text:
What can I do if I don’t completely understand a paper?
Our team finished a paper 3 months ago. However, we use a result from another paper in a very top journal (one of the best). There are quite a lot misprints and somewhat mistakes. We can fix most of them but one inequality which they didn't have explanation why this inequality is true. We have spent 3 months to ask people (some extremely top mathematicians, they published many papers in the top 5 journals) and no one understand...We also asked the authors, but it seems that they don't want to explain that to us...We are really lost and don't know what to do...Shall we submit our paper? We really can not make sure that the inequality is true...
PS. This result is crucial in our proof...
Now, we have clarified the 'gap', there are some problems in the proof, the assertions are not accurate/correct. However, luckily, the final result is correct. After discussing with one of the authors, we confirmed that it is a gap and it took us quite some time to fix it.
Well, some people told me that the 'big guys' do not care about the details. I am not sure whether these incorrect details would lead to wrong theorem. As a young scholar,   I have to say that I am a little bit disappointed at math research (well, maybe my field).

You use results from another paper that you do not fully understand in your own paper, is that correct?

Is there any proof of the inequality? Also, have you looked at any followup papers either by the authors or other people? Sometimes, later work explains some ideas better than the original authors...

I wouldn't use the inequality. I think it's okay to use a theorem you don't fully understand (I've had a colleague who used a theorem with a prize-winning proof that took a long time for experts to verify). Yet, there are so many red flags here that go beyond you merely using an established theorem that you don't understand to the depth that the original authors do, you risk publishing an error. I think your best non-mutually exclusive options are: wait and see if the proof is published, or try and prove/disprove the theorem (in the second case, publishing the result independently).

Explain the inequality to a few physicists. If they believe it while they wave their hands around, and murmur something about Maxwell equations, you can use it.

@BPND I will say that there is no proof for this inequality...The authors stated many statement in a paragraph and we verified most of them. There are some followup papers, but no one really use the main result of this paper (let along explanation).

@ThomasKing THX. Your suggestion is good. We are still asking people and we are still discussing...All people have discussed are now confused.

If I were in your situation, I would explain, early in the paper (probably in the introduction, not in the middle of some proof) that I need this inequality, and I would give the inequality a name or equation-number. I would add that the inequality is asserted in [reference] but without proof, and I have been unable to find a proof. Then, in any theorems that depend on the inequality, I would explicitly assume it, by name or equation-number in the statement of the theorem. It doesn't seem pleasant, but it's honest.

@AndreasBlass  THX, man. We have filled the gap, which took us quite a long time.

Should you submit your paper under this situation - possibly.
People assumed that Fermat's last theorem was true for centuries before it was proved. You don't necessarily need every detail of every proof.
If it seems reasonable that it is true then it's okay so long as you are clear on this assumption, and caveats thereof, and your paper is essentially going to be retracted if the inequality isn't true, or have conditions to it.
From your description however There are quite a lot misprints and somewhat mistakes this tells me that the paper is of questionable if not poor quality, and your mistake was doing further work that depended on this. In light of this I would not wish to publish without at least some verification of the inequality. Peer review in no way means something is true.

Agree. Peer review doesn't mean it is true. Especially for some `big' guy's papers....Most journals and reviewers would not question much about these papers.

Ask on mathoverflow!
It's a site like this, but for math at research level. There is incredible expertise in all fields of math (I know of) over there. Before you ask, look at "How to ask"  and also take a look around at the site to get a feel for how the folks roll.

Well isn't it obvious?
You just say "This is a proof dependent on the truth of result X".
That will be true no matter if X is true or not.
And then it is still a useful paper.
Then if X is shown to be true, then your paper becomes a true proof.

It is not obvious. As word spreads that the results in paper A are not reliable, responsible researchers stop citing it, and other papers building on it end up being ignored as well. The end result is that, even if statements in paper B are clearly labeled as being dependent on the unverified parts of paper A, the usefulness of paper B may become negligible. Even if later the results of A are verified, people in the field may still remain ignorant of the results of paper B.

Well if that's the case, the paper will be rejected and no harm done. Anyway, result X could still be proven by someone else and then your paper is then a complete proof. Unless the person is concerned with being "the champion who put the final piece of the puzzle in the proof".

If the paper clearly states the inequality is true and it was peer-reviewed and published in a reputable journal, you can assume it is true. The rule of thumb here is that you need to be able to fully understand the results of the paper you use, but not necessarily be able to reproduce ever result you cite.
For example: when in any field you use statistics (e.g. an inequality), you need to understand the final equations you are using. However it would be silly to require almost every scientist to be able to independently prove each and every equation from scratch.
The same is true for various measuring machines. As a scientist you need to know how to use your equipment and what it can and can't do. However beyond that, it is perfectly acceptable to cite that it works and treat it as a black box.

But apparently the OP is unable to "fully understand the results" which is exactly why he asks how he should handle it. I slightly disagree with your first sentence. You shouldnt "assume it is true" if it is not proven.

I disagree with this answer. This might be good advice in some fields, but for mathematics, this advice applied to this situation is in my opinion a big NONO. The OP wants to use an inequality which, from what I understand in his post, was not proven in that paper and was not referenced to a reliable source. And that raises a big red flag: in mathematics a result like this should be published only when it is obvious, which seems it is not. The fact that the authors refuse to explain it is another red flag... If you combine this with "here are quite a lot misprints and somewhat mistakes"...

, which means that the authors made many mistakes on simple things (so why should one assume that they didn't make a mistake on this more complicated thing?). Given all those red flags, the paper should probably not have been published (at least not in this form) and unless they find a more reliable source I would be hesitant to rely on this.

If the paper clearly states the inequality is true and it was peer-reviewed and published in a reputable journal, you can assume it is true. — This is absolutely wrong.  At most you can assume that a few people think it's probably true, modulo a bunch of picky details that they didn't bother checking but smell okay.

However it would be silly to require almost every scientist to be able to independently prove each and every equation from scratch. — True.  But reading, understanding, and verifying a proof is a lot easier than proving something from scratch.

@JeffE did you secretly prove that P neq NP (I.e., proving is a lot harder than verifying)? Jokes aside, I think the answer means u can take a published result as a given hypothesis in the absence of an error. Then, using it u get a result/onclusion modulo the hyp. If this inequality was wrong, too bad for its authors.

@NickS - Why don't you move your comment to an answer? // Question, also for Nick: What about the review process?  Could OP go ahead and submit, and see how the reviewers react? Just wondering.  Thanks.

@NickS My argument is that basically any discipline of science, including most parts of mathematics are simply too big to be able to understand every nuance of all the work you (indirectly) rely on. At that point, trusting the results of peer-reviewed paper is the lesser evil and the only practical option.
Otherwise we would have to require any paper in applied functional analysis to be co-authored by an expert in measure theory or even set-theory, just so we have our bases covered.

@dimpol I disagree. The right thing is to always find reliable references. Yes, you cannot check everything, but unfortunately the quality of peer-review nowadays is pretty bad. And based on the OP post, the paper raises too many red flags to simply rely on the fact that it is peer reviewed.

@dimpol There is a wide stretch from "You don't have to understand everything" to "If it's published, consider it correct"

@sgf I'd argue that stretch isn't that wide. Suppose the work of an author turns out to be incorrect because the author relied on citing peer-reviewed work in a respectable journal which turned out to be false/incorrect. Now as a supervisor/colleague/funder you want to discuss whether the author should have scrutinized the paper more, instead of trusting the results. What guidelines would you use to determine academic 'negligence'? Because without any clear rules, I'd either call the stretch pretty narrow or its width not really relevant to the daily practice of research

@dimpol, perhaps from a point of simple convenience for the researcher, it's sensible to assume that anything that is published is correct, because you can't prove that they were negligent, but both for the academic enterprise as a whole and for any researcher that wants to actually contribute anything valuable it's highly problematic to stop being critical of other researchers' results just because they have been published, to the point where you might just as well con people for a living.

@sgf Of course being critical of the work of others is a good thing and scientists checking each others work helps science progress. However there is a difference between allowing papers to be checked and requiring papers to be checked. In my view, any researcher should have the option to trust the results in a peer-reviewed paper in a reputable journal. The reason for that is that requiring every cited paper to be checked (and of course every paper that that papers cites, etc.) is impractical and guidelines for 'sometimes check' can't be made rigorous.

@dimpol Sure, but there's a difference between not checking a paper, and checking it, being unable to replicate its results, and then just taking its result as correct anyways.


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Is it beneficial to publish papers from previous labs during grad school?
I am a second year PhD student currently working on three papers mostly unrelated to my field from previous research appointments (2 from rotations and one from undergrad). I'm finding myself very unmotivated to complete these simply because I'm not sure how beneficial it will be for me to publish them. I don't currently have any publications, but I'm currently working on a project in my lab that will hopefully get me a pub within the next year. Should I drop responsibility/authorship from these publications entirely, decrease my responsibility on the paper (currently first or co-author on all of them), or stick it out and publish them? I'm most worried about if it will hurt my reputation later to have a bunch of pubs during my grad school years that are completely unrelated to my thesis.

