text:
START v2 (Softconf): what markup is allowed in reviews?
Softconf's START Conference Manager v2 is a web-based conference management system that is widely used, at least in the field of computational linguistics. Academics using the site enter plain-text reviews, but the site appears to support a limited range of plain-text markup that gets rendered in HTML upon review submission.
For example, *emphasis* is rendered as emphasis and * item on a new line is rendered as:

item

This feature is undocumented, but knowledge of the feature could help reviewers write more engaging and legible reviews.
I tried to guess the markup for other formatting styles, but without success. The two patterns above look like Markdown or reStructuredText, but **bold** does not work, nor does `monospace`, so it appears to be some custom solution. Does anybody know what other formatting styles are supported?
In the absence of official documentation about the feature, the answer to this question can make the information more discoverable for future reviewers.

I respect the 5 votes to close the question, but I'm confused as to why it's considered out of scope. This is about software that academics use for reviewing for a conference. According to the on-topic guidelines It appears related to "academic writing and publishing" (specifically peer-review) and isn't related to the topics to avoid. In case Softconf's CMT is not well-known outside my field, I've edited the question to give more background.

I emailed Softconf's support and Rich Gerber replied with the following:

The review is always considered a plain text entity, but to display it we insert a bit of markup where we believe markup is warranted.   But *this* will add emphasis, and you can also use bold tags like this.   There is also implied ordered lists, by numbers starting lines.  You can also insert HTML super and subscripts.  That's about it.

That is:

*emphasis*
bold
* bulleted list item
1. numbered list item
xsuperscript
xsubscript

also ---- on its own line will make a horizontal rule


text:
Why should I enter a pure math PhD program if I most likely won't end up in academia?
Assumptions:

The typical pure math PhD-bound undergraduate goes into a pure math PhD because they are [insert reasonable prerequisites for pure math PhD, (not the focus of this question)] and they want to end up in academia.
(With some exceptions) A pure math PhD is for people who want to enter academia.

Since most pure math PhD students won't end up in academia, we must wonder, given the above assumptions, the following question.
Question

Aside from the easy answer (see below), why should the typical pure math PhD-bound undergraduate enter a pure math PhD program if they will (1) probably not achieve their goal of entering academia and (2) probably have a few hard years after their PhD in chaotically bouncing around post-docs (never knowing when the end is in sight) and eventually readjusting their career goals to go into industry?

(1), (2) are based on observations one can easily make by browsing this site and talking to professors. This question may be abstracted to

Why should one go on a 5 year journey to achieve something they will probably not achieve, and upon failure, will subsequently face irreversible consequences (i.e., time lost, financial insecurity, etc.)?

The easy answer:
The typical answer is: "Follow your heart, and do it if you can't imagine yourself doing something else." But this is an emotional answer which is automatically true for every undergraduate who is very serious about a pure math PhD. And just because you think something will make you happy doesn't mean you should always do it. Sure, a PhD is fun, but it seems like a PhD gets really not fun very quickly upon graduation.
Overall, it's very easy for naive undergraduates to accept this "follow your heart" answer because us pure math PhD-bound undergraduates tend to think "Others have trouble, but I'm special." That's an extremely naive and unrealistic way to address the fact that most graduates from pure math PhD programs experience employment difficulties.
My background:
Mathematics undergraduate applying to PhD programs. I like math, I think I'm mentally and academically prepared to enroll in a pure math PhD program, and I have aimed to enter academia for a while. I know that with the right institution I would love a pure math PhD, but I want realistic career goals and not some naive expectation of "grad school -> PhD -> post-doc -> tenure" in going into a pure math PhD.
Note: My background is not really a background. It is included to reinforce the fact that I'm your average pure math PhD-bound undergraduate, who would probably do just fine in PhD program, and therefore this question might apply to similar undergraduates who are also not trying to be so naive about their career goals.

Hmmm. Why do you say that most math PhDs won't wind up in academia? Is that a given?

Where I am, doing a phd is "not yet fully commiting to academia" (in a positive way).  You can spend three years in a phd and have fun and make contributions to academia. You don't neccessarily have to move if you don't want to. For a postdoc, you would have to move (and thus give more things up/make academia to the focus of your life). Why should the fact that you won't gind a place in academia imply that you shouldn't do the fun of a phd (if phd is fun for you)?

For me it was just like that: I loved my subject, but also other things (like friends and family). I didn't love academia enough to give them up (like a would have at an academic career). But I could do the phd without giving them up. Others like to go abroad for a phd, experience a different culture/language they like and go back home after their adventure. For staying in academia, they probably would constantly have to move to places they don't as much like.

There is an old saying among mathematicians. "You don't choose mathematics. Mathematics chooses you." If you don't have that level of commitment (obsession), don't bother. And if you do, then nothing will stand in your way. The same can probably be said for a career in academia, though maybe not with the same intensity.

Is your goal to end up in academia? You can do math and pursue your endeavor on your own without having to go through a PhD. If your goal is to end up in academia, then it's obvious you should pursue a PhD in math.

It's a personal choice. If you don't like the odds, don't do it!

I know a lot of people with phds in industry. Also some in "pure" mathematics. I also know people who are succesful in industry without having studied. It's up to you and how and where you want to achieve success, even how you define it. Is it money? Is it status? Is it knowledge? Is it power?
I know lots of people (especially engineers) who do not believe a math study has any value at all, especially not in the industry. They slightly think about that about physics as well.
My perspective always is: A study is not a qualification in terms of job qualifying. It should be education and

thinking. Otherwise step into the job market right after school. There are only few studies like medicine or law which are very tailored for specific jobs. But all the other jobs are somehow in most of the ways reachable without a study. If a company promotes you to a certain position based on your education is another question. But from pov only very few positions require a study at all, also a lot of my engineer colleagues could be replaced by motivated technicians.
On the other hand, e.g. physicists conducting state of the art research need a well educated thinking. I don't believe you

gain that without a study and/or phd. The same goes to some other positions, also including mathematicians (sometimes they work side by side anyway..).

Data for physics is at https://www.aip.org/statistics/reports/employment-and-careers-physics

why should I enter a pure math PhD program with the goal of entering academia if I will (1) probably not achieve this goal, (2) probably have a few hard years after my math PhD, and (3) probably end up in industry in which case I could have taken a less stressful route and even prepared myself better with a PhD in another field?

With the mindset that you are showing by the very loaded way your question is phrased - including several rather misguided beliefs I will address below - consider the possibility that the answer is “you shouldn’t”.
What are these beliefs I’m referring to? They are:

Something is not worth trying if the probability of success is lower than 50%

The definition of “success” in pursuing a pure math PhD is to have a career in academia

Any argument for pursuing a pure math PhD is not helpful or worth considering if it is “vague and subjective”.

In fact, these beliefs are not true in any universal sense. The decision to pursue a PhD in pure math is a personal and completely subjective one. It’s right for some people, and not right for others, and for each person it’s either right or not right for different reasons: e.g., for some people who do define success as an academic career it’s still the right decision because they are talented enough to defy the average not-so-great statistical odds you are referring to; others simply define success in completely different ways.
Likewise, the people for whom the decision does not seem like the right one also differ in the reasons why they reach that conclusion. Some are passionate about math but don’t think the effort, stress and opportunity cost are worth the risk of not achieving the dream of an academic career. Others may be so mathematically talented that they can know with a fairly high degree of certainty that they can have an academic career, and yet nonetheless find other opportunities more alluring.
Your question suggests that you want someone to come here and persuade you to do a pure math PhD by giving you some objective, scientific reason to do it. That’s not how it works. You’ll have to do your own thinking and make your own decision based on your own ideas of what matters most in life and what kind of life and career you want. I said at the beginning of the answer that it sounds like a math PhD may not be right for you, but of course I don’t know you and may well be wrong about that impression, so don’t let it prevent you from making the choice that’s right for you. Good luck!

Thanks for the response! I just wanted to point out--ending up in academia is not just less than a 50% chance, it's really much lower than that, right? I guess it doesn't really change your argument. Also, the phrasing of the question is not really for me personally, but for undergraduates who may have shed the naive "grad school -> PhD -> post-doc -> tenure" idea. I assume they may wonder this question. Otherwise, they're entering grad school thinking "sure, others have trouble with employment, but I'm different! So I'll be fine," which I think is naive (it just can't be true for everyone).

@trujello you used the word “probably” so I simplified that to something on the order of slightly better than 50% chance. If you had said “almost certainly” that would change my argument (but I don’t believe it’s the case that people who get a math PhD “almost certainly” fail to have an academic career if they want to have one). But my argument isn’t specific to the exact number 50% of course, if it were, say, 70% then what I said still applies.

@trujello you phrased the question in the first person and gave background information about yourself so I assumed you were asking about yourself specifically. Anyway, others who read this discussion can interpret it from their own perspective.

@trujello: I think the statistics still say that well more than half of pure math PhDs end up in academic jobs.  Of course, most of these jobs are at four year colleges where there might not be much support or expectation for research.  Many PhDs also find themselves teaching at community colleges and enjoying it.

