text:
Should I accept an unpaid TA position?
I am a fourth-year undergraduate math major. I come from a not-so-big school, where the mathematics department is not funded that well. Recently, a professor asked if I would be interested in becoming a TA for a course being taught next semester (it is pretty unusual for undergraduate students to become TAs at my university.) As it turns out, the position shall be unpaid (simply because the department lacks funding, and does not compensate even some PhD student TAs.)
I shall be applying to graduate schools in the US & Canada this year, and the only reason I considered the TA position is that it could perhaps make me a more competitive applicant to PhD programs. Is that true? I'm sure I'll have opportunities to be a TA later in my life, especially as a graduate student, so I'm not missing out even if I let go of this opportunity.
Besides, I shall be busy with coursework and grad-school applications this semester, and the TA-ship would only add extra work and take away time. I'm not sure if it would be worth the investment of my time to become a TA this semester, just to add to my CV for grad-school applications.

You have to make the judgement call. You seem to have captured the important factors.

What work would you do as a TA? It could range from just grading papers to actual classroom teaching, and the nature of the work could affect its value for your grad school applications.

@AndreasBlass It's just grading this time around, and leading a few tutorial sections.

It seems like your real question is "will being a TA make me more competitive for graduate school?" Too late to change the question now that answers have been posted, but if this gets closed, you might consider reposting along these lines. (Also, if you are asking about India, you might want to highlight that more prominently.)

You might be interested: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/134440/is-ta-ing-worth-the-opportunity-cost-of-having-more-time-for-research

You should not. This is an exploitative offer.

and the only reason I considered the TA position is that it could perhaps make me a more competitive applicant to PhD programs

Anecdotally, I have heard from professors that this doesn't factor into decisions at all. However, this could be very different in your field/sub-field. And you are correct there are likely opportunities later to get teaching experience.

I strongly agree: this is exploitative... and sort-of meta-exploitative in that it allows the institution to continue under the impression that it can get free labor... rather than spend effort getting funding to pay workers. Bad.

And I strongly disagree that this is the right answer. There is value in things other than money. It might be a valuable experience. It might lead to insight in the subject. There are lots of ways it might have value. None of them might mean anything to you, the writer here , personally, but it is bad advice for the OP who is in a better position to judge the value, hence my comment to the question and my vote to close. Mostly, I disagree with the strength of your advice. It isn't for you or me to judge it exploitative. I suggest the OP not blindly take this advice but think it through.

@Buffy Nope, sorry. Uncompensated labor is wrong. This is the institution and the professor trying to take advantage of a student to do a job that should be paid.

I never said TAing would be valueless in any of the ways you mention.

I haven't forgotten my undergraduate days and the value I then placed on relationships with key faculty members. Those mentors are what made it possible to have a career in academia. Note that I won't and can't advise the OP to take the position, but, again, more than money is involved. If you over-value money then academia isn't for you.

@Buffy, to my mind, part of the socio-economic issue is about who can afford to do unpaid work. Not everyone. To "enable" that system, even if it profits oneself, is not-so-good, I think. But, yes, complicated.

@paulgarrett, I agree that being able to afford to do this is an important part of the equation. It weighs the scale in one direction. But it is the OP that holds the scale and has to live with their decision. Facile advice isn't helpful here.

@AzorAhai-him-, yes, I think that that idea is relevant... And, now that I think of it, there is the other "fallacy" that if lots of other people work for free without protest, one's own resistance/protest won't accomplish much beyond disadvantaging oneself. Hm. Looks like the bosses have us, "going and coming". I have no easy solution.

@Buffy here’s the facetious comeback : as there is value in things other than money, would faculty members and university administrators be willing to work for 60% of their current pay?

From the standpoint of US graduate admissions in math, you should certainly decline. I have served on our Ph.D. admissions committee (I am in the US), and admissions are based primarily on research potential. Teaching experience is not required or expected.
This teaching experience would help your application marginally, if at all. From the standpoint of your grad school applications, the other time commitments you describe are much more important.
The only reason I'd consider taking this on is if you were extremely interested in the job for its own sake. (And even if you were, the lack of pay is objectionable.) As you say you'll have opportunities in the future, so I would recommend focusing on your own studies for now.

Thanks so much! Your answer really helps. It's nice to hear from someone who has previously served on a graduate admissions committee.

Without really knowing all the details and the personalities, it is difficult to make this decision for you.
It is true that you can gain good experience from being a TA. For starters, you will be understanding the subject matter much better, even if you were only grading.
I am not so sure about making you a more competitive applicant as so few undergraduates are ever allowed to be a TA at a university that can pay for its students' labor.
Your last clause gives the reasons why you might want to forego this. You will be busy with other things and TAing can be a time drain, especially if you like it.
You did not mention the effects and the importance of the relationship with the professor that asks you to consider TAing.
In balance and in my personal view, you should find a nice way of saying no.


text:
Historical data for success rate of grant/project applications?
Is there any publicly accessible information regarding the success rate of grant/project applications for science/technology and other research grant programs (e.g. NSF grants) and its variation over time?
I'm not interested in an exhaustive list but some illustrative examples would be much appreciated.

here is a link I found from the NIH titled "Success Rates - NIH" : https://report.nih.gov/success_rates/index.aspx
in addition, if I remember correctly, about 10% of all proposals are funded AND that about 30% of proposals were from first time proposers. I will look for the reference to both of these statistics. I believe they were from a lynda.com course for educational grants, which has great information for this topic: https://www.lynda.com/Higher-Education-tutorials/Grant-Writing-Education/196581-2.html

Check out the NIH Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tools. It may take you some time to find exactly what you're looking for, but there are numerous reports available, with a good deal of detail.

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text:
How should I request a professor to restrict communication to email?
My instructor for an undergraduate math course (a professor) has been interacting with me over WhatsApp lately, and I feel that that is very unprofessional (and uncomfortable), since I (and everyone) use instant-messaging apps for personal communication only. Moreover, from what I know, it is common practice in academia to communicate over email. Am I overthinking it, or is it really unacceptable?
I find this unprofessional because WhatsApp relies on one's private phone number. I think this professor got it when I called their office phone recently.

Is the professor supervising you for a graduate degree (such as being a PhD supervisor) or in an undergraduate project project, (such as an undergraduate honours thesis)?

None of the above. He is just an instructor for an undergraduate math course I'm taking this fall.

What sort of things does he message you about? Course announcements to the whole class, or off-topic chatting with you in particular?

The messages are about additional references for lectures, and clarifications about problem sets etc. so I think it is on-topic w.r.t the course

I have students contacting me via messaging apps frequently as opposed to sending proper emails.  I get the feeling that the current generation of youngsters have not heard of emails.

How did this communication start? How did the professor even have your contact details in the IM service?

"Would it be possible for you to send me your message to my email as I find it easier to organize my incoming messages that way than using ?"

@DanRomik I had called up his office number once, which is how he may have gotten my contact

Is this a University supported/provided instant messaging service by any chance? Due to the pandemic, my Uni has accelerated the shift to MS Teams: classes are done on there, 1-to-1 supervision, and even group consultations. Stuff is often communicated to a whole class through their MS Teams 'classroom'. I very occasionally sent a small blurb or update (rarely a request) to students I personally supervised. So here, that would be normal. Moreover, since this is a professional IM service, it allows you to set 'out-of-office' hours e.g. before 9am and after 5pm when notifications are quiet.

Actually, I believe at our Uni, what is acceptable is very strictly defined. Before an academic year starts, the Uni will ensure that all the required services are up to the security standards they need to guarantee under GDPR etc. This is mostly the Uni e-mail, and the Microsoft suite provided through the Uni, almost no other tools get 'approved'. The profs/lecturers can require student uses any of the supported tools, while sharing additional materials through any other services (e.g. discord channels, youtube videos) is allowed, but can not be required.

I think it is relevant which IM it is. It seems from your comment that it is one that uses a phone number in order to add you. That is a bit more inappropriate as students will not have "work" (study) phone and are thus giving their private phone number. (Or even worse in this case he found it out through alternative methods.) I don't think IM is always inappropriate but this is.

Are the messages about school stuff, or personal stuff? Is the content of the messages inappropriate, or leading up to something inappropriate?

@Kvothe WhatsApp, which relies on one's private phone number - which is why I found the practice unprofessional. When being asked to call on an office/work number, a student has no choice but to use their private number. However, being contacted back on the same number via an IM doesn't seem so good an idea on the professor's side.

I feel like a few of the details in the comments should be included in the question because they are very pertinent to the issue. 1- the IM service is WhatsApp, which uses your personal phone number, 2- your professor got your phone number by going through the Caller ID log on his phone after you contacted his office (you didn't explicitly give it out for the purpose of being contacted through WhatsApp).

i could easily see a professor doing this because students in the past have preferred it.

@AlexandreAubrey - I agree; please consider editing the question to make the edit directly.

