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Assistant professor: is it bad if I attend a class in a discipline close to mine but not exactly mine?
I just got a position as assistant professor in the USA. The university I am working at is one of the top 50, according to the U.S. News & World Report. I will be teaching and carrying out high-level research.
However I would love to attend a class in a discipline close to mine, to expand my knowledge. Surely I could read the book, but if I have a class to attend I will actually do it, while I will probably never be able to find the time to read the book. Would it be considered bad? Should I do it without mentioning it to anybody since it is in another department?

Do you plan on just auditing the class (i.e. you won't earn a grade) or do you plan on enrolling as a student?

Just class...which would help with my research

Just let the instructor know.

Partially related: Is it appropriate to attend a class one is not registered for?

There's nothing bad about this; it's pretty common, especially for advanced graduate courses.  You don't have to be secretive about it.  But here are a few things to consider.
First, time.  As a new assistant professor you are going to be busier than you ever imagined.  Are you sure this is the best use of three hours a week?  Keep in mind that taking this class isn't something that "counts" towards tenure, so the only career benefit for you would be if it helps improve your research productivity.  Of course, if it's just something generally interesting to you that will make your life happier, that's a consideration too - but think about whether you can afford it.
Most people do this by "sitting in on" a class - you'd plan to attend the lectures, but normally you wouldn't turn in homework or take exams like a real student would, since that would create extra work for the instructor.
In all cases you should ask the course instructor for permission, by email or in person.  "Hi, I'm Lupocci, I'm a new assistant professor in department X.  I was wondering if it would be all right if I were to sit in on your course ABC 321.  I have been meaning to learn more about this topic and this seems like a great opportunity to do it."  Make sure there is available space and that you won't displace actual students.
You should ask the instructor how they would like you to participate in the class.  Should you ask questions, participate in class discussions or activities, etc?  Sit in the front or the back?  There's a possibility for your presence to be distracting to the students, so you want to minimize that.
Some institutions might require you to formally register for the course as an auditing student, so check your regulations.  Tuition would usually be waived, but you still might have to pay lab fees or something.  At other places this sort of thing is done "off the books" as a professional courtesy between faculty.  At still others, rules require you to register, but everyone ignores the rules and just does it off the books.  So you might also ask your department chair or a senior colleague what the norms are.
Finally, as you take the class, be mindful that you don't interfere with the learning of the students.  It might be tempting to ask lots of questions in class, bring up connections to things you are interested in, etc, but this may tend to derail the class, especially if the questions are too advanced to be useful to the students.  This might also have the effect of intimidating students who worry that their questions are not as smart as yours.  So you may have to stifle yourself in class.  You could discuss things with the instructor outside of class, but try not to take up too much of their time either (see second paragraph).

In USA you are allow to take a course if you are not student?????

@SSimon: Yes, if you are a faculty member at the same institution.  Sometimes non-academic staff of the institution have this privilege also.  As I said, you might be required to temporarily register as a student, but not necessarily.

@SSimon My public state university allows pretty much anyone to 'audit' courses, with the instructors permission and officially with a bit of paperwork. No need to be student, staff, or faculty of the university at all. No tuition, and no fees unless there's some material expense that would be imposed.

@Novelocrat - This is standard in the U.S. at least. // Nate, I like your answer except for one thing.  There is no reason for an auditor not to participate fully in the class, and I am also talking about doing homework and taking exams.  (However, an auditor is not required to turn in homework or take exams.)

One of the tenure-track professors in my department used to attend a lot of the informal courses given by my advisor (and the situation is similar, since it was close, but not directly related to their research). They asked the most questions, and interrupted the most. And it was a welcomed change, as my advisor is one of those people that give you the feeling that you understand what's going on, until you realize you don't. By asking a lot of questions, everyone benefited and mistakes were caught in real time.

@aparente001 Maybe there are reasons for an auditor not to participate fully, besides those already mentioned in the answer: e.g., if delivering homework and exams, that would require extra time for the instructor/TA to correct them.

@Novelocrat - I take it back.  I looked at several university's definitions of auditing and discovered that not all universities define auditing the same way.  I looked at half a dozen -- a very small sample -- and found one that does not permit auditors to hand in any work or ask questions in class.  The others I checked do permit normal participation and a couple require it.

@iled see comment

@SSimon It depends on the University. At mine, many buildings don't check your ID. You could be some homeless person that wanders in off the street, sits in the class and they'd never know.

Let me tell a story. I like stories, maybe you do too.
Once upon a time, there was a young German mathematician named... well, his name is irrelevant. Anyways, he revolutionized the fields of number theory and arithmetic geometry with his PhD thesis and subsequent work, and in March of this calendar year, there will be a conference (school?) dedicated to introducing and familiarizing people, whether they work in his field of number theory/arithmetic geometry or a related (but not too unrelated) one, with his work.
As such, many mathematics departments around the world this past Fall and Winter have had advanced graduate classes dedicated to introducing this young German mathematician's work and the preliminaries for understanding and circle of ideas surrounding his work.
I have heard that some of these advanced graduate classes were attended by quite a few postdocs/junior faculty, and in some cases, some senior faculty reared their heads. This stirred quite some gossip amongst the graduate students attending the classes.
So please feel welcome to attend the class you want to attend, keeping in mind some of Nate Eldredge's advice (especially the one about you having enough time).
I would argue that it is not necessary to ask for permission to sit in on the class, at least based on my experiences within math departments. But if you feel compelled to do so because of some silly antiquated conception of "respect", please do not do it over email. Seriously, I'm sure you're flooded with loads of email every single day. It never stops. Would you like another almost pointless email to read and respond to?

in europe, mostly these would be quite shocking and unimaginable.

@SSimon - What do you mean when you say "mostly these"? // 1 More: "I would argue that it is not necessary" - I disagree. Out of professional courtesy, OP should politely let the instructor know if it is a formal audit (set up through the registrar); and politely request permission if it is an informal audit (= sitting in).  Also, some professors would much rather get a one or two-line email than a knock on the office door.  This is quite variable.

@aparente001 I support open classes and virtual upload of a lecture to website. However, In europe, it is quite uncommon to be visitor,

@SSimon - I guess you mean it is rare to sit in on someone else's class?

it is not allowed @aparente001

@SSimon I'm European and I don't find this neither shocking nor unimaginable. Most of the faculties don't have any interest in attending someone else's lectures, but it's not unheard of. Moreover, in some countries like mine, with public universities, anyone is allowed to attend a university lecture without the need of being enrolled.

Question: which takes you longer, responding to "do you mind if I sit in on your class" in person, or responding to "do you mind if I sit in on your class" over email"?

I would prefer the email: it's a click or two and it's done. (Modern email services like gmail inbox even guess possible short two or three word responses, so you can just click the appropriate response and be done with it). I guess I don't understand the aversion to to email here.

@MassimoOrtolano yes, in italy maybe but in any other, because attend and participate is not same!


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Supervisor used graphic without crediting me
The following situation occurred:

I was asked to modify a figure (originally published in a paper) to be used in a non-further-determined publication by my professor.
I did substantially modify the figure: I redrew the figure from scratch in a vector program, added colours and decoration and made it generally more attractive.
Now, half a year later this same figure or graphic appears in a book and just holds the small remark © Name of professor. Neither my name nor a reference to the original figure is given.
I checked the general acknowledgements of the book and there is no mention of my name.

My question is: How to proceed from here? Naturally I don't want to deteriorate the relationship with my employer but I need to raise this issue, especially so that it does not happen again in the future (my professor asks me on a regular basis to draw graphics for him). Should I insist that my name should somehow be included (second edition of the book, online errata etc.)? What would the copyright implications be for a) not mentioning the creator of the graphic (me) and b) not referencing the original work?
Some context:
I work as a research assistant and I am not employed primarily to do these drawings though - when requested - I usually do them in my work time. The book in which the figure appeared is the output of a research institution (though clearly directed at the general public) and I am not sure if the book is to be sold, i.e. if it could be considered commercial use.
Edit: I may not have explained myself well. In my opinion the resulting image is not a mere modification of a figure but a piece of work that requires creativity and year-long practices with a graphics program.

Is this really worth an altercation? Rather, use it as an experience to modulate your further interaction with the prof when it comes to serious issues such as completely original pictures/data/articles. I suggest don't bring this case up, just use it as a guiding light for the future. Importantly, in this particular case, the original picture wasn't yours, either, this modification was - in a way - a favour you did to your boss (something I did a lot, without expecting compensation). If you think you deserve more credit, negotiate conditions in advance.

An altercation no and it is not what I seek. But I still want to make sure that he sees his mistake. As I now edited into the question, this is not a slight modification of an existing figure but an original idea based on an existing figure. I am the only one in his lab that can create images of this quality for him and he sought me out especially for that, so I thought that might be worth mentioning my name at least.