Look - for a homo economicus, a PhD program in (pure) math is clearly a bad idea.
I quit a $60K/yr job back in 1999 to do a math PhD.  My current salary as a tenured associate professor is a little more than $70K/yr - less than my salary 20 years ago adjusted for inflation.  I'm probably out most of a million dollars in lost earnings.  I faced a much friendlier job market (though I still had to be lucky to get a job - it wasn't that friendly) than anyone doing a PhD now will face.
But - I really didn't like tech consulting, and in fact when I left I vowed to never work in a position of any responsibility in a for-profit company ever again.
A PhD doesn't make your job prospects worse.  If you don't get an academic job after a PhD and maybe some postdoc, then you'll be able to get a slightly better version of whatever job you could get now.  Would it be worth the lost earnings and lost time if you don't get an academic job?  In large part that will depend on how much you enjoy actually doing the PhD.  I can't answer that for you.

First, a math PhD is meant to give you training to learn how to do research in mathematics, which is different than training you only for academia.  There are different reasons to pursue a math PhD, and in my experience a lot of (most?) people who start don't even know what they want to do career-wise after they finish.
It's true a math PhD is the best preparation you can have for becoming a math professor, but it can also prepare you for many other jobs that require a high level of mathematical expertise, and often involve some aspects of research.  At least in the US, if you look at the AMS annual survey, you'll see many people who get PhDs do stay in academia (for research, or teaching, or some combination of both).  See also the AMS career page for some non-academic job options for math PhDs.
Second, at the undergraduate level, it's too early to tell whether it will be difficult for you to succeed in academia or not.  While it's true that it's not easy to get a job in academia nowadays, it's certainly far from impossible (e.g., see the AMS data), and there are a wide range of jobs in academia from teaching to research.
Math PhDs are still very marketable, and going through a program will help you figure out exactly what you want to do (be it research or teaching, academia or industry).  So if you want to do a math PhD, my suggestion is to apply and see what happens.  After a year or two in the program, you might decide it's not for you and leave with a master's, which is also marketable.  If you like, you could also apply for some master's programs and some jobs to see what you options are; sometimes being confronted with decisions helps you figure out what you want.  (And taking a job for a couple of years, and then deciding on a math PhD is perfectly fine too.)
Finally, most paths in life involve "anxiety, stress, and uncertainty".  Your attitude to how you approach your endeavors makes a big difference on how stressful they are.  This blogpost is written a later academic stage, but maybe it will help give you some perspective on how to enjoy your time in academia, however long it lasts.

People enter pure math PhD programs because they enjoy doing mathematics and will have a stable career afterwards. That career may or may not involve doing mathematics, but who cares? If you can get a programming job now, or after spending five years obtaining a math PhD, which would you rather do? You can leave the PhD at any time if your preferences change.
Now if there is another more applied area that you're also passionate about but has better career prospects, then that is a difficult question which would require more personalized advice.
This is an important question. I think the other answers are somewhat dismissive of the fact that those from less privileged backgrounds need to care about these things. Getting a CS PhD (with summer internships) and a pure math PhD (without) could be the difference between affording a yearly flight back to see your family and not. My main point is that math is lucrative enough that you'll still be able to make it, and you can change your mind at any time.

Unless you are already financially free, ultimately the most important reason for education is to enable get you a job. Note an academic job is also a job. It is something that pays the bills and puts food on the table. In this sense it is no different from working as a cashier at your local supermarket.
Why study at all if you can just work at your local supermarket? Because there are some jobs that require technical skills that are imparted only by education. For example if you want to work as an electrical engineer, you will need to be familiar with things like Ohm's law. You need to be able to handle algebra, trigonometry, calculus, statistics, and so on. Humans are not born with the ability to do these things - you learn them via education.
In a similar way, a PhD in pure math will equip you with skills to handle certain jobs. One way to see what they are is to check your local jobs portal and search for jobs that require a math PhD degree. Here's an example.

Overview
SIG is looking for someone with an understanding and interest in sports analytics to join our Quantitative Research team. Quantitative Researchers at SIG use research to better understand markets and to identify, develop and improve strategies for the firm.
This is a research, development and modeling role in which you will use your background in mathematics and statistics to seek out reliable, timely sports data to clean, analyze, and transform into algorithms and strategies. This position will likely require intermittent international travel.
What we're looking for

Graduate degree in STEM concentration; PHD preferred
Interest in sports data/analytics with a strong understanding of US Sports-NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL
Data mining and modeling experience
Practical programming experience in Python, C++, Matlab, and/or R

If you want to do this job, a math PhD degree will be helpful.
You ask:

Why should I go on a 5 year journey to achieve something I am probably not going to achieve, and upon failure, will subsequently face irreversible consequences (i.e., time lost, financial insecurity, etc.)?

Because you think the rewards that come with getting the degree outweighs the losses if you fail. This is no different from many other decisions we make in life. Here's a similar decision you might already have made, reworded:

Why should I go on a lifelong journey with my significant other if it's possible they might cheat on me or fall in love with someone else, and subsequently force me to face irreversible consequences (i.e. time lost, financial insecurity, divorce lawsuits, etc.)?

Actually, I think the job posting you quoted conveys the exact opposite message you think it does. The reason there are finance jobs aimed specifically at PhDs is because they want to directly advertise to the giant pool of PhDs that need employment. The job itself doesn't actually need a PhD, nobody ever does a PhD with the express goal of getting such jobs, and you don't get paid more either (i.e. a fresh PhD will be paid a bit more than a fresh university graduate, but far less than a university graduate who spent their 20s instead getting 4-6 years of job experience).

The case that these kinds of jobs provide economic security to STEM PhDs is very strong, but they are absolutely not a reason to do a PhD in the first place. Finance jobs tend to require nothing more than undergraduate math, if that.

@knzhou I disagree - if that were the case, they wouldn't hire PhDs. After all, as you wrote, the fresh PhD is paid more than a fresh university graduate. They are asking for PhDs because having a STEM PhD is strongly correlated with the ability to do the job. It's true that the day-to-day job might only require undergraduate math, but hiring at that level also opens you to hiring the not-so-good undergraduates who wouldn't have qualified for PhD studies in the first place. Put differently, you can be sure a math PhD can do the job, but can't say the same for undergraduates.

That's simply not true -- SIG recruits extensively at the university level and does the selection through high-pressure interviews, which PhDs also go through. They happen to have job postings for PhDs, but they also have comparable postings for university graduates. (Being a US company, they might also recruit a bit in Canada, but that isn't a good reason to move from the US to Canada.) You will never meet anybody working in finance that wishes they had done a PhD for the career options.

@knzhou no, I do not agree. SIG recruits at university level the same way any university recruits at high school level, there are different positions requiring different degrees. If you join with a PhD you will be assigned different responsibilities from someone joining with a Bachelor's. You will never meet anybody working in finance that wishes they had done a PhD for the career options might be true, but it'd also be misleading, because one cannot tell what one would have achieved if they had gone for the PhD.

@knzhou I'd say be careful about comparing the best undergraduates without PhDs against PhDs. It's certainly conceivable that the best undergraduates don't need PhDs, but there are also a lot of not-so-good undergraduates who never do the jobs that people with PhDs do, because they don't have the skills.

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sort: votes


text:
Should I skip MS in Computer Science and directly opt for PHD? If so, what to expect from a PHD program?
I just finished my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science. I'm 100% sure that I want to pursue a specialization in AI and ML through Computer Science. And becoming a Professor is something that I really want.
I'm taking a gap year to work on my personal projects and I'm also doing some certificate courses online through Coursera.
Part of the reason why I made this decision was that I wanted to be absolutely confident in myself before I went into a professional post-grad program. But, mainly, the reason was that I was scared.
My family can't afford my education any further and not a single member(male or female) in my family (both immediate and distant) have ever studied beyond a Bachelors. I personally don't know anyone who's done a PHD and I'm not sure exactly what to expect from further education. I've been looking up post-grad degree programs in USA, and in Cornell University's MS in CS page I read that students who wish to pursue a PHD should directly apply for the PHD in CS.
That sentence intrigued me. And after looking up some more information, I found that yes, people can opt for PHDs right after Bachelors, it will be difficult obviously, but it's possible. I also found some scholarships online whose eligibility criteria I fit in, but I would still need to work while getting my degree.
But I don't know what happens in PHD programs.  Will there be lectures like in normal degree programs or just research and practicals and thesis and projects? Can I work while doing a PHD? And do I really need a Masters degree ? Will it become really difficult without a Masters? Also, what exactly is a fellowship? And what is a Graduate Research Assistant?
I'm genuinely confused. Any advice would be greatly appreciated (not that anyone needs my appreciation). Thank you in advance.

Who taught courses for your Bachelor's degree? Did those lecturers not have PhDs? It could be worth getting in touch with those you knew best and ask them some of these questions. It's also important to maintain contact because you will need reference letters when applying for PhDs.

