text:
How to get academic search engines only search in open access journals?
Sometimes I work from home, and for security reasons it is not possible to connect to the campus computers. I use Google Scholar for finding papers and so, but from home, most of the journals can not be accessed.
Is it there some way in which Google Scholar or another academic search engine searches only in open access journals?
PS1: There is no way in which I can access my campus, really.
PS2: OK, I will give more details, since it seems that PS1 is not clear enough. I am working with other collaborators that are not affiliated to any University. I could do VPN and similar but I can not pass them such information, or any other way of passwords or access to the campus, etc. We can only work with the open access papers they find. If the interesting papers are under a paywall, then they are useless for us. I hope this clarifies my questions, and thank everybody for the useful comments.

If your university has online library by which you can request the books, paper, and so on, then you have to first log in to your library account and then open the new tab of scholar.google.com. Google scholar then shows you the paper (not only the open access journal paper) you are looking for along with your campus library name. You necessarily don't have to be in the campus computer for the papers.

Your campus probably has a VPN or simpler off-campus bookmarklet that will give you access to journals. Or remote access to campus (ssh or RDP) + Dropbox.

I don't know how to change the search results as you want (and I don't see why you wouldn't want to know that the papers exist), but when I run into a paywall, I run a standard (non-scholar) Google search for the paper title. Frequently, a copy was posted to someone's web page and Scholar is trained to not use those copies when a published version exists.

yes, I know this

@Derrick - Your answer is not entirely correct. Google scholar shows every version of the paper, including the pay-walled ones too. All you need to do is click on "All X versions" and choose which source you want to use.

@flow - thanks for the edit. But note that you and your collaborators are not restricted to open-access only. Preprints from the authors are entirely legitimate.

I agree, but I should clarify that due to psychological reasons they will never request a preprint to anybody and I am not also going to do it( I only supervise this work)

Many papers are freely (and legally) available on the web even if they do not appear in open access journals; this includes both preprints and self-archived final versions in university repositories or the arXiv, for example.  As for material available only behind paywalls, the principle of not passing on copyrighted material to collaborators outside the university is, I believe, legally correct, but I would not feel bad about giving them copies.

@flow Whats a PS?

Postdata, something added later

In this case, Post Scriptum, or after having written something

This exact question has been asked at Webapps Stack Exchange:
Is there a way to configure Google Scholar to only show results where the document is freely available?
Quoting from the (unaccepted) answer there:

Unfortunately there isn't an option to restrict results like that in Google Scholar (I appreciate the idea, running into paywalls is very frustrating). I guess the argument could be made that you are limiting the articles/knowledge you could be exposed to be only looking at the free things. That and Google's recognition of what is accessible isn't 100%.

See over there for more information.

Besides not being helpful, this answer is incorrect: The question is asking about academic search engines in general, but the answer just say "Google Scholar can't do it" and leaves it at that.

@Superbest It is correct to say Google Scholar can't do it.  I admit the answer is incomplete, but that's not the same as incorrect.

I'm not sure, whether you really meant open access journals, because when I'm searching at home and I'm too lazy to use the VPN of our university, I'm usually interested in publications I can access.
I wouldn't rely on Google Scholar alone, because I'm not sure whether they filter the results. When you study the advanced search of google a bit, you'll see, that some of the switches are really nice. One really important switch is the -filetype option. If you search for instance for image segmentation in Google Scholar you get instantly only results with a downloadable pdf file if you use
image segmentation filetype:pdf

Even more handy becomes this approach in a two step method. As you know, when you "put something in quotes" in google, you search for the exact string. This can be used to do the following:

find some preview of the article you want to download.
choose a very specific part of a sentence there
search for this part and use the filetype option

Non-scientific example: Sometimes I'm searching for piano notes of some popular songs and since everyone tries to make money with this, you often won't find a free, downloadable version. Therefore, I first search for something like "sheet music evanescence my immortal" and look at one of the first links, where you usually can see one sample page. Then I see, what's on the page and I use this information to adjust my search
"My immortal" "I'm so tired of" "Slowly and freely" filetype:pdf

and the first hit is a high-quality pdf with all pages.
The same approach sometimes works for scientific publications, because most scientists put their publication on their website. So while you have to pay on the journal website, you may get it for free somewhere else.

yes, this is a good idea! I have tried in scholar so search for some articles adding filetype:pdf, but some of the results are still inaccesible!

When you run a search in Google Scholar, the hits are organized in two columns. The left column is for all hits (links + snippets) matching your search string. The right column (links only) is for the subset of those hits which are either free for everyone (OA) or free for you (based on Google's calculation that your institution has paid for access). For many searches, the right column will be sparsely populated. If don't search from an institutional IP address, then Google won't be able to tell what your institution has bought, and the right column will be limited to OA hits.
I believe this is one of the best-kept secrets about Google Scholar.

The hits are not "organized in two columns". Google just shows a PDF link if it can find one. There isn't anything secret about it.

No, there is no way to restrict google scholar searches to only open-access papers.
However, you have several options, to ensure that you can access pay-for-access journals that your institution has subscriptions for, even when you're off-campus. This neatly short-circuits the question of having to search only open-access journals. And see also the section below on "Hosting on servers other than the journal itself", which will allow you to find open-access copies of papers that are in pay-to-access journals, by looking on author's homepages and similar.
Shibboleth / Athens login
The login name and password you use for your campus network, may also serve as your login and password for one of the access aggregators, such as Shibboleth or Athens. So once you're at the online journal page of the paper you're after, look for "institutional login" or "login", and then search for the login details of your aggregator, and then for your institution. For example, most UK universities are part of the Shibboleth network, and get access via the UK Access Management Federation. So the login route is:
    - a link called something like institutional login on the journal page
    - a dropdown for UK Access Management Federation
    - a select-box to pick the specific university
    - university login and password
Hosting on servers other than the journal itself
Once you've done your usual search, and got the title of a potentially-interesting paper, then you can start looking for PDFs of it. First do a plain (not scholar) google search for the title, in double-quotes, and filetype:pdf. So if you were looking for the paper "Ninja Google skills", then you'd google for
"Ninja Google skills" filetype:pdf
If that doesn't work, check whether the paper is hosted on:

the university homepages of any of the authors
the preprint server at each of their universities
any subject-wide preprint archive for your subject area

Or email the author on the paper who's nominated as first contact, asking them for a preprint copy of the paper. A couple of sentences about why you're interested, and how you'll use it, will help.
Remote access to the campus network
Some people with this problem will have one or more means to access their campus network (although you do not. This answer is to help others as well as you, and their circumstances will not be identical to yours); a quick chat with one of the librarians, and someone in the university IT support team, should help clarify:

VPN into the campus network, then search; or
SSH into the campus network, then search; or
log in to the university library network web page, and search from there.

Failing all that, get creative
For some of the following, you'll need to check your university's terms and conditions, and official guidelines, to ensure that you play within the letter and the spirit of the rules:

Set up an in-campus server process that will receive remotely-submitted requests, search for a paper, and download it, and make it available to you. You might do this via a web-page, email, or Dropbox.
Share a Dropbox folder or similar with colleagues, and arrange that whenever one of you is on campus, and has a spare few minutes, you'll look for new requests in the shared folder, and if you find any, you'll download the paper and pop it in the Dropbox.
Ask your supervisor / department head (as appropriate) to mention to a very senior administrator that the University is failing its staff and postgrads in a key area, and that some form of off-site access is just part of being a university in the 21st Century.

While this is a very thorough and useful post, I had to downvote it. It certainly is not an answer to the question "Is it there some way in which Google Scholar or another academic search engine searchs only in open access journals?" In particular, please pay attention to the keyword open access journal, both in the question and in the title! However, this post might be a very good answer to a different (and more relevant) question, so perhaps someone should ask the different question...

@JukkaSuomela thanks for the comment. I've amended the opening paragraph to directly answer the question, and to set the context for how the rest of the answer will be useful to the OP, and to others with similar problems.

The type of journal an article is published does not necessarily have anything to do with whether you can access it for free.
Google Scholar very often provides you with direct links to free PDFs of articles published in journals that charge for subscriptions.  You can access those PDFs for free because:

The author posted a copy on his/her webpage;
The author posted a copy on an institutional server; or
The paper (or a preprint) is posted on an open-access repository such as arxiv.org.

For instance, none of my papers are published in open-access journals.  But if you search for my papers on Google Scholar, the first page has direct links to free PDFs for 6 out of 9 of the hits, and 1 of the remaining 3 is a book.

While your answer is true, it doesn't really answer the question as to how to limit Google Scholar to searching only free journals. Do you have any suggestions as how to achieve that?

