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Is it plagiarism if someone attends your talk and then writes a paper about your ideas?
6 months ago I presented a talk describing some research I had been doing and presenting some half finished results. Ive since discovered that one of the attendees took my idea from the talk and decided to pursue the same research project, albeit in a slightly different (but very similar) way. In the end, I uploaded to the arXiv first but we will be submitting to the same conference. One of the authors admitted in writing that they started working on the project after attending my talk. It feels unfair and like my idea has been taken and presented as someone else's, but is this plagiarism?

As you explain, the answer is   yes, But i suspect that some details are missing, Too obvious.

It's certainly ungenerous and rude for that other party not to mention that your talk was at least part of the source of the idea.

When you say "One of the authors admitted in writing that they started working on the project after attending my talk", does this mean that they wrote this within their article in question, or somewhere else?

Isn't this essentially what happened with Erdős and Selberg and the Erdős-Selberg proof of the prime number theorem?

You didn't mention whether the authors of that other paper cited your talk in their paper. One of the key measures of success in academia is how often one's works are cited. So if they cited you, that's a good thing for you. It's only a problem if they didn't cite your work.

If I knew this was in pure math I might give one answer.  If I knew this was a experimental science I might give another.

Why did you give the talk if you are afraid that someone will hear it?

If your talk merely inspired someone to work on the same problem, but using a completely different approach, then that certainly isn't plagiarism: an acknowledgement would be courteous, but not essential. If you suggested an approach to solving the problem and they followed up on that suggestion, then a failure to acknowledge it would be discourteous, but again, not plagiarism. Plagiarism means presenting your work as their own; Building on your ideas is not plagiarism.

The whole purpose of conferences and talks is to disseminate ideas and knowledge. In some sense, if you had published on the topic and someone else picked up the ideas and used them in a different context, you would probably feel pleased to hear about it. You feel differently because you happened to not have written a publication on the topic, but that's not the other person's fault -- they did what the purpose of talks is: They learned from others and are using the knowledge.
I fail to see that that is wrong. How long would you like others to hold on with using the knowledge that you presented to them before they can use it themselves?

Agree, if you don't want someone to use your ideas then don't discuss them in open forums. Others may come up with the same idea regardless, so need to get them published (or at least up on arXiv) asap to be cited/credited.

Even if it is a rough outline, it still needs to be cited. You cannot just lift substantial ideas from a talk without attribution. The fact that this is not on paper does not relieve the 'ursupers' from the responsibility to cite or acknowledge where they got their ideas from. This is plagiarism, albeit harder to prove than if the ideas were published. Though I agree with Buffy that it might be better to collaborate (assuming they are happy to, which they may not be).

@CaptainEmacs The OP does not actually say whether the other preprint cites anyone. (There is of course the issue that at the time of writing there was nothing to cite -- though there are other ways of pointing to the fact that something builds on others' work.)

@WolfgangBangerth Since OP does not mention it, I assume from the question it's not there. It would be far more borderline (and interesting) if it were, so I assume it's not. As for credit "The idea of wringing sausages through dirty socks was first brought up by John Smith at the Household Optimization conference in July 2022." It does not require much imagination to give even just minimal credit. What's more likely is that the "ursupers" heard the idea, forgot about it, remembered the idea without the origin, and then "nostrified" it without outright malicious intent. Happens a lot.

One can cite even a private conversation, as long as basic ethical standards are met.

I’m really shocked by this answer.  Using the results like you would from a paper is fine — but jumping straight into someone’s work-in-progress is seen (in my experience in pure maths) as quite unethical, since it has a clear chilling effect — people get discouraged from discussing their work-in-progress by the fear of being “scooped”.  I’d articulate the criterion roughly as: Say I attend X’s talk and it sparks an idea. When X writes up this work, could my idea overlap substantially with that paper? If this seems likely, then I wouldn’t pursue the idea without contacting X.

Disseminating ideas for others to utilize and develop, not for others to pass off as their own or mostly-their-own.

@PLL You seems to imply that the time between sparking of an idea to some important theorem is quite short. Typically, a lot of work is required. If it is so easy to over perform the OP, the idea seems to be rather trivial. Who cares who published some inessential theorem faster?

@yarchik: The issue is that the time to develop and write up work can vary a lot, for many reasons: How experienced a researcher is, how they’re dividing their time with other things, how thoughtfully they want to explore the consequences. Very often, an expert hearing a grad student’s talk can see a few steps ahead, and could (if they focused for a few weeks) work those steps out much faster than the student, and publish some results. You can dismiss this off as “some inessential theorems” but if they’re part of a student’s PhD project it can be devastating.

@PLL agreed, it has been common practice in my field (biology) for people to only present work at a very late stage in the publication process precisely for the reasons you suggest. This is obviously not an option for very early career researchers who don't have a "backlog" of completed work and must present genuine work in progress; if a more established researcher wanted to "take inspiration" from their talk, they would often have more manpower and equipment at their disposal to repeat the work more quickly - something that has absolutely happened to people I know.

All, the OP has not given any details about the other paper, neither in the question nor in any comments. We really can't know, all we can know is this: The purpose of giving talks is to disseminate knowledge. If you don't want others to use what you have come up with, don't give talks.

It is plagiarism if they present your ideas as their own. If they give you credit in some way then it isn't plagiarism, even if it isn't very courteous. Plagiarism is about the proper attribution of ideas. Citation is the way to avoid it. In this case, not enough is known here to make a real judgement, and, you say, they took them in a different direction.
Perhaps you have an opportunity, however, to work with them on these ideas jointly so that attribution is no longer an issue.
Note that you don't "own" ideas. Plagiarism isn't really about "stealing" what another "owns". It is a concept in scholarship that creators should be recognized.

Caveat: Laws vary and I've heard that some forms of plagiarism might be illegal in some places, but that isn't the norm.

+1 for "Perhaps you have an opportunity, however, to work with them on these ideas jointly so that attribution is no longer an issue."  You could lose an enemy and gain a coauthor by doing this.

I wonder if this would be a researcher you'd want to collaborate with. Without further details, they seem like the kind of person to act unethically.

@DrakeP perhaps - or perhaps they just thought the research was enough of a different direction to not interfere with OP's own research. imo talking to them about it is the best course of action to figure out how they are thinking about this.

And one should note it may be quite unethical even if it's not plagiarism. Not just discourteous.

The National Science Foundation Research Misconduct regulation defines plagiarism as the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results or words without giving appropriate credit. I cite this source as one of many using the same formulation. Here it is clear it is also the idea that is the property of the "inventor", the persons intellectual property. And strictly based on that statement it seems like a clear case of property theft or plagiarism IF the source of the original idea is not given credit.
To take someones idea and develop it further is not in itself a problem, it is how science works. What is a problem is if the origin of an idea is not ones own and is not credited. Then it is intellectual property theft and something a reasearcher should avoid at all cost. What can be done in the individual case becomes a question of what one is willing to endure. An article based on the idea could be questioned by writing to the journal editor and explaining the case. In thge specific case where it seems two papers originating from the same idea will be published, it will depend on how "the other" paper presents the original idea and then something for the proceedings (equiv.) editor(s) to consider.
Plagiarism and intellectual property issues are issues of ethics.

I like that there are 2 different meanings of (a form of the word) "appropriate" in the NSF's definition.

I think you are using the term "intellectual property" very loosely and inaccurately. It is a legal term and has a precise meaning. An "idea" is only intellectual property if a patent application has been filed. The expression of an idea (a written paper or a recording of a talk) is intellectual property because it is protected by copyright, but copyright only prevents copying the words, not making use of the ideas.

´@MichaelKay I do not think you are corect and you do not provide an reference in support.l Of course, intellectual property is not a universal law since it requires governments globally to adhere to the idea. There are states that clearly violate this idea and as such make the idea void and of no significance. So please clarify your standpoint and provide support for your statement, it could even be a worthwhile response to the original question.

Reach out to them and ask them to cite your paper, as you suspect to be the source of one of their ideas.
As you know their paper exists, you have to cite them as well. Less because it is their idea, more to cover that others are working on this topic, too.

