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Does it seems that my supervisor was reluctant to let me go for conference?
I have already finished the first draft of my thesis and now I'm reviewing chapter by chapter. A few days ago I submitted my abstract to a conference and was accepted. I emailed my supervisor and asked for permission to go for conference, but she didn't answer. From my experiences of working with her, she didn't answer means she didn't want to answer and she didn't agree.
I am confused at the moment why it happened like this. She always spoke highly of my work and told me that one of my results chapter can already been made into a journal article. So I'm wondering if I should ask her before submitting my abstract?
Do I have to ask my supervisor first and submit the abstract? Do I include my supervisor's name in the abstract? I'm working in the field of humanities, and I collected and analysed the data, but she involved in the research design in my early stage and now she is giving me feedback on my writing.
So I really want to know if it's just she didn't want me to go for conference or my unethical behaviour offend her? Shall I ask her in the supervisory meeting again for this issue to figure out what's the problem?

You are asking for an interpretation of an action (actually an inaction) of someone we don't know. You are much better placed to make a guess, but you should really just ask. In person.

Why do you need anyone's permission to go to a conference?  Just go.

@JeffE OP needs permission to name her as co-author (supervisor was involved in the work) and didn't ask. Without that, there is no submission and, without submission, likely, no funding.

@CaptainEmacs Sure. But that’s not the same tings as permission to go to the conference. Permission does not imply funding. Attendance does not imply speaking.

@JeffE "Do I have to ask my supervisor first and submit the abstract? Do I include my supervisor's name in the abstract?" - I think it is pretty unambiguous that she wanted not just to go, but to present this work.

@CaptainEmacs  OP is conflating attendance, presentation, and funding in their question, which strongly suggests that OP is conflating those things in their mind as well.

she didn't answer means she didn't want to answer and she didn't agree.

She may not have answered for many reasons.

So I'm wondering if I should ask her before submitting my abstract?
  Do I have to ask my supervisor first and submit the abstract?

If you want her to fund your attendance, then yes.

Do I include my supervisor's name in the abstract? I'm working in the field of humanities, and I collected and analysed the data, but she involved in the research design in my early stage and now she is giving me feedback on my writing.

It sounds like she's a co-author, so yes.

So I really want to know if it's just she didn't want me to go for conference or my unethical behaviour offend her?

Again, she may not have answered for many reasons, but you require her permission to list her as a co-author and you may require her funds to attend, so you should have probably asked her first.

Shall I ask her in the supervisory meeting again for this issue to
  figure out what's the problem?

Yes.

I don't use her funds cuz the school provides the funds but it requires supervisor's support...

@superwoman0723 Getting permission for funds is therefore less important and probably depends upon the school. Permission is still necessary to include her name as a co-author


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Workshop: What to put on CV when you had multiple roles?
Part of my post-doc has involved organizing a series of workshops. At some of these workshops, I end up with many roles. As an example, for the most recent workshop I wrote the proposal to get the funding, served as organizer, gave a talk/tutorial related to my research, and gave a (teaching) tutorial on some general skills useful in the field. (These workshops are more like schools: teaching grad students and post-docs about best practices.)
My question is: What parts should end up on my CV, and where? It feels ridiculous if some workshops show up 3 or 4 times (under headings for funded proposals, workshop organization, and talks). On the other hand, it was all a lot of work.
In addition, there were some workshops where I only gave a talk, and some where I was an organizer, but didn't write the funding proposal. It seems weird to include a talk from the one where I wasn't an organizer, and not include a talk that served the same purpose when I was an organizer.
What's the standard/recommended practice in this case? For context, my work is at the border of chemistry and physics, so to the extent that a lot of CV stuff is domain-specific, those are the relevant domains.

Who was the audience?  If you give a talk about your research to people from your university, that is very different from giving a talk about your research to people from other universities.

Academic CVs regularly have a funding section, maybe list such activities there, rather than under event organisation.

Maybe you can create a heading for "Workshop Experience", "Workshop Facilitated" or something along these lines. Then include all your workshop experiences there. You may have responsibilities such as:

Wrote the proposal for the initial funding and organization of the workshop
Gave a talk on ... (if needed to include the talk's name)
Reviewing submissions
Serving on committees (or lead sessions)
Coordinating and organizing events and conferences
Making ...
...

You may also modify the format above and in front of each activity, name the workshops where you did that task.

Disclaimer: I am not from your field so YMMV.
Assuming that you are applying for an academic position, the first order of business in any CV should be awards/research, followed by teaching experience, followed by professional service. What you're describing sounds like it falls under professional service. Did you have an official title in these workshops? If so, I'd list it as
Workshop of Physical Chemistry

Title1 (2017)
Title2 (2018)

and so on. If you chaired a workshop, and it's a known/prestigious workshop in your field, then just knowing your role would give people all the information they need (in my field chairs manage the program, decide the schedule, invite speakers etc. so I don't need to start detailing my roles, it's common knowledge). If it's not a very well-known workshop or doesn't follow the standard in your field for some reason, I would either not list it since it's not sufficiently important, or perhaps (if you feel it's important enough) say one sentence.
I would not put teaching roles in professional workshops as part of your teaching experience (unless they're really a summer school mini-course). You can reflect ad consolidate these things in your teaching statement.
Good luck!

Group funding and organizer into a single title, list them under the service section of your CV (which will also include reviewing activities, for instance), and describe your role there.
Whether you list research and tutorial talks depends on whether you have a presentations section. Both can be listed if so. Alternatively, both could be listed in the publications section, if they were accompanied by manuscripts that appeared in any workshop proceedings.
As careers progress, presentation sections get dropped and  invited talks sections get added. (If either or both of your talks were invited talks, then list them in such a section, they're considered prestigious.)

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Minor contribution to software publication: To coauthor or not to coauthor?
I've been invited to be a coauthor on a software publication for an open source program where I contributed a minor bugfix.
My contribution was small, and I certainly wouldn't have been offended if I hadn't been included in the author list. But they've chosen to invite all contributors, and I'm trying to figure out whether I should accept.
On one hand, I could do with a bump to my paper count (post-doc looking for TT), and this is a project I'm proud to have contributed to. (I've joked that in code-multiplied-by-computers, my 2-line contribution to this takes more drive space in the world than my 10000-line domain-specific program).
On the other hand, I wouldn't have invited me as a coauthor. Also, I feel weird that a paper with such a minor contribution may end up near the top of my most-cited, and I'm not sure how that will appear to the job market.
Is there a downside to joining the author list for such a minor contribution?
Is it unethical to benefit from someone else's bar for coauthorship being much lower than mine?
(Looking at other invited coauthors, I see some people with similar contributions going either way; yes or no.)

If you don't feel like your contribution was large enough to warrant authorship, you could ask to be credited in the acknowledgements section of the paper instead.

The principal authors may have invited you in hopes that this will motivate you to contribute more in the future. That seems like a smart move to me :-)

Following from @WolfgangBangerth: Their motivation may include their desire for you to help write the publication and doing so may eliminate your concerns that you haven't contributed enough.

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Including part of master's thesis in one's dissertation
I just want to make sure that I understand this issue correctly. My situation is that I developed a chapter of my master's thesis as a chapter in my PhD dissertation. It is a substantial revision but they do have some overlaps.
I did some research online about self-plagiarism. Here is something I find that is confusing:
(1) Many people say that if my dissertation includes part(s) of my master's thesis, I need to cite them correctly otherwise it would be self-plagiarism.
(2) I also see many people publish chapters of their phd or master's thesis as single articles directly without being criticized as self-plagiarism.
To me, this obviously shows that the reason why most people take case (1) to be self-plagiarism is not about copyright of the master's thesis. If it were about it, then the case (2) should have been self-plagiarism too.
The most reasonable conclusion for me seems that case (1) is not self-plagiarism, but something to avoid nevertheless. Because one wants the PhD dissertation to be something new and something representing one's doctoral research. But if so, I see no reason not to include a substantially revised chapter in my master's thesis in the dissertation, because the substantial revision represents my doctoral research (and my committee agrees).
Am I right? Is there anything I missed here? Thank you.

For case 2 in your question, one just says somewhere in the new article that it is taken from the dissertation, with a citation of it. The point of it is to permit the reader to know the complete context. Copyright is a completely separate issue from plagiarism.

As others have said, it really does depend on the policies at your institution and where you earned the master's vs where you are completing the PhD. My understanding is that we're typically allowed to include revised versions of our theses and relevant graduate course work from the PhD granting institution in the dissertation. You wouldn't need to cite it unless it has been published (see below). These can be thought of as early drafts of ideas that eventually made it into a dissertation chapter. If you earned the degree elsewhere, there's a pretty good chance it made it into a searchable database, so you can't copy and paste. If you are substantially revising the thesis and turning it into a single chapter, then I would add a foot note that says an earlier version of the chapter was submitted as a master's thesis and cite it. Same if the dissertation is a series of published articles. Just note where they were published, cite, and move on. You probably don't need to cite individual page numbers unless you want to do some commentary on where the content has changed substantially.
I should note that, if you are very early on in your PhD, there's a pretty good chance the submitted dissertation will have none of your master's work. I have 2 masters with 2 theses, and I originally intended to include substantial parts of include both in the dissertation. By the end, the writing style and the ideas were so under developed compared to my more recent work that they had to be dropped.