No, I do not.  .

I'm not aware of a resource that limits searching in this way but if you are interested only in open access journals you could try using advanced searching on the http://doaj.org.  Neither the search interface nor the content may be the same quality of the databases, but it would limit you to resources that were universally available.  However, this seems overly restrictive of your research because your colleagues likely have some level of access to research through their own institutions, through public libraries and state-level consortia, or even through walk-in visits to local research institutions.  Before limiting yourself so severely I recommend speaking with an electronic resources librarian on your campus to discuss all options and access.  Sometimes library database licenses do allow for scholarly sharing of articles or portions of materials with colleagues that are collaborating in this manner.

I am not sure in which field you are looking. However, if you are working in quantitative science (physics, quantitative biology, computer science...) you might check out Scientillion which is searching open access databases and has more than 90% of open access articles in its results. Since it is including the eprint archive ArXiv you often get the full text of articles which appeared in journals later after being uploaded there. Hope, that helps.

You can teach the Google search to avoid non-free journal sites using this chrome add-on. May be after using for a few days, you will come across all the main non-free sites and add them to your blocklist.

Try Paperity instead!
It is an aggregator of exclusively open access literature. As of now, Paperity contains more than 1,500,000 full-text papers from 4,200 journals covering all academic disciplines. You can browse papers by journal, use full-text search, set up RSS feeds to follow new articles on a given subject (RSS is tailored to your search criteria) and read papers on a tablet or smartphone (iOS, Android). Paperity aims at aggregating 100% of open access literature ultimately.
Disclaimer: I am the founder.

thanks. can you ellaborate whether this app outperforms researcher.app?

@flow "Researcher" indexes mainly toll-access journals; even if an article is open access, Researcher gives no indication about that; there is no full-text preview inside the app, so to actually read a paper you have to visit an external website every time, or download a file locally; there is no advanced search... In Paperity, all articles are open-access, so you never hit a paywall; there's an in-app PDF preview, no redirections to external websites; advanced search with ~20 different criterions to find exactly what you need... These are the main differences, surely there are some more.


text:
During review, I found a superior solution. What now?
I received a journal paper for a review. The paper suggests a solution to an important problem, but the solution is very complicated and has mediocre performance. While reading the paper, I thought of a different solution, which is much simpler and has better performance (to give some scale: their solution is 1 page to write and 5 pages to prove; my solution is 5 lines to write and half a page to prove).
What should I do now?
A. Write my solution in the review, hoping the authors will remember to "thank the anonymous reviewer"?
B. Recommend that the paper published as is, then write a paper of my own with my improved solution?
C. Something else?
EDIT: Before I found the superior solution, I thought of recommending "resubmit with major revision", with the reasons that I mentioned above: your solution is too complicated and its performance is too weak.
However, now I am not sure it is the good course of action. A major revision may take a long time. The authors might even decide to delay or stop working on the paper without telling the editor (or me). Meanwhile, I will have to postpone the publishing of the superior solution for an indefinite amount of time. What do you think?

Is the problem you have found a better solution to essentially the whole paper, or is it just part of larger whole?

Just because you discovered something better doesn't mean the paper under review doesn't deserve to get published. Would you have come up with your idea if you hadn't read the paper under review? You said it solves an important problem, that's worth publishing!

In my opinion, this makes it reasonable for you to ask the editor's permission to contact the authors.

I will assume that there are subtle fatal errors in your superior solution that will take independent review to discover.    Then it makes sense to review the paper on its own merits.  Does it advance the current state of the art?

I didn't get a clear impression of your opinion of the authors' work.  "Solving an important problem" ought to make for an excellent paper, but the rest of your description seems to partially negate that.  (In particular, I don't quite know what a "nonstandard input parameter" is, but it sounds a bit like they are cheating or that the legitimacy of their solution could be a matter of debate.)
Either way, it seems to follow from what you say that you feel that you have solved an important problem, indeed in a better way than the authors.  Unless you are such a known superstar in your field that this is a commonplace occurrence for you, I would think that you deserve to get more out of this than an anonymous thanks.  To me the options seem to be:
1) If the authors' paper is strong enough to be published, say so.  You should not hide your opinions about their shortcomings, but you don't have to include your new ideas in your referee report.  Then:
1a) If just by responding to your criticism (if they care to) the authors replicate your better solution, then it seems that you did not add critical value, and I would just recommend accepting their modified version and letting the matter end there.
But
1b) If your conscientious refereeing produces a version that is worth publishing but does not replicate your superior solution, then you should prepare your solution for publication.  The timing of this is something that you should ask for other opinions about.  It would be ideal if the authors had circulated their results in preprint form.  If not, you may need to delay submission until their paper actually appears.
2) If you think the paper is not publishable in its current form in the journal to which it was submitted but that it inspired you to solve the problem in a better way, this may be a case for you to ask permission to contact the authors and add your work to theirs.
3) If the work is really not valuable and your solution has little or nothing to do with theirs, then you could just recommend the paper for rejection and then submit your own solution elsewhere.  Examine your conscience carefully before doing this though: imagine that the authors found out exactly what you did.  Would they see it your way?

"Examine your conscience carefully before doing this though: imagine that the authors found out exactly what you did. Would they see it your way?" This is a crucial point. And, honestly, there is almost no way that the authors will see it the OP's way. In my community, rejecting a paper and then writing a related (even a better) one yourself is the stuff that produces lifelong enemies.

@xLeitix Well, it would also be very hard to defend ethically. After all, the causuality and facts goes this way, "there is a problem" -> "original paper solves a problem" -> "someone gets inspired by reading the paper" -> "that someone devises a better solution". Those are simply facts, I don't see a way to skip a step here. Fact that the original paper was not published at the moment does not matter at all IMO, it should be cited (even as unpublished or private communication) just to reflect facts and give proper credit. After all without original the better solution would not be as it is.

I believe that you should always act as if you have not seen a paper that you are reviewing for the purposes of your own research. If you want to write a better follow up, you have to wait until a copy of the original paper is publicly available first, in my opinion.

@Lembik: That may be the topic for a different question, and maybe it is indeed field-dependent, but the people (professors, postdocs) who taught me about how to conduct research over the years uniformly expressed that having early access to related work and thus being able to proceed with one's own research earlier is one of the best ways how reviewing is not only a service to the community, but also a chance for the reviewer. (Waiting would still occur, but only related to publishing one's own research, which would then have to cite the reviewed work.)

@O.R.Mapper You are right that this may be a topic for a different question.  I just note that acting as you suggest gives you an unfortunate conflict of interest when reviewing the paper, apart from anything else.

Option C is to contact the authors, aiming to become coauthor of a better paper. This should be done via the editor of the journal/proceeding you work for, to avoid the impression that you try to exploit your position to get free publications. The editor writes a letter to the authors stating that the anonymous referee has found a better solution, and ask whether they want to write a joint paper. If they refuse, you can still choose option B.
This option is only viable, if the result you improve is a significant part of the paper, and the authors have every right to differ in their judgement from you, so a refusal does not mean that they are mean/not cooperative/envious/whatever.
At a later stage in your carreer, i.e. once you have a good position, you should opt for A. This is not only common interest, but also helping yourself. It does not make a difference whether you have 76 or 82 publications, but editors read your reports and notice, and usually editors are influential people.
As a sideremark I would recommend you to take a little more care about the "anonymous referee" stuff. If the authors read this post, they will know whom to blame.

Ethically speaking, both, A and B, are perfectly valid options in my opinion. If the paper itself provides a significant contribution to the state of the art, I would recommend to publish the paper. Although your solution might be superior (which, please correct me if I am wrong, you have not yet proven) the proposed method might cover different aspects or might be of relevance in a different way. Depending on your motivation to publish a paper with your novel method yourself, this would be the logical next step. Why give your ideas to the current authors "for free" (meaning without real credit)?

It is not obvious that such incremental improvements are worthy of publishing on its own. Giving ideas to authors for free is exactly what reviewing is all about (almost).

@PålGD Reviewing is primarily about assessing the given work.

@PålGD Giving small ideas to somebody's paper for free is indeed a common part of reviewing. However, the situation here appears to be that the reviewer would be giving the authors a whole new paper for free. Having that much input to the paper deserves nothing short of co-authorship. Indeed, if the entire original content of the paper has been superseded, one would question even the "co-" part.

Option B strikes me as the best solution here, as it seems the original paper gave you the basis from which to create a better solution. Their paper could also help other researchers finding other solutions.
So unless you feel that their contribution is not enough of a step forward, or their proof is missing pieces or incorrect, then it would seem to merit publication.
They get their publication credit for the paper, and you have the beginnings of a new paper.

