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Advisor professor asks for my dissertation research source code
I am a PhD student and I wrote a computer program for my dissertation research. Recently my advisor professor got a grant and she wants to use my computer program in her grant and she asks me for the computer source-code. I will graduate next May and I am planning to use this program in my other studies. So I am not willing to share the code with her. She didn't mention future cooperation and I will also not cooperate with her because of huge differences in our research interests and perspectives.
So how can I refuse her properly?
Note: I was not a RA for her when I wrote the computer program, but this semester she got a grant and she set me as RA.

Does sharing your code with her prevent you from using it in your other studies? I don't understand why sharing your code is a problem here. Research projects in CS and Computer Engineering frequently use other groups' code without infringing on one another's research.

This is great that someone wants to use your software! You might even get some cites from this, congratulations! You could even put it on github or something so that she can cite that too and others can benefit from your program.

I am not in CS or related domains. I am in neuroscience, citation of computer code is meaningless and uninteresting to me. Honestly speaking, one reason I am not willing to share code with her is due to her lack of support in my research.

this semester she got the grant and she set me as RA You're currently her RA. Why do you say due to her lack of support in my research.?

I understand that you're upset with your advisor for whatever reason. But, you may stand to lose a lot by refusing to share your code (alienating your advisor, not getting good recommendation letters from her when you graduate, etc).  On the other hand, I can't think of a single thing you will gain by refusing to share.

If you wrote the program for your dissertation research, doesn't it belong to your institution?

Not sure about this, but shouldn't your PHD thesis be somewhat novel and original? What if that got compromised by part of the OP's research 'leaking' before he gets to publish it under his name?  My advice: Hand over the code, but make sure you get credited wherever it is used.

@W_H Generally speaking, you don't cite computer code, you cite the papers which first introduced or described the computer code. A paper cited for the methods section looks exactly the same on your CV or h-index (and to the tenure committee) as a paper that's cited for the conclusions section.

@R.M. while a paper is certainly preferrable, you can cite code as well - and should do so if there's no paper yet.

(Reference on availability of source code used in computer science research articles)

My adviser is a much more experienced and so is a much more skilled researcher than I am. The notion that my adviser would take some rough idea I had discussed with him and spend a serious amount of effort himself turning into his own research (to be published only under his name) would be terrifying to me. It is very unlikely someone just getting their feet wet in research could compete with someone who already is an established researcher. I don't know the general ethics of the code sharing, but I would not want to be advised by anyone trying to compete with their students in this fashion.

What would she be doing with the source code? I suggest you contact the Ombuds office at your institute. They should be able to give you a better understanding of what your options are, and if necessary, help you resolve the issue with your advisor.

@JimmyB: If transfer of information from a PhD candidate to the candidate's advisor is considered "leaking", something seems fundamentally amiss with the PhD project. (Personally, I'd go as far as saying it's nowhere near "leaking" as long as information is transferred only among people at the same university, but from what I have read on this site over the years, I am aware not all places are that cooperative to start with.)

If this code was important part of your PhD research, ideally, you should share it with everyone (open source or similar manner). Not sharing even with your supervisor makes the transparency of your research rather questionable. I am not questioning your intentions, you can have all kid of reasons to not cooperate with your supervisor, but in general keeping everything for yourself is not a good policy.

In my particular sub-field, if the code is not shared with at least the internal reviewers and everyone else in a particular collaboration the paper just doesn't get published. I'm quite amazed that you are/were able to submit a thesis that uses novel/homegrown  code without sharing it with your supervisor. If you really want to go ahead with this, make sure you are on legally solid ground.

@Marianne013: Based upon the question, there actually isn't all that much information on what the code actually is. Is the code the "result" or the "research", or is it merely a tool to simplify the research, or just a demonstration of the actual research? I can think of many cases where "novel/homegrown code" has merely been created for internal demonstration purposes and was never in any state to be shared (e.g. depending on the specifics of the OP's system setup). If that is the case, though, the OP should have even less reason to fear being scooped based upon the code.

If the code was a significant part of your dissertation, it should be part of your dissertation. I guess I don't understand how your dissertation could have been accepted if the source code wasn't included somewhere. If it's just code you wrote to help you do or explain something, then you may need to consider your schools IP policies. Generally, they own you, so you may not actually have a choice.

If it is just about getting credit of your work, make the code wordwide available first. Then just give her the link. In other case, I do not know How to proceed.

I’ll go further than the other commenters: if you don’t share your source code, it’s not research, it’s an anecdote. It can’t get published, and shouldn’t be used in any of your publications. It’s bad science not to publish research code.

You may wish to look at the conditions for getting your research grant - it may very well be that the code you've written, isn't yours, but the universities.

@KonradRudolph: As I've indicated in my other comment, I think your comment makes plenty of assumptions that are in no way based upon what we actually know from the question. If a paper presents an algorithm, interaction concept, or other programmable thing, and that algorithm is unambiguously defined in the paper or additional materials, that is fully sufficient for the research to be taken seriously. It is in no way implied that a concrete implementation of the algorithm or concept itself must be made accessible, ...

... and much less so any surrounding code such as a user interface for running the algorithm/concept, code for saving and loading test cases, and other peripheral utilities that may have been useful to the OP (and possibly even to others using their code), but that are simply not a part of the scientific contribution.

@O.R.Mapper I fundamentally disagree. You seem to narrowly define the outcome of research as the dissemination of knowledge. However, I’m more interested in cumulative increase of knowledge. By refusing to make usable implementations of algorithms available you cause other people to waste time on mundane reimplementation, thus decreasing their time doing useful work. You may still have contributed to science, but you did so patently ineffectively, for no good reason.

@KonradRudolph: Personally, I am an avid fan and contributor to open source projects, and I like providing more or less everything I do for reuse online when I'm allowed to. That notwithstanding, I'd consider it downright unethical to, say, reject a paper that clearly communicates its findings and everything leading up to those findings for the sole reason that the author just provides the information how to rebuild all tools used instead of the tools themselves. Doing so is a tremendous convenience and good practice, but requiring it would draw the focus too far away from the results ...

... in my opinion. What about a tool that was built in such a way that it cannot be integrated with my research code? Does that count as "published tools" or as "did not publish tools"? What about a published tool that only runs on a heavily customized OS that itself cannot be published? Maybe we need a separate publication channel for research materials/tools (as opposed to results) that contributes to how researchers are evaluated, but I see no point in conflating the two. ...

... Lastly, there are plenty of good reasons why research code might not be ready for redistribution. However, this is leading quite a bit off-topic - my point in this question was rather that we do not have enough information to evaluate how crucial for their research the dissemination of their code is, irrespective of pointing them to the generally good practice of helping fellow researchers by providing convenient tools.

if you decide to share, consider doing it with free license — GPL v3+

So, you're a research who doesn't make her/his research reproducible by voluntarily withholding part of your data collection / analysis tools? Sadly, that probably puts you right on track for tenure in the US system... :-(

Is this person on your committee?

