppily?  I don't think so.

@phoog It's wrong for an academic program to treat its students sloppily, but it is probably counterproductive to call it unethical; that term immediately makes people think you are accusing them of having done something much more serious (e.g. plagiarism), on purpose.  Treating this as sloppiness -- even if there may have been some malice in there somewhere -- is much more likely to achieve a good outcome.

"A while ago we had to take a multiple choice exam, which looked a bit odd. The sentence construction of the questions makes little sense at first glance, and it took a while to even grasp the content." - in my experience, this is more a feature inherent to the method of extensive multiple choice testing than anything else.

I don't understand.  Are you saying the students in the English track took the botched translation version, while the students in the Dutch track took the Dutch version?  //  It's generally a good idea to read University policy very, very carefully, and if possible us that as the basis for a complaint.

@aparente001 that is exactly what I am saying.

The specific course of action depends somewhat on whether this was an isolated occurrence.  Has anyone spoken with a dean or the department head?  It would be an easy matter for the department to take a look at the exam.  (Do check university policy -- this can give you ammunition.)

It helps if you quantify the impact of the bad translation: "The exam was X hours long and we spent on average Y% of that attempting to understand the question meaning" Was it like 1% or 25%? Did anyone actually write a wrong answer because of the translation? etc.

@smci: Indeed. That is kind of what I tried to point out in my answer. "Bad" exam questions can sometimes be "rescued" in the grading phase, and only then one can determine whether more answers ended up "wrong" because of the issues with the exam.

...and were there any particularly bad telltale questions which the English-speakers got wrong much more?

Sounds to me like someone clueless thought they were doing you a favor and royally screwed it up.

@WetlabWalter you cannot just randomly put umlauts into a word. That's just plain wrong.

Deäl wïth ït B-) [...but yes it should be Ausländer not Aüslander]

There are two different questions in here that are mixed up: one about whether the Dutch and English exams should be identical and one about exam quality.
Regarding the first question: I fail to see why this should be unethical. On the contrary: It seems very good that the standards on what you are supposed to know are the same. After all, you get the same degree.
Regarding the second question: Also here, the answer is obvious: Of course, exams need to be of good quality. If that is not the case, sure, this is a problem to be addressed. But that has nothing to do with the question of whether they are a translation or not.

I wanted to add an answer that concentrates more specifically on the issues of fairness and ethics.
Along with some (but not all) of the commenters, I don't think it is a good idea to characterize a poorly written exam as an ethical problem (without further information; it is a strange feature of ethical problems that almost anything could become an ethical problem under certain circumstances).  A poorly written exam is problematic because it is poorly written.  One does not need to launch an investigation of why the exam was poorly written in order to complain about it or seek redress for it.
I find (and have written here elsewhere) that students have a very strong sense of "fairness" and often want things to be completely fair.  We could be completely fair by giving all students everywhere the same grades; otherwise I believe it is provably impossible to be completely fair in all situations.  Different students are taught by instructors of different levels of abilities or enthusiasms at universities with differing resources in countries with differing resources...and so forth.  As a student, there is always going to be some other student who is in a more favorable situation than you.  It is not reasonable to ask for otherwise.  What is reasonable is to (i) ask to be treated well rather than badly and (ii) be willing to change from one academic situation to another if you see a better opportunity.
In this particular case:

Is this fair to the students in the English track? Is it even ethical?

Neither one is the right question.  Imagine there was no Dutch track, or imagine the Dutch track was experiencing the mirror image situation: getting exams that are poorly translated from English.  It would be fair, and arguably ethical, to give poorly translated exams to everyone.  But it would be bad for all parties.  As a student you deserve to have exams which are not so poorly written that fluent speakers of the language have trouble understanding the wording of the questions.  And you should ask for that.  In my view it does not strengthen your case to ask for exams which are "as good as the Dutch track": rather they should be good, full stop.  If they aren't, and if faculty there are not interested in conducting their business well rather than badly, consider going elsewhere.

I would guess that the ethics part of the question comes from the inequality in exam clarity for the two groups of students (dutch-speaking and non). There is perhaps identical input to both groups, but the exam difficulty varies (due to quality issues in one case). I remember a similar problem also at a Dutch university - Dutch-speaking students were given extra materials because some materials existed only in Dutch. This ended up being an advantage for the exam. In my example, the exam was identical but the input was not. Regardless of the quality of materials, it was still unethical.

@Ana: I understand what you are saying.  But it seems to me first of all that the exam was poorly written in a way which cannot be intentional.  (If you are in an English track, having portions of exams being written in a language other than English must be a mistake, right?)  Second: I would like to think that a university which has parallel tracks for different languages would want to treat those two tracks in a uniform way.  But is it obviously unethical if they don't?...

...  It's hard to believe that a Dutch university could be obligated by some basic principle to give English courses and exams at all: my understanding is that this is something that universities in the Netherlands choose to do.  If they are choosing to do it, they get to choose how to implement it.  If they implement it badly enough, they will lose students that they don't want to lose.  Looking at it ethically doesn't seem to get to the heart of the issue.

By the way: as a postdoc I taught at McGill University in Montreal.  McGill is an English language university within the mostly Francophone Canadian province of Quebec.  Natively Francophone students had some enumerated rights -- e.g. they could ask for an assignment or exam be translated into French.  All the textbooks we used were in English, and all the study materials were in English.  Is that unethical?  I would say: you can debate that if you like, but the practical answer is that that's how McGill University works.

@PeteL.Clark I think this too clever by half.  Universities can and do get away with a lot of bad behavior, but that doesn't somehow make it justified.  Agreeing to teach a course in a particular language, and not properly translating the materials into that language is malpractice.   It's one thing to set a policy which may ultimately not assist students as much as they need (as in your McGill example), and another to set out a policy (we will teach this course in English) and carry it out incompetently.

@Ben: I agree with you -- it depends entirely on what the policy is.  But based on what has been said, it is very hard to believe that the university has been competent in enacting its policy.  It should do better.  So this is an incompetence issue, not really an ethical one.  In the event that the OP's program wants to insist that there is no problem with giving badly-machine-translated exams, it still seems fruitless for the OP to take them to task for ethical violations.  Even if he succeeds, the root problem of their gross incompetence would still be there.

I agree with this answer and the comments below. We frequently receive questions which refer to possible ethical problems when there is no ethical problem at all. There are good and bad courses as there are good and bad products, and usually their goodness or badness has nothing to do with ethics: some people is simply better than others at doing their stuff. In the OP's case, the professor and the university might have overestimated the professor's English skills. Or not, but they had no other alternative. The important thing is to give feedback and to ask for an improvement of the "product".

@PeteL.Clark: well did Francophone students tend to achieve lower than English-speaking, and by how much?

@BenWebster: the status of French vs English in Canadian education is a long story, and depends on what province you're in. How unfeasible and expensive would it be to mandate bilingual English-French staff and texts for everything, and how much extra would it all cost? And they didn't "agree to teach a course in a particular language", it's Quebec Bill 101/Charter of the French Language which mandates it.

An exam written in bad english would actually be unfair towards anyone whose English isn't perfect (for example non-native English speakers with not very much experience). To these people, bad English is much much more difficult than to native English speakers. On the other hand, badly translated Dutch would probably put native Dutch speakers at an unfair advantage, who might be the only ones figuring out what it means.

@smci You seem to have completely misread my comment.  I wasn't suggesting McGill needs to be bilingual; I was pointing out that they're situation isn't the same, precisely because they didn't claim to do instruction in French.  I was talking about the OP's situation.

@smci Students at McGill have chosen to study at an Anglophone university. Those who want a Francophone one go to Universite de Montreal instead.

@BenWebster: I didn't miss your point at all, I was reacting to the over-the-top claim "Agreeing to teach a course in a particular language, and not properly translating the materials into that language is malpractice", wrt Bill 101, which mandates accommodations for French-language speakers, there's no question of "agreeing". To Jessica, Bill 101 applies to all of Quebec province, regardless. To all of you, I don't think it's helpful to mix that up with the OP's example. I'd be interested in a new question: "How does English- and French-language university instruction work in Quebec?"