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Editor rejected my paper stating that reviewers had refused to review it long after submission; How can I understand what is wrong with my paper?
I am having very  frustrated at the turn of events and review process. I had sent a paper to an International Journal. The paper was based on my work and well received by PhD committee of my Institute. The paper was submitted 3 years back. The paper was in status "Editor Assigned" for 6 months. After that its status changed to "Under Review". After 9 months in this status (15 months after submission date), I sent a polite mail to editor asking about how much time it will take to complete review? There was no response. After I month similar gentle mail was sent. There was no response. After month, I again sent query (18 months after submission). At that Editor replied saying that they could not review the paper as assigned reviewers either refuse to review or did not agree to review. The paper was rejected after 18 months without any review comment.
So how does one know where it requires improvement? If paper was not of required quality why they kept with them for so long?
I feel that it is wrongly rejected.
Is it correct answer?
How can it show status as Under Review and then Editor says no Reviewer did not accept or refuse. My understanding is that paper goes in "Under Review" state only after "Reviewer" accepts to review. So what would have happened? Why Editor requires 3 months just to tell the status and comes back with mail like this? Editor did not bother reply to mail. Is it that he got angry because of persistent queries.
I had even worst experience with next Journal. The paper was submitted and it remained in status "With Editor" for 9 months. Wiser by experience, I asked Editor about status? After persisting with it for about 2 more months, Chief Editor said that they rejected paper based on quick review as paper is not suitable to Journal as it does not meet its criteria like Originality, Depth etc. Again there no review comments about improvement.
It is not sour grape, I do feel that around 60% papers in that Journal do not possess these qualities and have been published in 6-8 months (after revision).
If paper is not of required standard, they could have rejected in 2-3 months, why it took them such long time. If I would not have sent mail, probably it would have remained with them for long time. This work is now 3 years old not published anywhere and I even do not know what to do to improve. I am feeling very bad and really do not know what to do?
What would happened? Is it wrong to ask editors about status even after 9 months or year? Our University requires two Journal publication for PhD thesis submission and really do not what to do?
Many friends are suggesting that publish in Open Access Journals.

Please read Take a deep breath before writing and [edit] your post accordingly.

Please use paragraphs. The "Chief Editor said ...paper is not suitable to Journal as it does not meet its criteria like Originality, Depth etc" This is a huge red flag that probably the paper is not good enough (by far) at the journals you are trying to submit it to.

Why it should take 9 months to decide that?

@Alexandros: Or the paper may have been sent to the wrong journal. A year or more under review without any sort of feedback is completely unacceptable.

Wow, I can feel your frustration, for otherwise the question is written with more readability. I guess asking a handling editor politely would not result in the result. There are too many factors to allow anyone to conclude... Forget it and move on.

We could have a better understanding of your situation if you pasted the exact wording used by the editors of both journals (editing out what could identify you or the journal).

Your post has a lot of question marks.  Which question are you asking us?

"Many friends are suggesting that publish in Open Access Journals." - Have those "many friends" successfully completed their PhD in the same department as you, and (if available) does anyone who has the role of an advisor in your PhD recommend the same?

Not to sound harsh, but if the journal is in English...your lack of proficiency might be the issue. The few short paragraphs you wrote are barely high school level.

I think before you submit to any journal you have to be aware of the expected duration of the revision. Depending on that you can contact the editor. There are some very specific fields that the editors have difficulty to find proper reviewers. As you know, without proper reviewers it is not possible to give you any feedback about your paper.

It is very bad news for an youth researcher. I can understand it but unfortunately we have to accept it. I know it is difficult to accept such situations.

The delays you mention are really excessive (note: I feel that way even though I am a mathematician), and your anger is quite deserved for that.
From what I heard from editors I know, it can happen that a paper is sent to successive referees who decline to referee, or worse accept and then don't do the job and do not respond to queries. At some point, the editor have to either do a referee's job themselves, which usually do not happen, or reject the paper. Usually, this happen with papers that are not clearly wrong or uninteresting, but that are difficult to read and do not really interest the tentative referees. In some case, you can have better result by submitting to a different, e.g. more specialized journal.
In your case, what bothers me is that being in a PhD, you have an advisor. What does she think of the paper? If there is no obvious problem in it, did you submit to journal suggested by her? On what ground? Is it possible that your institute, whose PhD committee you says received your work well, has much lower standards than international journals?
In any case, the only effective answer to your question is: seek feedback from a knowledgeable individual. It could be your advisor, but if needed it could also be another senior researcher in your field and institute, or even someone working elsewhere in your field. The closer the better, as it increase the probability of getting the feedback and the probability that it will be honest.
Last, as already mentioned, open access journal can be as toughly selective as subscription journals, and should not be considered easy shots when everything else has failed. I would not recommend submitting to a shady journal, let alone an OA one since shady OA journal often charge several hundred of dollars for publication.

Note that not all open access journals charge high publishing fees. I'd suggest rephrasing the last sentence of your answer accordingly.

@a3nm: I never heard of a shady OA journal not charging at least in the hundreds of dollars, but I may just not know about them. I do know good OA journal which do not charge authors, I will thus edit to avoid confusion.

oh, sure, I was also thinking of reputable OA journals

I think before one has done a significant amount of reviewing and some amount of editing, it is not easy to understand journal decisions. But one receives regularly papers that are not outstanding in quality and borderline in topic, but not borderline enough to warrant a desk rejection, where it can be quite excruciating to find reviewers who are prepared to do the job. It is not easy to convey to an author that their work is possibly (I do not claim that this is the OP's case) mediocre, uninteresting etc. until one has seen the whole spectrum of good, strong, excellent, brilliant papers.

I have had this happen a couple of times. In my case it meant that the paper was incomprehensible, and the referee(s) couldn't figure out what to make of it. The solution was to rewrite the papers in question and break them up into pieces, and more generally work on the exposition. Eventually I got all the work accepted into journals although it took a few years to sort everything out.
Another possibility I suppose is that you are a "crackpot" and your writeups were technical gibberish. But I will give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume that this is not the case. At any rate, if you are a crackpot nothing we say here is going to really help anyhow :)

Even so, you ought to receive a review response saying that it was incomprehensible.  Perhaps something along the lines of "It is not clear how the method disclosed could be applied to the motivating scenario" or something similar.

I suspect that most crackpots whose writeups are technical gibberish get their papers rejected much faster.

@BenVoigt You would think so but I have heard reports that some referees at top journals will sometimes just disregard papers which they feel are gibberish and therefore that they were unreasonably asked to referee.

I would not say your manuscript is wrongly rejected. What I would say is that it should perhaps not have taken such a long time.I can see many reasons for the delay, all dealing with personal issues, some understandable and some not so. Sometimes you just have to live with it. So the real problem here seems to be a lack of response as to why exactly the manuscript was rejected. It could be low quality, it could be out of scope and thus very different reasons. I think it would be only fair to ask the editor for a clarification, based on the fact that you accept the rejection and wish to see how it can be improved.
I think a journal should provide feedback on reasons for a rejection but also note that the reasons one journal rejects the manuscript may not be the same reasons another journal does so, if, for example, the reasons for rejection is "out of topic". So trying to get a sense of the reasons may be key to how you should proceed.
Another, to me, obvious way forward is to have a peer look at your manuscript so that you get feedback that can help you decide how to proceed.
Finally, Open Access is not equal to easy to publish. Yes, there are murky waters where shady open access publishers reside but you need to chose your journal with some care., Having a publication in a low quality or even dubious journal will not be of much use to you. So Open Access is not an either or choice but one of the alternatives and chosing the right journal includes also Open Access journals.

I happen to be an editor for a new Open Access journal. I concur with the the general sentiment of the other commentators. I have had similar things happen to me before as well. One Editor flat-rejected a paper of mine on the grounds that "there were already a lot of papers on that subject", even though I had conducted an exhaustive search and even enlisted the help of my school library team and we could not find even one.
The biggest advice I can give you is this; whether you choose a traditional journal, or an Open Access journal, they should have their guidelines clear. In their submission guidelines section they should clearly enumerate what fees are involved, if any. Many Open Access journals like mine don't charge a fee to read or publish. They should also clearly explain the turn around time from the editors. Some journals are published Quarterly so a review period of several months is common, but I have seen many journals with a turn around time of 4-6 weeks. The journal should also clearly explain the review process. For example, in my journal, I first quickly review the article for topic-fit to the journal. If the submission is within scope, then it is submitted to two different reviewers who conduct a double-blind review. At least one reviewer is a methodology expert and at least one is a content expert. The helps to ensure that the article is accurate. We also explain clearly what the outcomes are and what each one means. This is also a pretty common practice. If it is taking that long and the articles are being rejected by the reviewers then it sounds like either: 1. the journal you submitted to doesn't have a very large pool of reviewers, 2. the journal editor has too many submission to handle and is overwhelmed, or 3. the journal editor isn't going through and keeping the list of reviewers clean and is trying to assign articles to inactive reviewers.
In any event, don't get discouraged, just look for a different journal and try again. Check to see when the journal published an issue last and if they have their policies spelled out on the site. Good luck!

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How can someone be a co-author in a paper by just presenting undocumented evidence?
This recent paper is about birds of prey spreading fires. Some of the co-authors are firefighters which basically tell their personal experience as eyewitnesses to the behavior of these birds but do not present any hard evidence.
How can this be considered enough for co-authorship? Is this an accepted practice in social sciences?

Can you link to the statement of work? I can’t find a breakdown of what each author contributed.

Is this question really about authorship or are you complaining about their scientific methods? I don't see any indication in the article that those co-authors' only contributions to the manuscript were their observations, and there are other observers mentioned who are not co-authors. I might have missed something since I did not fully read the linked work.

