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As an international instructor, should I openly talk about my accent?
I'm an international, teaching at an American university, and I have an accent, which can be strong at times. I'm working hard at it, have always been, but still, the accent is there.
This has never been a problem in my career as a researcher because I was most of the time working with senior researchers and grad students. And even if they were native, they've never expressed any concern about my accent.
I'm sure that several times they didn't understand a specific word I was saying but they catch the meaning from the context. Sometimes, people asked me to repeat in an informal way by simply saying "what's that?" or "say it again".
Last year, when I started to teach undergrads, which are unlikely to have experienced different accents, I had some issues.
Some students asked me to repeat and I gladly did. My concern is related to those students that didn't ask, either because they are shy or because they thought that by asking I would be offended.
This next semester (yes, I'm going to teach in the summer) I'm thinking to tell my students in the very first minutes of the first class about my accent and tell them that I'm totally fine if they need me to repeat some words.
I'm not sure about it, because I've read that the first 6 minutes with a new class are the most important ones, and by showing this "weakness" they will conclude that I'm not capable, knowledge-wise, to teach them.
A mentor of mine told me I should talk openly about my accent, and add that in addition to English, I fluently speak two other languages and can understand two others. Trying then to make a balance between my "weakness" (my accent when speaking English) and my knowledge with languages.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/121962/telling-where-i-am-originally-from-at-the-first-lecture?r=SearchResults

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My answer goes against the other ones here (including the accepted one).
Before I explain why, however, I commend you for even thinking about this. If you have identified this as a weakness, and something that affects the quality of your lectures, then you are already one step ahead of the game. My experience with most educators in the same situation is that they do not seem to consider it their problem. The mentality seems to be that they've spent years learning the language, and  possibly even consider themselves highly proficient in the grammatical sense, having written many academic articles in pristine English, so there's nothing wrong with their English, and if people don't put the effort to understand them then that is their problem. This completely disregards the fact that if as a listener you're expending an unusual amount of focus and effort simply to decipher what is being said, you're unlikely to be able to focus on the nuances of a lecture. My own feeling when I attend lectures where the presenter has a bad pronunciation is that I leave feeling drained and having retained nothing despite having, in theory, deciphered all the words being spoken in the lecture.
Also, I would like to make a distinction between having a strong "accent", and effectively having incorrect "pronunciation". A strong accent that does not harm pronunciation is typically a positive thing, giving a lecturer a unique personality and charm. Therefore, the problem isn't having a regional "accent" per se. An "accent" only becomes a problem when you are actually pronouncing things 'wrongly', forcing your listeners to backtrack and figure out what you meant. Errors in pronunciation (and sometimes even grammar, or unusual expressions), could be due to your own language learning background, making it difficult for others who do not share this background to understand you. The corollary of this of course is that, you will find that people of your own linguistic background will probably find you easier to understand when you mispronounce things the same way they are used to. If your university offers pronunciation training, then it would be something worth looking into.
WHY IT'S A BAD IDEA TO START BY APOLOGISING

I'm not sure about it, because I've read that the first 6 minutes with a new class are the most important ones, and by showing this "weakness" they will conclude that I'm not capable, knowledge-wise, to teach them.

This is 100% spot on, and supported by literature. It's a very bad idea to start your lecture with such an 'apology'. It's absolutely fine (and encouraged) to make students feel safe by encouraging interruptions and asking of questions if something is missed or not understood, but you should separate this from the context of an 'apology' relating to negative first impressions about your own shortcomings!
From personal experience, and as you correctly suspected yourself, I would strongly advise you to avoid any opening statements that directly imprint in the students a lack of quality of what is about to follow. Linking to pedagogical literature, this relates directly to Maslow's hierarchy of needs in terms of feelings of psychological safety, as well as studies showing that teacher attitudes of 'defensiveness' and 'diffidence' can directly affect student motivation and engagement. This is particularly true in the case of externally motivated and extroverted students, who may feel you are actively about to risk their chances of obtaining their external goals, and may speak very vocally indeed about it.
If you start with such an apology, you may be actively sabotaging the rest of the lecture, and possibly even the term, if you fail to recover from that first impression. Furthermore, it may seem to you that such a 'fair warning' is respecting the students, but if you think about it, the students are more likely to feel disrespected, in that they will feel that their personal agenda and goals is being disrespected by being unnecessarily put at risk because of your accent, and that you're basically now telling them they'll have to work and focus twice as hard. I.e. your opening statement will effectively plant in their head the negative thought that "Great, they've lumped me with a teacher who I won't even be able to understand most of the time", starting them off with a negative experience from the outset.
Worse, they may even feel that you're effectively asking for permission to not bother making the effort to speak more clearly than you would have if you hadn't warned them about it!
Your apology can also very easily backfire by turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy, where students will have a lower threshold to losing focus because "they've been warned you'd be hard to understand anyway".
Similarly, it could backfire by instead deterring students from interrupting and asking relevant questions, rather than encouraging them, if they feel uncomfortable that doing so would be effectively perceived by you as being called out on your accent, e.g. "great, the teacher has already shown to be self-conscious about their accent, it was literally the first thing he / she said, I don't want to be the guy that's going to keep pointing their accent out to them by saying I couldn't follow the point they're making".
Instead of words, act. Show you respect your students by actively being aware of it and seeking ways to work around it. E.g.

while 'reading off slides' is generally not recommended, in your case you could make sure that anything you say that is a crucial point or contains jargon, is always also pointed out in words on a screen
you could record your lectures and go through the effort of subtitling them after the fact, giving learners the opportunity to revise with subtitles
you could consider an 'inverted classroom' format which relies more on advanced preparation followed by more personalised inputs at the lab
ensure you have appropriate formative and summative feedback throughout, so that students can flag their own strengths and shortcomings, and form an impression on the quality of your teaching based on that, rather than any psychological feelings you managed to instill on them during first impressions.

Finally, do continue being aware of it, and ensure you make an effort to speak clearly during your lectures, and if possible, try to seek professional pronunciation coaching in the meantime. The worst thing you could do is apologise at the start, and then do nothing more about it. Your students will lose confidence in you straight away.

PS. Also, I completely disagree with your mentor's advice. If people are having trouble to understand you in the first place, and you counter that by saying you speak more languages than them, all you'll achieve by that is to frustrate them even more. It's totally unnecessary and irrelevant information. Not only will they not 'sympathise', but you risk giving the message that it's not really your weakness for not speaking correctly, but their weakness for not being 'linguistically literate' enough by your standards.

The OP never mentions "apologizing" for an accent.

@JR I know but it's heavily implied from the wording (e.g. the fact they consider it a weakness themselves rather than a 'quirk', and they're worried about making a first impression of weakness and incapability by 'admitting' to it), hence worth the warning. If they can handle it with humour and confidence, like in Bluey's answer, then it might work out well for them, but I don't think it's worth the risk. It's very hard to avoid the actual words "I'm sorry" when you're effectively trying to tell people you're sorry (i.e. for inconveniencing them) (or worse, appearing conceited if you don't).

"If you have trouble understanding something I say, don't hesitate to ask me to repeat myself." That's all that's needed. Your advice to avoid an apology is admirable, I think, but your insistence that an apology would be inevitable is misguided.

@JR Fair enough, thank you, point taken. Having said that, I have given more general advice anyway though: "I would strongly advise you to avoid any opening statements that directly imprint in the students a lack of quality of what is about to follow". A delivery in the form of an 'apology' is only one way to fall into that trap, I'm sure there are other ways to predispose students negatively, and I would equally warn against those as well. Effectively the message is "be confident and ensure you don't start with a negatively predisposing impression, as evidence shows this backfires".

I completely agree with that sentiment. Even if it's true, "I'm sorry that I didn't get to prepare for this talk as much as I would have liked to" is a terrible way to greet an audience – be it students in a classroom, attendees at a seminar, or congregants in a place of worship.

Accents are tricky, especially in large lecture halls where students hear you over a mic, and can't see your lips. Different regions might have different opinions on what accents are difficult, depending on what other native language groups the undergrads may have been exposed to.
In my opinion, it would go a long way for your undergraduates to say something like:

As you may have noticed, English isn't my first language. I know sometimes that makes it hard to understand certain words. Please don't hesitate to ask me to repeat something.

This might help with students who are shy or don't want to offend you by asking.
If you like, you could mention the other languages you're familiar with to encourage speakers of those languages to connect with you, or just as a fun fact (personally, I'd be curious to know). I wouldn't mention it to make yourself seem somehow better than them, as that could needlessly add feelings of resentment.

I agree with this approach.  But like George suggested, I would rephrase I speak with an accent to English is not my first language.  And I advise international instructors to give a few sentences about their home land—helps for relatability.

I'm British, and I once gave a big conference talk in the US where I started by saying "I'm from England, but I'm sure you can tell that anyway because I don't have an accent". It got a good laugh and broke the ice.

''If you do this, definitely mention other languages you do speak, so the students are clear that your accent is not a limit, but a mark of your superior abilities.''  That would be a very strange thing to do, I have never had a lecturer that did that and listing the other languages you know would come across as a slightly cringeworthy attempt at ''flexing'' on students.

