text:
What does success look like in undergraduate research projects?
I've fortunately gotten a placement to do supervised mathematical research over the summer. The field is probability/statistics. My research topic has already been given to me. I'm planning on asking this in my next meeting, but I'd like to gather some thoughts ahead of time on what success means in such a project.
In general, what does success look like in an undergraduate research project? The timespan is relatively short (6-8 weeks), and I'll have to learn and apply my knowledge quickly. So what does success mean? How can I ensure that measurable achievements come out of such a project? What kinds of measurable achievements are there to aim for?

One of two things will happen. You'll either pick an easy project and finish it, or pick a difficult project and not finish it. It's not always possible to know what will be easy and what will be difficult, unless you do something somebody else has done already. Even if you don't finish the project though, you won't generally fail if you write up what you did manage to do well enough. This is an undergraduate project, not a PhD!

Consider both internal and external success.
At this level and for such a short duration, external success might be quite modest and defined by your supervisor. It is probably too short to result in a publication, but anything is possible. If it is graded, that will also measure success. Even if the results aren't publishable, a written (and maybe oral) report at the end is good experience. If the supervisor is happy with the work, then you have an item for your CV when it comes time to apply to graduate school or some kinds of industry work.
In between, developing a good relationship with the supervisor is a kind of success that might help you along a bit later.
Internal success, however, can be quite broad and deep. If it introduces you to research process and if it helps you decide whether you want more of it then it is a plus. But diving quickly into a research topic and immersing yourself in it can have a profound effect on your mind. That is harder to measure objectively, but you will know it if it happens.
Getting some collaboration skills is also a good thing if it is part of the project. Teamwork is valued in lots of later career positions.

+1 for the internal success. I think there are very few people even much later in their career who do not occasionally write a paper where the prime motivation is not to get an interesting result, but simply to use it as an excuse to learn a new topic.

Nice answer Buffy. I like your mention of soft skills: Getting some collaboration skills is also a good thing if it is part of the project. Teamwork is valued in lots of later career positions.

One particular form of relevant external success is that a project supervisor or similar is very well placed to write recommendation letters for both jobs and future academic applications.  There may even be openings for further study within the same lab - taking on a promising undergrad for a placement can be a good way to recruit if there are postgrad positions coming up

I have mentored NSF funded REU students through a math bio program.
My collaborators described our experience in a paper, Using a Summer REU to Help Develop the Next Generation of Mathematical Ecologists.
Here's my answers to questions given my experiences mentoring over 3 summers over the past 7 years:

In general, what does success look like in an undergraduate research project?

For the students, learning about research through doing research.
I have had students discover they want to go to grad school.
I have also had students learn they do not want to go to grad school.
Both outcomes are successes because they positively shaped the students' lives.
An added bonus is that I have had 2 student first-authored papers from their projects.
However, the mentorship was my greatest personal success.

The timespan is relatively short (6-8 weeks), and I'll have to learn and apply my knowledge quickly. So what does success mean?

Be organized.
Plan out a schedule before you start.
We treated our REU like a mini-biology master's program for 10 weeks.

We spend about 2 weeks in a coding and math/stats/biology boot camp. This ensures all students have the skills they need.
We then gave the students a focused project, usually in groups of 2-3.
For some students, the project would take all summer.
But, they would have something to present at future meetings.
These projects could be simple questions we had about data or existing models.
Or, they might be recreating an existing paper.
We selected projects given our (the mentors' interests) that also naturally lent themselves to bigger questions.
For stronger students, these projects would springboard into bigger questions they would discover on their own.
We would spend the last 2 weeks winding down. The students would create a poster of their work. This gives them something to share at their home university. We also would send students to a national meeting to present after the REU. Also, we would do a de-brief with the student.

Throughout the REU, we would have guest speakers talk about the softer sides of science and research.
For example, we have regular speakers on careers in science and also people talking about how they got their jobs.
We also ensured our REU students' research was impactful and novel because we applied the models to new systems used by managers.
For example, we would have the students work on problems US Fish and Wildlife Service biologists could use the results from for their management.
Thus, even if the math and statistics were not new, the biological application were novel and impactful because agency biologists could use the results for decision making.

How can I ensure that measurable achievements come out of such a project? What kinds of measurable achievements are there to aim for?

Look at the paper I shared.
My collaborators did formal pre- and post-REU assessments.
These allowed them to describe how they changed students likelihood for going to grad school and learned about science.


text:
Can I publish analysis in the supporting information as another article elsewhere? Or that's self-plagiarism?
I am curious if it is acceptable to write another article based on the analysis that has already been included in the supporting information that was published together with a peer-reviewed article online.
FYI:
The supporting information was available online only but open-access.
The analysis includes descriptives, models, and a few paragraphs summarizing the model output (no literature review, methodology, discussions, conclusions, etc.)
The new article is about a brand new topic that was not discussed in the article that has already been published. I put the analysis into the supporting information because the reviewer/editor wanted a "full analysis of any variables that have been used" but then they thought the article is too long and asked me to throw the less/non-relevant model outputs into the supporting information. It is such a pity that the data and analysis could make a greater influence if published as an independent article so I wonder if it is possible to make use of the supporting information/appendix and write another article. Of course, I don't want to get myself into the trouble of self-plagiarism...
Any idea?