Reading some of the answers to this question, there's another related question: what if you believed your code would do society more harm than good? E.g. an open-source method for effectively toppling an economy, say, with armies of twitter-bots... would it be immoral to share that code?

One of the reasons Science has been so successful is that scientists treat knowledge and tools as public goods. We don't hoard knowledge, but rather we write papers, share techniques, offer suggestions, etc. There are certainly cases in which sharing isn't beneficial, but these seem not to apply here. So of course you should share your computer program! You should share it with people you like, people you don't like, and people you don't even know.

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Ideally in this situation you would make your program publicly available.
Giving others access to this code does not prevent you from using it, and will help you build reputation within your field.
Not only that, but by making it publicly available rather than to just your advisor there is no risk of them claiming your work as their own - which I would assume to be your primary concern with the current power balance of your relationship.

If you publish it online with a free software license (e.g. GNU GPL, Apache Software License etc., see this page for a list and comments) - it will be unlikely it could be misused to appropriated by your Professor.

@einpoklum: there's a big difference between a copyleft license (like the GPL) that requires that copies stay open-source, vs. the MIT or BSD licenses that let people use the code as part of a closed-source project.  Choose whichever you want based on how you want people to be allowed to use your code.

@PeterCordes: You're right, but - the code would still not be usable as something a third party can submit as their own work to some grant committee or other financing body.

@einpoklum: Ah yes, that kind of misuse.  I think even if you made your code public domain, it would still be plagiarism for someone else to claim credit for it.  ("Look at this play I wrote, it's called MacBeth").  The difference is that you can take legal action directly, because they'd also be violating your copyright rights as well as committing plagiarism / fraud (against the grant committee, not against you).

As someone who works in scientific computing, I agree with what others say, and would likely take it a step further. To put it hyperbolicly:
Refusing reasonable requests to code used in a published article is ethical misconduct.
If you relied on the output of a program to produce your scientific result, then that program is part of the "materials" of your paper, and the same guidelines for sharing other materials used in making papers apply. Just like you're ethically obligated to reasonably make available (non-commercially available) plasmids, cell lines, mouse strains, etc. which you generated for your published research, you're likewise obligated to make available the (non-commercially available) code that you generated for your published research.
That's even more applicable to code, as code is not just a "material", but also a "method". While you certainly should describe the algorithm in text, there's typically a large number of details which are only apparent on examining the code. It's unlikely that a researcher would be adequately able to recapitulate your results from a reimplementation of the algorithm from just the methods section. This is particularly true in the (unlikely?) event you have a bug. Not releasing code is equivalent to just saying "We purified the protein" or "We measured the X" in the methods section: lacking in the needed details for someone to adequately reproduce your results.
Of course, "reasonably" is there in the release requirements, but "reasonable" refusals for wet-lab materials tend toward availability and time considerations: there's not currently enough of it to share or it would be a significant burden on the lab to send it to you. These tend not to apply for software - you can make as many copies as you want, and it's cheap to do so.
"Reasonable" refusals of software tend toward licensing issues. For example, if you don't have the legal ability to distribute the code due to the libraries you used. Or if your institution is selling the code commercially, you may need to require others to obtain the software commercially.
In your case, it doesn't sound like you have an effort-based or license-based reason for refusal. It doesn't even sound like you're refusing due to potential competition ("huge difference in our research interests and perspectives"). Instead, it sounds like you're more refusing because you are nursing a grudge. That's not good. It certainly happens that others act that way, but I think most people would agree that refusing reasonable requests for methods and materials sharing because of pique is unethical.

I hope they will now give me codes to the UK Met Office weather model, because someone certainly published something with it. If it is an academic misconduct...

And that many papers about simulations with ANSYS/Fluent..

He does not need to release MATLAB because MATLAB is already available to all scientists (and others). (same for other tools)

I agree with your answer, but in the case of the original question there is no publication to be immediately cited.

I respectfully but categorically disagree with the assertion that "If you relied on the output of a program to produce your scientific result, then that program is part of the "materials" of your paper". On that basis, I should claim ownership of Microsoft Word source code for that great chili recipe I wrote up a decade ago.

@DavidW Just because it's materials, doesn't mean you own all rights to it. For example, if you did a research study on Viagra, then Viagra would be a material for your paper. That doesn't mean you can claim ownership of Viagra. The bulk of the answer only pertains to code you generated yourself. As David Balažic mentions, if code (or other materials) were obtained through third parties, you can direct people requesting to go to those same third parties.

@VladimirF If you wrote to them with a genuine scientific enquiry based on something that appeared in a published piece of research than the Met Office would help you. Of course they would not hand over complete source code to their model to someone who wants to exploit it commercially or avoid paying them for weather predictions.

“to put it hyperbolicly” — No. This is not a hyperbole. It’s literal truth. And luckily it’s increasingly handled just like this by institutions (though progress has been slow).

@VladimirF The Met Office is providing a funded service, not publishing Ph.D. dissertations or scientific papers of any kind. Your analogy does not hold water.

@EJP Surely you are joking https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=met+office+journal+of+atmospheric+sciences+unified+model&hl=cs&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjq48L7_orQAhXCHxoKHZbxCBwQgQMIHjAA But actually, jwg is probably right and MetOffice researches could help in some cases. But they cannot hand out the code they used for their research.

If you wrote the code as part of your work as a PhD candidate, and were at all considered an employee of the institution as a PhD candidate, then the institution may well own intellectual property rights to the code you write ("work for hire" rules). This of course depends on the laws of the country where your institution resides.
If you wrote code that is essential for some future work of your supervisor, and which reflects an important intellectual contribution, then either (a) it should be cited if a publication describing the code exists; or (b) you should be an author on publications using the code.
In any case you have a moral (and possibly legal) responsibility to share the code; your supervisor has a reciprocal responsibility to acknowledge your contribution properly. Ideally you should publish your method (e.g. Frontiers Neuroinformatics), and then it can be cited in academic work.

Very often a PhD candidate is a student, not an employee.

Often, but not always.

Writing code is sometimes, but not always, an intellectual contribution that merits authorship. (Whether or not it is "essential" to the work does not necessarily determine whether authorship credit is appropriate.)

@VladimirF Such rules on intellectual property may apply to students, too.

@ff524: You're right. There's a big difference between writing a plotting function, and developing an analysis toolchain. I edited my answer slightly.

IANL but the student handbook at my university reads as though the university can claim anything developed as student coursework/thesis/dissertation as the universities intellectual property.  In practice there are usually several startups being formed within the university and later spun off as independent companies.  I'm not sure how they handle the handoff of intellectual property rights.

What does it say about the community I live in that I saw IANL and rather than thinking it might be a typo for IANAL, I immediately thought, "huh, does Iowa have a National Lab?"...

A lot of people have mentioned making your code available, and I entirely second that.  But to get more specific, put it on GitHub.
Public repositories are free, it keeps a version history of your work so that even you can't mess it up in a terminal way, and others can branch your code off in another direction and develop it, all while keeping the proper reference back to you as the originator.  You can include your licensing in the repository; you often want one that allows free usage but requires citation.  GitHub even automates it for you.
You can also explain your code and leave links to your website/published work/etc using markdown in the readme.md file
Then when someone like your professor asks for your code, you just share your GitHub link.