@PeteL.Clark (regarding your second comment): Dutch universities are indeed not obligated to provide English language courses. If they do provide an English language program (alongside or instead of a Dutch one) it has to meet the same standards as any other program. If they implement it badly enough, not only do students stop coming, they will also lose any government financing for the program and their right to award a degree for the program (of course a single bad exam is unlikely to lead to that). So while they choose to, they cannot google translate their program and be done with it.

@Smci I know it's dumb to argue about this, but I just can't help myself: if you understood, then you knew that the fragment you just quoted wasn't about Quebec, and thus has nothing to do with Bill 101, and so your comment makes no sense.  I'll additionally say that it's malpractice to do a bad job translating exams when you are legally obliged to, but that's a different question entirely.  All I meant to say is, whatever policy you have, you should carry it out well.

@BenWebster: I did understand, and I said a) your sweeping claim on malpractice was over-the-top. I agree "whatever policy... they should carry it out well", but that's aspiration, not reality, and if that's our yardstick, there's a ton of malpractice out there b) this question's joint Dutch-English language arrangement is so different to McGill and Quebec's mandatory policies, that it's confusing to mix or compare them. I guess we should stop at this.

The key point is whether the poor quality of the exams affected the marks. If translation was poor but students could understand all questions - even with help of professors or assistants present at the exam - bad translation is just an small problem of lack of professionalism that should be fixed before next exam. However, if bad translation prevented students to produce good questions, then it's worse and there are grounds to ask for the exam be repeated.
And I wouldn't focus the issue in ethics. Of course, ethics command to offer students a good service without mistakes like this one, but I see this mistake more as a practical problem than anything else.

Is this fair to the students in the English track? Is it even ethical?

It is too early to answer this question. For an exam, a final judgment can only be spoken after the grades have been determined.
Certainly, the way you describe the translation, it seems to have been badly done. This should be avoided in exams - and yet, sometimes it isn't. However, when bad quality creeps into some aspect of an exam, there is always still the option of adjusting the grading. For instance, completely incrompehensible questions might be ignored while grading, ambiguous questions could be graded as correctly answered for either interpretation, etc.
Now, making exam questions truly unambiguous can be hard, and making two exams in two languages express exactly the same information is really hard. Whenever this is attempted, there is a high probability the two language versions will differ at least in some nuances. What is more, this is aggravated by the fact that each question is often designed by very few people (or even just one person), and they are usually not native in all languages the question needs to be written in. Hence, it is almost unavoidable that different language versions of an exam are somewhat "unfairly" different.
Now, if that difference is enough to have a noticeable effect (approximately as in, students complain that had they used the other version, they could have solved a question that they failed to solve), the way to go is to treat the language versions as different exams and slightly decouple their grading schemes. (This only works to a limited extent, when only a few questions are really problematic, before something may have to be done about the entire exam.)


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Can I ask my supervisor to let me graduate early?
I am a master’s research student. I am having trouble with my supervisor. I don't like either his research interests (as he is forcing me to do stupid things) or his attitude. I have the option to convert to a course-based master's but I want to consider that as a last option.
Is it advisable to talk to my supervisor directly about early graduation? I would tell him that I am not happy with the research and I want to write a thesis on a closely related but less intriguing subject and just finish my master’s as soon as possible.

Is changing the supervisor impossible in your case? This would seem like the best option (though I would also consider trying to talk to him about possibly changing your topic / other activitites and reaching some kind of compromise)

Welcome to Academia SE. Can you please [edit] your answer to tell us a bit about what your programme’s written (and unwritten) rules are regarding this part of your degree? For example, the institutions I am familiar with have a limit on how early you can hand in your thesis. Also, here, the supervisor grades the thesis (and the grade carries a lot of weight), which would make what your suggested move a very bad one.

Early graduation is often (usually?) possible, but only if you were quicker than other students with the necessary work, not as a way out if you don't like the program.

Is it advisable to talk to my supervisor directly about early graduation? I would tell him that I am not happy with the research and I want to write a thesis on a closely related but less intriguing subject and just finish my master’s as soon as possible.

I expect that this line of argumentation to have a very small chance of success. If your main argument to early graduation is that you hate the program and want to get out, they will likely suggest you to drop out. If you want to have any chance at early graduation, find out where the bar is (in terms of required research output and coursework) and work hard to fulfill it as soon as possible. Then discuss with your advisor that you wish to graduate as you have done the required work (not because you dislike the work).
Stay far away from any argument that you hope they will lower the bar for you because you do not enjoy working with them. This will not have the anticipated effect: instead it has a good chance of antagonizing your advisor, in that way lowering your chance of early graduation. And you will need their goodwill to graduate early and (realistically also to  graduate at all).

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Is it legal to make submitted research paper public
I have submitted a research paper to IEEE.
Now my research supervisor is saying to make it public by writing a blog on Medium and giving a link to the paper. He also shared research paper on some channels without my consent.
I want to know

Is it legal to write a blog on Medium regarding research paper that is not published?
Is it affects my research paper acceptance?
Can anyone copy it and publish it in a journal or write it on a website with his/her name?

Why do you want cross-publish in an academic journal and on a weblog? Do you hope, this will increase your citation count?

@ManuelRodriguez My supervisor has some connections with the organization whom security problem is addressed in the paper. He said that paper will reach out to public early as compared to journal publication is long. I personally don't want this as it may affect my publication and thesis submission.

Is he actually copying any text from the paper, or just describing the results in his own words?

@FedericoPoloni He wants to describe methodology and results in own words.

and also link paper.

In which concerns publishability, it depends upon the journal policies regarding pre-prints and media coverage. However, this is not a legal issue - there is nothing illegal about the situation you have described.
In the case of IEEE you can see here that they allow authors to share their work anywhere.

Prior to submission to an IEEE publication
Authors may post their article anywhere at any time, including on preprint servers such as arXiv.org. This does not count as a prior publication.

Caveat: please read the whole content of the link to be aware of the full policy. They ask you to use a disclaimer that the work was submitted to IEEE:

The following text should be included on the first page of the submitted article when it first is posted in any of the above outlets: “This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessible.”

@Najib what if the journal changes their policy in the mean time and my answer becomes obsolete for someone finding this in the future? There is a clear dependency on the policies. The best answer is that: always check the journal's policy in the official website, it may change with time or be different for different journals. And if you read the full policies you will see that they demand you to remove all the content if you get the paper accepted. So, it is a yes with a big 'but', not a simple yes.

@NajibIdrissi The main concern is about publishability not legality. However, I have edited my answer to clear state that there is nothing illegal about the situation described in the question.

Can anyone copy it and publish it some website or journal? If so how can i prove it that its my work.

@Infinity your submission to a journal is proof of ownership. Submitting to arXiv and other preprint servers is also proof of ownership. Using something from arXiv without giving due credit is clear plagiarism.

