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How to handle lecturer who doesn't let me use my phone?
Inspired by another question where a user asks how to handle students with a phone, my question is from the opposite perspective: what is the correct response when a lecturer asks one to put away the phone?
This actually recently happened to me (a few months ago), and for obvious reasons (not wanting to interrupt the flow of the lecture, not wanting to have a falling out with the professor, etc), I just put my phone down.
But to be honest, I don't think that's the correct response, or at least I feel this is not the way it should be, because I find such demands inappropriate for a number of reasons, and so I shouldn't be giving in to them, should I?

My reasoning:
First of all, and this may sound immature, but what I do with my phone is none of the lecturer's business. As long as I am not disturbing anybody (audio is always off, I am never typing loudly because it's a touch-screen, and nobody is distracted by the screen because I make sure to sit in the back), it shouldn't be a problem.
Secondly, I find that such demands can impede my learning. I often use the phone to look up information related to what the lecturer is actually talking about. If a topic is mentioned that I don't quite recall, a quick google search or a 10-second glance at the topic's Wikipedia page brings me up to speed. Or perhaps the textbook for the course is on my cloud server and I need to the phone to actually access the book, if I didn't bring (or even buy) the physical copy.
Finally, I find it highly disrespectful to call a student out for being on a phone in the middle of a lecture in front of all others. Such conversations, if they need to be had, should be had in private. Approach me after the lecture or during the break if you have a problem. Don't call me out in front of the entire class.

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Are students permitted to use laptops during the lecture?

I generally don't police such things but I am always genuinely puzzled why students who are clearly not paying attention and are instead doing something else on their phone/laptops in the back even come to my lecture. Mind you, I don't take attendance. I find this bizarre.

@SashoNikolov Generally, people's attention span is not made for 2 hour lectures, it's something like 15 to 20 minutes. However, our brain is clever, and sometimes even when you are not directly involved so much, you save some of that information. I tend to listen to bits that I know I don't get and the teaching on it is great, but when its something I already know or I can't even hear the professor, there is no point to it. There have been times I just gave up because the teaching made it impossible to learn the material. I doubt this is everyone, some people just really want to pass and go.

"I find that such demands can impede my learning." Looking at your phone instead of listening to your instructor can also impede your learning. You might be overestimating your ability to multitask.The typical 1st year undergrad often does not know how to learn efficiently. It is to some extent the instructor's responsibility to help you learn, and insisting that you can do with your phone whatever you please, whenever you please, wherever you please is just as ridiculous as an absolute ban. Maybe you should listen to your instructor sometimes.

I know that some say that students are adults and should be allowed to do whatever they please then face the consequences, but try to see the other side too. Even if it is mainly your responsibility to learn, a good instructor will make an effort to help you and guide you. If you stubbornly ignore any advice "because it's none of the instructor's business" what you do, that can be thoroughly demoralizing for the teacher, and will benefit no one in the end.

@Lukali "Generally, people's attention span is not made for 2 hour lectures" - actually, it is. However, phones and the associated interests behind them (app creators) impose short timespans and aim to grab/break attention. It very much resembles the techniques through which companies foster smoking addiction against our own good. People sit through Avenger movies; many of them are longer than 2 hours. I do not buy the universality of the attention span argument. You are not interested in the lecture? Fine, don't attend. But if you are, make an effort to concentrate.

@CaptainEmacs No it isn't, that's objectively wrong. The maximum is well short of an hour. There exist several good studies on this.

@SashoNikolov When I was student, I had a lot of classes which I already knew the material. Sometimes attendance was mandatory, so I show up to avoid failing but not listen, then ace it. There were classes where attendance was not mandatory and I knew 95%, and I received a B for 1 or 2 questions I did not know, and for those I started to show up and only half pay attention until a topic came up that I was less familiar with, then pay full attention for a few minutes. When I was teacher, I told my students I didn't care if they came or what they did as long as they weren't disruptive.

@Aaron As I said, attendance is not mandatory in my classes and I don't police what students do. I understand  your point but I find it implausible that the students in the back row busy doing something on their laptops are all doing this because they know 95% of the material well and they are there for the other 5%. They are certainly not showing off this knowledge when I ask questions to the class.

@KonradRudolph Perhaps you are right. But remember, there used to exist several "good" studies on why smoking is harmless, too. Now, while I myself can focus to listen for blocks of 2 hours+, I do not insist on 2-hour blocks for teaching, but 50-60 minutes before breaks should be feasible. I do not buy that this 15-20 minutes (or, as it rather seems, 2-4 minutes) attention span that we see today is entirely detached from mobile use. In other words, I claim it is a matter of (anti-)habituation rather than physiological limitations. Don't forget, movies are 2-hours plus.

@CaptainEmacs I hope you don't say lectures require the same level of concentration than an avenger movie.

@user6522399 I didn't want to mention Wagner operas and they require concentration. ;-) But back to the movies, if I see the concentration in the eyes of the audience during a movie with a complicated plot, yes, I sometimes would like to see that in class, yes. (Although, I myself, for the most part, I manage to get the attention for longer and longer stretches of about 50-60 minutes towards the end of my lecture series; an - admittedly anecdotical - sign that we really talk about habituation here).

"As long as I am not disturbing anybody". You are disturbing your professor, whose job it is to educate you and all the other students, and will no doubt be judged on how well he/she does this. While you are looking at your phone, you are not listening. And if you don't understand something the professor is saying, ask the professor, not google. I guarantee you'll get a better answer.

I don't believe that the answers and votes accurately reflect academics' attitudes towards this question. Half the people answering don't actually seem to be academics, and I'm sure the proportion of voters is a lot worse.
Now, I don't believe that actual academics would come down on the questioner's side here, but I don't think that they would think so highly of the current top-voted answer (by a ridiculous margin) either. That answer is a rant with little content. Notice how it doesn't actually tell the questioner why they are wrong. (continued...)

(...continued) I have heard such rants before, but the people giving them were rarely proud of them afterwards and the people hearing them certainly would not have showered them with 300 upvotes. There are other, more nuanced answers that draw from their actual experience as academics. But they are somewhat buried by answers doing little more than telling the questioner off for their temerity in thinking they have the right to use their phones without disturbing other people. (continued...)

(...continued) I blame the fact that academia.SE has a low barrier to entry, as many people have been in school, and a lot of the content is not specific to academia, but I'll stop here since this is also ironically becoming somewhat of a rant.

To the people who are talking about Avengers movies, it's worth pointing out that a lot of people can't sit through them without looking at their phones, either. Unless it's just the people sitting in front of me...

In doubt, say you are sorry. If you "get caught" again. After the class, go to your professor and apologize for disturbing and the class. Then quickly explain what you were doing if it's relevant. Then base on the professor's reaction and the reason of the disturbance state your action next time. Finally, ask for an alternative proposition.

Missing context: a) what were you doing with the phone? Were you actually googling/wikiing for something related to the lecture? or using it casually? Was it necessary? Could it have waited until the break? b) was this a 45min lecture, and how far into it?

@bornfromanegg Ok, you are probably right, some people cannot even sit through full movies nowadays without bothering others by toying with their phones ;-) I will remove my comment in a day or two. Still, I do not buy the 15-20 minute attention span. And, even if it were, reading on the mobile is the wrong reaction as it requires context switching which is depleting mental energy; so it has precisely the wrong effect. Then it's just better to look at the ceiling and decompress/meditate.

@CaptainEmacs I’m not suggesting you remove your comment at all. My comment was tongue in cheek as much as anything. But I do think that lectures require much more concentration than a movie, as has already been pointed out.

Something I learned in college was that it's part of your job as a student to help contribute to the class. If I'm top of my class, and I totally understand the material, it's not my job to check out - it's my job to find the less-successful students and help them. My attitude and demeanor in class (paying attention vs on my phone) affects the students around me and can encourage them to do better in class, or can send the message that this class doesn't matter and they shouldn't care. I have a responsibility to my community that I should strive to uphold.

Do you like it when people look at their phones and don't pay attention to you when you have something you feel is important to tell them?  No?  Well don't do it to other people then.  The "golden rule" is a fairly good starting point for most of these types of issue.

Is this in a region where you do pay for university? Makes all the difference about whether you should think like a customer (which you certainly do ;) or a student ;)

Use your phone. Take control of your learning. Skip lectures that aren't useful. Source - double degree math/physics, masters CS ML, now making 200K+, still doing what I want and skipping meetings that aren't useful... The amount of downvotes illustrates some of the problems with academia. Fwiw there was one professor in particular who didn't appreciate me skipping his lectures. I would perform the best on the tests, he'd give me F's and D's. I brought it up with the Dean to compare against an A student. Should have gotten an A, but ended up with a C. Going back, would do exactly the same.

@SwimBikeRun Of course, attendance should not determine whether you get a C or an A. If you skip lectures, that's your business. I do not see why this is a problem with academia rather than with an unreasonable professor (you could have equally unreasonable managers in industry - workplace.SE vouches for it). If you are so lucky that you can choose your work style and it works, that's great for you - but it is a common mistake of talented and disciplined people to assume that everyone around them has the same degree (and expressions) of talent and discipline.