Eyewitness accounts are not evidence?

I'm voting to close because I don't think this question is actually about authorship at all, it seems to be a critique of a paper. I'll retract my close vote if the OP is able to clarify.

Eyewitness accounts are exactly hard evidence, no?

@JonCuster How is a eyewitness account reproducible since it doesn't lead to anything more than a story anybody could make up?

@HermanToothrot where did Jon say anything about reproducibility?

@HermanToothrot - I'm the only person in the lab. I read a meter, write down the reading in a notebook, and publish results based on the meter reading. I'm in a forest. I see an animal doing something, write that down in a notebook, and publish results based on what I saw. Very little science is performed in front of an independent audience - it is all eyewitness accounts.

@JonCuster Yes you have a point, that's why I was asking about social/behavioral science. However your two examples are not comparable, reading a meter in a lab is not the same as reporting an animal doing something. I should be able to get almost the same reading if I follow your methodology but a behavior could be a very rare event, so it's not all eyewitness accounts. So a bunch of people that have seen UFOs can write a paper and all be coauthors?

Clearly it would be better if they had pictures or film (haven't read the article, so I don't know). And lots of people do write papers about UFOs - they just aren't published in mainstream journals.

This comment thread makes it more and more clear that this is only disguised as a question of authorship.

@JonCuster you are missing the point, I was discussing reproducibility, results must be reproducible, even though now there is no time,money or interest to do that, it should be a part of the scientific method.

Well, this spring could well be a big fire season, so lots of interview potential of wild land firefighters. Just like astronomers studying novas have to wait for the next one...

I think the true answer depends on what the other co-authors think.  In my field and particularly for application-oriented papers and case studies, we often add industry representatives or clinical staffs as co-authors, even when they don't contribute much to the writing of the paper.
We do this because it fosters good relationships, demonstrates their facilitation of the analytical work, and (in our belief) is good a "people-practice."
For others, we simply list them in an 'acknowledgements' section with some comments.
It all depends.

It also recognizes them as "field observers" and their role in bringing the issue to the scientific community as worthy of study. Without them, in this case anyway, there would be no research, no paper.

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Are PhD students still employed by the University after their scholarships/fellowships have ended but they have not officially received their PhD?
Is being employed by a university during a PhD tied to receiving a salary/stipend/scholarship? Or am I considered an employee until I am awarded the PhD degree?
Because for the state I am considered unemployed, however I have finished my thesis but I am waiting for the PhD defense, so I think technically I am still considered affiliated with the University. I need to know this because I am filling paperwork for another job, and they want to know if I am currently employed or not. It seems a gray area situation.

If you are employed by the university, don't you have a contract?

Following from @MichaelBlondin, answers (to the first two questions) will surely depend on that contract and any local employment laws. But your first two questions don't really seem to be what you actually want to know, you surely just need to know what to write on the job application. Just list yourself as afilliated with the university, you are surely still enrolled as student, so that seems fine. (You may want to edit to add a third question at the end.)

This is strongly dependent on the country and the university.  It may even differ per individual.  Only your university can answer this question.

@MichaelBlondin: Not in the US.

In my country (and in most, I would assume), being employed in any legal sense is tied to receiving some sort of payment.

In the UK, PhD students are not considered employees of the university at any point, before or after submission of thesis or expiration of funding.

They are nonetheless affiliated with their university.

I would say that if you were asked if you were still a PhD student, the answer is yes. However, the question of employment should hinge on payment. If you’re not receiving any money from the school, then you are not employed by them. (Moreover, if you are officially recognized as unemployed, that should already be a bit of a clue as to what you should say to a potential employer.)

Yes and no, it's a very grey area, because I still have a university email, and access to VPN.


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What is the advantage of having a 'doctor europaeus' certified doctorate degree?
Universities in European Union countries have the possibility of issuing a PhD degree that is certified as "doctor europaeus" if the PhD student fulfills a certain list of 4 requirements, although this university reports a slightly different list of requirements.
Regardless of the requirements, is there any advantage of having such certification? I am referring to practical advantages, for example a certified degree can be accepted in other EU countries with less bureaucracy. And career advantages (for example more prestige or points gained in postdoc grant applications).

@MJeffryes that question asks what is a european doctorate, I want to know what and if there are any advantages, it's quite clear in my question.

The world, and also academia, is full of people who stop questioning anything if it's got the label "european" tagged to it, while those who still use their brains likely won't hold that extra title against you. So i guess the net effect will surely be positive.


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Does recording video of a scientific presentation violate the privacy of a PhD student?
The answers to this popular question were somewhat controversial, but many including @dan-romik whose answer was highly upvoted mentioned that recording a video is a violation of personal privacy and in the US, Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
I neither can speak for the OP of that question nor approve his/approach, but the strong stance regarding personal privacy puzzled me. The mentioned question says

We have a youtube channel in which students regularly explain their
  achievements.

Point 1: Can the reports of a PhD student recorded in video format?

A PhD student normally delivers reports of progress to the
supervisor. This report can be in verbal or written form.
I do not see any problem (including privacy) if the supervisor asks
the PhD student to deliver his/her report in video format.
Alternatively, the supervisor may ask the PhD student to deliver a
public lecture in the department. Since it is a public lecture,
anyone can record the presentation unless otherwise strictly stated
by the organiser.
Similarly, the progress could be presented at a conference. Many
conferences record the presentations.

Point 2: Can a supervisor share the presentations of a PhD student?

A research report is not intended for the supervisor's eyes only. An
educator cannot share the exam sheet of a student (according to
FERP), but the story is completely different for a research report.
The supervisor can/will directly use that report to report to the
funding agency who funded the PhD project in the first place.
The progress report is not only the progress of PhD student but the
work done in the supervisor's group. Therefore, it is not odd for the
supervisor to post the report publicly (e.g., the university website,
researchgate, etc).

Conclusion: Is video different from writing?
For centuries, academics presented their works in both oral and writing formats. Thanks to Johannes Gutenberg, writings are well recorded for centuries. However, video recording of the presentations is new, a few decades of recording, and one decade of sharing.
As a straightforward question, can someone refuse to appear in any recording because of personal privacy? This can apply to the PhD defence meeting too, as some universities record its video to be stored along with the written dissertation.

Since it is a public lecture, anyone can record the presentation unless otherwise strictly stated by the organiser: Everywhere I've ever been has strictly forbidden the recording of any lecture etc. This is the default.

@Marianne013 Who can stop the audience to turn the voice recorder (of their mobile phones) in their pockets? Many conferences have the live stream or share the videos after the conference (take a look at Youtube).

@Marianne013 By the way, even in theatre and music concerts, which are non-free copyrighted materials, nobody can stop the audience from recording and sharing. An academic pays the registration fee to come and share its content.

You can do all kinds of morally, ethically or legally wrong things without people noticing. Doesn´t make it less wrong.

@JayFromA You saw the case from the opposite angle. The example was not about recording a presentation. I said if you present your work at a conference, you know it might be officially or unofficially recorded and shared.

@Googlebot "An academic pays the registration fee to come and share its content." No, I don't believe that last part is true. Do you have anything to back this up? Every conference I have been to where talks were recorded, authors presenting were asked for a consent form. And regardless of whether you paid the fee to attend, certainly you are not allowed to freely share the proceedings of the conference (unless, say, the conference itself makes them freely available).

@ClementC. I meant academics present their works at a conference because they want to share. The organisers get the profit, not the academics. Otherwise, speakers have no problem if the audience get the content free of charge. It is like publishing in journals. The subscribers should pay to read the content, but it is the business model of the publisher. Authors prefer if the contents are freely available (if the journal can maintain its quality without revenue). On the contrary, musicians come on the stage to sell their art. They prefer paying audience, but academics don't (generally)!

This appears to be a legal question.  We can't offer legal advice.  Perhaps the experts at [Law.SE] are better placed to answer this?

@gerrit I doubt if there is a legal ground for this matter. What puzzled me is the strong and confident stance of several academics (I assumed) in response to the linked question. If many believe this way, it should be a common practice.

This seems like an interesting question, but can you edit it to clarify what you’re asking, and limit it to one or two very specific and related questions? As it is, it’s difficult to understand the source of your confusion and what you want to know exactly. Are you asking about the law (if so, where)? Ethics? Etc.

@DanRomik In points 1 & 2, I tried to articulate my perception from the discussions made in the mentioned question. The conclusion is my question: if presenting in front of the camera different from writing for an academic in terms of personal privacy. Academics used to deliver lectures and write papers from ancient times, but publishing is older than video recording. Are they different in nature? Or the latter has not become a norm yet. I appreciate if you have any suggestion to tidy up the question. Believe it or not, I spent too much time to articulate it in a readable format :)

I don’t have suggestions, sorry, but I find the question unanswerable in its present form (other than a trivial “yes” to “are they different in nature?”).