Yes, in the US most students start doctoral studies immediately after a bachelors. Yes, there will be quite a lot of coursework before you get to the dissertation stage. The courses prepare you to pass the qualifying exams and assure that you have a broad grounding in the field.
However, almost all US graduate students work as part of the program, usually as a TA (Teaching Assistant) or RA (Research Assistant). A TA usually does grading and meets with small "sections" of a larger course so that students can get questions answered. An RA works with a professor on research and the tasks depend on what that professor is doing. It might be programming or library research or whatever.
Holding a TA or RA position also means that the student doesn't pay tuition and has enough of a stipend to live (modestly), perhaps even with a family. I had two kids by the time I finished my PhD though my spouse also worked. That would be harder for a foreign student because of visa rules.
You don't need to have a research project in mind to apply for admission, nor do you need to immediately connect with a particular professor. The first year will feel a lot like the final year of undergraduate but with more advanced courses and possibly an introduction to research process.
Apply to several schools, probably in the R1 (Research focused) category. It is best if the general area you want to study within CS is represented there by several faculty so that there is the possibility for a research seminar.
At many such doctoral programs you can be awarded a masters, also, part way through your studies.

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


text:
How to describe this type of a scholarship?
Hi I'm applying to grad school and was writing my CV for the first time in my life, so had a question...
How do I describe a scholarship that was given upon entrance and lasts for four years and pays for 100% of the tuition? I've heard that a full scholarship refers to getting paid for 100% of tuition, but I couldn't find whether it refers to scholarships that last for four years or that last for one term.
I've written
"Samsung Science Scholarship (4 year full entrance scholarship)"
Would this be the correct way to put it? Or is it too formal? Is there a better way to put this?
Thank you in advance :)

I'm inclined to say just mention the scholarship name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Scholarship - this seems to be known.

Thanks for the reply. The thing is though, that scholarship is different from my scholarship as far as I know (because mine is undergrad and that one is grad)

There’s quite a lot of scholarships with the name samsung attached to it so i thought i’d have to specify which one it is

Ah I agree, okay. Well, I would still write "Samsung Scholarship (4 yrs)" or so.

I see. So you dont recommend writing things like “full scholarship” and “entrance scholarship”? Or is it just unnecessary?

Thanks for the reply by the way!!

There are several instances of the phrase "full-tuition scholarship" by various organizations, including universities, if you search online. You can check if that will provide clarity in your context.

I don't recall ever seeing "entrance" in this context. The rest of what you wrote looks fine to me.


text:
is chair not recognizing me on purpose or am I selfish and can't see reality?
My chair never says publicly good things about me, but he does about others. I am also an expert in one area, and this person does not acknowledge my input. He has meetings only with me and then with other people, but never together. I feels there is always something behind the back.
Everything this person does has an agenda, and I have seen it in action: you talk about one thing and the sharing of information is always modified.
I am the only one he targets, ignores mostly. No other faculty, just me.
What should I do?

This seems more like a question best suited to https://workplace.stackexchange.com or even https://interpersonal.stackexchange.com/

Is appreciation for others work expressed publicly or it happens between you and the chair? Besides, this kind of questions can not be really answered. Sometimes chairs are right, too (surely it is not your case... You see where the point is?).

You have to initiate, in my experience.
Specifically, try to first demonstrate some genuine compassion towards your Chair, e.g. reach out and extend some empathy toward him / her about the situation.
I would be inquisitive, rather than be quietly hostile.  Can you ask him / her some open-ended questions to formulate a clearer understanding about things?  If so, and this is productive, then try to listen carefully to understand, without rushing or even intending to respond.
Speak to him / her respectfully about it, and good luck.  Do not be adversarial.

Thank you so much! This is absolutely great. What do you mean by not being adversarial? Thank you so much again, this helps a LOT

https://hunch.net/?p=499

The hunch article is a good one @MonkeyButter, I just read it.

Thank you so so so much. This is amazing feedback.

Thank you so much to all


text:
My university does not do anything to prevent cheating in online exams, and grading is relative. What should I do?
I am from a reputed university in India and despite informing the department professors and higher authorities of the rampant cheating in the online exams, they haven't taken any steps to curb it (they use Google Meet/Zoom proctoring which is basically useless because students can still text and make excuses). They don't even reply to the emails that raise these concerns. They made no effort to change their examination mode for the online semester - by increasing the weightage of take-home/research assignment components in the syllabus.
This has taken a toll on the mental health of students like me who did not use unfair means but are now suffering because the university follows relative grading and the skyrocketing averages of the exams have made it next to impossible for us to get grades proportional to our efforts.
What should a student do in such a situation? Should he/she start cheating too?
Edit:
Switching the institute is not possible because this is India — students have to go through a gruesome procedure to get admitted into these reputed institutes in the first place.
Secondly, the jobs and higher education somewhat depend on the grades of the student so this unfair disadvantage for 2 semesters straight without cheating would be hell for any honest person.

Yep this is a real problem these days... Controlling students is very hard and this forces others to cheat to keep up else their CGPA will fall.

@Allure unfortunately, switching the educational institute is not an option.

@Allure some answers there are specifically focused on France and its education system, so the answers might differ for an Indian system

@3443 it would be better if you could mention that fact in your question itself.

Another related question: Other students can easily cheat on a test and the grading system is relative - should I cheat, and what else can I do?, but looks like most of the solutions there don't apply to this case as well.

I think this is a better duplicate target: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/132687/13240 In short: don't cheat, do complain.

@AnonymousPhysicist I have explained that complaining doesn't work.

To summarize: You cannot leave, you cannot complain, and you don't want to cheat. With those constraints there seems to be nothing you can do. So the solution is to find ways around those constraints. E.g. if the normal ways of complaining don't work, find another way (maybe media?), or if you can't leave within India, leave India, etc.

You should complain even if it has a low chance of success.  You should also consider if your complaint was well-executed.  Ultimately, the university needs students to exist.  If you make your voice heard in the right way, students can change universities.  It's not easy.

@AnonymousPhysicist but it's the students who are cheating and they aren't willing to change so the honest ones suffer.

@3443 Have you tried reaching out to MHRD? Students at our college generally write emails to the Ministry Of Human Resources Department of India when they feel that the college administration is behaving inappropriately. Especially top-tier colleges are more afraid of MHRD as they control their funding.

@Mods an Indian perspective is not covered in the linked answers.

I agree with @3443 the closure should be reconsidered. And the question should be opened as I had previously mentioned that this question is not a duplicate

If the key difference between this and the other questions is the country, I suggest editing this post to make the country more prominent. That will also put it back into a voting queue to consider reopening (if that doesn't work, the next step would be to post on meta).

@user134470: And does something happen when students write letters to this Ministry.

Well sadly in our case nothing happened. But MHRD is still known to be rather reasonable and does take action. It is worth a shot IMO.

Given the comments, you have eliminated the two most obvious responses: Exit (leave for somewhere better) and Voice (complain to the administration for improvements). There may still be more available to you than you think. A good resource is Exit, Voice and Loyalty by Albert O. Hirschman.
Because marking is relative, you are dealing with a tragedy of the commons problem. The total available high marks are made scarce because your professor has a particular mean and distribution in mind. There are more people who want high marks than are marks available. If everyone cheats, all the allotted marks are worthless as a measure of coding or other talent. Everyone has an incentive to cheat because not cheating does not prevent the cheaters from being rewarded.
In a commons problem, you will not be able to resolve the ethics on your own. The problem is social-structural, therefore the solution also needs to be social-structural. Your options are as follows:

Brainstorm ways to associate a cost with cheating. For example, you could launch a honeypot for an assignment with an answer that is wrong in a specified way. Then you can take the students to task for stealing your intellectual property.

Work with administrators via the institutions available to you (Student unions, associations, political movements etc.) to punish cheaters more harshly.

Establish a network of students who recognize the same problem and seek to establish norms across your colleagues against cheating. For example, raise some money to establish an award for merit for students who succeed while following the rules. Elinor Ostrom, the nobel economist, is the expert on this kind of solution. I would read her work, but summaries of her ideas do exist.

The ethics of cheating, even where you are disadvantaged are pretty straight-forward. Contributing to the cheating makes for a worse society from utilitarian (everyone loses from coders who do not know how to solve problems), deontological (a world where everyone cheats on everything is not a world I would want to live in) and a virtue (people will not improve if they always cheat) ethics perspective.
Assuming that your institution is indeed not interested in fixing this problem, it is corrupt. The World Bank has a list of actions to deal with corrupt institutions. There may be something there to help you.
Beyond that, you should know that blowing the whistle on an issue almost never benefits the whistleblower. Take a look at where your favorite whistleblower is now, and you will see I am correct. You will need to evaluate for yourself the degree to which you can fight this problem. I do recommend fighting from the inside first, assuming that everyone is interested in resolving this problem. You should go all the way to the top, explaining your understanding of the problem as succinctly as possible. You should also offer to be part of the solution as much as possible.

This answer is so far removed from reality it must have come from an academic.

"you may be the first hired in important companies for your willingness to resolve problems peacefully and intelligently" that part is probably the most unrealistic. Companies only care about your performance in the selection exam and the interviews. Which, I might add, requires a ton of preparation in and of itself. Something that OP will struggle with if they can't easy off some tension of their college exams.

If your solution to a problem is to use someone else's answer, then you are a dime a dozen and will not pass the college exam. Employers already know that Stack Overflow exists and have tests of their own. They also could care less about your overall mark in undergrad.

