text:
How do I cite a webpage with no author but a possible corporate author?
In Harvard style, for links such as: http://corporate.wwe.com/news/2002/wwe-corporate-world-wrestling-federation-entertainment-drops-the-f, since there's no clear author, I am usually citing it as (title of the webpage year) and then in the reference list as (title of the webpage year, available from URL, viewed...).
However, in this particular case, there is a corporate author which is, simply, the WWE. How do I cite the above link and, in general, almost all websites have corporate authors, how do I distinguish between a corporate author and between a simple page which I can cite as above?

In Harvard style the Author is a Key to the bibliography, just as the index number (like [1] is a key in Chicago style). One has to disconnect this from the concept of a name. In particular, when citing a web page with no clear author name one has to find a similar keyword to use. The corporate name makes a good keyword. It better to remember it is only a keyword and not start to use full sentences. The full details of the reference will be shown in the bibliography. So the Title of web pages should almost never be used. Thus for your example I would cite like this: (WWE, 2002). The bibliographic entry would be:

WWE (2002), "World Wrestling Federation Entertainment Drops the ‘F’", World Wresting Federation Corporate News, 6 May 2002.  [Online] Available at: http://corporate.wwe.com/news/2002/wwe-corporate-world-wrestling-federation-entertainment-drops-the-f [Accessed: 12 Apr 2016]

Aha, so with all the titles of webpages I used in the past, it will only be considered a poor practice right? I'd cite it now as: WWE 2002, World Wrestling Federation Entertainment drops the 'f', World Wrestling Federation Corporate News, available from: http://corporate.wwe.com/news/2002/wwe-corporate-world-wrestling-federation-entertainment-drops-the-f/, viewed 12 April 2016. Is that correct? Just to adapt it to my style...

@R.AS. You seem to be confused between a citation and a reference in the terminology....; but yes your current practice is poor.

I agree, one learns with time. Is the reference-list citation I proposed in my previous comment acceptable?


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Is there such a thing as listing too many areas of future work in a thesis conclusion?
I am finishing up my thesis and am currently focusing upon the conclusion. There I have a section on future work.
I have quite a few areas that I think require follow up or investigation. However, is there such a thing as listing too many areas of future work in that it will look like one hasn't done enough to tackle them? Or that the research is sub-par?

Consider the rule of three: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_%28writing%29

This is something you can ask your advisor about.  You want possible applications to be compelling, and not overly speculative.

Nobody will read your thesis, just go for it. Have fun. I am only 0.1% kidding. Every good phd thesis opens up more questions than it answers, I wouldn't worry about it. Though country, topic of thesis (e.g., what field are you in) would help give a better answer. Might be different norms in engineering versus biology.

@neuronet: This strongly depends on various factors such as country, field, type of thesis, and so on. Here, at least two people have to read any thesis de jure, and those are important as they determine your grade. It is often joked that only the supervisor reads the whole thesis and the coreferee only reads introduction and conclusion, and I would be surprised if this did not really happen, but even then, this question is about the conclusion.

Generally, you don't get credit for what you have not done. "Too many" as you mentioned do no harm, yet seems to be not really a good thing - although I'm not sure how many is 'too many' in your case and it depends on the structure & content of your thesis as well.

Shock First: couple of questions before "executing yourself" on your defense date: why these future work is not part of your current contribution? who will do all these future work? what is the relations between your work and these future work? how many of these future work are actually have research contribution potential?... and how do you know they are?... did you publish them?... of course not!. You see where I'm going with these? You are setting yourself up for a "crime" you didn't commit.
Explanation: Like any other part of thesis, you are showcasing your research contribution. Do not push it (aka fluff it) to something bigger; and if there is any sensible examiner; he/she will grill you over "fluffing" parts. Obviously there are many future work routes, but you choose and pick the ones that came directly through your research. You cant not keep going and going until you solve the world problems in your future work.
Conclusion: I would suggest to gather all your published research materials under one roof, and then write about the best two or three subjects, from the future work sections of your published research, that you can talk about; which directly came out of your research.

Future Work sections in published papers often sound by orders of magnitude more important and generalized than the content of the papers itself, and they are the only part of papers where big progress can be announced without dealing with all the tiny little details that create 90% of the headaches and that no-one might ever want to spend time on. As such, I am skeptical about classifying Future Work sections of published research as "which directly came out of your research".

I do not think that the number of areas of future work (let’s call them prospects) is a problem per se. Rather, your prospects should be good, i.e., they should be substantiated by the thesis and by possible additional arguments and not be too speculative. This should give you a natural limit, as a given thesis should can only allow for so many good prospects.
Of course, it can always happen that a careless examinor is put off by the plain number of prospects in your thesis, but that’s a risk you have to estimate yourself. This applies to too many prospects as well as to few. An often quoted rule of thumb is that a good thesis raises more questions than it answers.
If you frequently communicated your research progress to your supervisor, they should already know how productive you were without looking into your thesis. Moreover, if your research was comparably unproductive for some reason, writing what could have been done can mitigate this to some extent. This in particular holds if the unproductiveness is not your fault (e.g., if the particle accelerator you were supposed to be working with was unexpectedly out of order for a year).
As always, you should probably talk to your advisor regarding the specific expectations for your field and type of thesis, the pecularities of particular referees as well as whether individual prospects are good or bad.

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Elsevier actions following US sanctions on Iran
Elsevier has started circulating this letter as a consequence of the sanctions taken by the US against Iran to the editors of their journals:

Subject: US editors and reviewers can no longer handle submissions by
  authors employed by the Government of Iran

Dear Dr Bruno Granier,
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of
  the Treasury administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions. As
  a result of OFAC sanctions we have been made aware that US editors, US
  Elsevier staff and US reviewers are now unable to handle scientific
  manuscripts where any of the authors are employed by the Government of
  Iran. This includes the research departments of the various oil and
  gas companies which are deemed to be entities of the Government of
  Iran. We realize that this OFAC regulation will cause some
  inconvenience in your role as an editor but Elsevier is legally
  obliged to ensure that all reasonable efforts are made to avoid
  submissions from Iranian government agencies and companies being
  handled by US editors, US Elsevier staff and US reviewers. Please be
  aware that editors, Elsevier staff and reviewers from outside the US
  may still handle these manuscripts and that this OFAC regulation does
  not pertain to manuscripts where the authors are based at Iranian
  academic and research institutes. Manuscripts originating from a
  clinical setting that are not government run, for example, a hospital
  or clinical practice are also exempt from this regulation.
To view the official OFAC regulation, please click here. In practice
  the result of these sanctions will mean that:
• Submissions where any author is based in Iran, and is not at an
  academic and research institution, cannot be handled by US-based
  editors, US Elsevier staff, US reviewers, or any US citizens based
  outside of the US.
• If an Iranian author has dual affiliations (eg. university and
  government), their submission cannot be handled by US-based editors,
  US Elsevier staff, US reviewers, or any US citizens based outside of
  the US.
• Affiliations of Iranian authors should therefore be checked, and any
  manuscripts which fall under this OFAC regulation delegated to a
  non-US editor, before handling.
• When assigning reviewers, affiliations of Iranian authors should
  also be checked, and any papers which fall under this OFAC regulation
  should only be sent to non-US reviewers. (As an editor you should do
  what is reasonable to determine the nationality of a reviewer e.g.
  check their email address. This check does not extend to emailing
  reviewers directly to confirm their nationality or location). Unless
  there is specific knowledge that a non-US-based reviewer is a US
  citizen, editors can send such submissions to reviewers based outside
  the US.
• If your journal workflow involves all submissions being handled by
  US-based Elsevier staff, they will reject these manuscripts outright
  before they reach you.
• Should there be no suitably qualified editor or reviewer, please
  reject the manuscript outright.
When rejecting manuscripts which fall under this OFAC regulation
  please use the new EES Decision Term "Reject - OFAC Sanctions" and the
  following text:
"As a result of OFAC sanctions all editorial staff who are US-based/US
  nationals are unable to handle scientific manuscripts which are
  authored by Iranian scientists, employed by the Government of Iran.
  Based on this OFAC regulation we are unfortunately unable to handle
  your manuscript. We wish you success with your submission to another
  Journal."
We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause. If you do have any
  questions please contact your Publisher.
Sent on behalf of Dan Lovegrove
Cretaceous Research

Has there been any public response, by US editors or reviewers, stating whether they will obey (or not) the instruction? Also, does this letter conflict with the Code of conduct and best practice guidelines for journal editors of the COPE (all Elsevier journals are members of COPE as of January 2008)?