Actually, several of my papers have been published after I left the institute and while I was working at a new institute. Time contracts (2 years) make it possible. Publishing your work is a good idea. I would at least publish one of the three papers. Especially, since you don't have any publications so far.

It certainly won't hurt your reputation to have papers unrelated to your thesis, assuming of course that the papers were of a good standard. But you need to guard against these papers sucking up large amounts of your time and lowering the quality of your thesis research.

"I'm most worried about if it will hurt my reputation later to have a bunch of pubs during my grad school years that are completely unrelated to my thesis." To be honest, I'm having trouble understanding why this is a worry at all.  You seem to be saying that having, say, 3 papers in field A and 3 papers in field B could damage your reputation in field A.  This may not be as good as having 6 papers in field A (as @David says), and it may not even be as good as having 4 papers in field A and no papers in field B.  But it has to be as good as having 3 papers in field A and no papers in field B.

Also this question seems relevant: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/814/is-it-beneficial-to-publish-papers-not-related-to-your-primary-research-field?rq=1.

At some point in time you made a commitment to your co-authors to help with those papers. Those folks who arranged your rotations and invested time and effort in you made commitments that they fulfilled to you. You should really pay back their faith in you and get the papers out.

Is there any specific reason why you worry that having different publications will count against you? I am not saying that this is certainly not true, but unless you have a reason to believe that this is an issue in your field, I really would not worry about it. (if the time you invest into these papers could be better spent elsewhere is a different story, but we are in no position to judge this)

I struggle to see how having papers outside of your PhD field could be a negative - demonstrating you have knowledge, interest and expertise in a range of subjects can be a bonus. But as mentioned above, they must be of a standard you are happy to publish. Your PhD thesis (plus papers published along the way) will show your expertise in your main field, so why not show off your other skills too?
Plus, I imagine a lot of time and money has been invested into your previous work. I think you should use that for the benefit of your co-authors as well as yourself. But if you find the extra work is having a negative impact on your current studies, prioritise what is right for you.

I want to upvote this, because I think it's true in the OPs case, but I think it needs some sort of qualifier that this is true given the situation the OP describes. It is not universally the case that publishing outside your specializiation (and more broadly your field) will help your career.

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text:
A student forgot to answer an exam question
A student in an undergrad class seems to have forgotten to answer the last few questions on a written essay.
This student has achieved an average of A+ so far (over the term)
The last few questions are not worth much, but is the difference between receiving an A and an A+
This student has also submitted a draft of this essay earlier in the term to get feedback (all students are allowed to do this once).
Should I give 0 because this student did not answer it, or part marks because this student knows how to answer it (as evidenced by the draft) but simply forgot?

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

What does it mean to have submitted a draft version of an exam question?

Did the draft essay include the last few questions? 2. Same question as @DanielR.Collins - how can an essay with drafts be eventually written as answers in an exam taken on campus?

Is casually asking the student a possibility? That should inform your decision - i.e., you'd get closure but from a pure "test" perspective, forgot is the same as doesn't exist. However, if the student did submit but you don't have it, then it's a different problem. But you'd also have to ask the other students who "perhaps forgot" to be fair.

This is precisely why you should grade blind.

Well what's the existing practice in your dept when the final version accidentally omits stuff from the draft (or is worse)? How have any previous such cases been handled? Does the draft have any official significance, other than for students to get feedback?

Why not curve it (if at all possible)? If the student in question is the one who would have received an A+, supposedly they'd be leading the class in score. Everyone would benefit from a curve without robbing those students who spent the time on the essay. This breaks down however if you have an equally outstanding student.

You should give zero for the answers in question. You are grading what the student handed in, not what s/he potentially could have handed in. The logistics are just as much part of fulfilling an assignment as the knowledge. It would be unfair to the other students to be more lenient on this particular student than others.
If you wish, you may give the student another chance to answer these questions, but then you should do the same for all students.
(I once failed to notice in an exam that the question sheet was printed front and back, and only answered the questions on the front. I duly accepted my C+, along with the two others who had made the same mistake...)

If three people made that same mistake, then that sounds like a flaw with the test. There's a reason why tests or professors will sometimes make note of the test being two-sided. Even though it was ultimately your responsibility to check, that doesn't mean that improvements can't be made or that leniency shouldn't be granted.

If you "forgot" about the back side of a contract, you're gonna have a really hard time explaining that to a judge when you get sued for a breach of contract.  Getting reduced grade is a good way to learn this lesson.

Hmm. Just because you suffered through it doesn’t mean others have to. At least the handed-in draft should count for something: there’s really no good argument to discount it, other than senseless adherence to rules (which, for me, is indistinguishable from malice).

@Nelson That's why in contracts the pages are usually numbered (at least the contracts I had the pleasure of reading). This is a feature which should not be missing on any exam either.

@Nelson Most contracts are initialized on each page and signed on the last page.  If someone comes with a contract with a signature on the front page and no signature on the back page I would not be confident that a judge would rule that the provisions on the back side was valid.

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

Keep in mind this should be considered a limitation of exams written on paper.  If I were to write an electronic exam but didn't automatically warn the student of missed questions, that would be a UX bug in the exam software.  The only reason the student should be graded zero is due to there being no easy way to audit whether the student answered every question.

@Taemyr That's the reason why you are required to sign each page sometimes. You also have to sign how many pages are there in, so it is not possible to substitute one page for another. And when I was at school (univercities don't use a lot of long written tests in my area), each time a test was printed on both pages, we were always notified.

You have to be uniform in grading. If you are going to make an exception for one student, then you need to make that same exception for every other student in the class who would be affected.
If a "star student" screws up, you can't give her special treatment that you wouldn't extend to a D- student who made the same mistake.
(Personally, I would not give credit unless there was clear evidence something went wrong—for instance, did a page get lost somehow? Instructors are not infallible, and sometimes things can get messy if there are a lot of papers to grade.)

But if only one student forgot the last page, is it unfair to the others to let them finish it?

Yes, it is unfair. I didn’t say forget to finish, but if there’s an error on the instructors’ part—did a page get separated?—then an exception is reasonable, since the fault isn’t the student’s.

@aeismail: What if the instructor would be willing to do this for a D-student too? Is it still unfair to you?

@mehrdad: then what's the point of having a test given at a specific time on a specific day?

@Mehrdad: If it's the student's fault, it's unfair unless the instructor actually goes through all the exams, and gives the same opportunity to everyone affected. If it's the instructor's fault, that's a different matter.

Since most answer seem to have the opposite opinion I think that at least the other side needs to be voiced. The goal of grading is to accurately track how well a student understands and can apply the material taught in class. Written tests and exam papers are just a convenient way to measure this, they are a proxy for it. One answer even suggested that the exam was meant to test the "testing" skill. It is not. It is just an inconvenient side effect that it does. If you are convinced a student understands the material and is able to apply it then you should grade him as such.
As noted there can be downsides to this. There is the issue of perceived unfairness and other students might start to make (false) claims that they too just forgot some question etc.
Furthermore, it is true that there is some real unfairness in the fact that quite likely sometimes you will know the student well enough to know to award him the points and other times you won't. But then again there is something unfair about not awarding him the points when clearly he knew the answer. I think correcting injustice where you see it is more fair than ignoring it just so that you are treating all injustice the same way.
What is also important is that you don't run into trouble for your method of grading. So don't stray to far from acceptable local grading methods. Since cultures differ widely in what is acceptable and isn't acceptable I would also advice ask a colleague at your own university as his answer is more valuable to your specific case than a general stackexchange answer will be.
For the future. If you feel like you can get a more accurate measure of a student in the interactions you have with him throughout the course than from a written form of exam it might be a good idea to explicitly make clear from the beginning that interactions throughout the course make up a small part of the grading (this encourages questions and active participation).

The question specifically mentions an essay. In an essay you should not only be judged on what you know, but on how well you can present that knowledge.

@pipe. Fair point. Given the phrasing of the question (i.e. Clear set of questions with apparently a clear answer that the OP knew the student would be able to produce), I made the (perhaps erroneous) assumption that it was an essay assignment that was quite close to an exam with an emphasis on answering the questions correctly. However, I think my point still holds if you take into account that part of the points were for presenting that knowledge. You should still award the part of the points that are for giving the correct answer.

Indeed you might still deduct some point for not presenting these answers eloquently (since there was no presentation at all).

Exams are for presenting knowledge in the appropriate format.  One student showing they know something in an exam setting is very different than showing it in an uncontrolled setting.  Exams test your ability to apply knowledge under specific constraints; one of which is generally time.  It's not just about proving that you've applied the knowledge before.  The controlled setting is important.  Some people get really stressed during exams.  It's not fair to them to give other people points because they can demonstrate knowledge outside of exam format.  That's not what is being tested.