The student should do what ever is needed to be successful. Inability to adapt means you're kind of useless. Companies don't care if you cheated or not, they care if you can be successful. If cheating is the most productive use of your time then cheat.

I kinda agree with this answer. It is not really ideal to be very strict with ones' ideals... If you feel excessively guilty about cheating then you need to talk to yourself about it and allow some flexibility to yourself, if not cheating on the entire paper; you can maybe see the answers to tough questions.. or maybe just refer to the formulas instead of memorizing them... that way you can ease off some burden off your sholders.

"Companies don't care if you cheated or not" is completely false. If I need you to understand Java and you don't because you used someone else's work to get your marks, then not only will I fire you, I will refuse to hire anyone from the school that passed you.


text:
Why are many obviously pointless papers published, or worse studied?
In the field I specialize in (I'm currently a moderator of crypto-SE), I see many obviously pointless papers published, often in publications where that costs money. I imagine that's the same in many fields. Why are such papers published, or worse, studied?
Example: there are tens of thousand papers on image encryption, including thousands at MDPI, which has Article Processing Charges. Yet, the subject is almost¹ enough to tell the work is pointless: once digitized, and especially after it's compressed (as almost all images are today), image is data that can be encrypted just like anything else. The International Association on Cryptographic Research correspondingly publishes no paper on image encryption in its peer-reviewed publications; many of the papers about image encryption it references are refutations, and they do not go further than its non-reviewed preprint server.
Worse, I regularly see evidence that students at least think they have no choice but study a pointless paper riddled with errors. In this recent example, the paper attempts to apply an (unstated) Elliptic Curve signature scheme to inter-vehicles communications, but examination shows that the authors failed to find parameters for a usable Elliptic Curve. The paper cites 36 references on the same vein, many comparably poor. The OP ended up writing (in chat) "unfortunately I have no other choice but to study this paper", and I could not determine for sure if it was designated to them as a reference, or was just a poor choice.

Addition: what about the hypothesis that some subfields like digitized image encryption are abandoned as obviously not worth attention by actual reviewers, and flourish precisely for that reason? This particular subfield is remarkable in that it has developed standard patterns for the many articles, and some bogus measures of the efficiency of the encryption. To see what I mean, sample the papers this query returns (at least these all are officially free to read, if not to publish).

¹ I admit we must check that the image is encrypted and decrypted by a computer, and that the sole objective is encryption (rather than e.g. hiding data into an image, that is steganography, or Thumbnail-Preserving Encryption). Examination shows that most articles returned by that query are only about encrypting a digitized image, and many of the others are seriously defective.

Relevant Q&As: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/80320/do-most-customers-choose-predatory-publishers-knowingly and https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/142700/why-do-vanity-journals-exist?noredirect=1&lq=1

This conversation about cryptography (along with some answers-in-comments) has been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

Please note also that fgrieu is massively knowledgeable about cryptography, and other members with technical knowledge about this subfield confirm fgrieu's assessment. So, for this question, let us assume that "obviously pointless" is a correct and fair assessment.

It seems there are two questions.  One, "pointless paper", the other "riddled with errors".  These are not the same class of papers.

Is this post better off with lots of examples from cryptography or generalized?

Is it not the journals job to keep silly or pointless papers from making light? At the end of the day, people will research and attempt to publish whatever the hell they think is valuable. Sometimes people are objectively wrong about whats important, but if they manage to publish then SOME institution has just validated their work, your question "why are many obviously pointless.." then is also asking "why is the bar at some journals so low?" and thats a trickier question to answer.

Except answers below, I see two more reasons. 1) Many people consider references to their papers published no matter where as a way to make their public profiles more impressive. 2) Since there are many people who want to publish their texts (I cannot call any text a research paper), there is business that serves this need. This business gives you a platform to publish any meaningless text for some money, without any requirements for quality.

Some poorly-run institutions pay people to publish papers.  The pay is not based on the quality of the papers, only the number and possibly other useless information like the indexing of the paper.
Some poorly-run institutions require students to publish papers to get degrees, but the quality of the papers is not adequately assessed.
Some people do not realise their papers are pointless.
Some of the papers that are pointless in your opinion are not pointless to other people.

There are also many good papers.

Editors should filter out most of the garbage, I hope. Unless the journals are either predatory or very low quality.

I would also mention bibliometrics, personally: some people and institutions use number of papers and citations to judge research output, for tenure, promotions, and funding.

@Buffy I strongly disagree; scientific research should be judged by editors on the validity of the methods, not on the "point" of the paper.  Otherwise you end up publishing mostly statistical outliers instead of the truth.  Other fields might be different.

"Some of the papers that are pointless in your opinion are not pointless to other people." that's the key point here.

@Gimelist: shouldn't there be a limit to that? A good fraction of the papers I'm talking about are not only pointless, they affirm falsities, and in my opinion obviously so for any sane person having studied crypto for a year. Nobody knowing crypto has advised the authors, or they didn't listen.

@fgrieu maybe. I often review papers where it's clear the authors are not up to date or are ignorant about the topic. Maybe you should do the same - volunteer as peer reviewer or journal editor. Complaining about an issue is one thing, but actively doing something to resolve it, is another.

@Gimelist: I'm trying to understand the forces driving these papers to publication, especially paid ones in journals that pretend to be peer-reviewed. If I was trying to solve the issue (and I'm not jumping on a possibly lost cause), my first priority would be that publication of pointless papers is de-incentivized.

@fgrieu in that case, probably a line in someone's CV that puts them at an edge over someone that doesn't have the line. Something like "look! I have a paper out! I'm a real academic!"

There is nothing new about this and it isn't restricted to cryptography. I remember a keynote speech at a conference in the 1970s with the title "90% of finite element analyis is junk". In fact the same speaker gave an updated version of the speech on the 10th anniversary of the original, and changed the title from "90%" to "99%". It is also amusing to see papers which "rediscover" results that were widely known, and published in standard textbooks, before the computer era!

@alephzero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law

@Buffy The review process for the particular paper OP mentions (third paragraph) was probably less than rigorous: submission to publication time was under 8 weeks.

@FedericoPoloni Pareto principle: 80% of consequences come from 20% of the causes (the “vital few”).

I used to laugh about a pair of pointless papers. The authors had (independently) proved that Polish notation not only makes formulas of propositional logic unambiguous without needing parentheses but continues to do so if the formulas are written in a circle, so that one can't immediately see where the beginning and end of the formula are. Later, I learned that this result provides a key step in some combinatorial arguments, including a proof of the Lagrange inversion theorem for formal power series.  (The people who provided that proof of the inversion theorem were apparently unaware of the connection with logic.) The moral of the story is that I should not have judged pointlessness by the original purpose of the work but should have taken into account possibly unexpected applications elsewhere.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.

Let me propose two counterpoints to your question.
First, what one finds silly someone else doesn't.  I'm amazed that my most cited paper is basically aspirational and does not contain any strong result; on the other hand my best work is not cited very much at all.  In fact there is usually an inverse correlation between my ranking of my own work and the number of citations.  Hence what I find sillier others do not.
Second, I realized some years ago that some papers are just "silly" because they are - in some sense - practice.  I (or a collaborator or a student) had to publish papers under tight timelines, or under some pressure for a grant or something other deadline.  As a result, these are compromise.  I used to worry quite a bit about this until I visited the Musée d'Orsay in Paris: there you will find that, before making their "big work", the masters practiced on "études", a series of smaller tableaux where only some small elements are different.  It all looks very incremental.  There is one series in Orsay where three "études" show the same haystack with different hay colors, different backgrounds etc.
Now... I don't want to defend people who constantly and only publish "silly" papers, but I will add the following anecdotal evidence: a lot of the more incremental stuff is just to keep you going to a better, more properly formed, final non-silly paper.   I see this quite a bit of that as a referee for journals or grants: there are 3 or 4 papers in a series, and they eventually open the way to something more substantive and unexpected.
Sometimes not... you realize that the small "silly" papers already comprise all there is to say; the better researchers will move on.

This is definitely my experience. I am growing as a researcher as I publish more papers, and looking back, my first papers are honestly complete trash -- especially in comparison to my most recent. People will probably think my first papers are 'silly' and I hope I can say the same about this most recent paper in a few years time.

When you're hunting for a citation for a fact you "know" is true (or at least want to believe) it's much easier to cite aspirational papers. I wonder if this explains your experience?

@alessandro I believe you are correct.  There’s even a name for this: proof by authority ( see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority).

What is an aspirational paper?

@DKNguyen One that makes claims (sometimes bold) that are prima faciae true but without supplying solid evidence to back it up.

In my view, there are three main reasons:

Academia is an economic institution where money flows in and papers flow out. Just in the US, the annual budget of NSF, NIH, DARPA, DOE and many others exceed the GDP of a mid-sized country. The pace of breakthroughs cannot keep up with the amount of resources we allocate for research but researchers need to produce papers as deliverables of their funding. Remember the old joke of getting 9 women to deliver a baby in a month.

"Pointless" papers are needed "as fronts" to enable researchers to continue working in a field for many years. They may also enable high quality work in serendipitous ways. I do not think there can be a model where all papers are high quality without substantial changes. You may not agree with the boundary conditions of such a model either: Imagine arguing science takes time and try democratizing research funds by taking the competitive process out.