@Tom Yes ... that's why I didn't incorporate that suggestion into my answer ...

@AzorAhai-him- Yes I was responding to someone else.  Actually the only time I ever knew someone to do this thing of going through the languages they knew was at high school level, at a university it would be quite embarrassing.

I'm Australian and teach, 9 years, Engineering related subjects in Australia to students of a wide range of International backgrounds. In the process of introducing myself at the start of the semester I ask the students to put up their hand if they know what a dunny is. Most do not. I then explain that although I try to keep to normal English, occasionally I slip into colloquial Australian English. Due to this the students should show NO hesitation in asking me to explain/repeat/expand on anything I'm talking about. They will not offend me by doing so.
I emphasise that I do not want anyone failing because they could not understand me. For some students this appears almost liberating, to others, they still just sit there, eyes rolled back in their head, as per normal
In closing, my advise, if you are confident in your knowledge and are fine with the occasional question from the students, put it out there at the start of the semester and the students will respect you more.

Great entry into the topic of accents. So what's a dunny?

@DohnJoe a toilet.  I speak British English, but I recognized it straight away.

I disagree that prefacing a lecture with an 'accent apology' is a good idea in the general sense, but I do like your own twist on it. Your way seems to pass the message without sacrificing an image of confidence, and even presents this in a humorous way, instilling familiarity and rapport. I'd avoid it as general advice though, as I'd think that kind of trick is very hard to pull off in general, and you have more to lose than to gain if it backfires (as per my own answer).

Ozzies are pretty good of making light of what some may see as self-deprecation.  It's part of what us generally friendly and easy to get along with.

@Martin Bonner I think "Dunny", "daggy", "galah", etc isn't about whether you're Australian or not, it's about whether they syndicated /Neighbours/ in your country or not. [Also British] :-)

@Dannie I never watched Neighbours.

@MartinBonner I've watched but part of an episode, but I notice certain groups of people have speech patterns that are almost cloned from those characters.

A difference isn't a weakness. Don't think of it that way. You may find difficulty in communicating because of that difference, but it is just that, a difference. People in the US from Alabama and those from Boston speak English with different accent and different idioms. Eventually we get used to hearing a different accent so the effect lessens.
In fact, you and I would have a lot of trouble communicating since I am quite deaf and technological solutions are only partial. Even it the best of situations a speaker sometimes needs to repeat or - better - say an equivalent thing with different words.
But the first few minutes is, IMO, a good time to introduce yourself and how you speak. In fact, it can be fun if you "put on" an extreme version of your accent, just to show the range. Cockney slang, for example.

Yes, I do laugh when they say we will have a "Town Hall" ...

@SolarMike I've been trying to think what accent that would cause laughter in, but I can't figure it out. What did you mean?

@AzorAhai well, more than accent - it's Buffy's reference to Cockney rhyming slang... google is your friend !  So, whenever someone says they want a town hall (meeting) I tend to think that the amount that will be communicated will be small...

"better - say an equivalent thing with different words." - REALLY?  My father was partially deaf, and it used to drive him mad when he said "pardon" and my mother would try to paraphrase what she had just said.  What he wanted was a repeat of the exact same words (possibly more clearly articulated) so that he parse the phonemes out.

@MartinBonner, it is a subtle issue. For the deaf (myself included) I agree with you. But there are other reasons that you aren't understood. A teacher should have many ways to get an idea across. Some metaphors work better for some listeners that others, for example. If you can only say a thing one way, then you aren't going to be very effective in teaching. But it matters whether someone didn't hear you or didn't understand you.

I agree with Martin here, as the listener, before paraphrasing I'd prefer a repeat word for word what was said. I often have trouble with the speech of one of my coworkers. If I miss a few words and ask for a repeat, I already have the context/rhythm of what I did understand from the first attempt to help the parsing the second. If they surprise me by saying something else, it will often cause me more confusion as my mind tries to fit the new sounds into that shape. I find even if I do make out the paraphrased statement, I'm left distracted trying to figure out what they originally said.

As you say, it does matter if someone didn't understand your speech-- can't make out the words you used due to your accent (or their deafness, or a loud fan) vs. didn't understand your meaning-- Accent not the problem, they got all the words, but can't make sense of them (possibly due to unconventional grammar, or the use of some regional idiom, but maybe also just a complex concept). Paraphrasing is great for the second issue, but the question is about the first, and carefully repeating is better for that. It's up to the listener to indicate which issue they are having.

As someone with a mild speech impediment, I think paraphrasing is better because a simple repeat is likely to contain the same features that caused difficulty the first time. Plus, saying one thing in different ways is good for teaching.

I worked for a large company and they had an absurd training video in which a supervisor with an accent told his people 15 minutes and they heard 50 minutes and ruined something. Oddly, the corporate policy was everyone had to adapt to the guy with the accent: "Its their responsibility to ask me what I said" and I guess also to know to ask. It would make more sense for the speaker to work on his accent. I spent the rest of the training session asking everyone to repeat themselves while the HR person clenched her teeth. Imagine 100k workers having to learn 30 accents across however many people.

Similar to the accepted answer:

English is not my first language, in fact it is my third.
Sometimes students have difficulty with a word or phrase that I use.
  Sometimes this confusion disappears because they understand the larger point I'm trying to make - but sometimes it doesn't.
If you find yourself having trouble with what I'm teaching, I know it is a large class, but feel free to ask me to repeat myself - especially in the first few weeks.
You may be helping someone else who is unclear about the concept I'm presenting.

You are not apologizing for your accent.
You are just encouraging students who are having trouble following you to speak up in a lecture hall. (For their own good)

You certainly can, as other answers have suggested. But if you get the feeling - over one or two semesters of teaching - that this is impeding your work in class, don't consider it beneath you to try to get some professional assistance in practicing your diction. Very often, people are taught foreign languages with almost no training in pronunciation and diction - which can be quite challenging depending on your native language. (As a personal example - I find the tonal pronunciation requirements in Chinese horribly difficult!)
Also note that even if you tell your students it's ok to ask you to repeat yourself or speak more clearly - some students would still feel embarrassed or that it's out-of-place for them to do so; plus, after asking that two or three or four times, more students will begin feeling embarrassment of making such repeated requests.
If it's not that bad then forget everything I said :-)

Yes, absolutely! As mentioned in a previous comment, I have a mild speech impediment that became an issue when teaching a huge lecture (300+ students). I found a speech and voice coach who works with actors and it made a big difference. She was able to pinpoint precisely where my speech wasn't clear and exactly what I should do differently. Many such people also work with accents. The goal is not to remove your accent (unless you really want to) but to make you easier to understand.

Don't make a fuss about it, just tell them to ask if there's something they don't understand due to the accent - I had lectures in multinational group - neither me nor students being using english natively, everyone with different accents and noone had any problems asking again to repeat stuff, me included.

I once had an instructor who had one of those thick Chinese (I'm pretty sure) accents where not only was the pronunciation of some sounds quite jarring, the grammar was also just not quite there (random pluralisations, weird ways of asking questions, a couple overused set phrases). The worst part was, the teacher also spoke ridiculously fast. Like, imagine listening to a couple normal-speed sentences, and then hearing a jumble of syllables and maybe picking out a word or two. All in all, it was really hard to understand this person if you hadn't heard them before.
But the teacher had a good approach to it. At the beginning of the term, the teacher pointed out the accent, telling us that if we couldn't understand something that was said (or written: it was really obvious which assignments had been written by the teacher, since anything with no grammar mistakes couldn't have been original content), we should ask. And ask we did! The accent barrier could have been a huge problem, but the teacher largely eliminated the problem via those clarifications (e.g. "Sorry, what kind of function did you say that was called again?" "Oh, it was sinusoidal").
So, I believe that the teacher did a couple things that helped alleviate the situation:

Ask students at the beginning of the term to not hesitate to ask for clarifications.
Not admit any fault or weakness, but be sympathetic to confusion, especially during lectures, when words might get missed.
Repeat things of importance.
Beyond that, it shouldn't be an issue as long as the students are respectful about it (and frankly, if they aren't, you might have bigger problems).

Have you considered enlisting help from a student before the first lecture?
If you arrive in the classroom with enough time before the first class, you find a student and ask them for a favor.  You tell them that you want to encourage people to do as you have already described, ask a question or repeat something, and so you want them to specifically ask you to repeat something in the first few minutes of the lecture.  They already have permission and know you want them to ask.
You can even create a specific sentence as a cue like "When I say XYZ, please ask me to repeat it".

Isn't that dishonest and conspirational? And imagine of the volunteer tells the rest of the students.

@Philosopherofscience I've actually had an instructor ask this very thing of me as a student.  I don't understand how it is either dishonest or conspiratorial. What would I say to the other students, "the professor wants to encourage us to participate in class by asking questions when we don't understand"?  All this request does is enlist someone to help break the ice.

Because it's literally a conspiracy to make the question look spontaneous, isn't it?