This is good advice and GitHub certainly is great but what part of this answers the question?

@RyanfaeScotland How to carry out the suggested course of action doesn't seem relevant to you?

Someone asks how to refuse to share something and you provide an answer on the best platform to share it with the world. So no, I'm afriad in this case it doesn't seem relevant. I should mention that I'm of the school of thought that most of these answers don't actual answer the question, but I've picked up on this one as it seems even a further step removed from those answer.

@RyanfaeScotland I think that's an unnecessarily pedantic adherence to a literal reading of the question, which isn't the way StackExchanges work.  The question was "how to not share it" and the correct answer is "actually you should share it and here's why", while my answer simply adds "and also, here's how you can share it in a way that should address any concerns with sharing it."

@JeffL. Hmmm I still disagree and tend to think of answering the actual question that is being asked as the right thing to do (pedantically literally or otherwise). However the other answers and votes do look to support your train of thought. Thanks for taking the time to explain.

@RyanfaeScotland I'm grateful for your considerate attitude, and hope my explanation makes a bit more sense. Would you always assume that the asker knows the best course of action X when they ask a targeted question, How do I do X? I myself don't even assume that the OP even knows the best way to describe the problem, because often enough, I find myself in that situation. Those who know how to ask the best questions are often (already) experts themselves. Conversely, when I'm not an expert on a particular topic, I rely on comments/answers to refine my question, or broaden my perspective.

@Jeff Actually, if you put content on GitHub without a license, it's automatically under the MIT license, which is one of the most permissive ones (e.g. allowing commercial reuse)! MIT does require attribution, however; and that's about as little protection as you can get beyond public domain. (In other words, "you [must] include your licensing...," because if you don't (explicitly), you still do (implicitly) include the MIT license.)

@JeffL I don't assume the OP knows the best solution and it could be the solution they need help with is going to make the situation worse, I'd advise on it but still answer the question. Take this Q as an example, if I had the rep my answer would be 'If you are commited to refusing then you can do so politely as follows.... however be aware the code may belong to the university as part of the conditions also be aware you may be burning your bridges and limiting the good that can come from sharing your work.' Alas I don't have the rep (perhaps cause of my too literal answers!)

There are other version control systems than Git. And Github only supports Git.

@jpaugh: I'm pretty sure Github doesn't have a "default license". Quoting: "[The] absence of a license means that the default copyright laws apply. This means that you retain all rights to your source code and that nobody else may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work." (Github does reserve some rights though, through the ToS.)

@You Thanks. I must have misread that, way back when. Yes, GitHub would have to reserve enough rights to actually provide the service to you, even if you reserved all rights otherwise.

It's generally considered good practice to publish code that you use for research/analysis related to things you publish. Not everyone does but then lots of people fail to follow best practices.
Not publishing it is like keeping part of your methods secret or using confidential chemistries.
If you've used it for other publications then not only should you provide it to her: you should provide it to everyone who might want to inspect/replicate your work.
Also, as someone working in a neurology dept who writes a lot of code: Yes citations for analysis does still count positively, not as much as citations for things in your exact specialty but it shows you as being more well rounded.

Code used in research should be peer reviewed just like any other methods anyway.
First things first: find out who is the owner! I'm not a lawyer. Depending on situation, country etc, code may already belong to institution, research group etc. Before refusing, first make sure it's really your decision to make.
If it's yours, I suggest making it public, but put licence that will require mentioning use of it when results are used, and require sharing improvements with you.

In practice (and unfortunately), the costs of reviewing (potentially large amounts) code to the required level are prohibitive, and it's also not clear that the same people who are reviewing the paper should be reviewing the code (put bluntly, not all good researchers are good programmers). Moreover, a lot of research code is (quite frankly) hacked together just before the deadline to the point that reviewing it would be (a) an unholy nightmare and (b) unproductive.

I say this as someone who's spent a lot of time over the past couple of years reviewing code in a research context - you can do it, but it takes ages, and you have to be willing to let people incur (significant) technical debt just before deadlines and (hopefully) pay it back afterwards. It's not ideal, but the way in which academia is structured (i.e. prioritising papers over code quality) makes it difficult to do much more.

@StuartGolodetz even if code can't be reviewed, it should at least be reviewable, right? If anyone would doubt if program results are good, he should be able to see for himself?

Yes, in principle. In practice, though, stipulating that all source code must be released as a condition of publishing (which is the obvious way to try to enforce it) would just restrict who could publish papers - in particular, licensing and intellectual property issues can prevent people from releasing their source code even when they want to. I would err on the side of rewarding people who publish their source code rather than punishing those who don't. (Disclaimer: I publish my source code and I want cake, so I'm not unbiased.)

"Code used in research should be peer reviewed just like any other methods anyway." - I am not convinced it is useful in any way to spend scientific peer-reviewing resources on evaluating makefiles that copy our documents to our internal share server.

Read your institution's policies.
Your position assumes that you own the copyright for said code, and that's false in general. This will strongly depend on which university you attend, your formal student/staff status, and the institutions that fund you, but there are plenty of cases where the copyright for a PhD candidate's research output rests with the university. Moreover, in those cases, the person responsible for this bit of intellectual property is usually your line manager - i.e. your supervisor.
That means that your supervisor may well have the legal right to demand that you give her the code, and that you refrain from using it in further research outside of your current institution. This means that your very first stop here needs to be verifying that this is not actually the case.

If you must refuse, refuse in person, or refuse by phone. Do not put anything in writing, unless you're absolutely sure of your rights.
Since your advisor is making you a Research Assistant, note that she could be implicitly buying your future collaboration as well. After all, if your code is sufficiently complex, she may require your expertise to install it, understand it, run it properly, and possibly modify it.
In which case, you could use the fact that you don't have the time to work with her, nor the time to clean up your code to make it more readable or usable right now. Or you could simply refuse her request without justifying yourself to her (but again, do not put any of this in writing, just tell her in person or over the phone, if you're not absolutely sure of your rights).
And some people mentioned that you might want to get cited for your source code, but it could also be that you don't want your name associated with her project. So you could ask for that as well if you wanted.
Or perhaps, you could set the goal to release the source code, but only a year or two from now, by which time, it will be too late for her to use it in her grant. Or perhaps, you could release an older less usable version of the code.
Or if your relationship ended really badly, you could just tell her that you won't help and that you don't wish her to ever contact you again. And then, you could make a filter that ensures that you never see her email messages ever again.
My point is that you have many options. It's just that I am not really clear about your reason for refusing her request. If we knew your exact reason, then maybe we could supply you with a more exact answer.

