text:
Experiences and research in motivational effect on giving bonus points in exams based on handed in exercise problems
In our curriculum we have several courses that students fail a lot. One of the reasons which we suspect leads them to fail is that a lot of students do not do the exercises that we advise them to do. A possible solution we are considering, is to give students who successfully solve several exercise problems a few bonus points on the exams.
My question is:
First, do people here have experimented with such a technique? Did it work? What are the pitfalls? Is there any literature that could be helpful here?

Why not make the exercises themselves a part of the grading rubric instead of awarding points for them in the exams? Unless I misunderstood something.

It would help if you included some background about the level of students (beginning to intermediate level undergraduate, upper level undergraduate, beginning graduate level, advanced graduate level) and the type of college/university you're at (primarily teaching, liberal arts, primarily research, other including combinations of these) and the country the college/university is in. The reason I say this is that my experience is that it sounds like you're simply asking if homework should be graded and included in the assessment of student grades, which is extremely common in my experience.

Hmmm. Do you "advise" students to do exercises and then not check them and give feedback?

The obvious pitfall is that many students may not do those exercises on their own, either getting extensive help or blatantly copying, thus circumventing your goal.  My guess is that the ones who are not doing exercises anyway are the ones more likely to just copy solutions.

@justauser, We would like to allow students to also make the exam without also doing the exercisis. This especially for the students that failed the exam last year and want to do a resit this year.

@Buffy, We have experimented with just checking, and giving feedback. It was only a minority that handed in any work.

@DaveLRenfro, We are teaching at beginning undergraduate level. The courses are mostly in computer science and programming.

I was involved in teaching such a class a few years ago and I would say that this approach is better than nothing, but most of the times there might be better options. Keep in mind that all of this is anecdotal and I might misremember things.
The setting
The situation was a sequence of some large "mathematics for engineering students" classes. The first problem was that this was taught by people from the maths-department (including me), but the engineering department effectively had the final say on anything not related to the actual mathematics. And for that class they insisted (and we definitely tried to convince them otherwise), that we were not to force the students to do anything apart from the absolute minimum.
Specifically the requirement was that any student should be realistically able to get the highest possible grade by just attending and acing the final exam, because that was how all of their other classes were run. The net result of course was that a lot of students (not all, but certainly a large percentage) completely ignored the class until a few days before the exam, crammed whatever they could and then either barely passed or failed and tried the same approach next time.
Even of those that passed, many forgot most of what the learned immediately afterwards, which was an additional problem, since later classes relied on material from the earlier ones (e.g. dealing with systems of linear ODEs in semester 2 needs eigenvalues from semester 1.).
The second problem was that the class was indeed large (close to 1k students enrolled in some years), so the ratio of TA-time per student was also severly limited. Even if we would have had the money to hire more, we would quickly have run out of capable people to hire. So we had enough TAs to hold weekly exercise classes of about 30-40 people each, but e.g. not enough to grade problems regularly. (And we always stressed the mathematical approach to problems, not the numerical calculations, which meant that machine grading was not a good option).
The approach
With these constraints, the solution we came up (which was the one thing the engineering department allowed us to do) was indeed bonus points for the exam, totalling to a maximum of something like 10% of the grade.
The explicit goal here was purely to boost engagement, without straining our resources too much. So the metric for the students was "reasonable attempts" at solving a problem, even if the result was wrong or the solution incomplete. We varied the details a bit between the classes but roughly the idea was that each week the students would self-report to which problems they had something on and the TAs would spot check this and have some present their solutions in class, more or less at random. But they were told to be lenient.
Anyone who at least tried 50% of the problems and presented one attempt in class got some of the bonus points, up to the full points for 100% of them (there were some optional problems, so it was possible to get 100% even when missing some).
Some results
It is always hard to evaluate such a system and we did not attempt a scientific study. But the overall grades increased slightly after introducing it, but it is hard to conclude that this was not due to differences in the difficulty of the exams.
The actual exams of people who got bonus points were generally better than
the exams of those that did not get them, but that also might have been self-selecting.
The attendance in problem classes certainly went up, as did general student participation, but there still was a sizable minority that only showed up to miserably fail the exam.
Most of the students liked the system. It probably also helped that most that tried were able to obtain all of the bonus points with a managable amount of work.
There was a lot of blatant copying and questionable "attempts". We fully expected this but reasoned that even someone who only copies at least has to spend some time looking at the problem and that it is impossible to fully police something like that. So we only intervened if it got so blatant that others complained.
Some things to keep in mind
The administrative side of things should not be underestimated. Even if there is no actual grading and your university supplies a usable system for keeping track of the raw numbers, they have to be entered by someone and now that it suddenly matters there will be a continuous stream of emails that need to be dealt with (e.g. correcting mistakes, accounting for illnesses). Accounting for bonus points in the exam is also another extra step.
Depending on how you implement the system there might also be unintended side-effects. If people think that there is something to be gained from gaming the system, some people will try to game the system. Sometimes people only game themselves (copying solutions and then studying before the exam is probably more work than attempting the problems directly), but you still need to be careful that no-one sees the system as unfair.
As a particular example, initially we let people hand in what they did directly before class to minimize workload. Since the classes were spread over the week, that lead to people in the later classes attend the earlier ones, get the solutions from there, and then present them in the latter classes. People complained and we had to resort to having everyone hand in their attempts at solutions in the beginning of the week.
tl;dr
Such a system can work and surely beats doing nothing, but depending on the circumstances, there are often better options if you have the ressources.

There is a course design that goes something like this:

Here is a bunch of information and some suggested activities. You can take it or leave it. And, by the way, every couple of months we will give you an exam that can affect the rest of your life. Good luck.

There is another course design that actually cares about how students do and helps them to achieve their best results. This requires a bit (lot) of prodding with required exercise and projects along with points toward grades and individual feedback.
I predict that the change you suggest, if you use the first design, will have little effect since there is too much elapsed time between the exercise "advice" and the sort of magical awarding of points. There is little "in the moment" motivation.
Sure, it will work with a few students, but they don't need such things anyway. The ones you need to actually "teach" are the ones that don't find everything you say completely trivial and obvious. But for those who really need your actual guidance, not so much.
At a minimum, give the points when the work is done, not later when the exam is taken. And inform the student that the points are "in the bag".
Sorry to be so harsh, but I think laissez-faire teaching isn't really teaching at all. Those who thrive don't really need you.
I hope that your system doesn't force this sort of thing on you with too-large classes and no help.
A better plan would be to actually require that those exercises be done and submitted, with a given number of points, known in advance and earned or lost at given deadlines. My personal practice is to make such things the major part of any course grade with exams having much less influence. People learn by doing things that reinforce learning, not by just sitting exams that they can cram for with little long term learning possible.
The path to success needs to be well marked with achievable goals that the student can use as signposts to success. It should never be necessary for a student to wonder how they are doing. It should be a seemingly random process depending much on things like which particular questions are asked on an exam vs which particular things the student focused on.
See the book The Art of Changing the Brain by Zull for how the brain, and thus learning, actually works. This book was once gifted to every participant in a major Computer Science Education conference (SIGCSE) by one of the major tech companies. I can't remember which.


text:
Appropriate to call editor of journal where my name was removed as author?
Unfortunately, I recently discovered that my name was removed from a published piece which I contributed substantially to (it is available online). I have already asked my co-authors, and all of them claim that they did not make the attempt to remove me as author.
Should I call the editor to clarify? I've already sent an e-mail but there has been no response so far. I have the relevant phone numbers as they are from my institution. I would note that I had zero notice that my name was removed; I only discovered this when referencing the work for another paper.

Have you tried asking your other co-authors first? It seems like they should be the first to bring this to, as normally editors are not adding or removing authors.

Hi, I have indeed contacted my other co-authors. All of them claimed that they did not make any attempt to remove my name from the piece.

Thank you for the information, I have edited the question to include it.

As mentioned, all the authors, including the first author, claimed that they did not remove me as co-author. In fact, the first person I contacted was the first author.

Yes, the next step is to make direct contact with the editor and or journal. Bring your relevant work, take notes of what occurs in the meeting, time and date, Clearly state your case. If they do not correct the error, you then can turn to legal measures.

Update: Editor of journal claimed that manuscript was submitted without my name. It has been since corrected but henceforth, I will not be working with any of the co-authors on future work.

Yes, it's appropriate, since it's a pretty major issue.
Something might have gone wrong in typesetting, in which case a corrigendum is probable.

Update: Editor of journal claimed that manuscript was submitted without my name. It has been since corrected but henceforth, I will not be working with any of the co-authors on future work.

While a phone call might be needed to jolt them into action, you also need to send an email detailing the problem with appropriate links to the paper, along with its title and other information.
Spell out the problem in detail. Email is better for this than a "call", but an email alone might not be sufficient.
But it is difficult to communicate the detail in a phone call alone. But you could send the email and then follow up in a couple of days with a call.
Be specific and ask for a reply.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How to cite several papers at once with first same authors?
I would like to cite both Potter, Granger and Weasley (1995) and Potter, Granger and Weasley (1998) for the same claim. I would write

Hogwarts is a school of magic (Potter et al. 1995,1998).