@DanRomik how do you justify "yes"? We write and present orally, the former was recorded historically, the means for recording the latter is new. If we present something publicly, it will be recorded one way or another in the digital era. If you go to a public place, you will likely appear in the pictures or videos taken by some tourists. It's not an explicit comparison, but my point is that we cannot deny that we are recorded. And I think a PhD student cannot object recording his defence on the ground of privacy if it is the university norm/regulation. A possible answer is, "No, s/he can",

I think this question is missing the important part that the videos were made to be uploaded to YouTube.

EDIT: This post has been restructured into a clear answer, rather than the discussion format it was originally in. Thank you Stella Biderman.

Recording a video of a scientific presentation by itself need not be an invasion of privacy. The invasion comes if and when the video is shared, depending on the nature of sharing medium, the control over shared content and agency to withdraw/clarify one's statement.
A departmental talk may be recorded for internal review. A conference talk may be officially recorded (though I have never seen this personally). As long as these are not shared, and are stored for internal use (quality control, archive, proof of the event), privacy is not invaded. Even so, many individuals may find this distasteful, uncomfortable and even repulsive. This should be respected to the extent possible.
Personal choice is crucial. A conference is certainly a (restricted) public presentation, but presenters go there voluntarily. If someone wants to go on YouTube, that's fine. But nobody is allowed to make them go there. The concern of agency is also important- does the presenter have the right to retract or clarify their stand? Once on social media, it is near-impossible to issue 'errata' or pull something down once people start sharing it.
Yes, video is different from writing.
The medium is of crucial importance, because it determines how the content is disseminated. A journal paper is restricted to subscribers (let's leave illegal downloads out of all discussions).  An open access paper is open to all, but typically accessed by those with a prior interest. Both have restrictions on how it can be further shared and used. This is not the case with videos on social media. Those are seen by a mixed population with different levels of interest. They can be shared very easily and without accountability. They lend themselves to defamatory and potentially abusive comments and unwanted, non-constructive scrutiny.
The nature of delivery determines the audience. YouTube is not an academic medium. Neither is a regular newspaper. Both are good for certain purposes, both may be used for outreach and even educational purposes, but are sub-optimal for sharing research. The packaging of academic content to make it engaging to the general public is a serious and involved matter, which should be handled by dedicated workers with necessary expertise. A typical PhD student is not expected to have this expertise. (After all, how many academics after Feynman do you know who did this on a large scale?)

Although I think that you are right, I think this answer would be greatly improved by leveraging your discussion to answer the question being asked.

With all due respect, your reasoning for the medium or possibility for errata is nonsense. Many journals are now open access and it has the requirement of many funding agencies. Limiting the readability of an article is neither privilege nor right for the authors. Errata is a conditional privilege. If your changes are significant, you have to withdraw your article, as you cannot modify a large portion. In any case, like videos, there is no guarantee that readers will notice the errata. Moreover, academics do not always have this privilege (in various reports and materials).

@Googlebot- You mention a series of disconnected objections that are more the exception than the rule. Let me tackle them one at a time. I specifically mentioned open access journals as an exception, possibly you didn't read the answer fully? The authors are not limiting readability (I think you mean access, readability is a characteristic of writing style), the medium is, which is my central point. Yes, errata are conditional - so what? Yes, authors may need to withdraw if changes are significant. Both of these are not available on social media due to it's very nature.

@Googlebot - The journal does it's best to make readers notice the errata by linking it for future downloads or displaying it in a sidebar. No guarantee that it will be read, that's true. But it's still a measure that's missing on a video-sharing platform. If in some reports academics do not have this privilege (I'm yet to come across one such), then those are exceptions again.


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Is it academic misconduct to post assignment solutions on public websites?
I belong to Computer Science background, and most of my assignments are programming based. I usually use Github(private repos) to maintain assignments during the semester. Since I only have limited private repos, I usually make the code public once the semester is over.  In a few subjects, the assignments remain same over semesters but usually the instructor use tools to check for plagiarism from previous submitted assignments for the new submissions.
Seeing this question, Are there universities that consider it academic misconduct for students to publish material created by faculty?. I became curious that whether posting solutions to assignments of courses comes under academic misconduct or dishonesty ?

Even if it does not the breach the letter of the rules (which might vary between universities), it is wise to ask your instructors.

possible duplicate of Are there universities that consider it academic misconduct for students to publish material created by faculty?

@BobBrown the programming assignment questions are from faculty or some online resource, but the solutions are entirely of my own.

@krammer: Then, if a faculty member should re-use an exercise, as you say happens, your having posted the solution would give others an unfair advantage and would be academic misconduct.

@BobBrown Disagree. See my answer below.

@krammer: So, if you posted the bare solutions, you haven't violated anyone's copyright.  If, OTOH, you posted problems with solutions, then you've violated the copyright of the person who wrote the problems.

I became curious that whether posting solutions to assignments of courses comes under academic misconduct or dishonesty ?

Generally, I would say that putting material online is not academic misconduct or dishonest. What is important in the question that you have linked is that the "dishonest" part for the student is not that he wanted to take material from the web (this may or may not be against the rules, but it is by itself not dishonest), but that he intended to pretend that he solved the assignments independently. Strictly speaking, I see it not as your responsibility to make sure that students that later on take inspiration from (or outright copy) your solution declare that they did so.
Of course, from a practical point of view, your behaviour may still be somewhat unpopular with your professors, as it clearly opens up additional venues for cheating for the next batches of students. Personally, as a lecturer, I was never bothered, because I strongly believe that you always need to assume that the solutions to an assignment that you "recycle" from the previous year are "out there" in one way or another. However, I know that other lecturers feel differently, so if you want to piss nobody off, you should check with the professors beforehand. In any way you should make sure that you are not uploading material that you do not possess the copyright for (for instance, lecture material or assignment descriptions).

At least where I teach, aiding another in committing misconduct is itself misconduct.

+1 for "assume it's out there one way or another." I know of a case where the TA was handed in their own program, since it had accidentally ended up visible and indexed by Google.  Needless to say, the cheater was instantly caught and faced disciplinary action.

@BobBrown By your rationale, anyone who puts any material online that might be of use to any student who isn't supposed to use online resources in completing an assignment, is committing misconduct.

@ff524: Incorrect.  By my rationale, anyone who puts on line solutions to specific homework problems is committing academic misconduct.


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How do journals and conferences verify if the results in paper are genuine
Most of the conferences and journals doesn't ask for code to be submitted along with the paper. How common is it to detect fake or incomplete results in such conference/journal review ? In my field of study in Computer Science, sometimes overwhelming claims are made in some papers, but since the field is still growing, how do reviewers/editors determine the authenticity of the results ? Is it common to ask for code or working demo in such cases.

Peer review ...

possible duplicate: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7602/what-should-raise-red-flags-to-detect-fabricated-data/7609#7609

The linked question is very related. But it seems a little more specific than this one.

Since you're referring to computer science, I'll talk about conferences. Peer review, as Dave Clarke mentions, is primarily how papers are scrutinized. But conference reviews are often on a severe time constraint. So for an experimental paper, the reviewer looks at the main ideas, sees if the experiments are convincing and handle the cases that the reviewer thinks are important, and evaluates the overall work for "general excitement". But the reviewer has no ability to check if the work is correct.
In a theoretical paper, a reviewer might skim proofs, and see if the main claims pass a "smell test". If the result is important, or surprising, the reviewer might try to verify key claims in detail, and expect the authors to argue why their techniques should work. But even there, no formal proof checking happens (that happens in the journal review).
Ultimately, there are two (imperfect) safeguards against incorrect claims:

author reputation - you don't want to get a rap for writing faulty papers
reproducibility - I might reproduce your work, or ask for your code, when writing my papers.


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When to publish and what to include in a work in progress?
I have often seen conferences which invite papers on "work in progress" or "work with not too mature results" along with the original and exhaustive research. So, when is it apt to present your work in such conferences as work in progress in terms of the expected level of maturity, implementation progress and results ?
My field of research is Computer Science.

Presenting work in progress on conferences is a good way to elicit a first discussion of your (preliminary) research results, to establish yourself in a new topic, or to claim first ground in a "hot" research area. The important thing to me seems to be that you are able to present at least some results. Research concepts and plans often do not yield good conference papers.
There's a number of ways in which results can be regarded as premature, such that you would want to present them as "work in progress". I'll give some of them without claim of completeness:
In empirical research:

Small amount of data compared to the standard in your field.
Contradictory results which prevent firm conclusions.
Low amount of replicates or additional supportive data for your conclusions.
Experimental setups which may not capture or control for relevant factors in the system you're looking at.

In theoretical research:

Restrictive assumptions which make a theory applicable to only a fraction of the relevant problems.
Evaluation of a method with a smaller or more restricted test case than what would be done usually.
Mathematical results from numerical experiments without a clear proof.
Missing steps in an implementation such that only partial results could be obtained.