Here's what I would advise: write a paper that uses and explains the code.  Then when you share the code, request that whoever you share it with cites your paper.
A good example is here: http://www.modelinginfectiousdiseases.org/.  Read the last line, where some code is distributed with the line "if you use any of the programs in your research, we ask that you reference..."
Especially in your case where you say you have different research interests, and so your advisor will not be competing with you, you're just throwing away free citations (and good letters of recommendation) if you refuse to share.  The fact that no-one has given a good answer to "how to refuse" is because we can't think of any good justification for doing it.  If you really need an answer to this question, you need to explain what the reason is to do it.  "I don't want to collaborate" is not a good reason.

I am not convinced a paper about a set of utility routines that combines spreadsheets from different Excel files into a single Excel file will be accepted anywhere. It is simply not interesting as research. No, the OP doesn't say that's what their code does, but they also do not say anything beyond "a computer program for my dissertation research", so it is completely possible their computer program is meant for such "menial" tasks. This answer applies only to the limited case that the computer program is the actual subject of the research.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


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Contribution vs. novelty in the papers, especially in computer science?
I'm a little confused about the two concepts of contributions and novelty especially when I want to clarify them in my papers (CS scope).
For example, as a common practice, people talk about their contributions at the end of the introduction chapter. So, is this the place that I have to emphasize all the novel parts of my algorithm/approach? Or should I talk about how better is the performance of my approach comparing to others?
If I do not have to mention the detail novelty of my method in the contribution section, then where should I clearly emphasize them to make sure the reviewer get them without too much effort?

Might depend a bit on what tier conference and how competitive it is. Also, depending on how you achieved the performance improvements, that might be novel in and of itself.

It depends.  Novelty simply means "something that hasn't been done before", while "contribution" specifically talks about pushing the state of the art and solving a problem that hasn't previously been solved (or solving an old problem better).
To illustrate the point, assume you are working on a big data application and you realize that no one yet has ever tried algorithm X on that problem.  You apply algorithm X and try to publish simply because no one has done so before.  This is novelty, but it probably wouldn't be considered a contribution unless algorithm X is clearly better and you provide a solid justification for why.
A contribution is all about pushing the boundaries of what is known.  To continue our example, let's say now that you produced a new algorithm, Y, and are able to prove that in this specific problem it is better compared to other algorithms.  Then this would be both novel and a contribution.
When writing a paper with a "contributions" section, you usually should stick to the contributions in the sense described above - how does this work push the boundaries of the field.
It should be clear from the introduction that:

A problem exists in the field that hasn't yet been solved (or that can be solved better)
Your work solves/helps that problem (this is the novelty - if your work doesn't do this, then what's the point?)

Then in your contribution section, you can specifically explain what your contribution is ("we propose an algorithm for... that uses... to solve...")

source: Stack Exchange

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How can I fund my PhD after the first year?
I'm in the process of applying for admission to a PhD program this Fall after several years in industry. Due to the late timing of the application I'm looking at self-funding my first year, but after that I would rather not be doing so. What would my options be for funding after the first year beyond just TA and RA-ships?

You will get better feedback if you edit your post to include your location (e.g., US, Germany, etc.).

@MadJack Yes, good catch! Updated.

This depends on your field.  In science and engineering, probably funding is available.  But good luck getting funding to study medieval architecture ...  besides RA and TA there may be AA (administrative assistant).  They get some graduate student to do clerical work in the college office, for example.

In my Ph.D. program at Stanford, because I was married I wasn't offered any funding.  But everything I did - RA, TA, etc.  brought a certain number of tuition remission credits.  In the end, I only paid for 3 units during my whole program.  This will only work if you have a partner who works.

@ewormuth: "In my Ph.D. program at Stanford, because I was married I wasn't offered any funding." Wait, what?  It sounds like you are saying that you were discriminated against based on your marital status.  Could you clarify/confirm and also indicate when this took place?

In the US, various funding agencies (NSF, NIH, DOE, ...) have fellowships you can apply to for predoctoral students. They tend to be very competitive compared to internal sources (Teaching Assistantships, Research Assistantships, Graduate Assistantships), but they may offer a higher stipend.
Depending on your field, professional societies also offer fellowships: American heart association, Whitaker foundation, Gates foundation.
Industry also offers some in association with various schools: Siemens, Raytheon, Johnson & Johnson.

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What defines a PhD dissertation/thesis?
This might be a bit of an abstract question, but what defines a dissertation? Some colleagues and myself have been debating this and some are arguing that three peer-reviewed publications or a long monograph make a dissertation. However, others are arguing that the dissertation is defined not by the length or number of publications, but the significance of the contribution. Is there any scholarly consensus on this, or is this a continuing discussion in academia?

A dissertation is whatever the committee will sign off on and the university will accept. Anything beyond that is opinion and custom.

Just as a curiosity, in my country of origin it depends on the degree: monograph for finishing the bachelor degree, dissertation for finishing the masters degree and thesis for finishing the doctorate (there is no PhD over there). So, we say "bachelor's monograph, master's dissertation and doctorate's thesis". If someone says "I'm writing my doctorate dissertation" it will sound very strange.

It would help to indicate at what level.  In British English, a dissertation is an original work at masters, undergraduate, or high-school level.  Most of the answers seem to assume a dissertation is produced for a PhD - in British English that would be a thesis.

Don't have a source, and things may be different in different parts of the world, but I've always considered a dissertation to be:

A long monograph submitted in partial completion of the requirements for a PhD

Dissertations are generally submitted by grad students as they complete their PhDs -- other academics might publish long monographs, but that wouldn't be considered a dissertation.
Certainly I don't think there is a well-defined standard for how significant a contribution has to be to merit a dissertation -- it's whatever the committee will accept (though in principle, it should have some new advance, not merely a survey or report).
Some institutions may allow you to staple together your papers to produce a dissertation; most require a separate document that re-hashes work that may (or may not) have been published elsewhere.

Indeed, on point three, I have seen dissertations that, quite literally, where a heavy duty top sheet with a title and name on it and then several reprints of published papers stapled behind it. (Of course, this is from when one actually got reprints of papers, but that is another story.)

...where "long" means anything from "at least 20 pages" to "at least 500 pages".

This depends on field and on location. In mathematics, generally, if not universally, a dissertation is a significant contribution advancing mathematics in a subfield, where significance is judged by an advisor and a committee. It doesn't need to be published at all, though the candidate may have one or more papers based on it.
In other fields, a "dissertation" is, as you suggest, just a collection of published papers, where the quality is left, perhaps, to the editors and reviewers. It might even be a single publication.
A dissertation could be long or short, but its length has nothing to do with its quality. A three line proof that P = NP would, in CS, if correct, be a monumental contribution.
There isn't really a discussion "in Academia" though there might be within some fields or at some universities. A new field, in particular, might go through a period of uncertainty as to what should be generally accepted within that field. Most likely it would settle out somehow within a few years.
In those fields in which advisors/supervisors play an important part, it is the definition of the supervisor that weighs the most.