In most systems, you can't submit the same work for two different degrees/exams. You should cite your MA thesis and develop new research that builds upon it and goes beyond it.
You'll have to check with your home institution for the exact rules that apply to you but you need to be doing NEW research for your PhD.

The best answer to your question in your specific case is to check the guidelines for PhD examinations. In these rules, it is established what will be considered relevant for passing the PhD exam, which includes submitting a thesis. Every respectable university has these rules.
If you cite parts of your Masters thesis, clearly state where you do so.
Some universities allow cumulative theses, so plagiarism is explicitly 'allowed' for them. Some only allow a monograph, where plagiarism is explicitly forbitten, i.e. direct copy pasting. In the latter case, you are still (often) allowed to use your published results, if you rewrite everything and present it in a flow in the monograph.

> so plagiarism is explicitly 'allowed' for them -- You surely mean "self-plagiarism!


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Some of the values in Table is wrong in my published paper
In my survey paper (50 pages), I directly quote the results of performance from related papers. However, several numbers are wrongly recorded. My survey focuses on the introudction and summarization of current methods and the performance analysis takes very little portion (2 pages). Also, these mistakes do not affect the summarization in the survey.
Do I need to correct them by a erratum？

Probably not. Ask the editor of the journal that published the paper.


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The aggregated chance of admissions to top program in the humanities
Let's look at admissions to top PhD programs in English, where it seems like the top 10 schools each receive about 300 applications for an average of about 6 spots (these are approximations only). Across this sampling of schools, assume that there are 600 unique applicants. If all schools select different candidates, which admittedly is very likely not the case, the chances of being admitted to a top 10 program bounce from something on the order of 2% to more like 10%.
How overly optimistic is this calculation?

Interesting question, but I'm having trouble with the premise. Super-qualified people have a relatively high chance of admission; unqualified people have ~0% chances.I suppose you're asking what the odds are for an "average" applicant, but an "average" applicant by definition won't be admitted to a program with a < 50% admission rate (even if there were such a thing as an average applicant).

I think the basic idea of the calculation is fine.  It's actually irrelevant that some superstars will get accepted to multiple programs. The schools know that and compensate with mechanisms such as (1) sending out more acceptances than slots, knowing some percentage will decline, (2) waiting lists, late admission decisions, and early admission encouragement to fill their remaining slots.
So from a practical standpoint, looking at the entire sum of slots filled versus applicants makes sense.  Of course details may be slightly more complicated.  But the basic insight applies.
Edit:  Yes, cag51 is right that your qualifications matter.  This is not just picking colored balls out of bags.  However, even here the 10% versus 2% point makes sense.  (Consider that if a perfect selection process is run, you need to be in the top 10%, not the top 2%.)


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What is the ethical way to request Professor X to invite Professor Y as a contributor to our work-in-progress research?
I have been working as a research engineer with Professor X, who specializes in data mining, for almost past ten months. During this time, we have produced an AI publication. However, my contract with Professor X is scheduled to end in mid-April, as he does not have the resources to extend it further. Despite this, our work together is not complete, and we are aiming to submit another paper to NIPS, with the deadline falling around mid-May (usually).
Fortunately, I have been able to secure an offer from Professor Y, who works in computer vision at the same university, to join as a research engineer starting mid-April for the next six months. Professor Y expects at least one significant publication during this period. However, he has expressed concern that since my work with Professor X is ongoing, I may only be able to dedicate limited energy to his projects during the period between mid-April and mid-May.
I understand Professor Y's concern, as maintaining focus on both projects simultaneously could be challenging. During discussions with Professor Y, I sensed that he would be open to the idea of co-authoring the NIPS submission with Professor X, which could help alleviate some of these concerns.
Given this context, I am seeking guidance on the ethical way to request Professor X to invite Professor Y as a contributor to our second paper. One possibility is for Professor Y to provide some data (images) for us to use as motivation or application examples for my algorithm, which would strengthen the collaboration between Professor X and Professor Y. Alternatively, Professor Y could assist with proofreading and ensuring the clarity of the article.
The whole point of this exercise to make sure that Professor Y hires me and I don't have to side hustle (and hence take extra stress) for the NIPS submission. I am sure many people would have gone through such kind of situation in academia.
To provide more context, I plan to obtain one recommendation letter from Professor X and one from Professor Y for my PhD applications. Therefore, I need to ensure that they are both satisfied and willing to write these letters.

What do you see as the ethical aspect of this being? It sounds like a matter of diplomacy in which three adults gain something.

Personally, I would meet face to face with X and first talk about your situation and the dilemma. Then instead of proposing collaboration directly, ask X about the advisability of this step. You can (should) say that it will help you greatly with the funding you need to continue working.
Don't forget to discuss Y's reservations, nor your desire to continue with X on their project. It is truly a dilemma and there may be other options that X can devise and that you don't know of. Posing it as a question rather than an "ask" might get them thinking broadly rather than focusing too much on one option.
Presumably X and Y know one another. You may not know of their relationship, however. There are some people who can't/won't work with certain individuals.
You will also need to have a corresponding discussion with Y.


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How quickly should an assignment be returned to students?
As a student, it frustrates me when a professor gives us an assignment with a deadline, but then waits a month (or sometimes more!) before returning the assignment to us.
I realize that professors are busy people and are often teaching many classes, but it feels unfair when I as a student have consequences for not meeting my deadline, but the professor doesn't have any consequences when they don't grade our first test until after we take our second test.
I want to hear the perspectives of professors and other academics: should professors have deadlines for returning graded assignments (beyond just the end of the semester)? If so, what would reasonable deadlines be for different assignments? I'm sure, after all, that papers and tests take longer to grade than pass/fail reflection papers. Do other universities already have systems like this in place?
I realize that waiting to grade assignments does give the professor a chance to show mercy to students who sometimes turn in their assignments late and that I've been a beneficiary of this mercy before, but the fairness of that to students who do put in the time to finish an assignment on time is a whole other issue that I'm sure is covered elsewhere on this site. I just want to hear from others what their perspective on assignments being graded late is.
I also know that some larger universities employ teacher assistants to manage this part of the job, so how does this effect the issue?

What field is this? What sort of assignments?

Depends on the class size, existence of graders, length of the assignment, how urgent it is, etc. This question is impossible to answer.

It sounds like you're framing this as unfair because different rules apply to the teacher than to you. But class isn't some medieval duel in which your teacher challenges you to an equal fight for some weapon of choice. Your job is to learn according to the rules the teacher specifies. Your teacher's job is to teach. Which is not at all constrained by the same rules. For example you may not be allowed to use a calculator but your teacher is...! You may not be allowed to google your homework answers while your teacher may be using google too find suitable homework questions etc.

There is such a requirement at my institution - currently coursework marks and feedback has to be returned within 20 working days, and there is pressure for this to be reduced.
However, if you have a large class and a (necessarily) complex coursework then it can be very difficult to turn around the marking in that timespan.  I try to avoid doing nothing but marking all day everyday for weeks because it is difficult to maintain the required concentration/fairness when you get tired.
One solution is to have more than one marker, but that introduces variability and the need for second marking/moderation, which has to be done afterwards, and that means parallel marking by N markers is no where near N times faster.  The moderation has to be done by one person (for consistency) and the more markers you have, the greater the proportion of the total time must be reserved for moderation.
Another solution is to have purely summative assessment (mark but no feedback - e.g. most formal exams) which can make marking more efficient.  Unfortunately there are some topics where this is not the case (e.g. marking code style/structure in programming).  It also means that the students don't get feedback that might help them improve, however some students never look at feedback, just the marks (back in the day when feedback was written on paper, but the marks available on-line, a fair fraction of scripts were never collected).
There is also the problem with student having extensions due to "extenuating circumstances" (e.g. health problems).  They can't have a submission date that is after the coursework and feedback is returned to the students as that potentially gives them an unfair academic advantage.  So reducing the time available for returning marks also reduces the scope for accommodating student's extenuating circumstances.
On the other hand, where feedback is given, it needs to be given in time for students to have the opportunity to do something with it (whether they take that opportunity is another matter) and for the coursework to still be reasonably fresh in their minds.  For one of my programming courses, the lab session immediately after the first coursework is returned to the students is reserved for them to implement the suggestions in the feedback and get further feedback on the improvments from the teaching assistants.  This isn't always feasible, but in this case the lab session is the first of the following semester, so it works quite nicely.
So if students want marks/feedback sooner, it is likely to compromise marking and feedback quality, as a lot of work goes into it already, and it takes time to do well.  I should mention that when the deadline for marking was introduced, there was no commensurate reduction in expectations for the other activities, such as research and administration that I also have to do.  Often faculty time is treated as infinitely fungible and inexhaustible - but it isn't!