For more recent clarification, see https://www.elsevier.com/connect/how-sanctions-laws-affect-publishing-ofac-provides-new-guidance.

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is an agency of the US Treasury that is empowered by US federal law to edict and enforce embargoes and economic sanctions. Thus, US journal editors are bound by its regulations, whether they like it or not. Violating them would expose them, and their employers, to liability. If they violated them willingly, the employer might also turn against them. I don't see how deference to the law is in violation of COPE guidelines (or academic ethics in the broader sense): though important in publishing, they do not have force of law (and specifically defer to the law in many areas).
Elsevier is not the only publisher affected by these sanctions, and as others, they are not happy with it:

We stand by our belief that generally speaking, restrictions on publishing are inappropriate, and any exceptions should be narrowly crafted. We will work with our other publishing house and industry colleagues, along with research communities and institutions, to analyze recent changes and continue to pursue appropriate balance in the laws.

Some other publishers, however, either have a different understanding of the law or are willing to (potentially) go to court over it:

A spokesperson for the American Geophysical Union, which has a dozen members in Iran, says AGU does not consider publishing to be a trade issue and "accepts paper submissions from anywhere in the world." The American Society of Mechanical Engineers echoes that view, as does AAAS, Science's publisher. "We do not put any restrictions on submission or publication of papers based on economic or other sanctions," says Monica Bradford, executive editor of Science.
                                                                                [source: Wikipedia and references therein]

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How should PhD Students/Researchers take notes?
When taking notes while studying papers or concepts I'm always torn between

classic pen & paper approach, which I personally find more productive;
digital approach, will make it easier to find/sort/filter information later

I'm going to be a Computer Science Ph.D student, so I have to be quite productive (solution 1), but also, to work on the long term, so building my own "knowledge database" (sol. 2) makes sense.
I am currently thinking about developing my own tool based on markdown notes, git version & a query tools to find information, to tag/link items as well a generate bibliography etc.
What is considered the most useful way of taking notes, particularly for non-class settings?

Write and publish papers, rather than take notes.

@user2768: Pretty hard to write and publish papers without first having a thorough knowledge and understanding of the literature.  Taking notes helps a lot with that.

Are you asking about taking notes in class, or outside of class (e.g., when reading a textbook or journal article)?

Mostly outside of class. Can be focused on a particular paper or a concept that I need to learn.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is a survey, not a question.

Surface Pro with OneNote. Get the handwritten you crave and the digital cut-n-paste ease you need.

@DavidRicherby I think there's a decent question in there - I've edited to hopefully remove the "survey" quality.

See How to manage theorist's "labbook"?, and Good practices for organizing notes

Won't most of your outside-class notes be generated from reading specific papers?  If so, then come up with a simple filing system that will allow you to store, electronically, both digital and scanned, handwritten notes connected with the papers that triggered the notes.

@NateEldredge, new papers build upon the existing literature, so it makes sense to write down your understanding in a paper and build upon it. You needn't publish all of your notes, but you can write them down. And, if your notes are unrelated to the paper, then perhaps you're reading the wrong material. (Of course, I'm massively oversimplifying the process!)

In this article, "The Pen is Mightier than the Keyboard," the researchers tested this very issue.  They found that taking notes with pen and paper is more effective... but, that was because students who typed their notes were copying lectures verbatim whereas students who took notes by hand were taking in the information and then writing it in their own words (thus processing the info at a deeper level).
So, the key is the way you process the information, not necessarily the method you use to take notes. But, at the same time, it is noteworthy (no pun intended) that longhand notes tends to lead to that deeper level of processing more so than does taking notes digitally.
Personally, I'm all about taking notes longhand, and I print out articles that are important to me/my work.

When it comes to knowledge I make the (admittedly vague) distinction between general knowledge anyone in the field would have and specific knowledge that an expert probably would need to look up.
For the first kind I use pen and paper. Pen and paper is better for learning things by heart and for this kind of knowledge there usually are plenty of textbooks to look it up if necessary.
For the second kind of knowledge it is usually enough to get the gist of it. That is why I write my notes on my computer. Here it is less important to know it by heart and more important to clearly record a reference for potential future use. Searching through a file directory is easier than trying to find a random piece of paper I might have thrown out.
Of course given the time, writing a draft on paper and then a final version on your computer is best. However who in academia has time to spare for that?

I used and still use pen and paper, although for my discipline, I bought engineering paper so that I put graphs on the left page and content on the right page.  That is what I used for lectures and presentations.  There are limitations on a digital format unless you turn it into a glorified writing pad.  You cannot mark arrows easily, you cannot easily link text to graphs and you cannot write marginalia as easily, unless you are typing in LaTeX.
Outside of lecture, I use highlighters.  Although I keep a digital copy of articles, you cannot markup a pdf from a publisher.  I maintain four inch binders that are organized in a manner that is useful for me.  I have my own Dewey system.  Electronically, I store the articles using tags as names such as serial_correlation_explosive_roots or mvue_cauchy_trimmed_mean.  I also depend a lot upon memory.  The difficulty of using a markup system is that you do not know what will be important in three years.
When you read an article it may be that keywords a, b, and c were what was important to you, but the article contained a seemingly uninteresting reference to keyword d, which is not a keyword because you don't care at this point in time.  The keywords do not hurt, but if they cause you to commit less to memory because you say "I can search it," then you actually have lost retrievable data.  Of course in an ideal world you would have built a search using the contents of the pdfs.
Pre-built bibliographic tools exist.  BibTex is very useful, though not ideal.  For continuity I use BibTex though if I were starting today, I may not.  I maintain a unified bibliography for everything I have ever used or done.  BibTex is part of LaTeX.  If you are going to do professional writing, you should probably learn LaTeX.  Download something like MikTex and then use something like TexStudio as a wrapper so you do not have to type out all of the commands.  It isn't bad to learn on MikTex, but it is slower than TexStudio since TexStudio will guess what you are trying to do and autocomplete.

The support is probably the least relevant part. What you actually need is a structure to organise your notes.
If it goes well digitally for you, go for it. At the end, it all depends on how you function. I know that if I need to learn something, I better write it on paper than on a machine, unless it's computer programming. But that might not work for you.
There are multiple tools to manage bibliography, with or without the ability to add notes. Just pick the one you like and can work with.


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How do I set boundary while learning something and verify if I learnt that thing in a non-academic setting?
I was reviewing my learning progress so far this month and I found an important factor that's hindering my progress.
I really get stuck while studying a lot. And I think it's a good thing as it means I encountered something new.
For example:
I am learning about DNS and getting stuck on implementing the various types of name servers. I've read most of the things about DNS found in textbooks. I think my concept is clear about DNS, but I am unable to implement them in Linux server(not code them, just setup them).
I've completed the setup via https://fedoramagazine.org/how-to-setup-a-dns-server-with-bind/
tutorials like this which tells me how to do it. Also read parts of books like Evi Nemeth's unix and linux sysadmin handbook, TCPIP network administrators guide, Pro DNS and BIND 10. But I still feel I don't really "made it to stick".

How do I test/verify if I learnt something when I am learning something in a non-academic scenario, and not doing it for my current job? (Example: I learnt by exercises on textbooks while learning for university exams)

How do I define to which "depth" to learn a topic? Or how do I set a boundary while learning?

How to determine the optimum interleaving of subjects? I am a kind of a person who learns better by switching between different subjects(say computer networks, algorithms and database). But how many subjects switching is optimum? Has there been any research about it?

By far the most common way would be to enroll in a class; though we can debate about the costs of education and who should pay them, the reason it exists at all is to have professionals guide students in exactly these things. If it were something you could do yourself after reading a SE Q&A I guess we wouldn't really need universities.

I worry this question may not be a good fit for Academia SE, as it seems to focus on self-study and not learning in the context of an academic institution.

@BryanKrause university is not an option. I've enrolled in some online GATE computer science classes. Likewise, for some stuffs, they have certification exams which I study for or enroll in an udemy course to learn.

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Can I take two consecutive classes simultaneously?
For example, I would like to take Intermediate Spanish I AND Intermediate Spanish II at the same time.
Can colleges, in general, allow that? If my advisor says to me that they think it cannot be done, how can I insist and persuade them (without any illegal activity obviously)? Where do I see these policies?
This question is about US Colleges in general. Not about my specific college.

Sounds like an institution-specific question.

I know it does, but I mean generally speaking about US institutions

The problem is, there is not 'generally speaking' - between the ones I've been to, the one's my kids and wife have been to, one could come up with about a dozen different answers and those would be just one institution (different departments).