In many cases, it is a difficult decision, whether you should publish preliminary results (in case they are publishable in principle) or rather wait until you get more complete results. It depends on how fast you want to publish something on the topic, whether you can quickly get more complete results or not, and probably a range of other factors which I didn't think of now.


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How to have confidence in my research?
I'm a PhD student at a reputed institution and in my 4th year now. I'm researching in the domain of information security & privacy.
I've got a number of good conference publications (4 conferences) but not in top conferences.
I attempted for the top conference (S&P or ACM CCS - their workshops as well) but my papers got rejected.
I'm writing my dissertation now, however, I still have this unsatisfied feeling that my work is not really good, it may have been the imposter syndrome. I feel that my work doesn't look as good as other people's (PhD students) work who are working in the same domain. I've got a few questions maybe some experienced researchers who have gone through can answer.

How do you know your PhD work is strong work?
How to gain confidence in your PhD work?
How to know if the main idea of PhD work is a good one? (How to
get rid of this feeling?)

Thank you for your help! :)

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/61194/how-can-a-new-phd-student-objectively-evaluate-how-well-they-are-doing?rq=1 https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/86124/how-do-i-know-how-well-i-am-progressing-in-my-phd?rq=1

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2219/how-should-i-deal-with-discouragement-as-a-graduate-student https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11765/ive-somehow-convinced-everyone-that-im-actually-good-at-this-how-to-effect https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/87668/how-do-you-come-to-terms-with-the-fact-that-you-might-never-be-among-the-best-in

I agree to a large degree with the previous answers, to my take on this issue is not to disagree, but to complement them with a somewhat different perspective.
It's really good if someone gets a Nobel prize for a PhD thesis, but remember that the primary purpose of a doctoral work is to demonstrate that you have mastered the craft of being a researcher. In practice it means that you chose a certain problem, made a thorough and rigorous analysis of the state of the art, advanced it to a certain degree, formulated your results and discussed potential impact in an appropriate manner.
A PhD thesis is not only a research, it is also a qualification work that should earn you an official "resarcher" badge. Thus one of the best advices to a PhD student is to stay focused on an goal attainable within a limited and relatively short time of their PhD program (I can recommend reading an excellent book "A PhD Is Not Enough" that discusses this issue among other things) instead of tryng to reach for the moon.
If you want to continue working in academia, you'll always have a chance to do something else. In general, I understand this whole system of impact, H-indices, etc., etc., but honestly speaking I tend to focus on my own interests and passions. The reason is that there are "fashionable" and "not so fashionable" topics, the topics that are relevant to many people and to few people, etc. These matters are important, but they are very indirectly related to scientific value of a particular task. If you enjoy what you are doing, it's already quite an achievement.

How do you know your PhD work is strong work?
How to know if the main idea of PhD work is a good one?

It is strong work if it makes an impact. This could be in terms of highlighting new techniques that get widely adopted, by winning awards, by getting published or by setting up a startup and making millions. A lot of people define success in many different ways. How do you define it? If your metric is publishing in good venues - then I suppose that you can answer your own question.
Your ideas are as good as what you make of them, and as good as how others perceive them.

How to gain confidence in your PhD work?

You need to ask yourself why you're doing the PhD and have a realistic outlook. It is likely that without a good publication record you won't be able to land a strong academic position, but that's hardly the end of the world. There is massive demand out there for CS researchers in all sorts of positions.
What does your advisor say? Do they think your work is good and deserves publication in top venues, and it was just bad luck that plagued you? What do other figures of authority in the field think of your work?
As a general comment - you are getting the highest possible academic university qualification from a top school, in a highly competitive and popular field. And you feel inadequate? Say that last sentence out loud to yourself. You're anything but!
Good luck!


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Can a supervisor share the research reports of his/her PhD student?
In responses to the answers given to this question, I asked a question. From the answer to my question, I think the problem is rooted in different interpretations of the original question. Since I cannot speak for the OP, I simplify the case based on a logical interpretation (since my previous question has an answer, I cannot entirely change it, and ask a new question here).
Despite the controversial opinions, almost anyone considered the OP's strategy unreasonable or illegitimate.
Which of the following points is unreasonable or illegitimate?

The supervisor asks his/her PhD student to deliver a progress report every few months.
The supervisor instructs the PhD student to read his/her report in front of webcam instead of writing it on paper.
The supervisor shares the video reports of research projects undergoing in his/her group.

One may consider consent for the last step, but it is not the case, as the OP stated each PhD student initially agreed to the public release of the videos.
As I emphasised before I personally don't approve the OP's strategy, but don't understand what justifies such a strong attack to the OP.
My Understanding

Some people stressed that PhD students might not have the required skills. Since the OP did not mention video making, I interpret the task as "explaining their achievements" in front of the camera only.
Some said activities in the social networks is not the responsibility of the PhD students. Again, the OP said, "we have a youtube channel". Thus, I interpret, s/he edits and uploads the videos.

For what it's worth, I think at present and for nearly all fields of research your #2 would be a bad idea from a supervisory viewpoint, because you would not want to deprive your student of needed practice in being able to write technical prose well, something that will be needed later for writing papers, for writing grant proposals, for applying to jobs, for writing lecture notes, etc. And this also applies to various non-academic and non-research jobs, so it's hard for me to see the benefits for #2. But maybe it's OK for something like theater and performance studies, or 50 years from now?

@DaveLRenfro I agree with you as emphased that don't approve the OP's strategy but I don't understand why some consider it as illegitimate as asking a student to make coffee for his/her supervisor.

Yes, I've read all those answers and comments (even those moved to chat), so I think I understand your intention. Regarding your actual question, I'm not quite sure how I feel --- right now I think I'd want to know a lot more details about any such situation, because I can see myself somewhat supporting either side depending on the specifics involved --- but I did want to mention my gut reaction to #2 in case it's actually done somewhere.

@DaveLRenfro one point to add, #2 is not bad practice after all. Though written skill is of utmost importance, in my experience, PhD students more lack the skills for oral presentation. I have seen many well articulated dissertations with terrible presentations, but rarely the other way around.

After looking over various materials pertaining to FERPA (which was pointed at in the various questions/comments/answers), I'm having a hard time seeing how it would apply to work done by a student in the course of their research. The fact that the student is at the university would be considered 'directory information', which is not restricted by FERPA. The research work would not be considered an institutional record, so it would not be restricted by FERPA. But, I'm not a lawyer but am only reading the US Dept. of Education material on FERPA...


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How does Erasmus Programme work when the language of education is different?
How does an exchange student go to another country for a year when the language of education is different? Doesn't the exchange student attend any lecture or course during the visit?
Except for negligible exceptions, the language of education is the local language, and almost every country has a different language.
EDIT:

I feel the comments/answers are based on the large countries (e.g., many students can speak German or French). Consider small countries like Latvia, Estonia, etc. I doubt anyone learns those languages unless you already have a connection (e.g., a parent is from there, philology student). I think the purpose of exchange projects is to stay in/experience places you normally don't.

I doubt if basic language skills learned in school is sufficient for understanding a course/lecture.

If your choice is based on the language you speak, (formerly the UK), Ireland, (possibly The Netherlands) should be flooded with exchange students (or at least demands).

As a side note, I read somewhere (I will look for it), the popular destinations for Erasmus students are cities with beaches regardless of the country's language or the university's reputation. A popular destination country is Turkey.
I believe Erasmus is a cultural programme rather than an educational one. My question is how education quality assurance is managed/guaranteed.

Why would you even go on Erasmus if you don't speak the language? Those who don't will have a very difficult time.

@Roland if the UK was in high demand because of the language, Ireland should have received the excess demand after Brexit.

@Roland but I haven't heard Ireland has over-quota demand (i.e., waiting list).

Small countries are used to the fact that most people don't speak their language. Many addept by also offering courses in English. You yourself mentioned the Netherlands as an example of a country that should be "flooded" by exchange students (and it is). That is not because so many people know Dutch...

Now you have two very different questions. One on how students learn in a country that speaks a different language, and one on quality control. I would split this up in two questions.

the main impact of the erasmus is not that students learn something relevant for their diploma (although it is possible), but rather that they are exposed to a different culture within Europe.

"Except for negligible exceptions, the language of education is the local language"
that's just not true.

@fqq how many universities in Europe do you know that their taught courses are in English?

@Googlebot many that have at least some programs/courses taught in English. All the universities I attended/worked at (four in three different countries not including the English speaking ones) had at least some courses in English, and some of that was over 10 years ago (there's a trend to increase this).

e.g. the first university that came to my mind in one of the countries you mentioned (I don't know it personally) has many courses in English https://www.tlu.ee/en/exchange-courses

this website https://www.study.eu/ lists thousands of degrees taught in english all around europe

Universities using a lesser known language are far more prone to offer courses on English (or on another popular language, like German). They are also far lesser popular erasmus targets.