So, you think that it is acceptable to have "called up his office number once, which is how he may have gotten my contact", when most certainly he has hundreds of students, but you peculiarly feel that it is "very unprofessional" for the professor to write to you on topics of the course?

I don't think there is anything especially unprofessional about communicating via instant messaging. Email is a naturally asynchronous communication platform, and sometimes you need a synchronous method to contact people.
In my research group, we use a specific professional instant messaging application - Slack. I did this because I feel it's important to keep work and private life separate, but still need a way of communication synchronously with my team. Students/postdocs may exit/silence the app when they feel they are not on "work time". Your institution may also have such a system - Microsoft Teams, Google for Education's Chat and Facebook Workplace all offer similar functionality depending on which your university runs its IT systems on.
I should also point out that the opposite problem is also true. My students definitely think it's a bit weird that I refuse to be on their WhatsApp group.
That said, if instant messaging makes you uncomfortable, you should tell your supervisor this. There is no reason to lie about the reason - you shouldn't even need to offer a reason. You can just say "I'd rather be contacted by email unless it's a real emergency, if that's okay.".

EDIT:
This answer was written before it was clear that the OP was an undergraduate in a class, not a post-graduate communicating with their supervisor.
I do think it is a bit weird for a professor to be communicating, one on one with undergraduates in their classes via IM.
There are situations where some sort of chat system might still be a good way to communicate with students (I use slack in a large, long-term, practically based course I teach), but I do think personal IM is best avoided with undergradutes.
I don't think this changes the course of action, which would be to contact the prof and say you'd rather the contacted via a different means (see @henning's answer).

I agree with this in general, but OP is not part of a research group. They are just a regular student attending an undergrad course. Setting up slack for each and every lecture sounds like overkill.

@henning--reinstateMonica My Uni is on MS Teams. Most courses have a room or group somewhere on there, set up by module coordinators

@penelope same here with Moodle - however Moodle updates are sent via e-mail, and few people actually use the "Moodle chat" feature.

@henning--reinstateMonica Okay. This information wasn't there when I wrote this answer. I think that it IS a bit weird for a professor to use something like WhatsApp or Facebook messenger to communicate with undergrads.  I do have some undergraduate classes where I have set up slacks. These tend to be 1) Large 2) Long term (whole year modules) and 3) Practical (usually computer based), where people need continual advice on things.

@IanSudbery I know - the information was buried in the comments before I edited it in. The use-cases for slack that you describe sound just right to me.

@henning--reinstateMonica This question and answer were posted within global pandemic. IMs became key tool for maintaining contct between people, no matter whether academia, workplace or families. Under those conditions, setting up pro-grade tool is not an overkill.

@Crowley maybe. I managed to teach three (small but intense) classes rather efficiently without IM during lockdown, using email, a learning management system, and group video calls. But I know some who used WhatsApp groups etc, so it's certainly not unusual.

What's unprofessional about it is the lack of consent, in my opinion. It's annoying enough if someone wants you to use Slack etc, but at least you can log out of that when you're not at work. If someone got a hold of my private instant messenger details and started sending me work messages without my permission, I'd be furious - I don't think it's appropriate at all.

Are you overthinking this?
Perhaps. As the range of answers suggests, customs with regard to instant messaging are currently changing. E-Mail is still the main channel for professional communication, unless you are working closely together. But IM is catching up in this setting as well. As customs don't offer clear guidance, what really matters is your preference and hence your other question:
How should you request a professor to restrict communication to email?
"Polite, direct and succinct". It could go something like this:

Thank you for your message. By the way, I prefer e-mail to IM when it comes to university matters, and I would appreciate it if we could use e-mail going forward. Thanks!

This could surely be phrased more elegantly, but the point is to just state your preference and ask clearly for what you would like the instructor to do - neither getting defensive ("Sorry, but I often mute my messenger app") nor assigning blame ("I don't want to be stalked over a private channel").

This is best. No judgement or second-guessing, just a polite (and reasonable) request.

I think this is the better answer. Reaching out to a student on a third-party app is akin to calling them out of the blue. As I grad student, I don't even want my PI to contact me on WhatsApp. (Mostly because there's some messages I really don't want to accidentally go to them). Any reasonable professor that gets this note should realize how inappropriate they are being; and if it's not followed by an apology and contact ceases, it would be reasonable to talk to a higher-up.

I'm going to go a bit against the stream here, and say yes, this is unprofessional behaviour, given the circumstances a) that this is a professor teaching an undergraduate course, where there are surely more official channels available, and b) it was the professor and not you who initiated this communication.
There are two main reasons for me to say that this is unprofessional.
The first one is, that the power balance in this relationship is very uneven. In the situation as presented, the student can very easily feel pressured to keep a conversation going in order not to disappoint the other end, and most IM systems allows people to see when a message have been read. For IM systems as such, this is a nice feature, but it also lends the system to more informal conversations than normal email, and in this case it seems that the student has no way of expressing that they are not interested in informal conversation without the possibility of a negative back-reaction. (with email you can much easier stop answering)
The second reason is, that since this is likely an external service, the university can not keep records of the correspondence. The requirement of record-keeping is becoming more of a rule, in fact at my university we are required to keep correspondence to work email only. This rule is for sure something which is often broken in contact with colleagues or PhD students, but if I was caught messaging an undergraduate student over facebook/sms/skype/whatsapp/..., I would for sure be reprimanded and told to use either email or the university supplied system for course messages.
I have to add: This may not be of ill intent. This could simply be the case of a good teacher, who is not following all the latest fads, but in a misguided way is trying his/her best to meet young people where they are. This might not be taken out of thin air, I have in several cases had students contact me on IM services, or even on my personal phone number, where they should have used email. In such cases I have had luck with simply asking them to please use email. In cases of IM services I have often added that I simply don't check this service often enough for contact to make sense.

"This could simply be the case of a good teacher, who is not following all the latest fads". Who is not following the latests fads here?  I would say you. Especially skype (and IM like slack) are very common (academic) workplace communication tools nowadays. Skype perhaps not so much between professors and undergraduate students but that is simply because one-on-one remote communication between students and professors was rare before the pandemic. It clearly is less rare now since office hours are likely gone.

Restricting remote communication to emails only sounds a bit harsh in a context where, in many places, remote teaching is the only kind of teaching allowed.

to call it unprofessional seems like a giant stretch to me.

@eps On the contrary, I don’t understand how it cannot be considered completely unprofessional to communicate with an undergraduate student via instant messaging or text. This answer makes more sense to me than the others.

I don't even use my gmail address for writing undergraduates in my class (which I do use with my grad students), let alone texting.  The only professional ways to talk to students in a class are through official university email or the official learning management system.

I am more inclined to agree with this answer because I'm very disinclined to go along with all the "benefit of the doubt" sentiment floating around. Supervisors inappropriately violating boundaries (especially ones to do with personal messaging, cringe) already receive far too much benefit of the doubt, to the point where there's a Holywood-style harassment scandal been brewing in academia for years now. Students and junior researchers need to protect themselves in this low-oversight, high-professional-dependency environment

@Kvothe: There is a world of a difference between workplace communication between peers, and communication between prof./student, as I indicate in the answer. Even more, there is a large difference between Slack, which may even be university curated, and a completely off-the-books IM service.

There is no reason you cannot use Whatsapp or another instant messenger for formal communication.  There is also no reason you cannot keep records.  "The requirement of record-keeping is becoming more of a rule"  I do not believe that your university requires you to keep a record of every message.  Quite a few do not have that rule.

"if I was caught messaging an undergraduate student over facebook/sms/skype/whatsapp/..., I would for sure be reprimanded"  I don't believe you.  Also, facebook is a separate category.

@AnonymousPhysicist: Ok.

There are two major considerations that I'm kind of surprised aren't being mentioned by most of the other answers:

You didn't give your consent to be contacted that way.

You are uncomfortable with it.

Personally, I do think it's inappropriate to use someone's private IM/social media accounts for work/university purposes without consent. Since the messages themselves are on topic for the course, I'd guess it's an innocent mistake on the part of the instructor - they probably just don't realise it's making you feel pressured. But you should tell them, otherwise it will continue.
Since it's an instant messaging service, the next time it happens I'd suggest being straightforward and concise - something along the lines of

Hi, sorry, this is my private WhatsApp account - could we discuss this by email?

Hopefully that should end the issue there and then. If it doesn't, just reply to future messages with something along the lines of

I'd really appreciate it if we could discuss this by email instead.

If it continues after that then there might be a bigger problem, but I would expect something like this to quickly resolve it.

My instructor for an undergraduate math course (a professor) has been
interacting with me over an instant-messaging service

The word I notice here is "me".  If the prof contacts everyone this way then there is less to be worried about. If they contact just you then it's a concern.

EDIT
If this is directed at you alone, and you have all the necessary information from emails, then simply delay answering and keep answers short, e.g. "Okay", "Thanks", etc.  If it continues you can simply answer their insta-messages by email.