@Philosopherofscience My example was meant for the initial instance, not a repeating thing.  I'd like to know what the basis of the objection is. All the professor needs to do is say afterwards, "I asked Mr./Ms. X to ask that to encourage participation" or otherwise thank him for participation, so the class is not under any pretenses.  As I think about it, maybe your question could make it's own post here? I have my opinion but it might attract more discussion if we move it out of the comment section.

Oh, if there is immediate disclosure then I have no objection.

I agree with others that it would be good for you to address your accent.  In fact, I would suggest that you add a statement to your course syllabus offering help and encouraging students to speak up if they can't understand you.
As an academic advisor at a university that has a high first-generation population, I often talk with students who are struggling to succeed in a class where the professor has a strong accent.  When I ask whether they've spoken with the faculty member about the issue, they often reply that they have been too shy or thought it would be disrespectful to do so.   Having a written statement in your syllabus offering asking if they can't understand you (as well as speaking about it verbally) may then make them feel empowered to help themselves by asking for help!  :)

I'll just add a couple anecdotes.
I once had a prof (a fairly young guy), with a pretty thick accent, begin the class with, "I will be teaching this class in language somewhat resembling to English."  He sort of earned pre-forgiveness with that.
Second, I had another prof who was Italian and had a not-too-bad accent.  But somehow he used it to his advantage.  I'm not sure how, but I think maybe this was part of it:   Native speakers tend to think of foreign speakers as simple-minded.  I think this guy adopted a kind of simple-minded personality for the classroom, and the students' natural tendency to help the underdog made them more tolerant.

As an international instructor, should I openly talk about my accent?
Of course, there is nothing to gain by refusing to talk about your accent. The students will hear it, anyway. If you talk about it, you may satisfy your students' curiosity and (maybe) create a better understanding.
Should I talk about my accent in the very first minutes of my course?
This is an entirely different question, but I think that you should do so. In the first minutes, you'll likely say who you are, where you studied, how much experience in teaching you have, what you expect from your students,.. That's the right moment to solve the riddle of where you acquired your accent and to encourage the students to ask, whenever they don't understand you.
You won't damage your authority by evoking your accent: A student who judges a teacher's quality by their accent is not qualified for university!
You could make it clear that English is not your native language or maybe not even your first foreign language, but I wouldn't discuss the number of languages that you speak. It doesn't matter!

As someone who can still have issues understanding strong accents and feels embarrassed about it, I think a disclaimer like "I am aware I have a strong accent and will not be angry if you need me to repeat something or slow down" could go a very long way.
I often don't want to ask people to repeat things over and over and over because I don't want to seem like I don't understand or that I'm not learning their accent. Someone reassuring me (especially ahead of time) would definitely make me feel more comfortable asking.

I would perhaps invite the students to feel free to interrupt you anytime they have troubles understanding what you say, but I would start mentioning first that it could be when they find a passage particularly hard or even obscure, and add that they are welcome even when trouble arises because of your accent.
Sound pride of your accent when saying so. Say that you know that sometimes is difficult as you must, or had to, speak and switch between several languages. You can even mention when and where it happened, as a way of presenting yourself.
(Speaking more than two languages, especially if learnt later, isn't trivial. And most students surely recognised it).

We all have accents. You are already very considerate regarding if the students will have any problems understanding your speech. I would have appreciated if my professor mention that they speak X dialect or X accent which would help me to know more about that variety/accent. Additionally, if you think there are words that you think might be challenging for them to understand or challenging for your to pronounce, you can always use visual help (e.g., writing, pointing out, images).

There's no need to think of clarifying procedures as a sign of weakness or apology.  Keep it simple; you want this to be heard and understood, even if nothing else is.  Simply start this way, in a strong and confident voice:

Hello!  I have an accent!  If I say something you do not understand, I want you to tell me so!  If you want me to repeat, then ask me to repeat!  If that still does not work, then come to my office hours! In this class, we will be covering [syllabus etc.]

That's pretty much it -- again, keep it short, simple, and strong.  The point is to clear their frustration and yours right at the start so you can all get on with the work.
(Most students will recognize the "hello" no matter how bad your accent is, and in that first moment their brains will start calibrating for what comes next.  In the third and fourth sentences, you are repeating the same information in two different ways; most will get the meaning.  Most will recognize "office hours" in the fifth sentence, and will understand that meaning as well.  If you go over the syllabus next, and if they refer to their own copy or one up on the screen while you speak, then that continues the calibration process.)

1. A useful thing to do is to write key words and phrases on the board/display as you introduce them.
E.g. Today I would like to talk about polymorphism. <Pause to write "polymorphism" on the board.>
This way the students will not miss the most important words. Connecting words are easier to guess.
Incidentally I have a friend who has a very strong accent. It took me a while to understand more than a few words. Now that I have grown used to his way of speaking, I can understand. Of course your students will not want to wait for the 10th lecture before understanding, so ...

2.
In English perhaps the most important factor is not accent but  where the stress lies in the word.
Anecdote
I had an encounter with a server when I was visiting Spain. She asked if I would like, keCHOOP. I had no idea what she meant. In fact she became irate, "You must know keCHOOP, you are English!"
Eventually she showed me the bottle and I said, "Oh, you mean KEtchup!"
This simple misplacement of stress made a common word unintelligible. Apart from that I had no problem with her Spanish accent.

American instructor (midatlantic) at a local university -- many words I know first from reading, not from hearing them, or technical terms I may completely misuse.  I always asked students to let me know if I said something wrongly.  So it's not just a non-native thing.
When doing readings for Librivox.org, I would always have m-w.com and a few other pronunciation guides open in different tabs, and if an upcoming paragraph seemed tricky, I'd check out the words.  If you have a few words that are consistently misunderstood, I'd advise doing the same.


text:
What should I do if I submitted an article to a predatory journal?
Call it stupidity or bad luck but I am guilty of submitting my research article to a journal which is listed in Beall's List of Predatory Publishers.
It is my first article and I don't have much experience publishing articles. I was searching for a top impact factor journal and found this one on Google and in excitement sent my article (word and pdf files) in this journal a few days ago, only to discover later that this might be a bogus journal.
Now I am worried about that what will happen to my article. What if they plagiarize my paper, or send it to another journal not giving me credit?
My question is that what should I do now? Should I send my article to a reputable journal now? What should be the process? What if it is flagged for fraud by that journal? What are my options?
Any help would be appreciated.

Is your paper accepted for publication? Did you send the camera ready version? If not, you can always retract the paper. Do it as soon as possible

Not it is not accepted yet for publication.

Do as @aeismail says. Withdraw NOW.

Would a simple two liner email with my paper title be enough?

Is there a page fee? How much do you have to pay ?

No page fee. $150 once accepted.

Well just do not pay. They will throw your paper in the garbage can. Don't be afraid of "plagiarism" (this makes me smile): journals with fees, (unless few top journals) mostly are just after the fee, and the review is just a "formality".

I don't understand all these suggestions about withdrawing the paper "NOW!1!1!1!1!". If just asking to withdraw is enough, then that journal isn't really as bad as it seems. If however it is so bad, then just asking will yield no results. Either way, it's pointless.

How does a journal from Beall's list gets to have a 'top impact factor' in your field? Assuming you are talking about the legitimate IF.

@CapeCode It is most certainly a fake IF with a similar sounding name. I am surprised that the author did not discuss the submission with colleagues/advisors/supervisors before submitting to this journal.

@CapeCode, predatory journals just make up impact factors that look good. No one bothers to check the official list that Thompson-Reuters has sold off, anyway, to the highest bidder. Impact factors have no meaning, really, but the bean-counters love them.

@DeboraWeber-Wulff You seem to be misinformed about what the (legitimate) impact factor is and how it is used. In particular, the report is not auctioned but sold on subscription. My sentiment was indeed, that this was not a legitimate IF that's why I posted my comment.

@CapeCode, just got your comment, sorry. I do research in the area of academic misconduct and I know exactly what the impact factor is supposed to be and how it is misused by many, especially predatory journals. Inexperiences researchers have a hard time differentiating between "legitimate" and non-legitimate IFs. I personally find IF-worship to be misguided, although I understand that they are dogma at many institutions.

Just an update: Professor Beall has removed everything from his blog. More discussion in http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/83764/with-bealls-list-gone-how-can-i-tell-if-a-journal-is-spam

If the paper has not yet been accepted for publication, you are free to withdraw the paper from consideration. Depending on the policies of the journal to which you submit the article, you may need to disclose the prior submission, and explain why you withdrew the publication from consideration.
Unfortunately, there's little you can do to stop the publishers of the first journal from doing something unsavory with your article. You will need to exercise vigilance in monitoring the work in this area to ensure that the paper isn't mishandled or worse. Be sure to maintain records of all of the correspondence you have had with the journal—and make sure of all it is documentable—phone calls won't suffice here.
However, if all the journal has is a PDF of your original article, it makes it a lot harder to do anything with it: it is tedious work to convert it into the template that most publishers use without significant effort. Thus, without the original graphics and text files, it will be difficult for them to "transmit" the paper elsewhere.

They have sent me a mail of acknowledgment of article submission but it does not mention title of my paper.