I would only be self-plagiarism if you fail to cite earlier work, but I doubt that is your plan.
However, an editor and reviewers will need to judge whether the new work is sufficiently new (i.e. 'novel') to warrant publication. Your judgement that it is, might differ from theirs. You can write it up and submit it, however. Just cite your earlier work.

Should I email the journal editor (or the journal editor of my published article?) to obtain their "official" permission to use the model/data? Then they'll be able to tell me more about copyright/self-plagiarism or etc...

That shouldn't be necessary unless you plan to quote extensively from things (words, phrases,...) they have published. They only have copyright over what was actually published, not the work behind it. But it still wouldn't be any form of plagiarism if you cite. Copyright is an orthogonal issue.

Thank you so much!

I've seen appendices (I work in econometrics and statistics) that are orders of magnitude longer than the articles themselves. So, assuming it's original enough, it's possible. This paper has, in the depths of its appendix, a section on differential privacy. Vishal, one of the authors on an extension to this method, has a paper drafted about it now.

Thank you Jared! My concern is the model reported in the appendix/supporting information will be the same model (or maybe I can do something to make it slightly different but it will be something similar tbh). The appendix/supporting information did not discuss variable significance or related effects or anything, you could consider it a "result" section by itself. In this case, should I be concerned if paraphrasing the "result" section and equipping it with an introduction, lit review, methodology, and discussion to make it a full article for publication?

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Arxiving accepted manuscript after publication in Elsevier/IEEE/etc
The Elsevier policies state:

Authors can share their accepted manuscript: by updating a preprint in arXiv or RePEc with the accepted manuscript

I haven’t arxived a preprint; the paper is published already; yet I’d still like to arxive the accepted version – does above sentence imply that I’m only allowed to update an existing Arxiv entry but not create a new one now?

IEEE policies have a similar phrasing:

Electronic Preprints. Before submitting an article to an IEEE publication, authors frequently post their manuscripts to their own
  web site, their employers site, or to another server that invites
  constructive comment from colleagues.Upon submission of an article to
  IEEE, an author is required to transfer copyright in the article to
  IEEE, and the author must update any previously posted version of the
  article with a prominently displayed IEEE copyright notice. Upon
  publication of an article by the IEEE, the author must replace any
  previously posted electronic versions of the article with either (1)
  the full citation to the IEEE work with a Digital Object Identifier
  (DOI) or link to the article abstract in IEEE Xplore, or (2) the
  accepted version only (not the IEEE-published version), including the
  IEEE copyright notice and full citation, with a link to the final,
  published article in IEEE Xplore.

When in doubt, you can always arxive the preprint now, and update it with the accepted manuscript a few days later.

I was recommending to look into the actual copyright agreement, but then I checked one and it contained the same weird phrasing.

In general, if arxiving pre-prints is allowed (e.g. after consulting the Sherpa/Romea database), then it doesn't matter at what stage of the publication process one arxives the pre-print, i.e. the version initially sent to the journal/conference?
Then again for post-prints arxiving may be generally allowed but the policies may contain this weird "update" phrasing -- then arxiving pre- and then post-print should be fine?
I'm trying to understand this in general, to begin arxiving from now on, but many questions (e.g. double-blind review) remain open :-)

Elsevier. Elsevier clarifies in the following news post http://www.journals.elsevier.com/theoretical-computer-science/news/manuscript-posting-in-arxiv/ which I guess then applies to the other journals employing the same Elsevier policies.
Not sure whether all publishers need to be checked individually -- haven't found specific information from IEEE.

"To submit a manuscript in arXiv, the author can either grant ArXiV the non exclusive right to distribute the article or use a CC-BY or CC-BY-NC-SA license (http://arxiv.org/help/license). Since with CC-BY-NC-ND user license, authors can grant ArXiv the right to distribute the paper, accepted articles from Elsevier’s journals can be posted on arXiv within their policy."
https://www.elsevier.com/about/company-information/policies/policy-faq
Hence, postprint can just be arxived under CC-BY?

I do not have a definitive answer, but I have considered the matter and came to the conclusion that you can only update an already arXived preprint, not arXive it fresh after publication. Note that as far as Elsevier is concerned, this is a recent change, which happened when they revised their whole copyright agreement. Thus decade long habits may not apply anymore. Or maybe they do, because if there is one clear thing, it is that Elsevier's policy has been significantly obfuscated.
However, there are some countries (France shall join them soon) where by law, one can post their postprints on a repository after an embargo whatever the copyright agreement says. Many publishers also allow this (but embargoes are several years long for some Elsevier journals, if I remember well).

My conclusion re Elsevier is, however, that one can arxiv the postprint -- see above comments and http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1155-In-Defence-of-Elsevier.html and http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1158-Openness.html.

@ManuelaRaba: sorry, edited my answer. I still don't get the "clarifications" that are, as far as I know how to read, in contradiction with their own terms. One interpretation is that they do this on purpose to be able to say they are Green Open, while scaring as many authors as possible into not sharing their articles.

Technically, you can do the following.

Submit an empty page as preprint to Arxiv. This clearly does not violate anyone's copyright.
Update the empty preprint with the accepted manuscript. This is explicitly allowed by Elsevier.
Profit!

How do you profit? That implies you are getting financial gain. Maybe "befit from sharing your research"?

@RichardErickson It's just a common internet meme/joke to add "3. ??? 4. Profit" to lists.