The title of the question asks one thing, then the body asks a completely different thing.

How should I request a professor to restrict communication to email?

Send an email, and say, "Thanks for texting me about my answer to #7 on last week's problem set. It was helpful to get more explanation about why I can't infer whichness of foo based on whatness of bar. In the future, though, I would prefer to communicate by email or by my initiating a voice phone call to your office, rather than texting."

Am I overthinking it, or is it really unacceptable?

You're overthinking it. Not everybody interprets and implements professional/personal boundaries in exactly the same way.
I'm in my 50's, and I hear many of my colleagues who are of my generation say that you can't interact with students just through email anymore, because that's no longer the way their students expect to interact. I disagree with them, but I think they're sincere, and there's nothing blameworthy about the sentiment.

Instant messaging is not inherently more unprofessional than other common forms of communication.  It could be used in exactly the same way as email.  Instant messaging has been getting more popular in workplaces.  Specific messages could be unprofessional, but they would also be unprofessional if sent by email.
If you prefer to receive email, you can ask to get email instead.

"Am I overthinking it, or is it really unacceptable?"
I believe you need an actual assessment here than a theoretical one. Theoretically yes i believe it is not alright without your prior consent to this communication method.
The actual assessment is a different approach. It is based on the result of this communication method. Does it actually serves the purpose better? You and the professor have one common goal, complete an educational session; does this communication method help to this goal better than the standard one? If so then you probably would consent anyway, else if it does not help better or blurs communication purposes, then obviously you do not consent anyway.

If you use IMing only personally, you can discourage this behavior by being more responsive to email and less responsive to IM. You can say something like, "for something urgent, send me an email! Sometimes I snooze my IM alerts during the day to focus on work, but I check my email regularly." Then don't answer IMs during the day as frequently.
OTOH I know many professors who are completely unresponsive on every platform, so if one works for them, I just accommodate as much as possible to get things done. Having too many messages from a professor naively sounds like a good thing on balance in my experience.
If the IMs are crossing lines or distracting because they are off-topic or unprofessional (or something worse) then by all means, discourage the behavior. Being less responsive should help if you really commit to it.

If the professor has regularly experienced higher responsive-ness via IM, this response will come across as disingenuous.  If the professor prefers IM regardless of responsiveness, the professor may ignore this reply.

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How do you address yourself in a cover letter for faculty applications if you are not affiliated with any institutions?
I have just finished my last postdoctoral role and I am  now unemployed because my visa runs out, so I have to go back to my home country.
However, my faculty application effort is still ongoing. At the top of cover letters, I currently write

[my name]
Theoretical chemist
[My home address]
[my email]

followed by date and address of the institution I am applying to.
What do you think of that? Do you have better alternatives?

What you write looks fine, but explain, somewhere but briefly, that you have just finished a postdoc at institution A and have returned home for visa reasons. It shouldn't be a problem.
Your CV will probably show some of this information, of course, but a brief mention in the cover letter does no harm.

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Could I reject an accepted PhD admit after April 15?
I have already clicked on the acceptance of an admit(without funding). The deadline for response is Apr.15th, and I did not have any other options at that time. However, I just received a funding offer from a top University. I am wondering if I could reject the accepted admit. If yes, how to reject it very very politely? Will this affect credibility?

Two days after the 15th to accept a better alternative offer with funding? I think it's OK - they have time to make another offer. But be very polite as the answer to the duplicate says.

I voted to reopen because this situation seems a bit different than the other question.  Namely: the first offer was without funding and the US April 15th deadline issue is present.

Agree @Kimball that the funding issue is an important distinction. Also the poster of the question marked duplicate seems to have had a bit more interaction with the program whose offer they asked about declining, including a statement to the effect that the accepted offer was poster's first choice.

Note that the Community vote indicates the OP agreed that the linked Q answered the question.


text:
Would an international student A in the US helping another international student B in Europe cheating be punished by US university?
I have a quick question about a hypothetical situation:
An international student A in the US helped another international student B in the Europe finish the entire several homework assignments and an entire final exam. And now, the A has every evidence and chat files, and he wants to report the non-compliance of code of integrity to the European university of student B.
Would student A be punished since he helped student B finish the homework and exam? In this case, student A did not violate any discipline of his university in the US and the laws of the United States. Would student A still be punished by his university or by the law of US?

Just to make sure I interpret this hypothetical situation correctly: A helped B in cheating, and now A would like B to be punished for it, while getting himself away with it? Why would A even consider doing this? Remorse is, obviously, not his motive.

Like, B gave A some promoises and contract before the HW and exam. But B never committed after A helped B. Or B lied to A in the name of affection before the HW and exam.

Thanks for your response! Technically speaking, the following remark does not answer the question - but it seems worthwhile to point it out anyway: if, hypothetically, A was asking me for advice, then I would strongly recommend to him to just let it go (and to learn from the experience for the future). Spending time and energy (and possibly other resources) on retaliation is most likely not going to benefit A in any significant way.

Thanks for your suggestions!!! I mean if is possible for A is get away with while punish B after A's graudation? Suppose A would graduate one year eariler than B?

I think my previous comment was phrased a bit unclear, so let me give it one more try: My advice for A is not to try to punish B at all. What's done is done; A is somewhere in the US, B is somewhere in Europe - most likely they won't meet ever again. Any effort of "punishing" B would just cost A effort, time and energy, without any apparent benefit for A. We humans are much better off if we use our resources productively rather than for "punishing" others.

@JochenGlueck Thanks for your suggestions... But it should be noted that both A and B are international students and they are from the same home country. So for now, B's extremely bitchy behaviors seem like a tremendous insult to A and A simply cannot get over with it for the time being... I was wondering if honer code can be applied to the alumni? After all, A will graduate one year earlier than B.

Student A should at least be aware that blackmail is a crime.

So you are asking if blackmailing legal / moral?

There's a specific proverb in English to describe your experience: "no honor among thieves". I hope you have learned your lesson and will no longer act to undermine academic education.

What if the fact is that B had virtually ruined A's family and life? Do you think that A would just let B get away with it? This is not simply about any meaningless reward and money.

@WikizVito: Your last comment provides information which was not inlcuded in the question, nor in the your previous comments, and which shows that your question is not actually about academia but about advice on how to fight a personal vendetta. This question is way overdue for being closed.

You seem to assume that the academic honesty rules at a university will always stipulate that dishonesty only counts as being against the rules if it occurs at that university.  That is a dangerous supposition to make.  Many universities have academic misconduct policies that refer broadly to collusion, cheating, and other forms of misconduct, without stipulation that the misconduct must occur in relation to an assessment at that university.  In such cases, there would be a genuine argument over the proper scope of the policy, and whether it may apply to instances of misconduct in relation to assessments at another university.
Just to give you an example of this, here is the present Academic Misconduct Rule at my University.  Section 6 of the policy provides that "It is academic misconduct if a student: (a) in relation to an assessment: (i) cheats; ... (iii) improperly colludes with another person; or (iv) acts, or assists another person to act, dishonestly or unfairly in or in connection with an examination...".  While the policy certainly only applies to students enrolled at my University, you can see that it does not specify that the assessment in question must be an assessment at the University.  Likewise, Section 2 of the policy, which sets its scope, provides that "This instrument applies to all students of the University."  Again, observe that it does not specify that the instrument applies only with respect to acts undertaking in relation to assessments and other matters at the University.
If student A were a student at my University (subject to the linked rules), I think there is a reasonable chance that his actions here would be considered to be a breach of this policy.  The student would of course have an opportunity to argue over whether the policy applies to an assessment at another university, and they would probably argue that this should be implied, irrespective of the specified scope.  Perhaps they would convince the academic misconduct committee of this (such that their conduct is considered out-of-scope) or perhaps they would not.  I would think that most academic staff would be concerned about this behaviour, and would be reluctant to consider it out-of-scope.

... his or her actions would be...

I consider it legitimate to stipulate the sex of fictitious persons in a hypothetical example.

Stipulate the gender rather than sex?

Stipulate either or both, though I also take the view that the proper ascription of gender should be determined by biological sex (in cases where the latter is unambiguous).  You can continute to pronoun-troll if you like, but I get to stipulate the sex of fictitious people in my own posts.

I've just checked the OP again, and it uses the gendered term "he" to describe the actions of student A.  So the questioner has already stipulated that A is male in this hypothetical example, and my own stipulation follows suit.  (OP: "And now the student A has every evidence and chat files, and he wants to report..." [emphasis added])

yes I read this as well... even if the gender of one participant is specified, I would never assume in writing an answer that this kind of behaviour is limited to men, and would make a point of having a gender-neutral formulation, but to each his (or her) own.

I am confident that any literate non-insane person will understand that my answer applies to both males and females, notwithstanding the hypothetical example of a male student.

Cheeky question: Do you wish to apologise to (ficititious) Student A for misgendering him by calling him "her"?  ; )

I’ve wondered about this on several occasions and in several contexts...  I concluded that unless the OP uses the first person (“I”) then a generic third person answer containing “him or her” is not offensive, though context rather than a firm rule would dictate the ultimate course of action...

