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How to cite articles published under another name?
QUESTION
If an author published an article with the name A, but later changed their name to B, using the latter in their publications.
Is there any general consensus about how to cite their work authored as A alongside their work as B, in order to avoid confusing the reader (believing those are two distinct authors when they are in fact the same person)?
Options which come to mind would be to cite them

as "B (formerly known as A) introduced the concept of (...)[1] and proved that (...)[2]",
as "B-A  introduced the concept of (...)[1] and proved that (...)[2]" (albeit this might be confusing), or
emailing the person to ask them their preference (which I will probably do).

Is one of them the usage, or is there any that I could not think about?
REAL LIFE EXAMPLES

A researcher adopted the name of their spouse ("K") in their scientific articles, but later divorced their spouse and published under their original family name ("M").

A researcher published under their family name ("V") but later married and combined their name with that of their spouse ("W", resulting in "V-W").

I want to avoid confusing the reader when  citing work published under both the older and the present name, but hopefully without wasting space and reader's attention on personal details in a footnote. Lacking a proper answer I would contact the person, but I prefer to ask first if there is a general consensus.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/65464/citing-an-author-who-changed-his-name https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/44213/if-you-change-your-name-while-doing-research-can-you-list-both-names-on-a-publi https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10926/should-i-cite-author-names-as-they-appear-in-the-journal-or-as-i-know-them-to-be https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/91872/how-do-i-handle-a-colleagues-gender-change-when-citing-their-paper

Are you talking about a bibliographic reference & citation?  Or about mentioning so-and-so in a literature review?  If the former, I think you also need to account for the fact that the author's name attached to the article (possibly their former name) is an important piece of information for your readers who might want to find & consult the work you're citing;  which would argue for citing their articles under the name A.

I would say: use the form found in the published paper.  After all, the purpose of the reference is to help someone find the paper, isn't it?

Depending on circumstances, there may be reasons that a person might prefer not to have their change of name highlighted. Even if the individual doesn't mind, your readers will not know their views and may question your motives in announcing the issue publicly. In most cases I think it would best to avoid mentioning it at all.

Sorry if I was not clear: I will be citing works from before and after the change of names. Just using the publication names could create the impression that they are distinct persons, which could be confusing. I added a minor comment to clarify this in the question.

An important real-life example that may affect handling: trans people sometimes change their name, and dead-naming such a person is (usually) considered quite rude.

"Just using the publication names could create the impression that they are distinct persons..."? Not at all. Every other option creates the confusion. Just sticking to the bibliographic record is the only way to go. I do not care about the family situation of researches I am citing. In fact, your knowledge could be outdated. The person could have changed the name again and without your knowledge.

@D.BenKnoble There are actually some options for them to update their names in published papers.

@JackRed not exactly: I am referring to how I refer to the authors in the text of the article, not in the bibliography (no way I will change how they are cited in the bibliography, it should be as close as possible to how it was published).

If it's even necessary at all, use a footnote
My view is that the citation is an identification of the paper not the author.  Moreover, for most research work we are interested in setting out the content of the relevant literature rather than worrying about who wrote it.  The latter may be important in papers setting out the history of the development of a field, or writing about a specific researcher/author, but it is not usually the focus of our literature review and referencing.  Consequently, in the standard case (i.e., when writing a paper that is not about the history of the development of a field or a specific researcher/author) there is usually no need to make any effort to identify that different paper are or aren't by the same author.  If you refer to "Smith (1997)" and "Jones (1999)", both by the same author who started as Ms Smith but later got married and changes her name to Mrs Jones, this would still be fine because it still correctly identifies the papers at issue.
It sounds like you might be dealing with a slightly trickier case where the latter paper is an updated version of essentially the same work.  If this is the case and you want to note for the reader that this is the same person, my view is that a footnote is perfectly adequate for this.  You say you want to avoid wasting the reader's attention on a footnote, but that is precisely the purpose of footnotes --- to give some ancillary detail separated out from the body of the paper so as not to distract the flow of discussion.
It is also worth noting that this same problem occurs more broadly than just when there is a change of name.  It can occur when different people have the same surname (often because people from the same family have become academics in the same field) and it can even occur because we have long lists of authors on some papers and so we only list them partially, with et al referring to the other authors.  Thus, a set of papers all by the same authors (let us call them Nguyen, Jameson, Xi, and Foster) might be cited as "Nguyen et al", "Jameson et al", "Xi et al" and "Foster et al", leading to essentially the same situation you describe.

I think this is the right answer. The point of a citation is to allow readers to find the referenced paper. You can't find a paper if you don't provide the name of the authors as it was used on that paper. In all likelihood, you will not know anything about the lives of almost all authors you will ever cite, so not mentioning anything about changed names does not strike me as wrong.

Your last point is especially true in fields where the last author is the senior author. In that case the first author might be the PhD student, followed by a post-doc, another colleague and only at the end the senior author. When a new paper is published, it will be by a new student, new post-doc but same senior author, who well likely be in the "et al." part of the authors' list.

I guess this is little more than an opinion, but I think that citations should be made "as published" without alteration. That is the formal part. If you want to add a note that the name has been changed from A to B it would be fine, but the citation itself refers to an historical record.
My preference in adding a note would be to put it after the citation itself, perhaps in a footnote, not as an alteration of it. This aids in searching for things.

Imagine a case with three authors, all of whom have changed their names. Suppose it is also a case in which authors are listed alphabetically. "Who the heck are "Able, Baker, and Croft. There was a paper by Xavier, Yosarian, and Zeno with that title."

As a side note, I also suggest that new academics choose a name for publication purposes that they will stick with throughout their career. The common or legal name can be different from the publication identity. Among other things, your CV will be clearer.

I will be citing works from before and after the change of names. Just using the publication names could create the impression that they are distinct persons, which could be confusing. I added a minor comment to clarify this in the question. OF COURSE, the bibliography will have the publication names.

I don't even see the need to make a notation in the vast majority of cases, unless the biographical record of the cited author is under discussion in the paper.

@ScottSeidman, yes, I agree. The record is what it is. Changing the names, can imply a new paper (and possible plagiarism), just as not changing them can imply a different author.

I added an interesting example to my answer.

@yarchik, to whom are you addressing the comment? I think I say the opposite. Cite the paper as published. Or are you addressing the OP?

I agree with the previous answers that the most important use of a reference is to find the work in question. So I would always begin with the name on the work itself. Nevertheless, I consider identifying the author to be a second worthwhile purpose, so, if the author is better known under a different name, I would also give that name, usually in parentheses and often with an equals sign. For example, "Jaime Ihoda (= Haim Judah)". As far as I can remember, no editor, referee, or copy-editor has objected to my using this format (admittedly a small sample, since the issue comes up only rarely).

Stylistically I think the equals sign is a bit odd outside of a mathematical context, you could perhaps replace it with née: originally or formerly called

@Wolfie But né/née creates additional problems. It is gendered so you may not know which version to use, and it specifically refers to the birth name which may be different from either name you are giving (or the wrong way round). For example, you might want to cite "Mary Westmacott (= Agatha Christie)", but née would only be appropriate if followed by "Agatha Miller".

@EspeciallyLime The 2nd definition "originally or formally called" which I quoted from Merriam Webster is not gendered or specifically referring to a birth name, that's just its most common usage.  The Agatha Christie example is an alias, so "a.k.a" would work, it's also not what either of OP's examples were describing.

@Wolfie née literally means "born" (feminine).

I don't know what to say, other than its adopted English meaning being exactly what the referenced dictionary states it is

X (who also [or later] published as Y) would probably work pretty well.