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Is it okay for me to violate my school's honor policy by ghostwriting others' papers for money?
I've been asked to write a paper for someone else at my school and it has made me question whether I'd be doing a horrible thing by agreeing. I have done it and accepted pay before now. My papers are generally relatively good. A sizeable portion of my income in high school came from papers I had written for others.
I've written fewer things for people in college. My clientele has, to this point, consisted of old friends and friends of friends from the nearby community colleges and stuff. These essays take more than the fifty minutes to churn out than high school ones did, but they also feel more rewarding because I usually have to research and learn a bit before asking for a bit of a higher payment than I charged in high school. This whole thing didn't really feel morally unwholesome until a person at my college asked me to write an essay for her the other day.
We have an honor code that I thought worked well. While I wouldn't be breaking a rule by giving someone my intellectual property, the idea that they'd be signing the same agreement I always do about adhering to the school's policies on a piece written by me really freaks me out! Luckily it's nothing that would be published in any way, but it still opened me to what I guess is a common enough ethical dilemma. Do I sell out or do I pay attention to the "right" thing to do?
I have no scruples making people from other places pay. I'd still write a paper for a high schooler at the drop of their pretty penny. Doing it for someone here just feels perverse. I'm also gunning for a job as writing tutor --a flawed position in a crumbling part of the institution in which I'm still super interested. Right now it seems as though I'm teetering between becoming either the helper of or the worker for others.
Personal values aside it would probably be super awkward tutoring some people and doing the work for others, particularly if one of the professors who has recommended me for the tutor position were to discover that I had written papers for students taking their class. I imagine I'd be fired.
Still, writing papers pays well enough. This person has essentially agreed to pay by the page at a rate based on the grade the paper earns. Right now I'm expecting at least $100 for five or six hours of work, which is significantly more than any job I can get working for the school. She also indicated that she'd be interested in pursuing my services further should the first paper prove satisfactory. I could be making a decent bit of coin by doing something I actually enjoy while learning and developing is I wouldn't necessarily entertain under certain circumstances.
Do the many ethical implications necessarily outweigh the high potential monetary gains? Should it matter to me when I'm technically doing nothing wrong (apart from subverting some classic pedagogic practices and participating in small-scale soul sale among other issues)? Isn't this basically what professional speech writers do? Assuming I stop, where should I draw the line (i.e. should I stop writing for others entirely, or what)?
Can you think of any other comments, questions, or concerns for me to address?

Let me just point out that "it has been a long night; I'm too lazy to search and interpret other people's somewhat similar situations" is never the right attitude if you expect others to spend their time answering your questions.

I am wondering. If you have no compunction, then you'd just go and do what aids your wallet and try not to be caught. I'd have an opinion on that, but this is just mine, and SE is not a court and I am not a judge. But you seem to be bothered by it. So, clearly, you feel that it is wrong to do so. On the other hand, you talk about "subverting classic pedagogy", as if it is a program of subversion you run, almost robin-hooding what you do. To me it feels that you haven't decided what category you see yourself in. Cont'd

It's impossible to answer your first question of "Do the many ethical implications necessarily outweigh the high potential monetary gains?" Some people will gladly sell their soul for a dollar, while others wouldn't enter an ethical grey zone for a much larger sum.

However: as long as there is assessment, you deprive honest students from their well earned kudos (i.e. grade) for their honest work and give dishonest students the opportunity to buy themselves kudos for money. Since academic achievements are not - unlike money - supposed to be freely exchangeable, but are supposed to be tied to personas, you are cheating at least the university, the honest students and the employers of both types of students (and possibly others). You seem to see the problem or you wouldn't be here. So, what do you want to really know?

Are you paying taxes on that money?

@WolfgangBangerth, sorry about the rudeness. I was pushing a 48 hour day and just wanted answers fast. I do intend to look more closely into others' cases after I've finally had sleep.

@CaptainEmacs, before being asked by a person from my school I truly did have very few scruples about all this. I think I over complicated my question because of the ambivalence I was feeling this morning about myself. The idea of allowing people to plagiarize my work on my campus put stuff into a negative perspective that has brought the rest of the issue into clarity. Not sure why I posted exactly, except that it felt more suitable to have someone else process what I was beginning to realize than to spend the resources to do it on my own at that time.

@Daniel, all income is taxable income.

Please spend less time defending yourself and more time researching and writing a properly posed question. // How exactly would you report this income on your tax return?

How does this help the other student progress in her studies?

@Pi_Arc "it felt more suitable to have someone else process what I was beginning to realize than to spend the resources to do it on my own at that time" - I am not sure I like the message of this sentence. Parse it again: "I have a problem; have somebody else use their resources to solve my problem rather than use mine to solve it." - did you really mean to say this? The message gets more and more murky. Get a good night's sleep and revisit.

I agree with @Morgan: the question is asking whether it is honorable to do something dishonorable.  Clearly not.  Maybe the OP doesn't understand why lying, cheating and getting paid for it are dishonorable things in an academic context, but I don't think this site is the right place for such "remedial ethics."

I actually think you would do better to ask your question here, regarding the ethical 'dilemma' you are facing... http://philosophy.stackexchange.com/

@Gary: I don't think "Should I behave ethically or un-?" is an ethical dilemma.  However, I agree that "Why -- or in what sense -- should I behave ethically?" is a good philosophical question.  As with most good philosophical questions, one struggles with them for their inherit interest, not because of the practical benefits one expects...

@PeteL.Clark Well we are now in the amorphous realm of philosophy I fear. Your premise appears to be that the student is acting unethically here, no doubt because their actions fall outside of the scope of what you would call ethically correct behavior? I think the OP needs to figure out what their own ethical parameters are, ("Do the many ethical implications necessarily outweigh the high potential monetary gains?") and the philosophers might be able to help him/her do that better than anyone here was the idea I was toying with when I coined the above comment.

@Gary: It's not a question of what I call ethically correct behavior.   "I think the OP needs to figure out what their own ethical parameters are" If you mean that the OP needs to figure out whether s/he is willing to abide by the standard ethics of academia: yes.  But again: "Should I behave ethically or unethically?" is a trivial ethical question, as is "Do the many ethical implications necessarily outweigh the high potential monetary gains?" No academic is going to tell the OP that it is "OK" to violate the standard ethics of academia: this follows directly from the meanings of the words.

@PeteL.Clark "No academic is going to tell the OP that it is "OK" to violate the standard ethics of academia: this follows directly from the meanings of the words". Hence my suggestion they take their question to philosophy for a more balanced discussion, this was also in my mind when I made the original suggestion. It was made semi tongue-in-cheek at the time, but certainly there's definite merit for the OP to ask the question in philosophy for the very reason you've just articulated.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it appears to be subtle trolling, as the OP clearly understands that what they are doing is incorrect and is simply looking for moral justification to perform the service anyways.

You should read Chapter 9 of The Pale King by David Foster Wallace.

You are aiding others in breaking the rules of their college. Indeed, my old university, Texas A&M, had the Aggie Honor Code that says:

An Aggie does not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate those who do.

Note the second part. While it may not be illegal from the perspective of the law, you are helping others lie and cheat. Don't do it, you're going to regret it in hindsight as you go through life and gain more of an appreciation why academic dishonesty is a problem.
But see it from a positive perspective: You are good at writing. There are businesses that are looking for people like you. For example, there are companies that specialize in editing other people's works -- e.g., editing scientific papers for people who are either not good writers, or whose first language is not English. There is a market for your skill set, and one where you can actually make a living doing the ethically right thing. Most universities also have writing centers that keep a list of people who are interested in helping foreign students edit their theses and similar things. All of these will be rewarding jobs where you learn something and can help others without moral dilemmas.

I should note that there is a level of specialization required to work with non-native speakers (of any language). There are quite a few more complications, and it's not just about editing their content, but rather providing iterations on their work where editing for grammar, spelling, etc. is the lowest-order concern. If wanting to edit professionally, you must know your audience.

Sure, no doubt. All I meant is to point out that if you're good at writing, there are directions you can take this in to make a living.

The answer is no. Don't do it. The other person is committing plagiarism and you would be at fault as well, even though it is your work, because you essentially helped them plagiarize. Everything you asked points to you feeling guilty, so go with your gut. This could get very messy and you could be expelled. Where to draw the line? Don't do other people's homework. Period.
Not that I needed to find references to your question, but here's an article.

Yeah, I'm probably just going to stop altogether. It just doesn't feel right anymore.

I'd still write a paper for a high schooler at the drop of their pretty penny.

And yet, those high schoolers are the ones you're damaging the most.
This is what I tell some of my younger relatives. For every homework that you do not do now, that same kind of work will become ten times harder once you're in college.

Isn't this basically what professional speech writers do?

Professional speech writers can say what they do and who they've worked for on their resume. Will you be able to do the same?
Also, by getting in the habit of letting others take the credit for your work, you're actually devaluing yourself.

Assuming I stop, where should I draw the line (i.e. should I stop
  writing for others entirely, or what)?