Did it give the basis, or just focus the OP's attention on the problem? To me, it looks like the latter, but who knows...

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
How can I motivate the teaching assistants to grade more strictly?
I am a lecturer in charge of a course with over 250 students and several TAs. The TAs are partly responsible for grading the homework assignments.  Since these are assignments in programming, no two submissions are identical, so it is impossible to cover all possible cases in the grading guidelines, and the grading has some subjective element.
I noticed that one TA is consistently stricter than the others. For example, if the guidelines say that "code efficiency" is worth 20 points, then this TA would deduct 15 points when the code is inefficient, while the other TAs would deduct only 5 points for a similar issue.
A potential problem here is that it might be unfair to the students in the strict TA's class, but this can be solved by allocating the assignment task "horizontally" (each TA grades all 250 submissions in some of the assignments) rather than "vertically".
But I have a different question: I noticed that students who are graded more harshly, take the feedback comments more seriously, and tend to become better programmers. So, rather than just being "fair", I would like all TAs to grade in a stricter way - for the sake of the students. The problem is, most TAs are not motivated to grade strictly - they gain nothing from it; all they get is having to  handle students' complaints and appeals, and risking lower marks in the students' feedback (since the students do not understand that it is in their favor until after they graduate).
The TAs are not lazy - they do put a lot of effort in teaching and helping students; they just don't like to be the "bad guys" who give low grades. How can I motivate them to give stricter grades?
CONCLUSION: Thanks a lot to all repliers. In addition to the excellent answers, two things that I did were:

I assigned myself to one of the TA sections (where the assignments are graded), in order to get a view of the grading task from the perspective of a TA. It was a very interesting and important experience, and helped me refine the rubric.
I introduced the use of a static analysis tool (specifically: clang-tidy, for C++) as part of the automatic grading. It was way more strict than both me and the TAs in detecting readability and code-quality issues. Students learned a lot just from trying to make clang-tidy run on their code without warnings.

What sort of feedback do students get other than their "marks"? Do the TAs explain where the student went wrong or why points were deducted?

I don’t have time to write a response, but it sounds like an issue with your rubric. It seems like it is unclear what 20 pts of efficiency looks like vs 15 vs 10 vs 5.

@Buffy yes, the TAs explain, and if the explanation is not sufficient, the students ask the TA or ask me. They have no difficulty to "chase" us with questions.

@Dawn the issue is that every assignment is different, and it is hard to cover all 250 ways in which students write inefficient code (and similarly for other grading criteria).

I hear you, but I think you are not being creative enough about this. I would suggest you explore rubrics for grading essay assignments to get a better idea of good ways to go about this. Yes, it does take time and effort to come up with good rubrics, but with practice you will improve at it.

For my own actions, I find that distinguishing "feedback" from "grading" is useful. One does not have to "grade strictly/harshly" to give feedback. Serious students don't need to be clubbed to understand critiques.

Is it possible to simply grade code efficiency as simply the weighted runtime for various sample inputs? This wouldn't work for e.g. clarity, but specifically for efficiency, there might be more objective (and more efficient :) ) methods than having a TA grade the code. Of course, a TA would still have to check the code to see if they simply wrote a switch for all possible inputs and in case of low efficiency to give feedback.

Performance can be measured and graded automatically, without any TA having to do any work whatsoever. I've been in several courses where that has been done, its the method that is best accepted by everyone, because you have an absolutely impartial judge if you benchmark the solutions the students hand in.

@paulgarrett Yes, this!  Grading (of homeworks) is very difficult to do fairly.  I disagree that rubrics help, indeed they only formalize the fairness and work as a justification for one unfair system.  However, making a clear cut distinction between "feedback" and grading (the former is "not* the text you write to justify the latter), usually greatly reduces differences in scoring.  Combined with a system that doesn't give points (which graders & students have a difficult time to relate to) but a grading between "very good", "good", "okay" and "bad" this mostly helps to even out discrepancies

@Polygnome That can sometimes be difficult. For example, what if a numerical program is very fast but has lower accuracy as a result? Sometimes there are tradeoffs involved that are hard to judge objectively.

@Peter Performance and accuracy can both be measured. Automatically. A grading scheme can exactly map accuracy and performance to points. In fact it would be a really good exercise if students could choose to either go for accuracy, performance or both and try to get all of the points.

@Polygnome Yes, I'm just saying that it's potentially difficult to map a given combination of performance and accuracy (or any other combination or metrics) to a grade automatically, that usually requires human judgement as opposed to just awarding points based on e.g. runtime relative to some sample solution.

Can you clarify what level of course this is? You probably need a different method if the things you're worried about are, say, if students chose the most efficient sorting algorithm, vs if your problem is students who can't figure out a for-loop so they copy-paste the same block of code 50 times.

I doubt professional programmers are given rubrics.  Programmers do need to develop their own judgement on what are good programming practices to employ for a particular task.  Having very detailed rubrics doesn't help instill in students the need to develop their own judgement (and self-critical evaluation of their own work).

@Polygnome the problem with automated efficiency evaluation is that it doesn't cover why the code is inefficient.  Likewise for accuracy, it is possible to get the right answer for the wrong reason.  Automated assessment is a very good thing, but I wouldn't like it to be the only way in which these things are assessed.

@DikranMarsupial I never said those should be the only things. But if you do measure performance or accuracy, doing so automatically is the most objective way you can do it. You can easily give 5 points for accuracy, 5 points for performance and 10 points for other stuff. You can also make the exercises in such a way that "wrong" solutions fall through. If you ask "Write a recursive solution for XYZ ...", then every solution that does so iteratively is 0 points because that wasn't asked. A well-defined grading scheme removes ambiguity both for students and TAs and thus reduces complaints.

@Polygnome that still leaves the problem of how to grade why it was inefficient etc. and we are back to where we started.  As I said, well-defined grading schemes also don't help students to develop good judgement about programming skills and writing maintainable code (which can't be marked automatically - when we can do that we'll al be out of a job - the programmers as well).  I don't mind complains if they are "you shouldn't require us to use our own judgement" if that is a learning aim.

@paulgarrett "Serious students don't need to be clubbed to understand critiques" True, but attaching significant grade penalties to critiques can help the mediocre students improve as well, and potentially turn into serious students. Anecdotally,  when I was TAing an intro programming class, I had a student who frequently complained about how harshly I graded seemingly minor mistakes. But he did start making fewer such mistakes. Later, when he took the operating systems course, he stopped by my office to mention that he understood now why I had insisted on that level of rigor.

The purpose of grading students (if it counts towards their final degree result) is not to encourage them to do anything.  It is to grade their work according to accepted standards so that students (and potentially their employers) have an indication of their ability that is as accurate as possible (withing the limitations of the assessment pattern).  Feedback comments are good for encouragement.

If your problem is of incentives, of TAs not wanting to deal with complaints, one way to remove that problem is to deal with complaints yourself, with absolutely 0 TA involvement

A few things to add:

Be sure the TA's know you'll back them and will be the bad guy. The students know the TA's are using your guidelines. If a TA uses their judgement but was too harsh, you'll let both them and the student know it was your fault for not being more clear.

Emphasize the benefits of consistency to the TA's. Remind them students compare scores. Let them know it's OK to ask another TA how they grade something (or you). Let them know if they give too many points, it's causing problems for the other TA's.

Remind them they had to work hard to pass this class (assuming they did). Students tend to be protective of their majors, especially TA's, and want to maintain standards.

Get TA buy-in for the grading criteria. This is similar to the last bullet. Suppose it's -50% for not using functions, even if it works. Remind them this is the "learn to use functions" assignment and it said they were required, and you went over functions in class all last week. 50% off is generous.

I managed to go 5 years never having heard the word Rubric, then it was 6 months more before I realized it's the exact same thing as a grading key. I try to be somewhat detailed over a range:

Style:

-5: didn't try. nonsense var names, random indents, looks like garbage
-3: barely tried, and only in some places
-0: actually tried but still looks bad.

"Efficiency" seems way too vague. I try to list specific things they need to do:

Efficiency:

-5: no array loops, just lots of IF's.
-3: No nested if's
-0: at least 2 useful nested if's (even if others could be)

But (and I know this isn't what you asked) in a regular coding class they're often just trying to learn the new stuff and make it work. "Good style" is often too much to ask "Efficiency" can be even scarier and more confusing.
I've never done any training exercises with TA's. Just gone over grading at the first meeting. Then discuss the upcoming assignment, and how to grade the one coming due at every other meeting.