Now let's assume I would like to cite both Potter, Granger and Weasley (1995) and Potter, Dumbledore and Snape (1997) for the same claim. Should I write

Hogwarts is a school of magic (Potter et al. 1995,1997).

or

Hogwarts is a school of magic (Potter et al. 1995; Potter et al. 1997).

I doubt it vary much among journals but FYI I am aiming Molecular Ecology who uses the APA reference style as indicated in the guidelines to authors.

The APA reference guide from Purdue denotes how the articles should be listed and referred to inline. So my understanding of the two links above would be something like (using the examples they have):

[the claim you want to use the reference] (Wegener et al. 2000; Wegener et al. 1994).

would be inline reference and in the references list it would be

Wegener, D. T., Kerr, N. L., Fleming, M. A., & Petty, R. E. (2000). Flexible corrections of juror judgments: Implications for jury instructions. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 6, 629-654.
Wegener, D. T., Petty, R. E., & Klein, D. J. (1994). Effects of mood on high elaboration attitude change: The mediating role of likelihood judgments. European Journal of Social Psychology, 24, 25-43.

On a separate note: Are you using a reference manager like papers3, mendeley or zotero? If so just insert the citekey for the articles and choose the style, let the software do the work for you. Saves you the headache..

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


text:
Use idea of a paper to prove new result
I'm a PhD student in Mathematics. Recently, I proved something the main idea of which I got from another paper. To be honest, I don't like my proof, because I used the proof of the paper, changed it a bit and proved a new result. When I showed that result to my supervisor he really liked it. I told him that I used the idea from another paper. In fact, 90% of proof is the same, but he said, it's okay, if someone didn't do the same before.
Since that's my first paper, it is very important for me. I don't know what I can do. Is my result substantial enough for a new publication? Is it possible that a referee will reject my paper?

Is it possible that the 90% common part between your proof and the earlier paper is (or could be made into) a proof of a more general theorem, of which both your theorem and the one in the paper are corollaries?  If you can prove such a theorem, that would make a stronger paper, perhaps with very little additional work. (But if you can't, then follow your supervisors advice about publishing what you've got.)

@Ben Linowitz : No, no. I think you misunderstood my question. For sure, I cite the paper. My question : Is my result good? Is it possible referees reject my paper?

@Andreas Blass : Thank for your advise. In fact, what I did. I read the proof of earlier paper which was for a special case. Then, I found out that I can prove by the idea of proof other paper for more general case.

Also, in my observation, probably 90% of nearly every paper is already visible in other papers. That is the fact of generally incremental progress in "research". Sure, also often, beginners do not realize the commonality, thus failing to appropriately connect to the literature... or are dismayed to find out that that's the reality. :)

Since it's your first paper, you can in general assume that your supervisor knows better than you if it is worthwhile publishing. There are many publications out there - in math and other fields - that takes an idea or formalism from one paper, and applies it to a slightly different area. This is how progress in research works.
And yes, you should definitely cite the other paper. The fact that you've been inspired by something else does not disqualify your paper. In fact, quite the opposite can be the case, if it is not obvious that the idea from the other paper can be applied to a new area.

Good advice, but I'd strengthen it a bit. You must cite the other paper. Otherwise you could be accused of plagiarism. The referees at a journal or conference will decide if your paper is "novel" enough to be published.

@nabla Thanks for your comment. For sure, I'll cite it. Even, I'm going to write that I inspired from the paper. My problem is exactly the sentence you mentioned '' if it's not obvious ''.  I think that's obvious that we can use this idea. I have stupid problem, I don't know what is obvious in Mathematic. I saw some paper that have obvious idea, but it published good journal.

@Buffy what you mean '' I'd strengthen it a bit''. I'll put other results in paper too, but my main result is it.

The writer of the answer said "should definitely". I didn't want you to get the impression that it isn't an absolute requirement. Not to strengthen the paper, though that is good too. Strengthen the advice to cite. But I see that you recognize that from the above comment.

@RR You are an expert on your result, so it seems obvious to you. It might or might not feel obvious to others, who have not thought as much about the thing. The way to find out is to prepare the paper, submit the preprint, maybe ask for opinions, and submit to a journal.

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


text:
Send my paper to some mathematicians before putting on arXiv
I am a math postdoc. I have recently finished a good paper, but I want to make sure about it before I put on arXiv. That is why I have sent it to some good and great mathematicians to know their opinions.
Right now, I am a bit worried that they might steal my ideas as they have not answered my emails yet. On the other hand, I want to make sure that my paper is correct and good, which means I want to hear other opinions on it.
My question: Should I put my paper on arXiv or I should wait for their answers?

May I ask what precisely is your concern about your manuscript? As a postdoc in math, you certainly don't need "good and great mathematicians" to check your paper for correctness, since you have learned methods to ensure yourself that your arguments are rigorous (at least with very high probability). Is your concern whether your result is really as relevant as you suspect? Whether it's presented sufficiently well in the manuscript? Whether you missed relevant literature?

@JochenGlueck I proved a conjecture that was open for more than 20 years. That is why I suspect whether my result is true as I didn't use a common technique that people used. In other words, I use my knowledge to prove the conjecture in the field in which I am not expert. That is why I want an expert to read my paper.

I would say that a good way to help ensure your work is correct is to give talks about it to experts and make sure you can answer all their questions.  Experts are more willing to listen to a talk than read a paper.

Would it be possible to submit to a journal, and wait to post on arXiv until you hear the first round of reviewer comments? This will effectively serve the same function

Wasn't one of the original reasons for putting a paper on arXiv to provide an opportunity for feedback before submitting for publication?

Also, the arXiv allows for revisions (it keeps the old versions, defaults to newest).  So if something can be presented better, or needs correction, you can always post revisions later.  I guess the only "danger" is posting something egregiously bad and publicly get a bad reputation... but even in that case you could always post a revision saying: "The earlier version was flat-out wrong for X, Y, and Z reasons."  Everyone makes mistakes (some people just don't feel comfortable admitting it, or letting others see or discover the mistakes).

@chepner Yes, however there is no guarantee that anyone will decide to provide that feedback. One could wait passively for feedback that will never come

There is nothing wrong with sending a new math paper to colleagues, including people you don’t know personally, and either before or after you put the paper on arXiv. I am on both the sending and receiving end of such messages on a somewhat regular basis.
However, it is unrealistic to think that the people you’re sending the paper to will immediately sit down and check its correctness, or that they will do so even within several months. That’s simply not going to happen unless there is something extraordinarily exciting about your results. People might respond with minor feedback, point out a missing reference or some typos, make some general comments about your approach etc. but “good and great” mathematicians are simply very busy people. You should not expect anyone to validate your work if they have not been assigned to do so as a referee on behalf of a journal.
Your dilemma is not so unusual, and has a standard solution, which is to carefully reread and check everything you did, and then share the paper publicly on arXiv, submit to a journal and let the normal process play its course.

Thank you very much for your advice. I was so scared when I saw tensors_are_4_engineers's answer as I didn't think people might steal the paper. that is why I wanted to put the paper on arXiv before I receive the opinions those that I sent my paper to them.

I would not even count on the referee to validate the correctness of my work. I think that the author is the main responsible for the validation of his results.

If you're a math postdoc, at this point you should probably have good relationships with other mathematicians. Those are the people you can & should talk to about your paper -- not because you should be afraid of plagiarism, but because unsolicited emails to review a paper will probably just get ignored by the faculty you sent them to. They're not going to be bothered to read it, let alone plagiarise it. "Good and great" mathematicians get these kinds of emails all the time, and they're usually from cranks and amateurs (because trained mathematicians know better than to cold email professors to review a paper). So they just ignore all such emails in general.
That is why they haven't answered, not because they're busy plagiarizing your work.
I think it's best if you can find someone in your circle, and failing that, in your institution. If no one you know does research in the relevant topic, it's much easier to approach people in your institution and get taken seriously than with total randoms. Again, plagiarism isn't something I'd be concerned about, rather you should worry about getting someone to pay attention to it at all.
But if you're really really worried about plagiarism, an alternative to posting on arXiv (which is permanent) is to post somewhere else, e.g, your personal website -- where there can still be a verifiable record of your work, but you can take it down if you find out something is garishly wrong with it.
Postscript: if you absolutely positively have to send it to someone not in your (extended) network, "good and great" should not be your criteria, rather it should be "highly relevant" -- someone in your subsubsubfield you know would be very interested in your work (for example, you're extending their results, solving an open problem they posed/have great interest in, etc.). You might still get ignored, however.

Thank you very much for your advice. Unfortunately, there is no one in my group who is familiar with my research, but I explained my research to them and there was no problem. As they are not specialists, I can not be completely sure.  I completely agree with you that I should find someone who pays attention to it, but I have not found such a guy; my friend who does research in my field read the paper carefully and it was fine, but as I said I want a specialist to read the paper.

"Again, plagiarism isn't something I'd be concerned about, rather you should worry about getting someone to pay attention to it at all." Truer words have never been spoken.