I stutter, as such when I ask questions I always use my phone to write the question and show it to the teacher (every teacher has been "okay" with this)  and I never really look at it during any class; I only use it for communication.

this may sound immature

And it is.
You're acting as if you have the right to do what you want.  You don't!
It's a teaching session in a building owned and run by other people and they set the rules and delegate the authority.
You have two legitimate choices (1) obey the rules and the authority or (2) leave.
If you want to protest the rule, contact your student union (a legitimate channel for complaints).  You can pass your opinion along that way.  However the decision still rests with the people in authority, and ultimately you will have to accept that fact.
Note also that the people making that decision are both experienced teachers and students themselves.  You are not.  Respect their experience.
There's one more important reason:
You are there to learn.  You should be paying attention and listening.  You may need to ask questions and you may miss something if you don't.
I watch a driving show where bad drivers are educated and it's astonishing to see how many of the bad drivers put forward all sorts of elaborate rationalizations for using a phone when driving.  People are, simply, addicted to their phones.  Learn to do without it.  If you can't sit through a lecture without your phone, it bodes ill for when you hit the real world.
Note then if you were my employee and you started looking at your phone when I was presenting a report in a meeting, you'd be on your way to being fired.
The right you think you have to use a phone when you want does not exist.
Respect the rules other people set when using their resources.
It's that simple.

Finally, I find it highly disrespectful to call a student out for being on a phone in the middle of a lecture in front of all others

You are now experiencing the real world.  The one where people call you out to your face and in public for your errors.
Get used to it.  It's the difference between an adult and child.  All part of learning.
How disrespectful were you being by ignoring the teacher?   Did you think about that?
Immature is the right word.
Edit : regarding this and similar comments :
There are too many comments to address individually and this is as much effort as I'm willing to spend on this relatively small storm in a teacup.  My gut feeling is this won't make people who oppose my viewpoint any happier, but they deserve some kind of response.  But life's too short, so this is probably all I'll be doing on the subject.
Remember : Agree to Disagree is not ideal, but it's practical. :-)

One thing which could improve this answer is an acknowledgement that the OP is paying the institution for certain services and - unless he disturbs others - it's not the institution owning his time and not their place to order him around. The OP is not working for the professor, the professor is working for him.

That's not how it works ( in the real world :-) ).
The fantasy that "the professor is working for him" is not correct.  What is happening is that for a fee you are permitted access to the resources (including lectures) of the college/school.  But that's not a one way contract - you are accepting the authority of the college/school and it's agents and their rules.  Typically that small print gives the lecturer rather a lot more power and discretion than you realize.
If the rules are really unreasonable (e.g. pretty girls/guys in front, stand all the time when there are seats, etc.) then you have two choices : dispute them in some legal way (e.g. contact the authorities or ultimately take legal action) or leave.
Now one of the most basic rules is that you pay attention.  It's not complicated.  It's nor strange.  It's not an infringement on your human rights.  It's an implicit (possibly explicit) part of your contract with the school.  It's the only thing you are required to do at a lecture beyond those other common sense things of not disturbing other people, dressing, not eating, not drinking, not talking - and so on..
And, yes, it can disturb other people when you start using your phone to text or whatever.

OP just said they did put the phone down when the teacher asked

That's nice but the issue is the fact they should not have been using the phone in the first place.  The OP doesn't get this or the question would not have been asked here.
I've explained the OP needs to contact the authorities via appropriate channels.  That's all there is to it.
Many people seem upset by my post.  Fine.  They have a right to be upset if that's how they feel.  If it's any consolation when I was a young student I also thought every rule, restriction and law was personally aimed at suppressing my rights.  Maturity (experience) teaches you that it's not that black and white.  Some rules are necessary.
Inconvenience is not the same as being deprived of a right.
I am happy to encourage people who disagree to say so, but if you want change remember three things :

I can't change things.  You need to exercise normal legal political activity to try and get changes you want.  In normal political activity you do not always get what you want.  So contact your student unions, get a petition going, make a logical case to the authorities.  But be prepared to not win, because that happens.  Never start a battle you are not prepared to lose.
You can get more with a carrot and stick than you can with a stick.  Make a logical case why using a phone would benefit the college and lecturer as well as the student and you'll get a lot further than talking about rights you don't actually have.  That kind of approach will sound very naive to the authorities.
There are better battles for your energies that the right to fiddle with your phone during lectures.  Put that youthful vigor into something more useful to the rest of the world, please.

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I don't understand why this response has gotten so many upvotes. I sincerely find it lacking in good arguments, and the OP seems to be more focused on coming off as some sort of edgy, all-knowing smartass, than actually trying to make a convincing argument.

@SAK I think Stephen gave a very clear picture of the situation and how to asses it. Judging from other comments you've made here and in other responses, it seems that you expected to jump into an echo chamber. That is not the case. And to answer to your edit, a rule system is necessary for every institution. Having rules and authorities in no way implies fascism.

I had a prof in the 80's who made students put newspapers away.  He said it was rude to show such contempt for the lecture, whether it bothered any other students or not.  I agreed with him and with this answer 100%.  If you don't want to pay attention, why are you wasting classroom space?

@SAK The arguments are very convincing if you've ever thought of things from a lecturers perspective. It is extremely off putting to have your audience start doing other things. I assume at some point you will have to (or already have) given a presentation. I've known people still feel uncomfortable with presentations after years of giving them. If you realise this then the "listen or leave" argument is rather convincing.

There is a dimension that you aren't considering. While it might be benign if one person does something, it might be less fine if everyone does it. Others might not be so good about turning off ringers, etc. Others might just decide to play games or chat with friends. It is hard to let this happen and also assure that it isn't disruptive.
The reason for the policy, I suspect, is that the instructor wants you to focus on what is going on in the class - exclusively. Even ten seconds away can cause you to miss something important.
But, I also suggest not getting into a fight with your professor ("handling teacher"). It isn't a fight worth having if you are so likely to lose it. Generally such rules, which may seem unreasonable to you, are put in place for valid educational reasons. There are tradeoffs, of course, but they usually favor paying attention.
There are other ways to be an effective learner that don't require electronics. They have been used for millennia.
I have written about effective classroom learning strategies that require only index cards and a pen/pencil at CS Educators as well as in other answers on this site.

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Yup, punish all for the selfish acts of some

While it might be benign if one person does something, it might be less fine if everyone does it. - this sounds a lot like logical fallacy called slippery slope.

Agree with your first two paragraphs, disagree with your third one. Over a valid issue, students should not be discouraged from struggling. It's just that OP is wrong in expecting to be able to use a phone during class.

@TomášZato: Slippery slope is not a fallacy always. For example, if you walk on the edge of a literal slippery slope, you're bound to roll down that slope...

@TomášZato: Less slippery slope, more categorical imperative. Many rules exist not because a single violation is problematic in and of itself, but because of the problems it would cause if everyone did it. Viewing your own actions through the lens of "what would society be like if everyone acted the same way" is useful; if it doesn't work when many people do it, saying it's okay for you to do it, but no one else, is fundamentally selfish.

Further, there's the fact that it's not fair to the class to allow one person to do something and then say others can't (which the original post implies by justifying it by being in the back of the room).  For someone crying about injustice, that's a glaring hole.

@ShadowRanger If everybody decided to do anything at once, it would be a problem - which is clearly what you're assuming with the phone usage here. If a single person is checking their phone, I don't really see how it affects the entire class. Even if we should for a moment agree that it's a bad thing, which nobody managed to prove without invoking the idea of everybody doing it at once, it is still clear that professor disrupting the entire class to comment of it is punishing everybody for a single student's action. Which in my eyes would make them the distruptive one at that moment.

It is true: it is your business what you do with your phone. Up to this point: I had actually students talking into the phone while in class. Now it became the business of the other students. And thus, my business. After I had made it my business, you can be assured that talking on the phone in my class stopped for good.
Ok, you say you do not make noise while in class. Fair enough. Now, there is this proportion of students who play around silently with the phone and then, suddenly, they start asking questions about tests, exams, and other important issues which for which the detailed explanation has just been given. Clearly, their subconscious picked up the words of the lecturers, but not the detail for which conscious attention is required. That was absorbed by whatever they were doing on the phone. So, for the benefit of the students that prioritised their phone activity, and to the detriment and loss of time of the students who didn't, the lecturer has to explain the same things once more.
Note, the lecturer cannot just say: "pay attention instead of playing on the phone", because perhaps on that particular occasion, it would turn out that the accusation might be totally unfair to the student: in fact, something else might have absorbed the students' attention - their sick mother, having to move flats, or how not to get fired from their night-shift job. But, frankly, whenever a student asks about something that was explained just a minute ago (to be clear, not clarifications of a difficult concept, but the repetition of simple details) my first suspicion what caused this question for repetition would fall on their little "devil's prayerbook" that they consulted just under a minute ago.
I am not always convinced that, under the current zeitgeist, students, despite being lawfully adults, are fully mature. However, it is my view that if you treat people as adults, they usually will begin to behave like adults and, indeed, phone use seems to decline over the course of my classes. But not everyone has this patience: Therefore, I do not really blame other profs for wanting to stamp out this bad habit from the outset.
Because, all decent profs will have exactly one interest in class: to educate you as well as they can and know. And, if they believe that the phone disrupts your learning (and possibly that of your colleagues), the right response to that is to accept that they have the best intentions, and give them the benefit of the doubt that they know what they are asking for: and put the "devil's prayerbook" aside - there will be more than enough time for dark masses worshipping the interbeast after class.

