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Free Database to Verify the Accreditation of any College or University in the World?
Is there a free, authoritative, trustworthy online database where one can look-up the accreditation of any college or university in the world?

What type of accreditation are you looking for? Engineering Colleges, Nursing Colleges, Medical colleges all have their own specific accreditations that they maintain -- in addition to the University's own.

As I think the answer to this question is "NO, but there are many smaller ones", the question doesn't appear to be a good fit for the SE format.

For information about European institutions, the best starting point for such an online search is possibly the ENIC-NARIC network (European Network of National Information Centres on academic recognition and mobility) which lists the national accreditation organisations.
A list of accredited Swiss higher education institutions can be found at the site of the Rectors' Conference of the Swiss Universities CRUS.
A database of accredited study programmes in Germany can be found at the site of the German Accreditation Council.
The Accreditation Organisation of the Netherlands and Flanders NVAO has a similar database of Dutch and Flemish study programmes and institutions.

There is an international database called UNIVCHECK that allows to validate whether a university is accredited or not. It is both a white list and black list.

In US, US news college rankings will give you this information
http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges
Other databases that you can search are
US Department of Education databases
http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/
http://ope.ed.gov/accreditation/search.aspx

Thanks for the links for U.S. colleges and universities, but are there similar databases for worldwide colleges and universities? thanks

I think each country will / should have their own. Are there any specific countries you are looking at?

The World Higher Education Database contains around 18,500 institutions from 186 countries. It's maintained by the International Association of Universities, a UNESCO-affiliated NGO.

The Council for Higher Education Association has a Database of Institutions and Programs Accredited by Recognized United States Accrediting Organizations listing schools accredited by US accrediting agencies, but this also includes schools in other countries that are also accredited by these US organizations.


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"Post-Postdoc" Independent Researcher with Office in University?
I knew a foreigner in the astronomy department at the university here who was a "post-postdoc" independent researcher. How could she have her own office in the astronomy department as an independent researcher?

Surely the allocation of office space is at the discretion of the department/faculty, rather than there being a universal rule that tenured staff get offices but postdocs don't. My undergrad university had very little space and couldn't offer all staff members their own offices, whereas the university I went to for postgrad had plenty of office space, enough that I had my own desk for the duration of my postgrad research. Moreover, there's no such thing as a post-postdoc. Perhaps there was some other reason she had an office, e.g., working for someone senior.

Universities generally give offices to visiting researchers, so I guess her situation was similar to that of a visiting researcher, except that she wasn't actually visiting 'from' anywhere else.

I have an office of my own at the university where I study. And I didn't even begin my PhD yet!

Many universities offer positions with titles such as "research professor" or "staff scientist" or other similar titles. These all indicate the same basic phenomenon: a researcher who is generally supported by "soft money" (In other words, a position subject to sufficient funding), but who is otherwise more or less "permanent" staff. Such scientists may or may not have their own dedicated office space, depending upon overall space constraints within the department and within their boss's research group.

Such possibilities depend a lot on recommendations and past achievements of such a researcher.
If one is a real scientist with good publications and good, interesting project, not only office space, but also laboratory access and resources like access to the supercomputing facility may be provided.
Most obvious, a researcher may be supported by his home institution (industrial or educational) and would not require also salary for the project.
The similar situation may also result from various funding schemes that allow to obtain the initial grant for a position easily, but make progressively difficult to extend it over time, regardless of achievements like publications. In such cases some researchers actually work for free for a limited time in institutions that are no longer able to employ them, to finish everything properly.

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What percentage of PhD theses are rejected nowadays?
What percentage of PhD theses (e.g., physics ones) are rejected nowadays? And why?

Probably varies widely by department, location, etc. You shouldn't have to narrow it down, but might you want to?

@NickStauner: What do you mean I "shouldn't have to narrow it down"? I just want to know general trends. E.g., are fewer being rejected now than, say, 50 or 100 years ago?

Not sure what was unclear, but I'll try paraphrasing. Since that's your intent, you shouldn't (be required to?) narrow it down (even though doing so might make the question easier to answer).

What do you mean by "rejected"?  For example, that a thesis defense takes place but the student fails and leaves graduate school without a Ph.D.?  What if the student fails but is told to try again later after doing a little more work?  What about a student who thinks he/she should graduate but whose thesis committee disagrees and won't schedule a defense?  You might be able to find statistics for failed defenses, but by itself that data may not tell you much.  (My impression is that most borderline theses never make it to the defense.)

At many universities (my experience is exclusively EU-centric) there are at least two self-censorship filters before it comes to a defense. Firstly, and most importantly, it's the thesis supervisor who must approve your manuscript as defensible. Secondly, you  often also need a dean's approval for moving on towards  an actual defense. There are many theses which do not make it through these safeguard filters on their first attempt, but if the system works, you almost never see an officially failed defense/rejected thesis. Hence the numbers on the actual "failure rate" do not really exist.

@walkmanyi Same for Austria and Switzerland. I have never heard of somebody 'failing' their defense (that would be an affront against the advisor just as much as against the student), but certainly there are people that just never finish their PhD. I would say, in my group drop-out rate was around 25% - 33%, but I never bothered to count.

@xLeitix: Interesting, I just checked the regulations of doctorates for EPFL and ETHZ and they do not seem to stipulate an approval of a supervisor before submitting a thesis. So in principal you could be able to submit crap, though that does not seem to happen in practice.

At Ohio State, everyone on your committee must sign a form approving a draft of the dissertation before the defense can be scheduled. http://www.gradsch.osu.edu/7.10-final-oral-exam.html

@AnonymousMathematician: I mean the thesis or its defense is not accepted, such that the PhD student has to write a new thesis, perhaps in another department, and re-defend it.

@walkmanyi in Sweden, a board reviews it before the defence, and can recommend you to improve it. You are allowed to ignore them, at your own risk (and there was recently a case where this happened).

There is another very interesting question about the variance of quality of theses that do pass.  As there is almost no visibility surrounding which theses are passed (unlike, say, exam questions in an undergraduate degree) I suspect that it is dramatically high, even if you exclude the top 1% say.

In some graduate schools (e.g. the one I'm confronted with at Harvard), one factor is the 'qualifying exam'. I know of someone with a good publication record, whose adviser think she/he perfectly qualifies for the PhD, and who failed her/his qualifying exam. No PhD for that person, although the quality of the work far exceeds the one of the average thesis I have seen in the field.

@walkmanyi from my experience at EPFL, there is usually the 'private defense', a from of closed-doors exam with your thesis committee, then only if the committee agrees can the student officially defend.

I talked to my own supervisor about this, and it became clear that one of the main roles of the supervisor is to ensure that the thesis is good enough before it is submitted. And speaking for myself, I would never submit a thesis if my supervisor told me it was not defendable. But this means it could be that I will end up not being able to submit my thesis at all, because my supervisor thinks my thesis is not ready to be submitted. So I think maybe a more relevant question would be "how many PhD students never submit their thesis because their supervisor thinks the thesis is not good enough".

Here, for undergraduate theses in some 25 years, I remember one student who failed the defense.

@walkmanyi: "they do not seem to stipulate an approval of a supervisor before submitting a thesis" - possible, but I think the vast majority of doctoral candidates are experienced enough to adhere to the non-binding advice of their supervisors without being required to do so.

I'm only personally aware of one student who failed his PhD defense (this is at an R1 US university). After his advisor refused to approve his thesis, he went over his head and got the department chair to schedule the defense anyway. Results were predictable.
On the other hand, "major revisions" are very common, especially, I hear, in the humanities (in engineering, it's far more common to receive token feedback -- if the committee reads the thesis at all! -- than demands for substantial changes).
Outright failing a student during a defense is an extreme embarassment, for the department, for the PhD committee, for the advisor, and of course for the student, so there is every incentive to ensure that a thesis that goes to defense will pass. Moreover, since most theses these days are compilations of previously-published work, it is very easy to tell well in advance if the student is expected to pass.
So if an advisor has doubts about the quality of a student's thesis, he will either ask the student to spend more time improving it, or "suggest" the student start looking for jobs in industry.

Very small, as every failed PhD defence is also a shame for the professor. As a result, the professor will not allow to proceed with defence of the really weak work. And he will listen for other professors that would usually tell in advance they think to vote against.
Hence, most likely, the following will happen:

If a PhD student just does not work enough, the professor
will not allow to continue studies after some time.
If a PhD
student is mad with some own theory or topic that academic community
unlikely to accept, the professor will not allow to defend such a
work.
If it is really a bad luck with your topic, the professor will
change the topic.
If the professor has made a strategic mistake and
your diligent work does not give results that could be published in a
good journal, the professor should normally try to publish anyway in less reputable sources, good enough for PhD defence.