+1 for "They're not going to be bothered to read it, let alone plagiarise it.

@Adam Don't try to get a full peer review done on your own, that's what submitting to a conference/journal is for. Get a sanity check (which you say you already got) and go for it. The relevant specialists you're emailing may very well be asked by the journal to review your submission. Then you fix the mistakes they find.

I would suggest you to post it on arXiv, which will address both of your issues —

Unavailability of reviewers: Some experts might find your paper on arXiv and give feedback.

Risk of stealing: The world will know that you are the first one to come up with these results using your method.

Best of luck!

Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center.


text:
How to reduce minor and stupid errors on papers
I am a math postdoc who defended his Ph.D. two years ago.
I have 9 papers and 3 of them are with co-authors. In other words, I am a single author of 6 papers of mine. Two of my papers where I was a single author were published.
Recently, one of my papers was rejected after 8 months because the referee believed: 1) The novelty might not be sufficient for a journal, and 2) the writing contains inaccuracies at places.
I don't have any problems with the first issue as they can have a different opinion. But my problem is the second issue. I found out that all of my papers contain minor problems, such as proving something under compactness assumptions, but not mentioning that, or mix of quantifiers, or using a notation for two objects. Long story short, even though all arguments and proofs are overall correct, there are stupid errors. These stupid errors get my papers rejected from time to time.
What I usually do, when I finish a paper, is not to look at the paper for several weeks, and then look at it again. But again, there are some stupid errors. From time to time, I also ask some experts to look at my papers, but either they don't go through my papers, or they don't look at them very carefully. In general, I found out I shouldn't expect anyone to look at my paper carefully.
One more thing, I know I should work with experts instead of working alone, and I tried, but experts have several things on their plates, and take several years to finish a paper; I don't have that much time due to my short contract. But I have been working with some experts. We finish the result a year ago, but she hasn't finished the writing!
My question is how I can reduce these problems, which I called stupid problems, in my papers?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blSXTZ3Nihs

These past questions might be of some use: How to efficiently proofread my own mathematical paper?, How can I proof-read my own work more effectively?, Is there an optimum time to leave between writing and self-proofreading?

You are simply noticing a common experience that is pervasive with writers. It is extremely difficult to proof your own work. Waiting a few weeks between edits is a start, but it isn't likely to be entirely effective.
The solution is to have someone else, not involved in the writing, to give you feedback.
The problem is that you have a certain mind-set and a way of thinking. That is natural. When you read what you have previously written you naturally adopt the mindset that you had when you first wrote the work. Thus, when you read over a passage you are all too likely to "see" what you think you wrote, not what you actually wrote. The "correct" version is in your head and you sort of skim over the incorrect version, not seeing the erroneous detail.
It isn't at all that you are unsuited to academic writing. It is that the human mind is very complex and has connections beyond what we experience explicitly at the moment.
Multiple edit reviews of your own will catch a lot of these mistakes, but not all. I've found some incredibly stupid errors in fairly simple math writing. I meant "intersection" but wrote "union". It took several readings to catch it and it was an error that resulted in complete nonsense.
Work with a colleague and offer to pre-review one another's papers and give feedback on issues large and small. They will notice things that you don't.
Not actually writing an assumption (compactness) is a nearly perfect example of this. "Of course, compactness is required."
Reviewers can also do the same, actually, if they know a lot about a subject. The mind can "override" the eyes.

Thank you very much for your answer. I completely agree with you, but I have tried several times. I will try more to find someone who can check my papers.

It is also an opportunity to learn and to develop collaborations.

One method of reducing errors is proofreading aloud rather than silently. The idea is that reading aloud has closer fidelity to the words on the page, but familiar readers see what they want to see.

I recognize the problem of others agreeing to review your work, but then not reviewing it thoroughly at all. I'm not sure if you can expect them to review it thoroughly either way...
A quote that may somewhat apply here is: "Ask a programmer to review 10 lines of code, he'll find 10 issues. Ask him to do 500 lines and he'll say it looks good." (-not sure who said this first)
If you ask someone to review a whole paper, they will probably be overwhelmed and find it too much work to review it thoroughly. Maybe you can try asking someone to thoroughly review only a small part of your paper (e.g. only a single proof). Then you can ask someone else to do another part, etc. This is likely less overwhelming and can be done in much less time, making them more likely to do it.

Getting better at proof-reading: The "fresh eye" after a few weeks break is just the start for proof-reading properly. It allows you to actually read what is written (rather than "reading" what you remember writing). But to properly proof-read a mathematical proof, you need to disbelieve it. Put the onus on the text to overcome that disbelief. This will not just help you catch mistakes, but also identify parts of the explanation that need improvement.
Getting other people to proof-read: Reading a paper and proof-reading it are two very different things (see above). The latter takes much more work. If you give your draft to some expert in the area, you may get comments like "This reminds me of this paper here, maybe you should have a look.", but not really proof-reading stuff. (And if they did, I'd feel equally embarrassed about it.)
What you want is to get someone to explicitly proof-read your stuff. Ideally, this person is someone who can understand your paper with some effort, but is NOT an expert in the area. This would naturally put them in the right mindset. You should offer something in return, eg to proof-read their papers.
Getting collaborators: Someone who proof-reads because their own reputation is on the line, too, will probably be more effective than someone doing it as part of a deal. Also, already before the proof is written, the steps of mutually explaining proof ideas to one-another in a collaboration helps identifying the exact assumptions.
You don't need to look for more senior people as potential collaborators. Working with fellow postdocs or PhD students can fill the gap just as well (if not even better).


text:
How to reply to students' emails that show anger about their mark?
I always find myself in a difficult situation on the rage of students who are upset about their marks they just received. I feel it is kind of difficult to reply to students' emails that sound very angry. Especially when they first receive their marks.

Why did I get this MARK!
How could I get this mark, when my colleague got higher!
I will provide my mark to the dean! (some already done so!)

I know that this is not uncommon, but I feel we have the duty to know how to deal psychologically with this behaviour.
How do you deal with this situation?
Some say, do not reply to this email before at least a week so that the student acknowledges and time for them to relax.
The issue is that I will have to deal with these same students in a module next term and I am worried about how they will portray me.

The issue is that I do deal with these students on term 2 module - I don't understand what you mean.  Can you please explain this issue?

why don't we just not let students see how their papers were graded? https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/144597/do-students-have-the-right-to-see-how-their-papers-were-graded

One tool you can use is a syllabus policy that students should wait 24 hours after receiving a grade before sending a grade-related email. That gives the student time to calm down on their end and (perhaps) write a more considered email.

Very similar, if not duplicate question:  What to do about "grade grubbers?"

@Kimball, I believe the OP means that the student will be in their class next term.

@Damila My guess was also something like this, but I don't understand how this is relevant to responding to these emails.  (The OP says that this is "the issue".)

@Kimball, obviously I am not the OP but my impression is that they are concerned about having angry students/ an already antagonistic relationship in their next class.

It seems like a strong tone to me, to say the least. Is this speaking style normal where you are? Or are you perceived as young/inexperienced/weak?

When dealing with angry students, your number one priority should be to de-escalate the situation and bring it back to a more factual ground. That means you want to:

Stay calm. Even if you are getting agitated yourself, you should never let it show through in your answer (easier via email than personally, but the same principle applies independently of the medium). I tend to opt for a more formal tone than what I usually use, mostly because I have found more formal phrasing harder to be misunderstood as dismissive (your milage may vary).
Provide short, to the point, answers. Answer the student's query or complaint politely, but don't get pre-emptively defensive and don't overly detailedly explain your reasoning. The more you write or say, the more an unhappy student will find to be upset about. There is a time and place to give a student detailed feedback, but when they are currently raging isn't it.
Stay with the facts. Scrub all subjectivity from your own answer. You want to bring the conversation to a place where you are talking about specific assessment results (exam questions, assignment tasks, etc.) rather than "I felt I did better", and the more you are using subjective statements in your own answer the more the student will feel validated that his own subjective understanding of the situation is as valid as yours.
Require the student to provide concrete, factual arguments. Once you bring the discussion to a more factual level, you should ask the student why, specifically, they disagree with their grade. Are there specific assessment results they feel were wrongly graded? Are they unhappy with how you aggregated the assessments? Once you are discussing on this level, it becomes easier to both, convince a student that their grade is correct according to the framework, and see cases where your framework is indeed unfair (or can at least be perceived as such).
Answer, but don't answer too quickly. Especially when receiving complaints via email: avoid the temptation to immediately answer questions by upset students. Give it a day, this will allow both you and the student a chance to calm down. A little delay in your interaction will also motivate the student to think more carefully about what they are actually writing, since a non-question like "How could I get this mark, when my colleague got higher" just means longer delay for them.
Remember that student's don't have to agree with their grade. At the end of the day, not all students will be happy with their grade, and even after you have explained your reasoning not all students will be convinced. That's ok. You and the student don't have to agree on the final grade. There is a process in place what, if anything, students can do to further escalate a grade dispute (I don't know if that includes sending a mail to the dean at your department, in mine emailing the dean about a grade dispute would mostly result in a confused dean).