I really like the fact that "actually tried but still looks bad" comes in at -0 in this key. Everyone grading the assignments is notably more competent in the domain than the students. I think spelling this out explicitly helps people to stop looking for perfect solutions for a perfect score.

The "efficiency" rubric looks weird to me comparing loops and ifs and somehow grading the nested ifs. It feels more like part of the Style. If it's just as an example, then fine, but I really hope no one uses it in practice. Also, one thing to note that the most efficient code is often much less readable ("looks bad"), than simply "good enough" code.

@DanM.I'll add a blank line. For if's I'm thinking of 5 lines like if(letterGrade==true && g>=70 && g<80) when you're just covered and required-where-applicable nested and cascading if's.

I like your response the best. I graded for CS (was NOT a CS major) and, with the prof, had a defined key- basically diff'd in/out and they ought to match. Then I'd go read their code for issues/comments. Given they were provided sample data and in/out diffs there was no excuse for it not generating formatting. With that, any disagreements about style, comments, or.. excessive duplication of another person's work... went to the professor.

The first four points address the psychological issues of TAs not wanting to give low grades, which is exactly the focus of my question. Thanks

You have a bigger problem than encouraging stricter grading. You need to provide consistent grading. Otherwise your scheme is fundamentally unfair.
For starters you don't have an option to fail to provide a proper rubric. If you aren't doing that, then you are failing the students. If it is a lot of work to do it, then you have a large task, but a required one.
You can make the rubric as strict as you like (though I don't really like the concept of narrow interpretations), but it has to be clear to your TAs and it has to be reasonable to your students.
One way to assure some consistency is to have more than one TA involved with each student's work. They need to agree with each other or appeal to you for a judgement. If they enter student grades into a spreadsheet you can easily see the differences and can also use it for further TA training as needed, such as, for example when one TA is consistently "too" lenient.
For an exercise with lots of parts, it might be possible to have each TA responsible for only one part. This tends to work for final exams where students answer questions, but less well for programming assignments.
Another way to achieve a good rubric is to have yourself or a small team of advanced TAs scan the student work without grading it and use what they learn to refine the rubric to assure consistency. It is probably a mistake to use this trick to create the rubric in the first place, but it gives you an idea of where the students are going wrong and need correction. An overall view. Once that is in place, the actual grading can occur.
Another trick, though not very easily done in pandemic times or with a large pool of graders, is to bring everyone together in real time to grade all the papers. This could possibly be done online (zoom) and you could be present to answer questions and make decisions.
But, again, consistency is a requirement. The rubric needs to be complete to assure that. The "strictness" is a secondary concern, but could be improved (your idea, not mine) with a proper rubric that everyone finds clear.

Moreover, if you try to grade things on a fixed scale that are fundamentally "fuzzy" then you have an impossible task. If you can define "efficiency" in your example, then fine. But if it is a fuzzy concept then almost every rubric is likely to leave the grading to intuition. Give precise grades on the things that are precise. But for other things, judgement and a bit of compassion are probably needed.
In CS, some things are clear, of course. If a student uses bubble sort on a large array it is clearly inefficient. But selection sort is more efficient than quick sort at a certain scale, which is why library versions of quick sort normally drop back to selection sort for small sections of the initial set.
But judgments about "proper factoring" of code are judgmental. If your feeling is "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it." then it is nearly impossible to provide a rubric that will be used consistently by a group of TAs.

Even in the sort case, insertion sort can often out perform the other sorts to a surprising amount on modern processors due to its predictable control flow, despite executing significantly more instructions. So it can depend a lot on your definition of efficiency. So many standard librarys use that for small cases now.

I don’t see how this address the question asked.  In the question, OP acknowledges this consistency issue, mentions they’re aware of the standard and adequate solution (assigning the grading “horizontally” among TA’s rather than “vertically”), and then explains that they’re asking about a different (though related) issue.

@PLL a properly formulated rubric will, by its nature, set the level of "strictness" when it is applied. If it doesn't, then it is an imperfect rubric leaving too much to interpretation.

+1 just for the first sentence.  When I've had several competent TAs, one thing I've done is had the get together to come up with a rubric, and look at how the other TAs are grading at the beginning to make sure they're on the same page.  Once they were on the same page, they would take turns at writing the rubrics for the assignments.

I agree that a rubric is important, but as you said, even a very detailed rubric leaves a certain subjective element to grading, and my question is specifically about this remaining subjective element. It is more about the psychology of not wanting to be the "bad guy".

From my experience, the best way to ensure consistency is by setting simple, clear-cut rubrics.
This can be done via a moderation exercise: have all the teaching staff mark 10 scripts together and see where the disagreements lie.
Alternatively, if you have access to moderation tools like Gradescope, then this obviates the need to meet in person.
Bottom line - just be clear about your expectations. Explain to the TAs the purpose of grading - either harsh or lenient, and the need for consistency.

Several suggestions, dealing with several aspects of the question.
Spend some time training the TAs. At the start of the semester, have everyone grade the same set of sample submissions from a previous semester. Meet in a group to discuss what you and they think matters when correcting inefficiencies and inelegancies. If you can reach consensus, fine. If not, make your own requirements clear to all. Perhaps repeat this exercise with the TAs after the first assignment.
Consider two separate marks for each assignment, one for correctness and one for style. Perhaps be strict on the style scale but weight that mark less.
Weigh programming assignments at the end of the semester more than those at the start, and make sure the students know this. That should mitigate the effect of strict standards at the start and teach them what they need to do to do better later.

Interesting advices, thanks. I particularly like the last one, which simulates the idea that "a low grade now pays off well in the long run"

For programming assignments, there is nothing better than a suite of automated tests that look at accuracy, performance, and code smells.
You can have tiers of tests:

Tier I - basic tests
Tier II - advanced/edge-case tests
Tier III - performance, code smells tests

Based on the tier, the points/grade is determined.
Of course, you can use TAs to skim through the solutions to adjust the points for clever solutions and attempts to play the tests.

We already have that; my question is about things that cannot be graded automatically, e.g. code quality and writing style.

about code quality, most languages do have analyzers to automatically test code quality. The most common on being Linter,
It is also possible to detect code smells using other metrics with specialized tools such as cyclomatic complexity, coupling, coherence, etc.
The domain as a whole of analyzing code without running it is called Static Analysis.

@ErelSegal-Halevi - As a software developer I find that highly ironic because code quality in academia is abysmal. And like Felix said, in industry, we have a TON of tools for code quality.

What I and the other TAs did on last semester's course to make sure we graded all students as evenly as possible:

Before the assignment was released to the students, we went through the rubric to try to poke holes in it. We wanted to make sure that what the students were told to do in the assignment, what the assignment told them they would be graded on, and the actual rubric we would use, were all in agreement. If they weren't consistent, we'd take it back to the lecturer and propose a refinement.
When results came in, we took a couple of submissions and graded them collectively, to calibrate between the TAs how we would apply the items in the rubric in practice. After the first assignment we had a good idea of who were strong and weak programmers so we'd pick a presumed-strong and presumed-weak submission to calibrate at both ends of the scale.
When grading an assignment, we'd keep notes on what points were scored for each item the rubric. So you could look up why exactly a student got the grade they got, and what they should improve on a re-sit.
We also tracked the average mark given by each TA, so that we could do an inspection if one TA's average marks were significantly higher or lower than the others.

This approach worked out quite well.

This answer is underrated. Writing a rubric that covers all cases is an incredibly difficult task. Marking a couple of scripts together is much more likely to actually produce consistent scores.

If you want to reduce variance, you can multi-pass marking.
All deductions come from a combination of a marked part of the code, a reason, and a deduction because of a marked part of the code.
Take such information and hand off the marked part of the code and reason to another TA, and they independently determine the deduction based off your Rubric.
If they significantly disagree, send it to a 3rd TA.
If they still significantly disagree, escalate to you, and improve Rubric.
The first TA is spending most of the time (looking for problems), the second TA only has to apply the Rubric on an identified problem, so this should less than double the marking workload.
Because you are now comparing two (or three) TA's determination of how severe something is, you can bias the average towards the more severe rating.  TAs who regularly are the least severe you can review the work of, and encourage to be more severe if they need to be.
You'll note that you can even use such a mechanism to have student-student code review (looking at what other people do wrong or right is of high value when learning).  Students are told to use the Rubric to review other student's code, and identify areas that violate the rules.  Then TAs can review the student's selection of issues and issue marks that way.
That student-student review can also be used to spot problems that a TA is missing; if TA consistently misses violations of the Rubric that students catch (and a 3rd party TA marks as good catches), then that is a reason to consider talking to that TA about being more strict.
In short, you need visibility into the process.  This is expensive to do yourself, so you need to have your large number of Students and TAs provide useful cross-review, consume the resulting data to find exceptions you want to deal with yourself, and then apply corrective action on the exceptions.  That should efficiently move the marking to be more consistent, and correctly harsh.