At this stage, just withdraw the paper from consideration by the journal.

and as far as documentation goes, my article was accepted in an IEEE associated conference earlier this year but I was not able to present it due to travel issues. I have their acceptance mail with me. Would that be good enough proof if some thing bad happens to my article?

@JewelThief In case of being plagiarised, they can testify you submitted it to them earlier.

@JewelThief, why are you submitting the same paper to a conference and a journal? That can be considered duplicate publication.

aesmail's post is right on. In addition, I would recommend creating some Google Alerts for some unique sentences or phrases from your article as well. Use quotes around the whole text in each query. Make sure that the ones you pick are unique to your work by finding query strings that are exactly from your work and return no results on Google now. That way, if they do make use of your words, you have a chance of finding out when it happens. You might have to make several of these, but if you use some key passages, you've got a good chance of catching them if they do.

Thanks for pointing this out. I had this in mind, but forgot to mention it.

I would like to add that a predatory journal is not always and necessarily a bad journal. All reputable publishers have low impact factor journals in their house, and some non reputable publishers may have good journals.
I've even heard stories for publishers from that list to be eventually removed from the list.
I don't see the fear on plagiarism very rational, as all papers are public in one way or another, so if someone wants to plagiarise, they don't need access to your paper. (So, you can withdraw it from the app and submit it asap somewhere else).
My main concern would be to connect my (first) work with a bad journal and the chance they publish it regardless you pay/withdraw or not. But before you panick, make sure how well this journal stands. If you found it as among the top impact factor ones in your field, it cannot be that bad. Check SJR and Scopus. Also, consult your supervisor or a colleague who can propose you a journal.

Low impact factor does by far not equal predatory. Some journals may be wrongly labeled as predatory, but those who really are predatory are bad per definition – they only exist to take the authors’ money. — If you found it as among the top impact factor ones in your field, it cannot be that bad. – You know that predatory journals tend to pass other (bogus) metrics as an impact factor, do you?

@Wrzlprmft They might tend to pass other metrics as an impact factor, but it is fairly easy to check the official lists of THE impact factor and other trustworthy metrics. So, my answer for me is still valid. If these metrics are high, then it can't be that bad. If you want to discuss how valid IF and all other reputable metrics are, that's another (good) discussion.

If these metrics are high, then it can't be that bad. – Sure, but do you really assume that when the asker was talking the impact factor of the journal, they were actually talking about the impact factor?

@Wrzlprmft In retrospect, it's possible that he didn't mean that. But I think anyone who is at the point of publishing a paper has either the experience or someone to ask on where to look for the high impact factor journals. And maybe (I haven't checked) Google (scholar) would be one of these places.

I think anyone who is at the point of publishing a paper has either the experience or someone to ask on where to look for the high impact factor journals. – If that were the case, predatory publishers wouldn’t thrive.

@Wrzlprmft Predatory publishers thrive because when you apply for a job or a grant, few read your papers. They check the papers you pinpoint and the number of publcations. That's where these publishers step on and that's why people choose them. Not because they don't know. Of course there might be a few accidentally doing it, like the OP in this question, but most of the people who are in academia for a while select them only to increase faster their publication list.

I asked a question on that point. Whatever the outcome, I still think it’s safe to assume that the journal in this question does not have an impact factor, let alone a good one.

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text:
Personal advantages of being a referee once you quit science?
I previously asked this question in the physics forum (tag soft-question), but was convinced that it better suits in the academia forum. So I deleted it and posted it here.
I was recently asked to review a paper for a well-established physical journal, but as I have a lot to do in the moment, I'm tempted to refuse it. This is even more the case since I quit my scientific carreer roughly a year ago.
Thus my question: particularly outside physics, what are the benefits of being a referee? [beside the idealistic attitude of "bringing on physics" -- this is a valuable point in principle, but in reality, I've been long enough in the business to know that this is hardly the case for most papers. In contrast, most papers originate due to the need to continuously publish, a thing which I consider to be wrong].
For people in science, I see a clear opportunity in being a referee.

First, it gives you a connection to the journal editors and contributes to your authority.
Second, by concentrating on the paper, you are forced to learn something on your topic which might help you later. Further, you might be able to add citations to your own work and thus increase your influence.
Third, from a global point of view, you have to do it since you also expect your own papers to be reviewed (although this point is somewhat of a social dilemma, since [neglecting the previous points] it would be better to review as few as possible and concentrate on your own research).

However, do you see any personal advantages once you have quit physics? Are there maybe some if one plans to return some day?

Possibly related: do-you-list-journals-you-have-reviewed-for-on-your-cv

Also related (if you haven't left science): http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19395/can-reviewing-papers-help-increase-your-credibility-as-a-researcher/19417

To me, refereeing papers in subject X is a non-negligible part of being a professional academic in subject X.  So the premise that you want to referee a physics paper having "quit science" seems moderately self-contradictory: using your expert level qualifications to evaluate a scientific work is being a scientist, isn't it?  I'm almost sure it is. :)
So I guess you haven't "quit science" completely, or -- and this may come to the same thing -- the physics community is not fully aware of this fact.  One thing I might do if I were you is to make sure that the editor who asked you to review the paper knows that you are no longer employed as a physicist.  If I were an editor, that would be useful information, and unless I knew you rather well and knew that you retained a special expertise in this particular area, I would probably select someone else.
I think it's clear that you no longer have any kind of ethical obligation or professional expectation of reviewing papers.  I also suspect that once the community understands that you really are doing something else now your referee requests will come rarely or cease altogether.  So this is probably a decision that you need to make more for any particular paper than as a general life decision.  I would say: if you feel just as qualified to referee the paper as before and if you want to referee the paper, then do it.  For instance, if you see something valuable in the paper that you think that some other qualified person might miss, then it might be a nice parting gift "to science" to speak out for the worth of this research.  On the other hand, if it's just business as usual (or worse, motivated by "the need to continuously publish"): well, you don't have to clean the bathrooms in the apartment that you're not renting anymore, do you?
If you have thoughts of breaking back into science later on, then I think you need to think seriously about how to keep your connections and your intellectual life, um, alive.  There are many aspects to this, and making sure that you continue to referee papers is not, so far as I can see, especially close to the top of the list.  If I'm looking at the CV of someone who left academia for a while and is trying to come back (and it does happen), I will look to the work they have done recently and their plans for work in the near future.  I don't really care whether they've refereed some papers in the meantime.

However, do you see any personal advantages once you have quit physics? Are there maybe some if one plans to return some day?

If you have quit the scientific community altogether and are working as say, a fisherman, then there will obviously be no professional gain from continuing to review papers.
If you plan to (maybe) return to the scientific community  at some stage, having reviewed some papers might help you make the case in an interview that you've been keeping up to date with the literature, but it's still not a strong advantage.
So there's not much to be had in terms of professional benefit in this scenario. The question then is whether or not you feel there's a personal benefit for you: maybe you find the paper(s) interesting to read and learn about, maybe the editor is a friend of yours and you'd like to keep their favour, maybe you like that warm feeling you get when you help progress science a little ... answering these questions are entirely up to you.
(All I know is that if I wasn't in an academic career, there's not a snowball's chance in hell I would be reviewing the papers in my area for the "fun of it".)

Thanks for the clear words. You, as the other answerers, don't seem to attribute a large professional value to being a referee, and this although you are in science. Thus for me, it should be even less...

De nada. I think reviewing is an important part of a scientific career so my answer is really in the context of having moved away from research. I added a comment to your question where I linked a related question ... here I mention some of the career benefits I've gotten from reviewing and there's some other good answers in there in that context.

All I know is that if I wasn't in an academic career, there's not a snowball's chance in hell I would be reviewing the papers in my area for the "fun of it" This made my day.

I don't know how universal is this but in my country there is a proverbial saying "learn a craft and leave it, and when you're hungry squeeze it". Since here the "craft" is personal networks, and personal networks do not let you "squeeze" them easily once you have "left" them, then reviewing papers every now and then should not be too heavy an investment in an uncertain prospect -which could be returning back in science, but also it could be something else you cannot imagine right now. Ask any freelancer.
Do the editors know that you have left your scientific career? If yes, their invitation may say something about their opinion of you. But if they don't know it, I would suggest to make it clear right now: if they are happy to keep their invitation standing, then everybody knows you are doing them a favor. If they want to recall their invitation in light of this information, you will avoid possible later embarrassments.

Good suggestion, I will inform the editors about it. The first part actually states the problem quite well. The next problem arising from it (--which is completely up to myself and thus no point for discussion), is to priorize the various other things one could do instead. Surely one can't do everything just because things might arise you wouldn't have believed -- that is so for almost any of my plans. Thanks for your answer!

You're welcome. I am glad my sensitivity to informational matters offered something useful in this case.