So, you need the answer for your institution and department. Go ask your advisor (ok, done), the professors of those classes, and perhaps the department chair. For a language, frankly I'd suggest the answer should be no. Taking two different math classes? Sure.

Why? Sounds like the solution to your problem is to test out of Spanish I, not do this.

In general, exceptions can be made on an individual basis. But you probably need a reason to get one.

As a student I did this multiple times and regretted it every time. It just doesn't make any sense. Skip the easier class if you can, take it alone if you can't.

This will, of course, depend on the specifics of the class and how your institution allows it.  At mine, one set of classes in the applied mathematics department was Multivariable Calculus (also known as Calculus III) and Differential Equations (Calculus IV).  Although the former seems to be a prerequisite for the latter, this is actually not the case; I took the latter before the former, and some students have actually taken them concurrently.  Now, it should be noted that there is not so much overlap between the two classes they way they are taught at my institution, and it might be different at other institutions.
However, some classes are listed as prerequisites before taking other classes because they contain information or material which are a foundation for later classes (where you are expected to know the material taught in the prerequisite class), and even if you were able, you would be doing yourself a disservice to cut corners like this.  In the case of language classes like Spanish, it wouldn't be so smart to try and take Spanish II without knowing the material of Spanish I.  I would probably take Spanish I for a refresher or see if you can transfer credit in to bypass it, it doesn't seem to make sense to take both of them concurrently.
Again, this depends on how your institution sets its policies for prerequisites.  First, of course, ask your advisor for advice on this and consult the official course catalog/bulletin, since it should list classes, policies, prerequisites, etc.  If you feel you should be able to take Spanish II, consult the professor teaching that class and get input from them as to whether it would be a good move or not.
Hope this helps.

The policy will be in the prerequisite requirements for a class, in your case, Intermediate Spanish II.  In the U.S., you will find prerequisite requirements in the official catalog of the institution, and probably elsewhere. Somewhere in the official catalog there may be a policy about whether prerequisites can be overridden, and if so how.

I have seen some classes that list the prereqs as being OK to take in the same semester. Language classes seem unlikely tho

@AzorAhai-him- In the few institutions with which I'm familiar, those are called co-requisites.  In any case, the catalog is likely to be very clear, and you're right, it doesn't seem likely for a language course.  Perhaps if OP is a native speaker of Spanish or something ...


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Why don't university courses report percentiles together with absolute grades?
In any course in university, grades will be reported on an absolute scale, such as A+, A, B+, etc. Why don't these courses also report percentiles to indicate how hard the course was? This is very similar to what the GRE does. For example, I could be in the 95th percentile, which means that I did better than 94% of the students in the class. This would also eliminate the need to adjust grades to fit a particular distribution.

Some universities figured out that there is no need to adjust to a particular distribution, and relative grades are quite meaningless. You might know more than half of your peers, but if you still don't know the stuff, your knowledge isn't going to be very useful.

"In any course in university, grades will be reported on an absolute scale, such as A+, A, B+, etc." -- this is not true in general. Many courses / programs / universities grade relatively, even if they give letter grades. For example, approximately the top x% of the class would get an A+, and so on.

My university does this. https://i.imgur.com/EyHtxV6.png. Your question should be, why doesn't yours.

This sounds like a nightmare for the person giving grades -- having to fine-tune the grading to give valid percentages (and getting complaints that someones friend was 89st percentile, but the student asking only 87th, and that is unfair). Dually, one should assume that these percentages came with quite high tolerances. Maybe one should denote ranges: 90-100 by A, 80-89 by B and so on ....

@BrtH That's a grade distribution. A percentile would say that someone in the highlighted bar did better than 42-86% of their peers.

Would this be over a single section, or all sections ever taught? If so, would we recompute the chart each year for all students who ever took it?

In my University, we were graded on a curve and given A,B,... equivalent grades. The non-exactness of the final grade was to account for different random factors that could affect your marks throughout the year (Which TA corrected your work, consistency of grading, bad exam day etc.). This also gave the professors wiggle room to help students that were on the border of failing.

It shocks me that universities still 1) grade on a curve, 2) don't assign strict percentage marks to every assessment item. 15 years ago in Australia you knew exactly what mark you would get.

@Teepeemm, huh, you're actually right. They recently switched to a new interface, I hadn't noticed they removed that. I found this old screenshot of what it looked like and what I meant https://i.imgur.com/9yGwua1.png, the last line: 26% of students got the same or a higher result. (and some pretty dramatic results)

Actually there are many reasons that contribute to this, though as noted it isn't universal.
First, there is no real basis of comparison between courses, even in the same major, since the tests, unlike, say the GRE, aren't standardized, nor do they have enough data points for valid statistical inference. The numbers, if reported, would be essentially meaningless, though people would try to impute meaning to them.
Across disciplines the issue is even more extreme, of course. How "hard" is a Calculus class compared to one in Ethics? They can both be very hard, but it is impossible to compare them since the student activities are very different as is the basic pedagogy.
Second, and to me, vital, is the fact that introducing percentiles is a form of competitive grading that I find offensive. In my view, a student should be graded based only on their own, individual, performance. The typical A, B, ... grading scheme tries to capture this notion, even if imperfectly. If I get a C it should mean that I, individually, have some deficit, independent of what anyone else achieved or didn't. And note that the grading classifications are inherently broad and inexact as are all of the measures we use to determine grades.
One can do poorly on an exam for reasons other than lack of effort and learning. You might just have gotten too little sleep, or there is a family issue that requires your time and attention. Some instructors throw out the "lowest grade" to account for such things. Others have "fuzzy" boundaries between grade levels, giving the students the benefit of the doubt if they just "miss" a cut.
And of course, tradition plays a role. People know how to evaluate the general grades they see on transcripts from long practice. Even introducing A+ grades a few years ago caused disruption in this. Percentile grading has too much chance of being interpreted incorrectly.
Finally, implied by the above, percentile grades don't really measure "how hard" the course is, but something else. Someone has to be in the lowest percentile even if all students excel.
Don't look for completely "objective" ways to measure human performance and expect that it means exactly what the numbers seem to imply. Even Usain Bolt was sometimes slower than other runners.

I feel that a percentage and a percentile are different things to report; while this answer always says "percentage", I think it is about percentiles.

@MichaelHomer, yes, and I intended percentiles throughout. Thanks for catching it.

I do not see how giving a student benefit of the doubt when they miss a cutoff nearly is different from moving the cutoff...

@user2316602: When I did this I always moved the cut-off. Amazingly, I almost always managed to keep those who I felt performed at close to the level of the one or two students who motivated me to give them "the benefit of the doubt" (not in person, but when looking at all their various grades in the course), while having a reasonably large gap before the next grade not making the cutoff. But not always. In a handful of cases over a 20+ year period, I had to include a few students who I thought should be given the lower grade, yet their %'s were above someone I felt otherwise. (continued)

Since I was fully explicit in telling students how to calculate their overall course % (various weightings of quiz and test scores, various quiz and test drop possibilities, homework grades, extra credit for especially difficult take-home problems, etc.), the students were able to calculate their exact course %. Because I have no way of knowing who shares with who their grades, I never allowed, for example, a cutoff for C−/D+ to allow someone below this cutoff getting a C− and someone above this getting a D+. Of course, cutoffs were not worse than 90−100 A's, 80-89 B's, etc. (in the syllabus).

I think your question is:  Why don't we rank students?
Elite universities only accept the top few percent of eligible students.  If elite universities ranked their worst students, those students would choose to enroll at a lower ranked university where they could get a better rank.  Soon, elite universities would have fewer students.  Elite universities don't want that, so they do not rank anyone.  Certain elite business schools take this further and keep all student grades secret.
Other universities copy the elite universities.
There are also no particular benefits to a ranking system.
If your question is: Why shouldn't we rank students?
Ranking encourages competition over cooperation, which reduces student learning.

I don't think that this answer is true. Elite universities do compare their students with each other, and their grades are not comparable with those at lower tier universities. Employers know this, which is why no sane student would trade in a decent grade from Cambridge for a good grade from a lower tier university.

@AlexB. You are not contradicting my answer.

"rank" and "compare" are not the same.

I guess I am explicitly contradicting the statement that weaker students that can get into a top university would prefer worse universities if they knew that they will be lower in the ranking at a top university than at a lower tier one; and I am implicitly contradicting the claim that top universities do not rank students. I think it is pretty clear that awarding grades on a linearly ordered scale constitutes a ranking. The OP was asking why the precise mapping between grades and percentiles is not made public, but I am saying that in an imprecise sense employers know that grades reflect ...