There is very rarely a need to do this. Cite the paper exactly as listed in the indices of record.
I'll add this example, written by an old late colleague, Bob Doty.  He was a founder of the Society for Neuroscience, and the first (I think) president.
He wrote a retrospective on the work of Ivane S. Beritashvili https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030645220901121X
That name is actually a diminutive (or some other form of name variation).  Much of Beritashvili's work was published under "Beritoff".  Bob cited the works under the name they were published under.
(As an aside, Bob cited me in that, and it's one of the things I'm most proud of)

When following your institution's referencing rules, are you citing the paper and the author is just a part of the citation or are you citing the author?
Maybe a bit cynical, but the answer is obvious – we are always referencing a paper as it was published and changing the paper's author in your citation (i.e. not writing the name(s) written on the paper) would result in referencing a paper that doesn't exist, which is – of course – wrong.

Hmmm. I guess I don't understand down votes on this.

In no way am I suggesting to change the names in the bibliography part (which should obviously stay identical to that in the paper being referenced), but rather in the sentences describing the history of previous research (e.g. "Smith\footnote{Formerly knwon as Jones.} defined the concept of (...) [1] and later proved that (...) [2].")


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Will a journal reject a paper for citing an Encyclopedia?
When writing a paper, when I identify some area I'm uncertain of, I try to track down a good source in JSTOR, the library, etc. I am in a situation where I found there is no academic source available on the subject. Scholars studying the topic within the confines of a specific territory, I could find none presenting the information globally.
To be really specific about the case, I need info on the territories a European nation acquired globally, changes to that territory over time. All sources I uncovered were territory-specific, and it would seem silly to cite 10 separate books for this general information.
So that leaves me citing the Encyclopedia in about 10 places in the article, which I normally stay away from except for building background knowledge. Is that something that will be a problem to publishers if I have citations to something like Encyclopedia Britannica?

Things that I've seen cited in research papers include encyclopedias, preprints, this website, Reddit and 4chan. Certainly there is not a blanket "citing non-research-paper things gets you rejected" rule.

No
If other secondary sources like review articles are acceptable, then an encyclopedia is acceptable.
If the information is a well-documented, undisputed territorial boundary, then secondary sources should be adequate.
Personally, I have never heard of a paper being rejected for citing the wrong type of source in my field of research.  If the source is wrong or irrelevant, that could be a problem, but type of source does not matter.  In physics, non-peer reviewed sources like ArXiv can be cited, and these are less reliable than encyclopedias.

The answer depends on the nature of the information and the field - context you haven't provided and can't really on this site.
In general, information in the Encyclopedia Brittanica should count as reasonably reliable general information. You must cite it if you quote directly, and probably should in any case at all questionable. (You need not for, say, the dates of the Civil War.)
That said, relying heavily on that source for current (technical) information may well be a reason for an editor or referee to reject your manuscript.

"That said, relying heavily on that source for current (technical) information may well be a reason for an editor or referee to reject your manuscript." - Why? Certainly not more than relying on outdated articles in journals.

Can you give an example of a type of information or field where this would get a rejection  I do not believe such a thing exists.

@AnonymousPhysicist I have no direct knowledge of this. I do know that if I were to referee a (math) paper that quoted wikipedia or the Brittanica for a theorem I would ask for a reference in a refereed publication.

Then I think you think the answer is no.  Please edit.  Revisions are not rejections.  Despite the tagline "The Free Encyclopedia" it is clear the question is not asking about Wikipedia.

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Is there a search tool for finding primary sources in US History?
If I search a tool like JSTOR, ProQuest, or Academic Search Complete, I typically just find secondary sources. Occasionally I can find primary sources there, but only when it is part of a translation or transcription project, but it is rare for me to find these appear in my results. Sometimes I can find books that compile these, but one $20 book might contain just 40 primary sources, which seems minuscule.
I'm looking for US History resources like letters, dairies, military orders, military reports, commission reports, etc.
Is there a search tool that compiles a vast database of primary sources?

I doubt it.  The vast vast majority of primary sources are still only available on paper in the sole original copy.  There's a reason that historians have to travel to do their research.

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What are the different components of degree titles called?
Some degree titles have many components, e.g.:
Master of Arts in Psychology: Behavioral Health
|_A__|_B_____|_C___________|_D________________|

Another e.g.:
Master of Education in Curriculum and Instruction: Special Education
|_A__|_B__________|_C___________________________|_D________________|

What are these components called?

To take one of your examples:
Master of Arts in Psychology: Behavioral Health
|_A__|_B_____|_C___________|_D________________|

"Master" is the degree. Etymologically, "degree" comes from "degré": the step of a stair (or  rung of a ladder). "Degree" can be synonymous with "level" or "extent" - it is a measure. You could say "the level of a degree", but that would be a tautology. It's not incorrect, but "level" is redundant there - "degree" already says everything that you'd be trying to get from "level". Degree is a very flexible word, and can be used to refer to just part A, parts A+B, parts A+B+C, and parts A+B+C+D.
Then either:
"Psychology" is the subject and "Behavioral Health" is the speciality, or "Psychology: Behavioral Health" is the subject. You might also hear "field" used instead of "subject".
"of Arts" doesn't really have a well-recognised name. You could call it type, kind, field, sort, school or faculty, but in the end, if you want to ask what sort of Master's someone has, you'll probably end up saying something like: "What kind of Master's? Master of Science, Arts, MBA, something else?"

I really don't think that A should be called the degree. An MBA is not the same degree as an MPhil or an MS. I've followed up with details in my own answer.

I am not aware of either (a) a consistent way of referring to the parts of the degree title or, more fundamentally, (b) a consistent way of deciding even what goes into the degree titles! None of my degrees have a colon or any listed specialty or sub-field. For that matter, what I translate from Latin as a masters degree is actually a Scientiæ Magister (which should properly be abbreviated SM, not MS).
According to academic tradition, all PhD are degrees in philosophy. As a result, a PhD in biology is a doctoral degree in philosophy (in the sense of thinking and research) with an specialty in biology. On the other hand, a DSci would be a doctoral degree in science in the field of biology. It's not clear to me that we would want to refer to the fields or specialties in that case the same way in any sort of rigorous way.
EnergyNumbers' answer seems like a good attempt to parse out the answer. That said, I agree with Shane's answer that "Master of Arts" is the name of the degree. So, in:
Master of Arts in Psychology: Behavioral Health
|_A__|_B_____|_C___________|_D________________|

I would say that A+B is the degree. A is not the degree because an MBA is simply not the same degree as an MS, MFA, MPH, MPhil, etc.
C is the field, subject, area, or specialty. D is the sub-field, sub-area, or sub-specialty. I think adding a "sub-" makes this relationship clear.
I would call "A" the type, or maybe the level, of the degree. I like level because if I were to ask someone what their highest level of degree was, I would expect to hear something like doctorate, masters, bachelors, or associates and would not expect to hear that it was a bachelors of science.

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Do any schools maintain records of when instructors arrive and depart the classroom?
Recently, my college began placing staff around the school to record when instructors arrive. The record is to the second. A school announcement also warned against arriving late and ending lessons early by even fraction of a minute. I am somewhat surprised to find this in a tertiary institution. How common is this?

"I am somewhat surprised to find this in a tertiary institution." I am not. Only a tertiary institution would have so much free cycles left to spare as to be able to pull this off, and faculty so unworthy for such a practice to be gainful in any sense. Decent institutions don't have to worry about stupid stuff like that.]

@Kuba I think "tertiary" here means third-level (i.e. college/university level), not third-class.

@user10529 In any case, the institution of such a policy makes the instituting institution a tertiary one, as in third-class :)

I thinks it depends if the instructor is Tenured, part time or a contract instructor. For the later two, I would believe that the school would have some time sheet system for payroll purposes. Its becoming common.
Temple university has a template for time sheet for instructors
http://www.temple.edu/cjtp/pdfs/Instructor%20Timesheet.pdf
Also, check out this link
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/02/kean_university_now_requires_f.html

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Is "no late work" a common policy?
When I wrote my syllabus for this term, I added the line "Late work will not be accepted." In the past, I just took off a large percentage of the grade per day, but I became tired of the added work of managing papers that students handed to me at random times and places.
The students, naturally, complain this policy too harsh, especially when some larger projects are worth 25% of their grade. I searched the Internet to try to establish what the norm is. I found many syllabi from famous universities, but found very few even list any policies at all.
Is "no late work" a typical rule?