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Using Discord to support online teaching
This is a question I plan to self answer, but answers from others are very welcome too.
This term, I am teaching group and Galois theory. This is a heavily inquiry based learning (IBL) course, where almost all the time is spent on group problem solving. You can see the course webpage, with all of our problems, here (and the previous term's webpage here .) Like everyone, we have been told to move our teaching and office hours online.
I asked my students what tools they use to discuss math online, and several of them mentioned discord. I am currently setting up a Discord channel for office hours and course meetings. I am planning to use this to document what I have learned so far, and hope others will help.
I would like to thank the denizens of the "homework help" channel on Discord for their help! We academics criticize online homework help sites a lot, but this could be their moment to shine!
Questions which I plan to write answers to, if others don't:

How do I log onto discord? How do I invite my students?

How do they add themselves to voice and text chats? How can I break them into smaller groups for group discussion, and how can I monitor those groups.

How can I and students type math in discord, if we know LaTeX?

How can I and students embed photographed images or hand drawn sketches in Discord?

What are other useful things to know?

So far, the advice in this post is based on one test run with 6 students. I'll continue to update once our course comes online.

Answer to "How do I log onto discord? How do I invite my students?"
Head to https://discordapp.com/ and follow the quick directions to make an account. You should then see a screen that looks like this:

Discord is broken up into "servers", which are subdivided into "channels". There is a list of servers you are currently logged into on the left bar. Click the plus icon to make a new channel. You'll see a screen like this:

Click "create a server". You'll see the following screen, where you can name your server:

You'll then see this. If you have interacted with people on Discord before, it will suggest you invite them to your class. (I've blacked out the names of the people I've chatted with.) Instead, select the shown link and e-mail it to your students. The channel will remain in existence and be permanently available.

Answer to "How do they add themselves to voice and text channels? How can I break them into smaller groups for group discussion, and how can I monitor those groups."
Each server is subdivided into channels. Voice channels play in your headphones and listen to your microphone; text channels are chat windows. You can only have one of each active at once, but you can easily switch between them; simply click on the name of a channel to switch to it. The list of your channels looks like this; each voice channel displays under it (scribbled out in the image) who is in that channel.

What I've done is made two channels of each type and asked students to split themselves among them. I click back and forth to eavesdrop on and join conversations.
Note that the past history of the text stream is continually available. So, if students have been typing a lot, it is quick for you to scroll back and see what has been said. I would suggest you encourage students to type, the same way you would encourage them to write things down when doing group work in person.
Answer to "How can I and students type math in discord, if we know LaTeX?"
You can add bots to Discord channels. The way I know to do this is, after you have already created the channel, go to the webpage associated to the bot and click on the invite button; invite it to your channel. For example, go to  https://top.gg/bot/510789298321096704 and click on the Invite button as noted here:

MathBot provides a quick text interface to LaTeX, a basic calculator and WolframAlpha. If you type =tex before something, MathBot will render it in LaTeX mathmode. Beware that this means that, if you want to mix text and equations, you'll need to say something like
=tex \textrm{Let}\ k \textrm{be a field and let}\ S \textrm{be the polynomial ring}\ k[x_1, \ldots, x_n]
Preceeding a line with =calc will access a simple built in calculator, for example, =calc 9*43 should produce 387. Using =wolf should pass whatever you type along to WolframAlpha.
TeXit allows people to type LaTeX (demarcated with dollar or double dollar signs) and have it turned in to TeX. This is far more user friendly than the TeX feature in Mathbot: Simply typing Let $k$ be a field and let $S$ be the polynomial ring $k[x_1, \ldots, x_n]$ should work with TeXit running.
For more help regarding TeXit's commands (which also include a calculator and WolframAlpha), type ,help and it will send you a direct message.
Answer to "How can I and students embed photographed images or hand drawn sketches in Discord?"
You can also drag and drop files into a Discord channel. PDFs turn into links; standard image files such as JPG, PNG, GIF are embedded in the stream. See here. This could be useful if your students have tablets, or have paper and cell phone cameras, so they can take pictures of their work and upload it.
I will report, however, that in a recent test run, most students found the "make image, transfer to desktop, drag-and-drop to Discord" workflow to be clunky and awkward. We are considering whether we want to use shared whiteboard software as an alternative. Other suggestions are welcome.
An easier way to share quick sketches is by pasting images directly into discord. You can draw a sketch in MSPaint or some other program, copy it the image itself from within the program (no need to save it as a file), and then paste the image into any text channel. This is also convenient way to share screenshots; Windows can snip portions of the screen with Win+Shift+S, and Mac and Linux have similar features. After taking a screenshot into your clipboard like this, it can be instantly pasted into Discord.
For more complex things, you can share your screen in realtime if you are using the desktop Discord application. Simply click the "Go Live" button in the bottom left:

You can then share either a specific application or your entire screen. Others can watch by clicking your username (it will have a bright red indication that you're live), and then clicking Join Stream.
More information here.
What are some other tips?

Note that you can mute your microphone when you are not talking, to cut down on static. If you frequently forget to do this, Discord's "push to talk" feature makes it so your microphone is only on when you hold down a specific key on your keyboard. See here for more.
A protocol which has worked well in large VOIP calls I have been in in the past is that, if someone else is talking and you want to talk next, type the letter "Q" in the chat window. When they finish, all the people with Q's speak before anyone else starts. That wasn't much of a problem for my class today, but I plan to enforce this protocol if it seems like some people are never getting a word in edgewise.
You can adjust the volumes of other people in the chat individually. See here.
You can edit past messages to remove typos. Click on the ellipses in the upper right of the message, then click on the edit option. Other options here are to pin a message, so it is permenantly at the top, or delete it.

Thanks a lot, it's really helpful! Do you know if there are big differences with Riot (https://about.riot.im/), which seems to be an opensource equivalent ?

Not sure if this could be helpful or not, but Discord has Priority Speaker

I have used Adobe Connect last week (after my University got locked down due to the coronavirus). We ran into an issue quickly, that there were not enough licenses available.
I therefore encouraged my students to share the stream on other channels. My teaching assistant were quick to establish a stream to discord and twitch.tv. I also created accounts there and followed in the chat.
Now I am prepared to stream and share from one service to the other. Thanks to David's answer, I also can use LaTeX now in the chat.
Adobe Connect has the advantage of whiteboards and polls. Students can be allowed

Discord is for gaming and the existing networks of friends will prove too distracting.  I recommend Slack. Slack is also a platform with 116 apps listed on AlternativeTo. Browse all 116 apps for Slack.  You get ten free integrations on a free account.

Thanks! Will you start up a similar CW quesiton introducing people to Slack?

@DavidESpeyer I think this might get out of control if we have a question for each service. I think this question could be made more generic, and then an answer for each answer.

@Tim , that is a good suggestion. I'm going to wait a few hours to see if someone makes a better one, but having one question for intro's to all the learning platforms sounds like a good idea and I can revise the intro to this accordingly.

Sounds interesting. Does Slack allow for easy audio and video calls between participants, as well as screen streaming?

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Do I have a chance at an MSc in Machine Learning/AI with low grades?
I am currently applying to a Master's programme at a strong university in the UK and began doubting my chances of getting in.
I completed my Bachelor's degree in Mathematics at a large research university in the UK a few years ago but my grades were below the 2:1 UK grade minimum for this course by a few percent. I have since worked at a large company doing data science and research and really enjoyed the work. I have been doing well here, getting some strong programming skills as well in Python and R. I also published an application paper on machine learning at a conference and presented at some others as well and have experience working on research projects.
However, I am worried that my chances are low because my grades have not been the greatest and that they will overlook my work experience. Do I still have a chance?

related https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38237/how-does-the-admissions-process-work-for-ph-d-programs-in-the-us-particularly

Check out the research papers in a direction that interests you. Is that something you can cope with? Do you have a direction that you want to pursue? Marks are important, but you might get away with less (unless there is a formal limit in place) if you show competence, motivation, and a good understanding of the research landscape.

Quite simply: Your chance is equal to zero if you do not apply. But greater than zero, if you give it a shot. The worst they can do is not accept you. Which leaves you in the same state as when you would not apply at all.

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How to include guidelines from an organisation in your research paper?
I am including several guidelines from different organizations such as WHO in my research paper. The guidelines will be copied and pasted into my paper under the heading of their organisation. For example:

WHO guidline:
[Guideline Text]

Will this be considered plagiarism? Do I have to include the whole text in quotation marks or is the title "WHO guideline" adequate to show it is not my work. The other option is to just put down a link rather than copy and paste the guidelines but I need them to be in the paper for compare and contrast purposes.

How long is the guideline? I have a hard time imagining WHO guideline is less than 2 pages.

They are actually very short, the longest one is only 5 parapraghs long. All of the guidlines fit in a page and a half.

It isn't plagiarism if it is cited. But it still might not be proper. Plagiarism is not what you think it is.

5 paragraphs is a very very unusually long length of quote for any paper I've seen.