Regardless of what you think is right, the current system in the UK and the US means you must stick to the system of marking you set out beforehand, because otherwise someone will complain (yes, even if that means injustice all round, rather than correcting it for only some).

Taking your reasoning a little further, why not eschew the exam completely and just estimate what you think each student should be capable of anyway?  But the problem may be that the candidate actually ran out of time, so needs to pace himself better. A lesson to be learned, if that's the case.

@Tim. If the issue was running out of time you are correct, but the OP's post does not at all suggest this. Why do the testing at all? Because besides the downsides and my slight criticism it is often the best way to get an honest estimate of someone's capabilities. But when it isn't a professor should feel free (not necessarily obligated) to correct his or her estimates by other means (but then he/she might need to be able to justify this decision to administration/some form of oversight). It seems you are taking my reasoning "further" in a direction it was never even headed.

@Tim. Note for instance the IF: "If you feel like you can get a more accurate measure of a student in the interactions you have with him throughout the course than from a written form of exam (..)" Personally, I say this is quite rare. But then a professor who takes enough time to realize without the issue being raised by the student that the student knows more than he had the chance to show, might be just the professor to whom this applies.

I passionately share your opinion. The other opinions focusing on procedure instead of the subject matter remind me of some judges in the U.S. who -- in the face of exonerating evidence -- rather uphold a final conviction (and execute a person) than deal actual justice if all legal means have been exhausted, for example because an incompetent lawyer screwed up. But the law system is a procedure, a means, to determine justice, and tests are  procedures to determine a student's skill level. Obvious evidence should always supersede a procedural failure.

Each form of exam has up- and downsides; if this form of exam is inappropriate to the actual goal, teachers made a mistake; oral exams exist for this, and have tons of other problems. If teachers did not explain clearly how exams were graded, teachers made a mistake. But if the OP is a TA, this question does not suggest teachers made those mistakes—only that they didn’t explain the rationale of the marking scheme to the OP. Which probably is teachers’ fault.

The thing is, if we award points based on "the teacher knows the student knew the answer", why have tests in the first place? Just have teachers give evaluations of what they think the student knows. Twofold answer: First, teachers aren't mind-readers; tests are a way for the teacher to figure out what a student knows. But we could still say that this is the general case, and in specific cases where the teacher DOES know what the student knows (like here, supposedly, thanks to the draft essay) it is OK to use that. Which gets to the second point: teacher bias. (...)

(...) There are a million ways a teacher can favor students they find congenial over those they don't, and human nature makes the impulse to do so inevitable, if only subconsciously. And "subconsciously" is more than enough to have real effects. One way to reduce this is external fairness-imposing rules. Even with such rules (such as ostensibly fair testing practices) it's very easy for a teacher to show favoritism if they're so inclined; without them it all goes out the window. "I'll give points to this student I wouldn't otherwise because I know they know" has huge potential for bias.

@MilesRout Dunno what you mean by "genial". I said "congenial", i.e. students the teacher likes for whatever reason. You might mean "smart", or "nice" (what 'genial' means in English), but either way this isn't about bias in favour of smart/nice students vs students good at taking exams, it's bias in favour of students good at sucking up to the teacher vs students good at taking exams. With the added wrinkle that humans like people who are like them in many ways, so this is a bias against smart and nice students who are socially awkward or from a different background than the teachers.

@MilesRout Note that it's easier for a smart student to get better at test-taking than to change their personality. Let alone their accent, skin color, childhood social background and other less-acceptable factors that still can affect, subconsciously or even consciously, what a teacher thinks of a student. Biasing the system towards being good at test-taking IS a problem, but replacing it with teacher intuition isn't the solution. And honestly, we aren't talking about the most advanced, byzantine test-taking skills here. "Answering the question" is fairly basic.

It feels worth mentioning that if a student doesn't complete some questions then that would leave them more time on the questions they did answer which is another point of unfairness. So not only are they potentially getting credit for the question they didn't answer but also they are likely getting more credit for those they did answer and thus had more time for. This wouldn't add up to much if they missed one of ten questions but if you miss half the questions then you'll be spending twice as much time on the other questions as other students.

To start with, giving them partial credit for a blank question would be unfair to all other students. Additionally, test-taking or essay-writing are also skills to be gained during education, not only knowledge. Would you give partial credit to a student who runs out of time in an exam, or tell them that "next time, you should bring a watch and keep some control of the time, and think you you spend the time in the exam"? Reading carefully the questions and making sure everything is answered is part of the assignment itself, like in real life they will have to learn all their customer's needs and meet all of them, whatever it is they work on. Finally, this is an undergrad, and the discussion is between an A and an A+. Like, what are the stakes? If this was a matter of "this student will be invited to leave the program if not for this partial credit" or "fired from their job", you may want to be lenient and take their whole performance into consideration and not a single essay, or if it was a matter of health issues and they had written it while being sick, but, really, what is the life impact of an A instead of an A+ in an undergraduate program? Seriously. The impact on this student's life is minimal and you are risking being accused of having favorites (which is not necessarily true) and of unfair grading policies (which would be true, or at least the grading policy would be different for one student compared to others).

"To start with, giving them partial credit for a blank question would be unfair to all other students." How?

Because any other student with a blank question or a blank exam would not get any point for it. All students need to be graded under the same rubric.

"Because any other student with a blank question or a blank exam would not get any point for it. " I see little basis for that supposition.

Well, the OP is talking about giving credit to one student who left part of an essay blank, not about giving credit to the whole class for parts of the essay that each person left blank. If there was any hint that the OP would apply the same policy to all the class, it would be fair. Grading a single student under a different rubric is definitely not.

I don't see any reason to suspect that other students in the same situation would be treated differently.

@Acccumulation Then you should reread the question.  They explicitly ask "Should I give 0 because this student did not answer it, or part marks because this student knows how to answer it (as evidenced by the draft) but simply forgot?"  They are clearly leaning towards giving points due to the draft, and they are clearly talking about a specific student.

@JMac "Then you should reread the question." Just because someone reaches different conclusions doesn't mean they lack in reading comprehension. "They are clearly leaning towards giving points due to the draft" That does nothing to contradict my position. "they are clearly talking about a specific student." There is a specific student who is in this situation, but no indication that a different student in the same situation would be treated differently.

Give the student partial credit for these questions based on the draft. This ensures the assessment is based on the student's knowledge, rather than the mechanical aspect of copying information from the draft to the exam paper. The "penalty" is that they may lose points if their draft answer is of lower quality, as they won't have had a chance to incorporate any of the feedback and revise it.
For fairness, do the same for any other students who have omitted questions on the exam but answered them in their drafts.

I don't see the question stating there were any drafts. We would never have had enough time to first write a draft and then copy it in an exam.

@skymningen Yes, there was a draft. This student has also submitted a draft of this essay earlier in the term

If the exam was timed, that means they get an unfair advantage, because students who did answer the last questions had less time to spend on the earlier questions.
If the student had forgotten to hand in some coursework that wasn't done with a time limit, then allowing earlier drafts that were handed in to count would be reasonable, but work that wasn't done under exam conditions shouldn't count towards an exam mark.

You need to stick to the marking scheme.
That said, if many missed the last question or it was poorly answered by most then you may consider completely removing that question - this means that all students are still graded on the same basis.
You cannot arbitrarily change the scheme for one student only.

Removing a question is still unfair on those who spent their time on it, and scored higher than others. Any moderation of the marks must preserve the order according to the marks on the exam they sat.

@JessicaB It is possible to give the full points for that question to all candidates which preserves the order.... And is fair to all...

@SolarMike that doesn't preserve the order at all, somebody who didn't answer it gains far more additional marks than those who did. It's just as unfair on those who spent time producing a good answer for that question as giving everybody zero marks for it.

@ChrisH are you now moving towards exams are not a fair method of assessment ? What would you suggest?

@SolarMike What? No. Jessica said that giving everybody zero on a particular question would be unfair to those students who did well on that question and would change the ordering of students. Your response was to suggest giving everybody full marks for that question instead, and suggest that this would preserve the order of marks. I'm saying that Jessica's point is equally valid in either case. If everybody gets the same marks for that question it makes no difference whether that is zero, full marks, or anywhere in between.

The emphasis on fairness in many answers presumes that the exam is a competition.  Shouldn’t it rather be a way of evaluating each student’s grasp of the subject?  Sounds like the competition for rep in SE.

Maybe they should consider offering a make-up opportunity for all the students then, unless they want the grade to include ability to notice everything on a test, and being able to do a lot of things within short time periods.