"took off a large of the grade"? slice? piece?

As a student, I had a number of courses which did not accept late submissions at all. I also had courses which had similar rules to what you've done previously, deducting points for late work, and other courses with other different policies besides. I see nothing wrong with a "no late work" policy that is clearly stated in the syllabus. (I was an undergraduate in Texas.)

Oh my that's bad. Even exams can and should be able to be made up for a good reason. 25% of the grade lost for a couple of days is insane.

Yes, it is very common. For examples you can try Google queries like "no late work will be accepted" site:harvard.edu.

@Joshua I have a hard time seeing what would qualify as "insane" in what the OP proposed.

In industry, late work could cause serious consequences such as huge financial loss. You are doing your students a big favor by imposing no late work policy so that they learn this precious lesson as early as possible if they are going to work in industry after graduation.

Is “no late work” a common policy? It should be.

As a student I have found a mix of approaches based on the size of the assignment. For small (less than 10% of the grade) no late work is accepted, and for larger ones they have the sliding scale of ~5%/day.

If a student hands in work late, make sure to enquire if they have applied for an extension, in case they have a valid reason to be late (illness, bereavement and other personal problems) Red tape sometimes takes long to come through, and all you need to do is write the date they handed it in on the paper and delay marking it until you receive their extension confirmation. (It took me 2 months to get my official extension confirmation when I was in Uni once)

I thought that it was ALWAYS implict.

Due to a much criticize, I have delete my post. Chenqui.

for exceptions, see http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21365/being-the-right-kind-of-demanding-as-a-college-instructor

One issue not covered by the many good answers is proportionality.
There's nothing wrong with having firm deadlines and sticking to them, or allowing a grace period with corresponding deductions, and so on. But it's your job as lecturer to make sure the 'punishment fits the crime'. If you have a zero-tolerance late policy and a short time window for a hard assignment that counts for a lot of points, then the policy is disproportionately harsh even if it's fair and clearly stated. I bring this up because you mentioned assignments/projects that carry upto 25% of the grade.
This is partly why I use a sliding scale late policy, where students can turn in things late, but lose a percentage of their score for each day they're late, upto a week for a 2-week assignment at which point they earn nothing. If you wish to have firm deadlines for a project that accounts for a large portion of the grade, then you might consider creating intermediate deadlines to break up the penalty. This way, students can learn the consequences of missing deadlines without facing huge penalties. It is also more robust to unforeseen events that no one can control.

Codified rules are good. They don't preclude you from being accomodating of special situations. Say a student approaches you well before the deadline and has valid reason to be late (illness, tragedy, ...). This might be obvious to many, but maybe it needs to be said.
(Also, I challenge that university attendees should be forced to do anything. Give them material, give them offers for support, and then the exam. Those who can not motivate and organise themselves should fail. Unfortunately, that point of view is not economically (US et al) and/or politically (EU et al) opportune.)

True. What I meant to say was that the OP mentioned zero tolerance AND lots of points. Then a short time window is the last piece that turns this into an unfair policy.

On another hand the final exam is worth more and showing up late is not acceptable....

One percentage point per day is not enough IMO.  I like multiplier = 0.90 ^ (days late), which is 100%, 90%, ~81%, ~73%, ~66%, ~59%, ~53%, ~48%... but never quite gets to zero.

Concidering the strength of the punishment for not making the deadline, I think that it should be at least so high that students cannot take advantage of being late on purpose and using the extra time to produce better work – otherwise it would be unfair to those who are on time (which is one essential argument for deadlines). What exactly makes a punishment appropriate depends however so much on the nature of the task that it does not make sense to discuss actual numbers here.

@Nick S: Every college I've been into has rules for making up the final exam. Apply them to the other assignments.

@Joshua And those rules apply in special circumstances.... There is a huge difference IMO between allowing a repeat due special circumstances and allowing late work...Note that students complaining that late work is not accepted is not the same as "in special circumstances" late work is not accepted......

I've never taken a class where we were directly punished for showing up for an exam late. The punishment was always implicit and proportional (if you show up late, you have less time to finish; the later you are, the less time you get).

@BrendanLong The deadline for an exam is not the start of the exam, is the end of the exam. The equivalent of the start of the exam would be when the assignments are posted/announced...

In the UK, it is normal to have a deadline in exams, usually 30 minutes after the start which you must meet in order to sit the exam. This is typically also the time after which you can leave the exam early.

Don't you feel that the grade you give a student should reflect the quality of their work? Unless you are teaching a course in time management, I don't see how the student's time management skills should affect the grade at all. IMO you either accept what they hand in, or you don't. If you do accept it, you grade it on its quality, same as you do for what every other student handed in.

Disclaimer: I am a student in Central Europe (Computer Science), but an enthusiastic one ;)
"No late work" rules are common for both courses with many (>100) and with few participants. Usually, there will still be a couple of students trying to get a deadline-extension, but in my experience this number is far smaller if you make the "no late work" rule clear to everyone.
Just keep in mind that students have other work besides your course and make sure that there's enough time to do the assignment. I don't really see the point to give less than two weeks - if a student falls ill for a couple of days or is otherwise occupied, a second week will give him or her the chance to nevertheless produce a good solution.
Even for regular homework assignments, I think that giving the students two weeks time will result in far better hand-ins: they can ask questions/request clarifications one week after the assignment was published in the lecture.

+1 for "make sure there's enough time." Even for a short assignment, don't assume that I can find an hour in the next two days to complete it.

"I don't really see the point to give less than two weeks." One possible point is that students retain much more from a lecture if they do a follow-up assignment as soon as possible after the lecture -- two weeks later is almost as bad as two months later.

@MarkMeckes If you want the follow-up assignment to immediately follow the lecture, make it an in-class assignment. Otherwise, don't assume that students should be able to rearrange their schedules to accommodate your tight deadline, however well-intentioned.

@ff524: I don't expect my students to rearrange their schedules, I expect them to arrange their schedules around the classes they're taking.

There is little point in giving two weeks if they work on every assignment two days before deadline.

@Raphael We were often forced into those two days due to projects for other classes.  In my experience, professors seem to like to assume that they're the only ones that give homework, and assign due dates accordingly, not taking into account we have stuff to do for other classes as well.

@Izkata: True, but that situation is (after some burn-in) independent of the length of any assignment. (And no, the assumption is rather "that's doable, so those that should pass will manage".)

@Raphael It's uncommon for classes to pack your schedule so you never have free time. The issue is that sometimes you'll get four or five classes assigning a "reasonable" homework assignment at the exact same time. The homework feast-of-famine situation happened to be a couple times, and it was really annoying because the workload would have been fine if I could have spread it out a little bit more.

@BrendanLong Well, at my department you get one exercise sheet per week for every course you take (with few exceptions). So you always have things to do. And, apparently, (some) students are particularly bad at managing/balancing that load and prioritising ("Can I hand in on  Mondays instead? I want to drive home every Thursday afternoon.").

@BrendanLong That type of problem is very common in germany. Oftentimes, tests are clustered in 1-2 weeks, which creates huge timing issues. But this type of problem also occurs at the end of the semester: everyone gets their assignments from every course. I really liked teacher which gave assignments early in the semester, so you had a chance to spread out the workload.

@ff524 It is absolutely OK to assume a student has 1hr to do a short assignment in 2 days if you either (1) announce this policy on the first day of class and in your syllabus or (2) post all of the assignments online at once on the first day of class. This allows students to work ahead if need be, and schedule their time in advance. I think 2 is more reasonable than 1.