Why would you include a page of copied guidelines? If you want to discuss something relevant within these guidelines, cite that part. Otherwise refer to them by a link/reference

Of course it depends on the context how to use citations in the text. A very important aspect in scientifc literature (especially scientific article papers) is to be as precise and compressed as possible. Therefore my approach with guidelines would be to choose those paragraphs that are important for my work and to include only those with (WHO, 20xx(a,b,c...), p.xx) at the end of the sentence.
The fact that these are WHO guidelines is obvious I don't think you need "WHO guidelines": as introduction words.
If you take complete sentences word for word I would put them in quotation marks and put (WHO, 20xx(a,b,c...), p.xx) at the end of the sentence.


text:
Risky Research And Fear Of Rejection
I have had panic attacks recently because I have to submit a paper from my research.  Although I am passionate and I find it enjoyable, the head of the group has ridiculed me for having risky research.
Although I have successful results, the problem is that not much work has been done in that area.  I also feel day after day that my work may be poor; there is a lot of explanation and unpacking for the results to be interpreted for the reviewers.
I am afraid that the reviewers will say it is poor work. My work is in an interdisciplinary field, and I feel very stupid for selecting not easy and straight forward problems.  I feel that writing it up and analyzing it has been  very challenging.
Has anyone been in this situation (fear of rejection)?  Has anyone worked on something risky in an area that does not have much literature?

There isn't a question here. We can't give mental health counseling.

Don't worry and go ahead with submitting the manuscript to journal. Address the reviewers' comments. I have also worked on a topic with almost no literature support.

Isn't this a duplicate of your earlier question? https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/176150/75368

Does this answer your question? How do you deal with doubt and fear of submission of your work for review?

Before I did my PhD, I had the impression that getting a paper rejected was something to be ashamed of, like getting a failing grade on an exam. I think this is a common misunderstanding. Rejections are nothing to be afraid of, or ashamed of. If you're going to write papers, you're going to get some rejections. If you never get a paper rejected, you're probably not aiming high enough!
A rejection doesn't necessarily mean your research is bad. Usually it means something far less ominous, such as:

you didn't explain your research well enough for the reviewer to understand its importance
your paper doesn't fit the scope of the journal/conference
you tried to publish in a very competitive journal/conference

If your papers are regularly rejected, that might indicate a problem. Otherwise, it's just part of the process.
If your research is sort of "between the cracks" of two disciplines, you may not be sure where to publish. One option is to send an extended abstract (basically a one-page summary of the paper) to the editor of a journal, explaining that you're not sure if your research fits their scope and if not, could they offer any suggestions they have on where it might be more appropriate to submit it.
Note: I'm only addressing the surface question. Medication, counseling, or some combination thereof might be the best way to control the panic attacks.


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Literature searches in publications when you have limited access to journals
I'm currently at an institution that has a phenomenal library system.  I think every journal article or book I've ever needed, no matter how old or obscure, was available to me.  I consider myself very fortunate, and always try to hold on to resources that I may not have access to in the future.  I may be transitioning to a new institution soon, where a colleague of mine tells me the library is significantly smaller, and has far less access to journals, especially to those in science/engineering, which can be pretty pricey.
I'm concerned that in the future my manuscripts will be rejected because my literature searches will be limited to only the journals I have access to.
I was trained to never cite articles that I have not read, understood and could justifiably show are relevant to my work; I agree with that philosophy, so picking citations as "filler" is not something I am comfortable doing.  If all that is available is an abstract, I know that can help, but it's no substitute for the article itself.
I know that reviewers and editors are supposed to consider your contribution as a whole, and not just look at whether or not you cited the articles they think you should have, but the world is an imperfect place.
For those at institutions with limited journal subscriptions/small library systems, how do you justify your literature searches that are missing articles that the reviewers and editors feel are necessary?  Aside from your research contribution itself, assuming it is sound, worthwhile, and well-written, is it just the case that, those at institutions with fewer resources inherently have to publish in more accepting (less competitive) journals by default?
UPDATE  Thanks for everyone's interest and suggestions.  The answers so far have focused on how to get those tough-to-find sources, but I'd really like to see some suggestions on how to handle the other side:  communicating reference shortfalls to reviewers when the aforementioned suggestions don't pan out.  Thoughts?

Does the future institution library have inter-library loan arrangements with one or more larger libraries?

@PatriciaShanahan Yes, but the system as a whole is still pretty small.

Have you tried using only 'open' sources? google scholar is pretty handy to show you an open pdf preprint of a closed source...

Sci-Hub, LibGen, #icanhazpdf, if such sources are compatible with your morals.

The physical library may be smaller. However, you could inquire about their electronic subscriptions. At my institution we eliminated the paper journals years ago but I can access all of them, and many more, sitting in my office. The only downside is that on-line searches can return far more results than one might like...

Could you please give some hints about your field of research? Practice and needs vary a lot with the field.

@LaurentDuval To keep this as broad as possible, the natural sciences and engineering.

"communicating reference shortfalls to reviewers when the aforementioned suggestions don't pan out": You can't. "I couldn't access those articles" is not an acceptable excuse for a literature review. See my comment to the answer below: http://academia.stackexchange.com/a/67190/20418

@Ochado I agree, it isn't an excuse, but the motivation for the question was a means of seeing if it was possible to provide researchers at less fortunate institutions a reasonable chance to publish in the same places as wealthier institutions.  Would you agree or disagree with the question I pose just before the update:  Do those at institutions with fewer resources inherently have to publish in more accepting (less competitive) journals by default?

Sorry, I should probably nuance my response. If the literature review is a major part of the article (e.g. a standalone literature review article), then unavailable sources is not an acceptable excuse (that's what I was talking about). However, for a standard scholarly article where the lit review is just one small part of the entire contribution, then the article probably would not be rejected simply for an incomplete lit review if the major contribution is strong. From that perspective, researchers with fewer resources are not necessarily disadvantaged.

FYI I can't access a reference of an article I am reviewing: what shall I do?

You have several options - but they'll all take a bit more time. For one, check if your university can get access to articles "on loan" which usually just means another university sends you the pdf. Alternatively, check the corresponding authors university website. Often, they'll put their publications there, or on researchgate. Finally, if you can't find it via other methods, just email the corresponding author. A quick email letting them know you want to cite their work, but your university doesn't have access to the journal/book, and they'll usually be more than happy to email it to you (we all want to increase our citation counts!).

See if you can hold on to some affiliation at your current institution.
4 years later, I still have a visitor status at a previous institution.  I use it to access journals even though my current institution usually has access.  I can get Google Scholar's library links to work better with my old institution, so the number of mouseclicks is fewer.
Otherwise, Google Scholar will generally work and often provide a link to something not under paywall.  If that's not available, and it's not 50 years old, you can usually email an author.  Worst case - keep good relations with someone at your current institution and send an occasional request for a paper.

Aside - everyone should think about this issue when they decide whether to submit to an open access journal or not.  Want to have impact/citations?  Make sure more people can read your work.

If you know that a paper is relevant, you can probably get it in one way or another. The bigger issue are those papers you are unaware of.
I'm currently working as a computer scientist at a genomics institute that does not subscribe to the conference proceedings published by Springer and IEEE. As a result, I don't have direct access to most papers in my subfield.
When I need a paper I don't have access to, the first thing I do is a regular Google search. More often than not, I can find the paper on arXiv, the authors' websites, or institutional repositories. Sometimes the publicly available version of paper contains errors or omissions not present in the "published" (paywalled?) version, but that's just unfortunate. The blame goes to the authors, who are intentionally distributing misleading versions of their papers.
If I can't find the paper on my own, I ask our library for it. They're quite efficient at obtaining papers, typically responding to requests made during office hours in a few hours. The requested papers are not free, even though I never see the price tag myself, so I only request papers if I'm fairly sure they're relevant. In the rare instances our library can't get the paper, I have resorted to emailing the authors.
Yet as I said, the biggest issue are the papers I'm not aware of. As getting access to papers is cumbersome, I rarely read paywalled papers I'm not specifically looking for. Sometimes I miss relevant results because of this, but as long I'm making an honest effort at literature search, I don't worry about that too much. (Not citing all relevant work is actually quite common in computer science, where different subfields often invent the same or closely related concepts under different names.)

You don't need to read the paywalled paper to find out what its references are.

The blame goes to the authors, who are intentionally distributing misleading versions of their papers. that's incorrect in many cases where journals allow posting pre-peer review versions only.

@CapeCode If the authors are not allowed to post a non-misleading version of their paper online, they should definitely not post a misleading one.

Sometimes the publicly available version of paper contains errors or omissions not present in the "published" version: and more often that you would think given the journals' prices, the available author version does not contains errors added to the published version in the copyediting process.

@gerrit Many journals (including all the physics journals I'm aware of) restrict access to reference lists whenever the text itself is paywalled.

@E.P. But you can still access the references through services such as Scopus and perhaps others.

@JouniSirén If I put a paper up on Arxiv or any similar repository, I am not allowed to take it down.  If some moderate changes occur in revision and the journal rules don't allow me to put up a revised version on the repository, what then?  Also - misleading is a very loaded word.  They aren't final versions.  Very rarely are they misleading.

@Joel The papers in public repositories are supposed to be the final versions. They are the papers you actually publish, in the sense of giving the general public access to your work. They are the ones you are supposed to update when you discover an error in the paywalled snapshots published in journals. If a journal does not allow that, you can either ignore the policy or add note describing the situation.