It is possible that A would face discipline if it became known, especially if everything became known to A's university. Academic dishonesty is independent of borders. There are no US laws for this, however. Honor codes don't have a "cross border" exception.
And saying that "A did not violate any discipline of his university in the US" might not be a fair interpretation.
Moreover, if A uses this as a way to attack B, then B might have a legal case to make against A. Or, would simply inform A's university what happened, which would make it known. I suspect it wouldn't be ignored and might be treated as a serious matter. No guarantees, though.
But this seems like a hypothetical that is unlikely to be realized.

Thanks for the advice!!! And would could be the potential punishment to A's behavior if A reports anonymously to B's university? Or what accusation could B use after A reports anonymously?

Sorry, this is starting to sound less like a hypothetical and more like a plan. Don't go there. Since B and A know each other, anonymity could hardly be maintained.

To answer the literal question: probably the U.S. university would not hear about it at all, so, ... "no, nothing would happen here".
Even if a U.S. university did "hear about it", I don't think there are procedures in place to do anything about it.
So, yeah, probably any (routine/typical) academically unethical stuff a student here does abroad will have no impact on anything in the U.S., at least in the near term.
But, wow, I have to say, this is a very dangerous, apart from severely unethical, line of action. Woof. Stay away from this kind of thing. It's like borrowing money from professional criminals.

There is an academic offense usually called facilitation (or something similar).  Basically helping someone complete an academic assessment is considered on par with cheating, and an offense as serious cheating.  Certainly where I work a person can be accused of facilitation even if the second party is not in the same class or even in the same university.
The most extreme facilitation scheme is to get someone to take the exam for you, and I know of cases where both the student and the facilitator were from different universities and sanctioned separately.  In particular, the facilitator was found to have committed multiple offenses and was dismissed.
The situation you are describing can lead to blackmail as the facilitator could extort advantages (financial or otherwise) by threatening to “out” the cheater.  As a result, I doubt the facilitator would go unpunished (in Canada at least) even if the cheater was elsewhere.

Given that student A won't personally gain anything from doing this (only hurting student B), I think it is wise for A to wait at least till he graduates (and better, gets a job). If B were to report A then A's university wouldn't do anything since A already graduated.
The reason for this is that it would be too much hassle for A's univeristy to try to take his degree away, and this would probabily be seen as too much punishment in any case (A obtained his degree fairly, after all). If A's university really decided to revoke his degree, then he could probably fight it in court successfully with a decent lawyer (again, due to it being such an extreme disciplinary action for such a minor offence). This would also give A's uni bad publicity.
Also, even if A's degree were to be revoked, he still has access to his decree certificate and transcript, and this would be enough proof for most employers (most companies don't have the time to call every new hire's uni to confirm their degree is authentic). Plus, if A is already working, his employer won't be constantly checking whether his degree gets revoked. Even if they did check, they wouldn't fire A if he is performing well in his job.
It would be more risky for A if he pursues further study instead of work as then A's new university could take some action against him (assuming B finds out what A's new uni is or B tells A's old uni and A's old uni then pass this on to A's new uni).
In conclusion, the risk to A after graduating is negligible, and even if he did it while still attending university himself, it would be very unlikely for his uny to take any MAJOR action against him. It would be up to A to decide whether he wants to run the risk of having to do a small penalty like taking an academic integrity course or just getting reprimanded.

This argument about ethics has been moved to chat. Comments below this one should suggest improvements or request clarification; please use the chat for all other purposes.


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How much does college name matter for doctoral program application?
I wanted to know how much weight the college someone got a master's from matters while applying for a doctoral program?
So for instance, if a person is enrolled in a college which is not well known and his application is great in terms of research projects, CPI score, TOEFL, GRE scores etc., then would that person's application be considered worse than a person who is doing master's from a very good college (well-known)?
In particular, I wanted to ask this because I have heard that those Indian students are preferred for PhD programs in Physics in good colleges in US who have done Master's from a top IITs like IIT Kanpur or IIT Madras and students who apply from a lower ranked IIT get frequently rejected.
P.S: Those who have no idea about IITs can take the question in a general context from my first paragraph.

Better known schools are, well, better known. Previous students from a given school likely weigh heavily in determining if an applicant meets the desired standards.

Would this be a deciding factor even if the application otherwise was great?

There is no one deciding factor.

@JonCuster, perhaps you should expand a bit into an answer.

@JonCuster How much does it weigh in comparison to other factors ? This might seem repetitive but as far as I know the recommendations, research experience and SOP weigh heavily so, could these factors compensate for the good college tag deficiency? If no then is there an alternative way you could suggest that an applicant can try to compensate for this?

@Malajapan There is nothing a person at a less well-known college should do that a person at a very well-known college shouldn't do. Other than transferring, you should continue to excel at your research and classes. I am not sure what answer you're looking for ("do double good"?)

@Malajapan There's no way to quantify this because no PhD program that I know of uses any sort of strict formula. It's people (and all the variance and individuality that people evaluating come with) evaluating stacks of other people (and all the variance and individuality that people applying come with).

@Azor Ahai -him- I am enrolling into a masters program of a "not well-known" college that is why I am asking this. I am confused whether I should take a drop year and prepare to get enrolled in a better college for masters so that my chances of selection get improved  or whether I should just focus on building a really good application from whatever college I got this year.

@Bryan Krause Okay. I understand that. Personally, what advice would you give? Should I even try for applying into a good college considering my masters college is not good or is that a futile attempt altogether?

Why do you think your masters is "not good"?

@Malajapan Can you work with someone who publishes their research in journals with a good international reputation at the school you're enrolling in? The only guarantee is that if you don't apply to a school you will not get in. Know also that there are a lot of good schools in the US, not just the most internationally famous ones. Very few people attend one of the "most famous" schools regardless of their background.

@Buffy "Not good" refers to the fact that the institution isn't very well known outside of India, even though the course is rigorous and complete.

This answer applies to doctoral admissions in the US, and, while not universal, is pretty regular.
First, your successful admission will depend on a weighting of many things. There won't be a standard, published, weighting, but only the general sensibility of the individual faculty members on the admissions committee. Note that most (not all) doctoral admissions is by committee, not by individual PIs/advisors.
The important factors, varying for every candidate and for every committee member, in a rough order of importance, are grades, especially in the field for which you seek admission, letters of recommendation from professors, standardized exams (some places), writing ability in English (some places), research experience (more important if you have a MS, than otherwise), and intangibles. A gap or two in your education can normally be made up as most degree programs are relatively open ended in time.
Among the intangibles might be the place(s) at which you studied, but letter of recommendation from people who know you well would be much more important. A good student from a mid range place might be greatly preferred over a mediocre student from a great institution.
If your previous education is at relatively unknown places then it is likely to be ignored except in a few exceptional cases. If a university already has some experience with others from your place, then their success might help to make a prediction about yours. But it is, I think, much more likely to be a favorable impression made by a good student than the opposite situation.
And note that some great and demanding professors can be found at quite unknown universities. You can learn a lot from them.
The committee needs to make a fairly accurate prediction of the likely success of a candidate. Grades and supportive letters, along with prior research experience are very important. It is much more important what you have done so far and what others think of you, than other things.
Wherever you study, work hard, make a good impression. Stay in contact with professors who support you. But also know that the competition is very fierce.
Also note that most students in the US enter doctoral studies immediately after their bachelors degree. A MS is seldom required and can often be earned along the way.

This is a long comment, not an answer, but I often see this misconception in particular with students from India considering graduate admissions in the US.
Graduate admissions in the US are decided by committees of professors in the department that will admit you.  The professors will read your application, and then they will make a collective, subjective, judgement about which students are most likely to succeed in the program, and admit those students.  There are no other criteria.  Different professors may have different opinions based on their own experiences of what indicators make a student likely to be successful (and different definitions of success!), but these tend to average out in committee discussions.
This seems strange to someone from India, where these kinds of decisions tend to get made based on some formula involving various numerical criteria.  You might complain that the US system is subject to bias from the professors and even possible corruption.  It is, but in the US we have decided that the benefit of being able to take into account subtle, unmeasurable considerations outweighs (in our context) the disadvantages of bias and the risk of corruption.
It is, of course, possible to make some generalizations about whom committees tend to admit and what they tend to consider in admissions, but these are predictions about human behavior, not rules.

"we have decided that the benefit of being able to take into account subtle, unmeasurable considerations"  Actually, it is that for each research project, the PhD student who is most likely to succeed is a bit different.  There is no formula which accounts for the diversity of doctoral research.