If fairness is not the point, why do all students have to complete the same exam in the same amount of time with the same limitations on outside resources? Why are disadvantaged students provided with additional aid in completing exams? @WGroleau

@Nij: for your first, because not giving the same conditions would make it an inaccurate assessment.  For the second, in USA, because the law says everyone must have the same opportunity to do something, even if they aren’t capable.  In other words, the law says fairness IS the point—“judging” is evil.  Oh, wait, isn’t a grade “judging”?

Your sarcasm aside, the law makes clear that judging is fine - it is a problem only when the judgement is based on irrelevant factors instead of those the assessment should.

It's context dependent.  You should abide by whatever grading policy you have in place. In the future, you can have grading be minimum guarantees.  So the student will receive a grade no lower than the numerical score, but the teacher reserves the right to move the grade up by a third of a letter if his/her professional judgement warrants such.
If he/she is a star student, you can explain to him/her that you would be happy to write a letter of recommendation for him/her in the future.  That will be worth far more than A vs. A+ over the long run.

I think this may be the best way to handle this particular situation. Fudging the exam score for one particular student is patently unfair to the rest of the class, for reasons stated in other answers. But there are times when a professor can justify giving a higher grade than what a spreadsheet might say to give (such marked improvement over the course of the semester; or one solitary bad score that mars an otherwise exemplary performance). This should be done prudently and sparingly, of course, but there are legitimate reasons for the occasional exception.

It's likely the grading scheme does not address every possible eventuality, e.g. what if an accidental water stain covers some of the text of the answer - and also - what if someone flipped two pages by mistake.

From a 20 year old student point of view
In Italy, where I live, each question on an test weights around 10 points. If a student forgets to answer a question they usually can ask for a retry in an oral test (or sometimes written).
This test allows the student to get at least a few of the points they would normally get for a forgotten question (normally up to 5 points). But it also allows the teacher to ask extra questions about the same subject as the original forgotten question.
Asking extra or harder questions (together with the penalty in not giving all point he would normally get) in this case is usually done to prevent a student to cheat using this mechanism by making sure he can't just look at the test and leave the questions he doesn't know the answer to blank, then study those questions and get the full points later.
Seeing you said that the student has indeed shown that he knows the answer to the question you might be able to give him a few points using this method in a fair way, without giving him a huge advantage over other students

Here's a pragmatic answer: you should give 0 because otherwise students (this student or others) might get the idea that they can get extra marks this way, and either attempt to do so or else complain at the idea of others doing so.

To be fair to all other students, you should grade whatever the student handed in. If the student forgot to answer the last few questions, then marks should not be awarded for these particular questions.

Another option is:
You can exclude that part of the exam from the entire course grade.
For example, if the exam was 30% of the course grade, and he forgot 50% of the exam, then you can remove that 15% of the course grade and just scale the rest accordingly.
Ultimately this is a subjective question and there are multiple answers that would be valid, but as long as you would be willing to do this for any student who seemed to make this genuine mistake regardless of his/her grade in the course, I think this option would also make sense: after all, you could easily make the argument that you're trying to gauge their understanding of the course material, not their ability to make logistical errors.
Furthermore, don't forget you still have the discretion to award an A+ for the course if you still think the student had A+-quality work throughout the semester. You don't need to change the exam grade for that.
Lastly, note that I assuming this is about higher education. If you're talking about high school or earlier, I would be more lenient, treating them more like kids than adults for these mistakes.

The statement that a grade can be awarded simply because the course organiser wants to, is false in many universities. Second, disincluding an entire assessment is unfair to all students and does nothing better than ignoring just the missed question, or is just plain not possible, if the institution policies (or the laws governing them) do not allow it. -1 for local statements made as if they're universal, with no evidence that they're true for the asker.

@Nij: Do you have a single counterexample you can share or are you just downvoting due to a hypotheticals? In every college I'm aware of, including but not limited to my own, instructors were well within their rights to award whatever grades they felt reflected student performance, irrespective of their grades on intermediate assignments. Would love to hear your counterexamples.

You give zero evidence except "this is how it works in all the ones I know". Then you complain that the criticism states the same thing. Either it's good enough or it isn't. Give the evidence to support your positive claim first.

Grade it as it is turned in - if questions are not answered they are incorrect, if they are answered wrong they are incorrect. This guarantees a couple of things -
1: Most Importantly Fairness : your own bias for a particular student who "knows the answers" gets in the way.
2: Like giving a bonus to an employee who 'knows how to sell' but did not sell ie meet the quota. Life lesson achievers receive, do'ers receive. They will always put forth whatever effort they need to succeed.
You are not being mean, hateful or otherwise regardless of the empathy you might feel for this student.
I think that it might be another thing if that student had two of their family members killed or die the day or two before the exam .. but that is what I would call a human thing - you can understand with good reason the student would be under duress. In that case I might be compassionate - but I would make a note to self that is my rule for any and all students..

As for that part about bias, that's exactly why I ask all my students to write their name on the cover sheet of the exam, and on the cover sheet ONLY. This lets me grade the all exams without knowing whose test is being graded, thereby eliminating that bias.

@J.R. and that is good as long as you don't recognize handwriting - my memory can sometimes be a bit photographic .. but you are correct in grading as you do - to know ourselves (or say also our human nature)  is a good part of how to understand fairness to others.

It’s not foolproof, that’s for sure. There are almost inevitably a few students with very distinctive handwriting (be it excessively neat, or atrociously small and hard-to-read), or that one student with the bold blue gel pen. But the majority of the class is still being graded in near anonymity.

Well, if you were a high school teacher, I'd say to consider the student's work as a whole when marking their work, using the work that they'd submitted over the course of the term, including their drafts.
However, university is generally supposed to be more rigorous than high school, right? So, I probably wouldn't consider the draft when marking the paper unless my department had a policy dictating otherwise.
If you're a relatively new member of your faculty, I'd say to ask one of the more experienced members of your faculty about what your department's policies on this sort of thing are.

You might have the option to give an incomplete for the class, since, to your judgement, it was an incomplete assignment.
This is a generous approach.
Then the student can complete the exam, or a replacement exam, and potentially receive their A+. You could let the student know that they wouldn't receive less than an A in either case.

For now, you're stuck with the grading policy. If it's black and white, stick to it. This is a learning opportunity for the student.
It's also a learning opportunity for you.
When I was in college, all important exams clearly stated the amount of pages the exam had and the amount of questions it contained. FIRST order of business was checking those numbers when you started the exam.
We all learned something very important there: make sure you know what needs to be done. Were your questions numbered? Was there a front sheet telling your students the amount of pages and questions? If not, consider adding those in the future to avoid exactly this problem.

I believe the second is more fair: part marks because this student knows how to answer it (as evidenced by the draft) but simply forgot?
Because the essence is that he shows he has the knowledge. Let's say another student did manage to answer but his answer was poor enough comparing to the first who didn't. What's the point of the exams? To demonstrate that you learnt the lessons & can 'teach' it to others.

Exams prove that you can apply the knowledge in a controlled setting.  By doing a draft at home, you haven't really proven anything about your ability to function on an exam.  It's not fair to give points to the person who left an exam empty while another person wrote in a poor quality answer due to the stress of the setting.  In that case, they should have left it blank too and relied on the draft.  That's not fair to everyone actually writing during the exam.

Also, this student used their time to improve their marks on other parts of the paper. Giving them marks for prior work is basically giving them a lot of extra time that others didn't get.

@JMac: I teach people "Calculus" or "Programming in C", not "calculus under pressure" or "programming within 3 hours only". Like other answers have suggested, the settings of an exam should not be considered more than an unfortunate artifice.

Incomplete answer. Please elaborate.

@einpoklum It's only fair that if everyone else is marked based on the "unfortunate" process; everyone should be.  It's not exactly fair to grade 99% of your students for "Programming with 3 hours only" then grade on something else for one student.

@JMac: If two people have about the same command of calculus, but one performs worse under pressure, I don't see how it's fair for one of them to end up with a much lower grade than the other. The fact that special-casing a single student is (usually) unfair does not mean that any choice of uniform grading scheme is fair.

@einpoklum For starters, some people may have to work under pressure.  If the person designing the course doesn't care about testing under uncontrolled conditions, then the grading scheme can reflect that.  Generally, this is not how students are graded (as was the case here).  If the standard grading scheme involves controlled testing, all grades should reflect that, regardless of what is demonstrated in uncontrolled assignments.

@JMac: People may or may not need to work under pressure later in life, but that's not what I want to grade my students on. And, again, non-uniformity is just one potential source of unfairness.

@einpoklum That's fine, no one is telling you how to grade students.  If your marking scheme already includes an exam though; it's absolutely not fair to base one students marks on the exam based off something external.  It's great if you want your students to demonstrate knowledge other ways; but you should be trying to minimize unfairness whenever possible.  If you don't think exams are fair in general; the only fair alternative is to not use them.  It's not fair to operate under the system "Give the students the exam; but if you feel they know it, ignore the exam content".