I would have upvoted, except for phrases like "devil's prayerbook" and "dark masses worshipping the interbeast". Even if they are meant to be funny (they aren't), they're just distracting from the topic and showing of technophobia, which doesn't make a good case for your answer being in good faith.

@GreySage I use the internet a lot, and yes, I did have a slightly humorous, but also reflective intention here. The term "devil's prayerbook" had once been used for playing cards, and one of the issues is its distraction from other, more urgent/important things. The internet has de-evolved from being a neutral technological tool. Some of its actors now actively seek to absorb, not your soul, but your attention. Attention is currently a most valuable real estate - and the lecturer and the internet companies are competing for it. I think the analogy to the "devil" is not entirely unjustified.

@GreySage I am not sure technophobia is the right term. It insinuates that technology needs to somehow be protected from us backwardies who are challenging and threatening it. Well, you cannot know that I am a strongly technological person, and quite a few times amongst the first to use some new tools and gadgets. But I am also acutely aware of the lure of it. We should be masters of technology and not its slaves. And frankly, too many times, we (and I include myself), let ourselves be tempted to do things not because they make sense, expand our knowledge or move us forward, but because...

...the technological possibilities shape what we end up aiming to do, even if there are simpler, and more effective ways to do it. It's almost like the tool determining what should be done rather than the other way round. Anyone that ever used a form that did not permit to enter the precise data that you would actually want to enter, but did not let you move forward without doing so will have experienced one particularly clumsy form of that. Or, when people struggle to format a graphics correctly where a few strokes on board/paper would be perfectly clear and sufficient for the task at hand.

@NicHartley You are completely right. I took the maturity per lawful age as a canned way to determine attitude. But of course, it is fully personal.

Put your phone away (or leave the classroom), and speak to the professor afterwards if you're still unhappy.
Let's examine your reasons for thinking it's inappropriate:

First of all, and this may sound immature, but what I do with my phone is none of the teacher's business. As long as I am not disturbing anybody (audio is always off, I am never typing loudly because it's a touch-screen, and nobody is distracted by the screen because I make sure to sit in the back), it shouldn't be a problem.

Let's assume you are indeed right about all this and that you're not breaking any rules. In that case you have a right to pay attention to your phone instead of the professor. But that doesn't make it a wise thing to do. It's rude to not pay attention when someone is talking to you, and if you're looking at your phone you must expect your professor to notice. You'll regret what you did if someday you need a reference from him, you're looking for research supervision, or maybe even if you need a PhD/postdoc position. Academia is a small world, with a very long memory.
That's not all - teachers talk to one another, and another teacher's impression of you could be negatively impacted even before you start the class. This is especially the case if you end up in a formal dispute over whether it's your right to use your phone in class.

Secondly, I find that such demands can impede my learning. I often use the phone to look up information related to what the teacher is actually talking about. If a topic is mentioned that I don't quite recall, a quick google search or a 10-second glance at the topic's Wikipedia page brings me up to speed. Or perhaps the textbook for the course is on my cloud server and I need to the phone to actually access the book, if I didn't bring (or even buy) the physical copy.

However by using Google or looking at Wikipedia you don't actually pause the lecture. The professor will move on and you won't actually get up to speed, you'll be 10 seconds behind. Why not just raise your hand and ask the lecturer directly?

Finally, I find it highly disrespectful to call a student out for being on a phone in the middle of a lecture in front of all others. Such conversations, if they need to be had, should be had in private. Approach me after the lecture or during the break if you have a problem. Don't call me out in front of the entire class.

So speak to the professor in private after class and sort it out like adults. The parallels between the two of you are close. In both cases, one party has done something that the other party disapprove of. It's just the methods you use to solve the dispute are different. You don't approve of the professor's methods, so use your own method and talk to him in private.

Some comments deleted. Please keep the tone of all comments civil.

There are many good answers, but I wanted to add a few points that I did not see elsewhere.
Personally, when I teach, I find it incredibly important to be able to judge how much of my class is following so I can change my pace to suit my student's needs. There are many ways I try to do this, but the best way I know how is to judge based on the faces of my students. If you are on your phone though, I cannot get a feeling for how well you are following. In this sense, your choice to be on your phone is actually making my job harder, so even if you aren't disturbing other students, you may be disturbing the teacher and their ability to get instant feedback from you.
Also, I try hard to promote an atmosphere in which students ask questions, as this is helpful not just for them, but also for other students who may not have even noticed they don't understand. The more students who vocalize their questions, the more benefit to all students. Thus, if you chose to remove yourself from this process by asking questions to google rather than me, you are degrading the learning environment I am trying to create, which hurts other students.
Also, you suggest that a professor should approach you after class or during a break, but in my experience, that isn't feasible. When I call a break in my class, I don't actually get a break, instead students usually immediately approach me to ask individual questions. If I do get a second to breathe, I sure don't want to spend that time running to the back of the room to have a conversation with you about how your phone use isn't conducive to the learning atmosphere I am promoting. Similarly with the end of the class, that is when I hold office hours, so I do not have a chance to go chase you down (especially since you sit in back!!) when I have ten students who want to talk to me about this or that. My only option there would be to call you out and ask you to stay after class, which in my opinion is much worse than a quick comment asking you to get off your phone.
I cannot say if your professor has similar reasons for not letting you use your phone, but there are many reasons why it is indeed an appropriate request. So, to answer your question, as others have advised, you should respect your teachers wishes, and if you wish you can approach the professor after class (a good teacher will give you time to approach them either immediately after class or in office hours, so this is not unreasonable, unlike you expecting a professor to approach you after class). Don't be surprised though if you do not get your professor to budge on the issue. If you feel dissatisfied my your conversation with the professor, you can look into organizations at your institution that allows you to report grievences, but again don't be surprised if this also does not go your way.

+1 for the point that mobiles make students and their feedback needs harder to read for the lecturer. The second point about responding to the expectation of being told off after class is slightly too accommodating for my taste (do I really want to burden my mind with remembering who in the 2nd row from the last utilised his phone?), but on the whole a good answer.

I will add, having taught a little (not college level) that it just sucks on a person level when you're putting time and energy into it and being ignored. It feels almost like trying to have a conversation with someone who's making a point of ignoring you. I know it isn't the same thing, but it does feel similarly crappy.

+1 … forget etiquette and tact, it is so incredibly distracting if your interlocutors are visibly not listening. It takes a lot of training as a teacher to ignore this and not be thrown off by it.

@KonradRudolph Good point. I am toughened up to various behaviours by my audience, but I once had a student who always had a bored and unmotivated look. He actually listened (as you would find out when you asked questions), but it was totally unnerving to get this misleading feedback signal.

If you believe your use is completely legitimate (I'll give an example), briefly state your purpose to the lecturer when asked and be prepared to put away the phone anyway.
Once, in grad school I had a professor tell me to not use my phone in class. I'm hard of hearing and typically record the lectures on a voice recorder or my phone. If I recall correctly I had to interrupt or start the recording on my phone in the middle of the class when the professor spoke to me. I never use my phone in class otherwise, and typically prefer a voice recorder as its purpose is more obvious.
I said something like "Sorry, I'm hard of hearing and I had to turn on my audio recorder." The professor was gracious and might have been a bit embarrassed. There was no problem from that point forward. In fact I've recommended the class and professor to many people since.
If your purpose isn't so obviously valid (e.g., playing a game, etc.) then I'd just put the phone away. In my example, the purpose of using the phone was to better understand the lecturer and minimize disruptions to the class from me asking to repeat things I did not hear well enough, not distract myself.
There are many other reasons which few would argue against, like expecting an important phone call or message.
If you intend to regularly use your phone for legitimate reasons, it would be best to talk with the professor before class time about this to make sure there are no misunderstandings. Asking for permission also appears to be required to record lectures in at least some universities.

Frankly, when asking someone to put away a phone, the prof doesn't care why the student is using the phone, and isn't interested in having an argument.  Your case, requesting an accommodation, is a valid exception, but not one that carries useful advice for the situation described by the question.  In fact, a better approach for your situation would be to contact the prof in advance to say you'll be using the phone as a recorder -- you could have saved the prof some embarrassment.

@ScottSeidman true, but again who can guess that the prof hate phones? This is a problem of ignorance; no-one is actual faulty; we just learn by error.

@Ooker -- overcoming ignorance is why we ask questions.  If we do it at an opportune time, we can use the experience of others to avoid the errors.  In this particular case, a recommendation to respond with the reason the phone was in use is not great advice for the most typical ways these situations arise.