Why do you think humans can only communicate in one language? That seems like a very US-centric view of the world (and even in the US, knowing Spanish as well as English can be useful). FWIW I studied three different European languages as well as English in the UK equivalent of high school (and so did everyone else at that school who aspired to a university education).

Exchange students follow lectures in the receiving institution (apart from partying, which they of course also do). They do so by either:

knowing the language before going there (the number of bilingual and multilingual students has often surprised me)
Learn the language when they get there. The purpose of an exchange year is to immerse yourself in the new environment after all.
Limit themselves to courses taught in English. A lot of universities offer at least some of their courses in English.

Most exchange students will try to learn the local language. Whether it is enough to follow courses in that language is another question. But there are enough cases where that is certainly feasible: This is easier when the student already learned the language in secondary school, or when the language is similar to another language they already know. But some students are just very good at learning new languages (I can only envy them).

At least from a UK perspective: It is (was?) common for students to enrol on a course titled " with a year in ", which included some element of instruction in the foreign language in the years preceding the Erasmus year.

@avid that still exists

Some of the books, lecture notes, etc. may be in a different language than the lecture.

For what it's worth, here's my experience studying abroad:
Background

I'm French.
I was studying in France, in order to become an engineer.
I was able to speak English at an intermediate level.
I could not speak any other language.
Thanks to the T.I.M.E. network, I had the opportunity to get a double-degree from any partner university.
Studying in an English-speaking university would have been the easy choice.
I wanted to get the most value out of this experience, so I decided to study at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, and learn Spanish there.
I had a few months to learn Spanish in France, but I'm really bad at learning languages in a classroom.

Abroad

I arrived in Madrid 2 weeks before starting my studies there, with a very basic vocabulary. I could count from uno to diez, and... that was about it.
I explicitly avoided hanging out with French students (not too easy in Spain), or with anyone speaking English decently (that was much easier, at least 15 years ago).
So basically, I tricked my brain into having to learn Spanish. I had to travel, find a flat, buy food, and get myself understood, all in Spanish. It was hard at first, but many people were really helpful and patient.
I spent as much time as possible with Spaniards, or people speaking Spanish well.
I had heavy, literal headaches at first, but they slowly disappeared after a month. I could then understand most of what people told me. To be fair, French & Spanish have many words in common.
After less than 2 months, I had no problem getting myself understood. Once again, I simply had no choice : lessons were all in Spanish, and I had 14 exams waiting for me at the end of the year.
After a year, I was basically fluent, and some people didn't notice I was a foreigner during a short conversation.
I studied with many Erasmus students : the difference is that they flew back right before the exams. They didn't have to pass anything, I had to pass all my exams or I would lose both my French & Spanish degrees.

Afterwards

With the same goal of tricking my brain into learning a language, I went to Berlin after my studies, and learned German there.
Many German people speak English well, and are prompt to switch to English. That's really nice of them, but I explicitly asked them to speak German to me, slowly.
I had the exact same headaches as in Spain, and they also disappeared after a month.

@DanielHatton literal headaches. My brain had basically no downtime during the day, and was always trying to process something. I was completely exhausted at the end of each day. That was completely worth it, though.

That sounds definitely plausible: when I was abroad I found it extremely tiring to have a prolonged conversation. It really surprised me; I never felt that tired from a purely mental activity before. I can easily imagine that somebody else would react to that with a headache.

@MaartenBuis: Yes, and Madrid and Berlin are cities full of life. It was really hard to find quiet places, without any Spanish or German to listen to, even inadvertently.

Erasmus students attend lectures and are evaluated like any other student at the host institution. Their home institution converts their grades, when they return, to the local grading scale.
For bachelor degrees institutions seem to mostly use the local language, but for masters degrees there are a lot of options in English. My school doesn't even allow Erasmus while doing your bachelors.

There are limits on how many students each institution receives. At my home institution, for instance, during the application period we're given a table with possible destinations and the amount of slots available for each degree.
For example, we could have 2 slots for computer science and 3 slots for mechanical engineering at Institution X, 2 slots for computer science at Institution Y, and 5 slots for aerospace engineering at Institution Z.
The home institution decides who goes where. If there are 2 slots for CS at Y and 10 students want to go there, they'll rank those students somehow and pick two for the available slots.

Why a student wants to go to a particular institution is going to depend on what that student wants: a university with good reputation, a city/country with beaches nearby and/or interesting places to visit, the availability of courses they like, maybe the opportunity to improve a second language they already speak, and of course money.
Money is important. For a cash-strapped student going to a cheap location (country where wages are low) might be the only option.
Courses for what I've seen you get some leeway when choosing. A CS master student might be allowed to take not only master-level courses but also bachelor-level courses (maybe they have machine learning at the bachelor level and you didn't at your home institution). This of course needs to be approved by both home and host institutions.
I've had colleagues taking courses because they found them interesting. And I've seen others take courses they thought were easier to pass thus giving themselves more free time for traveling.


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Where to find successful proposals of previous ERC calls?
I plan to apply for ERC ADVANCED GRANT 2015. Is there any place for finding previous winner proposals?
The templates are straightforward, but it is very useful to see what winners have written in their proposals, particularly in the Scientific Proposal (Part B2).

the problem is that winners normally do not wish to share their secret weapons.

Currently, most people don't share their research proposals, whether successful or unsuccessful in their bid for funding.
However, this may soon change in the near future as it has been noted that more transparency would be extremely beneficial for a variety of reasons [1,2].
That said, there's a nice list of publicly available grant proposals in the biological sciences here. None are specifically for the ERC ADVANCED GRANT 2015 though. Figshare is also a good place to check for public research proposals.
UPDATE - There is now also a dedicated website for openly available grant proposals: ogrants.org it is a Moore Foundation funded initiative. One of the grants listed at that site is a European Research Commission Starting Grant (Strategic Predictions for Quantum Field Theories by John Joseph M. Carrasco).
Further Reading

Mietchen D (2014) The Transformative Nature of Transparency in Research Funding. PLoS Biol 12(12): e1002027. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002027
Gurwitz D, Milanesi E, Koenig T (2014) Grant Application Review: The Case of Transparency. PLoS Biol 12(12): e1002010. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002010


text:
Who to address on the cover letter?
In the cover letter of an application to an academic job, should we write

Dear Search Committee Members,

or

Dear Professor A, Chair of the Search Committee Members,

or

Dear Professor A, Chair of the department

or what else?
In case we don't know who the chair of the Search Committee is, should we write the department to ask?

And remember to close with "Sincerely Yours" if you addressed a specific person, but with "Faithfully Yours" if you did not. Do people still seriously care?

What about Dear Sir/Madam or To whom it may concern?

I address all cover letters, letters of rec, etc. "Dear Committee Members:" Don't waste your time addressing it to an individual.  The only thing you can achieve by doing that is embarrassing yourself and giving the search committee the chance to have a good laugh at your expense.  If you do it correctly, it doesn't actually achieve anything; why give yourself one more thing to stress about?

The advertisement usually specifies to whom the application should be sent. In such cases, use the name that's listed in the advertisement. If no name is given, then I would vote for the first option, as it is the most inclusive.

If they don't have any name in the main part of the advertisement but have name in the further information, what should we do?

The further information is part of the announcement. You should probably go ahead and use that.

One catch though: sometimes the name in the advertisement is the name of a secretary who is responsible for filing the applications, but has no part in reading them. In that case, having your letter addressed to the secretary would look weird. It's not always easy to tell when this is the case, but one thing you can do is check the department's website and see if the person is listed as faculty or administrator.

Of course, the committee will be reading so many of these letters that it's doubtful they'll notice the salutation at all.

I was instructed to send my application to committee@institute.tld, without any specific name, so I addressed it to the professor I hope to be working with.

In my field I hardly if ever see a name. Nowadays you often have to upload your documents via an online submission system, without any name/addresses.

Following the advises published on How to write a killer cover letter for a postdoctoral application http://www.asbmb.org/asbmbtoday/asbmbtoday_article.aspx?id=48927
you should adress your Cover letter to future Principal investigator (PI) of the project:
Start off right. Address your potential future PI properly, as “Dr. (insert surname here).” If you begin your letter with “Dear Sir/Madam” or “To Whom It May Concern,” your application could be dismissed as generic and untailored for the position. A letter that appears to come off an assembly line is likely to ride directly into the trash bin. If you do not invest the time to learn about the PI and his or her research, then the PI is not likely to invest the time to read your application.