In some cases I have replied like this:  "If, at the end of the semester, you believe one additional point on this exam will change your semester grade, please let me know and I'll look at it again."  No student has ever taken me up on that.

Also, when it seemed like it might be a problem, I have implemented a regrade request limit, e.g., 2 requests per student per term.

@BobBrown Sure, but recognize it might just be a nice way of saying "I'm still marking this wrong."  There's no way for me to know if it could have made a difference.
I had a professor tell me this after agreeing my answer was right, just so he didn't have to go correct the grade!  Could it have made a difference?  I don't know.  The only info I got at the semester end was "B".

@Edward That seems to be an issue with your university, not a general one. Our students receive precise percentage and raw marks, so can tell precisely how many extra marks would make a difference to their grade.

About speed, I answer these quickly since 1) otherwise I'll forget, and 2) I don't want the student to worry "ohmygod -- I can't believe I sent an obscentity-ridden tirade. I'm so screwed". A short "here are your scores" also says that I understand and am not angry.

why don't we just not let students see how their papers were graded? https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/144597/do-students-have-the-right-to-see-how-their-papers-were-graded

is it possible that 1st world universities don't have like a particular procedure in the 1st place? well my 3rd world university did and does, but apparently some 1st world universities don't even let students see how their papers were graded why don't we just not let students see how their papers were graded... https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/144597/do-students-have-the-right-to-see-how-their-papers-were-graded

@BCLC at least in Sweden there would be no legal basis for this. Also, it would arguably make these discussions even worse, since then a subjective "I felt like I did better than a 3" would be all that students could go by.

@OwenReynolds I used to do this as well, but after getting sucked multiple times into heated nonsense debates that didn't actually move the discussion forward in any way I decided that it's better to force a more deliberate pace on these debates. And, frankly, having to mull for a few hours over whether their explanation mark riddled email was indeed a great idea can be a healthy educational experience for some students.

This is good advice, but I think one key piece is missing: having a good grading framework. A good framework allows you to stick to the facts and stay objective as they advised, because there actually are facts to stick to. You can just point out "you got question X wrong, costing you Y points."

@EdwardOn the first day of the semester my students had the formula by which their final grade would be calculated.  They had graded work, except the final exam, returned.  The course management system kept all grades, including the final exam.  So, the student could absolutely know whether one point would make a difference, and if a student with a grade of C were one point away from a B on a potentially arguable question, I'd give the student the point.

I generally agree with this answer, except point 4. I'd advise to avoid asking questions to the students in responses; I'd state my reasons and then implicitly communicate that the matter is closed for me. I'd never encourage them to keep on discussing. (Of course some will do that anyway, but...)

@Lewian Yes and no. I also am certainly not fishing for additional complaints, but if a student is abstractly expressing dissatisfaction with their grade asking what exactly they are dissatisfied with actually speeds up the process.

@BobBrown Challenge Accepted.

I would add a final point: look up whoever is responsible for resolving an escalated staff/student disputes and, if a student email crosses the threshold from "angry" to "threatening and/or abusive" language, write a brief factual response about the grade and cc the relevant person or office when sending it. You should not need to fear your students.

Your first step should be to make sure the mark is accurate before you reply.
I once had a student complain about getting an "F". I looked in my gradebook and saw that the student had a "B"!  My first thought was that I had written the wrong grade on the report sent to the registrar's office.  I went, with the student, to the registrar's.  There was a "B" on the report I had sent.  The error had been made at the registrar's office.  Of course, the student's grade was changed to "B".

Interesting situation, but I'm not sure that's relevant here. If the instructor assigned a lower grade by mistake, fixing the mistake will usually defuse any student anger.

This isn't really an answer. It's a relevant anecdote, but doesn't tell the OP how to deal with the kinds of emails they mention.

Welcome to Academia.SE. You had gotten a number of flags for not providing a "real answer" to the question. So, I suggested adding a sentence to explain what your actual advice is -- feel free to edit this paragraph if I distorted your meaning.

BTW - I once had a similar situation. Two pieces of software disagreed about how to alphabetize names beginning with O', and so three grades in the O section were transposed. As luck would have it, this section of the gradebook included one of the best students and one of the weakest. That's the only time I've ever had a student tell me "I think there was a grading mistake that will turn my F into an A" and be completely correct. The student whose A turned into an F was presumably less pleased, but they never said anything to me.

While @xLeitix's answer pretty much sums it up, I would like to add that

"A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it."

Students complain about marks if either
a. Your rubrics/grading criteria are unclear or inconsistently applied
b. The students perceive you as pliant.
Of course, there are those students who will just complain for complaining's sake or with the hopes of you just not wanting the hassle of dealing with them. Those are, in my experience, a very small (albeit vocal) minority. Moreover, since their complaints are rarely justified, you can easily handle them.
If you handle (a) well, then students are much less likely to complain about you, and would greatly appreciate the transparency. I make my rubrics clear-cut and public, and ask students to refer to specific rubric items in their regrade requests. I tell them in advance that I do not grade feelings or intentions, just what actually made it to the assessment paper. Make sure that this grading policy is public on week 1; perhaps even get students to acknowledge reading it (say via an online form).
Students won't perceive you as pliant if you fix (a) and stick to it. I actively encourage students who threaten me with going to a higher authority to follow through on their threat (politely), something along the lines of

"You are well within your rights to take this matter up with the dean, and if you feel like you have been mistreated in any way, then by all means do so".

No one has gone on to complain yet. They know they have no standing.
Given that we are teaching in unusual times, you can (and should!) be lenient when the situation warrants it, as long as you are consistent about this as well. If one student complains about an inconsistency or possible interpretation and you find their argument valid, go back and fix it for everyone. If a student asks for an extension for no particular reason, grant it for everyone.

As another aside, perhaps it's my own personality, but I find anger much easier to handle than genuine sadness/panic. I reciprocate hostility with (icy, legalistic) hostility. A student who cries in my office about failing a class and not knowing how to break it to their parents is much likelier to get my support (perhaps not a good thing, but nobody's perfect...)

"I actively encourage students who threaten me with going to a higher authority to follow through on their threat" >> depending on national and local academic cultures, this might not be a good approach. There are places where students can bend the rules if they just ring the proper buzzwords. As you said, these are "unusual times", thus easier to become an "exception"...

Why would you want to discourage your students from exercising their rights? I don’t have the power to stop them, and indicating that it concerns me sends the wrong message

"They know they have no standing." Unless their parents are politicians, friends with the dean or have a lot of money, unfortunately...(in many countries, luckily not everywhere)

I'm not suggesting that. There's some middle ground between "discouraging" and "actively encouraging" that can be used to dial down the hostility - which should be the goal regardless of the student following through or not -, while still demonstrating your indifference.

I think we're on the same page. I agree that egging them on (or being generally mean) is a bad idea, and if that's implied then I'll revise my wording. I will admit that students who believe they're my boss because they're paying tuition rub me the wrong way and get worse reactions, perhaps bordering on aggressive, but - do as I say, not as I do!

@user111388 luckily I teach at a public university, where everyone is treated equally badly!

As a high-school student currently, (and I've gotten my fair share of Cs and Fs), I have always been more accepting of my grade (and less upset about it) when my teacher would explain why he/she gave me that grade, and then give feedback about what I could change next time I had to take an assessment in the same course. By doing this, you do two things. 1.) You tell them what they can do differently so that they have something to work towards in the next semester. (And often based on this feedback, they will do better the next time.) And 2.) They see that you care about your students and their work, by taking out time from your day to give them feedback/explanations. This may also inadvertently make them pay more attention in class/try to do better on their work. (I have found that I have learned and retained more from teachers that care than from those who don't.) This shouldn't ruin your reputation with your students, as they may still be mad at you, but they would at least understand why their grade happened the way it did.
This is probably not the opinion which you are seeking, but I think that it covers a unique perspective of the question, not covered in the other answers.

This sounds more like advice to OP's students than to OP themselves. OP wanted to know how to deal with students who haven't taken this advice, and have e-mailed them with hostility instead of genuine curiosity and a desire to learn.

I understand that at the moment this is the grade that reflects the student's efforts and this is the grade they deserve. In this case, I would explain to them using facts why they received this grade.
However, in the future, you may consider emailing students when they start to fall behind in your class. It personally gives me no pleasure to see a student not succeed in my class. When I have had such students, I have reached out to them via email. Some did not respond. One responded that they were suffering from depression due to the pandemic and asked to redo the assignment and was then able to catch up with the rest of the material.
It then helps to use this as evidence. You have a paper trail showing that you tried to help the student and they did not accept the help so they definitely deserve the low grade.


text:
Plagiarism Checker
My first research paper is due tomorrow and my university does not seem provide students access to Turnitin. There are numerous other plagiarism checkers online but none seem to be reliable.
Are there any services that I can use that is as reliable as Turitin?

Why would you want to perform a plagiarsm check on your own paper? You should know whether you plagiarised or not.

If the university allowed students to use Turnitin, then students who had plagerised would find it easy to hide evidence of their wrongdoing.