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open source programs for plotting?
Short version: Any suggestion on an Open-Source Software alternative to Grapher/Surfer/Origin/SigmaPlot?
Details: This is not a shopping question. As a scientist I explore and plot data all the time. I have been using Grapher, Surfer, SigmaPlot and Origin...  all good ones. But I want to move on to Open Software (an evolution from the point of view of open science, but that's another discussion).
Can you recommend good programs (software) within the open software realm which fits the "plotting" objective? I mean, I don't need it to do statistical analyses (I use R for that), I just want to plot data. If possible it should be usable through a GUI (ie graphically-oriented like those mentioned above, not command-line). This means I want a point-and-click approach, as I think this saves a lot of time by being more intuitive (this opinion could be challenged, but that's not the point of this question).
Also I would like a program which is "popular", ie if I don't understand something I can check forums, etc. rather than find out by myself because I'm one of the 15 users of the program..
Any suggestions? what are the most used and why? have you tried one?
This question may seem more fit for other forums (softwarerecs?) but I'm looking for opinions/suggestions from users of the Academia/Research world who are not necessarily "technical enough" to sing up in softwarerecs (audio, web apps, wifi, etc.). Therefore I think the most useful answers will come from this forum and not a software-related one. I think best answers will come from professors, scientists, students, technicians, etc. who work plotting data from different disciplines while they may not care (or not know) about drivers, OS, programming, etc.

This seems like a much better fit at http://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/ I can migrate it if you want.

If you're doing statistics in R already, why not plot in R, too?

@ff524 some people really like guide based plotting.

@ff524 as I said I want something point-and-click and not command line. R has great plotting capabilities (egg ggplot2) but I find the command-line approach not very good for any graphic task. As I said, that is an opinion and can be discussed but it's not the point of the original question...

StrongBad thanks for the suggestion. Yes, I thought on posting it in softwarerecs but in this forum I am sure to be reaching exactly the users who would have good options and opinions from experience. I would use softwarerecs for more IT-related questions (a quick look yields wifi, audio, web apps, etc.) My question is really intended to learn from academia and scientific (research) worlds, as these people could be in (or can relate to) my position/need. Therefore I think the best answers will come from this forum... May I request to leave it here?

GNU Octave is very similar to Matlab - but open source! It has relatively good documentation (see info about plotting here).
Veusz is a well-known option. It's written in Python & QT and is fairly powerful. That said, the documentation isn't all that great (in my opinion). It's my go-to because I've gotten use to it - but there's definitely a fairly large learning curve.
There's also a variety of command-line based options, like gnuplot (very, very powerful), matplotlib (similar to gnuplot, but based around Python and Numpy), PGF/TikZ (if you like LaTeX), and probably a bunch more options I'm not thinking of right now.

I wouldn't suggest Octave for publication-quality plots, though.

@MassimoOrtolano To be 100% honest, I've never actually used it - I always use Veusz (or Lucidchart). But the Matlab similarity tends to be helpful for anyone who isn't a programmer by trade :)

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


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How to keep team morale and efficiency when dealing with poor communication in a mentorship-like relation
I am currently mentoring/supervising a person within an academia-related field. This is not my first time in this role. I am easygoing, dislike unnecessary conflicts, and I like people to feel good and have nice teamwork. I highly value communication so I am open (and encourage others) to report so I can better help/work with them. I'd say I'm rather 'normal' in this sense (no micromanaging, no strict rules, adaptable to different styles).
So, there is this person currently under my guidance. I don't directly pay his salary (I pay all the other costs), but his project was approved because I was recommended to be the supervisor. It started very well and we both agreed communication should exist at all times (I consider this obvious but just in case I make it clear before choosing a candidate).
However, for unknown reasons, everything changed when the real work started. He seems constantly in a defensive position and I hardly have any news from him. I tried to consider different scenarios: Maybe I am doing something wrong? Maybe he doesn't want to bother the mentor? Etc. He seems to purposely limit the information to me. Unfortunately, the opportunities (of synergy and creative spin-offs) that are lost due to this lack of interaction will result in a loss for the project and for his career.
I constantly try to reach him with very limited success.
He's not lazy, or incompetent, nor doesn't want the project to advance. But, without explicit reasons, he doesn't follow my advice or communications. I am open to the possibility that my advice might not be appropriate for any reason, and to discuss it. Basically, he puts very little (if any) effort into keeping the communication alive and I am concerned about how healthy it is to work like this.
Recently, I had to travel for a few weeks to work in another city. He wanted to do some activities while I was absent and I suggested he wait until I arrive so I can participate and help him better. He decided to go on anyway, and I was fine with that. Five weeks later (with no news, as usual) I started getting (unsolicited) updates about him from other colleagues: while I was away he was spreading the 'image' (I can't be sure what words he used) that I left him alone, abandoned with his activities. He even said that if I don't help him soon, he will make sure that I don't get any credit for any advancement in the project. Similarly, he was engaging in trying to set up formal agreements with another company, without me (ie his formal supervisor) knowing anything about it.
This is something that builds up a barrier between us and for some reason, I feel something like discomfort from his side (which I have asked about and again, never got a real answer).
This is the first time I have had to deal with this stuff. I feel like I don't have the tools to handle him or the situation. In one of my intents to know what was happening, I asked him if there was anything from my side that he felt was blocking or preventing the communication (no answer to that) and that I was willing to change things if needed.
So, as you see, the title of this question is about communication, but can it be something else? What would you do in my place? How to solve this professionally without blocking his career but at the same time keeping my authority? I fear that if I don't do anything and let him spread bad words about me I will pay an undeserved cost: it will hurt my reputation because it would look like a double standard from my side (ie always preaching about communication and team work but on the other hand I 'abandon' my employee instead).
Edit 0: reduced the length of the text, as suggested by some commenters.

To me this looks like mismatch of preferred management style. Does he deliver the goals? If yes, some people do not like permanent communication, but just to know what to do and to proceed accordingly. If your candidate is such a person, make clear targets, and interfaces and give them the tools, and off they go. Check in with them, but don't overdo it and do not micromanage or -communicate. Others need permanent feedback. This does not seem to be the case here. Resist the desire to be liked and not criticised; but respected, you must be. Have a 1-on-1 to converge on mutual expectations.

This is a bit of a wall of text, I recommend to narrow it or at least to create section headings and try to organize it better.

@CaptainEmacs there is no management without communication. Even the minimum "check in with them" needs clear and two-ways communication. See in my response how the story ended.

@terauser It was not a critique - and I am aware that some people just do their thing and ignore what they are asked to do. They say "yes, yes" and do their thing. Well, when that happens, as they say in the Westerns, "one needs to do what one needs to do." BTW, as per SE convention, you should write the updates, clearly marked, at the end of your question, not as a response.

I post this in case other supervisors / mentors who care about creating a positive and healthy environment find this useful.
Four years later... I can tell the complete story.
Looking back at the facts, I can answer my own question now.
What happened

I tried to talk again with him. Two times. Didn't work, he didn't change a bit his ways. It only got worse and in the end, we only exchanged the minimum amount of emails to keep the project 'operational'.
He got things done (bare minimum). Finished and (fortunately) left.
Contrary to advice from some colleagues, I did not pursue any formal/administrative action against this person.
After commenting this to other people (looking for their opinions/advice), it turns out this person had several altercations and similar problems with different colleagues. Apparently, he has some kind of personal issue with the figure of authority and does not react well to guidance/mentoring from anyone. This was mentioned over and over by a number of his former colleagues and supervisors. Now I think "Gosh, I should have realized this was the issue!"

Lessons learned

The communication style should not be an obstacle, as long as there is a willingness to communicate. @Nik, yes I tend to be lengthy in writing. But I have no problem if someone needs a shorter and to-the-point style, I can adapt to that. This was clearly not the problem here.
@user35129 your comment that I "sound a little too confident" about my supervisory style and that I "assume that any fault causing the current challenge is due to the student's advertent or inadvertent misbehaviour" is totally unjustified. Did you even read my 2nd paragraph?
Asking for advice from people I respect was the best thing I did. It gave me multiple views on the subject and helped me to take my decision with more confidence.
Since this was the first (and until now, only) time I experienced this kind of situation, I also learned about myself: I do not appreciate someone who "gets things done" if it is not within a context of communication and mutual respect (to me and to the rest of the team/colleagues).
I decided that, while I am the group leader/senior the "he is an ass... but he gets things done" kind of role is completely unacceptable and opens doors to all kinds of abuses, toxicity, and unjust situations. Hopefully, this behavior belongs to a past era of Academia.

My advice

To students / mentorees: Communicate. Everything else is probably solvable.
To supervisors / mentors: Stay humble. But don't be hesitant to reinforce respect and communication in the workplace. Don't be afraid to prioritize social peace and mental health over everything else. If you don't have those, you have nothing.

I do not agree with your negative take on "gets things done" attitudes. If he does not do what you expect (communicate a lot), but gets things done right, this does not make him an #@!$. I have worked - very successfully - with such people. I have a team on one matter which I send my prepared documents/instructions and they just do it, with very minimal communication beyond my basic instructions, like well-oiled machine. It very much depends on the people and the project. Your candidate is obviously authority-adverse and a backstabber but this is a separate issue from communicating minimally.