@Stockfisch I think the feedback you are getting here, and that I agree with, is that work on this type of figure is not credited based on effort given. The credit is instead given to the ideas which are not originally yours, and to the authors of a publication if the figure is included in the publication. That doesn't mean your work was not appreciated or credited - it is common practice to include an "acknowledgements" section at the beginning or end of a talk or paper, you could ask for credit there, but in an already published book it's not significant enough for a correction.

@Stockfisch Fair enough. My advice sums up as: in future, set the conditions in advance. This saves a lot of headache, in my experience. It's much better than being shy about stating conditions or saying "no" and later getting angry, and possibly building up seething antagonism.

I may be missing something, but it seems that since you're employed as a research assistant there might be something about this in your contract.

How to proceed from here?
You don't do anything. You did something small your supervisor asked for, and he used the figure that you made for him.
It's very unusual for figures to be labeled with the name of the actual person that made it, and it would be a lot to expect this without asking / demanding this beforehand. Take the closest textbook and you'll find that indeed,  a lot of figures will be copied from publications and references are included. However, there will also be custom-made figures that don't have any note. And you can be quite sure these figures are not drawn by the authors themselves, but by their students or employees.
There would probably also be no copyright implication, as this sounds like you just re-created some schematic figure and you just copied the idea, not the work itself.

I don't agree as I don't see it as "something small". I'd like to compare it with a photograph where credit to the photographer is also necessary.

Credit is not necessary. It's nice, perhaps, but not necessary, and definately not legally required. This would just be work for hire and your employer would hold the copyright.

If the copyright is owned by the company (e.g. an employee of a company takes the photograph as a part of their requested duties, so work for hire), there's no requirement to credit the photographer.

And you can be quite sure these figures are not drawn by the authors themselves — Excuse me? [citation needed]

@Stockfisch Photograph is credited if licencing requires it - generallly not when a payed employee makes it in his/her working hours as part of job.

Just my two cents:  (which, I have a lot of, as I open a lot of answers this way it seems)
Take this as gained experience, and next time you are asked to rework graphics to a large extent, ask about how the rework will be credited beforehand.  Now to be fair, I have not seen many instances where graphs, etc have actually had reference to who made the graph.  This may be due to the idea that the graph/image is not as important as the data it conveys.
I would like to ask one thing.  Is there any line in the acknowledgements along the lines of "thanks to all who have helped me make this book possible?"  If so, you would be counted among that number.  If not, just chock this up to one of two things:  The author is too full of him/herself to recognize the work of others in a publication he/she put out, or two the author simply forgot to include everyone who helped out due to a simple slip of the mind.
I would HOPE it would be the latter, but I know enough published professors who would fall into the former category.  And the sad part of it all, is they are from the community college level.

To my mind, the most important element of what you have written is this:

not referencing the original work

Since the figure was originally published in another work, it is absolutely required that the original work be cited; to do otherwise is (self)plagiarism.  That part of the issue is clear, if it is a scientific publication. If it is a "pop science" publication that doesn't have any references at all, though, it falls into a general grey area of "crappy non-professional publication" for which no better can be expected and which you probably don't want to be associated with in any case.
In either case, an acknowledgement of your work would be appropriate. Failing to acknowledge you is probably not formally actionable, but is a clear indicator of a potential problem.  It's also possible that it's not intentional but simply an editing failure---screwing up one citation in a book would not be at all unusual.
So, how should you proceed? I would recommend approaching your professor from the point of view that this is a mistake, and seeing how they respond.  Something like:

"I was looking through the book, and it looks like the reference for this image was accidentally omitted.  What do you think we should do about it?"

If your professor is well-intentioned and this is a mistake, they should have suggestions for how to fix it (e.g., errata). If your professor just blows it off, however, then you know you're dealing with somebody with poor scientific publishing ethics, and should plan to start extracting yourself from that environment.  If it bugs you, you can contact the publisher later, but wait until you are secure in a place where your professor no longer has power over you.

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What are my duties regarding reporting plagiarism when reviewing a fellow graduate student's paper?
I am a PhD student, and have just finished the last part of my course requirement. My last assignment is to review several other student's term projects from a seminar course.
One of the projects I have been asked to review is rife with plagiarism. More than 75% of the paper is plagiarized, from over two dozen different sources, including academic papers, stackoverflow.com, and wikipedia. I have reported all of this to my professor, along with a detailed summary of which parts are taken from where.
However, some of the paper appears to be plagiarized from the student's own earlier assignments, in a different course. It's fairly obvious that this is the case because they first plagiarized the assignment description to summarize the problem they wanted to study, and then provide an answer to said problem, including answering discussion questions that are on the assignment, but somewhat unrelated to their main topic.
I know the professor who taught the earlier course well. Should I contact him directly? Should I suggest to my current instructor that the earlier professor be notified as well? Which course of action is more appropriate?

@Chris These are Master's students, but they are in a PhD level course. For instance, the project guidelines suggest that an "outstanding" project would be publishable at a top conference.

If you've spotted plagiarism, you have a duty to report it to a responsible authority. Just because the student is a fellow graduate student in your department does not absolve you of the duty. However, the politics of the situation can make things much more complicated, because it may lead to intra-departmental conflict, which is most certainly not a good thing.
I would believe the correct initial approach is to notify the professor of the current course of the current and past plagiarism. If you feel that no appropriate action has been taken, then you can consider notifying the instructor of the past course; however, the actions that can probably be taken are somewhat more limited than for a class where the final grades have not yet been assigned or have only recently posted.
How far you want to pursue this matter, on the other hand, depends on how serious you believe the transgression is. If the plagiarism is serious enough that it calls into doubt the student's ability to be an independent researcher, then further escalation—perhaps (in order of approach) to the graduate "officer" for the department, the chair of the department, or the dean for graduate students—may be necessary, if your initial efforts don't lead anywhere. This is, admittedly, a rather severe course of action, and one which may cause problems for you later down the road. So I would also recommend talking to your advisor as well, and solicit feedback as to what are the consequences of pursuing this.

The other answers make it sound like it is your bounden duty to hound the plagiarist, yea, even unto the ends of the earth.  My feeling is different in this case.
As I understand your question, the project was assigned for a course, and you are assisting the instructor of that course (call him or her Prof. Smith) by reading and evaluating the papers, in a role similar to that of a teaching assistant.  You should certainly report your findings to Prof. Smith, and be willing to answer any further questions they  may have, but your responsibility ends there.  It is up to Smith to decide how to handle the matter and whether to pursue further sanctions, consistent with the institution's policies.
Regarding the student's self-plagiarism of past assignments (say, from Prof. Jones's course), again, report your findings to Smith.  If appropriate, Smith can discuss it with Jones directly.  It's not clear that the student has committed misconduct with respect to Jones's course, only Smith's.

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What are some uses for clickers/pollers?
I've seen clickers/pollers/etc. used in classrooms for many things, such as evaluation and assessment and agile/contingent teaching.
What other uses are there for clickers in the classroom?
To clarify: I'm looking for a list of constructive uses for classroom teaching.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clicker_training Teaching the lecturer to clean the board after finishing by positive reinforcement? But I guess you meant a different type of use. ;-)

Possible uses
Assessment

How many of my students already know what I'm about to teach? (If most do, perhaps I can briefly summarize it.)
Did my students understand what I just taught? (If not, perhaps I should review it.)

Peer instruction

If a certain percentage of students answer incorrectly, students turn to their neighbor and discuss their answer for a minute or two (e.g. Mazur, 1996).

Anonymized responses

How many students have experienced ______?

Self-Evaluation

Teacher asks numerous questions to show students what they don't know. Students are expected to review on their own.

Formal evaluation (quizzes and exams)

Typically multiple-choice, sometimes true/false questions, though advanced clickers allow for other question types.

Student attendance
Student "participation points"

(Either for an attempt or for correct answer)

Scheduling

What date works best for the field trip?
When should we hold a review session?

More resources
Here's a good site with some discussion about clickers: http://www.nea.org/home/34690.htm

I will describe how I have seen the clicker used in large lecture undergraduate physics classes.  Four or five years ago I visited mechanics classes with my son, who was deciding what universities he wanted to apply to.
In all of these classes, I observed the clicker being used as a way to substantiate that students were present and paying enough attention to respond to the clicker questions when they came up.  Each clicker was registered to a specific student ID.  There was no small group discussion.
In some classes, the professor would display the bar graph of responses to the clicker question.
I sat in the back.  Many students were shoe shopping (or the equivalent) on their laptops, doing homework, etc.  There would be a visible, audible shift when the clicker question came up.


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How to decide whether to write a "methods paper" or a "results paper"?
I'm a grad student in planetary science, and I'm writing my first academic paper. This will be the first paper from my numerical model.
My results are timely: recent rumors in my community indicate that my model's predictions may be on the right track.
Papers in my field often fall in one of (at least) two categories:

"Methods Papers": These papers aim to completely describe the research methods, equations, data sources, and results in great, reproducible detail. Consequentially, they tend to be long, and results can be buried in the details.

In the context of numerical modelling, such papers might derive the important equations used. They might also describe the details of their numerical implementation, including the governing equation(s), boundary conditions, and so on.