@ScottSeidman: Your points are fair. I edited my answer to say that I only recommend responding back if one's use is obviously justified. As for why I didn't ask the professor in advance, the thought had not occurred to me. Likely that's because I don't mind if others quietly use their phones while I lecture, as I view that as their choice. I'll agree with Ooker that I don't think anyone is at fault here; this was a simple misunderstanding.

@Ooker I think if you want to record lectures, it is standard courtesy to clear this with the professor at the beginning of the term, whether you are using a phone or not.

@Kimball but again I thought that it's widely acceptable to record their lectures? Or is this just ignorance on something (politeness, copyright)?

@Ooker I just know that in my personal experience when a student has some disability that requires something like recording lectures or having a note-taker come, I've been asked for permission beforehand.  And I think most people would be unhappy to find out they're being recorded without permission.  But maybe this would be a good question for this site?

I just checked, and my university's policy is to get permission from the instructor before recording. http://diversity.utexas.edu/disability/accommodations-and-services/ I had assumed since it was perfectly legal that this was okay. Texas is a one party consent state and I don't think there's an expectation of privacy in a classroom. While I probably won't be taking any classes here in the future, I'll keep this in mind.

I second all of this, but think you might want to expand this slightly. First, I would emphasize that this discussion, if there is a legitimate reason, should be held outside of class time even if you failed to bring it up ahead of time. Second, I would expand the list. Especially in grad school, you might have people that are on call for their jobs or have children with a babysitter. I had both. If I ever had a professor that prevented me from monitoring my phone for those reasons, I would have been forced to drop the class. That said, I also took pains to make sure I wasn't disrupting class.

@TimothyAWiseman: Your suggestion is appreciated. I've made the appropriate change.

Excuse yourself to go out into the hall to use your phone.

Amazing insight. So when I was on my phone and wasn't disturbing anybody, that was a problem, and the solution to that problem is to HALT the lecture, tell me to leave, wait for me to leave, then HALT the lecture again and I come back in and walk to my spot. Amazing!

SAK Do your professors stop the class whenever someone needs to go to the bathroom? In my experience they don't, you can just excuse yourself and leave.

@SAK you may of course have a right to disagree with it, and that's natural. But being sarcasm is not. Frankly, before this I didn't understand why other people told you to be immature, because I saw your problem was legit. But now you just give me a reason.

@SAK I do not know about you, but once I started undergraduate classes, students have left classes in the middle for various reasons, never once asking the professor permission to leave or interrupting the lecture - you just walk out, go to the bathroom or whatever you need to do, then come back in and hopefully you can get notes from someone else for what you missed.

Disclaimer: I'm 48 years old and have a B.S. degree in Mathematics, so I've got a bit of detachment from this.
This reminds me of a friend of mine who is currently a freshman at a state university.  He took calculus his last two years in high school, and assumed that those credits would transfer to the university.  They didn't, and the university put him in their first year calculus course.
I asked him a few weeks ago how his classes were going, especially his math class (since that's my degree).  He said that he sits in the back of the room and plays games on his cell phone because he's seen all of the material before.
What should I tell him?  Drop the class and come over my house a couple of afternoons a week for a math lecture?  (I didn't say that.)
Contrast this with my first sixth grade math teacher, who had me out of her class and reassigned to the Algebra I class within about two weeks because she realized that I was in the wrong class.
Conclusion: my sixth grade math teacher was more competent that Dr. Whosit at State U.
Based on my experience during my own undergraduate time, there may (or may not) be very little point in complaining about it.
The big up-voted answer lectures us a lot about maturity and responsibility.  In one sense, I agree with it.  If I had known then what I know now, and had the maturity at 18 that I have at 48, I would have... dropped out of university after my first year and lived homeless on the streets while pursuing my academic studies.
Seriously.
That's a lot of maturity to expect from an 18-year-old.  I didn't have it, and it's unreasonable to expect that many people do.
Instead, the adults with terminal degrees who run our schools should do a better job at their profession than what my friend is experiencing.  Not sure just what situation OP is in, but there's a lot of people who use "the rules" to cover up for their own incompetence.

Update: (after 4 up votes and 7 comments) @Ben Voight has rightly criticized me for not answering OP's question, so let me try to address the question directly:
It's very hard to respect people who insist that they're experienced teachers, that they've been placed in positions of authority, that you should obey the rules or leave, but when called out on something as basic as placing a student on an appropriate curricular track, whine about all their rules and regulations and how, despite all their tenure and shared governance, there's just nothing they can do about it.
Respect them anyway, or at least act like you do.  It's the most mature course of action.
Keep text messages brief, like, "I'm in class right now.  I'll call you back later."  Don't play games.  There's no reason not to use your phone to look up material related to the class.  If the teacher says something, and you're really just goofing off, say "sorry", and put it away.  Otherwise, if you think you have a good reason to be using the phone, explain why.  If it looks like it's turning into an argument in front of the whole class, try to defuse it with "can we discuss this after class, please".  Don't turn it into an argument about rights.  Back down for the sake of the entire class.
The key is to act like you really want to be in their lecture.
If it's so bad that you just can't stand the act, then you really should leave.  The consequences may be severe.  Most of my professors would knock off a letter grade, minimum, if you didn't show up to their lectures, even if you could recite everything in their class.  Don't bother complaining to the school's administration - it's pointless.  Instead, go talk to the individual professors during their office hours.  Try to explain, calmly and rationally, why you're bored by the lectures, or you'd rather study the material out of the textbook, or whatever problem you have with the structure of the class.  The best teachers understand what educators call "learning styles" and will work with you.  The lousy ones won't.
Finally, realize that people who whine about their rights and people who bark orders to "do what you're told or get the hell out" are both immature.  A lot of maturity is expressed by voluntarily sacrificing your rights to smooth interpersonal relationships, by standing up for important causes, and by knowing when to do each.  When in doubt, favor conciliation over conflict, and dialog over silence.

FYI, typically it is not the professor who decides what classes students are in.  Also, many students who've had calculus at high school don't actually know many of the things taught in university calculus (see also Dunning-Kruger).

@Kimball, IMHO, if a student is bored by the material being taught, it is the collective responsibility of the school, both faculty and administration, to do something about it.  My sixth grade teacher did not act in isolation.  She brought the matter to the guidance department and the principal.  Why shouldn't something similar occur in a university classroom?

The faculty member usually cannot do anything here; universities have very strict registration rules that you have to move heaven and earth to violate. Dr. Whosit also may have a few hundred people in class and not even know your friend. In my experience, once you hit the 40-student mark, it's very hard to know every student well enough to suss out this kind of thing - and if your friend isn't complaining and the teacher has a 4/4 load, that would make it even harder.  I (seriously) suggest your friend ask for a few challenges, like solving the brachistochrone problem :) or serving as a tutor.

Sorry, I meant ask the prof for some challenge problems.  Your friend can ask you too, naturally.

I'm not saying university systems are perfect, and I agree we should improve placement systems, but the situation is very different from elementary school.  For one, we have thousands of students coming in each year with widely different backgrounds, and we don't have the resources to carefully evaluate them individually in the beginning of the semester.

+1 upvote from me. I'm very disappointed to see this answer at the bottom, and not at the top. This means that people simply DON'T CARE. I'm not implying this answer is perfect.  Basically, I have to ask myself if I should withdraw from this specific website (Academia) as 99% of answers are useless and only reinforce somebody's ambition or complacency. Hence it's usu. too much time wasted to find helpful answers like this on, which was so severely downvoted.

Although I agree with this answer, it has absolutely nothing to do with phone use, so it doesn't belong on this question.

The recent (3 hours ago from my present time) update to the answer and some of the comments are completely overlooking certain points raised in other comments. In fact, the professor/teacher might have been told by a course supervisor (or department chair, or someone else in higher authority over the particular class) that the department policy (or "calculus 2 policy", or whatever) is that cell phones are to always be put away in class. There's also the impact the use by one person has with others in the class, who may not know what the student is doing and (continued)

thinks the student is playing games, so some of the other students will think it's OK to play games. This is definitely something teachers think about regarding establishing classroom policies, by the way.

Your advice from "Back down for the sake of the entire class" seems helpful, but before that you seem to be answering a question from your friend, rather than the one from the OP. The OP doesn't mention anything about being mis-placed or too advanced for the class (in fact they seem to need to look things up online to even be able to understand the lecture, so if anything perhaps the class is too advanced), let alone having discussed such issues with the prof.

+5! If I knew when I was 20 what I know now I would not have attended college if it weren't for employers wanting to see the paper. For self-motivated people who self-teach from books, college is often an obstacle to learning, not an assist. If I had not gone to college I would have learned more about my field than I did while in college, both because of the mandatory classes of what I knew already and for the slow pace of the rest. That is why, when I became a teacher, I generally let my students try to test out the first week of class; those happy with their test-out grade loved it.