You already know where that line should be drawn. Writing for others teaches them absolutely nothing.
The next time you speak with this person (or someone else who wants your services), tell them that you won't write the essay for them, but that you'll be glad to lock yourself in a room with them for five hours to make sure they write their essay.
And then, you set your ground rules and ask them for the full cash payment in advance.
Your ground rules can vary, but I would personally include: Cell phones turned off. No wifi (unless research is required). This is a one-on-one session. They should sit next to you so you see what they're writing. No distraction (except for restroom breaks), unless they want you to walk out of that room and keep the remaining balance of the payment. The same goes if they're late or miss an appointment, you keep the money if that happens. And they should come to you at least three days before an essay is due otherwise your hourly rate is double.
The idea is that they wouldn't just be hiring a tutor, they would be hiring a task master. And even though, they may not be able to finish their essay in 5 hours, the work they accomplish in that time may motivate them enough to actually finish the work on their own.

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Without accessing the code how can a reviewer confirm if the simulation results are correct?
I have been reviewing the articles for various top-rank journals and conferences for the last few years.  After all these experiences, I can tell you there is no way to confirm the correctness of simulation results. Therefore, I usually make comments on design, procedure, mathematical and analytical analysis.
In the results section, I can ask some questions about why this or that is so, but how can I judge if the simulation was really performed or these are just fabricated graphs?
This question came in my mind because I observed on few occasions, during review process, a reviewer ask for including new results, which in my opinion required a lot of coding and effort to implement, but author responded within 7-10 days with new results and improved article.

This question came in my mind because I observed on few occasions, during review process, a reviewer ask for including new results, which in my opinion required a lot of coding and effort to implement, but author responded within 7-10 days with new results and improved article.

Why would this be different from an author stating the result of an experiment?  The experimental protocol should be given, but there would be no expectation that the reviewer would perform the experiment again to verify that it came out as the authors said.  In either case, the author could be mistaken or dishonest, but at least in the experiment case that wouldn't be something the reviewer would know.

@MBK: Regarding the case you mention in comments, it is surely very possible that the authors weren’t starting from scratch in implementing the reviewers’ suggestions, but had already independently considered those suggestions or something related, and so had a significant amount of the necessary code already written?

How about just playing around with the parameters to see how the results change? Extreme values would sure yield extreme results or differences. Sure there must be a possibility to have input to the simulation.

@MBK Regarding the case you mention in comments, I suspect you're simply not that good of a programmer as those who you reviewed. I can see how it is hard to accept that others are faster programmers, even more so when these others are people you review (hold control over). It is human, but there is absolutely no reason to suspect foul-play, out of what you described.

With accessing the code how can a reviewer confirm if the simulation results are correct?  Unearthing subtle bugs (the sort that tend to produce incorrect rather than bizzare results) is a skill, and one you can't assume reviewers will have.  I recall an off-by-one error in some of my code that cancelled in the final result (the difference between list indices was what mattered) until we repurposed the code; it was still a while before we caught the bug. Your last paragraph proposes fraud rather than error, and that's a very different situation

@Andrei The fast and slow programmer difference can be 1 week vs 2 weeks not possible something which is expected to be implemented in 3~4 months and you implement, get results, improve manuscript and upload in merely a week time. Also, I teach programming and i think I am not that bad as you are presuming :)

@DavidThornley There's a large difference between re-running the simulation program (which may have required many CPU/GPU hours) - i.e. rerunning the experiment, and a code review, which is akin to reviewing the experiment parameters and procedure. That said, this is my thoughts as a software engineer in industry, not as an academic.

@MBK Obviously it's hard to know for sure, but maybe they already had implemented the new feature/functionality - e.g. for another, future project. They might even had had those results ready, planning to submit them in a follow-up paper, but made the executive decision to move them to this one. Or maybe the structure of their code made it particularly easy to implement it.

@DavidThornley When we publish experimental results, we are required to report the methodology in exacting detail, down to things like what company the materials were bought from and even their production batch (lot) number. So the obvious difference would be that if you don't provide source code, you have not described the computational experiment in sufficient detail to reproduce it.

Do you have reason to doubt their veracity or good faith? Are their claims somehow not believable or highly questionable based on your knowledge of the field? If it isn't standard in your field to release code I don't think a reviewer should necessarily demand it, regardless of your feelings about making code public.
The authors should describe their methodology sufficiently for someone else to replicate it; in that way, they are putting their reputations at risk that were someone to duplicate their approach they would find the same results. Fabricating results is a very serious accusation. There are some statistical approaches to test whether data are likely to be fabricated, but the efficacy of this approach depends on the sophistication of the fabrication, and that question is better suited to CrossValidated.
If their work is meaningful in the field, at some point someone will implement their approach again. There is necessarily a bit of trust in science that people do what they say they've done. A reviewer should check that a paper's conclusions follow logically from their results, and that their methodology is described and sound, but they need not verify or replicate the results. As David Thornley points out in a comment on another answer, even simply running code tells you very little about those key factors, it only tells you if there is a blatant lie or mistake.

Do you have reason to doubt their claims? Surely that's the job of any researcher?

@user2768 Of course I mean beyond basic skepticism. You should doubt their approach as presented: if they say we tested X by doing Y and you know Y is not the correct way to test X, that's a different kind of doubt than them saying we tested X by doing Y and you wondering if they actually just made it up instead of ever doing Y. The standard is to provide enough information for someone else to replicate; if someone was making a truly remarkable claim, there is more reason to demand to see their code than if they are showing an incremental improvement.

Sometimes, even if the code is made available and the reviewer is willing to check it for correctness, it may be impractical to rerun the simulation. In my field, it's not uncommon for papers to report millions of CPU hours worth of simulation results. Surely a reviewer cannot be expected to spend a significant fraction of their yearly CPU time quota every time they review a paper. So I agree that a reasonable degree of trust is necessary.

@Miguel (Going OT) With such CPU-intensive computations, is it possible to generate a proof that the computations were performed correctly? (Bryan Krause and Phil Miller, nice revision.)

@user2768 It depends. The best benchmark is experiment, but it may not be possible to do it. The worst case scenario is that the simulation is "correct" but the underlying physical model is not. If the problem is important/interesting enough someone will try to reproduce the results using their own implementation or physical model (as others have mentioned here already). Generally, one may test e.g. a new interatomic potential by reproducing known experimental properties (density, self-diffusion coefficient) and then use said potential to predict unknown properties (e.g. reaction barriers).

@BryanKrause The magnitude of the claim shouldn't be important; because that's subjective.  Either the job of the reviewer is to ensure that every step in the paper is logical; and that anyone has enough information to try and reproduce the steps;  or it's to ensure that what was done is true...
I would agree with you, it's the former ... to ensure that anyone can reproduce the experiment and that the conclusion makes sense.  This would mean that the algorithm details must be included, but the code doesn't.

@Miguel In such a situation verification is all the more important. Why would you trust such a complex simulation without any plausible evidence that it actually worked as advertised? You shouldn’t. As a reviewer your job wouldn’t be to rerun the simulation, of course. It’s to ask the authors “what evidence can you produce to convince me that your simulation is correct?”

@UKMonkey I disagree that the magnitude of a claim is entirely subjective. If someone wrote a paper stating that eating bananas cures cancer I would be a lot more skeptical of that than if they claimed that higher banana consumption was associated with a 5% reduction in colon cancer risk in a longitudinal cohort study. A reviewer would be irresponsible to treat those claims entirely equally, even if proper experimental procedures were followed for both.

@BryanKrause If they're not subjective, what % of colon cancer needs to be cured by bananas to be classed as a "high magnitude" claim?  Of course it's subjective, and I'm sure you know it.  If you want some evidence for that, some people believe that the Earth is flat; the claim that it's round is significant.  While to others, it's the other way around.  A reviewer would be irresponsible to threat those claims equally if presented with SAME evidence for both; but that just means that the logical step from the evidence to the conclusion is lacking... which should be picked up for either case.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

"Do you have reason to doubt their veracity or good faith? " <- Yes, the fact that they've not published the simulation source code.