... internal rankings to a greater extent than an absolute international notion of "A minusness" or what have you.

@AlexB. "awarding grades on a linearly ordered scale constitutes a ranking"  Since in most cases elite universities only use the top few categories on the scale, that is not true.

Some universities indeed do provide rankings in one or another manner (I know that for instance WU Vienna provides statistical information how you are doing grade-wise in comparison to other students in your year and overall).
The main reason why many (most?) universities don't is because program managers and education managers tend to think of grades not directly as a device to assess how "good" students are, but as an indicator of how well a student achieved the defined learning objectives of the course (if you barely know the minimum after the course, you get whatever the lowest passing grade is, if you achieve all or almost all of the optional learning objectives as well you get the equivalent of an A+). How well a student achieves the learning outcomes is fundamentally independent of how any other student did - it's possible that nobody excelled in a course, and it's possible that everybody learned all there was to learn. In both of these case, the fix wouldn't be to re-scale the grades, but to adjust the learning objectives of the course.
This has the added benefit that grades are more predictable for students, and there isn't inherent competition among students (especially if your university heavily builds on peer instruction, you really don't want any students to withhold knowledge from each other).


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Including "Thanks Card" in my graduate application
I am applying for graduate schools in the US. In the applications, I can upload supplement materials (like CV, publications), and I am considering including a "Thanks Card" I have received from my last internship, which composed of many of my coworkers' recognitions and wishes for me. I want to include this card since I think it can further prove my motivation, good understanding of my field, and many other good characters. But I am not sure if this is too personal or inappropriate (my coworkers' first names appearing in the cards) for a graduate application. Could I have any suggestions or opinions? Thank you very much!

I always put in only good words in the "Thanks Card" when my coworker leaves.

@scaaahu I see. Yeah, I kinda feel the same haha. Though it does include some details of my work.

Thank you for replying! Guess I will not include it.

You can show it to a reference letter writer instead.  Stick to the traditional application format; you want to be remembered for your achievements, not for deviating from the format.

Honestly - unless this card is speaking to something very particular and relevant to your statement of purpose I would not include it. Think about this from the perspective of someone reviewing your application. In most US grad school applications, you need to have people provide letters of reference. What would this thank you note contribute in addition to those letters?
You don't say whether you have a letter of reference from this internship, but it would be odd either way.
If you don't have a reference letter from the internship, someone looking at your application might be confused by it, and not know how to judge it. It might raise questions such as "why is this person including this letter from their co-workers when they don't have a letter of reference from it?"
I will also say - generally the more specific a recommendation letter can be, the better it is. Maybe it depends on thank you letter, but in my experience, those tend to be "thanks for a great summer, great to get to know you" which is probably of less interest to an application reader than "During the 3 months Danny worked here, he worked on projects X, Y, and Z, and made contributions U, V, and W"
Anonymous Physicist is right. Show the letter to the person writing your recommendation letter, don't include it in your application.


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Need advice regarding my possibly conflicting research idea
I'm an undergraduate student just getting started with a proper research in machine learning. Oftentimes, when I'm experimenting with new ideas, I find that a similar or better research was already published few years back. In most cases, since the research I found was much better than my current experimental idea, I read that paper and move on.
But recently, I have found that many of my newer ideas are NOT yet published anywhere but most of them are submitted for review to different conferences (on OpenReview etc.) or some form of pre-print manuscript for them is available on arXiv.
Is it ethical in such to submit my idea to another conference as a publication ? It is really demotivating for me since I can't provide any publishable research for my thesis. Can someone suggest me a way to avoid situations like this ? (Searching on arXiv/Google doesn't help because the terminology used is sometimes very different)

If you have used those preprints to advance your ideas then it would be unethical to try to beat those authors in a race to publication of those ideas.
The problem is twofold. The first is just the possibility of a perception that you are acting improperly. This can be a big negative. But the second is that, seeing the other work, you have been already influenced by it, so it may not be proper to claim "priority".
You should probably do two things.
The first is to continue developing the ideas on your own and see where it takes you. Write them up as best you can.
The second is to wait and see what develops from the papers you studied.
If the final form of the other papers don't match what you have done you are free to publish (of course) and you may have a quick extension. You may even have a paper "ready to go".
But if they do match your results, you can just treat it as feedback that your thinking is sound and that you are developing appropriately as a researcher. Moreover it is evidence that you are approaching the research "frontier" earlier than many are able to do.
Since you are still an undergraduate such training is good, even if it doesn't result in a publication.
You also have an opportunity to contact those authors, now or later, as potential collaborators. Building a circle of people who are interested in the same things you are is a valuable resource.

And, of course, you said that most of your ideas are appearing in print. Don't neglect to follow up on the others.


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Is it appropriate for a professor to require students to sign a non-disclosure agreement before being taught?
There's a professor at my school that claims to be writing a book. He is requiring students to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) before certain lectures because he wants to maintain certain ideas of teaching his content part of his intellectual property.
I think that part is reasonable (to an extent) since he is protecting his ideas.
What I think is unreasonable is the fact that he requires all students to sign these NDAs, and offers no alternative presentation of the subject matter. Thus if a student does not wish to sign, they end up missing out on lectures that they have already paid the university to receive, and they have a potential of missing out on graded content that is "covered" by the material that the professor is restricting.
Students have no notice that this will happen prior to entering the class and thus are forced to sign if the don't want to withdraw.

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Do you have access to the NDA? Do you know what does it cover, exactly? When I joined my research institution I had to sign an NDA, and so do every student or employee that comes, which is preventing us from disclosing other people's unpublished research. If the NDA covered the unpublished research taught in the course, it would be very different.

Visiting prof tried to do the same, somehow the department didnt like it, somehow the 2 semester visit became a 1 semester visit only. So talk to the right person (Graduate advisor?) at your varsity. Just ask them if they think this required document is appropriate.

Ideas are not intellectual property.

No. It’s not appropriate and this is an obvious, blatant abuse of authority. I have a word in mind to describe this professor, but unfortunately am not free to disclose it as I am under an NDA. (It starts with an “i” and ends with a “t”).
Edit: to those asking “why not?”: teaching the class is the professor’s job. He is literally (in the literal sense of “literally”) required to teach the lecture and to allow any registered student who isn’t being disruptive to attend it, without setting any preconditions. And of course this swearing of students to legally binding secrecy is even more absurd than other types of conditions, considering the students are there to acquire knowledge they’ll need to use later in their studies and career. The whole “I’ll teach you but you have to promise not to tell anyone about it” thing reads like something straight out of Catch-22.

While I wouldn't contest the main direction of the answer (not appropriate), the argument that students are entitled to learn and the NDA wouldn't permit them to use their knowledge hinges on the formulation of the NDA. It may be solely focussed on the how they learned not the what they learned, i.e. structure of the course, examples, etc. This would leave the students free to apply their domain knowledge, it would just limit them in re-teaching it as in they could not do it the same way.

@FrankHopkins in a narrow technical sense you may be correct. However, the idea that students would need to carefully separate the how from the what whenever they are applying the knowledge they learned or sharing that knowledge with someone, at risk of legal sanction and into the indefinite future, clearly places a heavy and undue burden on the students. Quite simply, NDAs have no place in a teaching environment regardless of their scope. As someone said in another answer, NDAs are antithetical to the very mission of teaching, which is to share knowledge.

@FrankHopkins " It may be solely focussed on the how they learned not the what they learned, i.e. structure of the course, examples, etc. "
Aah, yes the - I've perfected the ultimate method of teaching, so my feedback might give me $50 more per year, so I wont tell anyone.
This argument is silly beyond recognition.

@DanRomik As I said, I totally agree with your overall conclusion just not all the way to get there. Mostly agree with your comment though. Would improve the answer in my opinion.

@FrankHopkins the how is just as much part of the knowledge being transferred by teaching as the what. A teacher's job is to teach and one of the most important parts of teaching is precisely teaching how to teach. If you want to keep your teaching tricks secret, then don't teach!

@terdon There is a difference between abstract teaching skills (which arguably are something that should be indirectly taught) and a precise recipe for a particular topic. You should learn how to teach in your own words not how to plagiarize. So come to think of it, in that sense, a properly worded NDA might be a nice lesson on how to distinguish both... (this is not meant totally in earnest. still...). Again, not saying the NDA is appropriate.