The PhD supervisor is more interested in your success than a lecturer is interested in the progress of the student. Same professor that writes low grades with relatively little attention (as long as he is sure the student deserves) will spend more time when acting as a PhD supervisor, will try to help, will try to fix the topic. This is because PhD project is also his research project. And who would want ones research project to fail? Of course, the professor tries to find a good PhD student for his project, or, if this was not successful, at least to fire lazy or uncooperative student in the first year. But this is way before the actual PhD defence.
If to ask differently, how many PhD students do not get they degree at the end, this really depends a lot on the traditions inside the institution. However in all places I have seen this was below 20 % or about. The first post doctoral position is also seldom a problem.
The next serious threshold you will need to pass is the professor position or at least a permanent researcher position, if you want to stay in science.

Can you provide a link to a university that requires the advisor to approve the thesis before being submitted. In my experience this is not how it works in the US or UK.

Regardless of the rules, it is very uncommon to go to defence against the will of the supervisor, and you really cannot expect to pass if you are in such a conflict, at least in European system. I have seen cases in Germany, Switzerland and Lithuania.

But the rules really only come into effect for the students who might not get approval. To the extent that the UK is part of the European system, the supervisor has no say in if a student passes or not. I think this is also the case in the Australian system.

To say differently, if the supervisor thinks you will pass, you will most likely pass. And, with the help of your supervisor, it should not be extremely difficult to bring your PhD into good shape. The PhD supervisor is more interested in your success than a lecturer is interested in the progress of the student. But if you are in a conflict instead, chances to succeed are minor. For such a case, I would suggest to change the supervisor instead, even if this would mean changing the university as well.

@DanielE.Shub: just a quick example of a university requiring an approval of a thesis supervisor before engaging a panel of examiners/reviewers: TU Delft. See article 18.2 (pg. 24), as well as the formal process description (row 6 in table pg. 8) in the TU Delft doctorate regulations.

I know the second point you made, @h22 all too good. This is why I failed my PhD-it wasn't because I lacked ideas or was incompetent student, simply the professor didn't even had experience in the area I was going in. There weren't enough money then, too, so instead of receiving funding (for a project which was really unique at the academic background I was in then) I was left with the choice to either participate in what he wanted me to do or leave. This is how most of the drop-outs happen as far as I know. Those who oblige to their peers always get through no matter what their

work accounts to. You have to be very (really very) sloppy to get rejected if you just do what "the elders say". This is why there is almost 100% success rate for those who "listen up" and they almost all the time graduate. However, the fact that you don't "listen up" doesn't may your work meaningless! It's just that sometimes the professors are too narrow-minded to participate in the pursuit of ideas they themselves can't fully comprehend. But I guess you can be a scientist even without a PhD if the work you've done gets accepted some day.

In short. Trust your supervisors. If you have a good relationship with them (or even a bad one honestly), and they think you will pass, then you will almost certainly pass.
If: you go over your supervisors head, your supervisors have been sub-par or not supportive, your supervisors have not thoroughly read your thesis, then you have more cause for concern.

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Can a dean expel a doctoral student without a trial?
My friend, a doctoral student, is being accused of harassment/stalking by the dean, yet law enforcement has not contacted my friend, and the dean refuses to substantiate his accusation, for fear of retaliation. My friend has not been given a trial, yet the dean is preventing him from completing his PhD, suspending him from the university. The dean kept my friend's adviser completely in the dark regarding the accusations. It seems the dean is harassing him, pure and simple.
What should he do?
thanks

Generally speaking, universities do not give "trials".  Investigations are made to substantiate accusations, and hearings may be held, but never a "trial" in the traditional sense.  Final decisions are handed down usually in accordance with pre-determined university policy.  It is virtually never the case that a single person hands down a decision at their own whim.  If the dean is handing down punitive measures, it must be done with strict adherence to established policy.

@Paul: So, universities have their own judicial system apart from the civil judicial system? In other words, one must not be proven guilty in a civil court first before a university can impose disciplinary measures like suspension or expulsion, or does this depend on the individual university?

I can guess from your profile, but you should add in which country this happens and what kind of legal entity the university is (if you can find out).

Is your friend employed as a TA? They might have a harder time terminating a TA contract than a PhD enrolment, due to employment laws. Also, although I understand that is sensitive information, whether or not he is actually guilty is somewhat important (though the tone of the question does imply he is innocent).

"one must not be proven guilty in a civil court first before a university can impose disciplinary measures like suspension or expulsion" Many issues that lead to disciplinary actions are not even strictly illegal (e.g., cheating on your tests).

@Geremia "judicial system" is a misleading term to use here. "The University" may do all kinds of stuff, including expelling students, with no illegal actions or proof neccessary. It could do it almost arbitrarily, if it wished. In order to achieve better results and more respect, "The University" might require its officials to follow a certain process. The required process might involve an unilateral decision of the dean according to some policy or an internal investigation (as "The University" has chosen to make that process), but it generally doesn't involve courts of any kind.

@Peteris In some countries maybe the universities can expel their students arbitrarily, but that is certainly not general. There were quite couple of lawsuits in our country even against harassing from the dean and unjust expelling before the PhD defense.

Hmm, would he be able to take the dean to court for libel?

@Moriarty: No, he is not a TA.

@Vladimir: We seem to be in universal agreement that if a university truly expels a student "arbitrarily" -- or even gives that impression to all outside parties -- then they certainly open themselves up to the possibility of litigation.  (The possibility of litigation looms ubiquitously in modern life...)

Is your friend heavily involved in the pro-life movement?  Here on the UA campus, I occasionally feel harassed by some of the pro-life advocates, and I'm sure that they feel they are not harassing anyone...I don't publicly proclaim my views and follow people around even though I have some vehement views...

@daaxix: This information is certainly not included in the question.  Your suggestion of it is presumably based on "real life" information about the OP.  I think the OP has the right to introduce this information or not as he sees fit (if indeed it is at all relevant).

It is included in his public profile here...I have no personal information and don't know the OP, I only attend the same institution, which is in his public profile...

@daaxix: Well, no, it's included on his homepage..which is linked to in his profile here.  I admit that is not such a strong distinction to make.  Anyway, of course the OP can supply this information if it's relevant and if he chooses.  It's okay to ask, but if we hound him about it we're effectively penalizing him for identifying himself.  I wish more users here would post non-anonymously, so I want to err on the side of respecting people's privacy.

@PeteL.Clark I somewhat agree, I too wish users would post more non-anonymously.  Unfortunately, I wouldn't completely do so unless I already had tenure, as it isn't an ideal world out there.  With that being said, it is disingenuous to not ask about the pro-life angle, since it is so polarized in the US, and definitely could be the reason...his page clearly portrays a very specific and controversial viewpoint...and he linked to it.

@daaxix: My friend does not attend my alma mater.

Universities do not in my experience hold "trials" in order to reach their decisions, however weighty.  So the answer to the literal question asked is probably "yes".
I guess what you mean to ask is whether the dean has the unilateral power to do this.  I'm not entirely clear on what "this" is: what does "preventing him from completing his PhD" or "effectively expelling" mean, precisely?  But even if I did, I would have to know the rules of your friend's university rather intimately in order to answer.  (Someone in your university has the power to do this.  As @Paul comments, probably more than one person was involved in the decision.  Just because the action looks single-handed to your friend does not mean that other university officials were not involved.)
One tip: if your friend's adviser doesn't know, get your friend to tell her!! (i) Could it make things any worse?  (ii) Won't she find or sooner or later?  Sooner may be soon enough to at least try to do something about it; later, maybe not.
Added "It seems the dean is harassing him, pure and simple." Well then he should report it to....oh.  Seriously, if by this you mean that you think the dean has some kind of vendetta against your friend which caused him to simply fabricate these charges: though obviously I don't and can't know the situation, I find that very unlikely.  Though there may be no "trial" system in the university, there will be some kind of clear guidelines and procedures for expelling students.  If the harassment is simply made up then the expelling couldn't possibly have followed these procedures, which would open the university up to a trial, possibly an embarrassing and costly one.  I think I understand this clearly, but a dean understands it like I can't even imagine.