You can't really judge if the simulation was really performed. That's why we've had things such as the Schön scandal - the reviewers of those manuscripts didn't detect the fraud either.
What you can do is implement the "smell test". Is this approach feasible? Are the results reasonable? Were there any glaring omissions? If you can't see any obvious problems with the simulation, that's good enough: the real peer review happens after publication.

Why would a reviewer have to implement a "smell test", rather than just requiring source code?  I mean, you should pretty much be using a "smell test" at all times when reviewing, but that doesn't preclude getting into the details.

@NicHartley: Sorry, I mistook the "e" for "a".

After all these experiences, I can tell you there is no way to confirm the correctness of simulation results.

That is not necessarily true. In some cases, it is very easy to discern that a graph cannot possibly be correct or at the least has been badly misconstrued or misinterpreted. I had such a mistake caught in one of my early papers and have caught them in several papers I have reviewed.
It is not easy to prove that the simulations have actually been performed. However, the Open Science framework is designed to make it easier to verify results of both computational and experimental work.

Your experience is about confirming incorrectness. It is still hard to confirm correctness.

This looks more like a comment on one sentence of the question, rather than an answer to the main question.

there is no way to confirm the correctness of simulation results.

Simulations should be repeatable, hence, correctness can be checked by re-running the simulation. Of course, the authors might not provide the necessary code, but then you can request the code as a part of the review process.

Its not an easy task to implement someones algorithm to check correctness. Sometime the implementation may take 3~4 months

I requested code and author denied saying its against their project confidentiality contract.

@MBK I don't recommend implementing; I recommend repeating. If the authors won't let you repeat (by denying access to code), then I'd be inclined to reject, but I'd consult with the editor.

@user2768 So, if I were to run some simulations using software I didn't have a license to redistribute, I shouldn't be able to publish my results?

@MBK Just running the same code on the same data tells you very little without actually examining the code to make sure it implements the algorithm(s) of the paper.  It tells you that the author(s) didn't outright lie about the results, and that's all.

@DavidThornley: Indeed, in principle results that rely in an essential way on non-publishable software should not be publishable themselves. Publishing results is supposed to enable the community to check them and build upon them.

@SylvainRibault In many areas of research it isn't possible, for various reasons, to share all the raw data involved. Should none of that research be published either? Should we save and distribute blood samples to anyone that wants to verify the results of a study of inflammatory biomarkers? What if the process of analysis destroys the sample? Trust is an integral part of academic research.

@Bryan Krause: The question was about software, not raw data or physical evidence.

@SylvainRibault Understood, but although you can argue in favor of open source software there can be good reasons to not distribute code freely; I think it's short-sighted to make that a hard "no" for publishing them, and pointing out that that level of replication is impossible in other fields that have no problem publishing them.

@Bryan Krause: OK, but I would draw a difference (even if not very clear-cut) between data, and how they are processed. Software, like formulas, tends to be on the processing side, and should be more open. Also, there is 'publishing' in the sense of making public, and 'publishing' in the sense of rigorously verifying. We should be able to make anything public, but we should not claim that we have verified a claim when the verification is impossible.

@SylvainRibault Yes, but accepting a paper for publication is not the same as verifying it. A reviewer should check that a paper's conclusions follow logically from their results, and that their methodology is described and sound, but they need not verify or replicate the results. As David Thornley points out above, even simply running code tells you very little about those key factors, it only tells you if there is a blatant lie or mistake.

@DavidThornley “So, if I were to run some simulations using software I didn't have a license to redistribute, I shouldn't be able to publish my results?” — Ideally, yes. That’s part of the Open Science manifesto. This obviously depends on the field but in my field (genomics), if a manuscript is distributed without runnable code, I reject it. And, it goes without saying, I’m far from the only reviewer to do this.

@DavidThornley I think reviewers should have access to code written by authors. That code is part of the deliverable. If it isn't, then it shouldn't be advertised in the paper. (I appreciate that drawing lines here is rather complicated.) It is unclear why you refer to "software [without] a license to redistribute," because that doesn't seem in scope here. I appreciate that reviewers may not be able to run code without a license, that's an independent issue.

@user2768 Even if the software is open source and there are no license issue, just installing it and verifying that the installation was correct can turn into a major time sink. In my experience most academic software has dependencies on the local computer system and its software development toolchain that nobody knew or cared about, and certainly didn't document anywhere!

@alephzero When I review papers and I want the code, I'm usually in a position to run the code immediately. When I'm not, I won't run the code.

It is an unfortunate artifact of history and culture but academia is still in the dark ages with regards to sharing source code. Serious computational researchers will often provide at least a detailed algorithm, and often the code as well. But dabblers who had to learn how to code "on the job", or people very set in their ways and traditions, will often neglect to do so and publications standard rarely require it, even though you would think that anyone in their right mind would agree that all scientific code should be open source (or at least shared with reviewers) if it is to be worth discussion.
Unfortunately, the established culture does not expect sharing of code, even though the in the analogous case of physical experiments there is an expectation of sharing the exact process down to every detail of method and material such that it may be exactly reproduced by other researchers. I would suspect that the reason for this is that in the grand scheme of things computers are a relatively recent tool of science, and the ability to easily share code is still more recent. That said, we've had ubiquitous internet and zero effort code hosting like Github for over a decade now, so if you ask me, it's about damn time. But it looks like there is still quite a bit of inertia.

I have been reviewing the articles for various top-rank journals and conferences for the last few years. After all these experiences, I can tell you there is no way to confirm the correctness of simulation results. Therefore, I usually make comments on design, procedure, mathematical and analytical analysis.

That's about the best you can do. You can also try to intuitively conjecture based on the rough description (if any) of the computational approach, whether the results achieved are credible or not. But ultimately it is impossible to know for sure.
I try to add a little nag at the end of my reviews about releasing the source code, although I don't think it gets taken seriously very often.

In the results section, I can ask some questions about why this or that is so, but how can I judge if the simulation was really performed or these are just fabricated graphs?

Well, the way you phrase it, you can't really know if any graph or result is fabricated, unless maybe you were personally present while the research was done. There is inevitably an element of trust. But without source code, even if you do trust, you cannot offer meaningful critique about some computational parts of the paper. Obviously you can still comment on initial assumptions and the approach chosen. You can comment on how the results are interpreted. But the implementation itself is out of reach until you can see the code. Actually, even providing a detailed algorithm would not be sufficient: The authors' implementation may not necessarily be an exact match for the algorithm they intended.

This question came in my mind because I observed on few occasions, during review process, a reviewer ask for including new results, which in my opinion required a lot of coding and effort to implement, but author responded within 7-10 days with new results and improved article.

I don't think it's fair to be suspicious just because they did it a little too quickly. They may just be very good at coding. Personally, my development rate is very variable: Sometimes things just click and I can write code really fast, sometimes simple things take forever. They may know of easier ways to implement the change than you are aware. They may have already coded something similar in separate work and been able to repurpose it quickly.
If someone were to falsify results, I think they would either respond right away because they don't care, or wait "long enough" to avoid suspicion. If they bothered to wait at all, I don't think they would jeopardize the whole enterprise by waiting too little.

Some bosses believe that the code of simulation models are worth money. However, (1) that is rarely the case, and (2) if we wanted to make a lot of money on coding, we would be in the software business not in academia. Besides, as others have mentioned already, simulation models that are not open-source live outside the scientific domain.