I am sure this varies between lecturers/courses; some universities may have more or less stringent policies but none that I have seen. In my own surroundings, a deadline used to be a deadline. This has softened over time due to many circumstances. Lecturers/teachers are more stressed and enforcing deadlines inevitably involves more work; students seem to find more and more excuses for not being on time. It is hard to point the finger in one or the other direction.
It is, however, interesting to think about the fact that deadlines are still deadlines in society. If you do not send in your tax report in time you are fined; if yo do not pay your bills you are "fined" etc. More critically, if you cannot finish a work task on time you may lose out on salary increases promotion or even lose a job, the latter particularly if you run your own business. So learning to cope with deadlines is important yet it seems to not be prioritized.
So what can be done? Key is to be very clear on what will happen from the start. If you make assessment criteria you can state that a late task means fail/zero points or whatever the perspective is. At the same time you can say that for a larger task, points will be deducted or grade lowered a step at a time after each time period the work is late. My former advisor gave all of us the option of being late but told us that points will be deducted. It was up to us to judge if we would benefit from being late (Better answer gave more points than was deducted for being late). This fostered some form of responsibility where you as a student had the power to decide.
So I do not think that it is difficult to impose rules for lateness that allows students to assess the effects of being late. Learning is of course about learning a subject but it is also about learning to function in society (in the work place) and that involves developing work standards that are good. So when imposing rules that involve lateness, it is also important to make the rules very clear and also to provide suggestions for what you perceive as a good work ethic/schedule to pass the tasks well, i.e. provide the students with enough information to also see what will not work. If you fail to do so the lateness effects may only seem as punishment.

+1 for So learning to cope with deadlines is important yet it seems to not be prioritized.

True, though if you don't pay your bills, you're fined, you aren't generally immediately sent to collections or thrown in jail. If you don't send in your tax report on time, you have to deal with bureaucracy, fill out a bunch of papers, and probably won't get your refund very quickly, but you will still generally get it eventually. Learning to deal with deadlines is definitely good, but still, the real world isn't usually "turn it in on time or you're just completely screwed with no recourse", either.

@neminem ... but losing a significant amount of points isn't exactly "being screwed with no recourse" either. It's exactly what you mentioned for the other examples - it's quite bad, and you would generally want to avoid it, but it's not the end of the world if it happens.

As I understand it, there are a lot of career paths (e.g. medical school) where having a single 'C' on a college transcript is an automatic and irrevocable disqualification.  And if you have a 'no late work' policy and individual assignments worth 25% of the grade, you're talking about giving an otherwise perfect student a 'C'.

@DanielMcLaury And if the students shows up late for the exam, you are also giving an otherwise perfect student a "C"... If the assignments for a class are worth 25%, then they should be a higher priority for that student than a 10% assignment... And we are speaking about probably multiple assignments worth 25%, being late once is not the end of the world... Being late always would be an issue, but then would you really want to accommodate that student?... And since you brought up medical school, would you want the student which is always late to be your heart surgeon?

"And we are speaking about probably multiple assignments worth 25%, being late once is not the end of the world"
Sorry, what?  If you miss a single assignment worth 25% of your grade, then your grade tops out at 75%.

I would say that in general it depends. If assignments are going to be happening regularly or are kind of a hard mathematics course (think calculus, differential equations...) then I think the no late work policy is valuable.  This is particularly true if you plan to post a solution to the assigned problems shortly afterwards.
On the other hand in a class that I teach most of the assignments are more project oriented.  As a result they will take longer than a normal assignment, and they are also far more open-ended (a solution from student A may look nothing like solution from student B, but they may both be completely valid).  As a result the approach that some students use may lead them to take longer on an assignment than others.  I use a sliding scale as discussed above;  Typically I allow 1 week grace where each day costs a few percentage points, and after that the assignment is not accepted.
as for pros and cons,
pros:

students seem to like the flexibility, sometimes many of their assignments are due in one or two days and this allows some buffering (at a cost)
with a digital submission like blackboard the late grading is very easy to do
assignments appear to have more work put into them, instead of students doing the bare minimum they tend to explore their solutions more

cons:

since introducing the policy some students tend to turn in homework later (typically 1-3 days)
some students treat the final deadline (1 week late) as the deadline, so a limited number of students will turn in their homework late consistently

Overall I am happy with the solution though, and I would suggest offering a slight grace period where it doesn't make your life too difficult. The main approaches that I've seen being either % off per day, or x number of free late days for the class.

+1 for "if you plan to post a solution to the assigned problems shortly afterwards," which seems to be an issue not addressed by the other answers.

As an undergrad computer science/philosophy major at a top 10 school in the United States, I would say that 90% of the classes I have taken have had a no late work policy. Particularly after the end of freshman year, it's understood that you need to get your work in on time.
However, it's usually understood in these classes that there is still the option to ask the professor for an extension, which will almost certainly be granted in cases of illness, etc, unless the class is just too large/has an automated grading system (checkouts of code on a particular date from SVN, for example) that prevents this. The late policy covers the case where a student just doesn't hand in his or her work when it's due and says nothing to his or her professor, and there is really no excuse for that.

I think it depends a lot on the culture and the institution. In America, er, a decade or two ago, I remember there was usually some penalty for late work at the Universities I and my friends attended, but "no credit for late work" was rare. However when I was at university in England, there were no penalties for late work in any of my classes. Even very late work was not considered a problem. Personally, I found that having all the time I needed to do the work, resulted in me being far more productive (if not as timely, but no one cared about that), and doing much more interesting and better writing, as well as not abusing my sleep by staying up all night.

I find the last part interesting, as typically when one is late on an assignment it results in less time for the following assignments... And then you get no better writing and more abusing sleep..

Ah but if no assignments have punitive deadlines, that doesn't need to happen. My overall amount of work done went up by a lot, actually, as I would actually spend several productive days working on a paper, revising it, turning it in when I was happy with it. So it didn't create a backlog - it just had me feeling no deadline pressure or resentment, and doing the work when I was ready and had thought of something interesting to write about, instead of stressing and resenting the deadline and doing something at the last minute, losing sleep, etc.

I highly doubt that any instructor would accept assignments long after the final examination. Typically the final exam is a hard punitive deadline for all the assignments... Which means that the total time you can spend on all the assignments is the same, no matter how deadlines are set... It is an illusion that with no strict deadline, you get more time for all assignments, but this is a very popular thought among the students... The reality is that you only get extra time if you start the assignments late... If you have 2 weeks for an assignment but you only start it a day or two before ..

... the deadline, yes by extensions one actually gets more time and less abusing sleep. But exactly the same result can easily be accomplished by starting the assignment 2-3 days earlier... Or, and some of my students are shocked when I tell them this, one should simply start the assignment 2 weeks before the deadline as one is expected.

Have you heard the expression, "what we resist, persists?" Do you think the shock of a student hearing that they could start assignments early is about not having heard it before, or about having to be punished into learning the truth of that obvious statement? I think the suffering and head-butting around deadlines comes from the power conflict in the situation. It's not about learning the obvious truth of when things could be done, and it doesn't have to be a stressful power struggle, and when it's not about that, it can be about much more interesting things.

At least, that was my actual experience, and it made a very dramatic difference for me. If I need to turn in a paper in exactly two weeks or I will be punished, I am likely to resent it, put it off, and be reactivated about power stuggles, and stay up all night the night before and crank something out. If I can turn it in when it works for me, and it's no big deal when, then I will stew on it till I think of something I am actually interested in, and be happy about doing it, and take the time I want until I'm satisfied with it. It made all the difference for me, and I'd never want to go back.

It really depends a lot of the course... If the assignment is a long creative work, yes I agree you cannot force inspiration and then a flexible deadline might make a difference... But then that's a completely different story, 2 weeks for such an assignment is a terrible deadline... And at my University, I never heard of any colleague giving a long project and only 2 weeks for it.  On another hand, especially for science courses, if the assignment is just about solving some problems, then your comments simply don't apply anymore.