Moderator’s notice to those complaining about the deleted comments: All of these were (at best mildly entertaining) jokes about the i…t assessment (apart from one obsolete request for clarification). I am quite confident that Dan would have clarified his answer if he seriously considered them “questions about [his] answer”. Any further contemplations on the possible meanings of i…t will be deleted without warning. If you actually need this clarified, please write so. If you seriously want these comments undeleted, please take it to [meta] or raise a flag providing a good argument.

He may or may not be "protecting his ideas", but, in fact, teaching has as a goal the dissemination of ideas. If one wants to keep secrets or have proprietary stuff, don't pretend to teach a friggin' class! :)

What's worse, there's nothing stopping the professor from just teaching the class without using it as time to plan his book.

I don't know what your university regulations are, but there must be something in there that says that a professor cannot refuse teaching to their students, no matter what you sign or don't sign.
It's time to ask your student union/representatives/whatever you have to reach out to your dean and demand a different solution.

While I agree this NDA sounds utterly inappropriate, I don’t think university regulations are likely to have such a blanket prohibition.  There are certainly classes where students are required to sign some kind of agreement: e.g. medical students meeting patients must commit to respecting their privacy, students in certain practical lab classes must sign safety/responsibility agreements, and in some research-based classes students may see confidential data.  What I’d expect regulations to require is that the professor needs a legitimate educational reason to require an NDA or similar.

It’s called a syllabus, which is a legally binding contract. If the prof failed to achieve the contract, ie learning outcomes, they open a liability.

@PLL in the cases you mention surely it's the university which requires those agreements to be signed, and consequently the university which refuses to allow the professor to teach them if they don't sign, as opposed to the professor personally refusing to teach.

@EspeciallyLime +1 Its not even the university, its public laws and regulations about patient rights, data security or workplace safety. And research is not teaching. The student can always choose another project. Probably unfunded. ;)

The instructor is paid to teach, not write a book.  If the book gets in the way of his/her teaching duties, either s/he give up teaching OR give up the book.  Moreover, I doubt this instructor can prevent random people walking in his/her classroom so the whole NDA is 100%-proof shhhhhhhhugar.

Writing books and other scholarly publications may very well be part of the professor's required duties, and it is reasonable to try to balance such activities with teaching.  But I agree that I don't see how the NDA is necessary.  Also, in a reasonably small class, it is perfectly easy for a professor to notice random people and ask them to leave.

@NateEldredge fair enough but can you prevent people from walking in a class?

No, but you can stop lecturing when they come in, ask them to leave, and resume when they're gone.  Then they won't have seen/heard any significant amount of the NDA material.  I fully agree that the NDA is a bad idea and inappropriate, but I don't think this specific issue is what undermines it.

What does "100%-proof shhhhhhhhugar" mean?

@TommiBrander Looks like a minced oath, representing someone saying "100-proof sh-" with the intention of saying a vulgar word, but then hesitating for a few moments before deciding to finish the phrase using the word "sugar" instead of the word that was intended originally.

At my institution in the U.S., we are strictly proscribed to only allow registered students in the classroom while teaching. (We get a big red-text memo each term about it.) My understanding is in Europe this is often very different, with classes officially open to the public.

@DanielR.Collins I'm curious to understand why is this?  I understand these students cannot get access to class material but why would you prevent someone from just listening to a lecture, when (I would assume) you don't prevent people from attending seminars...

@ZeroTheHero: (1) Money, I assume. (2) Our students are commonly confused enough that sometimes they sit in the wrong classroom for an entire semester and then lodge a complaint at the end. U.S. culture is very "anyone can come regardless of qualifications as long as they pay us".

Coincidentally, (2) above happened again today. My officemate just said he had a student sit in a chemistry class for the last week and not recognize it wasn't the math class for which they were registered,

@DanielR.Collins  man...  I thought things were bad here... but confusing a CHEM class with a MATH class...  what do your chemists teach, or what do your mathematicians teach?  ;)

@ZeroTheHero: Normal stuff. See: "regardless of qualifications" above. :-/

It probably depends on where you are, but the University, where I used to teach (and to my knowledge it is quite standard here in Europe), had it in the contract that everything you did while working for the university belonged to the university. That means that the professor can't exclude members of the university to the knowledge he acquired while working in the university.
Furthermore, having lectures which often require to be uploaded on-line would serve as a basis to protect his rights on the ideas (for patents, books, etc.).
NDAs are required to protect your know-how and patent-able ideas. No book ideas. Uploading the course on-line, would allow him to actually use his ideas and prevent patents to block him.

While this is common practice (intellectual property being assigned to the institution), it doesn't mean that students have any rights to that intellectual property.

I believe there's a question or two around addressing this ownership question. At my school (which I believe is typical for the US) instructors own the course materials they create. You can freely take it with you to your new job at the next school for example. Though the school may get some kind of license to use it too. To cover them if, for example, they want to video your lectures and keep them. Other forms of IP (i.e. patents) may be handled very differently of course, because they're worth something.

Patenting textbook stuff ?! ;-)

IANAL, but this NDA is likely not worth the paper it's printed on.

An NDA requiring students not to disclose information they were taught in class will be likely found onerous by a reasonable court, because it clearly conflicts with the purpose of teaching and lessens the value of education received, and invalidated if the professor ever tries to enforce it.
An NDA can only be applied to information which is held confidential by the owner. A reasonable court will likely rule that information presented as a part of curriculum in a school loses its confidential status, thereby invalidating the NDA.
If the judge has a sense of humor (which is admittedly rare), they may rule that taking the exam on the course constitutes compelled disclosure, which also nullifies NDA protection.

I don't advise you to sign this agreement, but if you already did, there's not much to worry about really.

What is it, exactly, that the Professor is trying to protect with this NDA? Is it the course subject matter itself, the method of teaching or the specific text of the course materials (lecture notes/slides)?
The first case would be clearly nonsensical. If he is teaching a University course, the subject matter is almost certainly generally-accepted mainstream science that was likely published many years ago and so is in the public domain anyway. So, it is unlikely that he has any particular claim to the subject matter (unless he has single-handedly developed all of the theory for that entire field). In any case, this goes against the main goal of academic research, which is to publish research findings to add to the cumulative knowledge of humanity, not to keep them secret for one's own benefit.
In the second case, can a teaching method be considered Intellectual Property? It seems highly unlikely he would be able to apply for a patent for a teaching method. Patents are typically reserved for more concrete inventions and innovations. Besides a patent, the only way it could be considered intellectual property would be for him to intend to keep the teaching method secret. However, his intention to publish a book about it would seem to contradict that. Also, as with the first point, this seems to go against the grain of academia, since teaching methods are also an active area of published research.
For the third case, as alephzero points out in the question comments, the specific text of lecture notes, presentation slides and/or a book can be protected by copyright. However, the Professor should not require students to sign an NDA to do this - simply make it clear to the students that the course materials are subject to copyright. These things are already protected, without the need for an NDA.
In summary, the course materials are protected by copyright anyway, and it seems very unlikely that any NDA would be enforceable to protect the subject matter or teaching method. So, you probably don't have too much to worry about by signing it.

If the teaching method was truly innovative and could be described in the manner a patent requires of e.g. an industrial manufacturing process, yes, it certainly could be patented.

@Nij ok, that's interesting. My understanding was that abstract ideas and concepts cannot be patented. Is there any precedent for a teaching method being granted a patent?

A teaching method is not an "abstract idea or concept" - it's a real process that is used to achieve some real outcome. It may be underpinned by a lot of theory, and the application of specific theory in a certain way may be part of the process, and if this theory is well-known or obvious it will probably reduce support for the method's novelty.

@Nij ok. Still, if we put aside definitions, unless there are examples of teaching methods that have been granted patents, I would say the question of their patentability is somewhat speculative.

@Nij Doesnt work. Patents do not apply to academic work, neither in research or teaching, but only to commercial application.

That's absolutely nonsense. Patents apply to anything that meet the requirements. The closest that you might call "only to commercial application" in the USA is the utility requirement, which doesn't involve commercialisability, and in the EU only industrial use, which teaching (the education industry) is. @Karl

In the US, the patent office has started granting patents to processes in the financial world. Seems like this could be expanded to teacihng processes.

@historystamp it might be possible, but again, in the absence of any evidence this is all quite theoretical. Ultimately, the only one that can determine whether a teaching method can be patented is the patent office.

@Nij if your claim is true (that teaching methods can be patented), it would probably undermine most of the answers to this question (because the Professor might actually have a valid reason to ask students to sign an NDA). In that case, perhaps you should consider writing your own answer and providing references to examples?