In real life, say the student becomes a secret agent, and they "forgot" to defuse the bomb before it detonated, killing 20,000 civilians. Do you just let them off because their previous job performance was decent enough? No.
"But that's unfair!" you may say. No, it's not. What would be unfair would be giving this student marks for doing nothing: unfair to the other students who did in fact have the wherewithall to turn up to an examination then answer the questions you asked.
Backing out of the fantasy for a moment, consider some practical issues with your specific situation. Perhaps the student ran out of time (for which you don't give free marks, do you?) or perhaps, when preparing a draft essay for you out of examination conditions, they'd cheated.
If this student complains, tell them they are not in kindergarten any more, and they should pay more attention to what they are doing. It is a valuable life lesson.

This is exactly what they call "False Analogy". I mean, secret agent?? seriously? LOL

@polfosol: The situation is the same if you make the answer boring and have it talk about a devop or a bank teller instead. No matter what you do in life, you don't get points for "forgetting" to do your job, so why should you be rewarded in an exam?

@polfosol: You're free to write your own more boring answer though :)

@polfosol: Plus I dare say the OP didn't specify that the exam wasn't an exam on being a secret agent

Although my point still stands, but your last comment definitely deserves a +1 ;)

This situation points to an anomaly in the examination based evaluation system: "You are what you are at the time of examination!" But this can be eased out as follows. If the system permits, one more examination (another written essay in this case) can be conducted to take best of two performances. But even that is not anomaly-free. A student who gets a higher grade with the first exam may lose out on a relative grading scale if others perform relatively better in the second. When the second examination is not announced a priori, it can be a cause of concern for such a student. So the best of two can then be applied on grades and not on marks. With the first exam, if a student gets a B, and considering the second one a 'C', then the final grade is B, and so on.

So you suggest to suddenly announce a second examination? How would that be fair to the students who cannot plan accordingly? Also, it might be that the exam in question already comes with a reiteration or is the reiteration itself – at least it would at most be a subtle change to the question. Having two exams may slightly alleviate the situation for the student but it doesn’t fix it.

As mentioned in the solution, best of two needs to be applied on grades, not on marks.

Personally I believe marks should always be adjusted (or, consideration should be given to doing so) before combining different scores, to avoid results being skewed by different difficulties of different parts of the assessment.

Surely the simplest approach, if you want to go this way, is to just do best of two on the draft and the final essay? If the draft is better, assign a grade to the draft and that's the final grade. Unless I'm misunderstanding the situation, I'm honestly unsure what purpose an "exam" that contains a pre-written essay serves anyway or why it is a useful activity to have students come in and transfer an essay they've already written to an exam paper.

best of two needs to be applied on grades, not on marks – and that would solve the problem how?

@Wrzlprmft, I am aware of your concern about "planning". But that is something that the instructor can evaluate in the instructor's context. There are several dependencies.

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text:
Is it advantageous to take Ph.D courses before applying to their program?
I currently have a master's degree in my field. Before starting my Ph.D, I took a position in private industry. Recently I was hired to work at an American university, and part of my compensation includes tuition costs. Because I will be working a full-time job, I would be a part-time student taking only one course at a time. My intent would be to continue this job while I was working through the Ph.D. program.
I'm concerned that being a part-time student will make me an unattractive candidate for admission.  One potential work-around that I have considered is that I take a number of the classes required for the Ph.D program prior to being admitted. Then I could complete the program in a similar amount of time to other students.
However, I don't know much of anything about how academic departments are managed.  Would taking courses required for the Ph.D. program be advantageous when applying to that program?

"will make me an unattractive candidate for admission" --- This may be field dependent, because I can't think of why this might even be a possibility. But it would make it easier for the department to decide whether to admit you, since after taking some courses they will have a much better idea of your chances of success in their program. (moments later) I think I might have misunderstood your context. I thought you were going to take classes part-time and THEN apply for the Ph.D. program (because you said "being a part-time student ... will make ...").

@DaveLRenfro - I edited to clarify that I my intent would be to hold a full-time job both before and after admission to the program.  Based on my previous graduate work, I had understood that performance indicator for departments was how long it takes students to complete their studies. If this is true, then a part-time student would reflect poorly on the department, because they would take much longer to complete their studies. There could be other reasons also.

Unlike masters degrees in the US, part time PhDs are quite rare (there are some exceptions, such as professional degrees in education). Research-based PhDs are about much much more than coursework. Have you checked with the program you are interested in to see if there is any possibility to be part time? There may not be.


text:
My advisor submitted a paper with my work without including me as an author
As you might see from my history I don't have a good relationship with my advisor. Recently we wrote a journal paper together based on my thesis. I wrote the introduction, analysis and the description of the app we had developed for our research. In crude terms, I wrote 15 pages of the 23 page journal paper. My advisor told me that our draft was submitted to this journal three weeks ago, yet I never received any notification from the journal that I was listed as author or co-author.
I went into the help section of the journal to figure if they do send emails to every author and it seems you do need an email to register as co-author. Confirmation here.
According to the guidelines, if the co-author is not registered with the journal, their email should be provided. Its quite obvious I should have received an confirmation email and my advisor only has my .edu email so there is no way another email address could have been used. I have written a journal paper to IEEE as co-author before and I had received an confirmatory email saying I was listed as co-author.  I am afraid of confronting my advisor about this as I need co-operation to graduate and in my thesis defense, but I was curious to know if I will get an email if I am listed as co-author? More importantly, should I be listed as author or co-author in this case, when the work is based on my thesis and I wrote most of the paper?
I called the 1-800 number and when I told them the submitter's last name (my advisor) and the paper title, they confirmed that my advisor was listed as sole author. They told me that they had to un-submit and resubmit the journal paper to add me as co-author and they gave me contact of a University professor for further inquiries. I have all the email proof of my work (for instance emails where my advisor asks me to write intro and I would reply with the intro text attached and so on). I am seriously upset right now. I have my thesis defense in December and I fear that if I confront my advisor, things will screw up. Can you  please advise on what I should do right now?
PS:  I was told that I am listed in Acknowledgement section in the end, which is completely unfair. The Deciding officer (it seems he is the final authority in these cases and RIO reports to him) at my University is the vice president, who was my advisor's PhD Advisor half a decade ago. They are both from same city of a foreign country and are close family friends. Rumor has it that the Vice President rejected multiple highly qualified candidates to get my advisor for Asst. Prof. Position.  All my friends are asking me to drop it because I don't have many bullets to go after them, but they can completely screw me up or set me up for something if I go against "one of their own". I am still evaluating what to do.
PPS: Thank you for all your advice. Even though I don't know any of you personally, you were very kind in giving me your time and advice. I cannot thank you all enough. I spoke with a full professor in another deptartment in Engineering. He asked me to stay put till December until the paper is published. He was of opinion that the University is a big cesspool and they only way to clean it is to "get the people" who are doing this publicly and shame them. I do not know if I am being used as pawn right now in University politics or what I should do. I  spoke with other people too and all they said was "Is not getting an authorship on journal worth more than not earning the degree". It seems sole authorship does carry extra weight age in front of tenure committee. The whole situation has completely shattered my faith in academics, and the fact that I am part of a state university makes this even more depressing. By the way, one of the two editors of this journal was on advisor's PhD committee. So many people have advised me not to contact any of them. In academia everybody seems to know everybody, in fact it seems more like a cult. I am just doing a Masters now, I always had plans to do PhD and explore my curiosities and see what I can achieve with perseverance, hard work and to test my mental capabilities to their limit, but I am done. I quit. I never felt so depressed for a very long time. Academia these days seems to run by industry practitioners who had previous experience at corporate politics and are good at it or by businessman who wear good clothes, have good people skills and just show off while delegating all the work to GRAs and underlings, and that's not what I am and will never be.

Have you discussed the authorship issue with your advisor at all?  (I mean earlier, not in response to this.)  Or has it ever been explicitly mentioned in e-mail?  Even "I've submitted our article to the journal" makes it sound like joint work, while "I've submitted the article on X" leaves it ambiguous.  If your advisor has clearly talked about it as a joint paper, then that establishes something.  If it's always been talked about ambiguously or as your advisor's paper, then you're in a tougher situation (although what you've described certainly makes it sound like you should be a coauthor).

@AnonymousMathematician well we always talked about it as our paper as it was based on my thesis. Basically the journal lifts up lit review and technical description from my thesis. In fact I feel I should be author instead of co author based on volume of pages I have written.

Tell her that you haven't gotten any e-mail, suspecting that the journal might have messed up your e-mail address, you called and sadly found out that THEY missed you in the process. Ask her if "we should retract." Give her one last way out. If she has half a brain or if it's an honest mistake, she will retract. If she waves hands or tries to hula dance away from you, then come back here and we may be able to give you some better suggestion, depending on how much you are willing to pay the reaper when these all are over.