My paper is based on my own algorithm which I've developed, I mostly want to check for plagiarism in the introduction and other places where I've explained certain concepts and referenced other work.

How do you know none seem to be reliable?

Turnitin will almost always give you a non-zero plagerism percentage; your supervisor/professor/marker will be able to glance through the output and see whether you've actually breached academic integrity or if its a false positive. In short, if you're confident you haven't plagerised, don't worry about it

You may also be interested in the answers to this question.

The best plagiarism checker is a clean conscience that you actually wrote every word yourself.

I wrote a paper about calculating the gas compressibility factor of gases, and Turnitin flagged my references in its similarity detection. According to Turnitin a truly original paper would not reference other work.

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


text:
Research assistant in Germany. When is it possible to switch projects
I am a research assistant (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) in Germany in a BMBF funded project. I just got an offer to join a project that has a longer runtime than my current project and offers more opportunities. My professor is in support of the switch. My role in the team is vital to my current project (full time position) and there is no replacement for me in sight. A colleague could do my part of the work but that would mean that he would have to qualify for the position (learning effort, etc.) and has less time for his role.
I'm relatively new in the position of a research assistant so I don't know how the legal situation is here. Is such a switch from a legal perspective even possible when the project is not done? How to justify the switch? Could someone dispute the switch, considering my new role was not advertised publicly?

If the prof supports you, they should be the one to talk to, they can answer your questions or find out the answers without dropping your name. They can also help you in finding a replacement without burning bridges or leaving your old team stranded.

What if there is no replacement when my new contract starts next week? Could there be a problem with the BMBF or a former coworker asking and invalidating my new contract?


text:
How can I work around the issues and obtain a proper computing environment?
I have been working on machine learning and neural network training for some of my projects. My supervisor gave me some Linux computers that are at least a decade old and equipped with GeForce GTX 780 GPUs.
There are multiple problems with these Linux computers.

Because of some strange reason, these computers automatically shuts down and go offline at least every two months. Someone has to go inside the server room and manually start them, bypassing some BIOS-related issues. Suppose I am working on Saturday evening at 6 pm and the machine abruptly shuts down. I need to wait until Monday morning, go to the faculty building, and then manually start the machine.

Those old GPUs have small memories. As a result, they cannot handle even medium datasets (e.g., 1 million samples and nine features).

These machines are behind a gatekeeper computer. So, it is very tedious to upload and download files from and to those machines on my laptop. So, what I do is first upload my files to another remote machine, and then I transfer those files to those GPU-equipped computers.

I requested that my supervisor provide me a dedicated machine equipped with powerful GPUs. However, he gave me another old machine. I set up Windows 10 on that machine and installed GPUs. However, the machine was slow, and I could not install the latest versions of the Tensorflow library that can work with that GPU and CUDA. When I requested that he give me a new machine, he said he could not. If I want to have a new machine, I should apply for research grants from government agencies, etc.
Another problem is that my supervisor is a pathological liar. So, arguing with him is like trying to nail jelly to the wall. No matter what I say, he slithers like an eel.
Now, my question is, how can I work around these issues and obtain a proper computing environment to train my neural networks?

Why are you working for someone you consider to be a pathological liar, and who does not support your work?

@Anonymous, Because I need to finish my PhD.

During my PhD, I had to buy myself a good computer (2,000€) otherwise I would not progress. Those GPUs are useless. By the way what you say about VRAM being too small for datasets is wrong. Nobody keeps the entire dataset in VRAM - you keep the model, a batch and activations, not the entire dataset. In any case, that GPU is useless, you need to buy yourself a proper computer or you will not progress. I had to do the same myself.

@RicardoCruz, Kindly post this comment as an answer. I will accept that.

@RicardoCruz, How about Colab Pro+ or Amazon AWS?

@user366312 I have once glanced at the numbers that AWS charges and did some back-of-the-envelope calculations, and it seemed to be cheaper to just buy a GPU. If you rent for $1/minute and you use a single GPU for 8h per days, then you burn $1500 in around 6 months. For $600 you can buy a good 12GB GPU (an A2000 or a RTX 3080 - maybe A2000 is better for neural networks). For most computer vision work they are very good (unless you work with something very intensive like NeRFs). I don't know about NLP/LLM, I don't work in that area, maybe that area requires more VRAM because of transformers.

Cloud Computing/GPU As A Service
One very real possibility is Cloud Computing, or GPUaaS.  But it's going to come with a very large caveat at the end.
My firm opinion is, even if your advisor were dripping with generous funding, you don't want to be managing this stuff yourself.  You want someone with real expertise and real money to set this stuff up for you and a few hundred of your closest buddies, and just give you terminal and Jupyter Lab access to little slices of it.
In 2024, this is not hard to find.  Many variants exist:

Some (maybe many, now?) universities will provide this, either at department levels or as the university itself.

Some National Labs, in the United States, provide this and partner with universities or industry.  I would be shocked if this idea were not replicated in other nations.

The National Science Foundation (again, in the United States) has some initiatives like the Chameleon Cloud.

Private companies abound, from Amazon on down, providing this sort of thing.

There are surely others, but that should get you started.
Here's the big caveat:  Those systems come with some downsides.
The commercial entities are going to charge you money, for instance.  And while my advisor was willing to set me up with some Amazon reimbursements, it sounds like yours won't.  And depending on what you want to do, it can get expensive.  And you shouldn't be paying for this out of pocket, anyway.
I remember Chameleon Cloud being difficult to schedule time on, but that was a while ago, maybe it's changed.
National Labs may have limits on use, or want to you to apply for grants.
University in-house solutions, though... those can be pretty sweet.  Mine was.  I rarely had access to whatever the latest GPUs were, but they were pretty recent.  And I didn't need the very latest and greatest anyway.

Here in Australia, to take another example, most universities have high performance computing facilities of their own and if that isn’t enough, we can apply for resources on the National Computing Infrastructure, which will likely be granted if the project is worthwhile. Another option would be for the supervisor to organise a collaboration with someone at an institution with better HPC resources (e.g., CSIRO). Of course, if the supervisor is indeed a “pathological liar” and known as such, that might be difficult.

@Significance same here (Germany): my university has some HPC resources of its own and there are resources in my case at the state level rather than national level.

If you want to have a new machine, you should apply for research grants from government agencies, etc...
(It seems your advisor already gave you the correct answer)

Until then?     also, those grants are competitive and not guaranteed.

@user366312 yes, grants are competitive and not guaranteed. I imagine that is why your supervisor cannot simply buy you a new computer — he’d need a grant to pay for it. The other answer gives some other good ideas, but without knowing your country, it’s hard to say exactly what your options are.

@Significance, I better not reveal the country.

@DanielHatton one would hope so, yes. If the OP is early in their PhD, not having this support would be a good reason to change supervisor or quit. If later in the PhD, perhaps the supervisor failed to anticipate the need?

@user366312 the information on your profile suggests an interest in one particular country, so see Maarten Buis’ comment on that other answer.

@DanielHatton It is possible OP's PI is a subject-matter expert in something else, and doesn't know the computational requirements for OP's project.


text:
How to be properly cited with a two-word last name
I have a two-word last name which gives as full name something like "Mike Adam Pince" (just an example) with "Mike" the first name and "Adam Pince" the last name (no middle name).
I have published few conference papers and I noted that Google scholar is referencing me (author's name in the results) as "MA Pince" which I'm sure other people would do too.
Now that I'm writing a journal paper I'm thinking of adding a hyphen to my last name "Adam-Pince" to avoid any confusion with others authors.
I wonder what's the common practice in such a situation.

Are you looking for advice about changing your name, or are you asking what the proper way to cite a paper you write is?

@StellaBiderman advice for whether I should change my name (add a hyphen) or not or do something else, so that other people can cite me correctly even though my real last name does not have a hyphen.

A relatively common practice is to put last names in (sm)all caps. Thus you have "Mike ADAM PINCE". (This is particularly common when dealing with a combination of Eastern and Western names, for example KIM Jong-Il tells us the surname is Kim not Jong-Il, or Spanish/Portuguese names, for example, Gabriel GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ tells us only Gabriel is the given name. I don't know of Google Scholar is smart enough to do this. I normally double check to be sure, but I'm in a field where this issue is common enough that generally no one assumes.

@NajibIdrissi This makes me more willing to put the hyphen then :)

@guifa could be a solution but we are bound by the template layout (conf., journal, etc.) where all caps last names are not usually the standard!

@MedNait Yeah, I definitely understand that.  I know the responsibility shouldn't befall you, but whenever you notice it, I'd just contact the journal/conference and let them know that having a template that makes distinguishing given and surnames by anything other than order is really helpful.  A lot of people from single-surname/final-surname regions are oblivious to the situation, but with some prompting might be inclined to improve their templates.