The question of "significance" is, of course, subjective and will depend on the institution, department, committee, and advisor.  But the property of novelty should be more objective.  Should a PhD recipient always make a novel contribution to the field or subfield (and perhaps leave the "significance" or "impact" to be decided in the future)?  I should hope so, but I doubt it's always the case, even in hard sciences and mathematics.  I dunno.  (Personally I think there is a glut of PhDs and wish that some of the quantity were traded for quality and novelty.)

Obviously there is not a consensus, given the differences in practice.  Even if debating this, I don't think there is an easy answer and you will get different points of view (different pluses and minuses and tradeoffs).
I tend to the view (in the sciences) that the dissertation is just a hurdle to get out of the way, but much less important in learning or in contribution than what you did in publications.  I think a gentle stitching together of previously done papers along with a perfunctory intro and background is fine.  (Perfunctory because I think a thorough review makes more sense when a senior scientist.)  The main disadvantage to spending too much time or effort on the thesis is that it either keeps you longer or it takes away from lab work and real papers.  Time is not infinite.
In general, I think most students would be better advised to try to get through the thesis fast AND to look at it somewhat cynically as a pass/fail school exercise.  In other words, NOT like writing the King James Bible.  On the other hand, your papers ought to be very well honed little gemstones.  They are going into the archived literature (so is the thesis, but nobody looks at it.) This might be very different for someone in the humanities where writing a monograph is an important skill.  But we need to be realistic that somebody working on helium-3 is getting a doctorate in condensed matter physics, not "philosophy" (despite the confusing term "Ph.D.")
I do like the use of the dissertation to be able to include results not yet published (but then please try to get the chapters converted later...nobody reads dissertations like they read papers).  In addition, you can include a little more work that does not fit well into regular papers (failed experiments, etc.)  The rationale is that at least you are getting it published somewhere.  But still better in articles if possible.
In addition, you can go more into details on future work ideas, innovations in lab technique or tools, or practical advice on benefits of different methods.  Follow-on students in the lab group can benefit from this and are a likely audience to read the dissertation.

+1 I'd argue a PhD is just a hurdle to get out of the way, aspiring academics should graduate as quickly as possible.

"as a pass/fail school exercise." It should be noted that in some countries (certainly in Germany) a doctoral degree is graded. And the grade is exclusively determined by the dissertation and the defense. So this may be dangerous advice.

The advice also appears badly misguided in some fields, where students typically are not expected to produce papers during their studies.

@user2768 That is also terrible advice in some areas. It may take a significant amount of time to acquire the required knowledge to be able to contribute meaningfully.

@AndrésE.Caicedo graduating as quickly as possible is compatible with a significant amount of time to acquire the required knowledge. The period of a PhD should be as short as necessary. A dissertation should contain just enough to pass with the desired grade---albeit, I'll concede there are valid reasons to include more. Taking longer than necessary hinders a career.

@user2768 "longer than necessary" is the key thing. My point is that what is necessary varies quite wildly depending on the topic. I know many examples of people that graduated quickly and found themselves as a consequence grossly underprepared.

It would be more interesting to talk about what a dissertation ought to be.  I have always been against the (rather modern) convention of a candidate stapling together 5 published papers and calling it a dissertation.  If one is to really be a Doctor of Philosophy, then he should really understand the philosophy of his field and his dissertation should show it.
You published 5 papers, two of which were "monumental" and all in highly respected journals?  Swell.  That shows that your advisor can hand you problems and you can solve them (or hand you topics and you can research and write interesting things about them.)  But is doesn't show that you know what an interesting problem or topic is.  Sure, you can get an assistant professorship and then work in a research group at a flagship university, but still, it's the PI handing you problems which you solve.
But how to your papers fit into the larger body of knowledge?  What makes them useful and interesting?  Where are these topics going to lead?  Those are higher-level questions, and I think the dissertation should not only be a publishable result, but also should show the world why the result should be published (and funded and pursued further.)
I speculate that the pressure (which I believe began with the Viet Nam war college deferment) to produce a lot more Ph.D.'s has caused academia to loosen the standards for who gets to be a Doctor of Philosophy.  We now have about 3 times the number of Ph.D.'s that society really needs and most of them are just grinding out papers that no one really cares about.
So my opinion is that a dissertation is a publishable result wrapped in a good thick layer of why it's a publishable result.

So, one novel and justifiably novel result is worth more than five "solutions to hard problems?

@anonymous  "Worth more"?  That isn't my issue.  I would think that academia wants to know what this student is made of.  I'm interested in evaluating the person, not the results (or in addition to the results.)

I think that's my point though. If the student works hard, makes a significant breakthrough, then it does it really make sense to say, "OK, now gives us four more publications!" So I'm interpreting what you are saying as, one significant advancement that the student is able to articulate and position in the literature well is better than volume, even if it's very productive work.

@anonymous  If the student publishes 5 "good" papers and only one is "breakthrough", but he doesn't know why the one paper is a notch above the others, then he is somehow lacking in the philosophy of his field.

More like, if a study has a breakthrough paper and knows why it's a breakthrough, is there any point in making them write more for the dissertation?

@anonymous  Yes.  He should write down why it's a breakthrough.  The point of the dissertation is to prove to others that you have mastered the philosophy of your field.  He should write about further direction that this breakthough should lead to.

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text:
What's the proper way to list authorship of appendix to a publication on a CV?
I'm collaborating with some others on an appendix to a historical paper for submission to a high profile journal. In the field the convention for authorship appears similar to mathematics (see also this discussion) in which authorship can be split between the main paper and appendices. Since the basic rule of thumb is that the CV should include all intellectual products what would be the proper way to include the appendix? Would it be appropriate to just include it as a publication, e.g.
Author, A., Author, B., Author, C., “Appendix: Neat Computer Simulation Justifying Historical Argument.” Appendix to Author, C., "Historical Argument." High Profile Journal, vol. XX, no. XX, pp. XX-XX, XXXX.

How would such a work usually be cited?

@user2768 MLA calls for it to be cited as a separate work.

Cite it in your CV in the style suggested by MLA

This question was asked a long time ago but never received an answer. In my field, the standard is to list it alongside the publications on your CV, with the text of the citation making it clear that what you authored was an appendix to another paper. This advice was already mentioned on MathOverflow.
Here's an example. The paper "A comparison of norm maps" by Anna Marie Bohmann, has an appendix by Bohmann and Emily Riehl. Here's how it's cited on Bohmann's CV:

A comparison of norm maps. With appendix by Anna Marie Bohmann and Emily Riehl. Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society 142 (2014), 1413-1423.

Here's how it's cited on Emily Riehl's CV:

A.M. Bohmann, A comparison of norm maps, with an appendix by A.M. Bohmann and E. Riehl, Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 142 (2014), no. 4, 1413–1423.