I just went through some of your older questions, and it seems that your supervisor is a seriously nasty piece of work. Please, for the love of science, once you've safely graduated, go to your university's Ombudsman with all the grievances you've collected. Assuming what you say is all true, people like this are what destroy our profession, and the lives of countless others. I completely understand if, after you graduate, you want to forget this thing as quickly as possible, but please keep in mind that if you don't do anything, there will be others.

I would say — if there’s anyone suitable at your university (faculty member, ombudsman, ethics council…) that you can trust a bit, don’t wait until you’ve graduated to raise this issue!  Write to the person and say something like: “I have an ethical concern I would be grateful for help with; can I ask your advice in confidentiality?”  Leave details until later; hopefully they can help/support you, and worst-case scenario, you just go back to waiting.  Unless your whole university is quite corrupt, they’ll be very unlikely to betray the confidentiality once they have offered it in writing.

keep calm and wait till December.

The Deciding officer (it seems he is final authority in these cases... — Nope.  The final authority on the authorship of a journal paper is the journal editor.

Honestly, in your shoes, I would be tempted just leave, after writing an open letter to both the president of the university and the editors of the journal, with links to a public web page that includes a complete data and email trail.  I would have absolutely no trust that my advisor would actually sign off on my thesis and let me graduate, or would work on my behalf to help me find a job, so what would I stand to lose?  This level of unethical behavior is not just an embarrassment to your advisor, but to your department, your university, and your chosen field of research.

But DO NOT actually write a public-shaming letter like that without soliciting the (confidential) advice and (anonymous) help of a trusted senior colleague, exactly as @PLL suggests.

I would suggest blocking that publication process by reporting to the editor first.

Definitely let the editor know!  As a journal editor, I would much rather learn about a situation like this before the paper was published than after.  You can ask them to keep it confidential for a while so you can investigate how to handle it.  There's no guarantee that they will do so, but it seems like a reasonable request and I would certainly agree.

Firstly, sorry to hear the sad updates. Contacting journal editor wouldn't guarantee anything because your advisor can submit somewhere else as sole author again. (And this is likely considering his/her dark personality)
Also, maybe you shouldnt quit the idea of doing ph.d.

Very sorry to hear about your final update. These bad experiences that you had are definitely not the academia I know. From my personal experience this type of behavior is extremely rare and most academics would find it disgusting. Don't lose faith in academia.

I just read your story.  While I would say it is quite rare in academia, it is definitely not unknown.  I do know of universities of which, at least in part, are huge cesspools.  I know you might be very angry.  But I would assess what you are going to do in terms of your self-interest.  If you confront the situation, or go public, you may face a severe backlash.  One option is to cut your losses and move on.  I'm not saying that is what you should do.  But I am saying that is an option worth great consideration.

@StephenMontgomery-Smith There is not a day that goes by away without me getting by angry by the stuff i have to deal with. I am just bottling up all my emotions and its screwing up with me and affecting me in other things.My advisor doesnt know that i know about these things.My lab is not able to find a good programmer to do development. My project has brought 3 more new projects from industry and there are not able to find quality developers to do the work for them.They are persuading me now to stay back for one more sem since according to them "i am the best developer in Dept. right now".

@james234 If I were you, I would put your emotional well-being first.  Put the needs of the department last.  You are in a difficult place, because if you expose the situation, you could get badly hurt.  Finally, I found that these kinds of difficulties brought me to God.  I don't want to shove religion down your throat, but if you are interested you can follow my biography to my web-page, and finally to my personal experiences.

Also, compare your situation with someone who is in an abusive relationship.  You keep hoping that things could get better, but they don't.  I know you haven't yet confronted your adviser.  But the power inequity is so great.  If you knew he/she would react well, it would be OK.  Is there someone else who knows your adviser well?  Maybe they would know.  But your adviser does have a lot of power to mess up your life in terms of letters of recommendation, etc.  And there do exist people who are really mean.

@StephenMontgomery-Smith Rot lies much deeper here. I came to know last week that a phd student is funded from my project and he gets paid more than me.But on proposal it was listed that i will be only RA working on it . My Lab brought Iphones and ipads from research funds of my project and have passed it on as "usability evaluation of mobile phones" and are using them for personal pleasure in their homes with their kids. My thesis defense is this month end. I am planning to complete it and just go public with everything and i will face  consequences that may result because of it.

@james234 It is laudable what you want to do.  But count the cost before you start.  It is possible that people won't want to listen.  I have done some of this exposing myself http://www.columbiatribune.com/commentary/op-ed/mu-s-administrative-culture-is-toxic/article_11f434de-15ee-5e75-9674-e26a237e9c3a.html and it was never quite as cathartic or effective as I hoped for.  What you are wanting to do is noble.  But be prepared for disappointments.

@StephenMontgomery-Smith Thankyou ,that was an depressing but interesting read.I will wait for my defense and then   let her know that i knew everything all along. Although its useless at this point ,i will tell her that i acted in good faith all along but she took advantage of it and betrayed the trust. Although i doubt she has any conscience ,i will let everybody in my department know about it discreetly through my friends and other GRAs.Even though i may not be able to do anything,i can let everybody know what happened so that they remember this when her tenure comes up.

@james234 I read the whole story and I really would like to hear updates from you. I think I am facing somehow similar dilemma. I wrote an entire conference paper (everything with implementation) and the supervisor told me he wants to put his name first. I had bad relationship with him for long time and now I am awaiting my thesis defence. I could not stop him. But I feel so angry inside and considering to quit academia because of that. It is unbearably unfair

@hawk You just have to think it is bad luck and move on. These people are very well connected (My advisor knows provost people in univ. admin personally).You have to believe in karma and hope they don't get ahead in career.I think these people look for students who they know won't go against them and then do their thing.They don't do like this with everybody.It is just heartbreaking to invest so much in a lab and then suddenly realize you were just a fool all these days to trust them and believe them. Just move on ,but if you want to fight make sure you have all the paper trail first

It is an unambiguous violation of ethics for a collaborator to be dropped from the list of authors.
If you wrote a significant contribution to the paper, you are in the right. Your supervisor has no ground to stand on. You should ask your supervisor (don't accuse!) if he/she has included you as a co-author. If a mistake has been made, the sooner it's fixed the better. You could also have a good claim to first authorship, though that is something to decide between authors.

Edit: a little humour - full credit goes to Nik Papageorgiou / The Upturned Microscope.

Moriarty as in... Sixtysymbols?

Nope, it's not my real name.

There may be nothing to worry about.  In ScholarOne (the web submission system being used), the submitter is supposed to enter contact information for all the authors, but an impatient submitter might skip that.  As long as you are listed as an author on the paper itself, I'd bet the web submission stuff can be fixed after the fact (it might annoy people, but it's unlikely to derail publication).  Probably the person you called at the publisher just checked the ScholarOne metadata without examining the submitted PDF, in which case you don't know for sure whether it lists you.
Instead of provoking an angry confrontation, I'd focus on first figuring out whether you and your advisor are in agreement on authorship.  I'll assume you have not explicitly discussed this question, since if you had, then you should have ended up with agreement one way or the other, or at least known you disagreed.
As a first step, you could bring up the question.  For example, you could write "I realized recently that we never explicitly discussed authorship of our paper.  I've envisioned myself as first author and you as the senior author, since I wrote much of the paper and it is based on my thesis work.  However, I should have discussed this with you before submission.  What's your take on the author ordering, and how did you handle it in the submission?"
Then you can decide what to do based on her response.  If she explicitly says you're an author, then I'd trust her on this.  You could still discuss author ordering, based on the conventions in your field.
If your advisor says she doesn't think you should be an author at all, then you'll have to discuss this issue.  It would be counterproductive to accuse her of dishonesty or of trying to steal your work.  Instead, you should just try to make the case that your contributions justify coauthorship.  You could refer to guidelines for this journal or for your field in general to help you argue.

i will call them again tmrw at toll free and ask them to look into journal draft itself if they can .Otherwise they gave me details of a prof. they asked me to contact. I will ask them for details and will ask to them to keep everything confidential.

If your advisor says she doesn't think you should be an author at all, then you'll have to discuss this issue. — But first collect a complete trail of your work and email exchanges with your advisor, and discuss the situation—calmly, professionally, and without being accusatory—with an informed third party, like your department chair or ombudsman.  An advisor publishing their student's graduate thesis work without the student's name is grossly unethical, but just being right won't necessarily help you.  Be prepared to burn all bridges with your advisor.

Not just unethical, but also counterproductive. At the advisor stage, the main challenge is showing that you can advise PhD students who produce publishable work. If you "steal" publications from them you are just stealing from your own future career.