There is usually no incentive for researchers to optimize the quality or the individual contributions of a single paper: As long as grants come in, especially from government-funds like NSF, there is little control on the quality of the output.

In 2, are you suggesting the people writing the silly papers on image encryption I'm talking about are actually working on something else that's serious?

People who are writing "silly papers" on image encryption are not writing one paper over the course of their career. If you look at the output of a research lab over a course of a period you'll see that the quality of contributions will vary. People usually work on multiple projects at the same time, some of them may look "sillier" than others. The examples you are finding may not be representative of the overall contributions of an individual or a group.

Referees of a reputable funding agency will not be impressed by crappy papers in low-quality journals. On the contrary, they are going to cut the funding of the respective projects at the next possibility.

Not sure what you mean by a "reputable funding agency". As I have noted, many of the funding agencies do not have a mechanism to check what appears in the wider literature as a result of their funding. This is partly the reason there are so many seemingly pointless papers. You may be talking about idealities, I am talking about the current praxis.

This is similar to other answers, albeit framed in a different way.

'Publish or Perish': At least in Europe, an academic's career is intimately tied with publications and you're expected to regularly churn out papers. To an external observer, the quality of the paper is usually tied to the journal ranking rather than the actual content itself. If your paper doesn't get published by a reputable journal, you can still get it out through other means (I'm sure many of you know what I'm talking about here). Hence we flood the internet with lower quality publications, making it exceedingly laborious trying to find the relevant gems.

'Journal publication as a business': The existence of high quality peer-review is integral in furthering science. However this viewpoint doesn't appear to be shared by all and hence we end up with publication houses that try to muscle in to get a piece of that pie.

'Information overload': The internet is rife with noise and this is also reflected in academic publications. Too much information is akin to white noise that drowns out the truly relevant information. You can see how #1 and #2 affects research in this regard. It's a vicious feedback loop.

I agree with the answer from ZeroTheHero in that it's best to look at it as a refinement process and consider the lower quality publications as incomplete works.

Agreed, even if you know your paper is bad or even wrong, there is simply very little incentive not to publish. It’s kind of good that your reputation isn’t ruined forever if you publish bad papers, but it leads to the kind of “noise floor” you mention.

I'd add one point to the existing answers:
Training
Somehow you need to train your bachelor, master and PhD students to write technically good papers. Often they will get some toy topic, that could show good results but might also be just a bit crunch work or a "silly" approach that helps them get into the topic and learn to do proper research (including scientific writing). Obviously someone higher up the chain will assist them and thus also be on the paper. And then you want to publish it, so if you know it is low level impact, a bit weird or "pointless" (e.g. very much expected results, albeit not done exactly like this), you look for a low-level journal and place it there. That can be just a low reputation journal that takes all that is not fake. In that case it's not about getting a good publication to brag about or to have a large scientific impact. It is just (mainly) so your students go through the process of refining and handing in the paper once. It also helps them to bolster their ego, and again to do the ground research in that area, that hopefully enables them to pick more specific more interesting problems and more reasonable approaches etc.

There may be something to this, but there are several caveats.  First of all, in my field (theoretical mathematics) it hurts, not helps, to have an evidently pointless paper, and it would be especially strange to see a senior coauthor on it: they should "know better."  Second: I don't think someone gets good training from writing a pointless paper: as the other commenter says, having something new to say is indeed the most important part of writing a paper.

@PeteL.Clark my point is not that it helps your career by getting citation bonus points, but that it helps students to become better writers and get the self-confidence to write and publish as it can be a scary process and you don't want to make any dummy mistakes with the process when you have an actually important paper at hand. Like car driving, there is a reason you drive in driving school with your instructor. It's pointless drives to nowhere in the middle of actual real traffic, but they help you to master the skill and drive to work later.

@Frank: I think we must maintain the distinction between a pointless paper and a paper of modest value.  I encourage my PhD students to write papers before their PhD thesis in order to train them in this way.  But I would not encourage a student to write a paper that contained no new results.

In addition to the excellent answers above, let me add another reason: project requirements.
When we submit a research grant proposal, we often have to indicate how many papers the project is going to produce if funded. This is in particular a typical requirement for nationally funded projects in some countries, less so for EU or Western academia funded projects, which do tend to offer more flexibility to researchers. Similarly, publishing in Open Access journals in particular is a mandatory requirement in some projects.
When such a project ends, the project's team is responsible for having delivered at least the promised number of papers. Not only the reputation of the institution is at stake, there might be "financial corrections" - i.e. the funding institution may ask to pay back some of the grant money, if the project has failed to deliver all that it has promised.
These results are evaluated by administrators, who are not actually reading the papers, but just checking whether they have actually been published. Furthermore, the evaluators often do not care if there were extenuating circumstances such as a researcher taking a parental leave during the project, a researcher moving to the industry, or (I imagine) even a researcher actually dying.
This leads to heavy pressure from ones institution to publish some minimum amount of papers every year.

One obvious reason is the "information asymmetry".
People indirectly paying for papers (or giving jobs to people with 123 published papers) do not understand enough about the field to properly rate them.
So if you have no morals, the best way to increase your income/status is to pump out garbage papers... remember to put IoT, crypto, and deep learning in the title!
You can see this not just in academia, but also in companies where poorly run companies hire people based on their CVs (e.g. bunch of useless certificates or membership in some fancy organization)

I know of a country where they added a law that if a prisoner publishes a paper (or completes a degree, or publishes a book), there will be a certain reduction in the sentence. Sounds like a noble idea to promote studying, right? Until it turned out that some imprisoned and barely literate mob bosses started publishing dozens of papers per month...

"IoT" is well into the hype cycle (already in trough of disillusionment?). The new buzzword is fog computing.

Publishing peer-reviewed papers has replaced answering research questions as the main goal of the research enterprise, and scientists are pressured to publish even when they don't have anything interesting to say. Most research projects start and are brought to conclusion under the assumption that they will result in multiple peer-reviewed publications, regardless of whether the study is successful in answering the research question or not. This is because of the ubiquitous pressure for publishing in large quantities institutionalised by the "publish or perish" culture in academia.
Quantity over quality is the name of the game in many circles, mainly because of incentive structures created by funding allocation and hiring practices. Bureaucrats working at university and funding organisations, as well as researchers in multidisciplinary review panels , lack the field-specific and topic-specific knowledges to judge the quality of one's work, so they need to rely on a proxy. In most academic settings, publication in peer-reviewed, indexed outlets is what is used as that proxy. Because there are enough indexed peer-reviewed journals that virtually any paper can get published somewhere given enough persistence, it becomes a numbers game. People in those funding and hiring committees don't have time, resources, and skills to read through all papers in someone's list of publications, so they just resort to counting them. Sometimes journal and conference prestige is taken into account, but more often than not it is just the publication count that matters.
Given the above, researchers operate under an incentive structure that leads them to taking any opportunity to get stuff published and to never let a project go without publishing (regardless of how unsuccessful or unimportant the study is). If it can be counted as a publication on somebody's CV, it will be written up and published.

Very well put. (Not to mention being sadly-true...)

The other answers here are excellent, and I won't bother repeating them.
One more obscure possibility is that some of these are "defensive publications."  A company can develop a proprietary technique and not consider it worth patenting, but are concerned that a competitor may patent it and deny it to them.  If disclosed in a publicly available paper, it is now in the public domain and any subsequent patent can be invalidated legally.

Yes, that can happen. Another fringe possibility is April fools, and papers made to demonstrate the lack of proper review. Sadly, many of the downright wrong and pointless papers I see in crypto are neither; the only thing they show is ignorance of basic principles of that science. My heart bleeds when I see them studied, perhaps mandatorily.

Just a footnote rather than an answer. I have worked in crypto-related fields and from what I have seen there is a lot of 'security by obscurity.' People implement algorithms, write about them, study them and generally make a lot of pointless noise. Getting to some real info in amongst this low signal to noise ratio is hard. I don't know if it's part of the game, or if it's just the crypto-currency industry with its obsession with 'decentralisation' causing a lot of disorganised redundancy. Probably a bit of both.

What are they trying to secure?

@Ambicion Both jobs and the weaknesses in protocol implementations.

@Trunk I am a mathematician, and I suspect such protectionism is exactly what happens in many branches of math. There are entire publication mafias based on keeping a level of obscurity on their topics. Sadly, also on some of their theoretical flaws.

@Trunk Nail. Hammer. Head.


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If the main idea of an article is simple enough to be meaningfully exposed in the abstract, should that be done?
I'm trying to decide between two kinds of abstracts for an article I prepare.

One mentions by name, goal and principle the well-studied, often taught, and commonly used theoretical construction I start from; tells I propose dual smurfs (one large, one small) rather than the usual single smurf, and that I get the benefits of both large and small smurf, with practical applications.
The other eats like 180 words (out of the recommended 150--250) to introduce some notation¹, then my dual smurfs, an extra variable, two new formulas describing the modified relations. I hope it could trigger a "that could work!" feeling in the target readership. But I have to severely trim the rest.