@Aaron, you make some really good points there.  Letting students try to test out is a neat idea; it's not perfect, but it's a big step in the direction of evaluating students to put them into appropriate classes instead of just assuming that they're ignorant of anything that doesn't appear on a transcript.  Our current educational system is based on a model of coerced learning - mandatory education until you're 16 or so.  It's done a great job of achieving 90%+ literacy rates, but has severely compromised education for good, self-motivated students.

On top of other comments here: It sounds like I'm about the same age as you, and I've made a career in academia while it sounds like you haven't. Point: A lot of time has passed since we were in the 6th grade and your friend now at a state university (rounds to 40 years), and institutions have changed a lot in that time. Teachers have much less power than they used to vs. administrators! (E.g., see Ginsberg, Fall of the Faculty). I have been told to explicitly say, "Faculty have no control over registrations."...

Yes, it's painful to see students assigned to a course beneath them; personally I always make the offer to skip class and only show up to exams. This is all the instructor can do now, and even that is significantly bending the rules we've been handed in places. If you don't like that fact, then we should support things like teachers' unions and academic freedom more than we currently do, because various court recent rulings have established that administration can dictate whatever it wants in these matters. All we can do is try to maintain a civil learning environment in our specific room.

N.B., finally, "learning styles" is a myth with no research evidence to back it up (albeit, a very popular myth). http://www.danielwillingham.com/learning-styles-faq.html

The problem with phones is that their primary purpose is to be a phone. I imagine that the professor would not mind if you had a laptop on the desk, s/he would assume you were taking notes.
However the suspicion that you might be using a phone for texting and social media would be very irritating to any teacher however and probably also to students sitting near by. If one person was allowed to do it then so would everyone else and chaos would ensue.
Suggestion
If you have a laptop but no access to wifi then you could set up your phone as a wifi hotspot, then put it in your pocket. Connect the laptop and silence any alerts on both devices. You can then google to your heart's content and others will assume you are note-taking.
P.S. Of course check that laptops are allowed before doing this!

The most upvoted answer has the core of the answer right. The rules are set up by the university, including the rule that says that it's the professor's job to set whatever rules in their class, as long as they are not against higher level rules. Also, if you want to go further, the university has been granted the authority to set these rules by the state, which has been granted authority by the people, which mostly mean your parents, and grandparents, and to a lesser degree you.
Now most people here, including the author of the most upvoted answer here, think that since there's such a long chain of authority, and plenty of experience, the professor also has the right of your respect and obedience.
Firstly, respect can only be earned. Whenever I hear someone asking for respect, they lose a bit of my respect to them. They might not care, then they lose even more respect from me.
Secondly, while nobody has the right to anyone's obedience, professors, due to their long chain of command, which literally leads to your parents, do have the tools to enforce obedience if they wish to.
How to handle such an enforcement really depends on the situation. Maybe the professor is actually happy if they find out that you're extending your knowledge. In this case, simply asking a question after class, in a polite way, might make the professor see your way, and maybe even apologize for their previous behavior. Going to the other extreme, they might propose for you to be expelled, at first sight of a phone in your hand, without you even having the possibility to explain anything. This means that the best course of action depends highly both on the actual context, and on your perceived advantages for challenging the authority. Since you only exposed a theoretical general case, there can't be any optimal solution.
I understand how the above is mostly a non-answer, so I want to extend my answer with a personal anecdote, which perfectly exemplifies the situation.
During my bachelor I was in the exact same situation. More specifically, I hated taking notes, as it distracted me from paying attention to what the lecturer was saying. Maybe it's me, but when I'm writing something I can't also process the information that I receive. The lecturer on the other hand, had this rule that everyone has to write everything he was saying. He was pretty much dictating stuff and we were supposed to write it, as if we were second graders learning to write. Some might say that this situation is different, because dictating to students is stupid, while not allowing phones in class is different. Nevertheless, they are both arbitrary rules, set by the professor, which has the power from... from... from... and also the tools to enforce them (see the above part of the answer).
I decided to challenge the rule and simply not write anything. I was just sitting silently and listening to what he was saying. Similarly to what you described, I was not disturbing anyone. It was obvious that I was the only student not writing, so the professor called me out for it. I politely explained my reasoning and the professor replied me with his rule, which needs to be obeyed, as everyone does. I politely declined to obey, and he dropped it for that class. It was a small win. Similar exchanges happened a few more times, but the new ones had mockery added to my address. I always remained polite. This professor was also the dean. Long story short, I did 5 years of bachelor instead of the regular 4. Although to be honest, this was not the only rule that I challenged in that university. I did earn the respect of some of my colleagues, and even of some professors, maybe I even changed some things for the university, but I literally lost one year of my life. I do not regret my choices, but my colleagues who agreed with my thinking, and chose to act differently, also don't regret their choices either.
Finally, you are asking for respect from the professor. I really meant everything I wrote above.

How does one loose respect? Can you tight respect?

@anonymous Complicated is just something one doesn't understand well, but I don't see how this fits as a comment to my answer. Everyone is within their bounds to do whatever they can do, and I clearly said in my answer that professors do have the tools to enforce a lot of things in their classrooms, one of them being no phones whatsoever. You pretty much repeated a summary of my answer in an adversarial tone.

I think you need to reconsider your position as a student.
In the US, every course will have a syllabus, which will serve as a contract between students and the instructor. In most other countries, there is something similar. You'd take it or leave it: it is your right to take the course at the given time or not, and it is the right of the instructor to set up some reasonable house rules. "Don't use your phone" is certainly one of them. You have a right to use your phone, but you likely forfeited it temporarily per course or school policy.
Now, if neither your instructor nor your school said you shouldn't use your phone in class, this would be more debatable, but still not to the point where you have a good case. This is not a pub, but a classroom: you are there to learn, as your instructor is there to help you learn. Being on the phone doing stuff is likely not going to help you learn, and would thus be disrespectful to the instructor.
Personally, if it were a large course, I wouldn't care much unless the student is actually being disruptive: it's their tuition and their education, and I could hardly do anything if they decide not to learn.

A syllabus is not a contract. Although this is a popular myth/metaphor. Instructors can and do change them without consultation or prior approval.

@DanielR.Collins It is indeed not a legally-binding contract, but IMO instructors and students ought to think of it as a contract as everyone is a grown-up here.

I would argue that as grown-ups, (a) everyone should be aware of what is and is not a real contract, and (b) not need fake contracts to establish reasonable/professional behavior.

@DanielR.Collins I need to respectfully disagree, or perhaps we have different concepts of "contracts": social etiquette is essentially a non-binding contract (nothing really stops you from breaching them, yet most people do honor and expect others to honor them). I would say that a syllabus is pretty much "class etiquette": as different instructors and students have differing expectations of classroom etiquette, it's necessary to write them down. Perhaps we should bring this to chat, though.

It's typically a contract similar in nature to an EULA—you either implicitly accept its terms by accepting the service or reject it by withdrawing.

So here's my take on this: Using a phone gives the impression that you're distracted. If I'm teaching, and I see students on their phones, I would tend to feel that I'm being ignored or not delivering the message I want to deliver. Some instructors will feel very disrespected by this; others may simply ignore it and continue lecturing.
If you have a valid reason, briefly tell the instructor that you're using it to look up relevant topics, read the book, or otherwise. If the instructor continues to object, put away the phone and discuss the issue in more detail at the end of the lecture. Don't argue it beyond this point during the class.
The tone of the question as written makes it look like you feel entitled to certain rights. While I recognize that you feel invaded, bear in mind that you're in a classroom setting and the instructor generally expects students to be at least minimally respectful and paying attention. Also, there are other students in the classroom, and your actions may set a bad example for others, even if unintentionally and inadvertently, and cause your peers to become distracted during the lecture. Ultimately, my recommendation is to be honest and transparent about what you're doing so the lecturer understands and can help you learn best.