Perhaps by 'trial' OP did not mean 'internal to the University'. Is it not odd to act on a fairly serious criminal accusation without informing the police of the alleged crime? I would have thought the process would be to possibly suspend (depending on severity) pending police investigation, and then act appropriately on the outcome.

It is reasonable to expect the university not to push forward such an accusation withouttthe consent of the person raising it; it is possible that they are legally prevented from doing that. In any case the internal process is probably independent of the legal one, and with good reason.

@Ollie: Perhaps.  But of course still less does a university need a government trial to expel a student: many of the things one gets expelled for (academic dishonesty, poor grades, misconduct on campus or in the dormitories...) are simply not illegal.  Regarding criminal accusation: we don't know that the accusation is criminal, and we don't know that law enforcement has not been contacted (only that according to the OP, law enforcement has not contacted his friend).  Further, whatever "effectively expelled" means, presumably it does not mean "expelled", so I guess that hasn't happened yet.

(Added: the OP has clarified that indeed his friend has been suspended.)  We know so little that I would not want to speculate -- nor are all the gory details really any of my business.  The answer to the question asked does not seem to depend on any of this.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but I took "harrassment/stalking" as criminal. But as you say, we are hardly in a better position to judge than OP, friend, and Dean.

I like your response, Pete. There's a broad range of conduct inimical to the operation of a university that will get you expelled or suspended, but would not rise to the level of a criminal complaint. It's the same at a workplace. Putting a colleague's stapler in a bowl of jello might get you fired but won't get you arrested.

Is there an ombudsman at the university? That would be the obvious person to go to after trying your advisor, director of graduate studies, and department chair (in that order).
Also the proliferation of the administrative ranks at universities often means that there are usually multiple Deans and associate provosts that you can talk to.
As with Pete Clark, I highly doubt that a Dean would try to expel someone with no cause. While the Peter° Principle operates at the administrative ranks, Deans and Provosts have no job security (they only have tenure if they are also faculty, which many are not) and are thus unlikely to do deliberate grievous harm. [They are more than capable of grievous harm through incompetence, indecision, or an adherence to rigid bureaucracy, but that doesn't appear to the case here.]
° n.b.: Pete Clark != Peter of the Peter Principle as far as I can ascertain.
Try to inquire with faculty to ascertain if there is more to the story (if it's your business, which it may or may not be; there are many things which regardless of FERPA or HIPAA should not be discussed about fellow students).

No, I am not Laurence Johnston Peter....although the Peter principle applies to me as much as anyone.

Deans are human: there are good ones and bad ones.  The bad ones are capable of this sort of behavior, although in my experience Deans of this ilk tend to focus more on faculty than on graduate students.
In any university, the keys to these things lie in the University's policies.  In the United States of America Deans are typically granted a fair amount of latitude, but even so they must stay within policy guidelines.  Again, at American universities there is usually some sort of appeal mechanism for this sort of suspension.  That is the place for your friend to start: what internal University mechanisms exist on his campus?  If there are none, there is informal appeal through the campus's Chief Academic Officer (usually called the Provost).  He also needs to confer with his dissertation advisor about the next steps.
As has been noted, you have only one side of the story and that from an interested party.  It's said that God helps those who help themselves.  It was also said that we get by with a little help from our friends.  Your friend needs to take some actions to help himself.  If the facts of the case really are on his side, he will likely get some help from his friends along the way.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


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Yardsticks for the worth of a Ph.D
I am about to do a Ph.D. in applied Mathematics/Theoretical Computer Science. The organization I'm going into is not a university, but a research institute in Europe. I'd like to assess my prospects after the completion of the Ph.D. So I would like to know how my Ph.D. would appear to potential employers. Will I be sidelined because I'm not from an esteemed university in the US, or will the actual contribution or my thesis be what I'm evaluated on? Will the former overshadow the good work I may have done and detract from it?
I thank you for your answers.

All the European research institutes I'm familiar with (INRIA, MPI Informatik, IST Austria) have excellent reputations.  You'll be fine.

Could you specify the country and the institute? The level is very uneven across the continent.

It is INRIA, France.
My concern stems from the fact that it is not a University and hence there'll be trade-offs in some aspects. @JeffE Thanks for the comments.

I'll second JeffE: INRIA is excellent.  Don't worry about it.

INRIA is very large. There is top-notch and rather mediocre people there. However, as an institution, INRIA is well-respected, so nobody is going to sneeze at your PhD from there.

I have exactly the same problem. Should I go to INRIA or KU Leuven for a PhD? The INRIA professor also told me there is a collaboration with Harvard.

For any job where a PhD is actually necessary, it is the quality of your work that is important (it is you that they want to hire, not your supervisor or institution! ;o).  In particular, if you have good papers published in top journals, that ought to count for a lot more than the university where you study, as it is likely your ability to produce top quality journal papers for which you will be hired.

There are two issues here. The first is the importance of the institute you get your PhD from being a University. This is a non factor as nobody cares about if you get your PhD from a research institute or a university. The second issue is the reputation of the place you get your PhD from. This has some importance, but your supervisor and the quality of the PhD are generally more important.


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Journal submission refered to Editor-in-Chief
I had submitted to a reputed computer vision journal. Both the reviewers (there were only two) marked it as "reject" with comments that alluded to the fact that they had actually "missed the point". It was interesting that the reviewers missed the point on two major levels, first on the actual aims and scope of that journal and second the actual scope of the conducted research. With 2 reviewers recommending "reject", the Editor decided to "reject" the article.
Even though there was no avenue for rebuttal, I drafted a long email with my rebuttal highlighting where the reviewers had missed the point of my article. The Editor replied saying that he himself was very much surprised by the reviewers decision because from his reading of the paper he actually saw value in it. On top of that, my rebuttal was very convincing. However, he does not feel comfortable reversing the decision because both reviewers had recommended "reject"  hence he is going to refer this to Editor-in-Chief to get his opinion.
Now, what are my chances of publishing this article of mine with this journal?
Update: The editor-in-chief got back with a list of possible items for major-revision that they would like to see. The major-revision deadline was quite short (just three weeks), they agreed to postpone the deadline on my request. I tried my best to address the items of major-revision and the article was finally accepted. Perseverance pays! :-)

The chances are slim in its current guise if you say two out of three missed the key points. That normally suggets a revision, if not a rewrite is required. However, I would be surprised if both misjudged the aims of the journal as you implied, and would suggest you re-evaluate what you percieve those aims to be.

Congratulations on your publication.  I'm happy that my guess was wrong.

First of all congratulations! Yes, it was a good idea to appeal. It is surprising that there was no way to send a rebuttal.

First of all, your situation is not at all uncommon.  On the contrary, most academics who submit sufficiently many papers find themselves in it from time to time.
The fact that your rebuttal email resulted in an editor's writing back that he saw value in your paper is already worth something: it gives corroboration that your paper has value.  In general it is doubtful that an editor would write that only to be polite, because in doing so he is opening himself and the journal up to further rebuttal from you.  The fact that he is passing your complaint on to the editor-in-chief is further evidence that he takes it seriously.

Now, what are my chances of publishing this article of mine with this journal?

If you're asking for a straight-up prediction: that's hard to say.  In general the chance that a paper that gets multiple negative referee reports is eventually published is very small.  However, it is also relatively unusual for an editor to directly communicate disagreement with the referee reports to an author.  The chances depend on how egregiously off-base the referee reports were.  If the editors truly agree that the referees "missed the point on...the actual aims and scope of that journal" then they are going to feel like wronged parties along with you and the chance that they will at least solicit another referee report seems pretty solid.  (On the other hand, if that is the case one wonders why they didn't notice it before you brought it to their attention.)  If a third referee report disagrees wildly with the first two, then perhaps the editors will be inclined to accept the paper (or seek yet further reports).
Nevertheless, unfortunately my guess at the most likely outcome is that the editors will convey their sympathies to you and wish you the best of luck elsewhere.  In my experience editors just do not have enough incentive to overrule referees in this situation.  From a hard-nosed perspective they may be right: if your paper truly is valuable and the referees are wrong, then you can resubmit to another journal of similar quality.  That outcome is in the long run almost as good for you and only detrimental to them if your paper is not just publishable in the journal but outstandingly strong beyond the sort of papers they usually accept.  On the other hand if your paper is flawed and they publish it anyway then they are throwing away all the advantages of peer review.
In general, it is a rare referee report that doesn't tell you something that could improve your paper.  If a referee wildly misses the point (which again, is not at all uncommon) it is not necessarily your fault...but nevertheless maybe you could rewrite the paper to make it easier to get the point.  Sometimes authors work for months or years on very subtle things and then expect readers to appreciate these subtleties upon a much more casual reading.  The fact that two different referees missed the point still does not imply that their comments have any legitimacy, but it does make it more probable.  If two people miss the point of your work in the same way, then I would certainly take a crack at rewriting the paper to avoid that particular misunderstanding.
All in all, it would be safe to at least start thinking about how you could (perhaps relatively quickly and easily) modify your paper for resubmission.  I would expect the editorial deliberations on this to be rather quick: if you don't hear back from the editors within, say, two weeks, then it would be appropriate to inquire politely on the status of your paper.  I would not advise you to resubmit to the same journal unless you know you'll get new referees: people who have missed the point once are not your best bet for appreciating the new version.