You cannot submit an empty page, it gets reviewed (moderated) by Arxiv exactly to filter out such submissions.

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

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


text:
Will doing my CS PhD by distance learning make it harder to get a job as a professor?
I've seen very reputable universities such as Georgia Tech and Berkley, to name a few, offering MSc degrees in Computer Science through distance learning. However, I'm not seeing the same distance learning opportunity available for PhD programs. After a Google search, I've found few well-known universities that take off-campus students - I only recall University of Florida - for PhD degrees.
I want to earn a PhD because I would like to become a Professor after that, so I want to know if doing a distance learning PhD program would harm my  employment opportunity.

To answer the "why", see Are there any aspects of PhD work that do not translate well to distance learning?

The StackExchange  way is one question per post, so I've edited out the question about assessing the quality of a distance learning PhD program; you can ask it as a separate question in a new post.

Yes, it will make it harder to get a job as a professor of computer science.
A distance learning PhD is not well suited for learning certain skills that one would learn in a traditional PhD, as described in more detail at Are there any aspects of PhD work that do not translate well to distance learning?. Some of these skills are important for getting a job as a professor and/or doing the job of a professor. For example, you would not get any teaching experience in a distance learning course, and most faculty applicants are expected to have at least some teaching experience.
Furthermore, by doing a PhD by distance learning, you miss out on a lot of the networking and exposure to other academics that happens in a good computer science PhD program. This plays a major role in getting a faculty job afterwards.
The exception to this is if you were to get a job where the PhD is necessary only as a formality. For example, if you are already so well known in your field that every university wants to hire you, but can't because their HR departments insist that faculty candidates must have a PhD, then a distance learning PhD might be sufficient.

I think it will also be beneficial if you're doing it for self development.

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


text:
Is it possible to get a master's in speech language pathology online or part-time?
I am currently looking into a possible career change as a speech language pathologist. Is it possible to get a masters in SLP online? Or are there any part time programs that would allow me time for work?

There's at least one program at the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire. It's designed as a part-time, online master's. You're required to attend 3 one-week sessions on-campus each summer over three years.
If you don't have an undergraduate degree in communication sciences and disorders, there are 30-40 credit hours of required courses - PDF before you can start the master's.


text:
How does a low quantitative score on GRE general exam affect admissions to mathematics PhD programs?
I am applying to pure math grad school for Ph.D. this fall (usually top 20-25).
I just took my GRE test and found out that my Quantitative score for General GRE is 156. I am not sure about the percentile yet for this particular exam, but this is typically around 64th percentile among GRE test-takers.
Thus, if I want to present strong applications to math grad schools like UT Austin, UCLA, Columbia, Ohio State is the quantitative score enough?
The rest of my application is decent with about (3.7 gpa), research and publication. However I scored in the lower end of 600 for math gre. As you can tell I have high anxiety before such tests but I would like to avoid bringing up this point in my application as I am sure that the admission committee sees reason like this on its applications a lot.

Are you applying to masters or PhD programs? Applied or pure mathematics?

@OswaldVeblen: Would you please be able to post a link of the answer? I have tried to search for general gre quantitative scores for math grad school but didnt come up with any results

@ff524: It is for pure math Ph.D.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13678/19607

Unsurprisingly, mathematics PhD applicants are rumored to have very high GRE general test quantitative scores.
I found a few links by web search where PhD programs list the average GRE scores for their students. (Everyone, please feel free to edit this to add more.)

Penn State: https://www.math.psu.edu/grad/phd/faq.php
Duke: http://gradschool.duke.edu/about/statistics/mathematics-phd-admissions-and-enrollment-statistics
U Penn: http://www.math.upenn.edu/grad/graddata.html
U Maryland Applied Math and Statistics: http://www.amsc.umd.edu/join_us/faq.html#Tests3
Georgia Tech: http://www.math.gatech.edu/academics/graduate/faqs-graduate-admissions#MINGRE

These sites all show average quantitative GRE score is in the high 160s, which corresponds to about the 90th percentile (which was around 795 out of 800 on the old scale). So, if these statistics are accurate, the rumors are true.

Now, for the more personal side of the question. You asked if the scores are "enough". Most schools have no firm minimum score. If you have sufficiently good credentials, you can overcome the low GRE score. What you will need, certainly, are very good letters of recommendation.
I would include a statement about anxiety in your personal statement, because even if the committee has heard it before, they haven't heard it from you.
You may also want to make sure you have diversified your applications: don't just apply to top-25 departments. There are a lot of perfectly fine schools lower in the rankings, which may not be as broadly strong but which may be strong in particular areas of interest to you.

Thanks for the stats. If possible I will try to retake the test. Would you recommend including about anxiety in my personal statement or should I let one of my recommenders know and ask him if he can mention it in the recommendation?

I think that is up to you, but it is very appropriate to put it in your personal statement. My thought is that the committee will not be able to even think about taking it into account if you don't mention it. If you do mention it, you can't guarantee how much it will matter, but I don't think it will count against you given the test score. The fundamental situation is: if your test scores match their averages, then they don't help or hurt your application, but if they are lower than average you want other aspects of the application to be stronger to compensate.


text:
Can I lose my job over writing a negative comment on (anonymous) faculty evaluation of institution?
I'm faculty and I work at a place that does faculty evaluations of our institution. I wrote a pretty harsh, but true comment on the back. While it's supposed to be anonymous, I'm still afraid it could be traced back to me. I know, it was a dumb move, but it didn't occur to me that writing the comment would be. Do you think I will lose my job over it? Maybe another dumb question, but I'm stressing right now.