I'm leaving the question if this question is on-topic to others.
Let's consider the question of why there are deadlines for students for handing in assignments:

it introduces a time point at which assignments can be discussed in class
it helps with making sure that the assignment parts are "done" before the exam (which has to be scheduled to a fixed date by the core concept of an exam)
it also forces students that are intrinsically motivated to invest time in the course's content early so that they have a better chance of following the lectures

There are surely some more that I've forgotten. Some of these reasons are such that the deadlines are actually required to make the course organization work. Let's now consider the question why it would be helpful for the student to have feedback by a certain deadline (or just "early" in general):

it helps with finding out early if the student is still on the right track to learning
it provides feedback earlier so that the feedback can be "processed" when the concepts are still a bit fresh in the students' minds.

So in both cases, deadlines have a role. But what would happen if the professors have (more) strict deadlines? Then they would suddenly take priority over other tasks of the professors, which many students are not aware of:

writing research grants - deadlines for other tasks increase the risk of missing deadlines here
administration - other things are likely to become late.
publication deadlines are more likely to be missed

The question here is if the positive impact on the students getting feedback early is worth the downsides of a worse performance on these tasks. And it should be noted that different institutions have different answers to this. Some for instance have a maximum span for exam grading, others don't. And homework grading is likely not seen as a priority in many cases.

Also, students need to figure out which classes they have lower grades in and which classes they need to prioritize studying for. If I don't have back my grades, I don't know which tests and assignments I need to spend more time on to boost my grade in the class.

@2br-2b While of course students have an interest in doing that, it is debatable whether allocating learning time with the primary purpose of grade boosting rather than maximizing the learning progress is an interest that is legitimate enough to the point of having to be considered when balancing when pros and cons of whether professors should have deadlines for grading or not. It can be argued that the combination of "feedback if the student is one right track" already mentioned and the self-feedback after handing in a solution (often, you know if you submitted good stuff or not) are enough.

This question as formulated may be opinion-based. Still, I'll take a whack at it.

Should professors have deadlines for returning graded assignments (beyond just the end of the semester)?

Should is a difficult word. Personally, I've long felt that both instructors and students should try to do things right away when possible. There is never a perfect time to do/grade an assignment, and attempting to do it right away will prevent oneself from becoming inundated by deadlines. Both instructors and students seem to have an irrational desire to postpone doing unavoidable work until "the last minute" (or later), which I've never understood.
As a practical matter, I think a policy requiring this would be very hard to enforce. At a major research university (so-called "R1s"), professors are researchers first and teachers second. They have many deadlines: grant proposal deadlines, proposals and reports related to their grants with hard deadlines, presentations that must be prepared for, lectures that must be prepared for, meetings with collaborators at which one must show results, etc. Trying to set a "strict" policy (e.g., return assignments within one week) would rightfully lead to some pushback. Setting a "soft" policy (e.g., return assignments within a week unless you're busy doing something else) would be meaningless; everyone could up with some excuse for being late, and no one wants to tell their colleagues how to manage their time.

If so, what would reasonable deadlines be for different assignments?

As a rule of thumb, I would say that papers and exams should be returned at least a few days before the next one is submitted. Homework should be returned within a few weeks. But again, I am only proposing this as a guideline.

I realize that waiting to grade assignments does give the professor a chance to show mercy to students who sometimes turn in their assignments late

It may make sense for the professor's grading timetable to be intertwined with the late policy. I've suggested this here. But in other cases, the schedule / late policy may have been designed with other considerations in mind, and so these two things are completely unrelated. For example, in a foreign language course, it is essential that students learn the current grammar/vocabulary before moving on, and so due dates should be quite strict regardless of how far behind the professor's grading is.

I also know that some larger universities employ teacher assistants to manage this part of the job, so how does this effect the issue?

Yes, the above reasoning doesn't apply so much to teaching assistants, and perhaps also not to faculty whose primary job is instruction (e.g., at teaching colleges or community colleges). Naively, it seems like stricter policies would make more sense for these institutions (though it's quite possible I'm wrong about this; perhaps someone with more experience at such institutions will correct me).

Many universities (at least in the UK) do have policies about time to feedback. Sometimes they are missed, which sometimes leads to (legitimate) student complaints. Sometimes they are unachievable.

https://www.qualitymatters.org/ The Quality Matters  instructional standards handle the issue by requiring a syllabus statement about assignment (and communication) turnaround times. Such a statement is not a hard commitment, but once it is out there it is typically followed (except for obvious exceptions like illness etc). At my institution there are not requirements for turnaround, but there are institutional norms and I have been questioned by the other faculty if I am outside of the norms.


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Is authorship justified for performing an experiment 7 years ago, which is published? We just used samples from that experiment for a new analysis
7 years ago, a mouse experiment was performed, and samples are still available for further analysis. This mouse experiment is already published with a certain readout. Now, we publish a whole different story, and one supplemental figure stems from the samples of that old experiment, with a new analysis. The new analysis was not performed by the experimenter of the mouse experiment 7 yrs ago. Still the experimenter is a co-author on the new manuscript. Is that valid? I always thought in such a case the paper should be cited in which that experiment was performed, and then of course the person who did the new analysis on the old samples should get co-authorship. But not the experimenter, since credits for performing that experiment were already gained in the other publication?

Do you know that the original author had no participation in the conceptual development of the new paper? In some fields a brief conversation with them might fully justify authorship.

Yes I do, I am first author on that manuscript. The only thing she did is performing the experiment 7 years ago, so she contributed to sample acquisition. It has nothing to do with the current study, as the data analysis on those samples from the old experiment was done by someone else (who is therefore rightfully a co-author).

I'm confused. Who is suggesting she might be an author of the current paper? is it the original author? A supervisor? Or just a quandary in your group?

its my supervisor who is also corresponding author on that current paper. and she is good friends with that co-author whose contribution I question.

Irrespective of ethical rules and proper authorship, see the answer of Peter Jansson, I strongly recommend not getting in to a fight with your supervisor. It leads nowhere good. Don't try to win the battle if it costs you the war.

Was the raw data from the original experiment published alongside it?

The performance/establishment of the experiment is published. And how the samples (which we analyzed again for a different readout for the current study) were prepared.

Just curious: if the given person is a good friend of your supervisor, how do you know they have not discussed topics related to the new paper? I am discussing ongoing research all the times with friends, and often have useful feedback from them. There are circumstances where I would consider coauthorship for signifficant, insightful discussion or idea from people who have never stepped in my lab (especially that it is free and zero effort on my side). Are you sure you want to die on this hill?

Thats true, and while I expect they have discussed at some point the paper (I guess she read it for feedback) I just know that she gave zero "significant" input before writing the manuscript as we all work in the same group and there were lab meetings every week over years where it was possible to give input.

I do not want to die on this hill. I value peoples opinion here a lot. I just thought it was more common to do what is fair and expected some rules that apply to publish, rules I could apply for argumentations. If the situation is like this, I probably won't fight as its not worth it.

It sounds like you are using the actual samples collected 7 years ago, and not just performing an analysis of the results published 7 years ago.  Is that the case?

Yes. Its not a re-analysis. I just took the samples (frozen mouse tissue) and did a whole new analysis on them.

I think what seems a bit unclear here is the "work" required to obtain the samples. Is this months of work to obtain this samples and they are specific to something (say mouses that went though a specific process) or is this a few hours of work and you could have taken any other labs  mouses. In other words, is the preparation of the sample "academic work", i.e. rather unique and takes time?

The co-authorship is not milk: there is no expiration date.

Controversial answer! On one hand, it is great when pithy answers cut through all the extraneous facts; on the other, it can be difficult to understand the reasoning. In any case, we will let the voters decide; please continue the discussion in the chat.

There is nothing controvercial here. Basic sanitaria. There is no need to explain why one needs to wash hands after each use of a bathroom, and do the explanation after each use.

It looks like you have made your decision and now use SE to justify it. Sorry,  I cannot help.  You are risking a lot. Is this paper worth it? Bye!

Data reuse is the norm in several fields and encouraged to replicate results and build on findings. Many journals require that data be made publicly available upon publication. It may also be a funding requirement. If all you are doing is reusing data from a previously published work, it would seem surprising that co-authorship could be expected.
Nature Data is an example of a journal whose sole purpose is the reuse of data. Obviously, co-authorship cannot be demanded from reusing data published here. In addition this stack academia question asks about co-authorship for data reuse with helpful responses with regards funding and data availability.
Whilst @markvs answer is both true and incredibly quotable, I would say building on or completing the unpublished work of somebody is not the same as building on their published work. In the first case, co-authorship would seem entirely fair; whilst citation would seem most fair in the second case.
However, I ultimately agree with what various people have said: it isn't worth getting into a fight over. It may be better to just get the PhD and use this as an 'annoying supervisor' story to swap with other academics.
To paraphrase a great expression, 'annoying supervisor' stories are not milk: they have no-expiration date.

I would like to add that @markvs deserves to be cited for my  joke at the end, but in my opinion does not deserve co-authorship of my answer.

"building on or completing the unpublished work of somebody is not the same as building on their published work" - this is exactly how I feel. I couldn't have phrased better what I actually want to say. Thanks, its good to hear that I'm not the only one thinking that way.

But in this case the data does not seem to be reused from published work. the raw data was never published, but some observations/aspects about them were. So I think this might actually fall closer to using unpublished data than published. To quote one of the comments "The performance/establishment of the experiment is published. And how the samples (which we analyzed again for a different readout for the current study) were prepared."