That's a good point. I was taking all humanities classes with writing assignments in England, and no science courses.

I remember an answer I once got for a piece of work handed in a few minutes late (and rejected):

How can you have nothing ready for 30 days and then suddenly have something in the last few hours?

In fact, I had been working on it the whole time, trying to constantly improve it, despite the fact that I had a working solution early on. Waiting was a mistake and helped me learn to prioritise.
So welcome be hard deadlines, they teach planning and prioritisation, and save examiner time.

My problem with a "no late work" policy is that it disincentivizes learning.  If a student forgets an assignment or can't quite finish it in time, they no longer have any reason to learn the material; they get no credit for learning it because they cannot turn it in late.  Because of this, I favor a 10% or even 20% per day penalty as oppose to a no late work policy.
I also think the "prepare students for the real world" argument is invalid.  In the real world, if you miss a deadline for something (work deadline, tax filing, etc.) you will get punished somehow, but you likely still have to complete the work; it doesn't just disappear.  Also, preparing the students for the real world is a secondary goal at best.  Helping students learn the material should always come before preparing them for the real world.  Internships and first jobs are much more suited for preparing for the real world.

Aren't doing better on the final exam, doing better in followup courses, doing better in job interviews, doing better on the job, and "gee my mom and dad paid all this tuition money so I'd better get something out of it" reasons to learn the material?

So, college students are known for being great planners with lots of well thought out long term goals who rarely make poor decisions...?  Don't pretend like rewards months/years down the road are of the same value to students as instant rewards.  Also, for gen-ed courses, almost none of what you mentioned applies.  How can you motivate a CS major to learn more about chemistry?  Well, you can start by not disincentivizing them with a silly grading system.

College students are adults.

That's exceedingly dismissive and I'd say flip to sweep this and so much else under the rug with "he's/she's an adult".  Are you going to hold me to your arbitrary standards even though I'm not even considered legally competent among other things?  And even if I were, what you said is inappropriate for a great many people, probably a quarter, for any number of other reasons.

I specify a due date, but have a 48 hr, no questions asked, grace period. If a student gets an assignment in by the due date, I give a small amount of extra credit (typically 0.25 pts added to his or her final percentage*). I do not accept assignments after the grace period. I never get complaints about this policy.
* I don't round final percentages. Students are in charge of their own rounding by getting the extra credit for turning in assignments by the due date

I have never seen a no late work policy; on the contrary, most of the classes I have taken/TAed accepted late work and took off no credit when the amount of time late was reasonable (1 or 2 days if you were asking questions / professor knew you were working on it.) This is probably due to the fact that most of my classes have had 5-10 students in them; the classes that I have taken with 20+ students have all accepted late work with a similar penalty as the one you described.
The question follows: Do you want every students best work, or do you want every students best work within a very strict time frame? If an assignment is difficult, and not just time heavy, it might be worth relaxing a no late work policy in my opinion.
It is entirely possible to have a hybrid, in which weekly assignments are not accepted late but larger assignments can be late with penalty.

"Do you want every students best work, or do you want every students best work within a very strict time frame?"  I want students to learn as much as possible from the course.  Research on learning has shown that students retain more from a lecture if they do follow-up work as soon as possible after the lecture, regardless of how well they do on that work.

@Mark Meckes: and is that difference large enough to offset learning less from the work itself because it has to be done at a more likely unsuitable time?

@Mark: Based on studies I've seen, yes.

I've always been a student that turned in HW late, and it varies widely depending on the professor. In general, I have found the humanities departments the most harsh about deadlines. The natural science classes are more lenient, with some professors clearly stating that they will accept late HW with a deduced grade. Others will accept late HW unofficially before they return graded HWs to students, and yet others will work with you more flexibly. There hasn't been a single professor of mine that hasn't accepted at least some late HW from me.
As a TA, I fully accept late HW, with no deadlines, and likewise return the HWs to students late (you can call it a "suggested deadline"). My teaching principles are fairly libertarian, and my students tend to learn a lot during the semester. That's what I care about. The only time I care about HWs and examinations is to see whether I'm doing an effective job at what the students' pay me to do, which is teach them. It's only fair to examine the students to see if I'm failing them.
It's appalling to see professors demand of their students, who, just in case anyone forgot, pay the professors' salaries, demand of their students to learn a certain way within a definite deadline. Nothing in my experience has been more detrimental to my learning. I've gained the most out of classes that allowed me to turn in HW late.
Just in case anyone thinks that students who fail to "respect" deadlines are intrinsically procrastinators, I declare that it was quite the contrary in my case. The reason I submitted HWs late was to ensure I read the whole relevant text before attempting the HW. I wanted to know exactly what I was doing when I solved a problem, rather than use "ad hoc" methods to get something that resembles the correct answer. Moreover, I would often find a passage in a text that interested me, so I would pursue the topic and do some research. Sometimes this "research" would take a week out of my time, but I learned more from the self-driven pursuits than all the professor-imposed, who was paid by me to teach me, HW combined.
It's time we do away with harsh grading policies and strict deadlines, because I don't know a single person who has ever learned that way.
On the other hand, I do know a lot of wage-slaves, also known as employees at major companies, who rent their bodies to their masters; and the masters certainly will demand of their subjects to have work done on time and subject themselves to meaningless evaluations by authoritarian figures. That isn't the environment in which people can learn and discover; that sounds more like mines, sweat-shops, and assembly line to me. Unless one wants to impose an assembly-line education, which is what's common in USA universities these days, I'd advise against serious deadlines.

their students, who, just in case anyone forgot, pay the professors' salaries — Incorrect. My salary is paid by the state, not from tuition income. (I do not accept late homework, even for illness or injury. I do, however, forgive homework under extenuating circumstances, so that the student's grade is unaffected. And I'm happy to give feedback on anything.)

@JeffE I guess your students and their parents don't pay taxes?

Yes, but so do I. And so do their future employers.

None of what you're saying is inconsistent with a firm but later deadline. You're merely arguing that the deadlines you experienced were shorter than you'd like.

Great JeffE, then I hope we could agree on running our classes on more democratic principles, just as we all pay taxes.

@TheLateGreat you don't purchase learning. you pay for the time and expertise of people who've spent a long time studying the topic you're learning. If you want to buy your education, you can always buy a degree. But then it won't have much value.

@Suresh I do agree that what I'm saying is a bit "harsh", but I was forced to respond this way due to the staggering consistency of the answers. I think you do pay for your professors time to teach nonetheless, and a student should have a fair say in what they expect of their professors, as well as vice-versa.

Sometimes, "staggering consistency" = "correct". I should add though that I've seen courses (often, mathematically oriented ones) dole out homework that has no deadlines and merely needs to be turned in by the end of the semester. The problem is then that the homework fails as a diagnostic tool to identify student weakness and misconceptions that could have been rectified if detected early.

@Suresh certainly in my case the HW grade was more of something to put on a spreadsheet than a diagnostic tool. Moreover, I'm not against deadlines, per se, but when you combine this with how the overall classroom runs, it does become an impediment to learning. How the classroom should be run.... that's a topic for another day, but I think how things worked before state-subjected education was on the right track.

For anyone interested, I would recommend Prof. David Hestenes "Towards a Modeling Theory of Physics Instruction". http://modeling.asu.edu/R%26E/ModelingThryPhysics.pdf

This is what worked best for you.  Other students may find (in the long run) that a lack of firm deadlines would be a detriment to their learning; for instance, it gives them the option of putting off work until they've forgotten how to do it.  I understand your point of view, but I don't think you can claim that it's the one right way to do things.