@Time4Tea the professor’s desire to keep his teaching methods secret, and whether that desire is based on a “valid reason” or not, are irrelevant issues. The professor is not an independent agent who can do whatever he wants in his classroom. He is an employee of the university and is required to teach the class and allow any registered student to attend, period. The discussion of patentability of teaching methods may be interesting but it is beside the point, and does not undermine or have much bearing on the other answers.

This NDA paranoia contradicts the very idea of teaching.
Imagine that some company hires you to do some job. And at some moment you discover that that job requires you to use knowledge given to you on that NDA-protected lecture. What must you do? You must tell your customers: "Please wait, my NDA expires in 16 months?"
In addition, I think that the professor over-estimates the readiness of the society to accept his ideas, whatever they are. For example, Java 8 introduced streams. By that time, that technique was known for more than 2 decades.
I do not know what he proposed, but I can tell you what he will get in response:

it is too exotic
it is not needed
it is too complex
who will use it? it is too different from what people are taught
there is no practical use
the problem that it solves is no problem
the problem that it solves already is solved with existing methods
no, I do not see any advantage
why did not you use the traditional notation?
it does not work in the general case
the part X of your proposal is described as bad practice in the book Y
you said the word X, how your work is related to Y X Z? (If they are not related, why did you use the word X that already has a meaning?)

On the other hand, it is possible that his contribution is just the organization of the material (this may range from explanation in simple words to things like vector/matrix maths, a notation that really simplified thinking). In this case, a NDA on the way of thinking is just unfair to the students.
Either way, there should be no NDA. But what you can do may depend on your country.

Management: "This student says you walked him out of your class, what happened?"
  Professor: "He refused to sign my non-disclosure agreement"

I don't think the university will take very kindly to your professor's arrangement. Unless he has received prior clearance from the university to do this, I can see it getting him into trouble.

A non-disclosure agreement only protects information that is not generally known. I seriously doubt that standard lectures can be protected information. I don't see how an NDA is appropriate in the case outlined in your question.
Why would you pay for information that you are then not allowed to use?

It is not appropriate to withhold material from a student for failure to sign an NDA. That said, it is appropriate to remind the students of the value of intellectual property, and that they are not the copyright holders of the provided material.
By way of explanation -- the work at issue is protected by copyright.  There may be some debate about who is entitled to the fruits of that copyright, the author or the institution, but many US institutions will cede to the author. In any case, it is NOT the student.
The way this is handled at my institution is that it is covered in the Academic Honesty policy.

The sharing or distribution of course materials for purposes of giving
  or gaining unfair advantage in a course is prohibited. Students must
  further respect the requirements of copyright protection for materials
  that are made available for instructional purposes.

All the students read, and sign, the academic honesty policy upon entrance, and generally receive reminders at each course on the first meeting.  Also, if the prof has any non-obvious course policies on honesty, such as how students are allowed to collaborate on teamwork, this is also shared on day one, as well as in the syllabus.
Thus, any unapproved sharing of lecture or other material is treated like any other violation of academic honesty policies.  There is no "Cease and Desist" to the student (but any site hosting the material might get a request to take it down, and if non-responsive, might well get a Cease and Desist, or it's equivalent), but there may certainly be ramifications.  For example, if the student has a previous major violation on record, such as cheating on an exam, a case involving unauthorized sharing might even  result in separation (though a lowering of the course grade or failure in the course might be the more likely scenario).
I don't know that this would preempt the professor from pursuing independent legal action.  For example, if a professor spent five years writing a textbook for the publisher, and found the entire preprint online prior to publication, and had real financial damage, I don't know if university policy would preclude a copyright violation lawsuit.
To summarize, the work is already protected by copyright, whether an NDA is signed or not.  Asking students for an NDA, and refusing to distribute material to students unwilling to sign, is inappropriate.  Some universities (maybe even "many") include copyright violation in their academic honesty policy, and students might experience penalties for traceable violations. There is also a possibility that students may be subject to the same legal actions that any copyright violator is exposed to.
Addendum:  The University of Maryland has had their lawyers write up a treatment, which largely confirms my assertions, at https://president.umd.edu/faculty-course-materials-strategies-dealing-commercial-use.  The situations where this comes up most often of late is when students upload course materials and exams to services like CourseHero or Chegg, but all the concepts apply for any unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material.

One of the main purposes of teaching is to prepare students for research or real-world by presenting the latest ideas, methodologies, and tools. If you have something that you intend to present it in a book or a journal paper, just do not teach it yet.
Perhaps the professor is protecting his lecture notes before publishing them as a book. While this is reasonable as the OP suggested, presenting no other alternative is not acceptable. As a teacher, your first responsibility is to teach and not write books. If you want to protect your material, you should adapt your lecture notes. It's just lazy to provide no alternatives and ask students for signing NDAs.

Based on your first line, for a moment, I thought you were going to talk about how this prepares the students for crappy NDA requirements in their real-world lives ;)

Asking students to sign an NDA in order to take your class is absurd.
Some points I haven't seen in other answers:

Non-disclosure agreements are legal documents. In theory, each student should discuss the document with their lawyer. In practice, most college students aren't going to have their own lawyer, or have spare cash lying around for paying a lawyer to review an NDA. Forcing a non-disclosure agreement on each student places an undue burden on them.
The NDA would create legal and bureaucratic headaches for the students and university. For example, say that the professor engages in personal misconduct during class. Can the students report this to the university without violating the NDA? Worse, what if the actual subject matter of the lesson violates university standards/ethics? Taken to an absurd extreme, what if the professor starts teaching racism and holocaust denial, or instructing students in how to build a bomb?
Lastly, the lasting implications of the NDA are confusing. Does the NDA mean that the students can't apply the knowledge from the class to future classes or careers? This might be answered in the wording of the NDA, but that again relies on the student having access to a legal professional to fully explain all ramifications of the NDA to them.

I remember showing up the first day at a job and being handed an NDA to sign.  Seems to me the professor has done the same thing.

A point that goes with your point about NDAs being legal documents: when I started university I was seventeen, i.e., not legally an adult, so it may not have been legal for me to sign an NDA even if I'd wanted to.

@historystamp I hope you aren't suggesting they're equivalent. NDAs for employment/contract work are common, and they aren't an unreasonable burden because it leads to you making income. Students have already paid money to attend courses and may not have disposable income to spend on lawyers. What you learn on the job might be a trade secret. What you learn in a class is supposed to be applicable to your future after the class is over.

Is this his IP/data, or does it belong to a third party?
First of all, in an American university this would be highly irregular. Behavior like this should be escalated to a department chair or dean--unless it falls into one of two narrow exceptions.
Exception 1 - Controlled Data
Some entities release data for scientific or educational uses, and they have contractual agreements with the recipient that the data is only to be used in those circumstances.
If the lesson includes such data or reports from third parties, the professor cannot use it legally without permission, and such permission is usually contingent on NDAs.
Even if this is the case, the professor should be very clear about which documents are covered, who owns the documents/data, and what are the penalties for noncompliance with the NDA.
Exception 2 - Sensitive or Copyrighted Materials
Sometimes sensitive documents or otherwise unpublished copyrighted material (including source code) are distributed for educational purposes. This is less common than controlled data, but some schools have close relationships with private sector partners.
All of the same caveats apply here. It is the professor's responsibility to identify clearly the protected material, the owner, and the consequences of breaching the NDA.
His methods and data.
If this is some sort of overblown attempt to keep his materials protected, it needs to be escalated.
The professor will own copyrights on any material he produces in the absence of a university policy to the contrary.
If this is pre-publication material for a textbook that he authors/coauthors, then both the publisher and the university should be aware of it.

If this class is about some new cutting-edge research, the NDA may be reasonable, or may even be legally required. If it's a "run-of-the-mill" class, an NDA would seem more unreasonable. It also depends on how long the NDA extends. You should be allowed to talk about it after a reasonable amount of time, such as after the book is published or the patent is filed.
The professor may be talking about something that he plans to file a patent on once the research is at the point where it's patentable. You cannot file a patent on something that's already publicly available (it's called prior art). In this case, he must require an NDA before telling you anything about the project.
Similarly, if it is a research project, it sometimes cannot be published once the information is out there, and even if not, he may worry about being "scooped" by other researchers.
So the choice here from the professor's perspective is: he can either choose not to educate his students on the latest and greatest research at all, or he can educate them under condition that they don't pass on that information.
And for you as a student, the choice is similar: if you don't want to sign the NDA, you can't learn about this particular technology.
Depending on the exact circumstances, it seems to probably be perfectly legitimate.