In academia, we don't mind, unless it states "to who it may concern", then yeah you're in trouble. (please note the spelling)


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Showing research experience in graduate applications
As an undergraduate, I have heard this term a lot. I have not graduated but will graduate soon.
When applying to graduate programs, research experience is what everyone tells.
Research Experience is used rather recklessly. Many students, even if they had to just type in data for professors/researchers, check some test tubes in laboratory or whatever depending on discipline mention they had research experience.
Last year, I had an internship at a renowned research organisation. The only thing they do is research and development. As an intern, I did not specifically join saying, I wanted a "Research Experience". I were involved in their project which was a research project. My task consisted of API development, working with Matlab and various stuff important for the project.
Yet, I did not come up with something new. Well, they did.
So, this is far better than what many students mention as research experience. But, is it worth calling this a research experience in my CV or applications? Shall I call this reaserch?
Making the question specific, what does a "Standard Research Experience" consist of? When graduate schools say undergraduate research experience, what kind of activities are they expected to have been involved in?

You're expected to describe research experience. It sounds like you've had some. You should describe it in your application. Talk about what role you had, what sort of things you actually did ("various stuff important for the project" and "working with Matlab" aren't very good descriptions). What was your role? Did you make decisions or did you just assist? What sort of products did you produce and what skills did those products require? How did you solve problems you encountered?
The idea behind these application questions is to try to differentiate people with no experience from some minimal experience (cleaning instruments in a lab and feeding rats) to moderate experience (sounds like what you have) and people who engaged in truly independent research (which is pretty rare, depending on where you did your bachelor degree and in what field). Be honest and detailed, that's all that's expected. Of course people will play up what they did, but if you made substantive contributions that demonstrate your abilities and experience, that will show through in your write-up.


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Should I stress highlighted articles in my CV
Part of my research attracted some attention like:

Nature research highlights
Monthly DOE (Department of Energy, USA) highlights
Institute newsletter (Is also read by other labs)
Editors suggestions on paper (like PRL)

My question is should I mention those in my CV or publications list or not at all, since the former three are not written by me but only about my work and as such not my work to claim.
Background: I'm drafting my CV for a young investigator grant. My overall resume is solid but nothing that keeps you awake at night. Especially empty are the two sections: received grants and won scientific awards.


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Career path to professor with an engineering background in Germany
I am in the final year of my master in mechatronics engineering in Germany, and I want to work as a researcher or a professor in a  university since i believe a professor/researcher has more freedom than an engineer within a company.
I don't have any experiences in the academic field, so I suppose I have to get some somehow.
What are good option to pursue as a career path in Germany to get a professor position at a university? Do I need to get a PhD? Is it better to become assistant professor on that path, or a research engineer?
Thank you

In which country do you leave ? What do you want to teach ? I am not sure of your definition of freedom...

i live in germany

Why are you saying a professor/researcher has more freedom than an engineer ?

It's just that in a company there is a more strict hiearchy, you don't get to work on the projects that you want, you are more bound to satisfy the clients need, while in research you do that for you own curiosity, it's like creating the new knowledge that will later have an application in engineering, please correct me if i am wrong.

you're not wrong. But thinking you would do everything you want as a researcher is false too. I agree that you're bound to satisfy the need of a client as an engineer, but you don't have to deal as much as a researcher with budget for example. Do you like to teach ? have you any experience in this domain ?

No,unfortunately I don’t have experience with teaching, but i am relatively young so i believe that I have enough time to learn

Ok so reword your question. You don't have any experience in the academics field right ? Before being a researcher, you must at least get some experience. The question here is not which path you should take. I will reword a bit, then put more infos. 2 sec ;)

Let us continue this discussion in chat.


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Is it advisable to attend a conference in Germany with talks by German presenters in English if you don't speak German?
There is an upcoming conference in Germany, all the talks will be in English, however all the listed participants are also German. Only speaking English I'm wondering if it would be inadvisable to go, as everyone will speak German during non-talk times?
Is this true or am I being too paranoid?

related: What to do when no one speaks English around you?

I suspect many attendees will speak neither German nor English as their first language, and that you will find English used by many as the "lingua franca" if the conference schedule is in English, as attendees will be a self-selected group with a reasonable grasp of the language, and will expect others to be so too. My experience of English-language conferences in Italy and Spain with speakers from many countries was that English was most common in the corridors.

When I was a student visiting various European departments, I always found it easier to hang out with other people not from the host country — for example, French students and postdocs in Germany, or German students and postdocs in France.

as Kate is pointing this out: listed participants = speakers?

Here are some claims that I think you will agree are true:

Anyone who attends a conference where all the talks are in English can understand spoken English reasonably well
You don't live in Germany and are considering attending. You are probably not the only person considering it
Anyone willing to give a technical presentation in English can probably both understand and produce spoken English reasonably well

I believe these add up to you being able to find people for "hallway conversations" in English pretty easily. You might have some lonely lunches if you find yourself at a table with people who all speak German and exclude you. I have this problem with people who all discuss (in English) something I don't understand at all and don't want to learn (eg how to install Exchange on a server.) I generally try to prevent this by striking up a conversation with a fellow attendee at the end of the session that is right before lunch, and suggesting we go to the lunch line together.

+1 for your first point. I think this sums it up entirely.

I would post an answer if I had anything to add to this (so +1). I can offer the anecdotal evidence that I am currently at a conference in Germany, and hallway conversation takes place in many languages, but most commonly English. Then again, in my case the set of attendees is international and most of them don't speak German.

Small hint from a German: Germans tend to fall back to their own language in spare time, not to exclude you, but because it is more efficient for them, and Germans just love efficiency, especially Scientists and Engineers. It is absolutely acceptable if you kindly remind them of the fact that you do not understand German. They will usually excuse for their switch of language and use English to include you.

I disagree with your third point. I have seen some bad presentations in "English".

I not only disagree with point 3, also in the question it's explicitly said that point 2 does not hold either.

@Zane listed participants are typically presenters. It's a rare conference that tells you everyone who is attending. The OP is considering attending. Surely some other nonGermans are too.

In my area (algebra) it's not at all uncommon for the conference website to list all attendees.

The points are mostly true, but I have seen enough evidence against (1) and (3). (Well, I've even been part of the evidence against (1)).

@TaraB: So, in your area, conferences have no last-minute registration that is possible on the morning when the conference begins, for people who spontaneously decide to attend?

@O.R.Mapper, I'm sure they do usually allow last-minute registration, but that's not particularly relevant to the original question, since people who register at the last minute are pretty likely to be locals anyway.

@TaraB: At least at my German university, there are plenty of foreign researchers who have been living here for several years and still do not speak any German.

@TwoThe - but how can it possibly be more efficient to speak German?  As any UI designer knows a German sentence is between 10-20% longer as a rule than the English equivalent (at least as written words).  That's not just more letters - it's also more syllables....therefore it must surely take more time to speak .... German scientists and engineers would surely appreciate those undeniable metrics when considering efficiency ...

Don't worry, Germans are usually polite. Being polite is to include all people in a conversation. So if the common language of a group is English, they'll switch to English to accommodate you. Furthermore, Germans attending the conference will expect to have attendants not speaking German and that conversations in the hallways will be in English too.

"Germans attending the conference will expect to have attendants not speaking German" - this. If they truly expected everyone attending to speak German, the conference talks would be given in German, as well. In my estimation, Germans are often eager to speak English (for example, readily switching to English when a single person present does not speak German), but not so exaggeratedly that a whole conference would be held in English if 100% of the audience were known to understand German.

There are some herd effects, and in my limited experience (we) Germans tend to switch when talking with each other, even though non-German-speakers are near (maybe more readily than other folks, I don't know). It is always appropriate to ask nicely if they can switch to English, though, and some may even expect you to speak up! (Who knows whether you understand and are just shy? Isn't it rude to assume no German ability just because a person looks foreign? ...)

@Raphael: the assumption that English will work for "foreign-looking people" is not a given.  I cannot really distinguish French-speaking and English-speaking people with African origin by their looks.  So the first bet outside of particular contexts like a conference is German, with an offer to switch if that does not work.  At a conference, it is usually embarrassingly easy to pinpoint Germans from other Western Europeans.  It think it's almost harder to tell them from Eastern Europeans.

I assume that the conference attendees will be at a higher educational level,
which probably means they can not only listen to talks in English, but probably are also able to communicate in English.
So yes, I thank it's safe to go to the conference and you will be able to talk to people in English with no big problem.
I guess from  your reservations that you are aware that it is not always easy to get along with English in Germany. Don't expect sales agents or bus/taxi drivers to talk English. And even if people speak English, they might not be very fluent.
And I must admit that all other participants being German is strange - whatever reason there is that talks are in English, it is surprising that participants do not come from outside Germany. I'd propose to call the organizers just to make sure that talks are in English.
I don't think you're paranoid here. E.g. Universities will have lectures announced in English, but hold them in German (as long as nobody objects).
And if there are so many German speaking people, groups often will talk in German. Then you shouldn't be shy - just throw in a remark and make clear you only speak English. I'm pretty sure they will switch language then.
Note: I'm saying this as a German living in Germany, with some experience with conferences at different national levels, sometimes visiting conferences where most participants are locals not speaking German.  In the last case, it's really important to not be too shy - when you try to join a discussion, make clear you do not understand what they say as soon as you get the chance - maybe a simple "hello, how are you" is already enough to achieve awareness.
I guess you will get to know some nice colleagues.