I'm commenting enough I might as well start porting some of it into an answer...
You probably have little footing to argue on, and this may be a very steep uphill battle that is not worth having because of the high chance of losing, but there is some hope.
Someone else wrote in comment that teachers must follow the code just like police cannot decide who to charge and must follow the law and movie theater workers must enforce the code at the theater.
... except that statement is wrong.
Police can, and they do, decide when and where to enforce the law. They do it every day. It is very common for police to stop a driver for some traffic violation and to either a reduced ticket (for a completely different violation, one which is less severe) or to issue no ticket at all.
Once I even watched a judge tell someone off (not me) for coming in to argue against a ticket that the judge believed was already a reduced ticket. The judge himself said that police do this all the time, that the ticket this defendant had was a type that police never actually give except as a reduction for some other worse violation, and that the defendant should just be happy that he doesn't have the ticket for whatever he actually did.
Likewise, in the classroom the teacher is the enforcer. The teacher has the authority to enforce the rules. The teacher usually has the authority to tell you to put your phone away. They could choose not to, even if the school's code of conduct says "thou shalt not use a phone in class."
When I taught, it was at a place where attendance was mandatory. But I knew that there were some people in the class that already knew the material. So I told them to feel free to skip if they already knew it, and I provided them with a practice test to judge whether they were prepared for the test or if they needed to come to class.
I also provided a "test-out" test the first week of class. I told people they could take a test that was similar to the final, and if they liked their grade they could just accept that for the class and not show up any more. They loved it, especially the ones who got an A, and it meant I did not waste their time and less of my time was wasted as well. Technically, this was against the attendance policy. But it was still the right thing to do.
The rules are there for a reason. They are there to increase some beneficial quality, such as order, peace, or - in the case of school - average grade. When the rules actually cause things to be worse instead of better, then following the rules is actually the problem and the rules are counter to their own reason for existing - this is usually not the case as long as the rules are good, but this does sometimes happen. The phone in the back row in the classroom is in between these two extremes. Using your phone in a non-distracting manner does not cause any real problems, and avoiding using it instead does not really provide any benefit (omitting the potential benefit or drawback to you, as only you can judge that). So this is a neutral case.
If following a rule in some specific case does no good nor bad, then enforcing it just makes the enforcer look like a jerk. And that might be the case - that is debatable. Unfortunately for you, the enforcer still has the authority to do that even if it could be considered an abuse. It is essentially the "might makes right" attitude, as authority is a form of might.
In your specific argument, where you use it for class, as a tool to augment your learning, you have an excellent argument. If this is actually a very common thing and is the only way for you to access the class textbook in class, then and probably only then would this be a good battle to fight, if you think that it is worth it and that you could succeed in that narrow case. Even then, the fight will probably apply only to that class, and the instant you are noticed doing anything else that fought-for right may be revoked. You may have to have similar fights for each class, though each time you succeed you set a precedent.
For anything else other than the class assigned textbook, this is not as likely to succeed even if the use is to augment class. Unfortunately, if you are looking up a term on Wikipedia, someone can (and likely will) argue against you that you should just write down that term in your notes and look it up after class. I am not saying that is how it should be, but that is a likely counter argument.

The answers have been given already, it is disturbing for the teacher to see a student busy with something else than listening and paying full attention to what the teacher is teaching, in the teacher's point of view. It is purely manners. A few teachers might find it not a big deal a student is googling up something about the lecture right away during class, but see that as a given right, not a freedom.
And to zoom in on your first reasoning:
What if other students (that are NOT in the back rows) that getting pointed at as well in front of other students (about being busy on their phones) are complaining about you doing the same (while sitting at the last row in the back)?
When something is about to get unfair, younger people get annoyingly childish (no pun), and want the same rights and treatments as others. In the end, the whole lecture or even semester or year might be a disappointment with all those disruptive discussions about paying attention. Especially for students that actually like to listen with full attention!
Though I do understand your interest and way to look things up by the Internet, but that's just an impulsive action. Please have a respectful chat with your teacher about this subject.
On the contrary:
It is becoming a part of the lectures in some areas... I know of a few primary schools that educate mainly with use of tablets. Digital boards and pc's are more common in some lectures, ofcourse.
But even then, I can't think of students not listening when the teacher is talking and demonstrating....
Just think about the teacher's point of view, if you will.

Think about the student's point of view. Not everyone in that room is on equal footing. For some, the lecture is too slow, perhaps review. I've been in a PoliSci class in which a fair amount the material overlapped with statistics classes that I already took. Luckily, my professor wasn't so self-absorbed, and allowed me some leniency in doing other, non-disruptive tasks while the lecture caught up to my knowledge.

@Clay07g, true. But still, have a good chat on that with the teacher to get on the same page. He or she should recognize that as well, as your professor did, luckily indeed. But that is a personal case, and that is up to the teacher to do something with. As it does not say the rest of the class is also way ahead on the current lectures. It's not a private lecture.

As long as you aren't in violation of other academic expectations, then yes, you're probably fine. Note that there are a lot of standards, particularly not impeding others, that need to be complied with; however, if you are in compliance with everything, then the professor is out of line.
To resolve the issue? If you wish, you may speak with the professor after class about this, but be prepared for a tough time convincing the professor of your intentions. Even if you are polite and courteous, some professors won't be receptive to your argument. Most teachers dislike when students have phones out for any reason, simply because some students abuse their phones. I'd recommend putting the phone away discreetly, then talking to the prof after if the use of the cell phone for your education is important enough to you. By directly defying the professor, you risk alienating them to your plight (if they took the time to ask you to put it away, they probably wouldn't like to have the discussion right then and there.

Within the limits of appropriateness, a professor can manage a teaching environment any way they see fit; asking a student to put away their phone will never be out of line because, like it or not, it's not an inappropriate request.

@Dancrumb I've actually been in a situation in which a teacher calling out some random student was more disruptive to my experience in the class than whatever the student was actually doing. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with a teacher asking a student to put away their phone, but it can most certainly be an inappropriate request, depending on the context.

@Clay07g: definitely - calling out a student can be done in an inappropriate way and I would not defend that. I probably over-stated things with "never" :)

If anyone is sitting in the same row as me holding a light and waving their hands about that is a distraction to me. The OP's premise and your confirmation that this does not impede other's concentration is false.

@PeteKirkham This answer is based on that assumption, not on a confirmation. I'm assuming that it isn't a distraction. Otherwise, obviously you're right.


text:
A methods chapter for a PhD thesis comprising multiple closely tied studies?
You'll notice I have refrained from using "Phd by publication" here, but I think my question might well apply to a PhD by publication, and am happy for my PhD to reside under this category.
Basically - over the course of my Phd I have published in genomics and epidemiology. They will comprise of two results chapters and one combined methods chapter, but the overarching thesis message is that in the future the data types in both realms of research can benefit each other when linked.
Each results chapter will describe the work undertaken in getting multiple papers published - and this is what I am finding difficult. I am writing a standalone methods chapter that describes the general approaches in both research areas, but I keep refraining from going into to too much detail because I feel they need to be presented in close proximity to the results of each paper. I am now finding myself writing the exact methodologies, respective to the results they generate all in the results chapters. It almost seems as if I do not need a standalone methods chapter - but this is science and feels very wrong to think that way!
So what I am asking is: is it entirely possible to have a high-level standalone methods chapter which documents the basic approaches to how I have done my research, listing all the data sources I have used and the software products I have written, to then go on and elaborate in detail during the results chapter? That is, the results chapter than becomes a series of papers with a narrative to link them all together.

"but this is science and feels very wrong to think that way!"? Maybe you want to elaborate why you feel this way?

Methods sections in their own right are drilled into the scientific process. Not to suggest non-scientific thesis do not require a methods section of course.

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sort: votes


text:
Is it bad to start an introduction with a direct quote?
I'm  a statistics student at the undergraduate level, writing an undergraduate thesis about genetics. I already have the objectives well defined and I will write the introduction lined with those objectives.
I found a text in a website with authors name and publication date that would be nice to put in my introduction. Is a bad thing start an introduction with a citation?
EDIT: Is a direct quote.

Perhaps this is tangential but monograph (which generally refers to a single-author book) can't be the right word for an undergraduate thesis (at least in AmE).

Do you mean literally the very first words? I had put a long quote from at the end of the first paragraph of my thesis and it was fine I think, but it wasn't the very first words, it was more the eye-catcher on the first page of Introduction.

Are you quoting a website, or are you quoting a book which was also cited by this website? If the latter, you most certainly need to follow up and get the book and check that the quote exists, is in fact the exact wording you're using, and that you're comfortable with the work as your initial building block - it says a lot about what you're doing, particularly to people who have read it in full (have you?).

Also, compare the following two narratives: "I found this great quote in some website and I just decided to pop it into my thesis, and as my star starting lines no less", versus "I chased up this quote from some website, which led me to this great book which I read and I thought it was awesome, so I found the bit I liked best and I quoted it in my thesis". Spot the difference?

While I am not aware of any hard and fast rule against it, I would find it off-putting to read a scientific document that started its prose with a direct quote.  There are just so many ways to start with one's own words that it feels lazy and lacking in self-confidence to me to use another's words for the first impression of a reader.
Note, however, that I am speaking of using a quotation as the first piece of one's prose, as distinct from the practice of putting a separated "thematic" quotation at the start of a document of chapter. I see this somewhat more often, and though I find it a bit "cute" in scientific work, I don't have a problem with it the way I would if somebody starts their prose with a quotation.

I generally am not crazy about starting anything with a direct quote unless it absolutely adds value. It's easy when you use this particular trope to just use a quote for the sake of using a quote, and often it comes off as cheesy. In the context of a scientific paper I would probably shy away from doing this, unless you have some sort of reason that you want to "lighten up" your content. Honestly, I really only have found it to be done tastefully with fiction.

It depends a lot on the purpose of the quote. If it is there to replace your own explanations and thoughts, then it is bad. However, a short quote from a respected source that emphasizes the importance or the difficulty of the problem discussed in the thesis can look way more convincing than any of your own blah-blah-blah in this respect, especially if you have something to say about the problem later that other people could not. In general, use your own words when speaking about the nitty-gritty of what you do, but refer to other people opinions, if you can, when you discuss the meta-issues like why it is worth doing, etc. In the first case, excessive quotations create an impression that you are just parroting somebody else's work, and in the second case absence of any appeal to the external opinion may make you look like if you are desperately trying to sell something no one else cares about, especially if you use a lot of standard buzzwords (another thing I would rather abstain from unless they are a part of a direct quote).