I know, it was a dumb move — [citation needed]

If it's true, and is not obviously discriminatory or malicious (etc) then why should there be a problem? The very purpose of anonymous evaluations is to get an honest opinion.

I hope so. It's just there's a whole "good old boy" system here and lots of people have done some really academically dishonest things for decades. I'm the fresh blood and I'm having to clean a lot of it up, but not without some resistance from the good old boys.

The true anonymity of "anonymous evaluations" is a key issue (in academia and also in the workplace).  If you say an evaluation is anonymous, can you later take them to task for something they wrote that you regard as problematic?
This happened at my university a few years back.  Student course evaluations are done electronically now, and they are said to be anonymous.  However, one student "contributed" an anonymous evaluation which criticized their instructor for their sexual orientation.  The university IT staff got involved, did in fact trace the evaluation back to the student, and the student was prosecuted for it.  In particular, IIRC their name was made public (I read about this in the university paper!) and they may have had to write a letter of apology.
This is a good problem for an ethics class: should the university have done this?  After reflecting about it for a while, my feeling is that the university did behave unethically: not by tracking down a comment that violates rules of university conduct (not to mention the rules and conventions of civilized society about treatment of minority), but by not being open with the students that the anonymity in the evaluations was meant as a policy decision, not a factual description of the way the technology is implemented.  They could have designed the system so that university IT staff would have no way -- or at least, no standard, built-in way-- of tracking it back to its origin.
Anyway: yes, it is probably technically possible that the evaluation can be traced back to you.  The moral of the above story is that unless you specifically know and trust the mechanisms that prevent that, you should regard the anonymity as being at the level of policy -- i.e., you are honorbound not to act on the knowledge of the identity -- rather than a true lack of knowledge of the writer's identity.
As for the rest, you ask:

Do you think I will lose my job over it? Maybe another dumb question, but I'm stressing right now.

That doesn't sound like a dumb question for you.  However, in my opinion it's  "a dumb question" (rather, an unfruitful one) to ask us.  We don't know:

Who you are, and what are the conditions of your employment.
Where you work, and who your colleagues are.
What you wrote.

Without this information, our best guess at the answer is nowhere near as good as yours.  I understand that because of your closeness to the situation and reasonable anxiety, it may be hard for you to view objectively.  I suggest that you confide in someone you can trust and who is closer to the situation.

@Trevor Wilson asked:

Was it this case: nytimes.com/2008/01/20/magazine/20wwln-ethicist-t.html ? If so, it sounds like the evaluation was handwritten.

Nice find!  I checked it out a bit, and...I think it is likely that this is the same case, and that it was long enough ago (longer than I thought) that I am not quite remembering the particulars.  It is also interesting that this made "Ask an Ethicist"...and the Ethicist said very much what I said above.  Adding to the irony,  I suppose I am now criticizing my university a bit by weighing in on this.  I think they can take it.

Was it this case: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/20/magazine/20wwln-ethicist-t.html ?  If so, it sounds like the evaluation was handwritten.

Thanks for your insight. It's really great to see the issue from this perspective.


text:
Does posting papers on Academia.edu count as publishing?
Does posting papers on websites such as Academia.edu or ResearchGate count as "publishing" for the sake of future journal submission? That is, if I have uploaded my paper to Academia.edu, can I later submit it to a journal that wants only "previously unpublished" work?

Every field is different. In math, no. In chemistry, yes.

What about the humanities?

@SAH usually the journal you will want to publish to has this policy outlined in their "guide to authors".

@SAH - Publishers in the humanities tend to be very conservative.

ROMEO is a compilation of journal policies regarding this. You can check your favourite journal there.

Since nobody wrote it in an answer, I'll do it: the answer to your question depends on the journal, but in each field most journal would have about the same policy.
In some fields (e.g. mathematics, high energy physics), the answer is 'no': posting a preprint in Academia.edu, the arXiv, or on your web page does not prevent you to have your work published by a journal. Many publishers will even allow you to update your public preprint according to the referee's comments, only keeping the publisher-formated version behind a paywall (not all of them though:  Oxford University Press has a very damaging policy in this regard).
In other fields (e.g. some humanities at least in some countries, chemistry) the answer is often 'yes': many journal would reject your paper right away on the ground that it already has been "published" in the sense of being made public. Even if they don't check, they may ask you to pledge that you did not published the material previously in that broad sense, and lying on these kind of issue may be devastating to a career.
In other circumstances, the answer may be more subtle. Some very prestigious magazines as Nature, Science, PNAS may ask for some publications that the authors keep them secret until the journals communicates about the work. This is to ensure maximum media coverage, but of course it concerns only the very small portion of academic works that is considered both as very important for the field, and of great interest of a general audience.

I wouldn't publish my papers on a website that everyone can see before it is actually published in a journal or a conference. Someone else may claim ownership and there is nothing you can do about it
In any case, assuming you did  publish it on either website, you can still publish it in any journal or conference as long as you honor any copyright rules or guidelines.