I think the focus of teaching should be students' learning,
and all policies including late assignment policies should be designed with
the goal of improving student learning and experience.
A good fair policy would encourage learning and good behavior,
a bad unfair one would do the opposite.
I think students generally care too much about grades,
it is important to refocus them as much as possible on learning.
Assignments, tests, and grades are tools for teachings not goals of teaching.
The hard deadline policy is common but
I think it is also a common experience of instructors that
it doesn't work well.
It is important to think about why it is so,
if we understand why hard deadlines do not work well
then we can design better policies.
In my experience,
the followings are the main reasons for missing deadlines in most cases
(roughly based on the justifications my students gave me
when asking for extensions in my previous courses):

Technical difficulties:
small unexpected submission difficulties,
i.e. they have finished assignments but
they were unable to submit it before deadline,
e.g. they lost power just before deadline.
Procrastination:
Considerable number of students leave working on assignments to the last minute.
They are also not good with estimating the time they need to finish assignments.
So they go over deadline.
Special cases:
events beyond students' reasonable control prevented them from finishing assignments, e.g. serious illness.

Of course we would not want to penalized students for the 3rd reason.
But we should also try to help those in the first two groups.
One common alternative to hard deadlines is having grace days,
but it has a too high administrative overhead in my opinion,
and it doesn't really work much better.
They will use up their grace days and
then go over deadline.
If we give them a grace day for all assignments
then we are essentially shifting deadlines in their minds.
After discussions with a few more experienced instructors
I switched to something similar to Suresh's policy for my last course and
it worked quite well.
There was almost no serious complaint.
Here is the policy I used:

1% penalty for every 30min after the deadline.

First, it is easy to implement.
I use an online submission system so it is quite easy to compute and apply these penalties
using time-stamps for latest submissions, it is a simple script.
Second, it is effective way of helping the first two groups.
This policy gives them two extra days after the deadline if they really need.
Most late submissions miss the deadline by a small amount of time.
Being essentially a continuous linear penalty function it makes sure
the penalty is proportional:
a student who goes over the deadline a few minutes doesn't loose too much points.
I give students typically 2 weeks for submitting assignments.
I don't think it makes sense to give more that 2 extra days.
Too many days and too soft penalty
will essentially shift assignment deadlines in their minds and
cause further procrastination.
The hourly lateness penalty creates a sense of urgency that daily penalty would not.
I had around 100 students and they seldom went over a few hours.
I also put deadlines on Friday evenings.
Students who don't like doing assignments
hate to spend their weekend on them.
Student who submit their assignments on time
do not have to worry and spend their weekend working on assignments,
this adds an extra incentive for them to finish it by deadline, or
if not possible with as little lateness as possible.
In addition,
it also makes sure that the following week
we can focus on our topic
without them worrying about assignments.
To deal with the 3rd group
I don't use my late assignment policy,
I use an special consideration policy.
If a student misses an assignment deadline with a good reason,
e.g. serious illness supported by medial documents,
I apply my special consideration policy to accommodate them
e.g. I may move the points for the assignment to other assignments.

When I was a student, one of the first things we were told was "No late work is accepted. Not even if it is only a matter of seconds. Not even if the printer catches fire or you're snowed in".
My university had previously just subtracted from the grade, and had been warned by the authorities that this was against the rules. So they stopped doing that, and instead enforced a zero-tolerance rule of "respect the deadlines".
And honestly, it worked well. The only requirement is that you make absolutely totally sure that all of your students are aware of these rules! Like I said, it was drilled into our heads on day 1 (and repeated regularly ever since). And it was enforced for the entire Computer Science department, not just for individual courses.
Of course, students can always ask (preferably in advance) to have an agreed-upon extension in special cases (perhaps in case of extended sickness, or whatever else it might be), but if it's just a matter of "I didn't finish in time", then tough luck. You either hand in what you have, even if it is incomplete, or you don't hand it in at all.
Honestly, I kind of think it is the only fair policy. Lowering a student's grade for handing his work in late strikes me as much weirder. Their work should be graded on its quality, and nothing else. "your ability to manage time" should not be part of the curriculum. If two students hand in equally good work, they deserve the same grade.
I think the important point is that being late doesn't mean that you can't hand in your work. It just means that instead of handing it in late, but complete, you hand it in on time, but incomplete. And you get graded on what you handed in.

As an undergrad engineering/computer science alum, I will say that I am biased towards having a late policy. Scale the assignment difficulty appropriately to account for "extra" time at a penalty and codify the policy to be clear and non-negotiable, ie 10% off per day. The other option is to tell students late assignments are not accepted, but extend deadlines appropriately based on student feedback. The goal remains the same: maximize participation.
The reason I support this is pedagogical. It is not to account for students being irresponsible. It is to attract more students to complete an assignment, allowing them to be methodical and calculating with their learning experience while ultimately maximizing the value they receive from a course.
The goal with college classes, from a pedagogical view, is to maximize turnout and participation. These are solid measures indicating that students are learning and that the college experience is economically valuable. If there is a no late assignment policy and 25% of students received a zero or extremely low mark for being unable to "complete" on time, we have an issue that could potentially be fixed with a course policy change. So I argue that it is better to have a late penalty while scaling content difficulty appropriately.
I was exceptionally busy during my senior year, taking the max amount of credits where all classes were advanced level/difficult. I recall one class where the policy was no late assignments. This was a very difficult programming class. I was on the wire for time, and pulled repeated all-nighters to complete an assignment for this course- right past the due date. I was very stubborn and I refused to just give up, although in the back of my mind I considered the high likelihood I would receive a zero. It ended up being accepted with no penalty and I received a high grade where the average grade was significantly lower.
Many would say this is not fair. But from my perspective, I learned more actually doing the assignment rather than being defeated - the alternative fate would have been to cease all work and receive a zero had the policy been uncompromising. As someone who is a perfectionist- I prefer not to stop until I know I have produced something that is robust and meets all requirements- this hits home even more for me. I believe that from a learning standpoint, accepting late assignments is far more likely to result in higher quality education. If a late penalty makes a course "easier", scale the content appropriately. Or surprise the students on a case by case basis at the instructor's discretion.
The goal is to get as many students as possible in a course to give a best effort attempt on an assignment given a variety of schedules, circumstances and uncertainty in the assignment itself. If after some date they receive a zero you will always chop off a number of students who can do the assignment with more time, and would with the opportunity, even with dramatic penalty.

And if the policy had been "no late work", then instead of just handing in what you had, you would have done nothing? Be realistic. You wouldn't have been "defeated", you would simply have handed in something that wasn't as good as it could have been if you'd had more time. Which is kind of a common situation to be in throughout your life.

That is sometimes true and sometimes not. In that particular case I would have failed the assignment completely. I consider that defeat. It is actually not as common a situation as you may think. Very rarely in life do you need to complete something, once, before a certain date or face failure. Things we do at work don't just disappear once a certain day passes; it just gets deferred until a later date. The point is that handing in something that isn't as good as it could have been is bad. The goal is to get as many students to hand in their best work as possible. Is that so far-fetched?

no, if that was the goal, you wouldn't have deadlines at all. It is up to the student how much work they want to put in before the deadline. Universities are not obligated to coddle you. And you're still hung up on the (wrong) mindset that "if it is not perfect, then it might as well not exist". In real life, people do not just "defer" the task you've been working on if you exceed the deadline. Instead, you just have to make do with what you've got. You, not I, are the one pretending that things just disappear if you can't perfect them before the deadline. They don't.

But please enlighten me as to how it is "fair" that you get a full grade for breaking the rules. You were supposed to do X before date Y. By your own admission you were unable to do that, and would have failed the course if they hadn't been lenient. Why did you deserve that leniency? You were unable to do what the course required.

I'm not going to tell you I deserved anything. I am going to tell you that I have personally experienced the benefit of a late policy in courses. Those policies have allowed me to absorb more from a course than what would have been possible without one. The goal for me was always to learn. Forgive my selfish desire to maximize learning. You imply that the goal of a university is to sink as many students as possible, ie no student deserves "leniency". I argue that the goal is to maximize participation. Target any average for a course, but get as many students to try their best as possible.