It seems strange to me to teach about the latest technology which is only known to the professor (and may not be peer-reviewed?) Could you give an example of a class where this happend and an NDA is legally required?

Who says that a university can only teach things that has already been peer-reviewed? In the contrary, in higher semesters, it is common that students actually participate in ongoing research projects that are a long way from publishing and peer-review (and may end up listed as co-authors on resulting papers). In research universities, that's probably the rule rather than the exception. After all, how else are student going to learn how to properly do research?

First, could you give an example of such a lecture? I think I find it weird because in my country all lectures are open to the public. To your question, how students learn researcg: In my country, not through lectures, but working closely with a professor but through seminars. The idea that a professor lectures about something which is not even peer-reviewed yet seems strange to me (also because there is so much peer-reviewed in every field to teach about).

Professor can ask for NDA on pieces of his teaching material. Imagine many classes on business or law use-cases that might be on ongoing cases or certain non-critical issues with engineering consulting that professors might refer to so they can help the students without revealing too many details but still subject to the much broader NDAs professor have with such firms.
However, if the professor simply is blanket-bombing the full content of his lectures without offering an alternative on other textbooks or lectures with an NDA then it will be problematic. However, such an NDA will not carry so much weight when it comes to enforcing and penalizing the breachers anyway in the court of law. I should add I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice, but something I heard a lot from people who have gone through it.
All being said, as other responses mention, it is generally a terrible practice to bring in those red tapes to the academic setting for personal gains.

I'll take the minority stand.
NDAs are now a standard in the startup ecosystem. Getting students readied for this reality may have been an unintended result of the professor's request.
I have come across a professor who was conducting sponsored research. He could describe the intent of algorithm he was developping, but was not allowed to describe the solution he was implementing.
The ability or willingness for professors or students to require or sign NDAs can widen the scope of university corporation cross collaborations where protecting a competitive advantage is a requirement.
I can see how some ideas may need time to be refined. In this case the professor would provide a peek in his research yet to be completed or even validated.
I would sign up the agreement knowing the book publishing would release me from the NDA terms.

Well, maybe don't charge tuition, etc., then?

@ paul garrett Can you consider that when universities start to partner with corporations, NDAs are meant to preserve a competitive advantage?
Won't students benefit when corporations and universities start overlapping?

While I can see situations in which an NDA would be appropriate under the circumstances you describe, it would have to be narrowly tailored to a specific need in a way that mainly benefits student learning. For example, an NDA specifically to protect the privacy of research subjects could be reasonable because it allows the student the learning experience of participating in research. But the benefit here seems to be entirely for the professor: he wants to prohibit his students from making full use of the material they're paying to learn.

@ Zach Lipton Until OP provides the lecture subject and topic and request from the professor further elements to support his reasoning, this question is a shifting target.

Like the writer here, I take a much more nuanced position on the question. It depends on things unsaid. The red herring, however, is the lack of prior warning to students. Nor do I know the alternatives that the students possess.

@Buffy Thanks for pointing to the lack of prior warning component. Would you agree a prospective hirer would appreciate the student taking proactive action to address his concerns?

Not clear to me that students generally benefit from corporatization of universities. Some may. Most won't. It tends to corrupt universities' principles, and leads more to a "trained workforce" rather than "educated population", in my observation, and with all that that entails, ideologically/socially.

@paulgarrett All being considered there are three revenue options upon graduation: entrepreunership, government or corporations. Would it make sense to tailor university culture to prepare students to those outcomes?

@ZachLipton Until OP provides the lecture subject and topic and requests from the professor further elements to qualify the NDA, isn't the question is a shifting target opening to speculation?

Minority stands are not welcome on this kind of site unfortunately.

@ASimpleAlgorithm Thanks for your comment triggering a long-winded reasonning and simple conclusion. The very behaviour exemplified in the upvoted answers stands as the best support for requesting NDAs. The outlyers customary with original thought wish to make a living producing just that. Those devoid of, demand the free labour of the former...


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Can I submit an abstract with a dual affiliation even if one of the two institutions has not contributed to the research submitted?
I need to submit two abstracts in a conference on behalf of two different institutions. The profile information of the abstract submission system provides only one institution as the primary one. During abstract submission, I am able to report a second affiliation.
How should I deal with this situation. I thought to create two login accounts, but then I am afraid if both abstracts accepted, I will need to register twice.
Alternatively, I thought to include both affiliations in the abstracts and have as the first one my current affiliation. What is the common practice in this case?

Ask the conference chair or the program chair. I doubt that there is a "common practice" for a rare situation.

Thank you very much! you are right, it is the best to check with the program chair. I have just emailed, let see what he will reply...


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MA thesis without a research question
I am currently trying to defend my second MA degree. I got my first one from the university of Warsaw (Poland), where I graduated summa cum laude, so I always thought, I had some idea of how to write a thesis. At this new university however (it's in Kazakhstan, but it follows a curriculum that's leaning towards that of what's considered to be a typical US university), I've been told that my thesis is no good, as it's in the wrong format, has not research question and is generally bad.
Now, I'm aware that this thesis is certainly not a masterpiece, it was written during a lockdown when I had little access to literature, so the literature review part of the thesis is merely 20 pages long.
However the most confusing part for me was that of this "research question" matter. I've been told that there isn't one, to which I replied "that's because I didn't ask any question".
My thesis is describing the lack of certain aspects of ESL education in Kazakhstan, including a survey in which teachers and students were asked whether those missing aspects should be included in the curriculum or whether they find them irrelevant.
I've written my first thesis in the exact same way, and I was told it was fine.
My question is, is there any way that I can get this though a defense without completely rewriting it?

This is more or less impossible to answer without knowing the details of the field, the thesis, and the university standards. And, most importantly: what the advisor / committee thinks. I assume that "you were told" means by your advisor, if that is true that most likely means you need to change your work until they are satisfied.

What would happen when we said you did not have to? You would show that post to your advisor, and suddenly your advisor changes her/his opinion because some random person on the internet said so. That does not sound that likely... So the short answer is that your advisor determines what is acceptable or not, so if your advisor says you need to rewrite your thesis, then you need to rewrite your thesis.

"so the literature review part of the thesis is merely 20 pages long" Why do you think that that is relevant? Is the quality of a literature review measured in pages? It is much more important to write a good and coherent literature review (and the structure imposed by a research question helps writing a coherent text), then write a long literature review.

Well, firstly, I don't have an advisor (long story); I've been told about that research question thing by other members of the faculty. Then, no, I don't think that anyone would change their mind because of what people post here. What I wanted to know is whether this way of writing a thesis is a global standard or not, because I already wrote one without a specific research question. I just don't know much about formal requirements.

It seems to me you already have a research question and you simply need to make it explicit, such as: "What aspects of ESL education in Kazakhstan are absent [subpar, under represented, etc.] as compared to xxx countries [yyy standards, etc.], and to what extent is their absence considered significant by Kazakhstan teachers and students?"

Formal requirements are set by your institution. So if you want to know what the requirements are you need to ask your institution.

Someone needs to grade your work. So even if you don't have someone you call an advisor, there is still someone doing the grading. If that someone who does the grading says your thesis needs to be rewritten, then you need to rewrite the thesis.

Disclaimer: I'm in STEM, not the humanities, and I'm in the UK. But the idea of "research questions" (or, alternatively, research aims) comes up in all our student theses.
I usually define a project as having three parts:

Find a problem (or ask a question)
Propose (or find) a solution (or find an answer)
Evaluate your solution (how "correct" is the answer?)

But there is another way a thesis can be structured:

Find a solution
Propose a potential problem
Evaluate the extent of the problem and propose/highlight new research directions to solve it.

My thesis is describing the lack of certain aspects of ESL education in Kazakhstan, including a survey in which teachers and students were asked whether those missing aspects should be included in the curriculum or whether they find them irrelevant.

This is good. It sounds like you've found a solution and have identified a potential problem with it. And it sounds like you've evaluated that problem, too. So, your research question might be something like "Is the lack of certain aspects of ESL education in Kazakhstan problematic for users of the educational services?". Or, if you want to avoid a closed question: "How problematic to service users is the lack of certain aspects of ESL education in Kazakhstan?". Defining it as a question makes your research suitably cautious. Maybe there isn't a problem at all, and your research saves someone else from proposing a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Maybe the problem is massive and obvious and everyone knows about it but no one has written it down.
You have your research question at the start of your thesis, then at the end, you reflect on it. What is the answer to your research question? How well have you answered it? Everything in your thesis should be driven towards answering your research question (or questions), and that will help to avoid going off topic.
----- Edit -----
Just editing to add: it already sounds like you have a research question (even if you didn't know it), and it sounds like your thesis is written on topic to support your research question. A huge re-write is possibly not necessary, but at least top and tail the whole thing and each individual chapter with sections on what this means for your research question. At the start, say why this chapter relates to your question, at the end say how this partially answers your question. It'll give the document more focus and it'll keep the reader on track, too.