Thanks. Couple things: 1) Re: "Someone else may claim ownership and there is nothing you can do about it"  -- One does attain a sort of de-facto copyright on one's work as long as one can prove that one did it first. In this case, the publication date on Academia.edu is a kind of safeguard

"You can still publish it in any journal" -- But will the journals be just as willing to accept it?

Repeat after me: "The best way to prevent theft of your work is to disseminate it as widely as possible, so everybody knows you wrote it."

@ff524 Please make this an answer, so we can upvote ;-) One needs to be careful that the intended journal has no problem with preprints (via arxiv or whatever) but I don't know many journals that have.

@choener It's not an answer to the question, since the question is not about theft, but about copyright guidelines.

@ff524 true ... reading is an advanced skill. ;-) So we end with 'depends on the journal'.

Copyright violation is too stealing!

I believe anyone can upload anything to Academia.edu or ResearchGate, so publishing in these websites in not an 'official' way of publishing.
"But will the journals be just as willing to accept it? " This depends on the journal.

@SAH It's not just de facto -- if you've made the work available to the public, you have an automatic actual copyright on it.

@cpast If I understand correctly, the copyright only actually applies to the words though, not the ideas. Someone stealing the ideas and writing them up as their own would be plagiarism, but I think perhaps not against the copyright.


text:
I have just started a PhD and my university expects me to present a conference paper, but I don't know what's expected
I have started doing a Ph.D recently. I am working on "Generalized inverse of Matrices and its Applications". And my university is asking me to present a paper in a conference, at least to show the progress on the work.
As you know, getting a result for a paper (within six months of starting a Ph.D) is not that easy, without understanding the basics properly.
Now I have to present a paper or a poster in a conference or in a workshop.
I don't know about the standard of conference papers or what is expected. What is expected of a conference paper?

Can you give me reason for the downvote??

Is it explicitly written somewhere in the rules that you have to publish something in the first six months itself? i.e. is it a rule, or a convention?

It is not a rule.. but my guide and doctral commity is forcing to do that..


text:
Why are papers accepted even if they don't release code or data to allow reproducibility?
Recently, we had a lecture about Reproducible research on of the slides was:

Reproducibility: start from the same samples/data, use the same methods,   get the same results.
Replicability: conduct again the experiment with independent samples and/or   methods to get confirmatory results.

Replicability = Reproducibility + Conduct experiment again

Replicability might be challenging in epidemiology (recruit again a cohort) or   molecular biology (complex cell manipulation).
Reproducibility should be a minimum standard. One should strive to at least make his/her   own research reproducible.

I find many articles that use software and when they hint what kind of analysis did they don't provide the code nor the data. There are public free ways of storing data and code of studies, and even with a DOI.
So far, I thought that some data might not be freely available because it has some private information (my field is bioinformatics), or the authors intend to use it for further investigations and want to keep for themselves the data.
The same happens with the code is the intellectual property of the lab or principal investigator, but retaining the rights of the code don't goes against the replicability.
Why are these papers accepted and publicized, even if they don't allow reproducibility?
Related: Reproducible Studies? and an example of the problem it causes Can up to 70% of scientific studies not be reproduced?.
Edit:
Some other papers about replicability: 1, 2.

Excel case: in this paper we can see an example. Reviewers of Growth in a Time of Debt estimated
(note that this is not measurable/checkable afirmation) that the
analysis could bring the results presented.
(I couldn't find a description of the methods used for the analysis on the paper, but it is a different field of mine and I have skimmed through).
But in new methods without prior experience/validation how can one estimate it without looking to the analysis itself?
And in "old" methods, how bad would be to share them if they are already checked?
"Understand why replicability is important, and you'll understand
which guidelines and rules should be applied, and how to deal with
research where guidelines are skipped.":
Replicability is important because science is about finding objective mesurable relations. This makes the relationship independent of who performs the study. But this can be discussed/answered on another question :)
I am aware that we do our mistakes, (see my other question here on academia), but we should aim for the best behavior and the best science.
"Put another way, there are finite resources so the more you rerun
the same code the less scientific progress you make overall"
I don't think that we make less scientific progress overall rerunning the same code. Checking that we know for sure that A is true is far better than work for 3 years or more and then discover that A was wrong.
How many finite resources are/were used on studies based on those the ALS Therapy Development Institute couldn't replicate?
At the same time the induced pluripotent cells were hard to reproduce and replicate, but this isn't a software based, or the recent example of @tpg2114, 3 years to replicate their own study in 4 new settings.
Quality of academic software when sharing it, here it seems that it is better to share the awful, crapy code rather than hide it.
Necessity of the reviewer of the code and data was answered here. In short:

Of course, the degree to which a referee is expected to verify the correctness of results varies greatly between fields. But you can always choose a personal standard higher than what's usual in your field. Just realize that good refereeing takes a significant time investment.

It seems that the comments are extending, and from the answers it seems that it is not the job of the reviewers or the journals, it might be a job for the reader (and of no one), or it doesn't worth it to make articles reproducible because it is too hard.

You might be interested in this news article and the resulting preprint paper. Basically, reproducing numerical results is really darn tricky and can be thwarted by things way outside of anybody's control, like compilers and hardware.