Yes, web submission software can send authorship confirmation emails to all co-authors, but not all journal publishers actually configure it to do so. I can confirm that at least one journal by Taylor & Francis does not send confirmation emails to people other than the corresponding author.

please see my edit.


text:
When should I write a thank you letter to the author of a scholarly paper?
If I read a scholarly paper and find it interesting and beneficial, should I write a short thank you letter to the author? Should I send the thank you letter from a .edu email address?

Absolutely, yes.

Absolutely, no, for widely read journals. Who likes getting hundreds of thank you letters?

@silvado I think many researchers would wish their papers were read by hundreds of people!

Yes! just don't expect the author to respond.

Fanpost for Scientists? Awesome!

Just make sure that the information you present is correct.  It would be an insult to get the title of the paper or even the name of the author incorrectly.

If the author is affiliated with a university use the e-mail address listed on their research page, likely a .edu address.

@MattQ I was trying to ask if i should send the letter using the .edu email account that the school provided me with.

@kylek You should have no problems.

I want to try to give some background to convey the perspective of the researcher on this matter.
For a scientist, the publishing of a paper is usually the culmination of a lot of hard work. The scientist has gone through coming up with the project, implementing it, solving all the problems, summarizing it all into a paper, and then through a long process of peer review. Each of these steps involves major effort.
Then the paper gets published. I personally found this to be very anti-climatic. The paper summarizes so much effort, but you rarely get any personal feedback about the paper, except maybe at meetings and conferences. Since we are all publishing our work openly for the benefit of mankind, I think every scientist would be happy to get feedback from people on his/her paper and hear that it was helpful in some way.

Given that most of the correspondence I get when putting out a new paper goes something like "I have just read your very interesting new paper. I want to inform you of my related works [....]," and thus is very transparently a request to be cited, the rare message that just says something like "I liked your new paper!" is always a welcome change of pace.

Please do.  The author will likely be pleased to hear about any specifics you found particularly interesting or helpful.
As a scientist one of the main goals is to disseminate your findings and spur interest in your work.
It is especially good to send a letter if the paper becomes a significant inspiration for your own research.  But, in this case you will also complement the authors by citing their work in your papers.

I would certainly be very pleased to receive 1 or 2 of such letters but I would hate to make it a standard academic practice (The image of Jean Bourgain reading "fan mail" sends shivers down my spine. Brrrrrr....).


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Cost-sharing for survey research
I've heard that in some social science departments, simple survey-based "experiments" are done by distributing a survey packet to some population (e.g., students in an intro psych course).  This packet may contain questions from various researchers.  They put all the questions into one packet to cut down on costs and logistical hassle, the idea being that for certain kinds of broad, simple data collection, possible interference effects from other items in the same packet can be an acceptable price to pay for easily getting a large amount of data.
Nowadays, a lot of researchers are also doing surveys online, using sites like SurveyMonkey.  What I'm wondering is whether any research practices/resources have developed that are akin to the "packet-sharing" shortcut described above.
For instance, SurveyMonkey Audience apparently charges $1 per response for a survey with up to 15 questions.  If one researcher were doing a survey with 10 questions, and another were doing a survey with 5 questions, they could be combined into one that would only cost half as much as doing them separately.  (I haven't looked at what other survey sites charge but I wouldn't be surprised if similar opportunities exist.)
I could imagine that this sort of thing would just be handled informally within departments, by people asking around to see if anyone else had a survey they could combine with.  Is that the only way this happens?  I know that in similar domains (e.g., running experiments on Mechanical Turk) researchers have developed and shared software to make the process smoother, and I'm curious whether anyone has created anything like a "survey cost-sharing clearinghouse" where researchers doing surveys could be matched up in a way that minimizes costs for all involved.  It seems like it would be a useful resource for those doing this kind of research.

One of the benefits of online survey platforms is that you can reach a population that isn't just psych undergrads. In your cost sharing scheme, surveys could only share if they're interested in the same population.

@ff524: That's certainly true, and is something that could also be handled by such a clearinghouse (by matching those with compatible populations).


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Should the date on a provisional degree certificate be used as "Degree Conferral Date" on applications?
So essentially, I haven't received my MA or BA degree certificates/diploma yet. I do have a provisional degree certificate for my BA degree, and the MA convocation is (unofficially) due to happen by the end of this year.
I'm filling out applications for PhD positions in the US (I'm an international applicant) and not sure as to which date should I put in the "Degree Conferred or Expected" section; the one I have on my provisional degree certificate or something else? For my MA I am assuming that I will just put 'December 2024', as the date it is expected.
Would greatly appreciate some input on this.

I am unfamiliar with your system. It sounds like you are in a joint BA/MA program, no? Is your BA provisional because it is awarded at the same time as your BA, or for some other rreason?

If you're applying for PhD positions now in the US, you're likely expecting to start a program in Fall 2025.
It will likely be important for required degrees (like a BS) to be officially awarded before you are able to start. It may be somewhat important for other degrees (like a MS) to be officially awarded before you are able to start. It is very very normal that applicants to US PhD programs will not have their degrees yet. The most typical path for a domestic student would be applying now for Fall 2025 when they expect to complete their bachelor's degree late in Spring 2026, past application deadlines and even past admissions decisions. Other applicants may have masters degrees pending instead, or may have taken time for a research job or even a job outside of academia.
So, it's no problem at all that you do not have your degree yet, if it says "Degree Conferred or Expected" in your case you care about the "Expected" part, because yours hasn't been Conferred (officially awarded) yet. Put whatever date you expect that you will be officially given the degree. Even if you've already completed all your requirements, that's the date they want. It sounds like you know what that date is for your Masters degree, so now you just need to figure out what the likely official date will be for your Bachelors. I don't know how you need to figure that out, but it seems like something between you and the institution giving you that degree. If "provisional" means "we've already given you the degree but the official paperwork is in the mail/post" and once you receive that paperwork it will have the same provisional date, you could possibly use that, but if it were me I would like to have some confirmation from the institution that this is acceptable.
In your CV, you may choose to indicate when you actually completed degree requirements regardless of when the degree is awarded, particularly if you feel that helps to make clear the timeline of your education, but admissions committees in the US will be familiar with concurrent BS/MS degrees that are common in other countries (assuming that describes your situation), even if they are not particularly common in the US.

Hi! So actually, “provisional degree certificate”, in my country, is an actual piece of paper, provided by the institution when asked for by a student, that acts as a sort of proof that indeed the person has graduated, and just hasn’t yet been given the actual degree certificate/diploma yet. It includes the final CGPA and overall result and remarks, with the signature from the Registrar, HOD of the department and other concerned authorities.

You need to be completely honest and even a bit conservative in such things to protect yourself. If you are filling out forms that have room, give the date and mark it as provisional. It is probably still "expected". You don't want to get into a situation where someone asks for verification and it doesn't come.
If the forms don't allow any explanations and are just check boxes and date fields, then put a couple of sentences elsewhere in your application to make it clear.
You might also contact the university, perhaps the "registrar's" office to ask this question. Has the degree officially been awarded? If they agree that it has this becomes much simpler. It isn't your receipt of the diploma that matters, but the date on which the university "acts" to confer the degree. Systems vary, so ask the university.

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


text:
Would acceptance letters from conferences be good in my CV?
I graduated and I am trying to build my CV in order to apply for a master's scholarship. I wrote articles in my field, but since I am a fresh grad and I wrote them with no other authors, they haven't been accepted by journals. I sent them to conferences and they got accepted by multiple conferences, however, I can't afford to attend any of them.
Should I add the acceptance letters from conferences to my CV?
For context, I am in the medical field.

Hi lia, welcome to Ac.SE. I removed your second question because we have a one-question-per-question policy. I think other questions like that one  have been asked on this site before, I encourage you to look for them.

Have you tried contacting the conferences about a reduced or free admission? Sometimes they have the possibility to do that for people without funds and it never hurts to ask.

related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/63185/under-which-title-in-cv-should-i-list-a-paper-accepted-in-a-conference

related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12988/how-submitted-to-appear-accepted-papers-are-evaluated-in-a-cv

Why submit your research to conferences/journals if you know in advance you are not going to go through with presentation/publishing? That way you are wasting reviewers' time. Hoping for a reduced/free admission or seeking funding to cover travel/living expenses is fair game, but if you are not even trying to obtain it, that strikes me as unethical. Not an enormous offense, but still...

Hi Lodinn, thanks for your nice comment. Anyways.. I am from a developing country that is currently suffering an economical crisis , so yes I thought that conference acceptance letters are strong for my cv and no I can't afford to go because its hella expensive and i am not 'funded' by any organization

Going to a conference might've helped. Acceptance letters don't really move the needle. Unfortunately for you, recruiters in developed countries can afford to be picky, but you can't afford major risks such as moving to other country without a job offer laid out. Realistically, I'd advise to aim a bit lower and improve your immediate situation for now and build your profile. Desperation would likely lead to either blacklisting or giving you a job offer with slave-like working conditions. Not just "work really hard" ones. The bad ones. Especially given the field.