@CaptainEmacs. To clarify, A) I have no problem with minimum communication. You seem to infer repeatedly that I need/expect someone to communicate a lot, while in actuality I only expect that communication exists. I  have worked w/ people with minimum communication skills (and different attitude!) and was fine. B) To be fair I don't think that someone is an !"#$% because she/he doesn't act as I expect. Rather, my view is that 'getting things done' does not compensate for being a toxic component of the team. If she/he is an as"#$%, I don't want that person even if she/he gets things done.

As I said, if they are a backstabber as it seems (and maybe you have other reasons to think so which didn't shine through your question), I think you are in the perfect right to want to get rid of them. However, your (very long, BTW) question emphasizes communication so much that it actually seems to be the core issue. Note that others have remarked on the very long text, too. Be assured that I sympathise with wanting to get rid of a toxic team member, but lack of communication a toxic member does not make. You may want to adapt your question to home in on what's really the problem.

Fair enough. I appreciate your comments and views.

The question is better now, thank you.

Certainly there appears to be a communication issue between you two. It's possible you and the student (or employee, mentee, whatever) just have very different communication styles and needs. It also sounds to me like your student may even be harboring some resentment toward you. From my own experience, I've certainly had difficulty working with a supervisor after feeling like they wouldn't make time for me and/or give me the support I needed. (And I think this is a very common feeling.)
My suggestion would be to sit down with the student and ask directly if they feel you've been meeting their needs in terms of communication, guidance, support, direction, etc. Give them the opportunity to air their grievances, but keep in mind that, due to the inherent power-dynamic, they may not be all that forthcoming. Getting to the root of the issue may take a few follow-up meetings, and the student may need some time to think about how to convey their experience.
Then you can reciprocate and convey (tactfully) that you need more/better/different communication from them for this relationship to work out. I wouldn't expect any drastic improvements in communication right away, but coming to the student with a bit of humility and vulnerability might go a long way towards repairing their image of you (however unfounded it may be/feel to you).
An alternative (but not mutually exclusive) option is to suggest that the student look for another advisor. Maybe even ask around in your department to see if that would be possible. You don't need to say anything negative about the student; just convey that the student's manner of communication doesn't work for you, but you'll do all you can to help them find another advisor.


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How does one determine he has a learning disability?

How does a graduate student determine if he has a learning disability? Are there any signs to look for? At what point is it worth seeking a professional opinion?

Some people, at least, believe there are a significant number of adults who would be identified as having a learning disability if they were children now. Some of these adults are in academia, and have succeeded academically despite their disability, perhaps through developing good coping mechanisms. Never-the-less, it may be that there are other techniques they have not thought of/come across that would benefit them.
What signs might suggest that this is the case, in a context where past academic success is the norm and future academic success is the expectation?

Ask your M.D. for a screening.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is not specific to academia. It may be on-topic on [health.se] or [cogsci.se].

@Wrzlprmft: I don't suppose we could close this one yet. This question seems to be an interdisciplinary overlap between the SE sites you've suggested and Academia.SE. It can be part of Life as a graduate student and it doesn't lie within the 'don't ask about...' part. The question seems acceptable to me.

I think this could be made more relevant by focusing on the academic side: how to you identify a learning disability in a graduate student, who must be very intelligent and may have developed very good coping mechanisms, but maybe is still being held back from achieving their full potential.

A screening with a primary care doctor (for example, at the campus student health center) is a good place to start....  The type of specialist who focuses specifically on this is called an educational psychologist.  Unfortunately, the testing tools used in that field are generally not available unless you buy them from the publisher.  There are some checklists for specific conditions, however.  Here are some useful ones: http://www.tourettesyndrome.ca/showthread.php?7737-Tourette-Symptom-Checklist

I've tried editing the question to something I think would be more appropriate for this site. I don't mind this being undone if the changes are unwelcome.

From http://ldaamerica.org/adults-with-learning-disabilities-an-overview/ :

Positive characteristics of adults with LD may include problem-solving skills, compensatory strategies, persistence, empathy, and outgoing personalities.  Areas of difficulty include: difficulty with reading, writing and/or math; poor memory; difficulty following directions; inability to discriminate between or among letters, numbers, and/or sounds; eye-hand coordination problems; difficulty putting things in the right sequence;
  disorganization; and/or difficulty adjusting to change.

Determining whether an adult has a Specific Learning Disability (SLD) depends on the type of disability (e.g. Auditory Processing Disorder, Dyscalculia, Dysgraphia, Dyslexia, Language Processing Disorder, Non-Verbal Learning Disabilities, or Visual Perceptual/Visual Motor Deficit).  Each disability will manifest itself differently, and the degree of influence will vary by individual.  In general, you will need a professional to determine whether you have said disability (see http://ldaamerica.org/adult-learning-disability-assessment-process/ ).

Going to a psychologist!! Only a person responsible for mental health and prevention of disorders can diagnose you.
However, before engaging with a psychologist, a student should compare their academic progress with other graduate students from the same field. Also a student needs to know and detect what concepts are crucial in their area of study, so a psychologist can help assess how well person is capable of extending their knowledge of these topics and learning them in depth.


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How much do research papers in arXiv count (for graduate applications)?
Wikipedia states that 'Although the arXiv is not peer reviewed, a collection of moderators for each area review the submissions.'
If a paper is not published in any other publication, does it means that it will not contribute to your C.V. when you are applying for an MS or PhD program? Because on arXiv it is not reviewed specifically implies that it does not have the same weight as compared to other publication.

Hi, and welcome to Academia.SE!  I've edited your title and tried to clean up your question a bit; please feel free to revert any changes that you find incorrect.

What do you mean "contribute to your CV"?  You are the author of your CV; you get to decide whether to include arXiv preprints or not.

Will one or more of your letter writers discuss your paper (and in favorable terms)? I strongly suspect that that, in combination with your paper being publicly available, will make a positive impression.

Having a paper that was not peer reviewed but is available from arXiv will help you just as much, and in exactly the same way, as having a paper that was not peer reviewed and is available from any other easily accessed online source. The main things that are important are that:

You have written a paper (according to some definition of "paper").
The paper can easily be accessed and looked at by anyone wishing to evaluate your strength as a grad school applicant.

Note that the value of such a paper to your admission prospects can actually be negative if it is clearly of very poor quality, shows delusional tendencies (e.g., a paper with the title "A simple proof of the Riemann Hypothesis"), or comes across as a dishonest attempt to create a false impression that you have done something important when clearly you haven't. Setting aside such obvious exceptions, an arXiv paper will probably have a positive, but in most cases not very large, value for your applications.

I would add a caveat that in some peculiar fields (computer science for example) publishing a paper on a concrete, useful, subject in a publicly available place can be very useful, not just in your career but to field. When the material is internally consistent, readers can verify themselves by implementing some aspect of the content of the paper, and the subject is something important to current research or practice it doesn't matter who reviewed what or the prestige of a journal. Journals are actually bad in this case as they hide useful work. This is the exception, not the rule.

You are correct that, since arXiv is not peer-reviewed, a paper in arXiv generally counts less than a paper in a peer-reviewed publication.
That does not, however, mean that it does not count.  This is particularly true when it comes to graduate admissions, where few students have any publications at all.  An admissions committee that is considering whether you have potential to do well in their program may find a strong manuscript in arXiv to be a very good sign.  Note, however, that the degree to which this is true will be strongly field-dependent: in a field that makes heavy use of arXiv, such as physics and mathematics, faculty may be quite accustomed to arXiv and understand how to judge such manuscripts; in a field that does not, such as many biomedical fields, faculty may ignore it completely.

The mere fact that the paper is on the arXiv will count for a little, but not so much by itself; the real value is that faculty can then read the paper for themselves.

The arxiv preprints are eligible for CV inclusion. It is better when you have both traditional journal publications and preprints.


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Is it common for Chinese nationals to turn down review requests?
I am an associate editor for some international scientific journals. Unsurprisingly, I receive a number of submissions from Chinese scholars (working in China), which go through the standard peer review process and publication. However, when I ask Chinese researchers, working in China, to perform reviews they either never reply or turn down any invitation based on not being able to access files or external systems. This is not the case with Chinese scholars working in other countries.
This may well be just my own unlucky personal experience, but it seems to be a consistent phenomenon throughout several years already.
Are there any ethical implications of this? This is, publishing but never refereeing? Or is it that I have been unlucky for several years?

I'm not sure that it's unethical to turn down referee requests. Ungenerous, perhaps.

@astronat So, in principle all authors could just try to publish and turn down all review requests with no ethical implications?

Is your question specific to Chinese academicians? If your question is, in essence, "what are the ethical concerns of publishing without contributing back by refereeing?" then why mention any individual country or countries. (please understand, I am not a Chinese fanboy, but I am also not willing to single them out unnecessarily.)