Chances are slim.
It is possible that the editor would ask for a third reviewer to look at the paper. If that reviewer is extremely positive, they might reconsider. Someone has to be passionate about the paper in order to get the paper accepted.
However, since both reviewers missed the main points there is a good chance that the presentation is not clear enough. So you could consider significantly rewriting the paper and then resubmitting to the journal as a new submission (it is best to coordinate this with the editor). This might prompt the editor to decide to evaluate it as a new manuscript.


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How to address new information (compared to the submitted application) during an interview?
My question has some similarities to Should I omit some of my qualifications in my application materials to “surprise” with during an interview?. However, in my case, the additional "surprising" information came after the application was submitted, so there was no chance for me to include it from the beginning.
Let's say (for a teaching-heavy job) that I received an amazing teaching evaluation after submitting my application, or I came up with a teaching plan that addresses the department's recently updated course curriculum.
I guess that I can in any case mention this information, but I thought about giving it a bit more focus, since that information might be really useful for landing the job. Therefore I wonder: Would it be appropriate to prepare some materials that I would show live during the interview?

I think you could prepare a couple of different scenarios and adopt the "news only" version or the one giving more details depending on the the live reaction of the committee.
It depends on time constrain, too.
Likely, if the news is indeed surprising, you can use the "in depth" material (physically as support or just being mentally prepared) for the question part that normally follows the candidate's presentation.

Thanks! Do you have any more tips about gauging the live reaction? Do you have something in mind like "mention the news-only version and wait if anyone asks further questions about it"? (In my situation, there is relatively much time, and the interview is on a different day than the presentation.)

@lighthousekeeper ok that split totally changes the situation. By gauging live reaction I even mean feeling the audience "emotional" response. You are speaking to them, so for some of us it is a relatively easy judgement. Perhaps you can propose a further explanation. Without time constraints, even the presentation might be a dialogue. Or you can make it so in spite of the formal environment.

Not really totally.... Follow your feelings as above. Most likely in the interview you'll be expected to say more. But put the seeds at least without giving the impression that you are supposed to arrive there and adjust things.

I worry that if you withhold important aspects of your qualifications to "wow" them later you might not even reach the point of an interview in which you could make it happen.
Competition for jobs now is very tough. You have to make the initial cut in order to reach any consideration at all. Then, probably a second cut in which you are discussed along with other candidates in order to determine who will be invited for interviews. If you miss either of those, you are sunk.
I'd suggest including all important qualifications. Perhaps they will come up in an interview and you can, then, stress some things, but you gotta get there first.
But if something new comes up along the way that makes you more qualified, don't neglect to mention, or even stress, it.
And, if the new material would materially affect your chances of reaching the interview stage, then you might consider asking if you could provide a supplement to the application when it first arises. A department head might be the person to ask, or the hiring committee's chair if available.
And there is no reason not to be prepared for either questions or whatever comes up. "Is there anything more we should know?" "Well yes, yes there is...".

I don't how the first three paragraphs refer to the OP's situation. The question of withholding important information to wow them later was asked in the linked question. This question only asks what to do when such a information becomes available after the application has been submitted.

Indeed, the last paragraph is the one most relevant to my situation. I wonder if you can expand more on it.

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


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Why do some conferences not include the review scores in their notifications?
In my field, conference submissions are usually scored by all reviewers during the review process (for example using the following scores: 2 = accept, 1 = weak accept, -1 = weak reject, -2 = reject). Many conferences includes the review scores in their notification mails, which makes a lot of sense, as the scores add a relevant piece of information to reviews. They communicate the actual assessment of the paper, even if the review's tone sounds more positive or negative than the reviewer desired (which might have all kinds of reasons, be it culture- or personality-specific). They also make the decision on a paper more comprehensible to its authors.
However, some conferences do not include the review scores in the notification. What are reasons for not including them?

Conferences do not have a uniform system for how they select papers. Giving papers a score is a very odd concept in my field, and I am not aware of its ever having been done in any of the conferences at which I have presented or for which I have submitted proposals. Alternatively, it may be that scores were given but kept confidential.

I have been PC-chair of a recent conference run using Easychair, and I decided to not include the scores in the notifications for the authors.
First of all, why the reasoning that the score could help to interpret the reports makes sense to me - but wasn't really supported by the evidence for us. Whenever we perceived a discrepancy between score and report, we tried to clarify - and it was essentially always the score which was off. There doesn't seem to be a clear consensus of what a +2 or -1 mean. [We provided guidelines to the referees, but that didn't solve the issue.]
The role of the pure scores in our decision making process was extremely limited. This may be different for a conference with three or four digit numbers of submissions, but for <100 submissions, an individual discussion and comparison is quite doable. But this means that we did not adjust misleading scores for the selection progress.
When it came to sending the notifications, I felt that the scores weren't needed for the authors to understand their reports, and in a few cases could rather lead to confusion.

One possible reason for keeping scores confidential might be to avoid people who got a "weak accept" feeling that they don't belong there, and to avoid people who got a "strong accept" generating an unhelpful level of arrogance.
I don't work in a field where scoring is a thing, so I don't know if this is the reason - but ultimately, the only people who can tell you the reason for a given conference are probably the organising committee of that conference.

One possible reason is to "soften the blow" to authors of papers who only received very weak scores. Receiving very weak scores can be discouraging to authors, who might even avoid the conference in the future if they feel that their work has not been treated fairly. By giving them the reviews without scores, the authors are prompted to focus on the textual feedback and improvement suggestions instead of the severity of the rejection.


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In which countries must college professors be cleared to work with minors?
I knew some college students in the U.S. who were <18 years old.
In which countries must college professors be cleared (background-checked, certified, fingerprinted, etc., like U.S. K-12 teachers) to work with minors?

What do you mean by "work with"? College students of course can work for their professors in the lab or on research projects.

And what do you mean by "cleared"?

@NateEldredge: background-checked, fingerprinted, etc., like K-12 teachers.

@Jfly: By "work with," I primarily mean teach.

@Geremia So you speak about the U.S., right? In my country, no ridiculous things like collecting fingerprints or checking background is done for people working or volunteering with minors.

@tohecz: Which country is that?

@Geremia Czechia (or the Czech Republic if you prefer). But I think that many European countries are similar in this manner. Remember that we are not laywerocratic.

So you speak about the U.S., right? — No, not even in the US.

You can be background-checked and fingerprinted for working for federal/state/local government, IIRC. That being said, university positions are not usually government positions.

Any special requirements or background checks regarding working with minors are a matter of employer policy or local law, and there are no standard rules across different jurisdictions.  In particular, there's no way to give a definitive answer without knowing the exact circumstances.
As a general rule, though, these sorts of background checks are rarely applied to college faculty.  Even in locations with unusually strict laws, there are often exceptions for college professors, despite the fact that some students may be under 18.  For example, the University of Sydney policy explicitly says "Where University staff or affiliates have direct contact with University students under the age of 18, this is not regarded as child-related work under the Act."

I'm not aware of any countries where background checks are required specifically to work with minors. There are places where background checks occur as a general condition of employment, but it's just because everybody gets a background check, and not just because they could work with minors.
As AM points out, in general, minors enrolled in universities are treated like everybody else, so there's generally no reason why there would be special background checks.

A quick google gave me several US university that have policies on the issue. For example Georgetown's policy  says staff involved in programs involving minors should do some training and that supervisors of those programs and those that regularly spend time alone with minors have to have a criminal records check.
I think the situation in the UK is similar with staff in one to one contact or on programs aimed at minors having to do a DBS/CRB check. See Imperial's policy.
I'm not sure but I expect the situation in at least western Europe is similar.