Data reuse is something entirely different than the analysis of physical samples. Physical samples (by their vary nature) are in limited supply and cannot be made publicly available.

While I think that authorship is not warranted in this case, you would be wise to submit (meekly) to your supervisor. The answer of Peter Jansson suggests why authorship is unlikely warranted.
But fighting with your supervisor over one paper isn't worth the pain it can cause if it spoils a relationship that you need to get your career started. There will be other, future, papers provided that you don't get sabotaged by a vindictive supervisor who seems to be exploiting students for an external friendship.
Protect your own long term interests. Live to fight another day. Sorry to have to say these things, but students have little recourse to such abuse.

I agree that this is a bit of a gray area. By the strictest definitions, it's quite possible they do not qualify for authorship. However, your supervisor thinks they do, and it really doesn't cost you anything to include them.
I also think you're likely underselling the contributions of the person who performed these experiments. Collecting data is...well, hard. Even when you are using well-reported basic techniques that seem to be used in labs everywhere, there is a lot of effort to bring any technique "in-house".
The person performing the experiments 7 years ago likely shaped how the data was recorded, the specific procedures undertaken, the choice of reagents and other materials. They may have made your entire project much easier than you realize. In a casual survey of other graduate students in biology, most of us agreed that all the data in our theses, collected over typically 5-6 years, probably could have been done in just 6 months if we had known what we were doing from the start. The other 4-5 years was just figuring it out and working out the kinks. All these things can be thought of as intellectual contributions that don't see the immediate link to your current paper, but your supervisor does. Just citing the older paper doesn't entirely capture the weight of these contributions. It's quite different if their work was done in another lab, and you're citing their overall methodology but still needing to do the work to replicate it in a different lab.
Authorship guidelines typically require authors to have some other contributions, though, besides just collecting data. At a minimum, they are expected to review and approve the final manuscript. My overall advice is that you should insist that they do this added step to be included as an author, rather than arguing they should not be an author by not providing them this opportunity.
It's also worth recognizing that in biology, there is no dilution of your work by including other authors. Often, the middle authors on a paper have made very minor contributions to the final work, limited to one figure of the paper, one verification step in the methods, etc, but nonetheless the paper would be incomplete without their addition. Having one more middle author will not reduce the "credit" you get for publishing the paper as first author.

The supplemental figure seemed to require the existing samples prepared by the former student ( so it seems to me the the supplemental figure was not based simply on reanalysis of public data in prior paper.) I assume that asking some other group to send their old samples for reanalysis would include discussion of co-authorship.

@Carol Probably it would, yes.

In any case, does the OP want an advisor who supports crediting her former group members when the group uses their samples or not?  When OP leaves there also will be projects where he has left samples or results that may be further tweaked into minor supporting pieces in future group pubs. Just because a group member leaves and the current members don't remember him isn't a reason to treat his old samples as 'public domain' within the group.  I think the advisor is showing by example how to do things right. (+1  @BryanKrause answer because it notes that the OP is underselling the prior work)

This answer hits all the points: the question author is unlikely to be able to judge objectively, they lose very little from acquiescing, fighting with their supervisor over a questionable issue will sour relations necessarily, and, critically, mouse work is really hard and should not be undersold.

I do not know where you get the assumption from that I underestimate mouse work and do not appreciate the work done.

+1 for pointing out that it can be very hard to judge "old" intellectual contributions. In particular, someone may do an experiment as part of their project and as a side line develop an idea of an additional line of research which may be followed with those samples or data. Thus having an intellectual contribution to the outline of a project that someone else get to work on years later. This would be one scenario where OP doesn't know about an intellectual contribution that has actually happened, but their supervisor does.

One way to view this issue is to apply the "Vancouver rules" (e.g. as described by the ICMJE,  International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. These recommendations outline what is required to become a co-author on a scientific manuscript. Note the "AND" in the list of requirements. It is clear that not all agree with these recommendations but it is also clear that authorship is given for the wrong reasons in many cases. In your case the authorship could be considered a "honorary or guest authorship" (COPE, Council of Scientific Editors) but would be perfectly normal if the person(s) fulfil(s) the expectations of an author, i.e. provides some intellectual input to the work to be published.
So in the end the case may seem clear but not easy to resolve if co-authors do not agree on the rules.

okay I understand that. But in my case, she did not give any intellectual input. But I am sure that the corresponding author and my supervisor who put this person on the paper, would just claim she gave intellectual input. So it seems like I can only lose here? I always thought there would be specific guidelines for such cases (as citing the paper with the previous experiment and then acknowledging the person, or sth similar)

Here, would it have been appropriate to give that person the opportunity to fulfill these roles? It is tricky to use the criteria of contributing to the manuscript if the person was not allowed the opportunity to contribute to the manuscript.

She was allowed to contribute actually, over the course of years. She just didn't.

I guess I'm just not a fan of gifted authorships ;)

@Amanda: It is not a gift. This is a rule in Academia which exists for thousands of years.

@Amanda, Please read and try to understand the underlying message of the links I provide. Being a "fan" or not is not an issue, it is whether or not you think the recommendations should be be followed or not from an ethical perspctive that counts. It IS an ethical question in the end.

@Dawn indeed, the ICMJE rules say that if someone would qualify for authorship under other criteria they must be given the opportunity to meet those related to contributing to and revising the manuscript.

The ICME rules are terrible and deny junior scientists just contribution for their work. No-one should be using or promoting them.

recontextualizing the problem
Let's say there are three researchers, Alice, Bob and, Carol.  Bob and Carol each design experiments about how a treatment affects mice.  They are looking at two aspects of the same treatment, so the control and treatment groups are the same.  Bob's experiment uses lung tissue, and Carol's uses brain tissue.  Alice is an expert in running this treatment protocol, so she deals with the mice and collects all of the tissue samples.  She gives the appropriate samples to Bob and Carol and lets them take over from there.
Bob and Carol each do the rest of their experiments totally on their own with no collaboration from anyone (even each other).  Then each writes a paper.  At this point I think most people would argue that Alice deserves to be a co-author on both papers, due to her direct contribution.  It doesn't matter if the samples Alice collected sat in a freezer one night or one week or one year.  Alice's work was instrumental to Bob and Carol completing their experiments.
In another scenario Bob doesn't exist.  Anything Bob would have done, Alice did.  Most people would argue that Alice still gets to be a co-author on Carol's paper, due to her direct contribution.  If those samples Alice collected didn't exist, Carol couldn't have gotten started.

Different fields have different standards of authorship, and different individuals have different ideas of how one meets those standards.  People disagree about these things all the time.  In this case I think it helps to look at things from Alice's perspective.  In my own work I tend to err on the side of inclusivity, when disagreements arise.  In the end it will make no difference to your career if you are first author on a paper with five co-authors or a paper with six.

Well in this scenario I agree. But: in my case the situation is different. They publish as you describe. Then a fourth person, lets name her Karen, takes the lung tissue, analyzes it for a different readout/idea, and publishes that. Who of the other three authors gets co-authorship on Karen's paper?

I don't really understand why your situation is significantly different to the first one with Alice, Bob, and Carol. I'd still say Alice deserves credit. And possibly Bob (depending on what was done to the tissue)

If you are feeling pressure to include the original author as an author of your paper and you are considering going along with it, one way to handle the ethics is to actually reach out to that author for collaboration. If they provide even a minor academic contribution (i.e. other than assistance that is purely clerical or administrative), you may be ethically obligated to include them as an author.


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What are pros and cons for paid peer review?
I think in the current system the reviewers are not properly rewarded. Yes there are outstanding reviewers awards (even gift cards), but that's only a small fraction of reviewers, and the majority of reviewers spend a significant amount of their time without getting any rewards. Some reviewers may be happy contributing to the community, but the system just won't work well if the reviewers are not properly recognized and rewarded.
So, in an imagined system where reviewers are universally paid, say $100, for reviewing a paper, what are the pros and cons?

Who pays for the review? That is several hundred dollars per submitted paper, whether accepted or not.

I would say perhaps the authors should pay. The $100 is just a placeholder, there can be some sweet spot amount that both sides (authors and reviewers) accept.

Does this answer your question? why do academics write peer reviews?

Another related question: Why don't researchers request payment for refereeing? Related reading outside AC.SE: Should peer reviewers be paid to review academic papers?, The 450 Movement

Reviewers are rewarded handsomely because colleagues reciprocate in reviewing their own papers. It is a community in many fields.