"Results Papers": These papers aim to be concise and to the point, which is to highlight the results of their research. Sometimes, such papers are rushed in order to present timely results before competing groups do. The methodology is kept to a minimum so that the results take center-stage.

In the context of numerical modelling, such papers might cite the method/equations/data/etc. from another paper, perhaps with certain modifications, rather than writing them out explicitly. Only the most important equations would be given.

How should I decide which approach I should take? What factors should I consider?
I see this as really asking how to balance the following factors:

Thoroughness — ensuring exact repeatability
Conciseness — so that the reader doesn't have to read a bohemoth, and/or doesn't accidentally skim over the important parts
Highlighting results — emphasizing the model's predictions/implications
Timeliness — getting it published soon

I feel like I can emphasize one, pick two others, and let the remaining factor fall by the wayside. (Did I miss any other factors?)

I should add that I don't think that "Methods Papers" and "Results Papers" are necessarily mutually exclusive.

Part of the answer to your question (possibly all of the answer), depends upon what direction you and your advisor want to take your thesis. Furthermore, this answer would be highly specific to you.

@RichardErickson: My solution is absolutely specific to me and my situation. It's probably not worth anyone else's time. That's why I'm asking how to decide — what factors should be considered —rather than asking "What should I decide for my situation?" This question should have an answer that is useful to the broader community.

@jvriesem That's an interesting way to approach it to make it more broad, though that 'how' will still depend a lot on individual factors. However, note that the title of your actual post is "Should X or Y".

If your claim is big, and depends on a new method, and you have enough time, writing a methods paper first will reduce the ability of reviewers to shoot down your claim in the research paper. If you heard rumors and someone else is also working on the same topic, you ars likely late and want to submit to the same journal as them (and openly talk to them - as it is nice and as they will likely be ahead of you).

Also, gotta love when people read a title and mark it as opinion-based without reading the question. I updated the question title to not mislead anyone else.

Why not both?
I'm not in your field (and methods versus results papers in my field break on different lines than the ones you describe), but in my field the methods papers can be among the most influential and cited works, but iff they are sufficiently unique and sufficiently generalizable.
If you have a method that fits those categories, and also have data that speaks to a particular result, and there is a tendency to split them in your field, there is nothing wrong with making it into two unique papers.
As an additional caveat: as a student, you should have an academic advisor who is well-positioned to give you advice on things like this. Please consult them before taking too much advice from the Academia.SE folk. We try our best, but we are not your advisor.

My dual advisors weren't sure which approach to take, so I'm just getting started and we'll figure that out later. Of course I'll ultimately rely on their advice, but I saw an opportunity to ask a question here that may be useful to others. As the saying goes, "Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed" (Proverbs 15:22, The NIV Bible).

@jvriesem Good on you - that's the right approach to take, for sure. You might be surprised how many questions we get where the student asker seems to not have considered asking their advisor first, for reasons I don't quite understand. Fear maybe?

I don't think my method would be generalizable. It involves solving a 2D PDE using a finite-difference approach with specific boundary conditions. I imagine the high-level science aspects would be useful to others, while the details of the numerics would be far less useful.

Ok, that suggests to me that the methodology is a lower priority for publication then (if it fit those other categories, a new methodology could jump start a whole career). If your field uses the arXiv maybe it would make sense to put a detailed methodology there, while preparing and publishing a more concise results paper? The methodology could always go to a low-impact journal. I really can't speak more than that to norms in your field though. In biology, all papers contain a fairly detailed methods, and often publish supplementary material when necessary to go into methods in depth.


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Can/should one put a copyright notice on one's CV or resume? Why/why not?
I have not yet seen anyone in academia put a copyright notice on their CV or resume. Why is this?
One might expect that even if the content is implicitly copyrighted, the layout/format/style of the document -- perhaps more so for a graphic designer -- is part of one's intellectual property.

What would be the point?

Who would want to copy your CV that you are worried about?

I'm less concerned about people copying my CV than about best practices. I can't imagine anyone would want to copy the content of somebody else's CV (short of nefarious motives), but perhaps one might want to protect the design of the manuscript. (I'm more curious than wanting to add it to my own CV.)

It will look like you're marking territory. Not a great quality people are looking for in colleagues.

Since your CV should be a collection of facts it cannot, as I understand it, be copyrighted. I wonder, though, how much embellishment of one's career is necessary to make it a creative work?

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not about academia.

A copyright notice is just that: a notice. Your CV is copyrighted (for what it's worth) with or without the notice.

are you applying for a position as a copyright attorney?

@DmitrySavostyanov: Stuff like this varies by country, field, industry, career stage and so on. By asking it here, I'm implicitly asking about this question in the context of academia, which is on topic, per https://academia.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic. I'll clarify this in my question, too.

Vote to close as off-topic, but it's an interesting question. I have heard of people ripping off other people's interesting CV designs, especially in design fields. But I've never heard of anyone trying to pursue the intellectual property claim in court. So I guess I'm wondering: Are you prepared to sue the people who steal your design, and if not, why would you copyright it? It's hard enough enforcing intellectual property claims for artwork, which is much easier to prove.

To those voting to close it as off-topic, please describe why. A few of you have stated here that you voted to close it as off-topic, but that is not the purpose of a comment — your vote says as much. If you vote to close, it's far more helpful to the OP to explain why you voted that way. The only message I see is that it does not appear to be related to academia. I have clarified my question and explained in a comment why I believe it is....

While your CV can technically be regarded as a piece of intellectual property, the usual reason why people assert their copyright to a work by putting a copyright notice on it is to deter and prevent other people from copying or sharing that work (usually so they - the authors - can profit by selling the work).
With your CV, it is actually in your interest to have as many people as possible sharing it and passing it around, so the incentives work completely in the opposite direction from a more traditional type of intellectual product.
Now, if your CV is such an amazing piece of work that people will be willing to pay for a copy, we’d be having a different discussion...

You still want the right people sharing it.  The maxim that "all publicity is good publicity" is still false.

@BenVoigt indeed. I’d hate to think that at this very moment some unsavory people might be gathered together in a smoke-filled room somewhere, looking at my CV and scheming to make me a job offer I can’t refuse...

Not really. "Copyright does not cover ideas and information themselves". So, the best we might argue that copyright could apply to presentation of the information (layout and similar).

@Gnudiff I agree that most CV’s will have only little that is copyrightable according to the law. But that’s tangential to what I wrote. The main point is that whatever copyright protection you are technically entitled to, asserting it by including a copyright notice is simply counterproductive.

You don't always want max spread of your CV. Sometimes you want just the particular place you are applying to to see this version of your CV that you are sending to them. There could be tons of reasons for this. Maybe it is a very niche market / company / skill which would not really be relevant to send to all the other employers in the world. Also phishing and identity theft has been increasing much on the internet the latest years for example. CV can be a gold mine of information for such purposes.

@DanRomik I'm with Ben Voigt on this. A CV contains a lot of personal information and as such it is in a person's best interest that the spread be limited. More so if the CV is truthful and not flattering. That being said I agree that there's no real purpose of a copyright for a CV.

@Nox agreed. My answer is an approximation only and of course there are contexts in which what I said would not apply.

I'm confused by this answer (I get the feeling OP marked as correct because the whole thread here got derailed anyway). Why would it be in your best interests to have the style of one's CV copied indiscriminately, if one is interested in capitalising on that style one way or another (not necessarily financially ... possibly simply in terms of having a CV in a format that is innovative and stands out).

@TasosPapastylianou my answer is not “correct”, it is “accepted”, see here for what that means. As for the issue you bring up about possible copying of the CV design, at least in the context of academia I am confident that no one (except perhaps in an arts or design department) ever stops to worry about this. Moreover, slapping a copyright notice on your CV would most likely cause harm to people’s perception of what kind of a person you are that would outweigh the supposed benefit you describe, even if such a benefit were to exist.

My point is, I'm not bringing a new point up, this was the exact question being asked (which is why I'm surprised at the 'acceptance' and guessing it has more to do with closure than utility). Furthermore, it sounds like there's a fallacious probabilistic argument somewhere in that logic ... yes probably no one cares ... except of course for the person who asked this very question; they probably care with a probability close to 1. So, given they've proven that, unlike 'most' people they care, offering advice that applies to 'most' people who don't care doesn't sound particularly useful to me.

@TasosPapastylianou well, I don’t know what to say. It seems like you’ve decided you don’t like my answer, so I encourage you to downvote it. But, probabilistic argument or not, I tried to write the most helpful answer (to OP, and to the community) that I could, and by all appearances I succeeded on both counts, so your theoretical argument (which I admit is pretty clever) that explains why my answer shouldn’t actually be as well-received as it has been falls a bit flat IMO. Anyway, thanks for your feedback.

Sorry, didn't specifically mean to come across as hostile. It was more of an 'I find it perplexing' angle that everybody seems to be answering the wrong question here, when imo it is worded relatively straightforwardly; the person is not worried about the CV's content, but the stylistic elements of its construction. I was simply hoping you'd have a view on this point, given you've already generated discussion (or explain why I'm wrong about it being the wrong question). I confess I'm also interested in OPs question (and rather disappointed the answers don't address this core issue).