Interesting reading! That's one of the reasons why I think recalculating the software experiments after some time (with the newer versions in hardware and software) increase robustness of the results and the objectivity of the findings. But in this case is replicability what's under compromise. "Exhaustive documentation during the process of
computational research is key"

In my field, I think that as time goes by, publishers do require that more and more. They encourage reproducibility, but it's not a necessity. From a researcher's standpoint, I can understand it, since there is a major difference between using my code to produce results, and publishing it for public usage. It takes time and effort. However, authors have a very significant incentive to publish codes - it increases the number of citations, since then people can compare conveniently. Papers that don't provide any means of reproduction have a bigger chance of being forgotten...

Presumably, on the other side of @yoki's comment, one factor is that historically it wasn't feasible to publish all data obtained.

There are multiple answers to your question.

Academic publishing assumes good faith. At least in the circles where the majority of people are genuinely interested in the advancement of science. This is the only viable mode of sharing scientific information between adults, although it sometimes fail as we all know it. Publishing should firstly serve the purpose of communicating results in a fast and convenient manner and second provide some sort of quality control.
Sharing code and data is not a necessary condition for a study to be reproducible. It surely lowers the threshold of work that has to be done by other groups to reproduce the results, but clear and comprehensive descriptions of the methods and algorithm, as well as how the data was gathered, suffice. In fact, it's even better since starting from scratch will avoid the reproduction of results that are due to artifacts in the implementation or the original data.
Acceptance standards vary vastly between journals. Nowadays anything can be "accepted and publicized" providing you pay the "article processing charge". The question is where was it published and by whom. The most prestigious journals in my field have strict guidelines about the study design and sharing of materials and methods, the other ones don't.

If it assumes good faith why do we bother reviewing articles? Good faith doesn't imply reproducibility. 2) Usually journals don't allow enough space for a comprehensive description of the code. 3) True...

@Llopis Peer review is fundamentally not about catching cheaters. The basic Modus Operandi of peer review is (1) author describes faithfully what (s)he did and what results have been obtained (2) reviewer judges the validity of this method and the interestingness and relevance of the results. Basically, peer review does not work without good faith (on both sides).

@Llopis If you as a reviewer would start from a position of deep distrust, every review would essentially need a full replication study.

How can I judge a method if I don't know it with the implementation?  Maybe the method is correct but the implementation is not right.

@Llopis If you review at least 5-10 papers a year (which is not much for an average researcher) would you be able to install 5-10 code sources and datasets on your PC and run them to see if the author is correct? And then repeat the statistical analysis the authors do? And then repeat again after a major revision? This is simply not feasible

@Alexandros Usually I install on my own laptop 2-10 packages each week without counting those which I update... Usually each time I analyse code I don't need to install a package but use the code of that package or the code of someone analysis. The point of having the code is precisely to automatize the statistical analysis of the authors, so I shouldn't do something after running the code. I doubt the code would take longer than 1 day to run, in which case is feasible to do it (if it isn't then at least I have tried and can see if there is any flaw in the code).

@Llopis "I doubt the code would take longer than 1 day to run" I don't think so http://www.nature.com/news/two-hundred-terabyte-maths-proof-is-largest-ever-1.19990

"It took the team about 2 days running 800 processors in parallel" thus just 2 days with the supercomputer, but I was thinking in my field, so right, reviewers can't check this unless they have a supercomputer available :)

@Llopis if you're reviewing and find a method to be sketchy to the point that you doubt it can produce the presented results, then by all means ask for clarifications or the code. If you find the methods to be sound ans appropriate and you're passionate about the subject and you have the time and resources to put it to the test, go ahead and publish your replication or contradictory study.

@Llopis my last manuscript in Bioinformatics has over a year of CPU time just for the results shown. I happily share the code, but I think rerunning everything is out of scope (and it is costly, we have only so much time in the computer clusters).

@Llopis this said, you won't get new results by rerunning my code, since, well, the output is what I coded, but by making the code available you can study the implementation, use it for your own studies, and build upon it. Way too many papers have hand waved methods, secret or unspecified databases, and underspecified features, like "13 biochemical properties".

@Davidmh Great! I knew that the protein structure prediction take some time. I would like to have a look on the code (I have an assignment with rosetta...). I know it is costly but it is even costlier not checking your results! But I don't understand what you want to say with your last sentence.

@Llopis we don't have infinite time in the clusters, only a few hundred thousand hours a month. If we were to re-run everything we review, we would run out of time for our own research.

Regarding point 3 above: in my experience standards for disclosure of materials/methods is not consistently more stringent at high-profile "glamour" journals than at most other venues. Even if a journal has guidelines about disclosure of methods and data, the extent to which these are enforced depends a lot on the editor and reviewers upon whose lap your manuscript falls. Still a lot of cultural and generational differences in what is perceived as important with respect to reproducibility.

Sometimes reproducing results is as much work as producing them. If I give you my code, you not only have to check whether it gives the results I published, but also whether it is correct. Reading poorly written code is a pain, so it might be easier for you to write it in your style again. Also I might have used a language like Fortran or some obscure computer algebra system.
The same is true for certain computations, in particular if they involve a lot of case distinctions, or if there are many different ways to obtain the result.
So I would leave the reproduction to the reader if I have the feeling that my guidance would not be helpful. The problem with this view is of course that it is open to rationalizations: Writing the code in a reader friendly way is too much work, so I invent a reason not to have to do it. Preventing this would be the job of the reviewer, but why should they be less lazy than me?