I fail to find a middle ground: it's either deferring meaningful explanation of the how to the body of the article, or spending most of the limited space/attention span for a basic exposition.

Some context:  I'm an engineer using cryptography professionally, not an academic. I only previously wrote one article as a single author², back in 1999. I now have a quite different idea, hopefully improving a well-studied, often taught, and commonly used theoretical construction. I plan to first post my article on a specialized preprint website, with three goals:

Raise interest of academics in the field to either get a summary refutation, or find a coauthor mastering more advanced proof techniques than I do, to get more precise security reduction.
Make a disclosure that prevents others from filing patent (I won't). That goal complicates privately circulating the article, since the few academics I know in the field tend to have ties to the industry.
If possible get published in a top conference.

The abstract matters to 1; less for 3, as I can change the abstract when I submit; not for 2.

¹ Four variables known to the target audience but under a plethora of notations and often two names, the usual smurf, one short formula on how the smurf relates to the variables.
² The attempt went well. LaTeX didn't kill me. I got published in a top-4 conference with peer-reviewed proceedings, then invited by academics to merge my material into an article in the reference journal of the field, sort of an obituary to the signature standard we had broken in significantly different ways.

All the answers have been useful, the accepted once was the simplest/clearest. I'll go for no notation or détail of the how in the abstract, then immediate dive in what my second option was, without the space contraint.

A pity! Your second option sounded brilliant. As a reader I would have loved it. I sometimes encounter such abstracts and they typically tempt me into browsing articles I would not have paid attention to otherwise.

Of course it should!  See this example: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1751-8113/44/49/492001/pdf

You can't put everything in the abstract as then there would be nothing for the publisher to put behind the firewall.

In my field(s) [statistics, economics, finance], it's generally bad practice to introduce notation in an abstract, unless the journal is highly specialized.  My suggestion is to go with the first abstract and then get right into things using your second abstract during the introduction.  I really like papers that have a well-written abstract and start laying notation almost immediately - big time saver as a reader and helps me avoid missing a useful paper.
Here are some helpful tips for abstract writing.

This is a personal view, I suppose, and others might disagree, but the purpose of an abstract is to permit a reader to get a complete picture of the work, not an introduction or background. Those can be separate sections of a paper. But a fairly knowledgeable reader should be able to read the abstract and know what the paper's results are. If they are concerned with the details or question those results they read further, but there isn't a need if the abstract is accurate and doesn't raise questions in the mind of a reader.
In particular, the abstract's purpose is not to tickle the reader into reading further, nor to provide definitions of terms that only make sense later.
In a math paper, not so far removed from what you are doing perhaps, the abstract would contain a statement of the main theorem proved, though perhaps not in technical form. If a reader wants to see how that was arrived at then they read further. Often the proof is more interesting than the statement itself, but unless I'm very interested in that particular question I may not need to personally vet the proof. But, I need to know the paper's conclusion for the abstract to be valuable at all.

I like "state main theorem". Problem is my main theorem is my enhancement has such&such standard properties. Problem is that a meaningfull description is long.

In a math paper ... the abstract would contain a statement of the main theorem proved - I would say contain a rough description of the main theorem--often results are technical and can't be properly stated in an abstract.

@Kimball, that should be fine. The abstract needn't be as technical as the rest in all cases. Made a small edit.

@fgrieu perhaps something like stating what the main theorem does, or corollaries of it that would interest people, or what this allows one to do now that it is proved? Even just stating it improves on previous results x y and z for reasons a b and c is useful.

You should think of how the end users will read your abstract. In any field, there are too many papers that come out every day to read every paper in detail. The main purpose of the abstract is therefore to quickly convey to a reader who is scanning a few dozen abstracts over coffee what are the main results and conclusions of your paper, so that the reader can make a quick decision about whether or not they want to come back and look at your paper in more detail. Often (whether consciously or not) these judgments occur on both a textual level -- are your results plausible and interesting -- and a metatextual level -- does this abstract read like it was written by someone who knows what they are doing. Even if someone doesn't actually read your paper, you would like them to come away with a clear takeaway message, so they are aware of the results of your work.
Going into enough detail that you have to define non-standard notation is almost certainly a mistake. Your reader's attention and time is a resource; getting someone to follow your notation is a use of that resource that probably could be spent focusing on the main result. The abstract will necessarily be terse and of course will not contain all the evidence that supports your claims. It should provide some very brief context (this lets people decide whether your paper is even in the ballpark of what they are interested in), describe at a very high level what methods were used, and in particular what novel approaches you used (this lets people judge whether your methods are powerful enough that you can plausibly show what you are claiming to show), and explain the main results and conclusions (that's the good stuff -- what did we learn?). On a meta level, an abstract that gets too far into the weeds technically will typically signal inexperience in writing papers. At least, it will put a roadblock between your busy readers and the good stuff you want to tell them.

Think of the sequence title -> abstract -> introduction as a funnel or inverted pyramid. As we go down, the word limit increases. As we go down, the specificity increases. Finally, by the end of the introduction, the complete concept of the paper and its context should be clear. Each step in the sequence is convincing the reader to precede to the next step. I should say, convincing the right reader, because it is also acting as a filter, informing potential readers that "no, this paper is not quite what you're looking for". You could also imagine a sequence of filters of increasing fineness, filtering out your potential audience until you're left with only those who are precisely interested in reading your paper. This is to everyone's interest. It makes your work more visible in the literature and it saves precious time and attention for potential readers.
With this concept in mind, you can see that disrupting the order can cause problems. What happens if the abstract is too specific, say by jumping straight into technical notation? You will lose the audience who are not already familiar with the notation. You will lose the audience who think "oh so they're just doing xyz, it must be pretty obvious and basic if they can neatly present it in the abstract" because you haven't laid out the context. You haven't explained why this approach is important/interesting/novel.
It follows logically, then, that you should prefer option one.

I would also add that some journals (perhaps many) will not allow you to include mathematical notation in your abstract because of various issues related to indexing, rendering within databases and so-on.

It is hard to be sure without knowing the details. But the first way sounds better.
The only advantage of the second way seems to be that it could trigger a "that could work!" feeling. In other words, if I understand correctly, you are worried about readers losing interest without bothering to read past the abstract (your goal 1).
Just try to pique their interest in the abstract, and show that you know what you are talking about, then in the main text present the whole of the main idea as soon as possible.


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How bad is it to take another year for my undergraduate degree?
Complex analysis (or more particularly contour integrals) is kicking me downhill (again), and I may need to drop it (again). If I do, I would only have to take a single course in my 5th undergraduate math degree, another 3rd year math course like complex analysis (3rd times a charm???). If I don't drop it, I risk getting a low enough GPA to not get into graduate school. I already applied. So how bad is taking another year?
Did anyone else do this? How many of you were able to get into graduate school even after taking another year? Is there a bias? What are the pros versus the cons?
People have mentioned this to me before in the past, like it was inevitable, but I never really considered it until now. When I ask others if they would do it, they act like it's unthinkable for them. Like they are inherently better than me so course they wouldn't need to do this.

Is this the US? Will you get good letters of recommendation? Any chance for some research opportunity in the fifth year?

@Buffy,  I don't know? Could you expand on research opportunities? I feel like I'm not fully sure what that is or how to guarantee such a thing. Would having a fifth year help with this?

I was a terrible undergraduate student.  It took me nearly a decade to finish my BA.  I've got a phd now.  Taking some extra time to finish a degree is not a career ending decision.  Poor grades as an undergraduate are not career ending.  However, these things can make life more difficult, particularly if the problems you encounter are towards the end of your bachelor's work, rather than at the beginning.

Xander, Libor: please do not write answers in comments. Comments are for requesting clarification on the question, or suggesting improvements to the post itself (e.g., better tags). More details here. Your answers do seem valuable; please consider moving them to the answer box.

There are biases, your professors will (hopefully) know more specifics and can help, but I really don’t think there is anything wrong with taking an extra year. The people who act like its unthinkable have a narrow mindset. I was one of them. At the graduate level it is very typical to spend an extra year even after your thesis is “finished” polishing it and giving yourself a better chance on the job market. The same should be true in undergrad (although finances, among other things, are different).

If you have a really good relationship with one (or more) of your math profs then you could make  a fifth year work to your advantage. Ask them what research opportunities you have with them, perhaps as an independent study. If you could put together a nice, but do-able, project to fill up the rest of the time for the additional year, then it could work out to be a plus.
But this assumes, for purposes of graduate study, that your GPA is good enough and you have some insight into one or more math subfields. You don't need (nor is it possible to have) universal insight, but something with which you can be clearly predicted to be a success by letter writers.
You are in a difficult place, I think, but is may still be possible to recover through hard work and faculty contacts.