The OP didn't ask about this, but I also want to discuss citations with the phrase "with contributions by." These are even rarer. Here's an example: the book Equivariant Stable Homotopy by Lewis, May, and Steinberger, with contributions by McClure. On Peter May's CV, it is cited as:
(with L.~G. Lewis and M. Steinberger and with contributions by J.~E. McClure). Equivariant stable homotopy theory.
But, on McClure's CV, it is cited as:
L. G. Lewis, Jr., J. P. May, M. Steinberger, and J. E. McClure. Equivariant stable homotopy theory, volume 1213 of Lecture Notes in Mathematics. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1986. With contributions by J. E. McClure.
Furthermore, each chapter says which subset of the authors wrote that chapter, and McClure is listed as a co-author of at least one chapter. I have no idea how this came about, but I think if I was writing a book and had to choose the level of authorship of someone who contributed, I'd just make them an author and not stress a ton about marking precisely who contributed what. There are better things to spend mental energy on.

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Are there grants and fellowships for PhD students past the first year, but before candidacy?
Effectively as per the questions title, are there grants and fellowships for PhD students past the first year, but before candidacy? From what I have seen, most are intended for first year students (i.e. those with no more than twelve months of study), after candidacy has been achieved, or are finishing fellowships for the last semester of work. For example, the Hertz Foundation says the following:

We generally do not award fellowships to students who are already
  beyond their first year of graduate study except in cases of
  "exceptional leverage".  Such awards are very rare—only three have
  been made in the past 10 years. (Leverage here means what difference
  the award of the Hertz Fellowship is likely to make in the kind,
  quality, and/or personal creativity of the student's graduate
  research.)

Which seems to be a fairly common theme. As such, I'm looking for answers in two parts:

Are there open grants and fellowships for PhD students past the first year, but before candidacy?
Are there field specific ones (computational social science or computational science & engineering) that may apply?

@tilper Quite likely, I'm biased towards general questions since other may have the same problem though. I've updated it with some field specific information though.

Yes. Several of the fellowship and scholarship mentioned in a previous question (Options other than the NSF for PhD level grants?) are open to non-first year graduate students.
For example, The EPA STAR Graduate Fellowship,  The Ford Foundation through the National Academies, NSA Fellowships, Google Research, and The Data Incubator all allow people to apply past the first year.
The NSA, Google Research, and Data Incubators Fellowships all target computer science. "The Ford Foundation seeks to increase the diversity of the nation’s college and university faculties by increasing their ethnic and racial diversity, maximize the educational benefits of diversity, and increase the number of professors who can and will use diversity as a resource for enriching the education of all students." The EPA Fellowships target environmental science, which could include computational science applied to studying the environment.
Edit note November 2019: The EPA no longer offers their fellowship program.

The Data Incubator appears to be for people that have their PhD and want to enter industry. I don't see anything about PhD student support.

They have a Fellowship Program, albeit it only covers attending their training camp.

Yup, that's what I'm referring to. It's not exactly something you could use to find a PhD.


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What action can be taken if hostel allotments are not out just after admissions are done?
I just joined a university for my post graduation studies, but as I'm from a different country, I don't have a place to stay. Therefore, I asked the hostel prefect if I can stay in a room as a paying guest until the hostel allotment are out. He said yes. After two weeks however, the DEAN OF STUDENTS WELFARE asked me to leave the place the same day. He took our names and now I got a letter for disciplinary action. What should I do now?

It's unclear what you're asking here, and I suspect it's off-topic on Academia S.E. since it's institution-specific. But to make a long story short, it sounds like you need to find new accommodations.

There are two things you need to do:

Apologize to the Dean of Student Welfare for the unauthorized stay in the hostel, explaining that you thought you had permission.
Find somewhere to stay. Possible resources include hotels, AirBnB, the university's housing department, the Dean of Student Welfare (after or as part of step 1), and personal contacts in your department.


text:
Access to scientific articles that cite mine after leaving academia
I used to work in academia. I was lucky enough to publish important papers in peer reviewed journals that now regularly get cited by other papers in peer reviewed journals. I have left academia to work in the private sector, so every time I get a notification that my work has been cited elsewhere in a non open access journal, I can't even see how it was used. I should be able to ensure my work isn't mis-quoted or wrongly interpreted, but I can't without paying extensive fees for each and every article...
Is sci-hub my only non-option because I refuse to use illegal means?

Possible duplicate: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26235/is-there-an-affordable-way-for-non-students-to-subscribe-to-multi-journals-archi

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

There is not much you can do about it if you are being mis-cited or mis-quoted, is there? You get to read it after it has passed through peer-review and not before.

Use of Sci-Hub is more legal than you think.

You can write an e-mail to the authors and ask for a copy of their published paper. Almost everyone will be happy to send you one.
Before doing that, check if the paper is already published on their webpage, or if they have submitted it to a preprint server. Use of preprint servers and embargo periods vary among the various disciplines --- in some fields you are more likely to find it online earlier, in others it's almost impossible.

That seems to me like a sensible alternative I hadn't considered. Thank you.

@tistbajean One particular caveat for you, since you refuse to use illegal means: although a researcher may upload a paper to their website or send it to you, this doesn't mean that it's necessarily legal. I'm delighted to share my publications with anyone who asks, but I have no idea, in general, whether I'm legally allowed to do it.

@Pont Good point, but all publication copyright transfer agreements that I have seen explicitly allow private redistribution (at least as long as it's not automated).

I confess I don't read the T&Cs in detail, but I do know that on publication Elsevier send me a "personalized URL providing 50 days' free access", which generously allows me to read my own article and share it with others -- for 50 days. From this I always assumed that they don't grant me a general right to email my article to others in perpetuity. Either way, the upshot for @tistbajean would appear to be: make sure any file on an author's website is legal, and if not email them to request the identical file (if they're permitted to redistribute it by email) in order to stay within the law.

@Pont https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/sharing : "If you are an author, you may also share your Published Journal Article privately with known students or colleagues for their personal use", and "Authors can share their accepted manuscript [...] via their non-commercial personal homepage or blog".

It appears from Elsevier's text that sharing of the published article is restricted to "known students or colleagues" (i.e. I shouldn't email it to a stranger who requests it) and sharing via web is restricted to the accepted manuscript (i.e. not the final published form). In this context the "personalized URL" makes sense -- it's an additional avenue which lets me share the published article with unknown people, albeit only for 50 days. This is relevant to @tistbajean since (from comments) they seem to start article-hunting in response to citation alerts, so probably within 50 days.

@Pont: I would guess by "known" they just mean you are sharing it with people that you know specifically rather than making it available somewhere with a note like "for anyone who is interested". If a stranger contacts the author, the author would presumably "know" who the stranger is after the first contact.

@sumelic Even if I "know" someone after they send me an email, that hardly makes them a "known colleague". At least to me, "colleague" implies someone I work with on some settled, regular basis.

Some options:
https://openaccessbutton.org/
http://unpaywall.org/
http://doai.io/
Also, Google Scholar will sometimes list mirror versions located elsewhere online.
That said, both with that and with contacting the author on whether you can access the article, you cannot be sure that the author has studied the publisher's terms and is allowed to share it, so it's quite hard to make sure you're not using illegal means.
Another option is to walk into an academic library and download them on their guest WiFi.

While these options might seem dodgy, they are perfectly legal. Most funders now require that research is available in open access form, and to comply with this almost all journals will allow you to place an unformatted version of the manuscript on your personal website. These services find these copies.