Make it easy for people to cite you correctly.
People are lazy. When I cite a paper, I usually copy-paste the citation from some website. This can be the publisher's website, the author's website, or some index like Google Scholar or DBLP (for computer science). I suspect most people do this too. So you should make sure the correct citation appears in these places.
Make sure that the publisher of your papers has the correct citation on their website. Put the correct citation on your website (e.g. create an "export citation" link). Create a google scholar profile and make sure it has the correct information. In some places it may be appropriate to even include the suggested citation in your paper itself. These actions won't ensure 100% correct citation of your name, but they will make a difference.
Another note: You get to choose what name to put on your paper. It doesn't have to be your legal name. (For instance, someone who changes their legal name upon marriage may choose to keep publishing under their maiden name.) So you do have the option to choosing a professional name that avoids these issue -- e.g., by hyphenating. Just be consistent.

Thanks for the advice, I checked and even the publisher of most my papers got it wrong! Guess the best way is to add a hyphen since checking every time for that and everywhere would be very difficult.

I had the same issue. I added a hyphen between them and that solved the issue. Search engines works way better by doing so.

You should write your name the way you want to have it appear in print: it's your name!
However, that said, it is true that automated algorithms are not always alert to the sensitivities of naming conventions. You could certainly choose to have an academic "name of record" that is different from your legal name. So you could be "M. Adam Pince" legally but go by "M. Adam-Pince" in academic publications and citations.
The only rule to follow is to stick with a single name once you've picked it.

not only automated algorithms. I bet that most people would think my last name is "Pince" and cite my papers as "Pince et al." for eg

About sticking with the name I picked, I already wrote few papers with my legal name (no hyphen) I wonder if it's best to change it or keep it as is at that point.

@MedNait: If you only have a few papers published, you could change it now, and ask the citation indices to make adjustments to the existing papers. But don't make the change after you've published a lot.

OK. Just out of curiosity, how would you cite a paper with a first author's name like mine?

It should just be “M Adam Pince” or “Adam Pince, M.” without the hyphen, depending on the house style sheet.

How would you know that Adam is part of my last name and not a middle name. Actually I checked and even the publisher of most my papers got it wrong!

Your answer and the accepted answer are similar. It's just that I had to choose and I like the first phrase of the accepted answer. Thanks


text:
Repeat acronym in conclusion
Can I use acronyms and abbreviations in the conclusion of a scientific paper or should I avoid them?
Even though the main idea of acronyms and abbreviations is to avoid repetition, my impression is that acronyms should be avoided as a conclusion should be somehow self explanatory.
Is there a consensus on something like that?


text:
Applying for a 2nd MS degree - Should I mention my previous MS in the statement of purpose?
Graduate application season is about to start and I would like to apply for MS programs within the US. Ideally, I should apply for a PhD since I already have a MS degree in Inorganic Chemistry. However, I've applied to three different PhD programs in the US and Canada this year and have been rejected to all three, I guess the main reason is that I don't have any publications and I am also a foreign student (from Brazil); hence I decided to try a 2nd MS degree to strengthen my CV and increase the chance of being accepted to a PhD program later.
The question is: should I mention in my application this previous MS in Inorganic Chemistry or should I proceed as if it was going to be my first graduate experience?
There are four different scenarios I can think of:
-I mention the MS in my application and it will be considered a plus, increasing my chance of receiving an assistantship.
-I mention the MS in my application and it will be considered a plus by the admission committee, but they won't be able grant me funding (as teaching or research assistantship) since this will not be my 1st MS degree.
-I mention the MS, but the admission committee thinks it is inappropriate to accept me as a master's student since I already have a degree and I would be rejected.
-I don't mention, I won't have the extra experience on my application but my chances of receiving funding are bigger in case I get accepted into the program.
Do my reasoning seems logical? Apparently there are no restrictions about a 2nd degree anywhere I've searched within the departamental websites of which programs I intend to apply, but I'm still not sure how they would ponder this situation.

You should apply to more PhD programs than just three! I applied to nine and was only accepted to one with funding, and I think applying to 10-15 is not uncommon. This alone would increase your chances.

@GypsySpellweaver But I've read the graduate school guidelines for every program I intend to apply and there is no mention about 2nd degrees and acceptance/funding. Could I still be penalized by omitting that I already have a MS degree in a different country?

2 MS won't help you get into a PhD but 1-2 years of industry experience definitely could.

I wouldn't use 2 MS degrees as a plus on my PhD application just by citing it, I would use it to improve my CV with publications so I could mention them in future applications.

There are several factors you should consider:
1) check if you are obliged to inform the university about all your previous degrees (this mainly depends on the policy of the university). For example, I know that in some European countries it is highly important to declare it due to financial issues, where students with similar degrees cannot get funding support. In some African and Asian countries, it is not allowed at all to join a program with similar degree due to insufficient pedagogical seats. For this be careful not making a false declaration.
2) in case you are not obliged to declare such an information (Note that it does not mean lying about it), it is better to check if you can make it as a positive point. This should be mentioned in your motivation letter, by intuitively indicating your motivation for the applied program and how its combination with your previous MS will help you to solve difficult problems in the labour market or doing PhD.
If you cannot find such a connection between the two programs and you find that the motivation is not sufficiently convincing, you can hide your degree as long as you are not obliged or asked to declare it.
Overall, everything will be based on how you illustrate your motivation.

At least in the departamental and graduate school guidelines there are no imposed restrictions relative to earning a second degree at the same field. I am starting to feel that mentioning the degree will not help me for different reasons though.

So if you have a doubt about how it might be considered, just skip mentioning it. You will have in this case equal chances to all other applicants. It is fair, isn't it?

Yes, of course.


text:
How often is a bad review from the reviewers due to the potential competition with your work?
Reviewers are expert in their fields who can understand your work but are also potential competitors if they worked in the same field as you do. How frequent is a bad review from the reviewers due to the potential competition with your work so they can stall your publication?
For example, if you were a reviewer, would you be excited to learn that I have published research that are superior to yours or prove that your research direction was wrong? Another extreme example, if you were an HIV researcher/reviewer, how excited/horrible would you feel if I publish a cure for HIV and will be nominated for Nobel prize tomorrow and you will be sitting down there listening to my talk?  What incentive do reviewers have to give out good/fair review?

Probably going to be far less often than all the other reasons you get a bad review: Work is actually bad; reviewer missed the point; reviewer didn't read; reviewer didn't have breakfast. I'd say don't worry too much about it, and focus on doing good work.

I would really hope that HIV researchers are motivated by the desire for a cure to exist and would thus be delighted if anyone finds one, regardless of whether they personally were at all involved in the finding.

That's what the editor is for.  If the editor is good, he or she will recognise if a reviewer is unfair/dishonest, and not weigh their review much in the final decision.  Moreover, the editor knows who the reviewer is and if a reviewer pulls this trick too often, he or she will get a poor reputation.

@gerrit: I really encourage you to write this up as an answer, because the final decision lies with the editor, who is hopefully less biased and who has an interest in the overall quality of the journal. Trylks mentions this aspect in his answer, but more as an appeal mechanism.

@DoruConstantin Answer added.

In my experience:
If the editor is fair, it doesn't matter terribly much.
The decision to reject a paper is not taken by the reviewers.  The decision is taken by the editor. The role of the reviewers is to give a recommendation, upon which the editor takes a decision.  If a reviewer recommends rejection (or acceptance, for that matter), the editor is free to ignore this recommendation (this has happened to yours truly).  If the editor suspects that a reviewer recommends rejection because of potential competition, or for any other improper reason, then the editor should not weigh this recommendation heavily.  This is one of the reasons why there should always several reviewers — at least in my field (atmospheric remote sensing), I've only come across cases with two or three reviewers.
Secondly: The editor knows who the reviewer is.  If a scientist makes a habit of recommending rejections for improper reasons, he or she will get a reputation among editors.  Editors are usually well-known colleagues in the field, so you really don't want to be known as the envious guy (or gal) who will reject major works of research because it was not invented here.  In the best case, they won't be asked as reviewers any more.  In the worst case, it may harm a scientific career.
Perhaps the scenario described above is somewhat naive, but in those cases where I've either been a reviewer, or been corresponding author, it would apply.  The same for open review papers (such as the geophysical journal, published by EGU, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics).  It might be different in other fields, this I don't know.  I hope that even in other fields, the editor does more than copy-paste and blindly follow whatever reviewers recommend.

With all due respect, I tend to think that no editor is so omnipotent that s/he can always see through any malicious intention of reviewers, regardless of how cleverly hidden they may be. I do think that it matters even if we assume that editors act fairly in good faith. Even a perfectly fair computer can give biased output if input is biased. And I'm not so sure that it's always easy to detect unfair referee reports. Besides, I think that the meaning of "fairness" is already somewhat ambiguous and may not be completely objective.

@YuichiroFujiwara It doesn't have to be malicious.  The editor can carefully look at each of the three reviews.  Papers should be rejected in case of serious scientific errors, or if the work is not interesting enough / off-topic for the target journal.  If one out of three reviewers rejects a paper based on serious errors, whereas the others don't, the editor should at least consider if he/she agrees.  If a reviewer rejects based on work being not interesting... well, if the editor agrees it doesn't sound like highly competitive research either.  I admit my experience is limited, though.

Some journals have an additional option besides major revision and rejection: reject and encourage resubmission, which means the errors should be (eventually) salvageable.  A reviewer wanting to get rid of competition won't even want to encourage resubmission...