I disagree with you that a university is a kind of kindergarten. Yes, I believe it is reasonable for universities to require something of their students. That does not mean I believe the goal is to "sink as many students as possible". But I don't understand why a "no late work" policy would have caused you to get 0 points on your course. What prevented you from just handing in partially complete work and get some non-zero grade?

In any case, I think you are mixing two different concerns. Yes, I believe that universities should maximize learning in general. But I don't believe that should extend to grading. Your grade should reflect the quality of your work. It should reflect what you "deserve", no ifs and buts. The lectures and exercises and assignments and projects should certainly be structured to maximize learning. But when you are graded, you should not be graded on "what you might have achieved if we'd suspended the rules". Nor should the grade be adjusted for "what might motivate the student the most"

The presence of a late policy here was the difference between me completing an assignment to outrageous success (90+) and failing it (ie <60 points). I see university as a series of challenges for students. To me, you want to get as many students to beat a challenge as possible. For this reason when things incidentally are really tough (ie having a bad day) and a professor happens to extend an assignment -  even for 24 hours as in this case if I remember right, I am beyond appreciative.

Your grade should be on the work you present, correct. What you are implying is that a late policy suspends rules. Policies are up to the discretion of the professor. You are arguing that is a moral conundrum; maybe it is. I am arguing that it is a practical solution to a practical problem that happens to better the learning experience for everyone involved. Students have schedules and real-life issues. Flexible policies and grading are a boon, especially to the driven learner who openly accepts an outrageous course workload.

handing in something that isn't as good as it could have been is bad — [citation needed]

I don't know about "typical," but I have definitely seen it used.  I've taught mostly in design schools where understanding the importance of hitting deadlines is a core part of the training.
Having said that, most instructors are a little more moderate.  Some will say students are allowed one late assignment per semester, some will accept any assignment late for half-credit.
My own personal policy was this:  As long as you made a reasonable effort to turn an assignment in on time you could always improve your grade on that assignment by resubmitting any time before the end of the semester.  If you missed that first deadline, no deal.  But if you turned in a project at, say, 25% completion on the day of the deadline and then before the end of the semester managed to get in the remaining 75% you could have full points.  But that's just me.
One other thing I go out of my way to say on day 1 is that communication is important.  I had a student who didn't show up for class all semester only to tell me two weeks before the end that he'd been caring for an ailing relative.  I could have made an accommodation in week one, but what am I supposed to do in week 13?!

I think the appropriateness of such a policy depends on the class and the students within it, and even when it exists, I'd consider flexing it for extraordinary circumstances.
For example, I once had a student who turned in late work because they were called up to respond to a national emergency. Is that really something I should have savaged their grade for, even if generally the class had a pretty strict deadline policy (because I was trying to turn grades around fast)?

An important role for a college professor is to prepare the students for the real world.  And in the real world, deadlines are firm.  You think a customer or an employer cares that you have a "good excuse" for being late?  That you "tried"?
Trust me, you'll be doing all your students a favor by accustoming them now to the reality that schedules are unforgiving.

I work at a middle-ranking UK university and we have a rule of 5% per day for 5 days then zero. I think it becomes counted as a cost by some students. "No late work without a doctor's cert", providing everyone knows well in advance, seems as fair as any other, what with the deadline being part of the test.

The university I attended had a no late work policy, however, some of the modules did allow a 24-hour late work window, but work submitted in this 24 hours was capped at 40% (Minimum pass grade).

Your students have the reasonable right to expect you to operate the policies decided by your department. Whilst I have every sympathy with the notion of 'a minute late = no marks' providing exceptional circumstances are accounted for, it's really not your decision but rather a decision that should be made by your department and uniformly applied across different courses.
It is unfair on students for your course to operate a different policy to the other courses they are taking because it (a) unfairly requires them to prioritise the work for your course over other courses and (b) it requires them to notice that you've set different regulations. So, whether or not your method has merit, you should adopt the same system as other courses they are taking.
I'm kind of surprised that your university/department does not already have a formally stated and agreed policy on this.

My department leaves this decision to the individual instructors. As it should. And no, students don't need to notice; instructors just need to tell them.

The comment on noticing was based on the assumption that was a general ruling. If every course does things differently then that alters expectations.


text:
Is it appropriate to assign Mechanical Turk-type tasks as extra credit?
By the end of the term, I always end up with quite a number of D and F students who want to improve their grades. Meanwhile, I usually have lots of menial tasks on hand during the summer, e.g. data entry, translations, proofreading, photo tagging, etc.

None of these tasks is work I am assigned or paid to do.
All of the tasks relate to my courses in some way and the resulting efforts would benefit the next group of students who attend my courses in the subsequent terms.
My school has no official "dead week", but naturally these tasks would occupy time that presumably the students would otherwise use for final exam preparations.

Is there any ethical or professional reason deeming it inappropriate to assign such tasks as optional extra credit, allowing students to move their 50 to a 60 or 60 to a 70 after ~10-15 hours of repetitive work?

No. Just no....

Nice question, +1. To me, a big red flag went up at "these tasks would occupy time that presumably the students would otherwise use for final exam preparations". So your menial tasks would probably crowd out preparation for other finals, where students would do some actual academic work. This does not seem fair to the students or other instructors. Could you schedule your tasks for after finals?

Why not have them dig your garden over and paint your house, while they're at it?

I'd hate to get surgery from a doctor who passed his degree by tagging cats in photos.

What if the class he teaches is "Real World Applications in Data Entry, Translations, Proofreading, and Photo Tagging"?  You're all jumping to conclusions.

@coburne: You forgot to add "....: A Menial Approach."

@village I guess you would say that giving credit where it's not due is wrong. But why would inventing a pretense to give the credit eliminate the wrongness??!

What comes next? House cleaning? A back massage? Or even worse?

As I see it, the grade in the class is supposed to measure a student's mastery of the material. Letting students improve their grade via unrelated menial work is not consistent with this standard and seems dangerously close to letting the students wash your car for extra credit.

+1. I'm trying not to disparage anyone, but jobs that a secretary could do do not seem appropriate ways of gaining academic credit... especially when this could mean the difference between failing and passing a course (the OP explicitly mentions F students).

Yes, if the work improves their mastery of the course material, that may be appropriate, as long as there's no deception (i.e.: the work is openly and publicly known to be of personal benefit to the professor). Other than that, it's a hard no.

+1 for "[this] seems dangerously close to letting the students wash your car for extra credit." My feelings exactly.

If the work improves their mastery of the material, that additional mastery will show up in their final exam scores, so no extra credit is necessary.

@xLeitix I have had multiple profs assign extra credit to participate in studies in their department which isn't all that disimilar

Agreed with all of the above.  Will add that "extra credit" is slacker nonsense.  It's supposed to be bonus points for students who have already completed their assignments and are looking for an added challenge.  Now it's become a panacea for students who can't be bothered to properly complete their assignments the first time around.  I never offer it as "make up" in any of my classes.

I will assign extra credit challenge problems from time to time in order to spice things up. They are always directly related to the class and equally available to everyone. Moreover they are worth at most 1-2 percent of the grade in total. When students approach to ask about extra credit in order to compensate for doing poorly, a good response might be: "First do all of the assigned work. Then we can talk about extra credit."