I owe you a beer. A lot. 2. This makes me wonder: is formatting the only difference between paywalled and unpaywalled documents? If yes, is that the only reason why pubishers fight e.g. SciHub but allow sites like these?...

@Neinstein That depends on the publisher. Some allow you to incorporate the feedback from peer review, some even the formatting, some allow you to share them elsewhere directly and most only after an embargo periods of several months or years. See also https://medium.com/flockademic/how-open-can-open-access-be-cf6662565ecd

Your local library probably has access to academic journals through JSTOR. Unfortunately it takes a few years for journals to be added to that.
Another option is to get access through the library at your university. Alumni are often given library privileges and even if that is not the case, as former staff, you might be able to set up some sort of arrangement. Get in touch with someone from your former department and ask how can you get access to scientific journals.

I have the same problem.
I used to just go to the local university library, as others suggested. But that doesn't work any more because I no longer live anywhere near a good library.
I eventually solved the problem by volunteering to serve as an associate editor of one of the main journals in my field, and I serve as a reviewer for other ones. The publisher then gave me open access to those journals and several others that they handle. This works for me because a large fraction of the interesting papers in my field are published in one of two journals. If publishing in your field is more scattered, my approach might not work.

I'm all for open access, but you don't have any special entitlement to access research articles simply because they cite you. It is up to peer reviewers and the editors of the journals that publish the articles to ensure that your work is quoted and interpreted accurately. Thus the method you use to obtain access to these articles should be the same that you use to access any other article you are interested in (contacting the authors to ask for a copy is an excellent method).

Im afraid I have to disagree with the accepted answer. At least in my field of academic medicine (where authors are at least likely to have funding to order reprints), most authors stopped ordering paper reprints more than a decade ago.
I used to receive many requests for reprints from eastern Europe and from parts of the far East. Those requests died out as internet access grew.
Writing a senior author these days may net you a PDF, or simply be ignored.
Your best bet is a public access library.


text:
Is it OK to go to postdocs for help?
There is a postdoc from another group in my department that frequently helps PhD students in his area when they have questions or want to talk about a particular subject. I would like to know if this is expected/normal. In other words, can I go to a postdoc looking to talk and ask questions related to our field?

Discussing research with postdocs and other graduate students and asking for some advice is usually encouraged, but you have to give alot more detail for us to be able to provide a useful answer to your situtation.

You could ask the postdoc (or the professor) if it's part of their contract to help supervise PhD students. I'm not saying that if it's not part of their job you should never ask for help, but it does change things a little bit if you know they're going above and beyond their usual workload to help you.

They are humans. Sometimes they just like to help. Be prepared that, at some point, they may find their time is made too much use of, and than they pull back from helping so many people.

When I was a lad (ok, postdoc) I certainly thought that working with grad students in the group was a big part of my job. It helped both them and I get lots more done quickly and efficiently.

In other words, can I go to a postdoc looking to talk and ask questions related to our field?

It depends on what you mean by "can", as well as the culture in your field and department.
If you are asking whether it's an ethical and reasonable thing to do, then the answer is certainly yes.  You can talk with and ask questions to anyone you'd like, provided you appropriately acknowledge any assistance you receive.
If you are asking whether the postdoc has an obligation to provide substantial assistance or tutoring, then the answer is quite possibly no.  It's hard to give a definitive answer, since precisely what the word "postdoc" means varies between fields and departments, but you shouldn't assume supervising graduate students is a serious part of the job unless you have some confirmation that this is true in your scenario.
If your questions are genuinely interesting and thought-provoking to the postdoc, then they will probably be happy to chat with you.  You may also get a good response if you ask about topics that are truly difficult to learn about elsewhere, so that the postdoc will be sympathetic.  On the other hand, if you try to lighten your workload by asking the postdoc relatively routine questions so you don't have to bother looking things up, then they will probably lose patience with you.

Yes.  Helping students is commonly part of a postdoc's job.  They are not obligated to help with every problem a student brings, but they probably will if they can.

Part of the idea of gathering professors, graduate students, postdocs and others is precisely to encourage exchange of ideas.

Yes, it's definitely ok as other answers suggest; I'd like to add a few more points though:

Remember if you receive help beyond a certain level, you have to give that person credit afterwards, either in a thank-you note in a paper/poster, or perhaps even a coauthorship. I'm not saying that to discourage you from getting help, just so you don't forget later on.
You can sometime reciprocate by offering them help with problems they're working on, if you feel it's too much of a one-way communication.
Try to use the opportunity of getting help on something specific to maybe get a broader perspective on your research directions from someone who's pursuing something else. You don't have to agree with what he says but these can be useful reality checks sometimes.


text:
Can I request for a change of a musical piece assigned to me due to physical discomfort?
I wonder if this is going to sound silly, I'd rather vent this anonymously online first before taking any action in the real world... I'm doing a Bachelor's Degree in Creative Writing and part of our next assignment is on Mozart. The music they've selected us to analyze is his Horn Concerto No. 2. Due to my autistic spectrum disorder, I find certain frequencies/noises to be irritating to listen to, it's this sort of throbbing in my inner ear like when you listen to something that is too loud or at the wrong frequency. I think it's related to my sensory processing disorder in some way, I have similar issues with tactile sensations. The Horn Concerto causes this throbbing/vibration and trying to analyze it is uncomfortable/painful.
This sounds ridiculous but would it be wrong of me to ask my tutor if I could do another piece of his music like Lacrimosa/Requiem or the 9th Symphony for one half of my assignment? I enjoy both those pieces, Mozart has such a wide variety of music to choose from and I'd hate to have to choose something else just because of my condition. Feedback would be much appreciated.

Not an answer to your question per se, but it’s quite easy using common music apps to take an audio file and shift all the frequencies up or down by some desired amount without changing the tempo. The sound quality degrades a bit but not by much. If your discomfort is really associated only with specific frequencies, consider the possibility that that will solve the issue and allow you to complete the assignment without making any requests.

There is even easier path to try. Try listening to the same piece performed by different people, or even on a different instrument. Almost anything more or less well known can be found played on piano.

I did this once, of course its ok.

Personally, if I set an assessment task that caused physical discomfort for one of my students then I would want them to tell me so that I could change it.

Any request has more weight if you have a (medical) doctor in your side, if you are met with refusal, offer to come back with a letter from your doctor.  I would expect that the university rules require him to accomodate your needs.

I think you have a disabled access requirement to study a different piece of music. I'm disabled; my experience is that when I say 'I have disabled access requirement X', this language helps. Your additional needs sound very reasonable to me; certainly not ridiculous. In general I think people are required to make reasonable adjustments for such things

would it be wrong of me to ask my tutor if I could do another piece of his music like Lacrimosa/Requiem or the 9th Symphony for one half of my assignment?