@JouniSirén  arXiv began as the "Los Alamos preprint server" and it remains a preprint server.  It would be good if authors would provide details about corrections.  If many authors ignored the copyright agreements however, then arXiv would end up in legal hot water.

@Joel arXiv may have started as a preprint server, but that's ancient history. These days it just claims to be a "electronic archive and distribution server for research articles". You also got the copyright situation backwards. Publishers are only able to take the rights because nobody really cares about the copyrights of research papers. If they actually started restricting what authors can do with their papers, they would lose their business, as people would start submitting their papers elsewhere.

There are many ways.
Within your institution, there can be inter-library loan service that you can use. Price can vary but usually quite affordable (for me it's US$5 an article/book. Students here can loan anything free of charge.)
Also, ask if your library has joined any kind of library consortium. If it does, you can often get a consortium library card that allows you to enter the member libraries and use their services, some of which may have a better subscription profile.
Depending on regulations, some public university libraries are opened to public as well. You can ask them about the access policy.
Collaborating with other co-authors who have more comprehensive access to journal may also be a good idea.
As for your current institute, before you leave, check with the alumni office and the library if there are any alumni access to the library services. In my college, alumni can enter any libraries in the campus if they show a valid photo ID and an alumni credit card. Your current library may have something like this.
And I'd also suggest chatting with the librarians in both institutes as well. They may know of other ways

If you need papers I suggest you try Sci-hub.
You submit a doi, answer a captcha and the page hands you the paper 99% of the time.
http://www.nextpowerup.com/news/26329/despite-lawsuit-sci-hub-continues-providing-48m-academic-papers-for-free/

You can simply ask someone at your present (soon former) richer institution to send you a copy of the paper.  At one of my former places the group mailing list includes current and former group members.  Once in a while, a current or former group member sends a message requesting a specific paper s/he has no access to.  As the alumni have spread out over around a dozen different institutes, those messages are almost always answered within an hour or two.  It takes me two minutes to answer such a request and I know how much time it can solve for the person asking, as I've been on both sides many times.  As there's at most a couple of requests per month, I don't mind at all to help out when I'm quick enough.

I recommend that you book an appointment with a librarian at the new institution and explain your needs in detail. (You could probably do that even right now, before you're sure you move to the new institution.) Librarians should know all the resources available at their institution, including many resources available to take care of special cases which might not be public information. I have known of situations where librarians were able to arrange very specialized situations for individuals with unique needs (e.g. obtaining full access to the full range of international legal journals for one researcher who needed them, even though the university had no law school and hence no subscriptions).
On a related note, I had a problem receiving a few special articles through interlibrary loan. After two weeks, just yesterday I finally walked over and visited my university library's interlibrary loan department, where they explained the copyright complications to me. However, after they had a face to work with, they were able to get me the electronic articles I needed within two hours after my visit. Helping you get access to what you need is what librarians live for; you should take full advantage of it. They can be surprisingly effective when you talk to them in person (or over the phone).

This is an answer to your "updated" question. I don't think that reviewers/editors know what kinda of access do you have. If you get a comment/suggestion to add a certain number of articles to your literature review section, you would need to find more relevant papers to add. I guess you can utilize all your limited library resources to do so along with suggested methods posted from others. If the reviewers/editors suggest that you add a specific paper. You better of finding that paper and added (if relevant). Of course you can't always disagree with a reviewer and justify that such paper doesn't fit the manuscript. But I don't how a reviewer will feel with a reply saying that you can't access this paper due to your limited access (giving the number of ways others have suggested above to get papers from).

I as a reviewer certainly don't accept that as an excuse. If a reviewer suggests an article that you didn't have access to, and then in the revision you manage to include that article, then you've just proven that you CAN get access to articles when you really have to. I'm very sensitive to researchers who legitimately have very little access (I actively work with colleagues in developing countries, and I'm originally from a developing country), but unfortunately, for the sake of scholarly integrity, the literature review is flawed if it's missing important articles, regardless of resources.


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Can you be dismissed from a graduate program for attending jury duty?
From what I’ve read, an employer can’t legally fire you for attending jury duty, although they don’t have to pay you.
I’ve been called before but never had to serve more than a day.  However, a grad student friend of mine was called, had already deferred once before, and is concerned that if he has to serve for an extended period, it would set his work back so that he couldn’t graduate in time, and his department told him that he can’t request another extension.
Can you be dismissed from a program for fulfilling your civic duty?
This is in the US, and the university is public if that has any bearing.
* UPDATE * - I'm really glad that I asked this question.  Today I received a summons for jury duty, and I am to appear in court at the EXACT date and time of my defense.  It can happen to you!!!
* UPDATE 2 * - Here is how I dealt with it.  I told my advisor that I had been called and asked if he would contact someone in the university administration to write an official letter asking to excuse me from jury duty on that day.  A few days later, I was given a letter to that effect.  The county I live in has a Jury Commission where you can go and "plead your case" to be excused.  I went to the Jury Commission and brought my letter, at which time they asked me when I would be able to serve.  I gave alternate dates (after my planned deposit date ;-) ), which they accepted.  The Jury Commission really appreciated that I had brought an official letter from the administration, as they had received excuse letters from doctoral student's advisors, and rejected them.  Having something from the university administration itself carries much more weight.  Thankfully, it all worked out!

You should specify whether you want an answer based on the law (for which Law.SE might be better, and in the US it depends on state law, so name the state), based on university policy (he'll have to read his), or common academic practice.  It's rare for people to have jury duty last more than a couple of days, and if he's already so far behind that this means the difference between graduating and not, it would be hard to argue he was really dismissed "for" going to jury duty.

his department told him that he can’t request another extension. Did they tell him that as a general statement or specifically in the context of him being called for jury duty? I suspect that even if they meant it as a general statement they might be more flexible for what are considered unavoidable special situations, e.g., an illness, a pregnancy, or (by a plausible interpretation) jury duty. He should ask them specifically about this if he hasn't already done so.

If he is truly at risk of being dismissed from the graduate program because of the jury duty, he should mention this to the judge during the jury selection. It's then practically guaranteed that the judge will dismiss him from jury duty based on a hardship. I have seen people (including many students) granted jury duty dismissals based on much more trivial situations that they claimed were a hardship.

This is pure anecdote but I was summoned for jury duty as an undergraduate and the first question during voir dire was my occupation. The judge asked whether I was being deprived of learning by being there and said I could be dismissed if I wanted. All on the judge's initiative and didn't even have to claim a "hardship".

Serving on a jury is considered a crucial civic duty - I think it would be extremely damaging for any university to directly or indirectly punish a student for serving on a jury.
That said, it is possible that an institution could disagree with how much jury duty impacts your friend. It would be quite another thing for a school to dismiss a student because they missed a specific date of class, but that is different than a project that is worked on over years. That is, they would not be dismissing them for participation as a juror, but for insufficient progress during all the other time they didn't spend on a jury, deciding that the time spent on a jury was not substantial enough to impact performance. Serving on a jury for 1 week wouldn't require a university to give another semester-long extension.
Assuming you are referring to the U.S.: it might depend on your local government, but it can be possible to defer more than once or to be excused entirely if the courthouse agrees. There is often a limit but in places I have lived it was not limited to once.
Usually the phrasing for getting deferred is something along the lines of "undue hardship" or "extreme inconvenience" which certainly applies to a graduate student nearing the end of their program.
If your friend can't defer and has to report, there are also at least some anecdotes and rumors that academics are likely to be rejected from juries for a number of reasons, though I am not aware of any social scientific study of this phenomenon. I would also add that long jury service for anyone is pretty rare - most court cases are fairly simple, and jurors may not even serve on a case if they are not selected or there is not a large number of jury trials during the time of service.
I am not aware of laws that protect grad students specifically, but this is really a question to ask a lawyer rather than Academia.SE. There might be local laws that effectively count grad students as protected employees, but I think it's likely to be a gray area due to the temporary and not-really-employee status of grad students. More likely, your institution or graduate school has some of their own policies regarding jury duty - I would suggest you or your friend consult those policies.


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Recommended tools for graphs and charts
I have seen a couple of images in several papers like those attached below. These images are really expressive also nice i.e. look very scientific. I have no idea how to generate such images since I have in the past used powerpoint/excel. I'd appreciate some pointers on the tools for generating such images or even better ones.
UPDATE Just to clarify about duplicated question(s), this question is quite specific to graphs like those that combine several features concisely into a line /bar graph or scatter plot e.t.c. (as provided in the attached images). Some similar questions e.g. this one is about illustrations as seen in the answers provided. I think my question is different, so are the answers provided different from those in the referenced question.

@Loong ok, thanks for letting me know, although those aren't my images. I will consider your advise while preparing mine:).

@SyCode I wouldn't take that advice too seriously - it's not wrong, but the style guide of whatever you're publishing in is the most important thing at the end of the day. For example, the first article I found with similar figures in PRL (a top-tier physics journal) uses this format https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.212501#fulltext

As a side note: the top recommendations, such as R and Python, use open source libraries like gnuplot, Tcl /  gTk and others.