I'm not going to get involved in a discussion. But here's some points: 1. I don't understand where you pulled off that number 3 about how many referees an editor uses; there are many cases where a single referee is used. 2. Even if multiple referees are used, they may all be biased due to malicious intent, jealousy, etc. 3. I don't think editors always read papers in detail or have abilities and expertise to judge their quality. If anything, that's one of the reasons referees are necessary. Sometimes editors aren't even academics (e.g., editors of high impact journals like Nature and Science).

@YuichiroFujiwara Perhaps it differs per field, but I've exclusively come across cases with 2 or 3 referees.  Perhaps my answer is limited to particular domains or somewhat naive.  I've edited my answer to reflect this.

Not perhaps. It is different from field to field. Or more like journal to journal. There are high profile math journals that may use a single referee, and others try hard to get multiple reports. In physics, Phis. Rev. A uses a different number of referees depending on the type of submission. But the policy is different in other Phis. Rev. series. (cont...)

But what's more important is that the problem isn't all about getting accepted at the end. For example, one poor/biased report may cause the editor seeking another report even if s/he already has another mediocre report, resulting in delay. This can achieve the goal of stalling your research, which is what OP is talking about. Also, one poor/biased report means less good feedback, which is an indirect way to slow you down. I think the effect of poor/biased referee reports is more serious than you make it out to be and shouldn't be taken lightly.

This can achieve the goal of stalling your research, which is what OP is talking about — if it delays (rather than stops) publication, does it really delay the research?  If it's major, don't researchers already communicate findings earlier through press releases, conferences, etc. — such as with the Higgs Boson, discovery of Earth-like exoplanets, or other major events?  Research is usually already a bit old anyway by the time it's published and printed — does a delay in publication really delay major research that much?  No papers means no funding, but are delayed papers a major problem?

This will be my last comment. 1. OP said "stall publication." And I think "stall" here means "delay deliberately," which is the standard sense. Sorry if my wording confused you. 2. Yes. Delaying publication can delay research. 3. Bringing up an extreme case is a logical fallacy. 4. You seem to agree that getting rejected by a journal causes "stalling publication." But if rejected, you can submit to another journal. So, in general, assuming there are alternative journals, if getting rejected counts as "stalled," I think causing an editorial delay on purpose does, perhaps to a different extent.

How often is a bad review from the reviewers due to the potential competition with your work so they can stall your publication?

Clearly there is no hard data on that, but I would wager much less than people think that it happens. I can only echo Matthew G.s sentiment above - In my experience papers in my field (software engineering) are rejected because of (roughly in order):

Bad method
Bad writing
Bad reviewer
Bad idea
Actively malicious reviewer

Of course, when people get a reject, it is much easier to conclude that bullet 3 or 5 happened than 1, 2 or even 4. However, that does not necessarily make it so.
In my experience, the way to achieve modest success in science is to do your best work, and accept that occasionally bad things will happen to you. Achieving success in science is a bit like playing poker. There are hands that you play well but another player gets undeservedly lucky, but over the course of an evening (or career), the bad players usually lose and the good players usually win.

It happens. Meanwhile, of course, it is difficult to document or argue about it... which is not surprising given that the people perpetrating this are not stupid, so will not leave themselves open to the simplest trail-of-damning-evidence.
The question of "how often?" is essentially impossible to answer, exactly because no one wants to, or would wisely, document such things...
But, yes, there is such a possibility, for sure, and it can have an impact. But, apparently, we are all to pretend that it is not happening, and to rationalize that there are other good reasons, etc. In terms of behavior-of-humans, this is similar to our collective rationalization that the seeming-issues seemingly-debated in politics touch reality directly. That is, there's scant purpose in rebelling too strongly, because then one disconnects from the actual process of "politics". On the other hand, it would induce insanity to believe too much that those things reflect sense or reality.

It is fully possible situation. The editor tries to pick the most relevant reviewers, but these are also the most probable competitors, as they work on the same topic. If two near parallel research projects are close to publishing they results (and who will be first), yes, this is a problem. However if the works are different enough not to invalidate significance of each other, most of the reviewers will not be biased.
It even happened for me to observe the competing laboratory simply delaying the review for a long time (as this also delays the publication) and ultimately refusing to provide it, openly stating that "we are competitors".
As a result, many journals allow authors to provide a list of competitors that may not be capable of unbiased reviewing for that article. If some other laboratory is very much a competitor, or if have already been problems with such a reviewer in the past, the author should ask the editor to pick somebody else.

This question cannot be answered, nobody knows how often this happens. If someone knew the answer it wouldn't be relevant anyway, because it would be ephemeral.
What we are talking about here is a form of corruption or perversion and pretending it's not happening or pretending it's impossible is the worst thing that can be done because that will only make it worse. Those who are corrupts get an advantage from a system that is not well designed for the present times, their behaviour is rewarded and so the system converges to a corrupt state.
Therefore it's important to fight corruption (and changing the system, but I don't want to go too offtopic). So, how can we minimise the risk for this so that it happens less often?

Preprints: arxiv.org (and similar services) can keep your preprints online, and they have become standard in some areas as physics (AFAIK). If reviewers try to publish papers that they have rejected the evidence is there, in the preprints server.
Open reviews: some journals have open and public reviews. The reviewer may still give a bad review based on personal interests but in this way that would be more obvious. Transparency is not a solution to corruption, but it helps.
Editors: if you have a problem with a reviewer you can raise your concerns to the editor. I have seen people doing this several times and they never had positive news on the result, but this is something that you can do in any case.
Choose wisely your venues: if the editor is not trustworthy (and the reviewers are anonymous) you may prefer to choose a different venue. In a free market (of papers and venues) with perfect information these venues should theoretically disappear after some time, but practice and theory are not the same (in practice).

There are probably more things that you can do, I hope more people will suggest some in the comments (actually I'm making this post a community wiki post, so feel free to edit). But in short, doing nothing about it (as other answers and comments seem to suggest) would be a very bad idea.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
PD: The reasons why the system is not well designed are long to explain, it has grown larger (there has never been so many people in academia in history), the fields have grown more specific, the world is more globalized, there is a stronger competition, etc.
PD2: I also agree that probably bad reviews are so because of other reasons, but one of them may be a bad reviewer or a reviewer having a bad day (as people seem to suggest), and what I suggest minimises the impact of this as well (e.g. open reviews).
Additionally we should consider how often papers that are "not that good" get a positive review for other hidden interests (friendship, they are on the same project, they promote the same approach/idea, etc.) this causes an unfair advantage and other papers may get rejected more easily.

To echo Paul's statement above, it happens. To what extent just depends on unknown and incalculable variables. Odds are, if you are in the game for long enough, you'll hear about it, see it happen, and experience it.
The problem is that the field of study becomes increasingly narrow, and so the pool of people that can provide peer reviews likewise become increasingly narrow.
At some point, you'll even start to recognize the style of writing from blind feedback and can identify the author.
And, what will really tick you off is coming up with an original idea, telling a colleague about it, and then 6 months later see that idea become the title of an article written by someone in your field at another university.
That actually happened to me, and the title was verbatim. I'm still peeved about it.

Unfortunately, bad and/or fabricated reviews are common if you are in a competitive industry. It is harder and harder to find a genuine and unbiased reviewer who has no hidden interests or agendas. You can watch some industry forums, where writing service owners and freelance writers allegedly post misinformation or untrue statements about each other in order to discredit their competition.
Another thing, you need to be careful whom you entrust your research work. Even if they don't use it today, they may use it tomorrow (or they may change some details and claim authorship). Hopefully, I didn't scare you too much though ;).

Web site owners posting nasty reviews of one another is a completely different situation from academic peer review.

if you are in a competitive industry Are you sure you are on the right site? We are Academia, not industry. The OP never mentions industry.

My point was that even academic peer reviewers may have a hidden agenda (just like politicians work with lobbyists to achieve a certain goal). The OP posted extreme examples so the goal of my reply was to look at the subject from a broader perspective too.


text:
What to do if I have a good proposal for experiment but don't have an ability to fully conduct it?
I've recently began working on machine learning, and I was a mathematician before then. Despite such background, as ML is a fast moving area, since I have studied the recent progress considerably and numerous papers, I'm confident in my knowledge. However, I'm neither good at nor fast at implementing my ideas to algorithms. I have no problem with writing pseudocodes, adding details and designing experiments, but it takes bit more time to implement algorithms in Tensorflow and PyTorch for my designed neural network not too slowly. I'm not used to debugging such codes either, since it's much harder than simple, fast algorithms I had to learn before. Therefore, it takes an incredibly long time to conduct an experiment by myself.
An interesting paper was published 3 days ago, and the author does neither understand its full implication nor have an access to enough computation resources. I can attempt a very interesting experiment, and if successful (which is likely), it would be a great deal for both the author and me. However, due to my incredible slowness, I probably have no chance for it, since others will probably publish before I will. I need someone with machine learning knowledge who is not too bad at coding.
I have three choices: grad students in my university, the aforementioned author and well-known experts in the field. I've never met the people in last two options, but both are familiar with the topic. The author doesn't possess a good coding skill either and failed at coding one thing I'm trying to do, since he is a mere student.
I'm not sure whether I can trust either of them. If I will propose my ideas and coauthoring a paper, since I lack coding experience and it bothers them, there's no guarantee that, even if they don't even know the paper (for experts' case) or my idea yet, they can just claim to have the idea already or just ignore my email, and they can publish the paper based on my idea before I do. Grad students probably can help me, but I'm not sure whether they will show an interest in or familiarity with the topic.
I believe this situation can be generalized. In such cases, what is the best choice? Any advice? By the way, as far as I know, it's uncommon to just upload to Arxiv a non-theoretical paper with proposal of experiments and generalization of an existing algorithm. Even if I do, it will not give me much credits, since if it does, then proposal papers would have abounded.