This question is like asking "what are the pros and cons of having three times as many permanent research positions that pay twice as much salary?" I'm sure you can come up with a long list of pros and only a very short list of cons, but the idea flounders on the assumptions. Where are you going to get the money from? I'll use open access journals to illustrate the problems since the journal's finances are clearer from the outside.
So you want to pay reviewers $100 per paper. Remember that you will need 2-3 reviewers per paper, and you will need to pay them even if the article is rejected. It's not uncommon for journals to have rejection rates of >70%. This means that for ten articles sent out for review, you need $2000-$3000 to pay reviewers, and you publish ~3 articles. If each article has an APC of $1500, then your net revenue is $4500, and two-thirds of your revenue (not even income) goes to reviewers, a level that is definitely unsustainable. Even for more expensive journals where APCs are $3000 per article, it's still ~30% of your revenue.
Given the publisher cannot currently pay for this spending, who is going to pay for it? One could:

Increase APCs. Raising the APCs from $3000/article to $4000/article would keep the net revenue sans reviewer cost the same. But this would be a corresponding drag on the authors, taxing either their research grants or their libraries. I can pretty much guarantee that libraries are not going to like this. I can also pretty much guarantee that authors from developing countries will look at you with bewilderment and ask you where they're supposed to get the money from.
Charge authors a submission fee. Basically the authors pay even if their article is rejected. This would also not be pretty. Absent the absolute best-of-the-best journals, you will instantly lose most of your submissions. And the money still comes from research grants or libraries.
Charge readers to read the paper. That would make your journal into a subscription journal that charges an APC. It would also mean no more open access. You will again instantly lose submissions, and the money still comes from libraries.
Start up a GoFundMe initiative to provide external funding to the journal. External funding is like manna, if you have it in sufficient quantities then everything becomes possible. If you can demonstrate that you are able to raise the money consistently, over a long period of time, I'm sure there'll be publishers willing to start a journal that pays reviewers (and stop once your funding runs out).
Petition your local government (/Santa Claus) to spend more money on research, which would increase research grants and library budgets, as well as create more permanent positions. Yeah, one could do that. Every researcher will be happy if this is successful.

And then there is, if you pay your reviewers why shouldn't you pay your editors? It's hard to argue editors do less work than reviewers, they handle a lot more papers after all and they see papers that are never sent for review. If you pay the handling editor $100 per paper, and then the editor-in-chief another $100 per paper, then that's an extra $200 for every article that enters the system regardless of whether it's published. For every ten articles sent for review, you now need $4000-$5000 to cover your costs before you even get to production. From $4000/article APCs you now need $5000/article. Ask your library how their budget would cope if APCs went up by 60-300%.
Ultimately the problem is that scientific papers have extremely narrow readership. If you could guarantee that there will be tens of thousands of readers willing to pay to read your article, then I can also guarantee that publishers will be able, even happy, to pay the reviewers for your manuscript. Still, can you make that guarantee?

Your arguments absolutely make sense, but I still feel the reviewers don't have enough incentives to do their jobs, this is especially true in conferences where I see lots of bad reviews. What do you think could be the ultimate solution?

If you want incentives for reviewers, they can provide evidence of their service at Publons.

@PeiGuo I don't think there's a solution. The root problem - that nobody wants to read scientific papers, but they still need to be vetted by an expert - is not solvable.

Ok, reading this make me wonder; what if you paid reviewers in shares of the publishing house? Can it be stipulated that If you hold shares of the publishing house you must be willing to accept X reviews per year? Then the reward of the review comes from the profit of the publishing house. Effectively, it becomes a publishing cooperative?

The publisher could pay reviewers, what they can't do is sustain their current business model AND pay reviewers. Profits just go to shareholders instead of the scientific community.

@Clumsycat shares aren't free. Pay in shares and the value of each share goes down. A big publisher like Elsevier processes ~1 million reviews a year; the float will increase quickly. An arrangement where "if you hold shares you must review" will not work, because holding shares makes you an owner of the company, and requiring owners to work for the company makes no sense. Finally reviewers can already buy shares in the publishing house if it's publicly listed (Elsevier is, see ticker symbol RELX); most of them just don't do it.

@JSLavertu it's not sustainable period. The calculations above show that if you want to pay each reviewer $100 per review and don't want to run a loss, you need a current net profit margin of at least 30% (~66% for journals that charge lower APCs). Few journals have this high profit margin; many are already solidly unprofitable.

@Allure I don't disagree with your math. Perhaps 100$ is not sustainable, but if profits went to the people who do the work instead of shareholders, it wouldn't be zero.

@Allure "requiring owners to work for the company makes no sense." but that is literally what a cooperative is. People who work for a cooperative own shares in it. In a pure worker cooperative, only workers own shares. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative

@Allure as for shares not being free, as you have highlighted, there is no free lunch. At least when paying in shares, you ensure that the expenses of the journal are met before reviewers are paid.

This idea stroke me yesterday and I do think it's worth sharing: "nobody wants to read scientific papers" because --- these papers are written for reviewers, not for readers. Reviewers are the ones that decides the fate of your paper and you have to please them, making the paper ultimately ugly and boring (a lot of times). Well I may be biased, but still think this is somewhat true.

@JSLavertu problem with that is that you end up with a figure like $5 / paper, and then you get reviewers complaining that "if that was the price that this eminent journal placed on their opinion, the (journal) should seek referees elsewhere".


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Remote advising for remainder of PhD?
I'm currently in a very unique situation and in need of advice. For context, I am a first year PhD student in the United States.
Basically, my advisor's wife accepted an academic job offer at another university in another state. There was no position made for my advisor, but he has decided to simply do his job remotely from his wife's new institution (teaching, advising, boring faculty meetings, etc.). He has already moved there and we have transitioned to having weekly meetings solely over Zoom.
Now, it's technically not necessary to have him present since we mainly do computational work, but I can't help but think that I'm receiving a worse PhD experience without my advisor present as compared to his previous students. I will never be able to pop into his office with a question, get to write on the same chalkboard or even attend social events together as my other grad student friends do with their advisors, and I'm beginning to think that my training is being hampered. I'm also worried that my progress has slowed down since we can only communicate by email and it takes much longer to get a response as compared to an in-person interaction.
Unfortunately, finding a new advisor at my current institution is very unlikely since my work is highly mathematical but my department (ecology) has nobody else with any substantial mathematical training besides my current advisor.
Is there anything I can do to help my situation? I've thought about moving institutions but I don't know if that's possible for graduate programs. It's also possible that I'm exaggerating the impact of being remotely advised, and I would really like to know if that's the case.
Thank you!

Can't you finc a co-supervisor at your host institution? You can partially join his group and I think (s)he would be happy to be co-author of good quality papers. Here, you should ask your supervisor first and discuss the problem with him.

What is keeping you from joining a group in the Math department (or getting a Co-Advisor)? During my PhD there were lots of students from other departments in our lab. We were BioEng but had Math, ChemE, Biology, and even an EE student.

What did the current institution say about the advisor working remotely? I presume he did tell them! It seems that it should primarily be on them to be sure that the arrangements work. That said, if the advisor had left suddenly you'd be in a worse position anyway.

@Younes Yes, I could be co-advised, but I currently don't know of anybody doing similar work. I suppose somebody doing pure mathematics could be useful to help with technical issues.

@GS-ApologisetoMonica , I'm not sure if he has told them -- it was quite sudden. You've now got me wondering whether this sort of thing is even allowed...

First, yes it is possible to change institutions as a doctoral student. It will probably cost you some time and effort, though.
But, in the modern world the remote advising scenario is entirely possible, if a bit different. Other students, co-located with their advisor have frustrations also. Many can't, in fact, just "pop in", thought they wish they could.
Ultimately, the quality of your degree hinges on what you do, not what your advisor does. But, if your advisor is still getting paid by your institution he has obligations that include your progress.
You should think about your decision, using your own value structure. "Can I make this work?" If the answer is no, then the next questions are about alternatives. Co-advisors might work for some. Moving to a different institution can work for others.
Even changing the research to a different topic so that you have a local advisor can work for some. You can return to your current research later as opportunity permits. But if you make changes, rather than carrying on as is, there will be some time cost no matter what you do.
You can make it work somehow.

A first year student is likely more flexible since there is little sunk cost in their research, so a topic adjustment or a local math advisor seems fairly straightforward.

I had a "remote advising" situation during my PhD in the 90s, as I followed my husband to a different city where he was offered a job. Although my advisor was a 5-hour drive away, I had much better conversations with him than many of my fellow students in the new city where I had a job at the university, but did my doctorate at a distance. I would write something, send it off by snail mail in order to have a few days rest, and then the fax machine would chugg out reams of paper with comments. My advisor was willing to use all communication available! It is not just a question of sharing a whiteboard (you can do that in Zoom, too, you know), but with the technology at hand after the Corona lockdowns, it should not be a problem.
Be willing to go to his new place on occasion to have a face-to-face chat, but other than that: carry on!

Thank you for sharing! I'm glad to know that others have succeeded with a remote advising experience.