Your future grades have zero impact on the outcome of graduate school applications made in the past.  You say you have already applied, so most likely your question is not related to achieving the outcome you want.
You probably do need to complete the bachelor's degree to start the graduate degree.  Any admissions offers you receive may be rescinded if your final grades are too low, but I have never heard of an offer being rescinded, and some universities will not actually check those grades.
Once you have a graduate degree, it is unlikely that anyone will care how long your undergraduate degree took.  If your undergraduate degree overlapped the pandemic, then taking longer to finish will not be remarkable.
Meeting the minimum standards for graduate school is not a good goal for your undergraduate studies.  I suggest you make a longer term plan for your career.  Graduate school is not a career, and not all graduate degrees are actually helpful.


text:
Dis-/advantages for faculty position in private vs public university hospitals in Germany
In Germany, several private medical universities (e.g. MSH Medical School Hamburg) have formed and partnered with companies such as Helios and alike running the hospitals. Looking for a new senior position (patient care and research) in a university hospital - what are the advantages/disadvantages compared to public universities? E.g. regarding "freedom of research", economical interest of the private holding vs. public mandate in public university, burocracy of separation of patient care vs. research...?
I have seen similar discussions for the US, but I am asking specifically for Germany, since I am not sure if these are comparable to the big US private universities.

In which sense are these "faculty" positions? Would you be a proper professor at a university?  Or would you be a regular employee of the hospital and only be a Hon-Prof or Apl-Prof at the associated university?

I think a problem with this question, compared to the one you link to, is that it is rather narrow: It is about medicine (which at least in Germany differs in quite a few aspects from many other fields the way university works), and it is about private medical universities in Germany, of which there are very few (to be honest, to me only Witten-Herdecke comes to mind, can you at least give a few examples)?  So probably only very few people here might know about this.

Specifically, are you talking about private medical universities, or are you talking about private hospitals being a "university hospital" of some public university?

@user151413 Updated text in Q: private medical universities (e.g. MSH Medical School Hamburg) plus companies such as Helios and alike running the hospitals.

Ok, so it is specifically about private hospitals serving as university hospitals for private universities, nor for public universities (not sure the latter exists, but it might)?  I guess this might then be linked to the status of professors in general at private universities in Germany.  Though my feeling is that it will be hard to give a canonical answer due to the small number of private universities in Germany.


text:
Is this plagarism? (Maths assignment)
EDIT: Could the downvoter please let me know if I should improve my question in some way. For clarity, I am asking whether what I describe below is considered plagarism, and if so what the approporiate course of action to take is.
I am very concerned about an assignment I submitted recently for mathematics, and that I may be accused of plagarism. The assignment consisted of several questions. For a part of one of these, I had come across something similar in a slightly different context in a talk I had given a couple of weeks earlier. It was just an aside around the reading I was doing- it was actually a named theorem, but at the time I didn't register it, but I remembered gathered the sketch of the proof and moved on. With this proof, it is of the form that when you frame the problem in the right way, then the proof just flows and it isn't really possible to modify it in any way. It also seems fairly general- I didn't read it in a paper, it must have been on some general expository website on topics relating to my area of math or a blog post.
So I used this framework for my problem (I iterate was in a different context) and wrote up the proof. At the time, I had a small thought as to whether I should try to track down a source similar to whatever it was that I had come across in preparing the talk. For some reason I decided that it was unecessary because it was just a framing of the problem that I started arriving at myself (which is why I recognised the connection to this different context) and secondly because, as noted above, it seemed like something fairly standard that one might come across in a course on the topic.
But now I am panicking for two reasons. Firstly, I feel that I have not given proper credit to the person who came up with this framing of the problem and proof in a different context (even if it is standard now, it was not once in the past). Secondly, as mentioned above it is essentially impossible to modify the proof once you have the framing, so what I wrote looks very similar to other sources. Heck, now that I've been panic checking for this theorem online, I've found pages\lecture notes which actually use almost exactly the same notation as me because the choice of notation is very natural.
I feel sick to my stomach, and feel compelled to write to someone to say that the idea for the proof was from elsewhere, but I do not know if this will help the situation. I was very tired and writing up the assignment in a bit of a rush before the deadline, so I was less vigilant about referencing than I should have been. As an aspiring academic, I am absolutely disgusted with myself that I did not give proper credit to whoever came up with this proof first just because it felt 'standard' and 'assumable', like the kind of toolbox set of techniques one picks up in a course.
Whatever the official outcome will be, I have learnt my lesson simply because of the anxiety and worry I feel now. But I would appreciate some advice on this. I'm finding it hard to judge myself if what I did was wrong or not, because this is mathematics. What distinguished 'copying a proof' from 'having read the proof at some point in the past and acquired the gist as a useful technique that I am now applying'? I am quite confused.

Are you an undergraduate? If so, which year of study?

@astronat Masters, so I should know better. I have never had assignments of this form before though, and during undergrad I had only written exams and a couple of expository essays to write, where I somehow never had a dilemma of what I could consider 'assumable knowledge'. I'm still conflicted in the present case.

Was this question a "research" question? Were you asked to research it and present a solution based on research?

@Buffy Not really a research question. It more resembled a difficult exercise sheet one might get at the the end of a course, with some of the questions a bit more open ended e.g. 'what's the best bound you can find...'. This one was not. It was simple a 'prove that...'.

I didn’t downvote, but my guess would be that someone didn’t like that an issue that could be completely described in one paragraph was presented in an unnecessary step-by-step fashion (it seems to be something like: “For a hw assignment that I solved relying on a proof I had read in the past online, I ended up writing a solution that could come across as having copied part of that old proof. Is this plagiarism? Should I bring it up with my teacher?”).

@gnometorule I apologise I see. I've been incredibly nervous about this and I tend to ramble a bit when I am

@JaimePQ This is far too much text!

@JaimePQ I made an attempt at simplifying your question. Please take a look and add anything that is material that I took out.

Contact the professor now, if for no other reason than to get out of your panic spiral.
Let them know that you are concerned that you failed to appropriately cite your sources and that you are generally confused about what can be treated as assumed knowledge and when you should credit a source.
You could even go as far as submitting a version of your assignment that does cite sources more completely.
This can be a learning experience. Go ahead and be an active part of that process.

Thanks very much for the advice! Will upvote when I have the rep.

As long as the question wasn't specifically intended as a research question, but rather an exam question or ordinary assignment, I wouldn't be concerned if I were your professor.
You were given an assignment and in a limited time frame remembered something you'd been told earlier, that wasn't exactly the answer, but allowed you to reconstruct the answer to the question. I don't see any issue with that in this context.
If you were to develop this into a paper, given a longer time scale, then you would be expected to trace down some such things, provided that they aren't already common knowledge (to professionals if not to students).
I doubt that any issue will be raised, but if it is, just explain yourself as you have here. The "kernel" of most of the things you now know were told to you at one time or another. You don't need to start every answer with "A professor once mentioned..."
There is nothing wrong with the answer of Dancrumb but I doubt that it is necessary to contact the professor. This just doesn't have the feel of someone trying to behave dishonestly or even carelessly.

I whole-heartedly agree that it's probably not necessary to contact the professor and it will probably come to nothing. Hopefully, your answer will help the OP feel calmer and they can follow up with questions about how and when to cite sources (or not) in a more relaxed manner.

Thank you very much Buffy!  Fingers crossed it will be ok. Will upvote when I have the rep


text:
Is it "ok" to withdraw a postdoc offer in an advanced stage? How?
I completed my Engineering PhD in 2019 and started working in a small startup. Things did not work out as expected. A few months ago I signed a job offer for a postdoc at a (great) US institution. I would have started immideately but couldn't because of visa. They applied for an H1B visa with premium processing for me, which is a big ask and big cost. And takes a few months.
I've been pondering about this over the past months since I signed and I came to the conclusion that I do not really want to do this any more. I loved my PhD, I loved doing research but the output wasn't super great (which means I'd need great output in the postdoc to be competitive).
My main reasons are that I just feel exploited by the system: The pay is about 3x less of what I would make in industry, yet I would continue live PhD life: Working like a pig without weekends and little money. Once I am through, no guarantee to find a (good) faculty position, specifically given my sub-optimal PhD outputs. And even then, five years tenure, again with little pay. Finally, 10 years later, MAYBE a bit more quiet but still little pay. Likely in a location where I do not want to live.
I am getting towards 40 years, I am married and want to start a family. I have full support from my wife for this way but I feel I am having trouble "providing" for the family and once I have kids life will be so stressful. I was so energetic during my PhD but now I would feel so much more doing a nice but exciting job in a big company. Finally starting to make real money. Starting savings. Starting a family and buying a house.
I think it's not really "ok" to withdraw from an offer once it's signed. Here in particular, it's worse since they put so much money & effort with the visa in and my PhD advisor (I have a wonderful relationship with him) vouched for me and made this (partially) happen.
I am torn: I could be honest, bite the bullet, destroy bridges and maybe need to pay for the visa fees (not sure?).
Or I could give it a shot: I love doing research, I'm sure I'd like the work itself and the group and university is amazing and world class. Maybe it turns out great. And if not, I could still leave after a few months.
Is it "ethical" to retract the offer? Should I try to contact the international department or HR first about the visa status (maybe the fees have not been paid yet)? Or talk with the prof first?
Should I share my thoughts first or be upfront from the beginning?
Any advice appreciated!

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/71780/applying-for-industry-job-after-accepting-postdoc-offer

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16862/accepted-post-doc-and-have-subsequently-received-offers-for-full-time-faculty-po?rq=1

I don't see any ethical problem with resigning the position.  Nor do I see any reason why you should repay the visa fees, unless your contract says you should (if your contract does not say that, they screwed up).  So this is just about your preferences.  It sounds like you prefer money, so go after the money.