In the US, copyright notices have not been required for decades.  So there is no benefit.
It isn't done and will be perceived as strange.  Since the purpose of your resume is to help you, don't do things like this.

It's correct that copyright notices aren't required, but that doesn't mean there's no benefit to them. They can help discourage innocent infringement ("I didn't realise anybody would care if I copied this"), and they make it much harder for an infringer to claim that as a defence - although the latter is only really important if the owner has registered copyright, since US law severely limits the action you can take without registration.

I'm having problems getting my head around the notion of "innocent copyright infringement of a CV" ;)

@alephzero It's certainly not common, but I could see it happening if someone thinks "my friend's resume is great, let me post it on Facebook/Instagram/etc. so all my other friends see what a good resume looks like"

@alephzero OP was talking about graphical elements. I can easily imagine somebody believing that it was okay to copy those while changing the text. (Whether they actually are subject to copyright is another question; I imagine if they were sufficiently elaborate, yes, but that seems like a bad idea for an academic CV.)

@DavidZ and would a copyright notice stop them? If anybody has the means to post your CV without your permission then either they know better than to do it or they aren't bothered by laws or even basic decency. Whatever the case, the copyright notice is irrelevant.

@VLAZ it is not a case of who posts it online, but of who 'reproduces' the work, with the intent of 'benefit' (whether financial or otherwise, i.e. in this case increasing their odds of being hired, by using ideas and material in ways that their original author did not consent to and would have preferred to license the terms of specific use). I agree it's hard to see this as too relevant to academia rather than, say, startups or design ... but still, I find the question to be very reasonable and interesting. I'm a bit disappointed people seem to be side-stepping the actual question.

@GeoffreyBrent this is the only comment addressing the actual question here imo. I suppose I could imagine a plausible scenario in an academic context if I tried. E.g., if someone is applying to an academic position where visual presentation of data is important (e.g. high focus on 'communication of science', or 'data visualisation'), then if I had come up with a CV designed in a way that communicates things surprisingly effectively, I'd hate to see that format promoted indiscriminately or wrongly. I might want to stipulate a licence that acknowledges me while preventing inappropriate use.

Copyright generally protects the content/text/copy and not the layout. If you believe your layout is so novel, you could try patenting it, but I doubt that will be successful (and you probably should not be using something so novel for a CV unless you are a graphic designer).
In response to comments, according to this document from the US Copyright Office the layout of a document is not copyrightable.

As a general rule, the Office will not accept a claim to copyright in “format” or “layout.” The general layout or format of a book, page, book cover, slide presentation, web page, poster, or form is uncopyrightable because it is a template for expression.

You might try and claim the CV layout is like a blank form, but those are also not copyrightable

Blank forms that are designed for recording information and do not themselves convey information are uncopyrightable.

Even the content of the CV is probably not copyrightable

To be copyrightable, a work must qualify as an original work of authorship, meaning that it must have been created independently and contain a sufficient amount of creativity.

since a CV is generally just a list of facts and the text is not really creative.
The combination of the text and layout might satisfy the requirement for copyright and potentially entitle you to damages if someone copied your CV, but it would not provide protection from someone using your CV as a template and replacing your accomplishments with theirs and likely would not protect you from them taking your accomplishments and reformatting them.
As for weather a patent would be appropriate, I think it would fall under a design patent

A design patent protects only the appearance of the article and not structural or utilitarian features.

where the layout is the design and the article is the content of the CV. As I said above, this is probably a huge stretch.

The layout and design is absolutely (potentially) subject to copyright as an artistic work in all Berne Convention signatories. Being in a Berne country also makes the copyright notice unnecessary, of course. You don't need a patent.

This is completely wrong.  Copyright absolutely protects the layout (in fact it may well not protect the content because that should just be a collection of facts).  Copyright protecting the layout is why copies of the Canterbury Tales are still copyrightable.  Patents protect inventions, not layouts.  You cannot obtain a patent for a CV.

@MartinBonner Can you provide a reference to your claim? I just edited the answer with a link to the US copyright office that says layout is not copyrightable. As for if a CV could qualify as a design patent, I doubt it, but at least such a concept is not expressly forbidden.

@MichaelHomer I just searched your link and did not find layout or design in the document. Can you provide a better reference to layouts being copyrightable? I just edited the answer with a link that says layout is not copyrightable.

@DavidRicherby see my edit. Can you expand on what is wrong?

From your linked document: " Copyright protection may be available for the
selection, coordination, or arrangement of the specific content that is selected and arranged in a sufficiently creative manner. The claim, however, would be limited to the selection and arrangement of that specific content, not to the selection and arrangement of any content in that particular manner. " (Granted my statement was overstrong.  It should have been "Copyright absolutely can protect..."

Design patent: "applied to an article of manufacture".  An electronic document is not an article of manufacture.

@MartinBonner yes, but that explicitly allows me to use your copyrighted layout as long as I put my content in.

Berne convention: 'The expression “literary and artistic works” shall include every production in the literary, scientific and artistic domain'.  Hence a sufficiently artistic or literary CV is protected.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

@MartinBonner So the design is protected if and only if anyone actually prints it?

It looks like this may have been resolved in the chat, but: this is premised on an implausibly narrow interpretation of “layout” in the context of the question. The entire document is an artistic work containing many components, including literature, drawing, typesetting, etc, all of which are independently and together copyright works the moment they’re created. It’s possible any or all of them they may be too trivial, and arguable that they should be for a CV, but a complete well-designed document is like a painting.

@MichaelHomer I was thinking that the OP wanted to copyright the layout so that they could sell the template, that seemed much more reasonable than trying to sell their actual CV.

@StrongBad my 2¢: copyright isn't necessarily about 'selling' per se. It's typically more about having control over intended use. Opensource code is a typical example: the copyright licence exists predominantly to prevent 'unethical' uses. It is conceivable that someone might want to copyright their CV layout simply to ensure attribution, or additionally restrict its use in inappropriate contexts that could make such an attribution backfire. (e.g. same reason apple prohibits MacOS use on non-mac PCs: they want to be in full control of the user experience, since their reputation is at stake)

One might expect that even if the content is implicitly copyrighted,

Content of a CV should generally contain information and information is not subject to copyright.  It will probably be subject to some information privacy law though, depending on your location.

the layout/format/style of the document -- perhaps more so for a graphic designer -- is part of one's intellectual property.

Yes, it is possible for the layout or style of CV to be intellectual property, however, it is unlikely indeed, unless you are a kind of graphic designer or similar who has meticulously created a sufficiently originally looking CV unlike any other.
Otherwise, since CVs are generally comparatively rigid in structure, format and purpose, unless you are in the creative field, you might risk either (a) creating a CV that looks similar enough to one of the billions of previous ones to be considered plagiarism for the purposes of copyright, or (b) creating a CV whose outlook is unique, has a sufficient degree of originality, but fails to produce any interest in the potential reviewer, who, perhaps, must orient himself quickly among dozens of different CVs every day.
Plus, even in that case, as others said, you don't need an explicit copyright notice, since the things that are copyright-able will be considered such.
On the social side, if I, as a prospective employer, saw a trivially looking CV with a copyright notice, I would consider the author to be ostentatious and less likely of interest for employment (He wants to copyright his CV? What else he might have misconceptions about?).

I put a copyright notice on the version of my CV that I posted on my website. I did this because others periodically would upload my CV to file sharing websites. (I assume this was because the websites required you to upload files. Not sure why my CV was picked for this.) I don't want that to happen because my CV has changed significantly over the course of grad school. Old CVs don't represent me well.
Since doing this I have not noticed any file sharing websites with copies of my CV, though I don't know if that has anything to do with the copyright notice.
For what it's worth, I also added the date of the last change and a URL to download the most recent version at the bottom. Those would probably do more to stop people from thinking my old CV is current than anything else.

I seriously doubt people who upload to file sharing websites care about a copyright symbol ;)

Can you? Absolutely.
Must you include a notice in order to maintain a copyright? No, at least not under most current copyright regimes. For example, the U.S. did away with this requirement effective March 1, 1989. Most other countries had removed it long before. So long as your CV meets the threshhold of originality, which is generally quite low, it will be protected.
Should you? In the U.S., including a notice still conveys some "benefits." Generally speaking they are not actually beneficial to a person who holds copyright in a CV, because they are associated with bringing an infringement suit. It seems unlikely to me that you would want to bring an infringement suit based on someone's use of your CV. You can read about the benefits in the U.S. Copyright Office's Circular 3.
You say you haven't seen copyright notices on CVs in the past. (Neither have I.) I'd urge you to defer to this custom. Why give people reviewing your CV a distraction? Plus, presumably you want your CV to look like the CVs of people who have been successful in obtaining the sort of job you want.
While we're at it, let's address what the copyright protection in your CV, which is automatic and independent of the copyright notice, actually covers. It does not prevent others from using unoriginal elements of your CV that you did not create. For instance, typesetting the headings in bold would not be original, and thus your right to your CV would not entitle you to prevent me from bolding the headings on my CV. You might also follow quite a few CV conventions in preparing your CV (e.g., listing items in chronological order). Your copyright will not give you a property right in those conventions. You also list facts on your CV, such as the year you got a particular degree. Others can use that fact without permission, as copyright does not protect facts. Since CVs are dictated by convention and consist largely of facts, the right of the copyright holder is essentially narrower -- it covers only very close reproduction of the CV. In the United States this is sometimes called "thin" copyright.
Does that mean others cannot copy, distribute, or display your CV? Not entirely. When you share a CV with someone, especially via a job application, you are giving them an implied license to use it for the sorts of things you both anticipate they will use it for (e.g., distributing copies to members of a search committee). In addition, anyone can use your CV under the user's rights recognized in their jurisdiction (e.g., fair use in U.S. law).