"you can [share a whiteboard] in Zoom, too, you know" → oh, the pain! The experience is so bad that I use it only when I really have no choice and it would never be my first choice, except if I had a pad to draw on (and see what I am drawing). I ended up once flipping my camera to show a sheet of paper on which it was easier to draw (but the collaborative part was gone)

@WoJ, did you try the new whiteboard in Zoom? It is quite similar to Miro and can be prepared before class. The old one was indeed a pain :)

My advisor left to my PhD institution (on the US West Coast) when I was in my first year of my PhD to take a new position at a different university (on the US East Coast). My situation was somewhat different from yours because he took a new job and I had this option to go with him, but I think some of the situation is similar.
I tried to think carefully about whether or not I could be successful continuing to work with him remotely. I had done my master's with him so I knew how we worked together and could likely continue to do that remotely. I did not want to relocate so ended up staying where I was.
I tried to build my committee to include two local people that could support me for the office pop-in experience even though they didn't do the exact same research but because they understood the basics of the field and the ups and downs of graduate school. My initial advisor kept an affiliation at my university initially, but after two years,  when his remaining grants there ended, he was no longer actually allowed to be my sole primary advisor and so the department head very kindly stepped in to ensure I could finish and succeed. Her lab sort of "adopted" me and even though we did completely different research. It was nice to have a lab "home" for social events, to celebrate finishing comprehensive exams, etc., and to have someone local who knows the department rules and requirements and timelines. I would suggest trying to find something similar even if it isn't exactly your research; my fellow graduate student support was so important to surviving grad school! It sounds like both within your ecology department and the math department might be good options, or to have some of each.
My advisor and I did maintain nearly weekly meetings over the years and that was really helpful, even if they sometimes were cancelled or very short. The regular opportunity to touch base was important for me.
In the end it was successful and I'm happy I made the decision I did, but there were some growing pains especially as my advisors new job was the head of a very large research group and so he became much more busy as time went on. Because I had great local support, again even though it wasn't from researchers that did exactly what I did, I was able to finish in a normal amount of time and I think with a solid dissertation :)
I would suggest talking maybe with the graduate advisor in your department or with the graduate school to make sure there are no issues with this set up from your end (e.g., in person exams or committee meetings requirements or getting proper paperwork signed along the way...some universities have these but many changed them in response to COVID).


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I'm in a bit of bind... I have the wrong regalia robe
So, I am graduating with my Master's in 3 weeks. The university that I am graduating from is the same one where I did my undergrad. I currently have a bachelor's robe, not a master's one because I figured, the same university, not much difference, and I didn't have the $100+ extra to order another gown. My question is, can I get away with wearing a bachelor's gown for a master's ceremony?

The bookstore at lots of places provided a rental service. But you need a local answer for your actual question.

What country? The answer is not going to be the same at Oxford as it is at UC Berkeley.

I don't think most people will care. It will not impact your degree. It will not prevent you from walking across the stage.
(answering with a US tilt, from the perspective of someone who attended large public universities in the US midwest; it's possible somewhere else people care about these things more)
I think your personal comfort is most important here. It's not really anyone else's business, but indeed you'll be in a public place/ceremony. Without knowing your country or institution, I can just say that in a big ceremony at a public US university, no one will care much. As a bit of reassurance from someone who has a bit of social anxiety: you're just not that important to anyone else. Everyone there is either graduating, so they are most concerned with their own achievement, or they are supporting someone who is graduating, so they are most concerned with the person they are supporting, not you.
You might stand out a bit, if your robe is highly visibly different from others. It depends entirely on your institution's varieties of robe just how much you will stand out; at some institutions, the master's gear may feature just a small distinction, at other places it may be an entirely different color. Probably, though, you'll all be mostly in black, with some school color highlights someplace.
Some people may look at you and wonder why you're dressed differently. Does that matter to you? If it matters deeply, you might look at other options like renting or try to put out a quick message through social media to see if a past year's graduate might let you purchase or borrow their garb (probably more than a few bought it and have it in their closet and since realized they have no actual use for the thing and would be happy to take your $20 instead).
If someone did happen to question you (they probably won't, but every once in awhile someone is more nosy than they need to be), I think they'd be quickly disarmed by a quip like "Of course I'm wearing my bachelor's gown; I wasn't going to shell out the $100 and I still get to keep my master's degree!" Possibly they'll feel a bit foolish for not thinking of it themselves, but I think you can feel confident in your wise frugality rather than embarrassed by your different appearance.

In the U.S. and probably elsewhere, the only real difference between masters' and bachelors' robes is the length of the sleeves.  however, be sure to find out whether you need a hood.  You probably will, and you can probably rent one.  You might even be able to borrow one from someone who graduated ahead of you.

I would contact your thesis advisor, or the student affairs office, or the inequality office to ask about it. Maybe they will slowly realize how archaic such a ceremony is, or how stressful can be for someone not having the means to be "like the others".
Big thumbs up to you for being brave and stepping out of this nonsense. I am sure there are students getting or using part of their loans to afford the robe.
Even if you could afford it, you would be pushing others that cannot afford it, putting them under pressure of being "like the others" (when the university should teach independent thinking, rather than having degrees as a pass for being accepted in an exclusive club).
I wonder how come that in the modern big push for "inclusivity", wealth inequality is systematically ignored.

No, I am not really wondering about it, I am sure it is a "mantaining the status-quo" strategy., especially in a strongly money-stratified society like the American one.

"I wonder how come that in the modern big push for "inclusivity", wealth inequality is systematically ignored." And, by complete coincidence, also discrimination based on educational status.

While I appreciate the criticisms of some archaic procedures, I don't think it's quite fair to a student who finds themselves in the position of the OP to answer "what should I do about not having the right robe?" with "Be the vanguard of the push against archaic graduation ceremonies and the inequities they cause!" You're taking their minor problem and asking that they escalate it to a major endeavor.

" I didn't have the $100+ extra to order another gown."
That's the OP issue, not a minor one.
I totally understand the puritan/calvinistic way of thinking, if your ancestor is from Ghana you deserve all kind of support (and rightly so), if you do not have 100$ it is your problem (and in the mind of the median wasp person, probably your fault).
I am not asking to escalate. I am just asking OP to add one infinitesimal statistical dot in the student affairs office, in the inequality office, in the interneuronal space of the advisor. Student will without any doubt find a local (L2) solution.


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How to reduce stress before your qualifying exam
I'm taking my qualifying exam next Friday and I'm wondering what I should do the day before to help reduce my anxiety. Do you recommend last-minute studying or taking the day off to relax and reflect?

What is the format of your qualifying exam (I know it can vary program to program)?

It's an oral exam with all five of my committee members for three hours. They've each given me a reading list and topics to study, so I feel fairly prepared at this point, but still very stressed!

There is no universal answer to this question, because different people find that different techniques work well/badly for them, and they also have different levels of aptitude for rapid learning and short-term knowledge retention.  In my observation, most successful students use a range of methods to varying degrees, depending on their particular aptitudes and learning styles.  Here are some common elements of effective preparation, including advice on your particular issue:

Don't slack off too much during the semester: While this is not strictly a method for what to do in the short period before your final exam, I would be remiss if I didn't include it.  If you put in a reasonable amount of effort to learning the course material during the semester, and keeping up with the topics, you will enter your study period with most of the material already known to a reasonable level.  In this case your sole job during the study period will be to refresh your knowledge and fill in any small blanks where you have had previous difficulties.  Using your semester for effective study will significantly reduce anxiety in the study session and exam period.

Do your study sessions a reasonable time in advance: It is important to leave yourself a reasonable amount of time before your exam to start intensive study.  If you have studied well during the semester then much of this will just be review, but if you have been a bit lazy during the semester then you might need to "cram" a substantial amount of new content.  In the latter case you should leave yourself at least a week, depending on how effective you are at rapid learning and knowledge retention.  Over a few exam periods, you can track your rate of progression over your topics in each course and use this to judge how much time it takes you to study effectively for a single exam.  As you gain experience you will be able to judge how much time you need to leave yourself and what volume of material you are able to effectively "cram" in the study period before your examination.

Relaxing activity the night before the exam: Many successful students try to avoid cramming right up to the exam, since this can impose stress/loss of sleep that can impact negatively on exam performance.  Consequently, one good technique is to do your studying in the week before the exam but do a relaxing activity (not involving alcohol) the night before to destress --- e.g., go and see a movie at the cinema.  This allows you to decompress and relax for the evening immediately prior to your exam.

Reviewing notes immediately before the exam: It is usually useful to do a review of your notes in the hour or two before an exam, to bring concepts and methods you will need back into your short-term memory.  At this point you should not be "cramming" to learn new material, but you should be jogging your memory of all the things you might need in the exam.  For this part it is usually sufficient to go over points in your notes at an overview level for about an hour; depending on your abilities and the quantity of material it might be less or more.

I hope "next Friday" means in a week, not in a day.
Cramming is usually the worst option. Staying up late the night before also.
There is a danger in late study that the mind may not have had enough time to let the late studying "settle in" so that it doesn't block things studied earlier. A qualifying exam doesn't normally depend on having a bunch of quick facts at your fingertips.
Everyone is different of course, but I doubt that hard study at the last moment will reduce stress. Quite the opposite.
But spending some time the day before the exam doing some aerobic exercise can let your mind relax while your body works. Bicycling was my drug of choice. I found it great as a stress reducer.
I'd guess that if you don't know the material two days before the exam, hard study the day before the exam isn't going to save you.


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How to determine academic level?
I have to complete a form for my internship.
A question on the form reads "On the first day of the above mentioned student’s employment, his/her academic level will be:___________".
Suggested answers are: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, Senior, Master’s, Ph.D.
I will complete my first year of Master's by the start of the internship.

Is there some reason you don't think "Masters" is the right choice, given that you'll be a Masters student and that the form suggests that as an answer?

I do not have Master's degree yet.

Is this in English or translated?