Or, since you have moved in to an area requiring being good at code, perhaps you too need to get good at it. Practice with a real problem can start right now. Other approaches just mean you are putting off the inevitable.

What about working in "Theoretical Machine Learning"?

I usually trust other experts, or anyone somewhat established in a field. If you cannot find someone at your department you can work with, I would contact whatever expert there is. Start with a vague explanation of your idea and ask whether they are interested in discussing it further. If yes, get together, talk about your idea, share thoughts, make a rough plan how to continue.
Of course they might run away with your idea, but I would expect that to be very unlikely. But I'm from a very different field, maybe we tick differently? Do you have a reason to suspect that they might run away with it?


text:
How would you call a person who gets a travel grant?
I used to write in my CV 'XXX travel grant, an applicant'. Recently, I discovered that some people reviewing my CV for grant purposes do not completely understand what an applicant is (they asked me if this is a CI or not). To me, calling myself a Chief Investigator on a travel grant sounds a bit weird because you do not investigate anything when travelling for a conference. What is the right terminology?

An applicant is someone who asks for a grant, it doesn't indicate whether they actually got it.

traveller? scnr

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/45216/19607

Cambridge Dictionary

grantee

a person or organization that receives a grant

If you have received the grant, you can write "XXX travel grant grantee" or "XXX travel grant recipient" (per J W's comment, now deleted).
P.S. Thanks for @BryanKrause 's reminder.

This depends on the sponsor and country.  In the US, if you get a travel grant from a federal sponsor, you are still PI (Principal Investigator) on that award.  You are still responsible for all the things PIs are responsible for, e.g., progress reports.  It's just a bit different in how the scope works and what you are reporting back.
You can also use the words "recipient" or "awardee".  These are generally used instead of "grantee", as they cover more funding instruments (e.g., contracts).


text:
How to write a good introduction for a software package in a paper?
There are several algorithms in my research area, and I'm the first to implement them all together in a R package with Rcpp. I'm working on a paper in which I'd like to compare those algorithms as well as introduce my R package.
This is my first time to introduce a package in my paper and I have no idea what kind of things readers might be interested in, for example, the implementation detail, the usage example or some benchmarks? Are there any general suggestions for these kind of papers?

Many packages for R and other platforms were formally published in a paper. Read a few such papers and see what's the trend.

The first suggestion is to read other papers of this kind. Have a look at the Journal of Statistical Software, which has many such papers. When it comes to comparison of algorithms, it depends to some extent on your ambition. The Journal of Statistical Software has papers that are mainly about introducing a package, give usage examples, discuss options etc. (these also normally need to introduce the algorithms that are implemented, as you often wouldn't expect every reader to know all of these).
Data examples should be chosen so that they work well illustrating important features of the software and how it makes sense to use them. Data visualisation often helps a lot; not sure whether your package has tools for visualisation, but even if not, think about how to produce informative data images based on the results of these algorithms.
A comparison can be just done exemplary on a few benchmark datasets and/or with a small simulation. However if you want to do a comprehensive comparison, the outcome of which could be general recommendations regarding when to use what algorithm, this requires much more effort, as you'd want to cover a sufficiently large range of relevant situations and explore them intensively enough that generalisation seems plausible (this depends of course on what exactly the algorithms are about). Maybe this kind of thing could merit a stand-alone paper, separated from the introduction of the package. (To give you an idea of the complexities, look at this.)
There are also papers that compromise, i.e., they do more comparison than the bare minimum to add a nice illustration to the package, but they don't do a full scale benchmark study. You may want to have a look at other journals in computational statistics to find those, and also fully developed benchmark studies.
In a paper that mainly features the package, implementation details may be of interest; in a paper that focuses more on the comparison, they may not be that relevant (it's hard to say what counts as "detail" in your description; if I knew the details I could have a strong opinion about some things you really should cover and some things that really don't seem very relevant; without knowing what this is about, it could be either way). So a major decision is really whether to focus on the package or the comparison, or to do "a bit of both", or maybe ultimately go for two papers.
Also always have a target audience in mind, and ask yourself what these people need and would be interested in. A starting point would be what you would be interested in reading other people's papers of this kind.

Completely agree with the recommendation to submit to JSS.  For technical and scientific writing, the first three paragraphs of the Introduction section should always be based on what's known with citations/references, what's unknown with citations/references, and how this paper is structured and how it contributes to the literature.
For your manuscript, what's known is that there are drawbacks of existing methods or packages.  So think of all the reasons why you developed your algorithm.  For software, I like to make paragraph 1 focus on the problems with the existing packages, which led to the creation of your package.  In paragraph 2 focus on how the drawbacks in paragraph 1 impact the user in terms of (perhaps) precision, computational time/efficiency, reduced user productivity, and quite basically, why your algorithm is better and why people should use it.
Once the above is written, in paragraph 3 focus on the structure of your paper.  For example "In the Data Used section we discuss the data used for example runs. In the Methods section, we discuss the fundamental basis of the calculations for X,Y,Z,..."   Also, provide Use Cases with example runs.  Other than that, everything else is straightforward.


text:
How to measure the quality of a research idea?
I am at the start of my PhD. For the last four months, I have been studying the existing literature on the topic given to me by my advisor.
I want to know, how do I find a research idea on which I can publish a paper?
How to judge beforehand if this particular idea can lead to a research paper or not?

Related/Duplictes: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/117/how-to-find-a-good-topic-for-a-phd-research-proposal, https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27086/is-there-any-systematic-approach-to-select-find-a-research-topic

Related/Duplicates https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/103636/how-to-find-research-topics-and-publish-more, https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21700/how-to-find-relevant-and-new-open-research-topics

Ask your supervisor! (if it is possible)

Maybe a frame challenge, maybe not. Does the question "glimmer" for you? That is, do you find it exciting? If it's "the same-old same-old" then maybe you should be adjusting.

In some ways, that's the whole point of earning a PhD.


text:
Can I cite information from a report summary, if the report is locked behind a paywall?
I've found a market research report which has some really useful information for me, but the report itself is locked behind a paywall, and I've received no response to the mechanism for requesting a free copy.
My question is, can I just cite the info from the report's summary (it's actually still quite detailed) and if so, should I cite that as a separate source (webpage) rather than saying that I'm citing the report itself?

Cite it if you had a valid / legal access ...

So ... we have had some advocates of "Cite something only if it is available for free" posting here ... but the opinion of that was generally negative.  Or is the question: "Can I cite something I have not read"?

@DSVA I did say cite the "report summary"... Bsaically, you can see the abstract of the report, and some statistics from it, and then you have to pay for the full thing.

I would try to find an alternative first. Google Scholar often lists three useful links to entries: Cited by ..., Related articles and All ... versions. Checking them out often resolves the problem: you either get access to the material, or find an equal (or sometimes better) alternative.
Similarly, Crossref allows you to filter on the publication (Actions menu) helping to find an alternative.
In general, I also agree that reading the abstract and/or supplementary information is already a good reason to cite the source. However, I would strongly discourage to cite that web page unless you are absolutely sure it won't be gone in a matter of months. Maybe refer to the unique identifier such as DOI, or think about adding a WayBackMachine's URL of that site. Either way, it's safe to add a date when the webpage has been accessed (in the bibliography entry).

If you are able to read the information in the report, even if it was only in the abstract, you can cite it.
Cite the report and the complementary references you have found.


text:
Abstracting and indexing of a journal
If a mathematics journal abstracting and indexing is
$1.$ Mathematical Reviews
$2.$ Zentralblatt MATH
$3.$ Scopus
then how  good is that  journal ? Actually I communicate my paper in a well know journal. They reject it and recommended this journal whose indexing I mention above.

Note "MathSciNet" is the name of the on-line version of "Mathematical Reviews".  Does "Mathematical Reviews" itself even exist any more?

@GEdgar sir I don’t know . I just copied from journal site .

For mathematics papers, 1. and 2. are the choice. They are of top quality. On the other hand, 3. claims to cover "all flelds of research". I know nothing about their quality of indexing.
A mathematical journal not covered by 1. and 2. is likely not a serious journal.  (The other option is that it is a very new journal and will be indexed in the future.)

Scopus doesn't include many lower tire journals. Scopus is also a good collection i would say.

@GEdgar yes it is 2019 starting journal.