It sounds to me that one of the TAs is not calibrating their marks to reasonable expectations of the student cohort, but to absolute criteria, e.g. x-points lost for each of a list of potential deficiencies.  This can be unfair because the deficiencies are often correlated, rather than independent, which leads to a bimodal distribution of scores - they all either got it basically right, or basically wrong.  In the U.K. system, where we have first-class, upper- and lower-second class etc., I'd ask the TA to look at the score they have given for the student and ask themselves whether that was consistent with the implied degree classification.  For instance if there were 20 marks for efficiency and a marker awarded only 5, then that is saying the work is a borderline fail, according to that quality.  Phrased that way, they might see that the score is incompatible with their subjective assessment of the work, rather than the objective "tick-box" score.  If another marker could have given it 15 marks, it clearly isn't in fail territory!
... of course it could be the other marker is too lenient, but again it is a calibration issue, they should ask themselves (in the U.K. system), whether the work was "first class" from an efficiency perspective, as that is what the score of 15 (75%) would imply.
How the TAs would moderate their original marks is another matter, but it is a sanity-check of their calibration.
Programming has a large subjective element.  The point is not just to write a program that computes the right answer (hopefully efficiently), it needs to be written in a way that is understandable by other human beings, so that it is maintainable by somebody else.  Overly prescriptive rubrics can cause more problems than they are worth, because sometimes students can come up with good solutions that don't fit your rubric, and they shouldn't be penalised.  Students also enjoy a degree of freedom to be creative in programming assignments, and I think that makes them better programmers in the long run.

@downvoter - some feedback on why would be very welcome.

Assuming "You" is is the university:  Pay your TAs more to increase motivation.  You cannot expect good quality work or higher motivation for bad quality pay.  Generous grading is low-effort grading.
The other answers advocating rubrics and training are also correct.

Why do you assume "You" is the university?  Can you explain how OP can influence their university to make a change?

It depends on the university.  The "lecturer" role has different levels of power in different locations.

Could you maybe expand the answer a little bit? To me, it sounds like an "academic" (=non-practical) solution, I have never ever heard of any university paying teaching staff more because some lectures wants it. Is this common in other.places in the world?

Are you saying to fire these and hire better TAs? Or do you mean that the more you pay a TA the lower they will grade others?

@pipe Firing would not be necessary as they usually turn over quickly.  Otherwise I am unsure.

@user111388 I'm opposed to long answers.  It's well known that the price of a commodity is correlated with its quality.  TAs are no exception.

@AnonymousPhysicist: I know that - but (at least where I am) it is well known that a university will rather drop TA's quality than to pay TA's more. Therefore, I'd like to know if this (lectures lobbying for their TA's) is actually a concept which in practise often bears fruit or only in theory.

@user111388 You're getting pretty far off topic, but where the lecturers and the TAs are in the same union, then yes that has happened.  Students can also wield power over the pay of teaching staff by dropping out of poorly taught programs/courses.

Note, there is no indication that the TAs are failing to do "good quality work" (the problem is only that OP feels their grading is too generous, not that the grading is inaccurate or unfair). Nor is there any evidence that the student's workload is disproportionate to their stipend. By this logic, any possible problem with a coworker could be attributed to inadequate salary. You may be opposed to long answers, but I am opposed to cryptic ones with unclear reasoning :-)

@cag51 I don't feel your criticism is honest.  I'm sure you are aware nearly all TA pay is very low, so I am not claiming that "any possible problem with a coworker could be attributed to inadequate salary" as most industries pay more.  You are also aware that grading too generously is, in fact, low quality work.  Further, the question specified "motivation" was the problem, which is indicative of low quality work.

Thanks for reply. I don't entirely agree, but at least I understand your logic now. (You might consider adding your reply, especially the last two sentences, into the post so that others will understand).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
How to explain that I do not want to visit a country due to personal safety concern?
I have been invited to visit a professor in a different country. I am very reluctant to go. The government of this country is currently under investigation by the UN for suspicions of crimes against humanity targeted at people of the same ethnic background as me. More generally, people from my ethnic background are legally considered second-class citizens (when they are citizens at all) in this country, and routinely get physically aggressed in the street without the police or army doing anything, even partaking sometimes...
How should I explain to this professor that I do not want to go? Should I get into details, invent a different reason?

Are you willing to disclose your ethic background to the professor or do you want to keep it private? Is your reason your personal safety or a broader political statement?

Related workplace.SE question: https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/119360/refusing-a-business-trip-of-an-indefinite-length-for-personal-reasons  (mentions safety)

Moderator’s notice: I removed the discussions about the validity of the asker’s concerns as this is not the right place to debate them. Please assume that them as given for the purpose of this question. PS: For the predominant assumption on the asker’s ethnicity and target country, a corresponding question exists on [travel.se]. If you have any valuable information on this, please take it there. Please keep in mind that the tag on the original question may as well refer to the asker’s country of origin.

The discussion about the above moderator’s notice has been moved to chat.

"Should I get into details, invent a different reason?" Probably depends on what you want to achieve by the explanation. Without stating your goals, this question can hardly be answered. My guess is that it's completely up to yoiur personal preferences. You explain what you want to explain.

Is the an official travel warning to the country? Then you could state it is your policy not to travel to countries warned about.

@lalala: That's an interesting idea, but in my experience there exist official travel warnings about every country. (For example, the U.S. State Department doesn't even have a "no precautions needed" level; the scale literally starts at "exercise normal precautions" and goes up from there. Here's an example of "exercise normal precautions": https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/International-Travel-Country-Information-Pages/Australia.html. If you expand "Safety and Security", you'll see several warnings.)

If I were you I'd have the same concerns. In fact, I'm not like you, and I have the same concerns.
But don't confuse the people of Israel with its government. Certainly there are bad actors there, but I also know many Israelis who are more than decent people and oppose the government actions and attitudes that you worry about.
That said, you may be wise to avoid such a trip. But don't assume, necessarily, that the professor would disagree with your true reasons. There is no way to predict, of course, since opinion about Israeli-Palestinian issues come in "all shades of grey" in Israel.
If it is a question of meeting, rather than visiting the professor's institute, you might suggest meeting elsewhere, say at an international meeting.
To flip it a bit, there are quite a lot of people in the world unwilling to visit the US because of recent trends and attitudes here - and some that are not so recent. And I won't visit Mexico, for example, though I love the place, not because the government is bad, but because of the danger of drug gangs and killings and an ineffective government.

Note that I answered the question based on its original form which was tagged israel. However, the same concerns would apply in other contexts and there might be serious issues for some people visiting some countries. But my general advice still holds. Don't conflate the government of a place with its individual citizens. Some of them would support government actions and others would not. The world currently has far too much of this. I've actually known people who won't visit Germany because of its Nazi past, though, til recently at least, it has seemed completely redeemed.

It sounds like your latter paragraph is a major part of the OP's concern. Whatever the issues with politics may be, he's mainly worried about his personal safety and with whether the police and military will protect him if he is assaulted, or indeed whether they'll be the ones assaulting him. Mexico and then some, basically. :/

@Buffy I  agree with your comment and I think it may be helpful to just remove the parts of your answer that would only apply to a specific country.

Discussion about politics and antisemitism has been moved to chat.

I work in a country where a few colleagues do not wish to visit, for various reasons.  Some of these reasons are based on accurate perceptions and others are not.  Some of those colleagues have been willing to frankly discuss their concerns with me, and in some cases I have been able to appropriately assuage their fears; in the end, these people came and were glad they did.  But some had legitimate concerns or were simply unwilling to budge -- including some close friends and collaborators.  I respect their concerns and opinions, and we have continued to work together even though I know they will never visit.  I do not think any less of them for this, and I believe they do not think less of me for working in this country.
My recommendation is to just be honest, but don't let your concerns evolve into a debate over political issues in your colleague's host country.

This answer assumes that the professor is reasonable. If you know them, use your social skills to judge whether they are reasonable.
Tell the professor that you don't want to go there for the reason you told us. They will understand (since they are reasonable). If possible, make another suggestion how you can achieve the goal you had.

The OP's title should suffice. If they wish to expound on it, that's their prerogative. +1

I understand that this is an awkward situation but I recommend being honest about it.  Remember that being honest doesn't mean you have to be rude, aggressive or confrontational.  Make sure that it doesn't look like you're blaming the professor personally for the situation in their country.
The problem with making up excuses is that this professor wants to work with you, so will try to help you overcome whatever reason you state.