@CGCampbell My question indeed concerns only Chinese nationals, which are the only ones with this kind of issue at a national level. There are of course researchers that do the same at an individual level, but in this case it seems to be a national phenomenon.

I suggest that you ask a few of your Chinese reviewers living outside China but with knowledge of academia there to give you some perspective on this. Given the comment of @scaaahu and others, you might need to do this rather privately.

@Buffy That is a good advice.

@Buffy What is wrong with asking here instead? We have a few users with knowledge of Chinese academia here.

@FedericoPoloni, I didn't say wrong. Just made a suggestion.

Anyone in China with more sophistication than a potato has access to a VPN. The claim that they're unable to access external systems is 100% BS. Source: Went to school at Peking University, fluent in Mandarin. Classmates and professors all used VPNs regularly.

I would also venture the following guesses: many Chinese authors did not do the work themselves.  They are included as co-authors to establish some form of relationship and to play their academic system.  In addition, they may not have a good command of the English language.  The workload of an academic can be very high and there are no reward for being a reviewer.  Lastly, only a handful of universities have subscription to databases such as the IEEE.

@the-notable And using a VPN is legal in China and approved by the universities?

@Buffy what was the comment by scaaahu?

@user1271772, I don't recall the text, but the intent was "don't kick the dragon", publicly at least.

How is that about Academia? Why is it not about some combination of editorial tasks and Chinese nationals, neither of which has anything to do with Academia?

@pipe A little off-topic, but in China the legal system, and by extension official organizational policies, are structured in such a way that you must violate the law/policies in order to be productive/effective. Through threat of enforcement, this leaves every individual of consequence exposed to coercion by officials, whether that's public officials or organizational administrators. So to answer your questions, VPNs are not legal, and it's unlikely a university officially approves their use. However, it's very likely that VPN use is implicitly expected in order to carry out your work.

I find it a bit rich that this is being framed as an ethical issue given how fundamentally unethical scientific publishing is. Journals expect authors to pay to get published, readers to pay to read, we are expected to do the typesetting using the journal's rules and they get expert editorial services for free.  Most journals don't even have print versions any more and they still charge both readers and authors and all they do is provide a platform to host content. We review because that helps science, but we owe nothing to the journals that are fleecing us.

Changed the vague and clickbaity title

Your experience does not match mine - Chinese researchers accept reviewer invitations just like everyone else.
Statistics also indicate that Chinese researchers do perform peer review. As a group, they submit more articles than they review for (along with Indian & Iranian researchers) but they also perform more peer review than any other country's researchers except the US (albeit not on a per capita basis).
See source.

Is there a difference depending on field, I wonder? Though if yours is physics, I'd think the Chinese government would be rather sensitive - at least in some sub fields. Guessing.

I see, it may well be an area-specific phenomenon. At least in Maths-oriented areas, those numbers do not match my experience.

@wonder statistics statistically never match individual experience.

@Buffy I can't comment on differences between fields (I only saw reviews in condensed matter). Still, I'd be surprised if the Chinese government is intervening to that degree - after all, doing peer review is not the same as doing classified research. Perhaps an editor who has handled mathematics journals can comment.

An interesting difference between qualitative vs. quantitative aspects (and the essence of the answer vs. the title of the graph). Qualitatively, Chinese do review; quantitatively, they tend to review less than other major nations aside from India and Iran.

I would point out that while this answer does agree that Chinese (as well as Indian and Iranian) Academicians appear to review less than submit, that there is no discussion about the ethics of that, so: does not completely answer question (even though accepted)

This is an excellent answer based in data, but I am not sure reproducing the graph here is fair use. That is, unless you have contacted NPG directly.

What the data do not say: they review fewer papers because they are asked by editors less frequently, or because they agree to review less frequently?

@FedericoPoloni I think it's probable they are asked less frequently, given the innate distrust some people have of Chinese researchers (c.f. Prof. Santa Claus' comment to the question). I don't have data for that, however.

Assuming that each published paper is reviewed by 3 reviewers (on average, some journals invite more or less), then a country that overall submits more papers than reviews would tend to indicate that they produce fewer reviews than their paper submissions require. In other words, we could indeed conclude that on average, faculty in China are less likely to review papers.

@Elodin if so, the red line would on average be 3x the length of the blue one, which clearly isn't the case - so it must have been corrected for.

Your opening line says Chinese researchers accept reviewer invitations just like everyone else, but then you go on to present data indicating that they do not accept reviews just like everyone else - the data in fact shows that Chinese researchers accept significantly fewer review invitations than researchers from other countries - by a factor of 2 to nearly 4 times and are the second strongest (and the largest) outlier in the dataset.  It feels like your data does not match your argument.

I'm not sure it makes sense to look at raw totals rather than per capita. Based on your data, it seems fair to say they review fewer papers than researchers in most other countries.

@Kat however, one ought to divide by the total number of researchers in the country as opposed to the total population. Do you know how many researchers there are in China?

@FedericoPoloni actually now that I look at the article again, the subtitle (immediately after the title) is "Scientists in emerging economies respond fastest to peer review invitations, but are invited least." So they are invited less frequently.

I'll begin by quoting dodd's answer:

"Internet in China is highly regulated and many usual Web sites are blocked there, say, youtube"

and expand it by saying that even the sites that are not "blocked" (blocked sites include Google, Facebook, Twitter and their subsidiaries like Youtube, Gmail, Instagram, etc.) cam still be extremely slow even at the four star hotel in which I stayed for 1 month while visiting scientists there. In July 2020 I asked a Chinese professor at Qingdao Institute for Theoretical and Computational Sciences (QiTCS) in Shandong University to answer a question on Stack Exchange and he asked me to copy and paste his answer into Stack Exchange myself, because:

"It seems that I always met problem when trying to reply the post in
the website"

which at first I didn't believe, because Stack Exchange is not blocked in China. But I asked professors at a completely different university to answer something on Stack Exchange and when the same thing happened, I asked my trusted Chinese academic colleague who told me:

"I chatted with Qu and he told me that he cannot visit Stack Exchange.
You visited here before so you know why :-(
Perhaps of the two of them Ma is more familiar with Internet stuff (He
works for the HPC centre of CAS), he will give it a try later.
Qu is not here and will be back in several days so we can meet in
person and talk about that."

I asked him:

"Is stack exchange blocked? I knew google and facebook are, but I thought stack exchange would be ok"

He replied:

"I think it is because that stack exchange is depend on some service of
google or some other CDN blocked, which made the webpage cannot be
loaded properly, or at least extremely slow.   I checked and found SE
is not blocked.  However the internet connection is affected by too
many reasons.  From my own experience, when I am at home, visiting
foreign website are all too slow to visit,  even they are not blocked,
although Chinese websites are as fast as usual."

So it's not just "blocked" sites like Google, but almost any website can be very hard or inconvenient to access.
Finally, let me comment on a completely different aspect of your question which has less to do with the specific components about Chinese nationals:

"Are there any ethical implications of this? This is, publishing but never refereeing?"

Journals do not pay referees and yet they make a lot of money (almost always) or in cases that appear to be completely altruistic they serve the interests of the people who run the journal in some positive way, at least enough for those people to continue running the journal. I personally have not had a salary since 2018,  and while I do still referee papers and take it very seriously, you cannot expect everyone to do it, all the time. Should people who refuse to referee papers be banned from publishing? I don't think so, but if you do ban them, they will publish somewhere else and your journal may miss out on publishing 100s of papers over the course of that academic's group's life span, and since journals typically charge about $30/paper when people don't have a subscription (and annual fees in the thousands for institutions), the journal may lose money or popularity.
If it's a problem for you that people are refusing to referee papers in your journal to the extent that it is making a significant impact on your journal's prosperity, consider suggesting to the higher-ups to come up with better ways to make it worth it for the referees (e.g. more "referee of the month" awards, gift cards, or maybe a small honorarium as a token of appreciation for the work they do to keep your journal running).

Journals do not pay referees and yet they make a lot of money (almost always) I'd put money on most journals losing money, actually. If the industry is profitable as a whole, it's because the few biggest journals make tons of money and subsidize all the journals that don't.

Similar experience tells me that they slow down everything they (the Great Firewall) does not recognize. This is why I'm extremely suspicious of fast VPNs. I'm sure they only allow VPN traffic that they know how to decode.

To answer your question in the comment below the question. I basically said the same thing you said here, but in a very short manner. I am a native Chinese living in Taiwan. I left the comment for the OP without formally answering the question because I worry about the retaliation in the future. You seem to be the one on this page who has more insights. Thank you for saying these things that most Westerners don't understand. +1

Thanks @scaaahu. I'm Canadian and not of Chinese descent, so hopefully I don't have a bias: I just quoted exact emails from Chinese professors. It's unfortunate that a lot of Westerners don't understand or care much to get it right.

I'm guessing that the problem is Google reCaptcha, served from google.com and gstatic.com (both are needed).