The introduction of any document should provide the readers the importance and necessity of this work. If the quote is relevant to the importance you can use it by a presentence of yourself.
Overally speaking the direct quote in academics is not generally acceptable with an exception for pioneers of that field.
You can use an implication of this qoute and write in your language with a citation to the original document.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
How hard is it to get paid to do PhD in the US as an international student in engineering?
Quick background about myself
I just want to give a quick introduction to my background but I think this could be relevant and beneficial to a lot of people. I am a Mechanical Engineering student studying at Imperial College London and working towards a GPA 4.0 equivalent, with a GPA 3.7-3.8 predicted/guaranteed. I will be graduating with an MEng degree in the summer of 2018. I also hold a Turkish passport (non-EU).
Into the question
I want to know how hard it is to get fully covered for tuition fees, accommodation and other expenses while getting paid a salary on top (I would still be consent with not getting paid as long as I do not pay anything other than my pocket money). From minimal research I came to find that this can be extremely unlikely, although, I also found that you have slightly more chances in some fields such as engineering since a lot of capital flow from the industry.
So from base line knowledge, I suspect my main options are to secure a scholarship that covers you fully, get the university to fund you or get a company to sponsor your research. I also know that it is usually a combination of the above.
I am a very driven person with a lot of passion for the field and I will be applying to universities such as Stanford and MIT. I am currently doing a research internship at Stanford and I also hold past research experience from Imperial College London. I will likely be getting published in a decent journal from my current research internship (at the age of 20). I just want to know what are the chances of getting paid let alone paying for tuition fees since I do not want to ask my parents for financial help. I would rather find a good job then to pay thousands of dollars for another 4-5 years, although doing a PhD has been my aspiration since very young.
Please do not hesitate to point to further resources as answer to the question and any help is appreciated.

PhD in the sciences are typically funded, at least in the West. Not sure what research lead you to believe funding is uncommon. If you get admitted you will be funded, but may have to be a teaching or research assistant. An offer of admission with no funding is considered a soft rejection.

Note that 'funding' will be a tuition waver plus a salary (stipend), normally a TA or RA position. You need to figure out how to spend that on housing, food, transportation, insurance, etc.

Speaking from my experience of physics in the UK (but I think this holds for other sciences), PhD students are generally fully funded by research councils like STFC, or by the university department itself. With STFC funding your tuition is fully paid (PhD tuition at my UK uni is around £4.5k a year) and you get a tax-free stipend of £14,553 (£16553 if you're in London). No TA/RA jobs required, although in my department you can do a few hours teaching a week if you want a bit of extra money.

So as a follow up, can you do TA or RA work as a PhD student who just came out of undergrad with an MEng? I thought those were for postdoc, although, I may be completely wrong. That is very good to hear that if you get accepted properly, you will be funded -  I was not sure of this so thanks so much!

@astronat That is good info and thanks! US fees seem to be gargantuan compared to UK, and even in the UK, I would be paying much more as an international student (although I will be eligible for citizenship soon that is if I stay in the UK). I heard of those, I believe they are called GTAs (graduate teaching assistant) but it seems to be a more relaxed position than what is meant in US.

In the US, TA and RA positions belong exclusively to graduate students.  They aren't applicable to postdocs.  (For a postdoc, research is a part of their job description by default; if they are teaching, it is usually at a level comparable to faculty rather than a TA, and they may get a courtesy title like "visiting assistant professor".)

Yes, you can TA/RA as a PhD student- my understanding is that those positions are the main source of income for students in the US. And yes, I was talking about GTAs (I just forgot the acronym). I believe this term sometimes applies to departmentally funded students as well as those doing additional teaching.

"From minimal research ... " you get nowhere with minimal research. Not to the US, and not to a PhD. Especially not at Standford or MIT.

@Karl I think "from minimal research" = "from some googling regarding PhD programs"

i think OP need to take a closer look again, bcs these assuptions about USA are wrong

In engineering, the primary source of support for international PhD students in the US is:

10.4% via teaching assistantships
71.7% via research assistantships or traineeships
11.5% via fellowships or grants
Small portion via other sources (e.g. self funded, employer funded).

Source: Survey of Earned Doctorates, TABLE 35. Doctorate recipients' primary source of financial support, by broad field of study, sex, citizenship status, ethnicity, and race: 2014
In STEM fields in the US, both US citizen and international PhD students are generally offered admission with funding, which will be provided via teaching assistantships, research assistantships, or some combination of the above. US STEM PhD offers that don't come with funding are generally not worth accepting. So it's not about specifically trying to get funding, it's about getting a real offer of admissions (which should come with funding).

you should be more frank. NO funding-dont accept!

My answer comes from my background as an international student with B.Sc from a university in a developing country (You probably never heard my institution nor my country) and I got full-ride PhD offer from two US universities (different major, both ranked in top 30-40 according to US NEWS). I applied to 7 universities. So, the success rate is around 28%.
"How hard is it to get paid to do PhD in the US as an international student in engineering?"
Using your background, I would say that, it is not that hard. Compared to me, you come from a well-known institution with an extensive research experience in a top US school.
However, to be clear, the difficulty in getting into a STEM PhD program really depends on many factors. So, the right answer will be: it depends.
It depends on which university that you think you want to join. If, you narrow down your choice into only MIT and Stanford, it will be pretty hard. You should have stellar record in all aspects of your applications: recommendation letters, research experiences, publications, standardized test scores.
Even if you have those credentials, you might be not lucky enough to be accepted with funding if your desired professors are not looking for a graduate student.
To give you a better chance in being accepted with funding in a US PhD program, I would suggest you to apply to as many institutions as long as you are not overwhelmed with the application process. May the force be with you :)

That actually helps a lot and thank you so much!


text:
Can someone else publish a paper based on independently achieving a result that is in a preprint of mine?
I have a paper that is currently in review but that has been available via bioRxiv for a while. While my paper was in review, a paper was published elsewhere which essentially scoops my paper. I am wondering how this could affect my paper in review seeing as my results were available earlier.
To clarify, I guess my question is about priority. We uploaded the manuscript because we were scared of being scooped. We thought that by uploading the manuscript, it would make it impossible for another group to publish the same results. The question is twofold:

Is it ethical that the other group published the same results whilst they were aware of the preprint? Secondly, would a journal take preprint priority into account when assessing a manuscript which has been scooped by another paper?

Is it a scoop, as in both of you did the same thing, but one published earlier, or, did they take your paper via Biorxiv and plagiarize it to get published?

The former, they independently got the results...

This isn't technically a question.  Could you be more specific?

I guess the question is about priority. We uploaded the manuscript because we were scared of being scooped. We thought that by uploading the manuscript, it would make it impossible for another group to publish the same results. The question is twofold: Is it ethical that the other group published the same results whilst they were aware of the preprint? Secondly, would a journal take preprint priority into account when assessing a manuscript which has been scooped by another paper?

Is the submitted date of the other group's paper before or after your submitted date. The preprint 'date' is mostly irrelevant (in my field).

They submitted their paper before we did.

@Afaar I'm sorry this happened to you. It seems they beat you to the punch and they may have done so unethically and, worst of all, they'll probably get away with it. If it is an ethics issue, then I think it's pure plagiarism. As people here know, I'm pretty loose about defining plagiarism. But this case could be pure plagiarism...pure theft.

So they submitted their paper before you submitted yours, but how about compared to when you uploaded the preprint?

We initially presented the results at a conference. They submitted their paper a week after the conference (we know that some of the authors were at the conference). We only uploaded the preprint and submitted the paper about a month after the conference.

They achieved their results in an independent manner.... why wouldn't they try to publish it?? And you are assuming that you exposition somehow affected their work, which isn't necessarily true...

Is it even feasible that they performed their experiment(s) and composed and submitted a manuscript to a journal in the span of one week?

In my opinion there is no scoop. Since they submitted one week after your presentation,  I cannot see how they might have generated the research, results, and paper in that 1 week. So, probably they were already working on it and had at least a draft. The fact that you knew they submitted a paper and 3 weeks later posted a preprint, suggests that you tried to "scoop" their already submitted paper.

This answer is under context that the OP's preprint was submitted primarily by him as a game piece in a competition with another group..

We uploaded the manuscript because we were scared of being scooped. We thought that by uploading the manuscript, it would make it impossible for another group to publish the same results.