"I can't afford to travel there." – "That's OK, I have some spare money on my grant!"
"I'm really busy this summer." – "That's OK, let's wait until autumn!"
"I'll find it difficult to get a visa." – "That's OK, our departmental administrator (CC'ed) is great at getting visas for people!"

Now, hopefully, we can continue that list with the real reason "I'm sorry but I'm really uncomfortable about visiting your country because XYZ" and the professor will try to help you out with that, too. Maybe the professor can help allay your fears or give practical help to avoid the problems; maybe they can't but you can find some other way of working together.
All of the above is based on the assumption that you know the professor and you're confident that he or she doesn't engage in or approve of the things you object to in their country. If you suspect the professor isn't "on your side", then you presumably don't want to work with them under any circumstances and that's a rather different issue. If you say you're uncomfortable about XYZ and their response is to justify XYZ, that would definitely be a time to disengage.

One way forward is to ask the professor for their advice. Put the situation and your fears forward in a non-confrontational way. You could simply say, "Thank you for your invitation, etc. ... I'm concerned about visiting because of my ethnic background, what do you advise?" The professor may say it's unadvisable or it's fine. In either case you are not obliged to accept the advice. You could say, "Thank you so much for your advice ... I have decided on-balance that I would prefer not to visit, etc." Then you can suggest other possibilities, e.g. invite them, set up a live link, etc. etc.

You can ask to speak with students of the same ethnicity as you, who study in the university of that professor or in other universities of that country, and ask them whether they feel safe. You may get one of two responses:

They may tell you "we do not feel safe". Then, you have a simple explanation to give the professor: "I am sorry, but students of my ethnicity do not feel safe in your country". Nobody can argue with facts.
They may tell you "we feel perfectly safe". Then, you may wish to re-consider your presumptions about that country...

As an additional benefit, you will gain new acquaintances, both from your ethnicity and otherwise, which is always a good thing.

People can and do usually argue with facts. There are many discussion about feeling safe in places going to stupid arguments such as "well, of course as a pretty girl you feel safe here, you should just never leave home after 7 pm"..

There are no legal second-class citizens or apartheid in Israel, Arabs have the same legal rights as anyone else.
Using any of these false biases when explaining not wanting to visit might very well offend the other professor. If you want to stay on good terms with them, I would suggest not using highly controversial or political reasons.
You could explain that you personally would feel unsafe; nobody can - or at least should - argue with the feelings of somebody else. If you are open to it, this could also lead to a discussion that can alleviate some of those fears. If you are not open to that, that's OK too.
You could also highlight other reasons, if there are any. Maybe you don't like to travel in general, maybe right now isn't a good time professionally (swamped at work) or personally (new baby, family issues, health, money), etc. I would suggest staying close to the truth here though; lies have a habit of coming out. The other professor might eg notice that something is up when you say that you don't like to travel, but often take part in international conferences.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
How to decide whether to referee a math paper?
When approached to referee a mathematics paper there are of course a couple of factors to consider in the decision of whether to accept the task or not.
Expertise:

Do I have sufficient background knowledge to referee this paper?
Am I an "expert" in this particular field?

Why did they approach me?
I guess there are two possibilities:

The authors suggested me as a possible reviewer (the authors might know me).
The editor came across my name (either through connection, studying cited papers of the paper at hand, search for similar papers, asking a colleague).

This will mostly just be speculative as editors don't seem to typically reveal such information.
Workload:

The number of papers that I am currently already reviewing. There is only so much one can do without greatly affecting one's own research productivity.

My question is:
How do people weight these factors?
How do experienced reviewers decide on whether to accept to review a paper?
With how many papers to review on the desk do people say no? (of course length of the papers is a factor here too).

The length of a paper is not a particularly good criterion. Probably much more relevant: the estimated number of hours to be spent on the referee report. This depends somewhat on the length, but more significantly on the quality of the writing (which one can try to assess briefly before agreeing to review), the referee's familiarity with the subject, the availability of references, and various other things.

That is an excellent question and answering it will help me sort out my thoughts on the matter. Which exactly matches the best reason for me to referee papers: because doing so will likely teach me something.
To go into more details, there are basically two sets of reasons to accept or decline to referee a paper.
I assume here that you feel reasonably competent to do the refereeing; otherwise you should simply decline.
1. Reasons centered on the community.
1.a You want your papers refereed, and for the system to work it needs everyone to participate. It is part of our job, and thus we should do it; the big question is where to place the bar.
A good reference point is to consider the number of referee reports one has benefited from, weighted against the average number of coauthors.
This gives good incentives: it means submitting too boldly and facing rejection might "cost" you to force yourself into one or more referee reports (depending on the journal you submit to). Another common reference point, which is quicker to estimate, is the number of papers you got time a fixed factor that roughly takes into account the number of authors on the paper, the number of referees per submission, and the average number of submission. I would think that a factor between 1 and 3 is reasonable.
Then this reference could be mitigated in several ways.
For example if you struggle to stay active in research, and if lack of time is not the primary reason, then accepting more referee request is a good way to contribute; moreover it can help you get to grip again (see above and below).
Also, since there will be authors who will do less than their share (e.g. because they did a PhD and then quit Academia altogether, not necessarily free riders), each mathematician should do at least slightly more than his estimated share for the system not to get out of control.
So, if you don't feel like it and have some advance in your refereeing with regard to the above weighted reference, you have a good case declining. If you feel that you could do it and you are behind compared to the reference point, then accepting is the proper move community-wise.
1.b Accepting or not to referee a paper can be used as a political tool if you have strong opinion on how mathematical publication should be run. I think it is part of our duties to have a say in this. As a concrete example, you might decline to referee for some publishers whose practice are in your opinion opposed to the interest of the mathematical community (no need to be more explicit I guess, except it might concern more than one publisher). You might also decline to referee because the way you are asked is not correct; as an example if the editor asking me would imply the expected answer in his demand (e.g. "the paper is long and we have a large backlog so we would only accept it if it where really extraordinary"), I could very well only give a quick opinion and not referee it fully, as my time would be wasted if I dive into a paper whose fate is basically already decided.
On the contrary, you might accept in a borderline case in order to support a journal with particularly good practices (e.g. open access without author fees, low-cost subscription community-owned, journal working a new model you want to support, journal having an at least decent proportion of women in its board, etc.).
2. Reasons centered on oneself.
As mentioned in the second sentence of my answer, refereeing is not only a duty, it is also an opportunity.
2.a You can accept to referee because you expect to learn from the process. This is particularly suited for papers lying near the border of your area of expertise; in particular it might be the wrong move to only referee papers which are very close to your own work. Of course, a very technical and difficult paper needs more competence, so you have to weight that criterion against the expected effort and time needed to do the refereeing. If you feel a bit out of good questions to try answering, refereeing papers is a great way to force yourself into looking precisely at new math, which can only help find new directions. You may also find techniques which can help for questions you have no clue about, or it could turn out your own bag of tricks provides answers to some questions left open in the refereed paper.
2.b Accepting to referee and doing a good job at it will make you look good to the editor who solicited you. There is no short-term reward, but in the long run this can benefit you in several ways (being known to be serious could help your papers be taken seriously, at some point good refereeing job can help get proposed an editor position if your own scientific production is good enough). You should mention refereeing in your CV, but it will probably not make a big difference in most cases your CV is needed.
2.c Of course, the main reason to decline to referee is lack of time. You should not jeopardize your own career by accepting all referee request if those are numerous (I personally don't get so many that this argument weights much, but that depends on people and on subfields). If you feel guilty, look at 1.a and you might realize that you already did your share. Big shots can also reasonably concentrate on other things than refereeing "common" papers, and would be more selective (and less available).

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


text:
What does the "C" mean in "Mater. Sci. Eng. C"
ISO4 standard naming for the "Materials Science" field is as follows:

Mater. Sci. Eng. C
Material Science & Engineering: C

What does the C mean?

The ISO code does not refer to the field, but to a journal. The C is not an abbreviation; rather there are 4 journals with this name, each with a different focus, indexed A, B, C, and R.

A focuses on Structural Materials: Properties, Microstructure and Processing
B focuses on Advanced Functional Solid-State Materials
C focuses on Materials for Biological Applications
R is for review articles

Such a nomenclature is generally used when a journal's scope has become too broad and it needs to be split into multiple journals. Physical Review uses a similar system, for example.

Are these to be interpreted as "1, 2, 3" e.g.: books in a series, like University classes numbered 101, 102, 103, etc? Or do they stand alone, or have entirely different purposes (not belong in a series.)