No, it wouldn't be unreasonable to ask and in many places accommodation would be required by law. But in some other places what they should do and what they will do might be quite different. I would hope that the UK requires appropriate accommodation.
But you should ask and explain your reasoning. In fact, since the program isn't one in music at all, it might be necessary for someone like me (almost completely deaf and totally deaf in certain frequencies) to use a completely different assignment that doesn't depend on normal hearing.
I've had to give up music - even Bob Dylan - sad.

Have you had a look at bone conduction headphones?

You're majoring in Writing. Write about how irritated you get with those notes and yes, emphasize your spectrum disorder. That should give your prof a fresh perspective about how "other" people view Mozart. You could do a whole book about this even to a point comparing autistic and neurotypicals who also hate listening to that type of music.

The OP describes it as "uncomfortable/painful". I don't think they should have to suffer through discomfort and pain to get their point across to the professor. If I was the professor and I read an assignment written like this, I would ask the student: why didn't you just tell me so I could give you a different piece to write about?

On the other hand, if this is something that OP wants to do, there's nothing stopping them from clearing this with their Professor first. They can both make sure this can be done in a way that still accomplishes the goals of the assignment, and this avoids getting into a situation like the one @kaya3 describes.

This has nothing to do with hating Mozart.

This sounds ridiculous

It's not ridiculous, you're feeling physical discomfort. Plus, how can you be inspired to write creatively by something that's mostly grating for you to even listen to?

but would it be wrong of me to ask my tutor etc.

It's perfectly fine, but:

Your tutor might give you some sort of excuse, like "I have to give everyone the same piece" or "I can't make this decision myself" or whatever. I don't think that's a valid excuse, but it might happen.
Make an effort your request to sound respectful and non-aggressive, and not like a demand. You've explained it pretty well here, i.e. focusing on how it affects you; just make sure to use an appropriate tone of voice. Also, don't make a concrete suggestion for an alternative piece; rather, first wait for your tutor to acknowledge the problem, and either ask you for a suggestion or start wondering out loud what to do.
Your tutor might have another alternative, e.g. using a painting instead of a musical piece; or even letting the other assignments have more weight in the final grade and letting you skip this one.

I agree, especially with the point of not suggesting specific pieces. This might give rise to the thought that you want it, because you know it well already. Instead explain what exactly is the problem and with which kind of music you are fine and giving some pieces as examples for which is ok. And speaking from experience, most professors are quite understanding in such regards (speaking from the point of view as a graduate student and tutor).

Asking for accommodation is fine -- remembering that there are laws that dictate whether such a request must be honored, and that many profs will respond to polite and timely requests, whether they are required to or not.
I don't think you should recommend a piece for replacement though.  That might offer you an advantage over other students.  My preference would be to do your best to communicate what disturbs you in the original piece (perhaps indicating times of such passages in a recording), examples of works that don't disturb you, and ask the prof to do their best to offer you an option that you wouldn't find disturbing.

If I were the professor, I would welcome the suggestion of an alternative.  Otherwise, I'd have to spend a lot of time listening to different pieces of music, trying to guess what would or wouldn't cause OP's discomfort.

@DawoodibnKareem  -- the point is that a pre-familiarity with a piece may prove an unfair advantage.  Perhaps an alternate assignment assessing the same metrics is the best option.

You can certainly ask but there are several potential issues with your request.  I'm always reluctant to modify an assignment for a student because, if I do it for one student, then I have to be willing to do it for everyone.  I understand that you have a situation that makes the assignment problematic but I have no way of confirming that and I definitely don't want to put myself in the position of trying to decide what constitutes a good reason and what doesn't.
It's true that faculty are legally required to provide accommodations for students with disabilities but this is only the case for disabilities that have been confirmed by the university.  We can't make this decision unilaterally and, for better or worse, this is a situation that the federal government takes very seriously.  That means that there are lawyers involved and, whenever lawyers get involved, things get very rigid.  I'm required to give students the accommodations the disability office has decide they get and I'm specifically required not to do anything else.  If I do, we're back to having potential fairness issues with the other students in the class.
The path forward for you should be to go to the disability services office at your school, provide them documentation of your condition (or find out what documentation they want to see) and have them provide an official accommodation notice that you give to your professors.  Unfortunately, that's a process that probably won't be done in time for this assignment.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with this, but I would point out that it seems to me that you are answering based on an unconfirmed assumption that the OP has not reported his condition/disability to their University.

In the UK (mentioned in the OP's profile) a disability does not have to be "confirmed", and ASD disorders are really hard to get diagnosed, even in childhood. Obviously a diagnosis helps, and it's good practice not to spring something unexpected on the organisation, but having been notified of a disability qualifying under the Disability Discrimination Act, the duty to accommodate applies. Disputes need to be dealt with by the courts, but "You don't have a disability" is quite uncommon. [A reasonable adjustment may be to suggest a different work of Mozart's, or a different arrangement of it.]

This may just be my opinion but, you should be willing to modify the assignment for every student.  If there is an innate problem with the assignment, such that every student is asking you to change it, it would be extremely stubborn of you not to change it.

I really don't see how there would be any fairness issue raised by the professor simply assigning a different piece of music from the list of pieces of music they must already have drawn up for the task. If the pieces aren't all of equal difficulty to write about then the assessment was already unfair, otherwise if they are of equal difficulty to write about then assigning a different one is still fair. I also agree with Zibbobz; "if I do the right thing once then I will have to do the right thing more times" is not a good argument against doing the right thing.

For some kinds of accommodation request, I would agree with this answer’s stance — when they compromise the fairness/appropriateness of the assignment, or put a large extra burden on the instructors.  But for requests like this, which seem easy to grant, I don’t see any reason to be unwilling.

@kaya3   You made some huge assumptions.  Why "must they already have [other pieces] drawn up for the task"?  When I create an assignment, I don't create five equivalent versions so that I have backups in case someone has an issue with the first one.  Also, the OP mentioned already being familiar with the other pieces he suggested which would give him an advantage over other students who were likely hearing the other piece for the first time.

-1. OP has a disabled access requirement to study a different piece of music. Your approach is essentially, 'I don't want to take responsibility for helping you, come back when the system has certified your situation so I don't have to think about it'. I'm disabled and the system discriminates against me in many different ways. Getting certified can take a very long time and cause all sorts of difficulties; your approach added on to that process can cause a lot of additional suffering in my experience

@Joe My approach is, "There's a process in place for handling your situation.  You should go and use it."  And you're right - I'm not taking responsibility for evaluating your condition, getting the documentation to confirm that it is what you say it is then determining what accommodations are appropriate.  Again, that's why we have a process and it's been my experience as an instructor that US school's often go overboard in the accommodations they require.

@G. Allen, I think you're lacking the experience of starting that kind of process, and finding that it's still going after a number of months without any useful response. I'm not saying you need to take responsibility for evaluating people's condition etc., I'm saying that if people come to you with disabled access requirements, you can take responsibility for helping them by making reasonable adjustments regardless of whether they have documentation or not. It took me two years of being too ashamed of my disability to get any kind of documentation.

+1 @G.Allen, without any kind of formal confirmation of the issue it is a minefield, better to let those entrusted with the process deal with this.