Given the other possible answers, it sounds like it is asking if you are Master's student. If you really don't think there is an appropriate response, then contact them and ask.

Since the first 4 options are not degrees, and the sentence explicitly asks about the status of the "student", you can then read the last two options as "master's student", "Ph.D. student", etc. That's how I'd read this if it were in the US and natively written in English, anyway.

This is a form from a US lab. So, I assume, this is English. I am asking if I can put "Master's" in the gap. I have indicated in the question that I am Master's student, but I don't know about my academic level.

Put Master's.
The reason is because you're a Master's student, and they're presumably asking for your current status as opposed to your highest completed degree. To see this, consider the PhD option. If you've completed a PhD degree, then you're no longer a student, in which case the first part of the sentence is incorrect. But if they want you to use your highest completed degree, then literally nobody could possibly fill the blank with PhD. The only sensible option is they want your current status, and since you're a Master's student, you use that.


text:
What is the chance of me getting PHD scholarship for international student in Australia
So I'm an international student in Australia. I got a lower second class bachelor of mechanical engineering (honours) from Curtin University. My final year research thesis was published in Journal of Materials Research and Technology on ScienceDirect (Elsevier).
Is it possible for me to get a PHD scholarship in Australia ? Thanks.

Welcome to Academia.SE. I realize the "duplicate" question is about the US, whereas you are in Australia. But the top part of the top answer still applies -- there is no formula to calculate your odds of admission, and this site does not offer individualized assessments. Sorry we can't be more helpful.

You only know if you apply.   It all depends on the applicants applying to a university in a given round.  If everyone has a high GPA and top quality publications, then your chance is probably zero.  Further, given the current pandemic climate, universities may have more (or fewer) scholarships.


text:
Can i submit paper that result's not expected?
my results were not expected which was control was lower than treatment and it's supposed to be lower than control according to other papers.
I used the data and finished the paper and was trying to submit but my prof said I couldn't use this data because it's not the expected results and it was my error while doing the experiment?

Your job is to prove your Prof wrong, and provide reasons.   The reasons are your contributions.

@Prof.SantaClaus, "Your job is to prove your Prof wrong" Their job is to find the truth.  Maybe the professor is right and the OP did the experiment incorrectly.

Did your professor say "that result cannot be true, so you must have made an error", or did (s)he point out a specific error you made that caused your result. In the former case your professor is plain wrong. In the latter case the professor may be right.

Sure you can, some of the most important papers in the past century were on results that were not expected (e.g. Michelson-Morley paper, the papers that discovered dark energy).
But such a paper needs to be quite detailed. You need to examine all the possible reasons that might have affected your results, e.g. systemic bias, potential sources of error, do careful estimates of error margins, and so on. If you can eliminate every possible source of error you can think of, and if you can be sure that the result really is robust, then it's something you can publish.
It sounds like your professor doesn't think you've reached that point, so you have work to do and submitting the paper now is likely premature.


text:
Lecturer Copied Textbook Questions for Open Book Exam - I Used the Answers
Yesterday, before my exam, I went through as many practice questions as possible, and incorporated anything I missed into my notes - this included cases not taught in the textbook or lectures. I am a law student, and all our in-person exams are unrestricted open book - we can bring in anything use anything save for electronics.
Lo and behold, I go into the exam, and about 60-70% of it exam is verbatim questions I did last night. I had with me a textbook with those questions and answers in it (this textbook wasn't assigned for the course) because I was planning to use the answer structures from it.
I tried to keep my answers distinct by using some different cases, I retained the same structure and discussed the same issues and got most of it 'right'. I looked at the textbook a few times if I had forgotten something, and also to make sure my answers weren't too similar. It was a difficult exam.
Did I do anything wrong? Will the lecturer likely catch me if it is wrong (they might not want to get themselves into trouble)? Surely it isn't a case of academic misconduct.
I should report it - but but I don’t want to do a supplementary exam in a few weeks as I’m going overseas in a few days. I'm worried sick - surely I wasn't wrong?

In law school, one thing you are supposed to be learning is how to prepare to deal with legal issues that arise. This includes doing legal research and writing memos to yourself ("memo to the file"). Your preparation for the exam is probably exactly what a model student would do, and what the professor hoped to see.

You prepared for the exam well and you got rewarded for it. The way you describe it, you never had any intention to cheat. Therefore you did nothing wrong and should not worry about it. I would simply forget about this. If one day you get to host an exam, recall this experience and consider preparing better questions.

I remember once for a class Q&A session a day before an exam I brought in a textbook question and asked the instructor what an answer may look like (notes were inconsistent on the matter). He was really cagey and the inconsistency wasn't clarified, so I whittled it down its essence to a true and false question. Finally we got clarification, and as it turned out he had used that exact question in the exam. The 20 or so people that attended that session got full marks

I took a class with an extremely conscientious friend who explicitly asked the professor if we were allowed to study for an open-book exam by looking old tests and bring these in as part of our materials; he said yes. We studied together and discovered on the day of the exam that 5 out of 6 questions were verbatim from the same test the previous year. To this day I have no idea why on earth he approved that if he was going to re-use the test...

@KRyan exam authoring is complex. The professor may not realize that was done, or maybe he knew, objected to it, but was shot down by no fault of his own. He didn't give you guys the test, so simply rewarded his students for happening upon the answers.

What subject was this? In physics/math you may have an open-book exam with answers at the end, but those are one-liners stating the final result (in a sense to verify your work), so copying those would at best lead to minor credit. Mostly to no credit at all since the derivation/calculation has not been shown.

@KRyan This might be an issue of giving away what's on the exam. Suppose I have written an exam, and it is closed book. Then someone comes to me in an office hour and asks me, coincidentally, how to solve some question they have, and it is the exam question. I cannot refuse to solve it as then they would know it's on the exam. So I solve it. If the lecturer had said 'no', what logical deduction could you make from it?

As long as looking back at previous material was allowed, you did nothing wrong. You studied for an exam, and took the exam following the same rules as all the other students. The professor is at fault here for blatantly lifting exam questions.
If your professor had any sort of integrity, they would have cited where the question came from, but that is more-so for HW/practice questions. The exam should be made up of their own questions so students can't just search online for the answer (or luck into owning the book like you did).
I think the only scenario where taking an exam question from a textbook verbatim would be ok is if the class was assigned said textbook, and the professor previously assigned the question as practice (either mandatory or optional). This at least gives everyone a level-ish playing ground.

I agree that the professor has basically plagiarized here by failing to cite the book the questions were taken from. But by the same token, the OP may have also committed plagiarism by failing to cite where the answers came from, although it's hard to say from the OP's description if the book answers were used as a starting point or as a final check after the question was answered independently.

Should that last paragraph begin "I think the only scenario where taking an exam question from a textbook verbatim [would be ok] would be if ..." ?

@NuclearHoagie Is it now the case that those taking open-book examinations are expected to give references for all the assistance they get from said books? For that matter, is someone taking a closed-book exam expected to give references for everything they remember? On the other hand, I don't follow the claim that the professor was plagiarizing, either: neither setting nor taking an examination is a venue for presenting one's original work. This is just unprofessional laziness, which is bad enough.

I agree with @sdenham . This is an examination venue and as a student in an exam setting it's a bit rich to ask to provide references for one's answers. If you're cheeky you can drive the point home by saying "In accordance with [source]". I had exactly 1 open-book exam in my life in physics. One of the questions was taken from a reference book, but that one had no solutions and I lucked out by having prepared with that book.

Did I do anything wrong?

Nope, you're ok :-)

Will the lecturer likely [rephrased: notice what I did]?

Unlikely - unless you were exceptionally poor in homework assignments/midterms/etc - which would make a high exam score suspicious to the course staff. But it sounds like that's not the case.

I should report it - but but I don’t want to do a supplementary exam in a few weeks as I’m going overseas in a few days.

You have nothing to report: The instructor knew, when using questions from a textbook with official-textbook-answers, that there's a chance some students will just have those answers.
But if this bothers you, then you could go see the lecturer, or even one of the TAs. You would mention the fact that the questions seemed very reminiscent of material you saw in one of the textbooks. Don't "report having copied a textbook answer". You will probably be told something like: "Oh, yeah, sorry about that, we didn't have the time to write original problems for the exam because [EXCUSE HERE]". That should at least make you feel better, I guess.

It was an open-book exam. You found the answers in a book. What could possibly be wrong with reading a book to learn the answers?
Whether it's OK to copy the answers verbatim will depend on additional conditions in the exam instructions, as well as whether the questions admit to multiple wordings of the answer. If a math question asks for a numeric answer without asking you to show your work, there's no way to distinguish copying the answer from working it out yourself. If you happen to stumble on the exact same question somewhere, it's hard to unsee it and I don't think you can be faulted for copying the answer; it was a poor choice for the professor to copy the questions exactly in the first place.

"Plagiarism" of the answers by the OP?

@LouKnee That's an independent problem, since they could also plagiarize from other books they use to  find answers to the questions.

@LouKnee Not unless the exam included instructions stating that all answers must be in the student's own words.  If it's open everything without restriction, that's also an open invitation to copying and pasting.