@DamonBlais Like different brothers or sisters from a single family. Or like parallel similar  subjects at a single uni, each oriented to slightly different audience. They do not follow each other in series, thy are independent branches focused elsewhere.

@DamonBlais - Once upon a time there was just Physical Review, which covered all aspects of physics. Then they got more and more good articles submitted. So they split the journal, each part focusing. Phys Rev A is atomic, molecular, optical, and quantum. Phys Rev B is condensed matter and materials, Phys Rev C is nuclear physics, etc. All under the Physical Review umbrella, but you pick the field(s) you are interested in.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
Should we allow reuse a image in a publication as long as it is properly cited and noted?
Sometimes it is easier for the reader to understand a image if it is reused, even in the same publication. Just like we sometimes need to go back to a slide when doing a presentation.
What is the original reason for forbidding this? My guess is to save some pages. But now it is digital and manuscripts are already long and large.

Can you clarify the question? Do you mean reproducing the same figure in the same manuscript? If so, why do you refer to citation? And if you mean reuse in a different manuscript, there is no clear rule against.

It's pretty common for all images in published research to be at the end of the paper, with references pointing to them within the text.  Instead of putting it in the paper twice, just number your figures appropriately by chapter (e.g. fig 2.1) and reference them as needed.

I mean both. In general, I mean we should be more flexible about image use as long as it is properly cited or noted.

Sometimes it is easier for the reader to understand a image if it is reused

Not really. You can go back and forth when reading a text. I see no advantage reproducing an image within the same document.

What is the original reason for forbidding this?

It is not strictly forbidden. I would call it common sense. The fact that you do not see images reproduced in the same document is because most people are convinced it is totally not necessary.

+1 PS to the OP: there are times when it might make sense to reuse a slide in a presentation rather  trying to page back and forth to it in real time.

I agree with you.
It would be great that simply by placing the mouse over the reference to an equation or graph, it would appear in the form of an overlay.
It is exasperating to have to go up and down in search of an equation and then recover the reading point. In more than one occasion I open the same document twice to avoid it, in one window I read, with the other I look for the references.

This is not an answer to the question, which is about repeating images. I agree that repeating equations can sometimes be useful and appropriate. Mouse over won't work on printed documents ...

@EthanBolker, I read it as a proper answer for online or other electronic documents, which the OP does mention. And I agree that scrolling in such documents can be tedious.


text:
Canadian citizen seeking research opportunity in an American Laboratory
I'm an undergraduate student in Biology located in Montreal, Canada. I've contacted a researcher at Stanford University and he's interested in hiring me. Since this is a very expensive place to live and he will not be paying me for my work, I'll rely only on scholarships and grants.
I'm still in the preliminary steps, but I have a few questions.
The main one is related to the tuition fees regarding such a work field. Since I won't be attending a semester as a student but will be an unpaid intern, will I need to pay fees to the university?
Second, I heard the university is responsible for providing the visa. Any approximation of how much such a visa costs?

You typically cannot get a visa to volunteer to do a job that should be paid. You should either be formally hired and paid (it's hella toxic for a researcher in the Bay Area to expect you to come in-person and not get paid??) or enroll as a student to get the appropriate visa (this will be very expensive). But "volunteer" visas are not for doing this, nor are tourist visas.

This sounds to me like a very, very bad idea to pursue.

student in Biology ... he's interested in hiring me ... he will not be paying me for my work

Yes, it can be normal in biology for undergraduate students to work unpaid in labs, sometimes as volunteers, sometimes for course credit. The idea in these cases is that the value the student is providing the lab is nil or negative; any value the lab receives is worth no more than the cost of training provided. In these situations, too, the cost to the student to putting in a few hours work per week is not that high. It can be thought of like a lab course taken in a research lab rather than a standard lab course in chemistry/biology. Even then, there is some controversy over whether these positions should be allowed. My personal position is that it's okay up to a limit, as long as students are primarily learning and not primarily spending their time doing menial tasks.
In any event, this situation doesn't apply to you. You're talking about moving to a different country to work possibly full time for free. Don't do this! This isn't how any of this is supposed to work! Either your potential supervisor is taking advantage of you, in which case you definitely don't want to work with them, or there has been some huge misunderstanding (for example, maybe the professor assumed you're also a student at their university, or will be soon). Someone who is not going to be paying you for your work is not interested in hiring you, they're wanting your free labor.
You expect scholarships or grants? These are almost certainly not available to you. Any worthwhile scholarship or grant program is going to be funding graduate students, who have applied and been accepted to a graduate program. Graduate programs get lots of qualified applicants, and are mostly limited in how many they can accept by funds available. Unless you have a personal connection to someone that's going to give you personally a bundle of cash because they have money to spare and they have a personal interest in you (for example, they're rich and you're their nephew), this money doesn't meaningfully exist. Non-graduate students who are paid to work in biology labs are paid using research grants that their advisors get, usually from the government. If the professor in this lab won't pay you, you've already been denied the only reasonable expectations of funds.
I don't think it's worth addressing issues of visas, that's a likely obstacle but isn't even the most pressing one, which is that this is a very bad idea and won't work well for you.

The question about whether you would be considered a student and have to pay tuition has to be addressed to the researcher at Stanford. For the visa, you will need to have documentation and you will have to be able to show that you will have the money to pay for your stay. The costs of the visa will depend on the type of visa you are getting, which will depend on the type of agreement you will enter with the researcher. This needs to be brought up with the researcher as well. Stanford university has very good resources and has dealt with visa for students, permanent and visiting faculty, and so the researcher has better resources to answer these questions.
In general, Canadian citizens can stay in the US for up to six months without a visa, but if you are entering into something like a working relationship or something similar to a student relationship, a visa MIGHT be required. If the researcher enters into any type of agreement with you, Stanford University might want these matters to be cleared.


text:
A scholarship organization is publishing my personal information on their website
In February 2018, I received a one-time scholarship (1000 €) from a private association in the EU. A few months ago, I noticed the organization published on their website private information of the scholarship recipients: name, town and photography of each person.
This is a problem for me, because this appears on the first page of results when I search my name on Google. This means, everyone who looks up my name on Google will be able to know where I live. This is even more a problem, because I live in a small town, so it is very easy to deduce my house address.
I had emailed the association, and I was told they were "not even sure they could technically remove the information" because "this is the first time we received such a request" and "no scholarship recipient ever had a problem with this".
This was a few months ago, and my personal information is still published on their website.
I would still prefer to have this information removed. How should I politely approach this situation?

Sorry for your problem but this is a legal/social problem not an academic one, so off-topic here.

Where should I post then?

I'm not sure, but for legal issues there is https://law.stackexchange.com/

They are required by law to remove the information when you request it.

Some scholarships applications require you to give permission to disseminate your information on their website, etc. Are you sure this particular scholarship did not have something like this in the fine print? In any case, you should think carefully about whether you really want to fight this. Making such requests after being given a scholarship might be seen as ungracious by some


text:
How to batch download papers from a reference list without DOI?
I'm looking to download some papers from a reference list in an Excel file which consisted of all the basic info about a paper (e.g., author, year, title, publication, etc.) but unfortunately not the DOI. I've looked into many methods for batch downloading papers, but they all require the DOI to work. I've also looked into searching for DOI using the title of the paper but to no avail, as all the programs I've came across does the reverse, i.e., use the DOI to retrieve the rest of the metadata. I would greatly appreciate any pointers anybody has.

Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking.

I think the question is clear.

You can submit batches of references to get DOIs manually through through Crossref Simple Text Query - https://apps.crossref.org/SimpleTextQuery

Wow!  I just tested it and it worked on some really obscure stuff.  It did not work on old Soviet journal articles, presumably because they have no DOIs.

Thank you!!! This is a simple solution that worked well for me.

You cannot do it consistently.  That is precisely why DOI was created: so that papers can be  reliably located by algorithms.
For subscription journals, batch downloads are normally forbidden under the contract.  This rule can be enforced by banning you from downloading.

It might be helpful if anyone knew how to do it 99% accurately, even if it's impossible to do it 100% accurately


text:
Part-Time PhD in Germany
I want to apply for a part-time (65% week hours) PhD position in Germany. The duration of the PhD is 3 years.
Actually I don't understand why some positions are full-time and some part-time, while the duration is the same. After graduation is there any difference between this two groups?
Salary group is 13 TV-KAH and I don't know how much they pay. I appreciate if you could explain it. I read some questions about this topic but I didn't find the suitable answer.