In order for simulation work to be precisely reproducible, it would be necessary to have (a) the code for the simulation and (b) the seed for the pseudoramdon generator used to run the code. Unless the code is proprietary, there is no good reason for authors to withhold this information from reviewers, even if the code will not be published as part of the paper. However, publishable simulation studies may be so extensive that it is not feasible even for an energetic skeptical reviewer to repeat the simulations.
To a degree many simulation studies can be self-verifying. When this is possible reviewers should insist on feasible inherent verification. In non-technical language here are a couple of examples of what I mean.
(1) Often a simulation will produce several results of which some are novel and some are easily obtained or generally known without resorting to simulation. Then at the very least a reviewer can can confirm that the latter results are valid. Somewhat similarly, simulations may refine results that can only be approximated by probabilistic or other mathematical computations. Then the reviewer can confirm that the results
are at least approximately correct.
(2) Very frequently, an important part of a simulation study may be to obtain approximate bounds within which the simulated results are likely (perhaps 95% likely) to lie. If it seems feasible to have obtained such bounds and the paper under review lacks them, then the reviewer should ask for them or for an explanation of their absence.
Addendum: This is a trivial example illustrating some concepts in (1) and (2). Suppose five dice are loaded so that faces 1 through 6 have respective probabilities (1/12, 1/6, 1/6, 1/6, 1/6, 1/4) of occurring. If all five are rolled, what is the probability that the total is at least 25? A simulation in R statistical software of a million such 5-die
experiments shows that the fraction of outcomes with totals 25 or more was  0.092903. Is this result believable? The answer is Yes, to about three places.
The simulated 95% margin of simulation error is "within 0.0006." It is easy to see that the average total is 19.583 and the corresponding simulated result is 19.580. A reasonable 2-place normal approximation is 0.0922.
This particular example is rich in corroborative
possibilities, but those are a few.
Note: Another issue is that, using various kinds of mathematical software, this problem could be solved exactly by advanced combinatorial methods. One exact method is based on this page, except that our dice are biased and outcomes are not equally likely. It is questionable whether simulations should be published if there is a tractable exact solution. One job of a reviewer is to identify papers that should not be published for this reason.

Usually known examples are reproduced to gain confidence that the simulation is doing what it claims. Then further simulations show the new results, which might not be reproduced by an other group because the did not use the described method or approach described in the paper/talk.
Due to brevity, often the first part is omitted in journal articles and conference talks. PhD theses contain them more often.
One of my first publications, it does not contain any breakthrough, is only cited from others to show that they match my results.

If I were reviewing a paper which relied to a heavy degree on some computational analysis, but didn't supply the code, I would reject that paper unless the authors could give a good reason: even if they'd used proprietary libraries, I'd want to see the calls they made to those libraries. This is required by many journals in my field (genomics/bioinformatics).
That said, if the simulations ran for 2 months on 10,000 cores (or even a week on 200 cores), there is not much chance of me reproducing even with the code. And I almost certainly have neither the time, moneny nor expertise to repeat lab experiments in any paper I read.
I don't think that providing code, although a good practice, is a protection against dis-honesty. In the end there is very little protection against outright fraud, and the review process is not primarily there for that purpose.

There might not be a chance of reproducing it now, but consider that the paper may still be of interest in a decade or two.

The chance of any underlying infrastructure in two decades being compatible with code written now is fairly minimal, unless its packaged as a virtual machine. I'd be skeptical that even a docker image build now will run the same in 20 years time. This is a real and on going problem. See https://www.software.ac.uk/  for an example of people working hard to try on solve this non-trival issue.

Using proprietary libraries is not a good reason. That is, the authors can show the code they wrote, and say "Compile this with libproprietarystuff".

Which is exactly what I said

"The chance of this reagent company being in business in two decades is fairly minimal. I'd be skeptical that mail order catalogs will even be the same in 20 years time!"


text:
Is it true that articles cited in Wikipedia get more citations?
It is famously known that “visibility” of an article influences its citation count. Is it true that articles cited in Wikipedia page get more academic citations?

Generally they are on Wiki because they are well cited for good reasons already...

@Jon Custer It's not always the case, I have seen very recently published articles cited in Wikipedia page.

@TommiBrander I am  interested in academic citations as a result of Wiki visibility.

@MBK I edited to clarify.

There appears to be some literature comparing citations on Wikipedia to citations in academic journals, but I have not been able to find any randomised controlled trial (RCT) on the matter.  For example, in a comparison of Wikipedia citations to journal metrics, Nielsen (2018) found that "[t]he Wikipedia citation numbers showed high correlation with the [Journal Citation Report's] numbers for the total number of citations to a journal" (p. 4).  If go broader than Wikipedia, Lawrence (2011) finds that free online availability is positively correlated with citation rate.  Both of these studies use observational data and show correlation between the outcomes, but they do not rule out other causal relations that would lead to correlation (e.g., if papers are more likely to be made available online, or added as citations in Wikipedia, if they become more cited).
If there are any enterprising researchers reading this post, this sounds like a good research question for a randomised controlled trial (RCT).  Since Wikipedia can be edited with a free account, it should be possible to set up an RCT where you add a randomised set of presently uncited academic articles to Wikipedia and track their citation progress in academic journals against a control group.  First find a set of articles relevant to a subject that are not presently cited on Wikpedia; then randomise them into a control group and treatment group, and add the articles in the treatment group into Wikipedia articles; then watch changes in the citation count in the academic journals over time, and then test for a difference in the groups.

I suspect Wikipedia might object to being used as a guinea pig.

Well, I suppose this is what ethics committees are for.  Anyway, I'm not sure they'd necessarily object, given that the research might potentially show the value of their platform to academic researchers.

That doesn't sound like a very good research project. There are a lot of confounds, and it is probably against wiki's ToS.

Confounders are not generally a problem for an RCT, so long as it is properly constructed.  Indeed, that is the primary benefit of doing this as an RCT instead of an observational study.  Whether such an experiment would breach ToS/ethics is a separate issue from its merits as a scientific experiment, but is a matter that would need to be considered in an appropriate ethics application.

If all the articles being added are legitimate articles that reasonably should be cited in the Wikipedia articles in question, I don't think most Wikipedians will mind. It might make sense to check with first with someone there, maybe on the Admin Noticeboard before running the experiment, but my guess is the response will not be negative.

@JoshuaZ But if the articles not being added to the control group are legitimate articles that reasonably should be cited, I’m sure at least some Wikipedians would object to the omission.

@JeffE Possibly, but there's no ethical obligation to improve Wikipedia articles. So at best one is only contributing less to the project than one otherwise would have. There's also nothing stopping one after the study is over from going back and adding in the control articles. It isn't like anyone is advocating a study procedure where we remove random citations from Wikipedia.

Wrt RCT by article writing, this study might be interesting (they did something similar to examine Wikipedia's effect on tourism). Also, Wikipedia editors' discussion of the study.

Yes.
I once edited an article into Wikipedia. I needed a source for a generic claim (something reasonably well-known to experts in the field, such as "the question of whether P = NP is a major unsolved problem"), and I just cited something I was familiar with. It wasn't even a good source for the claim - the paper didn't aim to prove the claim, it just contained one line that confirmed that the claim is true. But since I was familiar with the paper I didn't bother looking for something else.
A few months later, it turned out that the source, along with others in the Wikipedia article, had been cited by others for the same claim.


text:
I have made my independent research available as a book on my website. Why is it not celebrated by the mathematics community?
Some mathematicians said that general topology in general and theory of proximity spaces in particular are dead (meaning that no new discoveries appear in this field of mathematics).
I have discovered a theory which generalizes general topology in general and theory of proximity spaces in particular, opening a new major area of research.
It is described in this draft book.
So general topology "resurrected".
Where are the celebration and fireworks proclaiming: "General topology is alive!"?
I am an amateur mathematician and my speaking English (and also my purse to buy air tickets) is still not good enough to participate in scientific conferences.
I am not allowed to submit to either arXiv or nLab.
Something is wrong: There should be a celebration of general topology being alive, but this does not happen. What is wrong?
Well, one thing because which this does not happen is that I have not (yet) solved any specific open problem (not counting open problems which I myself formulated). But what else keeps the world off celebration?

My question is not a duplicate of Publishing vs. putting work online under a free license because at that question I ask about how citing (not acceptance in general) of my work may be influenced by its license and method of publication. Here I however ask about acceptance (not citing) of my work independently on its method of publication.
It is surely not a duplicate of I believe I have solved a famous open problem. How do I convince people in the field that I am not a crank?, because in this situation I have not solved a famous open problem.
It is not a duplicate of Creating a community around my research book, because in that question I ask what to do but in this question why does it happen. These are entirely different questions.