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Can non-PhDs or non-Masters be on an accredited college's faculty?
Do U.S. college accreditation agencies forbid teachers with only a bachelor's degree to be on the faculty of an accredited U.S. college?

The fact that the statistic accreditation agencies use is "percentage of faculty with terminal degree" does mean that Ph.D.s are not the only qualification. Without a terminal degree in the US one is usually limited to non tenure line positions. Again world changing accomplishments can cause any of these rules to be overridden.

It depends on what you mean.  If you are asking a theoretical question about whether there are rules that forbid it, then the answer is that it is theoretically possible, at least at some universities.  For example, Andrew Gleason was a tenured professor of mathematics at Harvard from 1953 through his retirement in 1992, without ever having attended graduate school.  (Technically, Harvard awarded him an honorary master's degree when he became a faculty member, but he had no master's degree when he was hired and never received a Ph.D.)  The rules vary between universities, but I do not believe Harvard's have changed since Gleason was there.  For another example, if you invent the World Wide Web, you can become a professor with no master's degree.
On the other hand, it is impossible in practice.  Unless you have received some sort of major academic recognition (a big prize, universities specifically soliciting an application from you despite knowing you have no master's degree, etc.), it's not even worth thinking about, since the chances of being hired are almost indistinguishable from zero.  If you are aiming for an academic career, choosing not to go to graduate school means giving up on that career.
By the way, I'm assuming here that you are asking about fields in which there are very few famous practitioners without advanced degrees.  I can imagine that in certain fields (perhaps art, business, or politics), there might be more people who would be attractive to universities despite having only a bachelor's degree.  But even in those cases, it would require truly impressive achievements.

The Gleason of "Gleason's theorem" in quantum mechanics? Wow, I did not know that. interesting

Yes, my question is mainly about whether accreditation agencies' rules forbid it. I've edited my question to make this explicit. thanks

(Although, I'm sure there are many honorary doctorates, on university faculties, who only previously had a bachelor's degree.)

Yes, it is possible (at least for part-time appointments).  I am part-time faculty at the University of Washington, and not only do I have just a bachelor's degree, my degree isn't even in the same field as my faculty appointment.  My real world skills and knowledge combined with my mentoring/leadership experience are all that were required.
However, it would be very rare for full-time faculty to not have at least a master's.  UW policy requires the master's degree for full-time faculty and a PhD for professorships, and some departments are adopting rules requiring a PhD for any full-time position.

It is not forbidden.  Accreditation is based on many factors and percentage of terminal degree holders is one of those statistics that is considered.  Even the most prestigious colleges may have a number of MS/MA/MFA on their faculty.  In rare instances, even people without degrees might be on a faculty.  You may find these rare people on performing or creative arts faculties -- writers, actors, painters, filmmakers, etc. that have outstanding bodies of work or accomplishments.

MFA is a terminal degree and for teaching purposes is effectively equivalent to a PhD in the creative arts. (i.e. studio art, creative writing etc,)

There is a category known as "Professor of Practice", which some schools use to explicitly recognize folks whose teaching authority comes from experience and demonstrated skill in the field rather than from academic credits.
However, if you're talking about tenure track, most schools will ask even these folks to have (or quickly obtain) a "terminal degree" in their field. That may only be a Master's for some fields, but Bachelors generally won't cut it.

Extensive and creative work experience can trump higher ed degrees in cases where the person has something exceptional to bring to the faculty.
The idea behind attaining higher education degrees is that one becomes specialist of a discipline and that lends credence to teaching and research. Becoming a faculty member isn't instantaneous, there is a tenure track process which has its own requirements.
There are several accreditation entities, you have to be more specific about which discipline  and accreditation entity you are referring to.

For example, the "Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Commission on Colleges" (SACSCOC). What do they, specifically, say, do you know? Does it really depend on which accreditation agency we are talking about? thanks

The SACS criteria for accreditation are at http://www.sacscoc.org/pdf/2018PrinciplesOfAcreditation.pdf  They include a requirement that the institution "Justifies and documents the qualifications of its faculty members."  They don't say anything specific about the percentage of faculty with terminal degrees.  You can check to see the requirements of other regional and national accreditors.

Supposedly yes, but mostly they ask people with a master's degree minimum (depending of course of their publications in the field for both cases). If not they aim for PhD or post-docs.


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Search for StackExchange citations with Google Scholar
Is it possible to use Google Scholar to search for publications that cite StackExchange users, questions, or answers?
cf. my Meta StackExchange question "Publications that cite Stack Exchange" or "Academic papers using Stack Exchange data"

Not to my knowledge.

According to this answer to "Publications that cite Stack Exchange":

Legally, anyone citing a Stack Exchange post must credit the author's user profile (among other things), which looks something like this:
https://site.stackexchange.com/users/#####/username

A Google Scholar search for "stackexchange.com/users/" yields many results.

Surely https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=stackexchange.com is the URL that is necessary in this case?

@user2768 Yes, that'll include more results. I'm only looking for articles that cite specific StackExchange users, not all articles that mention StakcExchange

@Geremia That's what the Stack Exchange TOS say, but in my view that provision is itself illegal. Stack Exchange is not the copyright holder for that post; it is a licensee under a CC license, and does not have the right to add additional restrictions.

@Geremia You might like to clarify your question, because it makes no mention of such restrictions.

There is clearly no legal requirement for anyone citing Stack Exchange to formulate their citation in such a way that gives credit to the author's user profile.


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How to ensure I will stay first author of my paper?
Some time ago i clumsily wrote a paper about an algorithm.Since i had no experience in scientific writing i gave the paper to a professor with the hope that he would help me improve the presentation.The professor rewrote the paper making some very minor changes in proofs without my consent but allowed me to be "first author" on the paper.Recently i discovered that he put himself as first author in the first author field(that was intended for those who made the greatest contribution) of the  of the journal's form.I feel a bit cheated by this and i am not sure how to proceed to change it if it is possible.I have already sent an email to the professor who agreed to change his "mistake" but i don't trust him at all since he lied to me repeatedly in the past for other matters.
Is it fair to pressure him to add my name as first author(he said he will but did nothing yet) on the submission form if its possible since he rewrote my paper(without my consent) but really added nothing new to my algorithm and its proofs ?
Since the professor is a bit dishonest how can i be sure that he does it without deceiving me in some way?

"What should I do" isn't a good question. Maybe you could edit it to clarify what kind of solution you are looking for? "How to ensure I will stay first author of my paper," maybe?

you are right.I will change it.

How did the part where he allowed [you] to be "first author" on the paper look like? Could it be that the professor made a simple mistake when submitting the paper, that is, he put his own name first either out of old habits or because he will be the corresponding author (i.e. the author that handles submission, which he obviously does - with your agreement?). This would also fit with him going to correct the "mistake". It could just be that, a mistake. Paper submission forms aren't always easy to see through, some still use the same forms they had in the 80s (at least that is my impression)

Does the professor's name come before yours in alphabetical order?  (Algorithms papers normally list authors in alphabetical order.)

Yes.But on the paper my name is first.I allowed the professor to send the paper to a journal(information processing letters) and he added his name first in the first author field of the submission form and also on author ordering field.

Journal editors don't want to become involved in fights about authorship.  However, it is a very well accepted ethical norm that a paper cannot be published without the consent of all of the authors and that authors can't be dropped from a paper after submission or author ordering changed without the consent of the authors.   It's good editorial practice to contact all of the authors of a paper and check for objections if any such change is proposed by the corresponding author.
Thus you have the "nuclear option" of contacting the editor and telling him/her that this change in author order was counter to your prior agreement with the professor and that you no longer consent to publication. I'd recommend that you start by contacting the editor to find out whether the author order has been fixed by your professor.


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What to do if a co-author is delaying announcement of results?
I am finishing writing a joint paper with a collaborator and we are both extremely excited about the results. However, we cannot agree on when to announce the results.
In my opinion the paper is essentially ready and we should announce the results very soon. The field in which we are working in is booming right now, there are several brilliant, quick people we are competing with. We have a breakthrough result and in my field it is not unusual to see people arrive at the same results simultaneously and independently. Seeing a lot of activity and knowing more or less what people are working on I feel that we need to secure priority essentially immediately. This would mean e.g. circulating the current version of the preprint among colleagues or, ideally, posting it on a preprint server.
My co-author on the other hand would like to explore other potential applications of our results. The main result of the paper is complete, and the only question is how many applications we can have. We currently have 5 very nice applications but my co-author would like to look for more. If they are found they would be certainly good, but at this point it is more of a fishing expedition. However, because of this my co-author demands that we announce our results three months from now and is insisting on a gag order until then. (In our field it is not uncommon to lose results to dishonest researchers who learn about your result early and can try to publish/attach their name to it before you).
Basically, I feel like we are sitting at a roulette table with a million dollars but instead of cashing in we are waiting to see if we can win another 100k.
I would really appreciate some advice on how to reasonably resolve this situation.

are you and your co-author at the same level in academic hierarchy, or do one of you have superiority over the other?