Regarding salary, I gave detailed instructions here: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/44699

Most PhD students in Germany receive a regular salary, not a scholarship, and are officially employed as research/teaching assistent (this is what full-time/part-time refers to). It depends on various things like the source of funding if these positions are full-time or part-time.
The time you dedicate to writing your PhD thesis is technically your own free time. So there is usually no difference between these positions in terms of workload, value of the degree, etc, except for the salary. It's stupid, I know...
There are calculators on the internet that can tell you the exact salary, but lots of public charges depend on your personal situation (whether you have children etc) and things like where in Germany this is: http://oeffentlicher-dienst.info/c/t/rechner/tv-l/west?id=tv-l-2016i
For a 65% position it's currently ~2200 EUR/month (after taxes a bit less than 1500 EUR).

Thank you so much Niko. Your answer was extremely helpful.


text:
What "Applicant Confidential Data Form" has to do with tenure-track positions?
The data collected using "Applicant Confidential Data Form" will be used by US-based universities to monitor University’s Affirmative Action/Equal Employment Opportunity Programs as required by the US government.
I have seen that in (some) cases, faculty job applicant seeking academic job in US-based universities are asked to submit this form after they successfully submitted their initial application. The point is that, typically there is no instruction in "call for faculty member note" to fill this form and submit along with application. But the faculty search committee asks after while.
So it raises a question:
Do the faculty search committee sends this form to ALL the applicants or particular applicants who are allegedly suitable for the job. Is receiving this notification from the committee can be considered a positive sign in recruitment process?

I've received this form from hundreds of employers that later rejected me. I think schools that use it will send it to every applicant. So it doesn't mean anything except that your application was received.
I believe the reason for it being a separate form, rather than part of the application, is that it's meant to be for statistical purposes only, and should not affect the hiring procedure. The best way to achieve this is to ensure that the hiring committee never sees it. So they send a separate form, to be returned to a separate office within the institution, which holds it confidential.

The university EEO (equal opportunity office) wants to protect its ass(ets) in case it is sued. They can protect themselves by showing that the search was run fairly (equal numbers of men and women applied, no ethnic or racial categories were over represented,etc.). Since they should theoretically have no way to tell who filed a postcard or not, it is up to you whether to return it or not.

I would not read anything into such a form as this. In many cases, the university may require it, but the department doesn't mention it, or only sends it out afterwards. However, the nature of the form is not one that it should only be given out to "suitable" candidates; it's something that everybody who applies could be asked to fill out. So it is unlikely that this means anything, either positive or negative.

Having received these cards from many of the same institutions at Nate I speak from a lot of the same experience. There is a point I want to amplify from his answer though.  In the US it is actually illegal for this information to influence the hiring process officially (there is lots of reason to suspect that unofficial ways of using this information still have an effect). But this means that the information, if collected, must not go to the hiring committee or anywhere near it. Some electronic application systems can handle keeping this information separate, but those that can't have to be supplemented with physical cards. Institutions that still allow paper applications also must be supplemented.
The offices which send out and handle these cards are charged with making sure that the institution as a whole is being a Equal Opportunity Employer and complying whatever Affirmative Action requirements they are under. Once you start considering why paperwork related to legal compliance is the way it is the question gets much larger and won't always have a satisfying answer.


text:
Do admissions care how close a TOEFL score is to the minimum?
I work with some students who will attend graduate school in the US. The schools they are applying for list minimum required TOEFL scores. Some have just reached the minimum scores required for admission to their schools of choice. Do admissions departments ever care about how close this number is to the minimum? In other words, will the students be at any greater advantage if they retake the test and get a higher score, or is the "score level met" simply a "met" or "not met" variable that goes into deciding whether or not the students are accepted?

Perhaps it should be more of a concern that their English skills are so poor they can only reach the minimum score. I've taken the TOEFL a long time ago; it was not a very demanding exam. Perhaps you could help your students improve their English skills. Having poor English skills in the US is really isolating. They could easily end up just talking only to people of their nationality.

^ I don't agree. Some schools have a minimum TOEFL requirement of 100 or above (Yale and Stanford are about 100, Harvard is 109), which are excellent scores. Just because a student hits close to minimum does not automatically imply he/she has poor English.

I don't think they care. Because I know some students whose scores were below the minimum score and they're still admitted. Of course, that varies from universities to universities.

@Penguin_Knight I misread. I assumed a miniumum TOEFL score for admission was low, which is (as you point out) not necessarily true.

You did not say whether your students are applying to MS or PhD programs. In my experience, MS applications are evaluated more superficially (i.e., with more reliance on test scores) than PhD applications, so you might want to specify which you are asking about.

The answer is "sometimes."
Some schools will not care what the score is, as long as you have the minimum requirement that they advertise publicly.
Some schools won't care, even if you don't have the minimum requirement (they may "waive" this requirement routinely).
Some schools will care: they may have one public requirement, and a higher (unpublicized) threshold that they really use in most cases. (Or: the school has one minimum and the department has a higher, unpublicized one.)
Some schools will care: the minimum is required to get your application looked at, but even if it is met they still consider the score in admissions decisions.

How large is the portion of the schools won't care? And how likely do top schools care (or not care)?

@Ooker the grammar "error" you corrected in this post was not an error, but is in fact correct American-style punctuation. See Punctuating around quotation marks. And I don't have any specific numbers; all I can say is that none of the attitudes towards exam scores that I described in my post are especially unusual.

It’s worth mentioning that one of the reasons for having strict cutoffs for English proficiency may be the need to have students act as TA’s early during their graduate careers.

In addition to other useful remarks made: in my university, a minimum TOEFL score is considered a problem, to the extent that it drags down everything of the file. Partly this is based on our past experiences with such scores (statistically, over 30+ years) and the subsequent improvements-or-not. Specifically, minimal TOEFL score people seem not to usually improve much at all, even after a few years. Oof. Of course this says nothing about any individual, but we predict based on the statistical aggregate...
The minimum set by the umbrella "graduate school" body that imagines it oversees graduate education and degrees across the university has lower expectations than our math dept. I cannot speak for other depts.
And, indeed, both higher and lower TOEFL-score kids who associate almost entirely with their home-language population outside of teaching and classes simply do not improve, do not learn finer points of colloquial English, etc. On one hand, I'm somewhat sympathetic to cultural dislocation... but if the issue is job performance, then we can see the obvious issue: cultural extraterrestrials are rarely effective in teaching.

Almost 20 years ago, I was in charge of graduate admissions for my department, and TOEFL scores were among my biggest headaches. They just didn't provide the information I really needed: Can the applicant succeed not only as a student but also as a TA in first-year calculus or pre-calculus? (TA positions were essentially the only financial support we could offer foreign graduate students.)  I remember two students in particular. One had the highest TOEFL score I had ever seen, but I had great difficulty understanding her, and I'm confident that I can understand "foreign English" significantly better than our calculus students.  The other student had a TOEFL score barely above the university's minimum, and she was admitted only because one of our faculty vouched for the reliability of a professor who had worked with this student and vouched for her ability to speak English well.  This student was, despite her TOEFL score, indeed able to speak English well, and she even served as an intermediary between some of the department staff and some of her fellow students whose English was not so good (though their TOEFL scores were better than hers).
My department also requires applicants to provide a letter from a native speaker of English, attesting to the applicant's ability to teach.  (We sometimes stretch the meaning of "native" a bit, for example to include me.) These letters are often more useful than TOEFL scores, though sometimes the language of the letter sounds so foreign that I get suspicious.
Returning to the actual question, unfortunately what departments do with TOEFL scores depends not only on the particular university and the particular department, but even on the particular person or committee that happens to be handling graduate applications.  I can easily imagine that my successor as associate chair for graduate studies treated TOEFL scores differently than I did and thereby avoided some headaches).

What ff524 said, but I will add that if you are interviewed they will judge you by that. It's reasonable since if you have the TOEFL with good marks but have already forgotten half your English, you are deemed unreliable, if you failed it on the other hand, but are at ease with English, it is easy to understand that you probably failed the essay or had a bad day. What they see with their own eyes is more important than an exam taken some time ago under who knows what circumstances.

And that doesn't even get into the possibility that someone else took the exam in the student's name.  A technical interview is a much more reliable gauge of whether there will be a language barrier.

Indeed, there's also that possibility.

If I'm not mistaken the TOEFL certificate is only valid for two years, so someone who earned a B in a C1 English Exam (i.e. 8.5-9.0 in IELTS) but took the exam five years ago would probably have to sit either the IELTS or TEFL exam.

I would agree with "sometimes."  Usually departments will set these criteria, not schools, based on the success of students who have a given score.  But once that bottom is set you meet it or you don't.