My feeling is that it's sort of a sliding scale based on the amount of time they have to put in, the amount of credit they get, and the relevance of the task to understanding course material.
It's not uncommon for professors to allow (or even require) students to act as participants in a study (e.g., fill out a survey, be part of an experiment) for credit, on the theory that such participation helps them to "understand the research process".  If the tasks they're doing have some relevance of that sort, I think you have an easier case.  If it's totally mindless work with no connection to the class, it's more dubious.
Also, at least at my school, every such opportunity must (by human-subjects rules) have an alternative credit opportunity that takes roughly equal time but doesn't require such participation (e.g., write a paper).  This kind of alternative is designed to ensure that students aren't forced to work for the professor's benefit in order to improve their grade.
Also, assuming by "50", "60", "70", you're referring to their overall course percentages, that seems like a massive amount of credit to me.  When I've given or received extra credit, it's usually been much less than that -- equivalent to maybe 2% or at most 5% of the overall grade.  The intent is not to allow students with a flat D to move to a C, but to allow students who have a high D to move to a C.  I think offering extra credit that allows students to raise their grade by an entire letter sets some dangerous precedents, especially when combined with the mindless-task aspect.
In the same vein, extra credit assignments usually were the work-time equivalent of say, one homework problem, or at most one homework assignment, expected to take the students maybe 3-5 hours tops, and often an hour or less.  10-15 hours of mindless work sounds like a pretty awful prospect to me.  I think it's a bad idea to misuse the extra-credit leverage to have students slaving away for hours and hours.
So basically, I think it is possibly defensible, but more so if the tasks are not truly mindless but have some reasonable connection to the class.  Also, I think the amounts of time and credit you suggest are a bit high, and especially so if the task is just grunt work.
Incidentally, as an example, I once was a TA for a class where the professor assigned homework in which the students had to take a spreadsheet and perform certain category-coding tasks on the data.  I suspect (but do not know for sure) that the professor was using the coded data for his own research.  However, the data was relevant to the class topic, and the coding task, although not exactly an intellectual challenge, was a realistic encounter with this sort of data, in that if students were to later write a paper using such data, they might well have to perform such a task as part of the project.  Also, the amount of data coded was rather small (about 50 spreadsheet rows per student, as I recall).  My own opinion was that, although such an assignment was perhaps not the best way to get students interested in the class, or enhance their understanding of the material, it wasn't unethical, because it was small in scale and legitimately (if uninspiringly) relevant to the topic of the class.

Yeah I would not dismiss this idea as unethical out of hand for just the reason you mention about study participation

+1 for "relevance of the task to understanding course material". If that is absent, there is no other justification I can think of, and plenty of arguments against.

It is not ethical, you are misleading future possible employers about how capable the student is.    A degree is a measure of how well someone can learn and how well they know their subject, not how well they can tag photos.
You are also devaluing the degree, so making it harder for other students at your university to get a job.    A course that few people fail is of little value to the people that pass.
(Proofreading may be OK in a English degree)

Perhaps I should have mentioned in my question that the course subjects actually fits close to the various tasks I assign them, as you suggest in your last line. For e.g. proofreading methods is covered in one my courses, not only would the students practice proofreading, but meanwhile be proofreading the very readings that they read in class. Meanwhile, the photos to be tagged all contain technical terminology that students must learn in the course, so the students would be reviewing that material and typing out the terminology they ought to have learned.

@Village - you should definitely include that information in your question.

A student is willing to exercise the skills they do have to compensate for the skills they need to improve in - that's a highly valuable skill for an employer.

It's funny to me that you mention Mechanical Turk in the question because it suggests where things might go if you were to implement something like this. You'd give students tasks. They'd post them to Mechanical Turk, offering a few cents in return. Your tasks would get done, and the students would get extra credit.
But it seems better to just post the tasks to Mechanical Turk yourself instead of inviting students to buy a passing grade in your class.

If you do it, make sure the kids who have B's have the same opportunities. They probably care more about their grades, and would more ambitiously take the opportunity to do something dumb for the A.

Getting an A from doing mindless work seems even more unfair than a bare pass. A pass means that you can probably get something done, an A implies mastery of the subject.


text:
If my article submission is rejected while my PhD thesis is being examined, do I have to tell the examiners?
Because I submitted two journals, and my scholarship just about to end which I have just finished and approved by my supervisors.
So, yep. I wonder if it is necessary to tell the examiners of the thesis, about the progress of my journal submission, while the thesis is under their revision.
As I learned throughout this journey, good news about article submission is always on the borderline for me.  So, the news is not necessarily a good one, and I don't know how much the news will impact the examiners'  decision about my thesis.

It might help to know what structure your thesis-committee is: are they all/mostly at your institution, sort of like a team of supervisors, or are they at other institutions? In the first case, they may be able to provide advice/edits that help you publish (assuming the thesis contents overlap with the submission), or at least moral support.

They all from other institutions. However, they can come from anywhere in the world. All I know was the university actually encourages to have the global examiners, rather than the local one, and I don't know who they are.

The acceptance of a paper is not something that you are obligated to raise to the members of your thesis committee, because it is not a part of the evaluation of the thesis—it has to be considered on its own merits.
That said, if you are asked about or choose to inform them of the status of the manuscripts, you should not lie about its status.


text:
Reply to reviewers
I recently submitted a manuscript and and a reviewer asked about sample size:

The sample size is low to draw a strong conclusion to change the national policy, it is better to assess this trial as a pilot study. It is advisable to propose a multicentre trial to assess whether these findings are specific to this region. How the sample size was calculated and what is its external validation tool?

My manuscript is an observational reporting of a newly created hospital registry that included all patients with a particular disease. Since I was only reporting that data, no sample size calculation was done.
My question is how should I address that with the reviewer?

The sample size would be the total number of observed patients. What is the issue exactly?

Are you sure the reviewer understood that particular issue in the paper? The question is classic and you should have "N = 4795" stated somewhere.

Yah the total number of participants was included in the study, this was his comment..: "The sample size is low to draw a strong conclusion to change the national policy, it is better to assess this trial as a pilot study. It is advisable to propose a multicentre trial to assess whether these findings are specific to this region . How the sample size was calculated and what is its external validation tool?"

Based on your comment, it sounds like the reviewer is mainly suggesting a change of framing, about your discussion section and the generalizability or scope of your results.
I may not understand fully what you mean by "hospital registry." It sounds like a database or initiative set up at one hospital (or perhaps small hospital chain). My answer (and the reviewer's critique) would probably not apply if the registry actually has a large regional or nationwide scope.
When you introduce your data, you can describe your data in ways that help the reader evaluate this population's representativeness and generalizability. You can then argue in the discussion the extent to which your results would generalize. Between the initial data description and the discussion, you could find other data to help you "triangulate" your results and put your population in context.

Does your region have a similar incidence of this disease as other places in the country? And what percentage of cases nationwide are there, compared to the number in your sample?
Does your sample include all the presentations of this disease that are in the literature?
Does the background information of these patients (distribution of age, gender, race/ethnicity, income/insurance status, comorbidity, risk factors) match the background information in the known literature on the disease?

If not, is this because the literature is too limited, or because your sample is not representative? It might be beneficial if your population actually overrepresents groups rarely afflicted with the disease.

Further, if you are aiming to change policy at hospitals across the country, then in some sense your N = 1. You should explain when introducing the data why the hospital (management structure, funding, etc.) is also representative.
If there is any comparable data you can systematically check your data against, that could be a useful new analysis for the end of your analysis/results section. As a check on the reliability of the data you have, you can also argue that your data in the registry is consistent with (or outperforms?) available data from the prior system. That is, do you have enough data so far to show that you're successfully describing what happens at that hospital?
It's also extraordinarily hard to get a policy or implementation that works in one place to work in another place, and so even if your work provides evidence toward a national policy, the reviewer may be right that, the "next steps" goal should aim for a slightly larger implementation. Thus, you may want to bring this up as a "limitation" to bring up in the discussion or conclusion section, along the lines of:

While our study used the entire population of patients [in context], one may wonder if this approach will work beyond [context].

In light of these possibilities, embracing the reviewer's framing (this is a success as a pilot study, as opposed to a major study with limitations) may be useful, especially if you yourself are interested in working on scaling this up or implementing it more widely. Good luck!

Excellent response to a very vague question!