I like the three step schedule!

Thanks @henning--reinstateMonica! It saves me asking "What are you going to do? Why will you do that? How will you know if it's worked?". You wouldn't believe how many people ignore "evaluation" when it's probably one of the most important parts.

In all situations that I am aware of (social sciences, Western Europe), almost every student paper and certainly every thesis needs a research question. Deciding on the research question is a crucial and early part of the project and should be done in close coordination with your supervisor. In fact, when I supervise BA and MA theses, I spend a lot of time and work with my supervisee on exploring and then narrowing and pinning down the exact research question.
It's not unlikely that your supervisor applies a similar standard, but only they can tell you for sure. I'm surprised that this topic hasn't come up much earlier in the supervision process. The fact that you don't have a supervisor (as you mention in a comment) is very bad and unusual. Get one now. You are entitled to at least formal supervision.
What you should do next is talk to your supervisor and ask them if you can introduce a research question ex post, and if so, how. In terms of efficiency this is much less desirable than starting with a clear research question right away. However, it is only natural that in the early, exploratory stage of your work, the research question will change somewhat and needs to be at least reframed. Moreover, your thesis most likely does not completely lack a research question, it's just implicit in your discussion and needs to be made explicit, placed up-front, and motivated by a rationale. After you've done this, you will have to make (probably many) adjustments to the text, so that every sentence is part of an answer to your research question. Thus, if your supervisor is on board with this approach, not all is lost. Of course, there is a lot of work ahead, but it's easier than starting from scratch.

That was my original thought. But is it mandatory to make it explicit?

Again, your supervisor's opinion is what matters. But yes, it's a widely shared academic norm that every paper needs to have a clear and explicit research question.

Sounds to me your research question is clear. You are attempting to quantify or qualify a deficiency and examine the attitude about that deficiency. Now finish it off with the possible consequences of that deficiency and wrap it up.
You are way ahead of many grad students, who will not even bother doing a lit review.


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How do I help minimize interruptions during group meetings as a student?
The project I work on has numerous members -- several graduate students, a couple of postdocs, and my advisor. We meet every other week to discuss progress and update one another on our status. Almost to a point these meetings run over, as we continuously find ourselves in tangential discussions.
One effect that I've noticed from these tangents is that certain individuals in the group tend to get interrupted more than others. Specifically, there's a single female postdoc (hereafter referred to as postdoc A) in the group, and it seems to me that she gets interrupted more often than anyone else.
There are multiple guilty parties here -- my advisor, the other postdoc (who is male and is hereafter referred to as postdoc B), even my labmates and I (the other graduate students). We (my labmates and I) have noticed this and are making a strong effort to no longer interrupt postdoc A while she is speaking. My advisor and postdoc B seem to be oblivious to this, and often times will discuss potential ideas and pitfalls about postdoc A's research during her own presentation.
I'm guessing there may be multiple factors at play -- issues of gender, societal norms (postdocs A and B and my advisor are all from different countries outside the US, while my labmates and I are all from the US), power dynamics, etc. And I also realize that I'm a bit biased here -- I work most closely with postdoc A, so I have a sense of loyalty toward her especially. But it's gotten out of hand in my opinion, and I'm not sure as a student how to best assist her.
This post has some suggestions for students and advisors on how to conduct effective group meetings, but it doesn't directly address this issue. I'd appreciate any advice the Academia S.E. community has on how I, as a student, can best support this postdoc during group meetings.

Does she dislike being interrupted in group meetings? Some people don't. (Personally, when I am the presenter in group meetings, I want others to discuss ideas and issues having to do with my research - that's why I give internal group presentations in the first place. Often the most productive meetings are the ones where I never get to finish my presentation because of all the discussion.)

@ff524 I should have mentioned - I have talked to her about it, and while she doesn't mind questions, she does mind the long tangents where she gets interrupted even when she tries to speak.

None of the answers so far, including my own, address the issue of professors with wandering minds.  I'm not sure that can be prevented.

This happens in all kinds of contexts and I would leave gender issues out. I have seen females trampling all over the rest of the group (males and females). I suggest the helpful advice of @JeffL, and stay mostly neutral. Keep in mind, though, that some people may be a bit vagrating and that can also tire out listeners. I'm not saying this is the case here, it may help to make a point of staying focused and compact when presenting which can limit disgression (depending on which level of discussion is desired).

This sort of thing has roots way beyond academia.  There is a lot about the dynamics of women having difficulty being spoken over in meetings (though I imagine it could apply without respect to gender too, based on differing levels of assertiveness).  Maybe a few things to try:

When someone, even your advisor, talks over her, say "Wait, what were you about to say?" addressed to her, so it's not directly confrontational toward the interrupter.  This is as opposed to something like "Wait, let postdoc A finish" addressed to the interrupter, which is more confrontational.  That is, assuming you want to avoid a confrontation with your advisor.
Mention it casually to her after a meeting.  She might appreciate and/or be emboldened by the support.  Something like "What was it you were going to finish saying before soandso took over?"  This way you show you're both interested in what she had to say and also noticed that she was talked over in the meeting.
Wait until the interrupter finishes, then bring the focus of the meeting back to postdoc A.  "Sorry, what were you about to say earlier?"  or "Hey, postdoc A, what was it you were saying about X a minute ago?"  This is probably the safest thing to try, and if you do it enough the others might even get the point!

Great answer from Jeff L.  Related to idea #1, it can help to look at postdoc A.
If Postdoc A is comfortable doing this, she can try some interruption deflection techniques.  Here's an example.  Suppose she got interrupted while she was trying to say, "What we found most interesting about these results --".  The trick is to repeat just the beginning part several times in a row until the others stop talking: "What we found most -- what we found most -- what we found most interesting about these results was etc."  You don't have to raise your volume a lot for this to work, but it does help to use a slightly higher pitch than normal, remain very calm, and kind of extend that last word "most" a little extra.
A person who interrupts is successful with his interruption if someone else responds to what he says.  What I'm getting from your question is that Dr. Prof and Postdoc B provide these responses to each other.  That could be hard for a bystander like you to interfere with.
I wonder, since you work closely with Postdoc A, if you and she could make some co-presentations.  It would take careful preparation, agreeing ahead of time on your content and your outline, and who's going to present what.
I have no way of knowing if things have reached the point where you'd like to ask the university for help, but if they have, it might be worth talking to your Title IX coordinator about what's going on.

I do not know about the culture of your research environment, but in my experience, the purpose of group meetings is discussion.  Presentations get interrupted frequently, and the advantages and disadvantages of particular research are discussed bluntly and openly within the group.  If A is interrupted and B is not, then that may mean B is boring.
It may be that some members of your group are interrupting inappropriately, possibly for sexist reasons.  But don't assume interruptions are necessarily bad.

I don't disagree, but I've discussed it with this postdoc and she's said she's upset and a bit hurt by how frequently it happens. And by the fact that even during her own presentation, she's interrupted while trying to answer questions about her own research.

If presenter A can finish his speech and the discussion starts after it and presenter B is discussed within their speech, it is neitherr polite neither advantageous to anyone (except for interrupters ego). Another question is whether the interruption keeps the topic the interuptee was talking about or the topic is changed to something completely different. Or does the discussion include interruptee or it is discussion within the audience only?

@Crowley: The discussion becomes audience only (generally between my adviser and the interruptee) because unfortunately postdoc A (the presenter) can't get a word in edgewise. I'm encouraging her to be more assertive about it (and sharing the advice I get here with her), but it's obviously easier said than done. (I'm loud and assertive by nature lol, so it comes fairly easy to me -- something I try to always keep in mind.)

@tonysdg Would there be problem if the interuptee would continue with the speech regardless the (closed) discussion? Maybe continue in discussion with you.

@Crowley: The particular example I'm thinking of from this past week was supposed to be a group meeting, where we were all sharing our work. The problem is that it started as a question that the adviser asked postdoc A, but postdoc B started answering, and then the adviser began discussing with postdoc B. (I don't mean to paint my adviser or postdoc B in a negative light, I'm just thoroughly frustrated with the behavior.)

@tonysdg Your adviser want to be informed and B answered their questions. Does B do it to any other members, or just to A? If they do, interrupt them.