+1 In my experience, the main reason people don't share their code is because said code is poorly written.

Even poorly code is better than no code in my opinion. At least one get some sense of the functions one use or how they are used anf if the results are obtained this way. This is enterly different from discussing the methods which would requiere in depth knowledge of the code

@Llopis: I have listed some possible practical obstacles to publishing one's code in another question (several of which could be called facets of "poorly written").

@Llopis No, actually providing bad code hurts anyone who wants to replicate. Just running the same code is not replicating or reproducing results - it's more like watching a video of the experiment. Sure, it can point out a blatant mistake, but in general - you still want to do it yourself to be sure if you're skeptical. And code can have subtle flaws that are not part of the method (but rather part of the implementation). No amount of eyeballing is going to catch that - you either have to perform full analysis (and that's a huge task), or write it yourself...

...[cont] Unfortunately the human brain tends to replicate solutions it already saw. So if you are writing a similar thing yourself to test, you will invariably borrow ideas or constructions (and possibly flaws) from the code that you already read. This is something that has been known for centuries (although not applied to programming obviously). So unless you are talking about a paper where the actual implementation, rather than method matters (algorithmic real-world performance, for example), giving your bad code along with your paper does not help, but rather hurts.

On top of the existing answers regarding the current state of reproducibility in peer review, it is important to consider that norms regarding reproducibility are rapidly changing in peer review and publication among:
Peer reviewers
The Center for Open Science endorses a standard disclosure request that you can add to any peer review
    to request that the authors provide minimal information on
    reproducibility:

I request that the authors add a statement to the paper confirming
  whether, for all experiments, they have reported all measures,
      conditions, data exclusions, and how they determined their sample
      sizes. The authors should, of course, add any additional text to
      ensure the statement is accurate. This is the standard reviewer
      disclosure request endorsed by the Center for Open Science [see
      http://osf.io/hadz3]. I include it in every review.

I use this myself and have found that at least a handful of journal
    editors will press the authors on this front.
Journal Editors

Several top journals in psychology are leading the way in terms of incentivizing replication-friendly publications by providing
"badges" indicating that the paper has released raw data, had
its protocol preregistered, and/or has released study materials.
Recent empirical evidence has suggested that such incentives are
effective.
Numerous journals now require a statement about whether data are publicly available, or an explanation of why they cannot be made so (e.g., due to sensitive information). There are too many to list, but here's a commendable example from Science:

After publication, all data and materials necessary to understand,
  assess, and extend the conclusions of the manuscript must be available
  to any reader of Science. All computer codes involved in the creation
  or analysis of data must also be available to any reader of Science.
  After publication, all reasonable requests for data or materials must
  be fulfilled.

Authors
Even when submitting to a journal that does not have any requirements regarding reproducibility, some authors are choosing to make this information conspicuous anyway. On my own papers, I now add a "Research Transparency" statement before the Acknowledgments, saying simply:

All raw data, materials, and R code are publicly available at [my
  Open Science Framework repository URL].

I also say something to this effect in my cover letters when submitting papers. These voluntary disclosures may help promote new community norms, hopefully eventually making poor disclosure a red flag rather than the status quo. In fact, I experienced a small example of this when a reviewer recently commented:

I appreciate the authors [sic] releasing all their data and protocols
  online.

It's often technically difficult to recreate the same runtime as another person used, so the code may not do the same thing on your machine. In practice, we're usually not talking about tested, portable, production quality software. You may need a certain operating system, certain libraries to be installed, the correct compiler or interpreter version etc.
Reproducible computation is something the SciPy community was deeply interested in a few years ago, and seemed close to getting a handle on. I'm not sure how far they've come since (I'm not a scientist, so it was off my radar), but I know it was an important issue for IPython Dev, and Continuum Analytics were working on it as well.
You need to share the whole setup, maybe as a machine image for Amazon Web Services, or use Docker or something like that. You basically do your work in VMs, then share whatever people need to reproduce the VM.

Yes, I am aware of such solutions. Usually Docker is used to catch the environment where software is developed and tested in industry. Precisely because such technical solutions of using a fixed environment and the analysis (Ipython for python, sweave and knitr in R,...) exists I am concerned about not sharing neither the data nor the code, which under my point of view would be the minimum. However I am afraid your insights don't answer the question.


text:
Do I have to explicitly seek permission from Professor before audio-recording his lecture?
Similar questions (privacy/ethical point of view,generic legal point of view) have been asked before but I am looking an answer from a legal standpoint specific to the state of New York.
I am a Masters Student and one of those who find it very difficult to concentrate in the class. During my last semester, I started using recorded(by the University) lectures for exam preparation and found this way to be way more effective (in terms of marks obtained in exams) and time efficient as compared to actually attending the lecture. During this semester, I am enrolled in a subject where lectures are not recorded. I specifically want to do well in this subject and therefore want to have audio recordings of the lecture. But I am afraid that if I seek the Professor's permission, my gut feeling says that I might not get it(I don't want to dot down my reasons here as I want the discussion to be focused) and of course lose my chance to record lectures in the future. This is a public university in the State of New York.
Can anyone tell me if I were to record his lecture without seeking his permission, will I be breaking the law?

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it is asking about the law rather than about academia.