Putting copyright notices on pages you write is alien to how people think, and they typically never consider the possibility they might need to/want to do that.
After all, copyrights (and copyright notices) are strange artifacts of authoritarianism in human society, dating back to how the British crown decided to artificially prop up publisher monopolies centuries ago.

The British Crown has nothing whatsoever to do with copyright in most parts of the world.

@DavidRicherby: The statute of Anne is the first example of a law preventing people from copying text. It definitely served to legitimize this unconscionable practice in other countries - not to mention having a direct effect on British colonies such as the to-be-USA and others.

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text:
What should I consider when deciding whether to delay an exam?
I believe I may have scheduled an exam too early, and I am considering delaying it by a day or two. The material that I would cover fits in fairly well with the earlier material, and not as well with the later material. I can cover the material as is, but barely so, and the students would not have time to digest it or gain experience via a homework set. I have already put the approximate dates of our four exams in the “tentative” course schedule.
What factors should I consider when making this decision, and how should I weigh these factors?
Here are some factors I've thought of:

Whether or not I have time to cover the material in class
How much advance notice is given (Changing the date the day before is probably too late, right?)
Whether or not the students would like the exam to be delayed (I'm guessing they will!)
Department or institutional policies
Whether or not student accommodation services (e.g. make-ups, proctors, alternative formats, etc.) need to be scheduled in advance

Update
I think there are a few things that are clear (some from the comments—thanks!):

It matters whether or not any posted exam dates are described as tentative or firm. Tentative dates are estimates and students should understand that they are subject to change, whereas students may plan around firm dates.
Exams should not be moved to a significantly earlier date. This is not fair to students.
Students should not be tested on material they haven't had a chance to engage with (in and/or out of the classroom) or ask questions about.
Special understanding and grace should be extended to students who miss an exam date due to a scheduled change (especially for short-notice changes). Of course, students who miss an exam for a school-approved reason (e.g. sports/research/bereavement travel) usually have the right to make it up anyway.
If the instructor polls the students offering to make a change to the exam content and/or date, and they unanimously support the proposed change, then there's no reason not to do so.

Epilogue
I polled the students before asking this question. Almost 60% of students preferred moving the exam date back one day to cover the extra material, and about 35% preferred keeping the exam on the same day but having it cover less material. In spite of their preference to delay the exam, and in spite of the dropped material fitting better with the this exam than with the next exam, I decided to move 25% of the content of this exam to the next exam. Thanks to all for the discussion!

When I was an undergrad I had a lecturer who moved our exam earlier by about a week because of a change in her schedule and only announced it three days before. It was a total disaster, everyone did terribly including myself [note now, years later, I'm pretty highly esteemed in this field] because none of us had time to study, and she ended up having to let everyone sit another version of the exam if we were unhappy with our marks. Don't change exam dates.

@GrotesqueSI I see why you'd think not to move exam dates up, but it seems that pushing them back doesn't suffer from the problem you mention

@GrotesqueSI Indeed, changing an exam date to be earlier is borderline unreasonable - as is the case with making deadlines earlier for assignments, for instance. Extending deadlines (and, similarly, delaying an exam) is not nearly as big a problem.

Your syllabus is a contract with your students, changing the exam scope, deleting a few questions, or moving them to the next exam is the standard way to handle this.

Just to make sure: do you have a syllabus? (In my country, most profs don't.)

Changing them later can be a problem if people planned trips, or it causes conflicts due to the unscheduled change.

Exam dates announced at the beginning of the semester should only be changed with a highly compelling reason. The syllabus of a course is a contract with the students. Even if 90% of your students prefer the delay, if one of your students has to cancel an airplane ticket for a conference visit or miss a wedding, a balance has not been struck.
If I were a student in which an instructor tried to change an exam date as late as "the day before", I would certainly lodge formal complaints with the department and the institution. Please do not do this.
In your initial post, you'd not given any reason to believe that you couldn't simply move a bit of material to the next exam. That is by far the better option.
If for some reason delaying the exam is truly unavoidable, you should feel obligated to offer make-up exam times for students who may be unable to attend.

+1 for You haven't given any reason to believe that you can't simply move a bit of material to the next exam This was my first thought, and something I've done many times, as needed or as I thought appropriate.

In fact, even if it is truly impossible to give a meaningful exam on the scheduled date, I still wouldn't reschedule it - I would cancel it altogether and reweight the remaining exams.

I wouldn't cancel it all together as that throws of the weighting of all the other assignments. If this exam is "easy" and "light", so be it. It's a lesson to the instructor for future lecture organisation.

Or you can make certain topics self study, or plan more lectures, or make changes to the exam, the scoring of the exam... Changing the dates is the only no-no, agreed.

@GrotesqueSI A lighter exam is a good alternative to cancelling outright, but I'd just make sure students are aware that future exams will be heavier. Study time is limited, so usually students will devote more time studying for the exams they expect to be "heavier" (at least in my experience). Since this judgement is normally made in part by just how heavy the exams earlier in the class were, you just want to make sure you set expectations accordingly.

@gnulynnux: Yes, but if it is really not possible to give a meaningful exam, then something has to give, and I think cancelling the exam and reweighting the others is the most reasonable approach.  I would say it's an implied term of the contract that the professor can reasonably modify it if circumstances require (and in fact, my syllabi say this explicitly).

I had a physics course that routinely had material on tests that had yet been covered in the course, seemingly the prof expected us to work ahead. Almost everyone did poorly in this class, with around 2/3rd of each class of 300+ students failing each semester. This is not how to run a classroom. Reading this good Answer makes me think they just had a set test and refused to move questions to relevant testing times. This class seriously messed up my GPA and my ability to focus on other classes, and I hope the OP takes the above advice seriously.

I disagree with those who say that changing dates is an absolute no-no, provided the exam dates are not "firm" dates,, and especially if they are described as tentative/estimated dates. I'd even say that, given plenty of advance notice (e.g. a month or two), the exam date could be moved up a day or two. Thanks for pointing out that I hadn't given reason to move content to the next exam, too. In response, I added reasons to my question soon after you posted this answer.

@jvriesem Well, I would also say that firm exam dates should be provided at the beginning of the semester. Students have the right to know what they need to plan around.

Yes, consider all of those things. But note that you will disrupt some of the students while advantaging others. The ones most likely to be disrupted are the best students with a regular schedule.
But another alternative is to change the exam so that you don't "cover" as much material and let that flow into the next exam. To me, this is a far better practice.
There is a problem with learning that unless we use certain practices to firm up our understanding (repetition and feedback, which I write about here quite often) then we are most likely to recall the thing we looked at last and it can interfere with recall of things learned earlier.
Actually, I think that a good practice is to avoid including material from the just previous lecture on any exam. Or at least, avoid covering it in such a way that requires deep understanding.

"...then we are most likely to recall the thing we looked at last..." wow I am having exactly this problem but I never knew how to express it so explicitly. Would you have any advice about the following situation? I am in a Numerical Linear Algebra class, and since the beginning of the semester we have been doing a LOT of small theorems: the columns of this span that, unitary matrices have such and such property, hermitian matrices have such and such property, etc. Like you say, I am having a lot of trouble remembering all of these. (cont.)

But I do not know how/what to practice and how to get feedback. I have proved most of these things on my own twice or thrice, and I do n but I still don't remember them and I don't know what other type of practice to do.

Modifying the content of the exam is much more likely to be acceptable to those who have to deal with the bigger picture of scheduling as well. Changing exam (and coursework - students' workloads must be fair) dates is regarded as a last resort.

From a student's perspective, I would expect the following three things if you were trying to reschedule an exam:

At least an attempt to bring it up with the class and poll, talk about it. Who knows, maybe your new date conflicts with another class everyone is taking and they'd rather not move it.
At least a week's notice, probably more.
Finally, flexibility for anyone who can't take the new date. People set work schedules, travel, etc. If you change an exam, I would really expect you to let me take it at another time. On the other hand, if you've made it clear you expect people in class every day,  you might not need to worry about this, but some schools allow professors to schedule exams outside of class time (which seems super lame to me, but whatever), and I don't know what yours does.