Voting to leave this closed as it cannot possibly be answered without reading and knowing your book and having the mathematical background to do so. It is essentially a request for peer review, which is not a good fit for Stack Exchange.

Some of the already given answers show that this question can be answered in a general way, without the need of a thorough review of the author's work. Therefore, I'm voting to reopen.

Question: Are there any conferences in your native language, or in a language that your are more familiar with?  If you mention that language, someone may be able to suggest something that could be an easier starting point.

@RBarryYoung My native language is Russian but I live in Israel. I hardly can afford air tickets to travel to a Russian scientific conference (and also take note that all my manuscripts are in English). Also, I need for some established scientist to welcome me to a conference, in order for me be allowed to give a talk.

@porton Invited talks at conferences are usually only given by well-known researchers. However, many conferences give financial assistance to students so they can attend. I know you're not a student but your financial situation is essentially the same (your research isn't supported by a grant that includes travel expenses) so conference organizers might consider paying some of your expenses. Also, Israel has a very active academic community: surely there are local conferences or workshops that you could attend at minimal cost.

@Wrzlprmft: six answers with 24+ votes each, seem to contradict your statement.

@MartinArgerami: Some of those answers actually refer to the content of the book or at least its form of publication. The others answer the slightly different question “what did I do wrong?”, which could be edited into the question but is still too localised. There may be a good underlying question here along the lines of “Can I expect any success with a mathematics book published this way”. If you can reasonably edit the question this way (prefrerrably such that no existing answer is invalidated), I am happy to vote to reopen.

Please don't delete this question. It's useful as a dupe to direct other scientific revolutionaries to.

There should be a celebration of general topology being alive, but this does not happen. What is wrong?

The people who say general topology is dead are generally not unhappy about this conclusion: they feel it died a well-deserved death due to a lack of important connections with the rest of mathematics.  (They are wrong, both about whether it in fact died and about its lack of connections, but these beliefs persist.)  Your work does not challenge these beliefs, because it appears to be almost entirely self-contained, with minimal connections to other topics in mathematics.  If someone considers the field dead, then they will view your book as a zombie, rather than a sign of life.
This doesn't mean you have to try to change their minds.  It's perfectly reasonable to ignore them and focus on the mathematicians who do care about general topology.  But those mathematicians won't be surprised to hear that the field they work in is still alive.

Well, one thing because which this does not happen is that I have not (yet) solved any specific open problem (not counting open problems which I myself formulated).

This is a major issue.  There are two ways you can attract researchers to a new research area.  You can show them how this area is connected to things they already care about, or you can convince them the new area is outstandingly interesting and important in its own right (more so than what they are currently working on).  The former is far easier, while the latter ranges from difficult to impossible.  If you can't build connections, then the chances of ever attracting much interest are low.

But what else keeps the world off celebration?

Celebration is not the default state.  Every day, several hundred new mathematics papers are posted to the arXiv, some of them rather important.  On a typical day, none of them will get a reaction that could reasonably be described as celebration.  You should not expect it to happen here.
As a general rule, it can be difficult for authors to predict how their papers will be received.  Your book is exactly the sort of thing you like.  Maybe it's your favorite topic in the world, but that doesn't mean it will be everyone else's favorite too.  This can be really frustrating.  Some of my papers are much more popular and influential than others, and they aren't always the ones I'm most excited about or proud of.  I sometimes wish I could say to people "Hey, if you think X is so great, why aren't you twice as excited about Y?"  But ultimately people's tastes and preferences differ, and you need to make a case for your work in terms that other people understand and value.  This is not easy, but it's the only way forward.

Here is a brand new mathematical theory I have invented just now (in the last 30 seconds):
A Gobleflump is a set together with a ternary operation Star(a,b,c), and a binary operation Spade(a,b) satisfying Star(Spade(a,b),Spade(c,d),Spade(e,f)) = Spade(Star(a,b,c),Star(d,e,f)).
I could now devote my life to the study of Gobleflumps.  I could publish papers about extremely regular gobleflumps, and the equivalence between hyperconvex gobleflumps and hypoconvex grendleflops.  This might all be legitimate, correct mathematics.
No one will ever care about my lifes work, or probably even read it, unless it makes some connection to existing mathematical theory, illuminates why something disconnected from the theory works the way it does, or solves some existing problem.
The reason is just that mathematics is a social activity.  People work on things which are important to the group, and the things which are important to the group are determined (basically) by fads.  There is no objective reason that human mathematics should be so concerned with polynomial equations over finite fields, except that some people found it interesting, and they convinced other people to find it interesting.  Eventually people found these tools could be useful for solving their other problem in algebraic topology or data encryption.
My own work as a Ph.d. student was probably only really interesting to about 50 people on the planet, but might possibly be interesting to some more people in connected fields if I did the hard work of convincing them that it is useful to them.
If you care about the impact of your work, then I suggest working on mathematics which arises naturally in connection with the mathematics of other people.  If you do not care about other people, then work on something which is not connected to what other people care about.

"Mathematics is a social activity." Well said. I recommend W. Thurston's essay "On Proof and Progress in Mathematics" (http://www.ams.org/journals/bull/1994-30-02/S0273-0979-1994-00502-6/) for more on this viewpoint.

To be honest, spade and star probably are real number functions that exist.

I remember seeing this months ago (probably the day you posted it) and can't believe I didn't upvote it then. I must have gotten distracted somehow, perhaps thinking of how many papers I've seen that seem analogous to an exploration of Gobleflumps (just to name one example, "fuzzy bitopological spaces"). (moments later) I just noticed that I wasn't a member of Academia Stack Exchange back in August 2015. Nonetheless, I do remember reading your post about Gobleflumps.

A good and fair question.
I took a brief look at your materials, and it seems like you introduce a host of new terminology and notation. It would take a tremendous effort for anyone to learn it. What is the payoff? Why should anyone take the trouble? I don't mean to cause offense, but these are questions that you must anticipate and be prepared to convincingly answer.
The classical way to motivate people to learn a new theory is to use it to solve an existing open problem, whose formulation does not require the new language you develop. Failing that, you could give sleek, elegant solutions of problems (again, whose formulation does not require your language) whose only known solutions are complicated and kludgy.
I recommend to you that you learn about the history of Alexander Grothendieck, his mathematics, and of the development of modern algebraic geometry (i.e., of scheme theory). Nowadays it is common for advanced graduate students to spend a lot of time learning his intricate language for describing what are, essentially, the solution sets to algebraic equations.
Why? If you refuse to take it for granted that this material is worthwhile, and instead learn the history of its development and its applications, I would guess that you would learn a lot about what it takes to get a new mathematical theory accepted.
Best of luck.

I had the same reaction when glancing through the slides. I have done research in general topology. Why should I learn all the terminology from the slides? What problems will it help me solve? Just having a more elegant notation isn't really a motivation on its own. So the slides have some of the "what", but they don't have the "why".  It is true and unfortunate that some mathematics textbooks are written in this way, but it isn't the way working mathematicians actually approach new material.

You need a reality check.
Is this really a breakthrough? Are your assumptions and development of your theory solid? Are the consequences far-reaching?
Reading posts of yours like Is a university that grants me a PhD for $1000 and a copy of my unpublished book fake? or http://www.mathematics21.org/algebraic-general-topology.html makes me believe that the need is real.
Also go through this list or this one. Both are valuable checklists.

Even famous establishment mathematicians run into trouble when their work starts to become inbred, creating lots of new concepts and terminology that is not connected to anything anyone else is doing. Mochizuki's work on the ABC conjecture and Poenaru's work on the Poincare conjecture are both good examples. Both have constructed intricate theories with very little connection to  mathematics that other people are working on, and as a result, the mathematical community is largely ignoring them. It simply takes too much time and mental effort to slog through their work, without any guarantee of a payoff. It could be that after several months of study, you find a mistake. Then that's basically several months down the drain!
So if establishment researchers working on big important problems run into this issue, a relatively unknown researcher with an elaborate theory that doesn't actually solve any open problems is not going to have much of a chance!
My best advice is to begin more modestly by writing up some part of your work in a short research article with plenty of motivation in the introduction. "This is a new theory that resurrects general topology" is not sufficient motivation! Instead "We provide a simplified conceptual framework for understanding phenomenon X" would be better. Avoid making grandiose-sounding claims or sounding like you are bragging. After getting a short article on your ideas published you can start building from there.