I’m not seeing a huge dilemma here. Given that you have decided on a change of direction in your career, your choice is between disappointing the people who hired you now, versus disappointing them in a few months’ time once you finally work up the courage to tell them that you don’t want to do this anymore. Avoiding the disappointment and possible bridge burning is simply impossible, unless you are willing to sacrifice the next couple of years of your life doing something that you decided you don’t want to do. This stuff about “giving it a shot” sounds more like it’s about you looking for a face-saving excuse to avoid admitting to the people who hired you that you made a mistake than about having a genuine desire to continue to explore the option of staying in academia. You don’t sound to me like you have any such desire.
It’s best to pull off the band aid now, apologize for wasting people’s time and money, and allow everyone to move on. It’s not completely “ok”, and you can’t realistically expect people not to be upset at you, but it’s the most mature, honest and professional way to handle the situation you’ve found yourself in.
P.S. since an H1B visa is involved, make sure to check the legal and immigration implications of withdrawing your acceptance before making any official moves. You don’t want to end up having to leave the country or being ruled ineligible for future work visas, etc. Good luck!

By reading your post, it seems clear that you prefer to go in the industry and it has advantages for you. So this is what you should do. Of course, it would have been best if you would have known earlier and you you would have declined the offer, as it would have saved time and money for the visa and other things. But now you are here.  So the best is to talk directly with HR and the professor and tell them the truth that you have changed your mind and you will not do the post-doc to avoid wasting more time. There is some chance that the professor may be upset, or he may understand. For example, there was a post-doc who was supposed to join my team, and I spent quite a lot of time to prepare documents and provide an invitation letter for him and he was supposed to come. But then, he told me that he took another offer in another country at the last minute. Thus, it appeared that although he accepted my offer he was at the same time taking other interviews and still looking for other offers. I was a bit upset but I can also understand the motivation to look for the best job, so we still had some collaboration after that. But other people may be more upset.


text:
Citing unofficial translations
One of the references I use in my text is paper A.
However, I've actually read an unofficial, unpublished translation B which can be found online.
The translation uses more modern definitions/terms and corrects some errors.
How should I properly reflect the usage of the translation in my bibliography?
Currently, I use the original reference together with a note in the bibliography which explains the situation:

[reference A entry] Translated unofficially by translator as title
B, year B. Translation available online at url B.

Note that the original author did not give permission to publish the translation.
From the Translator's preface:

[author] has asked that all republication of any of his works (in original or translation) be ended.
He has not actually invoked copyright (which, as stated above, he does not believe in), but asked this as some sort of personal privilege.

What is your concern? The form or the content. The content seems fine (i.e. honest).

Independently, "modern definitions" might be an issue if the meaning changes, as it might for mathematics, or even political science.

I wondered whether the content would be misleading. The original source is a landmark paper in its field and the terminology hadn't matured at the time, but the translation uses the current standard definitions which are equivalent; so no problems there.

I'm rethinking my answer. I suggest you don't cite things that actually infringe copyright if that is what you mean by "unofficial". See: https://copyright.uslegal.com/enumerated-categories-of-copyrightable-works/translation/

I edited the question to give more context. The original author did not give permission to translate his work.

Have you actually read at least some parts of the original?  (Do you know enough of the language to do so?)

I skimmed through the original to check if the translation can be trusted. At this point, given the (lack of) answers, I'm looking for a more modern work that I can reference to solve my problem.

Citing both, as you currently have, is fine and provides good a good indication to readers who are unfamiliar with this paper.
With regards to the fact that the translation was not permitted by the author, that is strictly not your problem. Copyright doesn't apply to people who are viewing or otherwise using the copied content, but to its distributor (i.e. the translator in this case). This would be no different to me simply sharing the URL of an unofficial stream of a football match (where the official source is a payed TV channel) with a friend --  I would never get into trouble for this, only the website hosting the stream could.

Practically speaking, I doubt you'll run into problems for linking a single copyrighted work, but too many links might constitute some kind of contributory infringement / promotion of infringement. That's exactly how those running e.g. BitTorrent trackers get into legal trouble.

Yes, but: 1. the OP says it's just one particular citation, not many and 2. the original author would be extremely unlikely to pursue legal action against a graduate student or researcher giving a link to an unofficial version of his work in a paper, since they don't have much to gain from it. Also, the specific author mentioned by the OP already said "I don't believe in copyright", so it would be really hypocritical of him to take legal action aginst someone for copyright infringement.

Sorry, no. If you want to be respected in academia, then you need to practice it yourself. Even when it is inconvenient.

Oh hey @Buffy, nice to see you! I'm the same person who posted this question on another account, I hope you remember me. I don't think simply citing the specific version of a reference you used is disrespectful, since you aren't expected to have read the entire original and translation to know that the author didn't authorise this translation or that it is unofficial.

You are sort of pushing my buttons here. Yes, it is disrespectful. The "minimum necessary to avoid a suit" is not a very good moral principle. Nor is "Gee, your honor, I didn't know (said slyly)" You should aim higher.

I think it would be less moral to not give a reference at all (both to the original author and the person who, albeit without permission, took the time to prepare a translation that you benefited from).

You don't seem to understand that it is the OPs reputation that will suffer if they publish something that, in effect, advertises their ignorance or disdain for the proper rules of scholarship. They are laying down a marker, in public that they don't care what the creator of the original thinks. The translation should not have been posted on the web. The OP shouldn't reference it. Respect.

Then it could be plaigiarism since the translation did add some content that the OP used in his paper (namely, updating the definitions to "current standard definitions"). Also, if people know that the OP does not understand the original language of the citation they may start raising eyebrows as to how they actually used that reference in their paper.

@Buffy Ethically obligatory citation behavior, as suggested in this answer, is not disrespectful.

At the moment this is the only correct answer, but it has the lowest score.  That's disappointing.

This is an unusual situation, and, based on my observation of "ambient stuff", I suspect that the question refers to some part of A. Grothendieck's writing.
I am generally at least partly sympathetic to AG's politics, in math and in life, so I'm not approaching this in a hostile way.
However, if one/we is/are paid indirectly from the people, it is not moral or ethical to try to with-hold the results of our labors. (And, srsly, why would we want to?)
Legalities are another thing, and I have not idea, especially about variations between countries.
But, circling back, although I myself might be embarrassed by public airing of ooooold documents of my own, I do feel that I owe people an accounting for what I've done. Not behind paywalls.
EDIT: in response to @Buffy's reasonable comment: as my general advice would be, "be honest". Yes, it is tricky in this situation. I'd say, yes, tell where you sourced the translation, give a link to the original, AND remark that the original author has made ... those requests. Which may affect those links.
That is, in citations, especially "in modern times", it seems nearly impossible to make things easily uniform. "Telling the truth" (as ambiguous as that obviously is) is a better guide than "style guides"...

This does not answer the question, which was about how to cite.

In my experience, with a dilemma like this, it is better to provide ALL the information, including a condensed explanation of your thought processes. That strategy supports the primary purpose of citations: identifying the source of the ideas and revealing where you found that source so your reader can review it themselves. Additionally, by revealing the sources, the dilemma and your decision, your honesty protects your academic/writing integrity and reputation.

Let me recommend, just to protect your own reputation, that you cite only official sources of the document, even if it is in a language you don't read.
However, if the translation is either of an out of copyright work, or authorized by the copyright holder, as seems not to be the case here, then the translation can be properly published and you can cite it. If it is visible on the internet then it has, in effect been published, even if it is infringing.
If you honestly found the translation on the web then there isn't any issue in your reading it to understand the original. You can't unsee things, after all. But, as a professional, you don't want to contribute to copyright infringement.
But the issue goes beyond the minimal requirements of copyright. The author, according to comments made here, has expressed a clear preference that translations not be made and yet. Even if they "don't believe" in copyright, they still hold it until they give a license or release it to the public domain. I would respect the clearly stated wishes of the originator. At some point in your future you will be thankful if others respect your copyrights and other clearly stated wishes.
My only additional worry is that, if you can't read the original, that you need to be assured of the accuracy of the translation.

See this for a discussion of copyright of translations (in the US, anyway).

There is, however, one additional consideration, though I'm pretty sure it doesn't apply here. It is possible for an extension to a paper be written in a different language. The structure of that extension would be very different from a translation, however, even if it had to give fairly extensive explanations of what is said in the original. In that case, the original would have frequent citations to statements, not just an overall statement of the origin. Moreover, the extension would need sufficient creative content to be considered a copyrightable work in its own right.

"that you cite only official sources of the document, even if it is in a language you don't read."  This is unethical advice.  You must cite all sources you use.

"you don't want to contribute to copyright infringement."  A citation is not a creative work and therefore cannot infringe on a copyright.

@AnonymousPhysicist. I didn't say a citation is infringing. I said it contributes to infringement by by citing a source that does infringe. Ignoring injustice contributes to it.

A citation cannot contribute to infringement that occurred in the past.  Time goes in one direction.  Also, I strongly disagree with your beliefs about justice.