I don't think that matters much, but: I am tenure track, my co-author is tenured; experience-wise we're quite close, since I have done a decent amount of work; most importantly, the idea for the project and the majority of the work came from me, although in mathematics all co-authors are considered to be equal.

"She demands that we announce our results three months from now" Say what? You are both faculty, and she demands that you leave the results that you primarily worked on be?

What I don't understand is the following - you don't need any applications to just circulate a result. Yes, more applications likely means that it is easier to publish in better journals, but why is this important for putting a report up in arXiv?

The argument my co-author is using that we should try to claim all possible applications before we make the paper public. In mathematics being able to apply your result is what makes it more sellable, papers are sometimes turned down if the result itself is too technical but there are no applications in sight (e.g. a previous result is generalized simply because it can be, while the new version does not bring anything essentially new to the table). But we already have many applications so this is not a problem...

What to do if a co-author is delaying announcement of results? — Work it out like adults.

"In mathematics being able to apply your result is what makes it more sellable." But then, if someone "claims" an application you didn't think of before you even publish your result, won't that make your breakthrough more sellable as well?

@T.Verron: I agree completely -- the problem is my co-author doesn't...

A belated comment, in response to "In mathematics being able to apply your result is what makes it more sellable, papers are sometimes turned down if the result itself is too technical but there are no applications in sight". This depends very much on the (sub)field of mathematics - this whole discussion seems more like TCS or Machine Learning to me... That said, the OP's concerns were valid

I think you should push harder to get the paper onto arXiv. The important thing is to have a rational discussion with your co-author where you discuss your worries and try to address them. Here are some additional arguments you can try to use to convince your co-author:

If someone discovered your main results and puts it on arXiv right now, you lose potentially a lot. (Though not everything; if the result is reasonably deep posting your paper one or two days after the other group will result in recognition as "simultaneous discovery" at least.)
If you posted your paper and someone else derived good applications from it, you still gain some increases in your h-index (probably).
Posting things on arXiv does not mean the paper is immutable. You can continue to think about further applications and revise the paper as necessary. It is only after you submitted the paper at a journal for review that you really have to start worrying about making big changes to the manuscript.

But absent you finding out exactly why it is that your co-author is reluctant to post the manuscript on arXiv, the brainstorming sessions with strangers on the internet can only go so far.
I probably am not familiar with your subfield of mathematics, but this mentality of "In mathematics being able to apply your result is what makes it more sellable, papers are sometimes turned down if the result itself is too technical but there are no applications in sight" is foreign to me. In PDEs frequently a technique is developed to solve one or two problems initially. And the originators then work very hard the next few years to extend the technique to apply to many different problems. It is surprising that you are still worrying about the number of applications when you already have five!

Thanks, this is helpful. In a way, I am hoping to make sure that I am not being unreasonable. I want to have a good strategy to achieve what I think is necessary here, but also I don't want to jeopardize the relationship with my co-author. The main reason why my co-author is reluctant to post the article, as I understand it, is that she is hoping to amplify/maximize the effect our paper will have. To me it is the classic bird in hand vs two in the bush, only in this case we don't even know that there is more to find.

One potential issue with arxiv is that, depending on the field and the journals they may wish to submit to, this may be deemed a "prior publication" of the work and can result in the paper getting rejected.  Mathematicians and mathematics journals usually don't care (if anything they prefer an arxiv version to be pre-existing), but other fields may differ in how accepting they are of arxiv preprints.

@zibadawatimmy: the OP stated in the question, I quote: "ideally, posting it on a preprint server." Whatever field he or she is in is probably not one where the concern you raised matters.


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Assessing students in exams with negative points?
I've seen that some math teachers design tests which punish errors with negative points.
Why do they assign negative points?  What are some pedagogical reasons why teachers might do this?

Some standardized tests use negative points to prevent guessing on multiple choice problems. Other times stuff it "required" but not given any points (pre-lab work for example). Ultimately it's up to the teacher, and they can assign any grade they want - but it's generally better to be consistent (i.e. a wrong negative sign is always -.5 pts, etc.), as that makes it easier for students to understand and creates less back and forth discussions over the grades.

Related: Is it dishonest to guess on multiple choice exams?

I'm afraid I have to give +1 for the user name in confluence with the question.

In Germany, this is illegal. (iirc) Note also that you only have this problem (caused by guessing being a valid strategy for exams) if you pose uninspired MC exams. Better exams don't have this issue.

@Raphael Really? Doesn't the government have better things to do with its time than making laws about how people mark multiple-choice exams?

@DavidRicherby I don't know if there's actual law/regulation, but there are court rulings to that effect (prompted by students suing after failing an exam). Basically, it was ruled that you may not "take away" points earned on one problem by assigning negative points to another. Hence, points on problems/questions have to be non-negative.

@Raphael Ah, I'd forgotten case-law.

@Raphael: but it is perfectly OK (and frequently done) in Germany to subtract points for certain types of error within a question (wrong sign, parenthesis error, missing axis units, wrong/missing unit, etc).

@cbeleites Yes, certainly. Many such grading schemes can be transformed into their positive dual, though: award points for correct/present things and sum up (as opposed to penalising for wrong/missing things).

At my university a student got a negative grade due to wrongly answering too many multiple-choice questions. Then a "root factor" was applied to everybody's grade, i.e. newGrade = sqrt(grade) + grade. This student therefore had the dubious honour of being the first student in university history to receive a complex number as his final grade.

@DavidRicherby: Germany doesn't have case law - I forgot what its type of law is called: one ruling doesn't set necessarily enforceable law for other cases. Also, being German, as a kid I remember our biology high school teacher (also a monk) once giving an F+F for an exam where "one fail wouldn't have done justice to this level of incompetence" (which I'd call the extreme level of negative points; albeit at high school level). And he was everyone's favorite teacher.

My aunt once scored -7 on a scale from 1 to 10.  It was a secondary school vocabulary test and the teacher simply subtracted one point for each wrong answer.  This was in the 1960s; I think it is now illegal.

Note that you could avoid negative grading on multiple choice by awarding for example 2 points for a correct answer, 1 for no answer, and 0 for an incorrect answer. Not sure whether or not this would outwit those German judges, though ;-) Their objection to "taking away points" may or may not also cause them to object to "awarding points for doing nothing".

@SteveJessop IIRC, that exact approach is used for some American high school math contests.

and who's to say the negative points eventually lead to a negative grade? I've had teachers do that, they just stopped correcting on reaching the number of negative points needed to reach a 0 (or 1, school I went to never graded below 1-, different scale, same principle).

@gnometorule What you say about case law is correct (afaik) but strong precedence (meaning you are likely to lose in court) is equivalent to something being illegal in practice, unless you are prepared to fight. (Which universities usually don't seem to be, both regarding willingness and competence.)

@cpast Definitely regional/per-competition, if it is done; WYSE had no penalty for incorrect guesses when I was in it

@Izkata It is done. I remember it in the math competitions I competed in when I was in high school. One of them, for instance, was graded out of 200 possible points. There were 40 multiple-choice questions with 5 options each. You started out with 40 points and got +4 for a correct answer and -1 for an incorrect answer. This meant that blind guessing would average out to no effect while educated guessing was still more likely to be in your favor. The American Mathematic Competition follows a similar scheme with +6 for correct, +1.5 for no answer and 0 for incorrect.

Concerning Germany, specifically, it is forbidden in North Rhine-Westphalia: http://www.pflichtlektuere.com/16/05/2012/multiple-choice-verwirrung-um-minuspunkte/

Grade that goes below zero doesn't make sense.

What makes you say that?  In some real-world scenarios, thinking you know the answer and being wrong is worse than realizing you don't know.  For example, I'd rather have my doctor or lawyer recognize when something goes beyond their expertise, so I can consult a specialist rather than following mistaken advice.  I imagine the same is true for most professionals, such as engineers.
If not answering at all yields a grade of zero, then it's reasonable to award negative points for a truly bad answer.  (Of course an insightful but flawed answer may still deserve a positive score, just not as high as the correct answer.)
In practice the most common case I've seen negative scores used is multiple choice exams, for the reason given by GeneMachine, but one can make a philosophical case for applying them much more broadly.