Mathematica can do spectacular things, but it's complicated and expensive

Well, please don't try to generate a graph that looks like that first one ...

The alleged duplicate question is not about graphs and charts but about illustrations in general. These are very different use cases, which require different tools, as can be seen from the answers in both threads.

@henning  I completely agree with you, I hope this is also clear for others.The questions and answers are completely different.

SyCode, if you want to know more about what @Loong is saying, you can have a look at this answer of mine.

@MassimoOrtolano I like your answer, it is very comprehensive, many thanks for pointing me to it. I haven't looked so much into these standards but I agree about how important they are and the need to adhere as much as possible to the outlined conventions.

There are quite a few options here, with varying levels of user-friendliness. Some I have used are:

Grace: Quite simple to use, you input values through a *.dat file, and can manipulate plots through a GUI. I think it's Unix OS only (Linux, MacOS). Speculation: The figures in the question look like they were made in Grace.
gnuplot: Works on Windows as well as Linux and Mac. A little bit more of a step up in difficulty, as you are manipulating figures either through a script or in a terminal/command prompt.
Matplotlib: Also works on Windows, Linux and (probably) Mac. Requires some knowledge of Python, since it is a Python package. Also generates figures through a script or IPython console. Found this to be a bit easier than gnuplot. Very good documentation.

I also tried gnuplot before, though it has a lot of features it requires some technical knowledge as you mentioned. I am trying out matplotlip , though I have very sparse python knowledge. Grace is completely new to me. Do you know if matplotlip can produce the graphs above ?

Matplotlib can certainly do scatterplots and line plots. Matplotlib is a bit more well documented than the other two, and more widely used (I think), so sites like StackOverflow will accept questions on it, and you even have a decent chance of getting an answer.

To me the examples in the question look like from Matplotlib.

The font and the symbols used look like Grace to me. Could be wrong.

I will try out matplotlib, also helpful to also improve my python skills. I also like the possibility of getting answers to questions from stackoverflow.com e.

The R language has a number of libraries to produce clean looking graphs, for example ggplot2.
The example below was made with the galluvial extension for ggplot2, one of many extensions that allow animation, interactive graphs, and more.

BTW there are several R packages which extend ggplot2 to allow animation, interactive graphs, and more

@Carl Witthoft thanks, added.

Slightly tangential: When it comes to the aesthetics of the output, the main advantage of the more technical tools recommended in other answers, over Excel and similar programs, is that they have better defaults.  It is possible to create good-looking charts with Excel, LibreOffice, etc., if you know all of the things you need to tweak.  In order to learn what those things are, I recommend these books:

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, E. Tufte (the sequels are also useful, but not as much)
Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction, K. Healy
The Grammar of Graphics, L. Wilkinson
Preparing Scientific Illustrations, M. Briscoe (thanks @henning).

Reading these books will also help you get the most out of something like gnuplot or ggplot2.

Good book list, but I disagree that you can get decent charts out of Excel.  You can't even generate multiple-input spaced bar charts.  It's really a mess.

@henning Added, thank you.  I've only heard of that one, not read it myself.

@CarlWitthoft Indeed Excel can't do complicated things, but I'm pretty sure I could replicate OP's example scatter plot and line chart in Excel if I really had to.

I might add "Storytelling with Data" by Cole Neussbaumer-Knaflic. It focuses more on business oriented graphs, but some of the insights transfer well.

LaTeX offers numerous packages, e.g., pgfplots.

The drawback to LaTeX is that you can't really do real-time data processing and graph generation in one swell foop.

@CarlWitthoft In the end, your paper is going to be written in Latex, so you have the problem of interfacing whatver produces your data with Latex anyway. Producing a plot and exporting it to Latex as pdf is not that much different from producing a table, exporting it to Latex as .csv, and then plotting it with Pgfplots.

@Federico Poloni that's where Knitr/Sweave comes in: "Sweave enables the embedding of R code within LaTeX documents to generate a PDF file that includes narrative and analysis, graphics, code, and the results of computations".

@FedericoPoloni and if you don't want to go full knitr, you can also have your R output synced somewhere (e.g. Github) and have your Latex program pick it up from there (e.g. on compilation). The syncing possibilities are endless (and not limited to R). Indeed, this also goes for many other things like citation (e.g. source library in the cloud, Latex syncs with that, etc.).

Although it might possibly be true as some of the answers and comments state that good graphics can be produced in Excel, there is one very big downside to using Excel for scientific graphics. The major downside is that it is very easy to make mistakes in an Excel spreadsheet and very difficult to see that they have been made. Auditing a spreadsheet is exceptionally challenging - you basically have to try to reproduce the results by other means. There is a way round that problem but it involves adhering to extremely strict protocols as to the construction of the spreadsheet. Since most people produce complicated spreadsheets by starting simple and adding complications, the result will generally be unauditable (other than by reproduction).
ggplot is free to use and very easy to learn.

Just to address your example specifically, the top example shows some signs of having been generated by MATLAB.
MATLAB has documentation about how to make such a plot here.
To add a little more completeness, if you know JavaScript and are looking to make a very unique visualization D3 is a nice choice that has a reasonably friendly API but gives the user very fine grained control.

Matlab also has export_fig (uses opengl painters to achieve superior appearance) and matlab2tikz (writes matlab figures to a tex file with tikz script) on the file exchange.

Excel can be used to create most graphics.  It can be a bit click-y, but for one-off graphics, Excel is often the fastest way to create a custom graphic if you already know how to use it.  The trick is to not accept Excel's defaults, so it doesn't look like out-of-the-box Excel junk that can be spotted from a mile away.
The one below was created in about 15 minutes (including making up data):

"Excel can be used to create most graphics" is quite a strong statement that is demonstrably not true. While it can create many standard types of graphs, it is limited in how it comsumes data and how it renders the charts. We have a number of other plotting libraries (D3, matplotlib, ggplot, altair, etc) for not least the reason that Excel is limited in what types of charts it can produce.

@ako I would argue most graphics are standard types of graphs.  The examples in this question are standard types of graphs.  I'm simply trying to demonstrate that Excel charts can be formatted to look 'scientific,' like the graphs in question.

There are different software is used to design creative graphics. Graphics are basically a visual representation of colors. Some of the software are as follows:

Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe After Effects
These are some amazing software that graphic designers used to design a 2d and 3d eye catchy creative designs.

Sure, but they're more suited for graphics than graphs, aren't they?

I'm a big fan of GraphPad Prism as I am not as skilled in the python, R or scripting in general (although I'm working on it). Prism is to me very intuitive and the GUI has all the buttons and taps for me to get the data to analyzed and then presented in a style very similar to the examples shown in the first post.

GraphPad Prism  is the most intuitive and fanciful tool I have seen so far. It is unfortunately quite pricey, even the student licence is $100 !


text:
Why was Roy Fielding's thesis on REST not adopted immediately?
Roy Fielding's thesis ( Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures  ) was not implemented/adopted immediately, was there any specific reason for this ? The thesis was submitted in 2000, however the REST architectural design became popular in the last 3/4 years. I may be wrong but that's why I like to know better. I understand that under SOA, SOAP was popular and well standardized before the REST era. Was this lapse in adoption a function of academic or industrial factors ?
Maybe the evaluation was insufficient or not convincing  enough for real world deployments. What academic lessons can be drawn from this ?

If someone claims that (s)he found something good, then that alone is not enough. Mistakes happen, even without mistakes correct conclusions given the evidence present can later proof to be incorrect. So a single publication alone is often not enough, it needs checking by others, replications, etc. before a conclusion is widely accepted. That takes time.

I do agree with you. It will be nice to know why/how SOAP was standardized and adopted rather than REST despite the thesis  from a then member of Apache Http project. Maybe we as academics can derive some lessons from this historical discourse.

It is simple : “experience is like a toothbrush, you can’t use someone else’s “...


text:
How to mention a course that you haven't taken yet in an application
I am preparing to apply for an internship that strongly favors people with CUDA-programming skills. There is a course in exactly this that I won't have taken by the time I apply for the internship, but that I will have taken before the internship starts. I don't have any experience with CUDA-programming at this point.
What are the best ways, if any, of bringing up courses that haven't yet been completed?
Note: There is a similar question on how detrimental this is, but I am seeking advice on how to handle this problem. Hope this constitutes a different question.

I understand your situation as I have been there many times. The answer really depends on the job I would say. Since you say that the job "strongly favors" but not "requires" CUDA, it can't hurt to mention that you plan to take it.
"But where do I do this?"
So depending on what is required from you as an applicant, there are a couple of places to mention your future course. If there is a cover letter then this is the ideal place to slip in the fact that you are an avid learner and plan to take and complete the course before the internship begins etc. etc. However, if it is a more informal application process that focuses mainly on a resume, then under your course work section (if you don't have one then I recommend putting one that lists all the relevant courses you have taken for the job) and next to it just list the semester you plan to take it, for example:
Intro to computing concepts, Data structures,
Operating Systems (In Progress), CUDA Programming (Fall 2015)
Feel free to put grades next to each one if they are impressive.