@NicoleHamilton It's been 40 years since I was in school, but I recall that the expectation of open-book problem sets and exams was that you could use the material to find out how to answer the question, but you were still supposed to do the work yourself. Although most of my classes were technical/math, where copy/paste wasn't usually an option.

@LouKnee When I was in college (not law) there was no requirement to cite sources for answers on exams. Law might be different, but in general unless the prof says you need to cite sources for your answer, I don't think it's reasonable to call not doing so plagiarism. Now if you copy from another student that's another matter--that's cheating. But in general exams aren't academic publications and have very different standards. At least in my experience in the U.S. in an engineering discipline.

@Nicole Hamilton "If it's open everything without restriction, that's also an open invitation to copying and pasting." Copy/paste doesn't preclude citing sources... students spend 3+ years being told not to plagiarize, and then we're suddenly supposed to turn a blind eye at the last moment??? (Don't uni regulations ban plagiarism, and overrule  exam rubrics?)

We don't know the actual rules the professor gave when for this exam. For all we know the instructions say that it's open book but you must answer in your own words. As I said, plagiarism is an orthogonal issue.

I don't think plagiarism is relevant here. You aren't publishing your exam answers as your own work, and in an open book exam there is no requirement that they are your own work. I know people popularly use "plagiarized" to mean "copied" but they don't actually mean the same thing.

@DJClayworth In the context of exams or homework, they're equivalent. If you turned in a paper that was a copy of an encyclopedia chapter, it would be plagiarism even though papers aren't published.

@Barmar The OP's phrase that worries me is "and also to make sure my answers weren't too similar." i.e. they deliberately obfuscated the source of their answers, which to me denotes some level of knowing dishonesty. But, if they'd just written "This is the model answer from book X ... blah...blah..." I'd admit their intellectual honesty, but should they indeed get full marks if they haven't shown their own understanding of the material? (a perennial issue for open-book exams). I think there's actually a really interesting question lurking under all this.

@LouKnee The OP isn't even sure that rewording the answers is acceptable, so obviously he'd be concerned about verbatim copying. I think it really depends on the type of questions. If this is a law exam and they ask for the name of a legal principle, that's just a set phrase and it makes no sense to reword it. But if it's an essay question I think you're expected to demonstrate some understanding.

@Barmar "For all we know the instructions say that it's open book but you must answer in your own words." but of course even if the OP didn't plagiarize, doesn't prevent people from thinking they may have done. I've been responding to the phrase "What could possibly be wrong?" in your answer: all sorts of other issues could be dragged up. Similarly, if OP's classmates find out and make a fuss declaring it unfair, they might be able to force a re-sit even if the consensus here is that the OP did nothing wrong.

I've added a little more detail related to this.

@DJClayworth Plagiarism is just "copying" with one additional requirement - that you don't mention where you copied from.

@NuclearHoagie Nope. If you're not passing the work off as your own then it's not plagiarism.

@DJClayworth When taking an exam there's an expectation that the answers are your own work. Otherwise copying off your neighbor would be OK as long as you admitted it, but that's never been an acceptable way to get around cheating.

@Bamar That’s not the case with open book exams though (cheating notwithstanding). You can copy from allowed sources and get good marks as long as you correctly synthesize it, and unless the instructions or your institution’s rules require you to cite sources, it’s not plagiarism, and if when I was a TA I were grading such an exam and the student had meticulously cited every source for each answer, I would probably have gotten very annoyed as it would have slowed me down without providing any value.

@bob I never said they were supposed to cite sources. That seems to have come from other commentors when trying to equate it to plagiarism.

Ah sorry, I must have gotten mixed up when reading the comment thread regarding who thought what.

@bob If student copies a definition from book A, another from book B and a comment from C, they may be demonstrating understanding through synthesis. Here the OP is copying the entire answer wholesale to the extent of feeling they have to disguise it. I'm uncomfortable with this situation is my position, and as I already said above I think it's a good question because there isn't an obvious (to me) right answer: admitting wholesale copying fails to demonstrate understanding (point of exam), but not admitting is dishonest.

I think it largely depends on the rules (or lack thereof) set forth by the professor, but I think we may need to agree to disagree.

The professor is certainly guilty of plagiarism by verbatim copying text from a source and failing to cite where it came from. Depending on how your answers were generated, you may have also committed plagiarism by failing to cite where your answers came from. If you used the book answers as a starting point and just rearranged some things to make it less obvious, you likely plagiarized by presenting the book answers as your own, without giving any credit to the book. If you answered the questions independently on your own and used the book as a reference after the fact to check that you didn't miss any important points, it is less likely plagiarism.
You certainly didn't cheat on the exam, but you may have plagiarized if you presented the book's answers as your own. To avoid any possibility of academic misconduct, it would have been better to be entirely up-front, clearly citing the book that your answers were based on - proper citation is an absolute defense in cases of plagiarism, since plagiarism requires misrepresenting another's work as your own.
All this said, I don't really expect anything to come of it. One could argue that plagiarism may be more "forgivable" in an exam setting with tight time pressure, as time could expire after writing an answer but before listing the proper citation. It would likely be viewed more harshly in another setting like a term paper, since the absence of citation there is far more likely due to deliberate misrepresentation, rather than other factors like time or stress. But be aware that if you want to report the professor for having plagiarized the questions, it's quite possible that you're guilty of the exact same offense by plagiarizing the answers.

The examiner cannot be guilty of plagiarism in this context, as long as the citation is made in future, i.e., when the exam is released afterwards as a past paper. In an open-book exam, giving a citation would be equivalent to giving the answer in the exam. Whether it's a good idea to use questions from a book with answers in it is a different question.

You did nothing wrong. If your prof is lazy enough to pull answers from a book students can access, then all I've got to say is good for you for preparing well.
The only potential flag here is that you may have copied the material from the textbook -- for open book exams it's tricky if there's an expectation to cite anything.
Otherwise, you're fine.  The prof plagiarized, not you (lol).

In my opinion, the right approach is to think through what you owe the other people in the situation.
One goal of the exam is to give each student roughly the same challenge.  Through no fault of your own, you happened to be significantly better prepared than your classmates. The challenge was far easier for you than for them - and not just because you studied hard, but because you happened to study the right book (this was just a stroke of good fortune). So you ended up gaining an unfair advantage. I think it would display integrity to explain what happened. And if I were the lecturer or a classmate of yours, I would be deeply impressed by that integrity.
Insisting that you, strictly speaking, played by the rules is not the approach I would admire the most. The rules are usually not written to accommodate all situations, and you have a responsibility to think further, beyond what the rules say, to find out what you ought to do.

Also, in my view, certain kinds of luck are totally fine to benefit from, for example happening to dream up the right set of questions the day before the exam, or the normal unequally distributed resources (if you've had a great education and great mentors, it's fine to benefit from these even if you got them through luck), but your luck was an abnormal kind of luck, and would rightly raise many eyebrows.

Why would it raise eyebrows? If OP consulted a resource that was explicitly prohibited, then yes. But they didn't. For all they know others similarly benefited. Not saying it wouldn't be a bad thing to let the prof know, but there's risk: the prof may take an inappropriate hard line and accuse OP of cheating when they didn't, or they may unfairly give OP a harder test.

And besides an open book test isn't testing your recall--it's testing your ability to find sources containing the information, ideally before the test, and to bring them with you and find the info quickly. So IMHO OP did absolutely nothing wrong here and should probably keep their mouth shut unless they didn't describe the full situation in the question. It can only unfairly hurt them.

If you are going to get your questions from a book on the shelf, then what is wrong with getting your answers from that same book on the shelf?
They should prepare more original questions if they have a problem with people doing that.

As the other answers explain, considering the circumstances, there is nothing wrong with what you did. It's only about the philosophical question about how you view yourself considering you looked at the answers in an examination, traditionally meant to test your knowledge and skills. My take: if in your view examinations are a poor measure of this, and there is undue importance given to marks, then I think you should be okay with your actions. If you don't, I still wouldn't go asking for the supplementary exam; you could just choose not to do this in the future.

Some details are needed before giving an accurate answer.

Did the professor cite the textbook, at least somewhere in the course?

Did you cite the textbook?

What is your program (LLB, LLM, JD, PhD), country, and year?

Is it a research-level course, practice-level course, or an introductory course?

You can use the country tags when updating your question. The answer really depends on the background.
For example, if you are taking a first year introductory level LLB course, it will be usual (yet unrigorous) that the professor failed to cite some sources, for two reasons: 1) the professor believes that the materials are too fundamental or 2) some previous students used the citation to get original answer and directly copied it.
Of course, not citing the material you use is a wrongdoing of some degree, for both your professor and you. To what degree? That depends on the rigidity of the course and your program.

It is a fourth year LLB unit in Australia. The lecturer didn't ever cite the textbook - I did not cite the textbook as (a) I've not ever heard of anyone citing a textbook in an exam and (b) I don't believe a source should ever have a monopoly on something which someone with the correct knowledge could reasonably be expected to materially reproduce (without having seen it) such that it should be cited (reliance on a source is another matter - but reliance on extrinsic materials is expected in an open-book exam). That is just my opinion, however.

@MarcusSnead If no one cites sources in your exam then you should be fine.