+1 The answer makes a lot of sense, but a sidetrack question is - how many docs would admit before their patients that they have no clue what ailment they are suffering from? They'll diagnose something and recommend pills even if they are not too sure!

This is an opinion-based generalisation, and is inappropriate for this forum.

@New_new_newbie It's not a doctor admitting they have no clue. It's a doctor saying, "My training and expertise leads me to believe that you have a problem with your [insert body part here], so I'm booking you an appointment with a bodypartologist." That happens all the time. Likewise, any time you meet a lawyer socially and ask them a question about the law, the first thing they'll say is, "I don't do that part of law. You'd need to speak to an expert on that to find the real answer."

I remember as a student seeing hard questions posed as "Can you {do something difficult}?"  As students we knew this was just the professor's polite way of saying "{do something difficult}", but I was always tempted to simply answer "Yes" or "No" and move on to the next question.  Perhaps the question should have been broken up into "Can you {do something difficult}." and "{do something difficult}" and students could get points for an honest "No".

@New_new_newbie any decent doctor knows and admits when he's not the one to help the patient, and will send you to a colleague who can help. Only a quack will kill a patient in order to sell more pills and consults.

This is exactly why in my medical genetics class there was negative points for the multi-choice exam (which were freaking hard), you really had to think and know, do not guess.  It will make it worse.  If you dont know, leave it blank.  That's what he was going for, as he primarily taught med students.

I actually did an exam once were we were made to state how certain we were of our answers on an 1-5 scale. With 1 meaning that we would probably google it with these key words and thus lose no points if we were incorrect but only earning half points and 5 meaning that we were dead certain thus earning us full points but costing twice the points if we were wrong, makes you think about what you know for certain.

To give an (imperfect) analogy, on Stack Exchange posts can get negative points, thus making the poster  lose reputation. The reason is to prevent users from posting low-quality posts in the hopes of getting a few upvotes. Downvotes force the user to only post if he's confident it's a good idea.
Similarly, giving points for correct answers on a test, while ignoring incorrect answers, encourages random guessing. Taking away points for wrong answers forces the students to be sure they really know the answer.

+1, though I was tempted to give -1 just for the irony.

It's to discourage guessing, and to avoid mark inflation.
There are many discussions of negative marking available; here is one:
http://teach.southwales.ac.uk/assessment/negativemarking/

There are many positives and drawbacks to negative grading, even for free response tests. It encourages academic honesty and self assessment which are important for learning and discourages "BS" answers where the student knows the answer is wrong but is trying to confuse the grader into awarding some points. Some view "BS" answers as cheating. Unfortunately, negative points for wrong answers can punish students who are under-confident, and choose not to write an answer when they actually can demonstrate some understanding. It can also reward students for not even showing up to the exam if the test is hard enough.

I see two parts in this question,

Why negative points? Grade that goes below zero doesn't make sense.

Negative Points can make sense, as a punishment. Grades below zero not so much IMO.
I have a lecturer, who gives us assignments before the exam, we hand them in and get some points for it.
You then start your exam with that score, but if you fail a question you get negative points. This is for the reason that the exam only tests for topics we dealt with in the assignments.
But you don't drop below zero.
This method prevents people from coping assignments from other students beforehand.


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Benefits to serving on an IEEE Standards Association?
What are the benefits of being a member of IEEE Standards working group?
From my limited knowledge:

you get another badge on your cv
you get to have a say in outlining a specific IEEE Standard
you are contributing to the scientific community

Are there other benefits? For example, would an employer look at a candidate favourably if the candidate was on a IEEE Standards working group etc? What kind of employers or job-positions would specifically look for candidates with such experience?

You meet experts in the field, greatly expanding your network.

While this is an interesting question, I'm having a hard time connecting this specifically to academia.

@Compass, which other forum do you recommend?

Well, you don't have to move it, but if you give us an aspect that relates to academia, it will be a little easier to help us. For example, if it benefits for helping you get tenure, or improves the quality of teaching.

@Compass, Will it benefit in getting a tenure? or improve the quality of teaching?

Jon Custer's comment is spot-on. You will meet (hopefully) smart people across many disciplines and have forced exposure to different areas of expertise. You will also get hands-on experience in negotiation and compromise, which is always handy.
Your question didn't ask about downsides, though, which probably should be mentioned.

Writing standards is a very tedious and often frustratingly political endeavor.
This can take valuable time from the doing actual research.
There is no guarantee that the standards you create will actually be followed in The Real World, which can be kind of depressing.

Browsing through unanswered questions, found this. Sorry for the necromancy.

I've always thought that (judicious) question necromancy is a great thing.


text:
Techniques for good board handwriting
I'm a math TA and I find that my most consistent comment for improvement involved my board handwriting. Anybody have some tips or techniques I can use to make things a little neater on the board?
There are, of course, time constraints with teaching any course, so I don't want to simply write more slowly in order to assist in writing more neatly. Thankfully in a math course much of what I write is symbols which are easier to (borrowing a typography term) kern than sentences, but I still feel like I need to vastly improve my handwriting on a board if I plan on teaching for any length of time.
This is a sample of my handwriting:

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
EDIT: After checking the room in which I'm assigned to teach this semester, it turns out I do actually have a whiteboard instead of a chalkboard. Like I commented below somewhere, I'm sure 90% of the answers mentioned (those not expressly about chalk, anyway) will be completely cross-transferable and I'll try to make them all work. Thanks again for all the great answers!

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

I have struggled with this too.  Two things that I find help are:

Write much bigger than you think you should.  It's easier to be neater with bigger letters.  You can fit less on a board, but honestly that's generally a good thing.
Move your body along with your writing as you go.  My writing gets worse the farther my hand is from my center of mass, and tends to trail downward too.

Thanks for the response! I've noticed that too, I often finish lines in a downward curve that is very noticeable. I'll give both of these a shot!

Write much bigger than you think you should, is something I have come to realize as well!

+1 for "You can fit less on a board, but honestly that's generally a good thing."

A professor of mine has given me the opposite advice: write smaller than I think I should. And I think it actually helped (not too much, but still...). With the second tip, it is worth noting that you should take care not to obscure what you're writing with your body (not too much, anyway).

"and tends to trail downward too": This problem was especially bad for me; sometimes my writing would start out straight, but then curve downwards at a 45-degree angle, and eventually crash into the bottom of the chalkboard (and I'm short, which made the effect even more pronounced).

The downward trend usually happens to me if my feet stay put while my arm moves to the right -- I eventually run out of reach, and the only way gravity seems to prefer for my arm is down. Just move your body along.

I would say the biggest thing that makes my boardwriting messy is rushing.  I know you said you don't want to write more slowly, so my suggestion is to try this: write (and speak) more judiciously.  Then you can write slower and more neatly, when you don't need to hurry.  It takes practice, and requires more preparation, but with a little more thought and planning, you can often be more clean with your presentation, which allows your writing and speaking to become more clean. [Disclaimer: I don't always practice this, particularly when I'm in a hurry before class.]
Also, jakebeal's answers are good.  The angle at which you write (both side-to-side and up-down) is also important, and when you're not in a hurry you naturally adjust your body to write at a more comfortable angle.

So you're saying that generally being more concise will allow me to have more time to write neatly, correct? That's something I'm always working on, because as a math TA, often my students don't particularly want to be there; the more concisely I can present it, the better.

Yes, and (at least for me) it takes proper planning to be concise.  It also makes lectures easier to follow--if you're not in a hurry, then students don't have to rush so much to keep up with you.  Easier said than done, of course.

In addition to Jake's great answer, what helped me was a chalk holder (you can find them online for $5-10). One reason people write terribly badly with chalk is that either the pieces feel like the are about to break, or they are tiny. Using a chalk holder makes writing with chalk more like writing with a pen.
I'd also recommend having two or three loaded chalk-holders waiting in reserve; having to pause mid-lecture to empty out small fragments, reload a new piece, and regain the thread of your discourse is terribly awkward.

I'll check them out! What brands have you tried/liked?

@walkar I use one called School Smart. You have to be a little bit careful when you buy them, so they work with the chalk brand your university uses.

I think my university provides just Crayola chalk. I'll definitely look into reviews for that that brand and other models. Thanks!

Looking at your sample, I notice a couple of things.