As a (former) associative editor, I can assure you that it is very difficult and highly frustrating to find reviewers. Reviewers do not get rewarded, especially outside academia, and a good review can take days. My average is probably an afternoon plus some time to think about it.
Some highly regarding academics only review for conferences / journal that they themselves submit, and the custom of giving reviews to graduate students so that they learn how to do reviews and discuss it with their supervisors has pretty much finished because it is now considered a violation of confidentiality. Struggling assistant professors will be jaded by their experience and not so willing to do unrewarded community service. If we use the usual number of three reviewers, everyone with a Ph.D. should review at least three times the number of papers they submitted.
My recent experiences do not agree with yours (which just shows that anecdotal data is not very trustworthy) nor does it agree with the nice statistics in a previous answer. I had much better luck with Indian and Chinese academics than with US academics, which are in general much more likely to accept invitations than people in industry.
Finding reviewers is extremely frustrating and I run into free-loaders, which is upsetting. And then, after I scurried google scholar for potential reviewers, get no answers or non accepts, the editor sends me an automatic email telling me how important a short time in review is.

"a good review can take days" made me laugh. In mathematics the correct statement is "a good review can take years".

As an editor for several journals myself, I receive dozens of submissions from Chinese scholars, but they very very rarely help with reviews. They usually ignore referee invitations, or simply turn them down without explanation. Many of them with papers accepted in the same journal.
I cannot begin to imagine what are the reasons for this behaviour, but it is just what it is.

I am not sure refereeing or not refereeing has (or should have) any ethical implications. People referee articles for various reasons, and they don't referee for various reasons.
One may ask: what happens if nobody referees anything? Still I don't think the sky would fall on us in this case. Something would probably have to change, for example, journals would have to pay referees, or some other solution would be found.
For example, Feynman avoided refereeing anything (https://www.aip.org/history-programs/niels-bohr-library/oral-histories/5020-4). Feynman: "I myself don’t referee any papers." Weiner: "What was your attitude on that?" Feynman: "(I don't want to give a long quote here, but it is very interesting)".

See this question: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/29079/19607

@Kimball : So most of the answers there offer some "quotas" to referee. However, I am just not sure one has ethical obligations to referee. Otherwise we should find Feynman highly unethical. I still think he had the right to choose his battles.


text:
How to find the Ph.D. thesis of Sir Roger Penrose?
I am currently writing my Ph.D. thesis. I like to take inspiration from the writing of people I have admired my whole student life. The idea is to take inspiration from how people wrote many complicated ideas in an informative but concise form. In this quest, I wanted to look at Roger Penrose's Ph.D. thesis even though my topic is far from what he did. However, I have lost hope. It is not there online anywhere.

Have you asked your librarian? Helping you find literature like that is their job after all...

@MaartenBuis It is easier to order through the library if the entry exists. For this case, unfortunately not. However, I will see if that is an option.

Your library employs people who can help you. They are called librarians. Just talk to them.

@Sursula Although the question is similar, I also have asked about the interesting and well-written thesis that people might have encountered.

@CfourPiO For SE, it is better to ask one question at a time.

@MaartenBuis, I am familiar with the terminology; thank you for your input.

@CfourPiO: I removed your second question since there should be only one question per question (as already mentioned) and it’s also far too broad and opinion-based for this site.

note, this question has also been brought in mathoverflow: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/256134/penrose-thesis-topics

@CfourPiO asking for specific theses is also a shopping question which is also off-topic

I also think your approach of looking at PhD theses in particular is flawed. Rather look at any scientific writing that you consider good. While there are some differences between PhD theses and other publications in the macroscopic structure, this structure also strongly depends on the particular work. As for Penrose’ thesis in particular: Scientific writing has progressed a lot since 1958 and you should not ignore this. Also pure mathematics is and was very different from other fields in its writing.

@Wrzlprmft Thank you for the suggestion. I did not think from this perspective.

https://www.qmul.ac.uk/spcs/staff/visiting-staff/profiles/rouse.html Try contacting him directly?

@Sursula Thanks. Will try this option as well.

One trip to Wikipedia gives us a link to the entry for the thesis in the Cambridge university library:
https://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/t9gok8/44CAM_ALMA21428192330003606
It does not seem to be available for loan, but you can contact the library to see if they have a digitized version (or ask your local university librarian).
Here is the worldcat entry: https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/71366928
The Center for Reseach Libraries has a microfilm version, which they can digitize on request: https://catalog.crl.edu/Record/d36d6ec6-3700-5e81-b894-27ef84ece6a9

Excellent. Our university is not a CRL member though. Luckily, I found an entry in my university library online. I have ordered it. Thank you. I don't know if they can request it.

Unfortunately, they can not order it :(

Since (from what you say in comments) you’re at a university, ask your university’s librarians for help — either by email or (often best of all) in person.  Helping researchers obtain literature is one of their main job responsibilities (though less often needed now than it was twenty years ago); they can often find much more beyond what you can get automatically through online systems.
Depending where you live, you may have other research libraries available to you as well — many countries or large cities have national/municipal research libraries, with similarly well-qualified librarians. (For instance, in the countries I know, the UK has the British Library, and Sweden has the Kungliga Biblioteket in Stockholm, both open to anyone living in the country.)

There is nothing a research librarian likes better than a challenge like the OP has. They live for this kind of thing.

Actually, I have tried this today and they said they can’t help as it’s not available at all in EU and they don’t want to import from somewhere else now. However, I asked them over email. I will try to reach out to them physically. Let’s see if they can.


text:
How to initial an author's name that contains nobiliary particles and articles
When an author's name contains something like "van der", "de la", etc, and you wish to initial the author's first/middle names (all but surname) in a reference, how do you deal with the extra words?
For example, if I wish to reference a paper by António Franco de Oliveira Falcão, would I write Falcão, A.F.O. or Falcão, A.F.d.O., or maybe Falcão, A.F.D.O.? Although, it seems that this is a Portuguese name, with two surnames. I'm not sure how I should deal with two surnames
I'm  using the Leeds Numeric style. I've found an example of an author with the name Leo Cornelius van Rijn, which is referenced as van Rijn, L.C., so that answers what to do if the word is part of the surname. But in the Falcão example "de" is part of the Oliveira name, I'm not sure if that would be part of the surname or not.

What citation style are you using?

Leeds Numeric, can't find anything about this question though

For starters Falcão is part of that person's surname and not a "middle name".

@Maeher exactly, which is why it is not initialed in my examples. I'm not sure what you are trying to say?

I think there's a few things going on. This Portuguese name is probably A. [Franco de Oliveira] [Falcao]. So it might not be abbreviated at all, depending on whether this person is usually cited with four words or just Falcao.

Is it worth looking how other authors using a numeric style have cited him?

@jonnybolton16 Well, yes, of course?

Sorry, I meant to say that Oliveira is part of the surname. Copied the wrong part of the name.

If you are worried about a specific example, look to how they and others have done it in the past. If they are alive, consider asking them.

For what it's worth, if it is this António Franco de Oliveira Falcão you're asking about, they seem to mainly publish as "A.F.O. Falcão", corresponding to "Falcão, A.F.O." the way you write it. Now, whether or not that is fully correct, and whether this is by choice or due to resignation from dealing with systems too inflexible to deal with Lusophone names...

To do it right, you typically need to have a little bit of understanding of the language/culture from which the name comes from. That's because that determines whether a word is part of the middle names, or part of the family name. For example, in German, if my name happened to be "Wolfgang von Muehlendahl", then you'd have to know that "von" is part of the family name, and so correctly abbreviated, my name would be "W. von Muehlendahl".
In some Spanish-speaking languages, people have two family names (from the sides of both parents), and both of these are part of the family name. So if someone is "Jose Hernandez Hermosa", then it is possible that this is correctly abbreviated "J. Hernandez Hermosa". Of course, there are plenty of people in the US these days who have Hispanic names but no longer follow the Spanish precedent, and it wouldn't be out of the ordinary if there are some for which "Hernandez" for whatever reason was chosen as a middle name, and for whom the name abbreviated would be "J. H. Hermosa".
For your example, "António Franco de Oliveira Falcão", the question then is what the convention in the Portuguese culture is. It is possible that only "Falcão" is the family name, but it may also be "de Oliveira Falcão" or perhaps even "Franco de Oliveira Falcão".
The upshot is that it is actually quite difficult to do this correctly if you're not familiar with the conventions of the culture from which someone comes.

"The upshot"? Haha. Also, it might help to clarify that in those Spanish names, the first surname is the primary one, so Jose probably would go by "Jose Hernandez" in a short form, not "Jose Hermosa," as might be more natural for an Anglo.

Thanks. So to summarise: 1) If the word is attached to a surname it is usually written out; 2) Sometimes it's hard to understand exactly what to do when there are multiple surnames 3) if in doubt, have a look at how others, or the Author themselves, format their name

Yes, I think this is good advice.

Usually these particles remain before the full surname, and are omitted when there are only initial letters.