This answer uses the context that two or more groups were working on similar measurements in competition, simultaneously and independently;  likely there was awareness of each other as the competition for this result; and that the only effect on group B (if they even saw the preprint) is 'lighting a fire' under someone to finish the write up the results to try to either beat a submission date to publication (just in case the OP's preprint was prematurely posted to try to bluff the competition) or to try to show how close both groups were in time and get an 'also ran' credit. Notice that there was no mention of which group thought of these experiments first, or giving credit for the ideas.
Yes, It is ethical for group B to submit a paper for work done independently even knowing that there is a 'preprint' floating around from group A who appear completing their independent results simultaneously. Most of the fixup would occur after one or the other published articles appear.
Giving everyone in this particular situation the benefit of doubt; a solid assumption is that each group expects the other to submit any solid results for publication.  (and that both would prefer the published articles to be citation-of-record).
It might be nice to cite a preprint in this case as a placeholder. But, the real issue occurs when the first paper gets  'in print' and the still-waiting group can compare submission dates. Will group A or group B do their duty?  (As it turns out from additional comments in the OP's post, group B submitted their work  before the OP's preprint appeared.. The OP should add a citation to group B in his in-review paper.).
To expect the preprint to be treated as the priority game changer between the two groups in this very artificial situation  is not fair. It was posted as a game-piece in the race to establish priority between neck-and-neck groups doing the same experiment. Either group here could have abused a preprint posting (e.g., putting something out that is not 'ready' or full of minor  or major errors to establish claims like a patent troll) and then fixing it up in a later version.
If we are using traditions still mostly in play, when it is a 'race' for priority, what will count to the community in establishing priority is when was the paper submitted to the journal.  (If someone tries to publish to early, and their work is not ready, there is chance it will get rejected, giving some checks and balances)
Finally -Journals will care about the submission date, not a preprint posting date.  OP's paper is still in review, with group B's paper appearing first. It is usually is not a reason to reject group A's paper. Group B's paper had not appeared when the referees started reviewing. Traditionally, what would happen when the dust settles is that group A and/or group B's paper would add citation or corrigendum.
Pretty much for everyone else, if two papers with similar important results appear about the same time, they both will be cited more or less equally and/or together.
The moral being, (in this case) that if one is worried about establishing priority in a race and trying all possible gambits, the (ready to publish) paper should be submitted for publication immediately after being posted on preprint server. Then it has what protections are currently possible under traditional model and any newly evolving models.
*I likely will get negative comments saying that I imply to 'ignore at will citing or acknowledging unpublished (but reliable) preprints'. (No, I am not). But this case seems to be about independent, simultaneous competition where the preprint was used by group A to either 1) pretend they had already had version ready to be submitted for publication to psych out competitors from submitting their own, or 2) indicate to community that version was just submitted for publication and anyone who thereafter submitted would not have the priority when the dust settled.*
In clarification - in later comments to the original posted questions,  here is timeline deduced after my original answer was created.

Group A (the OP) and group B at conference in their subfield.
OP or member of group A shows their results in their presentation. From OP's comments, it is pretty clear that any 'published' conference abstracts available before or after conference do not present any details of results (which usually means that presentations standard may be  work-in-progress - no one in audience is going to complain or ask for a 'talk' retraction later if results or understanding evolves between talk and a final publication.
Group B submitted their work for publication without sending a preprint to the OP (or posting a preprint on public server).
OP submits a preprint a few weeks or month later. They make Group B aware of the preprint.
OP submits preprint for publication (time delay between preprint and submission unknown)
Group B's previously submitted paper appears in print.
OP becomes aware of Group B's paper .
OP asks question to stack exchange (because no matter what, it is a very disappointing to feel as if you were scooped)

On bright side, We have important results corroborated within a short time from two independent groups. Others in the field will cite both with with confidence.

EDITS 1
1) Numerous edits/rearrangements to articulate reasoning related to original posting which is neglectful of the preprint rights in this particular case focusing on group B actions. (I'd appreciate hints on how to clarify, as the negative comments are focused on preprints being neglected as a general class of published goodness )
2) Added the timeline from OPs additional comments. Basically group B never saw preprint before submitting their own paper because it did not exist then.

While it may be standard practice, I strongly disagree with the claim that it is ethical to ignore preprints because they are preprints.  If someone has reported research in any form, whether a preprint, a PhD thesis, or even a blog post, then that research has been reported and (if relevant) must be cited as prior work.  It's fine to cite it as preliminary work ("Affar et al describe a similar methodology in their ongoing research.")  it's fine to ignore it if the content is insufficiently convincing.  But ignoring known prior work because it is not formally published is dishonest.

-1 You are contradicting yourself by "Then it is protected under both the traditional model and any newly evolving model of establishing priority.". What if the paper gets rejected? Then according your words, the preprint does not matter and therefore it does not establish priority.

@JeffE, I agree in general, but also am trying to articulate otherwise because my impression from OP is two groups who likely know that they are competing to get priority for a result before the other- within a matter of weeks or a month - the potential unsympathetic interpretation is one group putting up a preprint to 'block' another group publishing, why would they think it blocks groupB from publishing? Is it because the hope was that the preprint pretends a priority that isn't there? (if it wasn't submitted pretty immediately, then what does that say about the work as put in the preprint.

#JeffE I will try to think of alternate wording, as I agree that using words that it is 'ethical to ignore a preprint' sound like fighting word that have the negative comments focusing on that rather than what else is written.

@Alexandros, Yes, in the old days, if paper A is rejected, then A loses priority to the B if B published. The assumption being that there are probably good reasons for rejection and that group A rushing when they were not ready. For the majority of cases,( in my field) its usually between groups in friendly competition or not, and outside of really 'hot' topic, no one cares much about A and B. For the big things, it usually seems eventually retrospective/review papers or newspaper background papers/books or such will run through other bits (He said at seminar, sent preprint to XXX, ...)

my impression from OP is two groups who likely know that they are competing to get priority for a result before the other- within a matter of weeks or a month — So what? Science is not a horse race. Two groups independently reaching the same results within a month of each other arguably deserve joint credit. — if it wasn't submitted pretty immediately, then what does that say about the work as put in the preprint — It says it wasn't submitted immediately. And that's all it says.  Journals do not give research legitimacy; it's the other way around.

@JeffE I agree, but this was a horse race between these two groups. Without knowing how 'important' the result was, usually, in my field, we'd likely be citing both papers if we needed to cite the results for some reason. I'm not arguing how other people will cite the results, just about the two groups who are working (and knowing) in competition with each other. That what the OP said for why he posted the preprint. Not to get the results to the field, but to block someone else publishing.

Thank you Carol for the great answer. I think that you have hit the nail on the head. The situation is as you describe with both of us being aware of each other's work, but us submitting later (though with a more comprehensive analysis). Just to clarify that we submitted the paper more or less at the same time as uploading the preprint. I just hope now that the journal we submitted to will not revise their view on our paper due to the other paper appearing (which is my worry).

@Ataar, I probably went overboard trying to put forth really detailed explanations. As Jessica B's nice short answer notes, it would be commonly accepted practice in the usual competitive 'hot topic' fields as long as the time delay isn't egregious. A more comprehensive paper (better!) on hot result that was under review at the same time as the competing group wouldn't get rejected in my experience (in physics) just because the competing one got 'out' first. (although groups will make choices of where to publish something if one journal is faster venue.).

Do you know that they were aware of the preprint? Scoops are bound to be common if many groups are working on the same problem or starting to flesh out a new area with lots of low-hanging fruit. If they were aware of your preprint, and you can prove it, they should have cited your preprint at the very least, and you might get them to publish an errata with the citation. But, if they didn't know about it, they got there first, and you'll just have to accept that.

Yes, they knew about the preprint. I have emails confirming that. They did not cite the preprint though.

You might ask them to make a correction citing the pre-print now.

The OP said above that the other group submitted their paper a week after some conference, while the OP's preprint and paper were submitted 3 weeks after that. I don't believe they are obliged to cite your preprint. When the submitted the paper, there was no preprint.

This might depend on field, but it is not uncommon for two papers to appear on the same thing at pretty much the same time, and both might reasonably be published. In my experience, if a preprint appears on something someone else is writing, they will post theirs as soon as possible, to make it (reasonably) clear that their work is independent (preprints are standard in my field, although some papers are published without preprints being available).
If the paper appeared while yours was under review, and no preprint was available before (showing, for example, that they actually got the result two years before you), it is clear to the journal you submitted to that your work is independent. My expectation would be for yours to be treated as it would have been, but then but if accepted you would include a sentence pointing out that the other work was independent (and published while yours was under review, maybe).
If your paper is rejected by the journal you submitted to, you may find it hard to get it published elsewhere, if the time-lag between the two papers becomes too large.

I would say, let the review of your paper go forward.   If it is rejected because of the other paper, well that's what happens sometimes.  But maybe it will be accepted anyway.  The decision is up to the journal editor.  I don't know what this paper is about, but in some fields, replication of results is sometimes useful.
If your paper is published, maybe you can add a note to it about the other paper, and saying they were independent.  Maybe even casually mention the date your preprint was on-line.

If the preprint was publicly available before, there should be no reason to reject it solely "because of the other paper". If, as OP said in the comments, the two teams got the results independently, then both papers are valid and relevant.

@what_academia in my field preprints do not could as prior publication, but a prior publication, either by you or someone else, is grounds for rejection.

@StrongBad That sounds more like sports with formal rules than academic research. Not counting a prior publication as a prior publication because it appeared in a wrong venue is just silly.