Size: Some of the writing, e.g. all but the first bullet in the right half, is too small, in particular non-capital letters.
Whitespace: Be mindful of spacing letters, words, formulae, paragraphs differently and consistently. For instance, "factors over R" has more space between "fac" and "tors" then between "factors" and "over".
Font: Curved lines are harder to draw with chalk than straight lines. Many small letters and some of your big letters contain curves; try to use a more block capitalish style.
Whichever font you use, make sure that letters/symbols are clearly distinct.
Consistency: Make the same letter or symbol look as similar as possible between instances (note your equivalency arrows and small "n" in formulae).  Space structure elements consistently.

I think spacing is the biggest issue here, followed by consistency. Note that the basic rules are mostly the same as in typesetting for print, for which lots of literature exists.
As for general advice for avoiding writing yourself in a position where it is hard to write well, these come to mind.

Keep your hand approximately at eyelevel. That means moving the board a lot.
Break new pieces of chalk in half; that way they are easier to hold and do not screech.
Rotate your piece of chalk frequently so you have a somewhat symmetric tip at all times.
Disregard pieces of chalk that have become smaller than your first digital bones.
Do not squeeze. If there is not enough space, switch to the next board.
Write with enough pressure. If you apply too little you do not get enough chalk on the board for clear lines. The necessary amount of pressure depends on chalk and board surface.

As for writing speed, note that at least when you change your font you will have to write more consciously, hence slower, for a while. Train slowly, speed will follow.

Thanks for the great response! I'll give all of these a shot -- rotating the chalk is something I've never heard before. As for the smaller pieces of chalk, I'll be using a newly purchased chalk holder (at the recommendation of another answerer) so I should be alright with anything that the holder will hold.

I agree with almost all of this, except the suggestion of using "a more block capitalish style". Writing in capitals is slow and hard to read (that's why road signs are in mixed case, for example). Do you mean something more like "Write in a simple, sans-serif-style font rather than attempting cursive letter forms"?

@DavidRicherby That's two distinct possibilities. I know some people who write block-style capitals only and very quickly -- it's a matter of training. If you can get the curvy non-capitals down quickly and clearly, go with it by all means. (Personally, when I want to write very clearly, I try to emulate \textsc, i.e. small capitals instead of non-capital letters.)

In addition to everything above: write with your arm, not with your hand. The movement needs to come from shoulder and elbow, not from wrist. Some people write on paper this way anyway, but some (including me) tend to keep their arm still except for moving along the line, and use their wrist. This simply does not work on boards.

Practice makes perfect.
My own handwriting (on paper) went from hideous to beautiful enough to get me compliments. I accomplished this by making a conscious effort to write neatly when taking lecture notes (even if it meant writing slowly), as well as writing things over and over until it was satisfactory (often compared to a sample).
I don't feel like it really slowed me down all that much. Occasionally, during exams or fast speeches, I still revert to uglier handwriting in hopes of saving precious seconds, but rarely gain all that much. Conversely, I doubt you will really end up losing significant lecture time by writing neatly during real lectures, but of course you can always try it out in a mock lecture (note that writing neatly the at first will be much slower because you are not used to it). However, it did take me time to get better: The bulk of the improvement was over several months, and even after several years the quality of my handwriting was changing, though not as noticeably. Keep in mind that I would spend several hours taking notes in lectures every day, in addition to writing in my free time. Perhaps you can be a more diligent student than I was, but I would still say don't expect big changes overnight.
That said, I don't see why my experience wouldn't translate to board writing also. If you want your handwriting to be better, find a board and keep writing on it until it is better. It helps to actively force yourself to write neater.
As I said, lectures are a great opportunity for getting some regular, intense practice. If you can at all afford to slow down even a little bit, you should do so and you can get results sooner.
Regardless of whether you decide to risk slowing down your lectures, you can always practice by yourself. As a grad student you will almost certainly have access to a blackboard. Go up there and write on it until your hand gets tired. Then erase and do it again. Keep an eye out for motions that make letters come out particularly ugly or pretty.
Small children learn to write by tracing dashed lines of letter shapes. You could simulate this by using some kind of projector to project "worksheets" on the board (with a blackboard, white on black would probably look better, and a dim room helps).
If you feel like this is too much of a waste of time, write out material that you are having difficulty learning, research ideas and notes of future lectures. That way you are both practicing your handwriting AND doing some useful work.

The first few lines are quite legible if not that neat, but as you go on the font gets smaller. If someone was at the back of the room they would have a hard time reading it.
I would try and keep the first lines as the minimum size for your writing, but if you are in a large lecture theatre it probably needs to be larger.
I think this is a problem lots of people have. I don't know of an easy solution other than to consciously make your writing bigger than you think it needs to be.

Thankfully I have yet to teach in a large lecture room, but as you and others have said, writing bigger is probably the quickest change I can make. Thanks!

You say that you can read the text at

but is that partly because you're familiar with what it should say. There has been a meme over the last few years something along the line of:

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too. Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.
i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghi t pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh?

It's the same for other presentation skills too. I know I tend to speed up a bit when talking in public, probably due to nerves, etc., which doesn't help sometimes.

I do understand that phenomenon, but I guess that's an inescapable fact -- if you write something, you should have an idea of what it's supposed to say, so you can't accurately evaluate what's written. There are sometimes, however, going back through my handwritten notes for courses that I can't read things which is why I've taken to using LaTeX in class for notes.

Use simpler letter-forms. In particular, your upper-case 'L' and lower-case 'f' are very intricate: compare them to the shapes of those letters in a simple sans-serif font, such as Arial or Helvetica. And make sure you finish writing every letter: many of the ones in the sample just deteriorate into a squiggle, as if you got half-way through the letter and were so eager to start the next one that you abandoned the one you were writing.

The L and f are usually more legible (in my opinion) than most other letters, in part I believe because I've gone out of my way to make them fancier than other letters. The "finish writing every letter" advice is very useful though, thanks!

In addition to good suggestions above, I can suggest one improvement seeing your writing.
Alphabets like a, p, e, g d, all have very small 'compressed' circles. If you consciously try to make them larger(while of course, keeping the circle proportionate to alphabet size), the writing will be more readable.
You can write a paragraph on board which has all alphabets in it. You can then observe which alphabets have the problem I mentioned above, and improve on that.

I rarely write entire paragraphs, and thankfully my choice of letters gets pretty narrow just teaching mathematics -- my best letters should be x, y, z, a, b, c, p, q, and the like. That does give me the idea to write down each letter from the alphabet in succession and analyze how I write it on the board and try to consciously change it to something more legible though, thanks!

I think most people have already covered the important points.
For me the main items are 4 -
1) Size:
Write BIG! Then go back to the last bench and see if you can read it without squinting.
At the beginning, a good way is to write a sample in a corner, go to the last bench, and if that is ok, dont rub this throughout the course. Use it as a reference all through till you get the hang of it.
2) Write in capitals
Avoid cursive.
A bad capital handwriting is far better than a bad cursive. and sometimes better than a mediocre cursive too.
Added edit: exception - If you write in small letters, write spaced out and avoid running handwriting. I write small letters like a child on the blackboard so that it is readable. It is much different from the cursive that I normally use for writing on paper.
3) Use a little more space between letters and words
It tends to make your existing writing neater and nicer! A useful illusion.
4) Use flow charts and text boxes -
Just like 3, they create the illusion of neatness and order.
PS: I think 1 and 3 have already been mentioned by many others, but that just reminds you how important it is :)

Re 2: YOURE NOT SUGGESTING ALL CAPS ARE YOU? Also 1) and 3) are in jakebeal's and raphael's answers.  I'm not sure what 4) would mean with the example board given.

@Kimball - Actually you are right, I was suggesting ALL CAPS! I know it is difficult (and I guess it would also depend on the topic being taught), but I started doing this when I found that students often misspelled what I had written on the board, or kept asking me about it. It takes some time to get used to this but is 100% worth it. I'll add a photo from one of my classes for (4)

The calligraphy - well that is fixed with paper, pencil and patience.
On the chalkboard it tends to be just slightly different.
The main trick that helped me was just to push the chalk into the chalkboard instead of pulling it, like we do it with the pencil on paper.

I haven't tried your method, but it seems that board is not commensurate to the paper since it is hung on the wall.

Pushing the chalk into the board rather than pulling it is exactly the wrong thing to do, as it makes it judder and bounce. It's how Walter Lewin did his famous dotted lines, for example.

Push the chalk into the board, don't push it through the wall.