Now of course, on your end, how many reschedules you want to deal with is a factor in deciding if you want to reschedule.

Keep in mind that these effects snowball through the semester once you start delaying material and dates. If you're behind by one or two days and slip the exam date, then I guess you'll be two days behind starting the next block, and if you continue at the same pace, four days behind for the next exam?
It is not uncommon for some instructors to get so far behind that they need to cover a chapter of content per day in the last week, for example. (I've had incoming students to my classes voice worries about exactly this after bad experiences in other prior courses, say.) I've even seen a colleague who got so far behind that he wound up scheduling makeup lectures after the official end of class meetings, and a midterm exam after the final exam.
Don't go down that path. Zeitplan über alles.

Stick with the planned dates.  This is not a math or engineering system that you can tweak to the utmost.  You are dealing with human beings.  You want people moving along a path in an expected manner.
It's much easier for you to excise some material than to change the dates.  You should be able to write exams to cover arbitrary dates (e.g. every 4 weeks of the semester).

Could the downvoter explain?

For a lot of courses (mine included), there are natural "breaks" in course content. Sure, an exam could be written to cover specific lectures, but it often makes more sense for an exam to cover a cohesive unit of the course content. (For example, I wouldn't want to give a literature exam on Book 1, Book 2, and half of Book 3, then wait till the next exam to do the second half of Book 3, Book 4 and Book 5.)

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text:
Asked about bibliographic search skills for application
I’m applying for a postdoctoral role in the UK, and I am asked to have ’bibliographic search skills’. I’m sort of at a loss as to what that means, specifically – does anyone know? I’m assuming it doesn’t just mean ‘can read a bibliography’. I have a Ph.D., so I’m sort of embarrassed not to know what this means, but there you go.

"Is able to use Google Scholar. (check)"

Suspect it just means that you can do a literature review. Not sure though.

I share the other commentors’ assumptions and would like to add that it might be a relic from pre-Internet times when searching literature was a relevant and non-trivial skill.

Well, even back then, citations had journal, publication date, and so on. Tracking it down would probably have been harder since you needed a hard copy, but carrier pigeons were around back then, no?!

@Compass That is not what a bibliography search is about. It is about finding the relevant literature without starting with a specific reference (in order to for example determine if something has already been done before).

I would assume 'bibliographic search skills' means the ability to find appropriate literature 'from scratch' as @Tobias suggests. If that's the case, can I recommend a book that helped me with my literature searching, and can be read easily within a day:
Booth A, Papaioannou D & Sutton A (2012) Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review. Sage Publications Limited.

It's written from a health science perspective, but I found it useful in the social science to identify search terms, databases, perform searches, and filter results.

Adding to @Phil's answer, and per my "literature search" PhD course, that translates into knowing that:

Not everything is in Google.
Not everything academic is in Google Scholar (I have encountered cases!).
GScholar has some "crap" in it, ie., the filters are automatic and the database wide, so you get things that are not peer reviewed.
You can use other databases (pubmed, web of science, scopus, EDS... whatever applies to your field and your university has paid for).


text:
Didn't pay attention to rules and created an illegal note card for exam?
For final exam in my university chemistry class, a note sheet, 8 by 11, was allowed. You could put anything on the sheet, however it was to remain 1-sided. Of all things, I forgot about the last rule, and created a 2 sided note sheet for the exam. Well, now that the grades are out, my professor emailed me saying that a third of my points were deducted because of my note card. He was really being generous, because the rules say that I should actually get a score of 0.
Well, I still passed the class, but will this incident be put on my academic profile for applying to the engineering department? I mean, I'm still mad at myself for this, but do I have to and how would I explain it to the school if it's necessary?

It's so nice to see someone posting a question like this with such a good attitude :)

If anyone asks, and I doubt they will, just tell them you're a smart guy who manages to do really dumb things now and then.  As an aside, I'm a bit surprised the prof didn't just take away your cheatsheet prior to the  exam.  This sort of rule is (I'm being slightly humorous) here blatantly discriminatory against those of us with crappy handwriting who can't write small :-)

Yeah I think because it's a class of 600+, (it's an entire lecture section), they skip checking the note sheets. But I am pretty terrified now. I hope my professor doesn't think I was actually trying to cheat. Although by the looks of it, I technically did cheat. He said that because I did well above average on all my other stuff in the class (midterms, HW, etc), a 0% on this final would mean I just barely pass the class, he decided a 30% point deduction would be appropriate....

@user3211857: It would seem from your question that everybody had to submit their note sheets along with their exam answers. Given that, I think it would be silly of your professor to assume that you really meant to try to cheat, when you knew the evidence would be staring him right in the fact just hours afterwards. His generous actions towards you indeed suggest that he understands.

"how would I explain it to the school if it's necessary" Like you did here? It's trite, but one quality is how people manage to deal with mistakes. You made a mistake, admitted it, dealt with it, and learned from it. And despite the reduction you still managed to pass.

Thanks all. I just admitted my mistake and emailed my professor and that settled it all. I still can't believe I did that though.

Is this rule legal?   After all it seems to be saying that someone with better eye sight can take in more notes!

@Ian I have to agree that it seems a stupid rule. People could abuse it in so many different ways: using shorthand, using a really tiny computer font, layering several fonts over top of each other to maximise space. Then of course people with large handwriting without access to a computer would effectively be suffering because of these things. In general, it's just effectively eliminating the kind of fairness an exam situation is supposed to enforce, because even if nobody tried to cheat everyone starts off in a state of inequality.

Summarization is a useful learning activity.

@AkkaDemic Yes, but it's not what you're being tested on in an exam; the ability to summarise has no baring on your knowledge in an unrelated field.

@Pharap I know it's not what you're being tested on. But if the rules of the exam (single-sheet of notes) motivate students to do this useful learning activity (summarization), that is a good thing.

Often a professor is no more eager than you to invoke formal disciplinary mechanisms, as they are often complex and time-consuming.  From what you describe, it sounds like you've been given your punishment and find it fair.  If the professor was interested in taking it further, you would likely (but not necessarily) have been informed in the same email.
To find out, you can simply email the professor back.  Say pretty much what you said here: you made a mistake, you find the punishment fair and even generous, and you just want to check whether the matter is now settled, or if you need to anticipate further disciplinary action.
If the professor feels that the matter is settled, and that the grade reduction is all the consequence that you need to face, then you can safely put it behind you; if not, it may become part of your record and may require explanation, depending on how things proceed.

Good advice. In addition, depending on the examination regulation, it might be an idea to ask if it is allowed to re-take the exam while "losing" the pass grade. Sometimes this is possible.

This doesn't seem to answer the question. The question is not whether the asker is likely to receive further punishment but whether they should mention or explain the incident in what I assume to be their application for a place in grad school.

@DavidRicherby Sorry, I thought the implication was clear: if the professor considers the matter settled, it's over and won't show up on any records; if not, it depends what happens next.  I have added clarification to that end.

OK. But, in that case, wouldn't it be better advice to just mail the professor and ask directly if this will go on the student's record and if it needs to be declared or explained in a grad school app.? As it is, you're advising to mail the professor question X and try to deduce the answer to question Y from the answer to X.

@DavidRicherby I think it's a much better idea to at least begin by addressing the cheating issue directly.  If a student begins a discussion about cheating by asking about whether it will have consequences for their future,  it can come off as insincere and self-serving, as in this question

Hmm, so I already emailed my professor apologizing and promising that this won't happen in the future. I also stated that I understand my consequences of my actions and take full responsibility. But he hasn't replied back yet. Would it be a good idea now to follow up with another email asking if there is anything else I need to do like suggested? I mean, why the way the professor worded it in the initial email, he already took off the necessary points, and I think I can't really do anything now, because it seems like it's settled.

@user3211857 I personally would probably just not worry about it at this point: in a comment above, you write that he decreased his penalty based on your prior performance in the class and wanting to let you keep an OK grade.  Those are not the actions of somebody interested in pursuing a formal complaint that would show up on your record---after all, he could have given you the zero and had the bad grade show up on your record.  You can ask for reassurance if you want, but I personally would just let it go and move on.

I don't see how losing a third of the points is "fair".  It's arbitrary.

At the U.S. schools I have been at, a minor punishment for academic integrity such as this does not appear on your transcript and you are not obligated to mention it when you apply to other schools (unless they ask, which I don't expect that they will.) The same holds for most other "internal" disciplinary actions that the school takes.
This is particularly the case if the professor has not taken "formal" action. At many schools, there are two options for the professor. For minor penalties, the instructor can handle it personally with the student, as long as they can both come to an agreement. In this case, there is no permanent record of the penalty except with the professor.
For more serious penalties, or if the student and faculty don't agree, the instructor has to initiate a formal process. If the formal process results in a penalty, then additionally a disciplinary letter is put in your file (probably in the dean's office for your college). If there is another incident, the presence of the first letter will make the penalty worse. At my school, students are expelled after the third formal incident.
You can check with the professor, as jakebeal says, to find out whether a letter has been filed. As he says, you could tell the professor that you understand the penalty and accept it, and will not repeat it, but for your information you'd like to know if formal paperwork was filed. You could also ask this in person during office hours.