I am a Brit living in Germany. In Germany it is usual for educated people to speak quite good English. Depending on your subject, most of the books will be in English anyway.
Some people from the East of Germany (what used to be the "new" Bundesländer) may have learned Russian as a first foreign language instead, but if they can't speak English they probably won't turn up anyway?

@RedSonja: good to hear this - however, in Germany a lot of things are quite dependent on education level. Nice nick though.


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How to organize a Joint Collaboration Plan and Fees
With today's technology it is very easy to collaborate with people around the world (I totally recommend Vyew for that). When you collaborate with people from different countries, are there any rules for who pays the bills? The expenses could be conference fees, attendance fees, journal fees, etc. For collaborations we use Hardy-Littlewood, but is there any such kind of rules for paying the bills? Or is it just a previous agreement or consensus between your coauthors? How do you normally approach the subject to your fellow coauthors?

It depends on the agreement reached with collaborators. Obviously. Did you expect there's a universal rule set in stone (“thou who hath the beard longest shallt pay the bill”)?

Because I don't think there is much of an answer possible other than the obvious one (see above), I suggest to close this question.

I think the better question here to ask is: how does one pay for joint collaborations?

This has never been a concern for me, since I've never had any fees associated with publishing a paper.  Specifically, I've never published in any journal that required me to pay to publish.  If a coauthor wants to speak on the paper at a conference, then he/she pays for any related conference fees, or possibly uses grant money from an adviser.  (For reference, I work in pure math, where conference proceedings don't typically "count" like a journal publication.)

I think is an interesting question if rephrased onto something like "How to organize a Joint Collaboration Plan and Fees"

This question could be edited to be more constructive, as suggested by Leon and aeismail.

Thank you very much for your feedback. I will rewrite the question according to your suggestions. The comment by DanC sounds very interesting to me since I'm in theoretical computer science and the "scientific culture" in TCS is mostly inherited from pure math.

In Big Science (tm) such as particle physics there is a huge body of (often contradictory) theory and practice. Each major collaboration has it's own formal document (often called a "memorandum of understanding" or some other unpresupposing name) laying out the rules that was settled by give and take amongst the original collaborators (perhaps with some input from the funding agencies). But it is too much to write in one post and this rapidly becomes a make-a-list question in which we each relay the stuff that worked for us.

What do you mean by "For collaborations we use Hardy-Littlewood"?

In theoretical computer science (which I work in), the most direct answer is "What bills?"
For remote/electronic collaboration, there really are no significant costs.  Each collaborator uses their own computer equipment and their own internet access.  They install LaTeX and Skype and svn themselves.  They typeset and illustrate their own papers.  They each buy their own espresso at their own favorite coffee house.  There are no fees associated with submitting or publishing papers.
On the other hand, if you actually want to travel, either to give a conference talk or to work in the same physical location as someone else, there are real costs.  For conferences, usually each person (or their grant, or their advisor, or their department) pays for their own travel, lodging, and registration fees.  For collaborative travel, every trip is different, but some common protocols include:

The visitor (or their advisor/grant/department) pays all costs for their visit.
The visitor (or their advisor/grant/department) pays for travel, and the host (or their advisor/grant/department) pays for lodging.
The host (or their advisor/grant/department) pays all costs for the visit.

I have used all four of these arrangements (and various ad hoc mixtures), as visitor, as visitor's advisor, and as host.  For some visits, I've had small joint grants specifically for collaborative travel; in others, I've used travel money from a larger grant; in others, I've paid (either for myself or for my guest) out of my own pocket.
In short, F'X is exactly right: It depends.  Obviously.

Hi JeffE, thanks for your answer. I find your answer very illustrative and that's the kind of answer I was hoping for. I should have asked, "what's your experience in sharing cost for joint collaborations?" or  something along the lines. But since asking for someone's experience could be rather subjective, I've tried to write my question objectively.


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What is the point of ScienceWISE annotation on arXiv?
This is an example of a semantically tagged paper: Distributed Joint Source and Channel Coding with Low-Density Parity-Check Codes. On arXiv, it looks like this:

In the PDF (with Chrome as PDF viewer), it looks like this:

What is the point of this? Why should I, as an author, add this to any publication?
Shouldn't I, if I want a link to Wikipedia, just add it by myself without the usertracking (respecting the privacy of the reader) to my article? And shouldn't I be able to find content of much higher quality and explicitly name it in my paper if it is necessary or otherwise, if it is not necessary because it is quite basic knowledge in the domain I write about just assume that the reader will know what I mean / know the textbooks where he /she can look up the definitions?
See also

https://arxiv.org/help/sciencewise

Could the person who downvoted the question please add an explanation?

I didn't downvote it, but I'd guess the issue is that this looks like a rhetorical question.  (Specifically like you are more interested in criticizing ScienceWISE than learning about it.)  I can sympathize, since I think ScienceWISE looks ridiculous myself.  Some of the tags in the paper you linked to fail to meet even minimal standards (for example, there are irrelevant/misleading definitions for "intensively" and "mass function"), and none of them seems remotely useful to me.  However, rhetorical questions often get a poor reception, since they aren't really intended to be answered.

@AnonymousMathematician I doubt that ScienceWISE is worth using, right. However, obviously there is at least one paper which uses it. I've asked this questions because I can see the downsides, but no upside. If this looks as if I only wanted to criticize it, I'm sorry. (It might be a language problem, as English is not my mother tongue. In English, I tend to express myself simpler than I would do in German.) How could I phrase the question differently to get people write the advantage(s) of ScienceWISE?

From ScienceWISE FAQ:

Why do you need all this if there is Wikipedia?
The main difference of our Ontology from most existing online resources is in a possibility to have several single-authored definitions of the same concept. Unlike Wikipedia, ScienceWISE provides a mechanism for scientific community ranking (by linking against the best definitions) and provides a peer-run quality assurance system.

You may have read that already, but unless you explain what is not clear your question is either impossible to further answer or a disguised criticism.

To cite my question: "Shouldn't I, if I want a link to Wikipedia, just add it by myself without the usertracking (respecting the privacy of the reader) to my article?"

That does not say what in the citation you think unclear  or beside the point. ScienceWISE explicitly say what they add to wikipedia ("a mechanism for scientific community ranking" and "a peer-run quality assurance system"), you have to explain better why this does not answer your question, at least I don't get it.

authors: Вікторія Чупахіна


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How should we point out a software error in a paper?
We are conducting a simulation study to compare various clustering methods. However, the implementation of one of the methods used in the study (Mclust) occasionally produces empty clusters, which is not allowed in our study. We only use R in the study. Unfortunately, reimplementing the methods is not a feasible option. However, we don't want to exclude this method from the study.
How should we mention that "we know it occasionally does not work the way we want, but we still want to include it in this section"?

Just a friendly piece of unsolicited advice, but I'd recommend being very sure that the "software error" is not just "user error".

This doesn't sound like an error so much as you using the software in an unexpected way.

It looks like this may be a known issue, and (if I have understood correctly) is related to the fact that Mclust does not produce clusters in a deterministic way: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64323572/clustering-with-mclust-results-in-an-empty-cluster. If that interpretation is right, then I think it's valid to explain why this issue arises (non-deterministic clustering) and the method you chose to deal with it (only keep realizations where all clusters are non empty).

Incidentally, if my above comment is the correct explanation for your issue, then your issue is not a software error but rather a subtlety in interpreting the results of the method, which would be present in any correct implementation.

Ideal solution: you report the bug (you say it's a software error and not intended behavior) to the developer, they fix it promptly, and you obtain your results with the new version.
If this doesn't work out, you can mention the exclusion criteria for the cases you don't use in your analysis as is detailed in EarlGrey's answer. In principle, this is no different  than other methodological limitations of your study: reviewers may find it acceptable or objectionable, or help you mitigate the limitation. Regardless, it needs to be disclosed. If possible, estimate the potential impact on your conclusions.

Are you comparing the methods or the implementations of methods? Do not mix them.
If the method behind "Mclust" is what you want, then the implementation is "Z". Use it only when its results match the assumptions of your study (i.e. only when it does not produce empty clusters).
In the text, you should describe the limitation of the implementation (i.e. "Z results are used only for the cases that ...".).
If you cannot find another implementation of the same method, maybe you are lucky and during peer-review you may receive the revision "use "ZY", it works for the cases of Z and also the cases with empy clusters".

Thanks for your suggestion. I edited the post.

People often append modifications to the name to make it clear. If the original method is "Foo" you call it "Foo-NoEmpty".