Just as a comment, Mochizuki's work has received a lot more attention since I posted this, and there are actually significant numbers of people working on trying to understand his ideas.

First, echoing @Anonymous ' answer: people need motivation to learn something that is outside their usual world. Why should they? How will it help them?
Second, "acceptance" is in some ways a very weak thing. People may "accept it" but ignore it. It is not clear what reaction you expect. This reminds me of my contact with an angry amateur mathematician who expected to somehow be paid a stipend by the nearby university due to the theorems he'd proven... He was angry that I merely gave him advice about what journals to submit the article to (this was pre-internet), and didn't care at all that I told him he could mention that he was referred to them by me (as opposed to cold-call submission), and didn't care at all about my advice about the style of his write-up.
Stylistically, academic mathematics is very conservative, and any element of non-conformity in language is viewed as evidence of crack-pottery... although, obviously, it is only evidence of disconnection from the forces of orthodoxy. But/and if one's goal is acceptance by the (mostly orthodox... if only from fear of ostracism) majority, essential-conformity in style is very important. In particular, don't say that you "have a new theory" or that anything is "resurrected", and so on. Minimize new terminology, minimize new notation.
That is, yes, give the (possibly misleading) impression that what you propose is as-little-different from the status quo as possible... thereby getting peoples' confidence.
For that matter, building off established technology is vastly more sensible than trashing everything and starting over. It's really tough to give a convincing argument that everything we (=professional mathematicians) have is misguided and we should all change something...
In short: be persuasive to the human beings you want to persuade. They are both "human" and "expert"...

"It is not clear what reaction you expect". I expect (or rather wish): Web links, mentions in blogs, mentions at research conferences, etc. It seems that till now, there are zero mentions of my research by other people, and I am a bit disappointed by this

Ah. Well, yes, that's an understandable hope/expectation, but it is too optimistic even for people who are "in". Unless you give people something irreplaceable, they'll choose to refer-to/cite "the usual", rather than something new, especially something "outside". Conservatism and conformity-to-orthodoxy: people who are striving to enhance their own status will not refer-to or even mention anyone/anything non-orthodox! Surveys, commentaries may (as Todd Trimble's) "magnanimously" comment on work outside the orthodox, but this is not typical...

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Math PhD application references from a postdoc
Will a reference from a postdoc be considered less than a reference from a lecturer/professor?  This is assuming that I have done a dissertation under him/her and that the postdoc is in his/her (at least) third postdoc position.  It may be worth to note that he/she has graduated PhD for around 10 years.

Will a reference from a postdoc be considered less than a reference from a lecturer/professor?

As a general rule, yes, but it depends who the postdoc is, how strong (and effectively-written) their letter is, and what the letter is for. As an example, I am currently working with a smart undergraduate, and he got accepted to several very good graduate programs (US, mathematics) on the strength of his application, which included a reference letter from a postdoc he did a research project with last year. So such letters can certainly be effective and have value. It all depends on the context.
The main point is that the most important factor in how seriously a reference is considered is not so much the job title of the letter writer (although that is still a factor that has some significance), but their credibility and reputation in the research community. Certainly many postdocs already have high credibility and name-recognition, and a letter from them (at least for a grad school application and to a lesser extent for a postdoc application; less so for a tenure track job application) will be taken quite seriously.

I think that what matters is the academic reputation of your reference, and the extent in which he/she knows you. If your reference has published many high quality papers, then him/her not being a lecturer or professor may not be an issue.

According to my advisor, a reference from a non-faculty member is not worth much. (Field is mathematics.)

I know famous mathematicians who are “non-faculty members”, so this claim is factually false. Even if you were referring to postdocs specifically, in order to be helpful your answer would have to be a lot more nuanced than it is - whether a reference is “worth much” would depend greatly on who the postdoc is, what their reference says, and what the reference is used for. For example, for a grad school application I think it could well be worth almost as much as, or even as much as, a reference from a senior faculty member - again, depending on other contextual information.

I'll be happy to remove by answer, should someone express an opinion to the same general effect with more details or nuance.


text:
When do you italicize the name of a book, article or website in APA style citations and references?
I am  writing a paper that is using APA Citation and I'm confused on how the in text citations are supposed to go. Do you italizize the name of the website, book, article in which you are citing? Or can it be left normal?

In APA style, typically the name of the website, book, or article is not part of the in-text citation, so it's not clear what you're asking - perhaps an example would help.

APA style does not include the website, book, or article title in the in-text citations. You would use the  (Author, year) format. The only exception is when there is no author listed. In that case, you include enough of the title to enable to reader to find the relevant entry in the references.
For example, if your article by an anonymous author is titled Evidence of influences of Eurasian mythology in Charles Darwin's unpublished works, published in 2010, your in-text citation might look like this; (Evidence of..., 2010). You do not italicize the in-text citation, even when using a title which is [correctly] italicized in your reference list.
For more information on the correct use of APA style, consult the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth edition, (2010), or check online at the APA website.  For quick reference, the APA blog is also useful.


text:
Is it appropriate to include declined post doc offers on your CV?
I have recently got several postdoc offers and two of those were really nice. I have accepted one of them and I am thinking whether I can make some use of the second one that I have turned down.
I traveled quite a long distance to give a job talk, that was pretty successful, and a famous professor in my field made me an offer. Maybe the fact that this famous professor was ready to hire me would make my CV look better (I plan to apply for permanent positions in Academia in Europe/America(s) in future).
So, the question is: would it be helpful and generally acceptable to add to my CV words like "job offer from "Professor_Name" lab, refused in favor of anther offer"? Or it would look like an act of excessive inappropriate boasting?
In general my CV is quite OK even without that so these words would not make a crucial difference anyway, but still.
UPD. My field is applied mathematics/computational neuroscience.

I've never seen anything like this. I'd see it as excessive boasting.

It almost sounds like you regret turning down the offer. I don't think this would reflect well on you if you put it in your CV.

You could always delay the start date of the one you have accepted and accept the second on a short-term basis, then (you have something to put on your CV and, more importantly) you have more experience.

user2768, I have only heard about the delaying possibility for fellowship-like positions (which is not my case) and usually the delay cannot be really long. In my field one is supposed to start the position as soon as possible. Even if it was not the case, the physical straight line distance between the locations of the two labs is about 12 000 km, it would be a nightmare to move between such distant places twice in a short time.

Sounds to me like **** swinging. If the famous guy was so impressed with your job, skills etc you can always ask him whether he could write you a recommendation letter, which for sure will be more impactful than a "declined" line on your cv.

@Anon maybe you right, but I would be reluctant about asking him for a letter after I have turned down his offer. He is probably not very happy about that.

I've seen a few cases of people in my field (linguistics) turning down competitive funding offers and listing them in CVs with "(declined)". Some of these happen to be tied to postdoctoral positions, especially ones offered by governments and/or prestigious granting agencies.
And depending on field/location, it might be possible to list job talks as 'invited talks' for particular departments.
Beyond that, I think referring to job offers you have refused is inappropriate and likely to look only like showing off.

This is also true in my field. When a post-doc is tied to competitive funding, it can be listed as (declined) under the awards/funding section of your CV. Places you interviewed can be presentations or invited talks.

TL;DR - No, but it depends on which country.
Your CV lists the "course of your life", and that definitely doesn't include the courses you refrained from taking in life. As someone who has read people's CV (albeit not in the US) I would find it highly weird / somewhat inappropriate for you to list anything you've declined.
However, as @OlegLobachev suggests, in some countries (e.g. Germany) this is more common and perhaps even expected.