One of my professors once told me that I'd be surprised how many PhD's have been expelled from one university or another...it turns out that he was one of them.

This answer follows on your comment to jakebeal's excellent answer (which you might consider accepting). You have already emailed your professor and, as he has not replied, I'd take that as "nothing further needs to be discussed". Conclusion: no, do not contact him again about this matter.
Also, in your comment below the question, it appears that you professor already has a good opinion of you (you were above average on previous exams, etc) and therefore lightened the punishment. This is already a pretty strong indication that he does not intend to take things further.

Consider asking the Professor to retake the exam with next semester/next year's class, this time without a 2-sided note sheet. Explain that you made an honest mistake and were not trying to hide it etc. That way you're not asking for a "free pass" or anything.


text:
Research within organisations
I have just started working on a dissertation and I need to contact a number of organisations to get an idea of how they work.
What I am after is not sensitive in its nature. I just want to know what practices they apply to their tasks and whether they have developed anything  different that suits their needs or perhaps the tools they use.
However, I am being troubled by the following points:

How can I assure the organisations that the information I require is not sensitive or for commercial purposes? My interests are purely academic.
I am carrying out my research within an organisation. I am worried they might see me as competition. For the time being I have opted to not mentioning any organisation.

How can I go about assuring them that my interests are purely academic and convince them to reply back? What should I do?

this is a question about sociological research methods, not about academia.

It is still a question related to research methods within an academic context as far as I am aware.

Did you go through IRB? Did they have any suggestions?

When I have a question or request that is likely to be misunderstood, I start out with a phone call, to make that human connection.

@Dawn, the advice I got from 'Academics' was to not mention my being a part of an organisation up-front so as not to scare them off, but then inform them politely if I can get a conversation flowing

@aparente001 I should have thought of that from the beginning, its really what I should do. Unfortunately I cannot do that with every organisation since it would mean a number of overseas calls. But I could certainly call those which are based here!!

There are affordable ways of calling internationally.

"the advice I got from 'Academics' was to not mention my being a part of an organisation up-front so as not to scare them off, but then inform them politely if I can get a conversation flowing" - I don't understand.  Are you part of an organization?  If so, what type of organization?  Why might it be helpful not to mention this at the outset?

@aparente001 I am a research intern and I fear I might be seen as a 'competing' threat.

Well, thanks for explaining the subtext, but I still don't understand whether you are part of an organization, and what it might be.

Vote to close as "unclear what you're asking" because you first said "What I am after is not sensitive in its nature", Then you said "I just want to know what practices they apply to their tasks and whether they have developed anything different that suits their needs or perhaps the tools they use.". I think you need to talk to your advisor to confirm  what you want to know is not sensitive at all because those info are pretty sensitive to me.

@scaaahu Why should you vote to close something you did not understand? What I would like to know is not sensitive information. An example is, how does the team work together, do they make use of existing frameworks to get the job done, did they tweak it to their advantage? A sensitive question might be more information related to their strategy and their clients. Something I won't ask about.

In the US, if you are conducting a survey or certain type of interview, you need to have it approved (or declared exempt) by your campus IRB committee. This body will regulate what you need to disclose, and will also approve the wording of any cover letter.
In a written context, putting the cover letter on school letterhead should convey that the project is academic.
In an interview, you would likely state that you are a PhD student at UNIVERSITY and are working on a dissertation related to X to convey that your project is an academic one.

I just realized it is not clear from the question if this is a survey or an interview.

I was thinking more on the lines of an interview since I need to ask a number of open-ended questions

Okay, I think you should still work with IRB to make sure your project is complying with the rules and is exempt. Should probably be exempt if you are asking information on organizations and not information on individuals.


text:
Instead of an old work, can I cite a new work that shares an author and cites it?
In my research field (operations research), several works have been published in the last couple of years by different authors that cover most of the recent developments in the field.
I’m writing a review paper and even though I read and used a couple of papers dated as far back as the 90s (mainly for my introduction and review), I want all references to be from 2010 or later.
I would like to write something like:

Ref. 3 discussed branch & bound and dynamic programming approaches for KP, MKP and some of its variants.

Reference 3 is Kellerer, Pferschy, and Pisinger (2004).
Another paper, namely Puchinger, Raidl, and Pferschy (2010) shares one of its authors with Reference 3 and also cites it.
My question is: Instead of citing Reference 3 as it is, can I cite Puchinger, Raidl, and Pferschy (2010) because it is more recent?

I want all reference to be dated from 2010-2019 --- Just a passing thought, but wouldn't some readers suspect that you were not very thorough in your review if all your references were only from the past decade?

To follow-up on my comment, I spent a few seconds just now googling for a survey paper (googled the phrase "survey paper" along with a random math topic, "convex geometry") and I found this paper published in 1999, and I tried to imagine how thorough the coverage would be if all references before 1989 were omitted. (Not very thorough was my conclusion.) Incidentally, note that this survey paper is much narrower in scope than "operations research".

@DaveLRenfro, Thanks.. I had to edit my question to be more explanatory, i am not trying to omit the works done at the early stages of the research, I am only asking about the possibility of using the recent researches done to reference the old research by citing the new instead of the old provided( same field, same/different authors, old work is cited in new work). Thank you

Still, why "instead" when you can cite both? "This first appeared in [1]; see [2] for a modern exposition" is a standard way to proceed when you want to cite a newer source [2] along with an old one [1].

@darijgrinberg, understood.. but I want all the sources listed in my reference to be dated from 2010-later, so how do I go about this ?

Is the 9 key on your keyboard broken?

I assume that the specific information for which you cited Reference 3 is also covered in the newer paper that you want to cite instead. But you didn't actually say that. If the assumption is wrong, then of course you need to cite the old paper that actually contains the information in question. Even if my assumption is right, I see no good reason not to cite both papers.

I would recommend against this as it seems artificial. The year you give isn't some magic number and citing only recent work doesn't give you any advantage.
But there is a deeper reason in this case, I think. Just because a new paper cites an older one doesn't mean that the newer one advances the older one in every relevant direction. Another way to think of it is that the ideas in the new paper don't actually "contain" all of the ideas in the older one. Someone wanting a good overview of the field - the purpose of a review article - will probably need to go see what those additional ideas are, but if you don't point to them their only pointer is indirect through the paper you do cite. This makes the serious reader's job harder.
You seem to be giving an annotated bibliography, I see no reason to truncate it. The annotations, if well done, will help a reader decide whether to go to any given paper you include.

I suppose that one could write an 'update' review, covering just the last $n$ years worth of work, but that point should be made explicit as well as having citations of the last few major review papers in the field. Slightly different focus of the paper, and it would be written a bit differently.

Cite them both.  Covers various aspects.


text:
Is it a must to collect resources from previous students to be a successful student?
Last semester, I was doing well (A+) in three of the five courses I was taking, but had a problems with two others:

For one course, the professor supplied a long list of study materials of several thousand of pages. And, the lecture material was way too extensive for a four-month semester. I downloaded lecture materials from other universities to cut the load and still found it very extensive. Then, from the end of April, 2019, my brain was signalling an SOS. Finally, I failed in the theory part of this course, and as a result failed in the course.
For another course, I obtained A+ in labs, and projects. But, I found the time inadequate to prepare for the theory test.

These two courses increased my stress level, and that stress level caused an anxiety attack in the first week of May, 2019. As result I failed in four courses.
Later I found that successful students were actually massively cheating in those two courses.

For Course 1, they were actually not following materials supplied by the professor at all. they have developed a massive database of all old questions.
For Course 2, they uploaded all the assembly language programs to the server before the lab sessions. Also, they have developed a massive database of all old questions.

I have two questions regarding this:

Is my experience very common or normal?
Is it a must to collect old resources from previous students to be a successful student?

This really depends on your school. Often the answers are both yes (and why should this be cheating?). Most people here will howrver tell you that they always were great without looking at old questions.

Do you have a counselor or adviser at your school with whom you can speak?  Even with your explanations, those of us here on the internet won't know what is considered normal for your school.  However, I will say that, even for a grad program, having several thousand of pages of study materials seems to me like the professor doesn't know how to cut the required work down to manageable levels.  I'm not at all surprised that 'successful' students were the ones that skipped this pile of material in lieu of actual examples of work from previous classes.

@Van, Do you have a counselor or adviser at your school with whom you can speak? - Yes. But, talking to him was totally useless as I already failed in the semester, and now I know how things work in the school. ;-)

How many passed? How many failed? Any course will have some students who pass with top marks and others who fail, with a chunk in the middle passing. A course where everybody fails tends to have an issue, but you don't suggest that everyone failed. Perhaps you need to re-evaluate your study techniques and look at the time spent on each of those modules. Did you focus on the "easy" ones then play "catch-up" with the harder ones or did you spread your time evenly across all modules? While some modules can be passed with a "24 hour" cramming session, others cannot and they need constant input ove

It depends on the situation. Of course it shouldn't make a big difference, but sometimes it does. That's all anybody can really say here.