I wish I had something more positive to say, but ultimately, the upcoming years are going to be enormously important to you, and unless you already hit the rock bottom and are willing to work for food doing whatever odd job comes up, you still have something to lose and will need to measure your next steps carefully. Maybe try to find a place with a bit less fierce competition where you would have some advantage: be it knowing local language/customs, having a support network, or something else. Aiming straight at a spot in a hyper-competitive environment is hoping for a miracle.

Will the conference publish abstracts of the accepted papers, or possibly a journal in the field may have a section where the abstracts are published, hardcopy or online?  This might be citeable, but I don’t think a letter of acceptance is acceptable because what goes in a CV is work others saw or can find. A letter of acceptance by itself makes none of your work public, even the abstract.

Being accepted to a conference isn't necessarily a sign of renown/quality work. Therefore, I wouldn't advise attaching them to your CV. In your situation, it'd be best to have some joint publications or, perhaps, ask a colleague attending the conference to inquire if the conference will publish them anywhere (online or offline.)
I'd also advise you take a look at some journals that are, perhaps, less prestigious but would accept your works. Having some material that can be read and studied to determine your abilities is a plus.

Can you please recommend any less prestigious journals? That would be helpful.

But I think those journals take forever to review the articles.


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What can I expect for US grad admissions with a degree from a reputable Middle East university?
My university, the American University of Beirut has consistently been ranked as one of the top universities in the Middle East, excluding Israeli universities.
I am concerned about how US profs view the academic rigor of Middle East Universities. What can I expect for US grad admissions with a degree from a reputable Middle East university? My field is computer science.

The American University of Beirut certainly used to be well known, I'm not sure how that may have changed over the last few decades. So, you should expect pretty much what any applicant expects - you might get accepted and you might not based on the actual application.

Your university is well known. You might give preference to universities that have faculty or previous students from there. Most American universities now use third party evaluations of foreign transcripts and the quality of the programs when reviewing applicants. I have read many of these and found them to be realistic evaluations.

Doctoral programs are pretty good at being able to learn about the reputation of foreign universities, having dealt with them frequently. And note that in the US, you don't need to have come from a world famous (or nationally famous) university to gain admission. It depends more on what you have done than the name recognition of your university. And, there are probably enough Lebanese faculty in US large universities that word of mouth will give an idea.
I'd think you can expect to be treated fairly and evaluated honestly. Expect a lot of competition, however, so nothing is certain.
Note that letters of recommendation are especially important here and if your letter writers are established academics with good reputations, you should be considered along with any other international student.
A complicating factor, of course, is the general "unrest" in Lebanon and surrounding countries. If that has affected the general quality of the higher educational system it could be an issue. I have no knowledge of that, but it is probably discoverable.
I doubt that you have issues of language, but that can complicate things for some people.
See the US answer for the canonical question on doctoral admissions to learn of the process here. How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in Country X?. Unless you are independently wealthy, you will also probably want to apply for a Teaching Assistantship, which will fund your education and provide a modest living stipend. CS departments need a lot of TAs to support the undergraduate program.

Well, yes, the various kidnappings, murder, and car bombings in, roughly, the 1980s, had major impacts on the number of (mostly US) visiting or permanent professors at AUB. Not sure of the situation there now, although https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_University_of_Beirut suggests there are now financial issues as well.

"there are probably enough Lebanese faculty in US large universities" Really? Perhaps they're more common in CS but I have never met a Lebanese faculty member (or grad student).


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Are universities strongly associated with ethnic minority groups a thing outside the USA?
This question asks about the history of why Howard University in Washington, DC, USA has remained a school whose student and faculty bodies are predominantly African-American.
Do "historically [minority ethnic group]" universities exist in a meaningful sense outside the USA? For example, are there universities in Spain which are historically known for targeting or serving the ethnic Basque community? Are there "Historically Italian" universities in Argentina? Do the Ainu of Japan tend to predominate at a specific Japanese university?
This question is not about whether specialized minority-serving academic institutions should exist, or what their social, political, or economic ramifications are, if any.
This question involves something other than a request to churn and process statistical data - it is a question about social realities and social perceptions in academia. For example, if a census of a particular university in the UK happens to reveal that 65% of the faculty and students are Scottish Highlanders, but there is no significant social perception of the school as a "Highlander School" and no particular adherence to Highlander culture, then it would not count under this question. If, however, there is a UK university whose charter specifically says that it was established "for the education of Highlanders", or which inspires mentions of "oh, that Highlander school!" when mentioned casually in pubs, it counts, even if the actual number of Highlanders on campus as of 2018 is 15%.

Legal segregation of blacks from whites in the US is the reason for the existence of historically black universities/colleges. I suspect another category you would by more likely to find abroad are institutions that primarily or exclusively educate women.

Do you count countries with ethnic minorities that speak a different language?  Do Swedish-speaking universities in Finland, French or Italian speaking universities in Switzerland, or French-speaking universities in Belgium count?

As the situation in Spain has been mentioned, here universities aren't targeted to specific groups, although they use the languages of their area. Contrastingly with the USA, here most students don't travel far away. In addition there are private universities with religious backgrounds, but they aren't focused in students from their groups.

@BryanKrause South Africa has a similar history of segregation and has no historically black university as far as I can tell.

Are you asking about minority servicing institutions in general or about historically X institutions. There are a number of new institutions with a goal of servicing minorities that would be hard to describe as historical.

@StrongBad I would describe recently-instituted minority-servicing institutions as in-scope. Even if these institutions do not have much in the way of history, they are clearly socially identified as being associated with minorities and thus their "history", even if short, has been one of being associated with minorities.

@AlexanderWoo if the language barrier has resulted in significant de-facto segregation by ethnic group or at least the perception of it, I would say it counts. If a country is mostly populated by bilinguals and citizens typically choose a university based on reasons other than the language spoken (e.g. prestige, program availability, climate, etc.), then it probably wouldn't count. For example, if large numbers of native Dutch-speaking fluent French-speaking Belgians attend French-language universities because they are easier to afford, those schools would probably not count.

@Pere Right. Also, for the particular example of the basque ethnic group, it would not be easy to establish the pertenence to such group. Maybe the concept itself of ethnicity is unclear outside the US. Language would be a clearer boundary e.g. in Belgium.

@RobertColumbia - I think all my examples count then.  Next question: do anglophones in Quebec count as a minority?  What about Flemish speakers in Brussels (or other French speaking parts of Belgium)?

@AlexanderWoo: Even though French might technically be a minority language in Belgium and French and Italian may technically be minority languages in Switzerland, nobody in those countries would call the respective groups "ethnic minorities". Internal social frictions notwithstanding, the respective groups are not "subordinate" to a majority population in any manner.

@user8001 Probably the central difference between the US and South Africa as far as this question goes is that half the US did not have state-mandated segregation. I'm no expert on this, but I believe that most of the earliest efforts to educate blacks in the US were initiatives by Northern abolitionists and religious groups like the Quakers.

I think @AlexanderWoo is right on the money. In most of the world, a different ethnic group will also speak a different language. If a university uses that language, it will "target" that ethnic group by default. As an example, take the Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Norway. The university uses the Sami language, and so virtually all of its students will be Sami.

@ElizabethHenning - Um, what about Booker T. Washington?

@aparente001 Booker T. Washington is an excellent example of someone who was educated at a school founded by Northern abolitionists.

@ElizabethHenning - And after that?  Was what made Booker T. Washington so famous and influential the fact that he studied and cleaned his heart out as a student at Hampton?

As universities in England were originally based on training religious folk for the priesthood, they did not accept other religions or non-religious persons, so alternative learning places evolved, which are now full universities, but the female/male divide was strong in learning establishments until recently. Imperial College, London was specifically created to allow Empire students of a non-UK-religious background get a university education in UK. They might be non-Christian, Non-Believers or even 'pagans' or even "Scots Protestants" but Imperial College was open to them while the older English religious founded establishments were not.

I was a student at Imperial in the late 1960's. By then, any remnant of the religious difference or special association with the former empire had gone.

Trinity College Dublin could be considered an example. Consider, from Wikipedia:

Originally it was established outside the city walls of Dublin in the
  buildings of the dissolved Augustinian Priory of All Hallows. Trinity
  College was set up in part to consolidate the rule of the Tudor
  monarchy in Ireland, and it was seen as the university of the
  Protestant Ascendancy for much of its history. Although Catholics and
  Dissenters had been permitted to enter as early as 1793, certain
  restrictions on their membership of the college remained until 1873
  (professorships, fellowships and scholarships were reserved for
  Protestants). From 1871 to 1970, the Catholic Church in Ireland
  forbade its adherents from attending Trinity College without
  permission. Women were first admitted to the college as full members
  in January 1904.