I find it bizarre that someone gets A+'s in some courses then fails others. If cheating is that bad there that a top student can't keep up with the cheaters then you should complain to the school because their degrees are worthless. (of course if you become aware of any cheating, massive or not, you ought to report it and complain).

No.  It is not normal for students to use a student-collected database of old questions.  I know this is done at some universities, but personally I have never seen one.
The proper thing is for faculty to supply sufficient quality and quantity of study material that students will not benefit from these databases of old questions.  Faculty also should not reuse test questions which might be in a student-collected database, but not in the study materials.
When faculty reuse tests and keep the content "secret," then student-collected databases create unfair advantages for certain student groups.  These groups often exclude minority students.  This is an unacceptable practice.

May be worth getting experience of universities that do have that type of practice...

@SolarMike I knew about it because colleagues who were education researchers at a certain engineering-oriented university told me about it.

@AnonymousPhysicist, which country was that university from?

I think you're confusing "normal" with "accepted".  In my experience, this practice is far more prevalent than most faculty want to believe, even when faculty supply enough good study material that it isn't (or shouldn't be) necessary.  I completely agree with you that sharing good study material is the proper thing for faculty to do, but not all faculty do the proper thing.

Can you explain why this is not normal?

@user111955 Most students study the way they are told to study, or do less than that, not more.

I don't quite understand. You mean the normal thing is just to use the materials mentioned in the lecture, not more?

In some areas it is not uncommon for students to have collected old assignments/exams.  What is highly regrettable is that this information is sometimes accessible only to some at the expenses of others.  Unfortunately plagiarism of this kind is difficult to detect by its nature so difficult to deter.
It should not be required for you to do this and in fact it seems some courses are poorly structured.  If you can substantiate the allegations in your post, you might consider a formal complaint (although it’s not clear what can be done to prevent access to such “secret” resources short of delete this data bank.)
You will not get much traction with the stress issue unless you were in a position significantly different from most other students, i.e. unless your workload was significantly different from other students.  If this is the case the first question to ask is why was your workload so different?  Unfortunately some courses/programs seem to have impossible expectations and make it some kind of badge of honour to test the breaking points of students.

Whether students having access to old exams or not is cheating, depends on a few things. If the instructor knows that it is common then s/he will probably act with that knowledge and not overly use old exam questions. In such a case, it would even be valuable for the professor to make an exam bank available to everyone. See this recent question for more perspective on this particular part of the issue here.
But there is more involved.
Every situation is different. When I was a student it was common for fraternities in the US to collect old exam questions. None of the three top math students at the college I attended were members and so didn't have access to these, nor other similar resources. But we all did (better than) fine and all ended up with PhDs. While the exam banks may have helped a few avoid failure, it had no real effect on things when looked at from a wider perspective.
Also at that time it was believed (possibly apocryphal) that at a certain very top graduate school in the US, no student would consider taking a course for credit unless they had already audited it once. I don't know if that was true, but it points to the pressure to succeed that students often face.
Next, I believe that no course that you ever take will ever be able to tell you everything about that subject. It will only be a surface skim that covers the important points and techniques that enable you to go further. Moreover, it represents, even in traditional subjects, only a snapshot in time of the thinking in that field. History moves on. Mathematics moves on. Hopefully a course will give you the tools to move on with your chosen field. But it is unlikely to be a lot more than that.
For the above reason, I have saved nearly all of my notebooks from courses I then considered important. I wrote on paper (not very good paper, actually/sadly) and took care of them, so I still have access to notes from math courses I took more than 50 years ago. I have a copy of a paper I wrote in secondary school (around 1960) and consulted it recently for another project. I have a deeper understanding of all that now than I did then.
The reason for saying the above is to comment on your professor's giving you such a "load" of supplementary material. You should ask about it, but I suggest that s/he is helping you build an archive that will be useful to you over your professional career, not just resources to pass that particular course. I once took a writing course from one of my "great" professors. He would seldom talk about writing (though he made us do a lot of it), but would spend lecture time recommending books to read. In a week, he would recommend 30 or more books. Who could keep up with that? And no, we didn't need to read them to pass. We needed to write and write and write.
Finally, though I may supplement this after some reflection, every student is different. You may or may not need to have access to a gigantic exam file, but I doubt that you will provided that (a) you are serious about your subject and (b) you practice with the knowledge you are gaining by doing exercises and getting feedback. Doing more than the minimum number of exercises, in fact.
That said, it is useful, and the prof should support it, if you are able to see one or two old exams, just so that you have an idea of the kind of question that the professor uses, if not any actual upcoming questions. In some places that would be against the stated rules, unfortunately.


text:
Producing a bibliography by chapter – have one reference in two chapters
I am organising my bibliography by chapter to make for easier reading.
However, I have one source that I use in two chapters. Do I just include the reference in the bibliography for this in the first chapter it appears in?

I can't give you an authoritative source at the moment, but I can't recall ever having had to look up a reference in a chapter different from the one in which it has been cited. It would also be very impractical: How would the reader know in which chapter the reference has been cited first?

In mathematics, this was a somewhat common occurrence back in the 50's and 60's (maybe in other times as well). If a work was used as a reference in several chapters, it was cited in each of those chapters. Some books even had suggestions for further reading attached to each chapter (some titles appeared in multiple chapters) in addition to a general bibliography.


text:
Mistake in defended PhD thesis
I have defended my thesis and the PhD was awarded. But now I realize that I have made a mistake. The same images are published for 2 different samples. ( I have  the real two images but somehow 1 was published in both cases). What should I do now? No one has looked into the matter.


text:
Should I delete my question on Stack Exchange to reduce my own plagiarism?
I created a new account and posted a question on Math Stack Exchange asking help for a specific part in an exercise from class. It was duly answered.
That question went on to gain a lot of hits and I received an email notification which I had set, of a comment left by a person who said I was stuck too. I didn’t know him as the class strength is around a hundred, but on checking on social media, he turned out to be my classmate. Now with nearly eighty hits on it, presumably from my classmates looking at this problem, should I delete it because I feel that Turnitin would end up holding me guilty for plagiarism from my own content if other students post it before me?
I did attach my files and everything including the idea which should easily enable anybody else from my very class to use it in the assignment.
So is it wise for me to delete the question now or is it too late? Is it ethical for the community at Math Stack Exchange to lose a question that garnered so much attention and I did gain my share of points. Will I lose my points as well?

You can't delete even your own question if it has an answered voted up by anybody, or if it has multiple answers. But you can ask the site to disassociate the question from your account. There is some chance that the community will close your this question, saying that you should ask it on the https://meta.stackexchange.com or on https://math.meta.stackexchange.com , in this case do it.

@peterh: Dissociating would increase the risk of what OP is worried about and eliminate the best evidence that OP is not guilty of plagiarism.

You mean to reduce other peoples' plagiarism right?

From what you have reported, it does not sound like you have committed plagiarism, i.e., you have not claimed the work of anyone else as your own work.  So you don't need to worry about that---and if other people steal your work, that is their fault and not yours.
You might, however, also be concerned that you have broken a class policy on obtaining outside help, and that you might be exposed by others plagiarizing you.  If you have not broken class policy, then don't worry about it.  If you have broken class policy, then 1) don't do it again in the future, and 2) trying to hide it probably won't help you, since this site gets widely copied and cached in any case.

I can’t understand whats up with “outside help”; could you elaborate on how you understand it? Is going to library considered as “outside help”?

@Kyslik Some classes have policies about the type of help that is considered acceptable and unacceptable. This would usually be in the syllabus or similar document. For example, there might be rules about what work you can do as a group and what you must do on your own. If the class doesn't have a policy like that, then it doesn't apply.

You asked the question, and you received the answer originally. Other people copying from the same question should not be a problem to you.
What you should do when receiving help online though is making clear to whoever does the grading that part of the exercise was solved using help by someone else (by citing them/linking it).
In case there will be an aftermath, you will be able to prove you were the one asking that question, since it is linked to your account.
Depending on class you did the exercise for, you might get a worse grade when doing so, but it is the right thing to do.


text:
Pursuing a new graduate degree after academic expulsion
I was in a master’s program. I completed one year completed, but got expelled due to my GPA dropping below what was needed.  I was put on probation and was given one semester to pull up my average by getting an A in all three classes I was taking, but I only got an A in two of them.
I have the option to apply for re-admittance and will do so, but just in case I want to apply to other programs, perhaps as a transfer. If needed, I’d apply fresh and start over.
In my new applications, should I explain my situation (life changes, job loss), or would it be better to not dwell too much on it?

Generally if you are willing to pay for your degree it is exceedingly possible to find a school willing to accept your money.

Vote to close as "unclear what you're asking". Please respond to @Nat's comment. You completed one year. What was your GPA of your first semester?

@Nat - I think I understood what OP was asking and have edited the question to make it clearer.  Also, I tried to focus the question.