I believe this is off-topic here, as this pertains strictly to the legality of this action, which can only be accurate to this specific state, and further may vary by additional contract as part of your student agreement. It seems like you would be best advised to speak with a lawyer, and your University may even have an attorney they work with that can give you low cost/free legal advice. Otherwise this may be a pretty simple consultation with a local lawyer, which itself might even be free, or at least low cost.

This site is not open for legal questions. In some universities, having a disability accepted by the disability office will explicitly permit you to get a recording of the lecture. However, in any other case, it will be - if not matter of law - then matter of elementary courtesy to ask for permission. And yes, if it is not granted and there is no official university-wide arrangement for recordings, you should not be recording the lecture.

It appears that New York City allows you to record it as long as you are in the lecture. However, it does come down to school policy as the website pointed out: "Tape recording shall be permitted for individual private study only at the discretion of the instructor." It would be best to check ahead of time with your professor. I see no issue with it, especially if it's meant to help with your studies.

The link you provide suggests the opposite of your description (it says you are "probably OK" to record in single-party consent states, which itself isn't very reassuring when applicable to a possible felony), which is...well, confusing, at best.

@BrianDHall You are correct. I did more research and edited my answer.

Two issues:
Professors own a copyright on their teaching materials, including lectures and powerpoints. Technically, copying the material without permission would be a violation. It's unlikely you'd be charged and even less likely that you'd lose, but it's an issue for the second...
Which is that your conduct may be a violation of your campus code of conduct. If your professor does not allow you to record his/her lectures and you do it anyway, then you would be in violation.
tl;dr: Don't do it. The legal issues are less important that the possibility that you could found to have a code of conduct violation and separated temporarily or permanently from the university.

I'm not sure if copyright actually applies to recordings made for private use. Some evidence for this may improve the answer.

Oh, so I can copy Photoshop if it's just for my private use? Cool.

No, but Photoshop is a bad analogy, since there's no recording process involved. A more suitable analogy would be making notes during the lecture. If I can write down notes so fast that I can capture the complete lecture (stenography), this would be a copyright violation as well, then.


text:
Can I put details of evaluations results in the Appendix?
I'm about to send a paper about performance optimization in the field of Cloud computing. My target conference has a limit of 10-pages for the main section with unlimited pages for appendixes/references. My question is whether it's a good idea to move small details of my evaluation results to the Appendixes (to save some pages for other stuff), or it's better to somehow fit them in the main section?
My current plan is to keep key important evaluation results in the main section (maybe only 1 or 2 graphs) and move every other messy stuff to the appendix, including comparison graphs, evaluation parameters, extracted latency/throughput data, and most importantly, details of scenarios that I considered for the evaluation.
Is this a good idea?
P.S: My adviser (who is far more experienced) is against this idea. He says: "you should only put things into Appendixes that if a reader misses them, they can still exactly understand what you did in your paper (e.g., proofs of theorems). Evaluation results are not in this category, and they need to be put in the main section." Of course, I agree with this argument, but my question is specifically about whether small details of evaluation experiments fit in this category or not.

Putting some nonessential details into the appendix is fair. The scenarios you considered are surely not nonessential.

@lighthousekeeper Alright. For scenarios, I'll keep explanation of scenarios in the main part. What about the details of the evaluation results? I have 3-4 pages of results (numbers/charts/graphs) for ~200 different scenarios that I tested to make sure my model is accurate.

If it's not possible to put all these details in the paper, you might have to do some compromises. Include the details that are most important for your story: anything that is suitable for giving an "overview", and interesting individual cases. Put everything else into the appendix.

@lighthousekeeper Makes a lot sense. Thanks for your advice, I'll appreciate it if you elaborate a bit more as an answer.

I can elaborate more in an answer, but I'm not sure what to add on top of what I wrote in my comments. Do you have any further questions?

@lighthousekeeper I can see from your profile that you are a professor in CS. As a dummy example, let's imagine you proposed a method for optimizing home wireless network speed. To evaluate the efficiency of your method with the situation that your method is not used, let's say you need to run a bunch of experiments in various scenarios. In the main section of your paper (e.g. in the evaluation section), of course, you will include high-level results/comparison, but would you also include details of your experiments (extra tables/numbers/graphs), or you prefer to include them in the appendix?

My general strategy is to have as many details in the paper as possible. Usually it's not possible to have all the details in the paper, due to page limits. The details that didn't make the cut then go to the appendix.

@lighthousekeeper thanks. Imagine another scenario, let's say there is no page limitation in the main section to include all the details: would you still include a handful of ugly, messy, big-fat-ass, half-page/full-page tables full of numbers in the main section (or you would include them in the appendixes)? Assuming that those details won't make sense for an average reader unless he/she wants to know small details of each experiment. - Happy new year by the way :-)

If the details are not important for supporting the story of the paper, I might still put them into an appendix. This is because overlong manuscripts can look scary to reviewers and might lead to the paper taking longer to be accepted. Happy new year, too!

I think your advisor gives good advice.
But if you are sole author, you can probably write it as you like and wait for the response of reviewers of the conference papers. But if you are too far off the "standard" you risk a quick reject rather than a suggestion to change it.
If you are only a co-author you need to negotiate it, of cours.e

Do you think it's a terribly bad idea to put evaluation results in the appendix? As I said to Nicole, I have 3-4 pages of evaluation results, and I think putting all of them in the main section just makes my paper so unnecessarily messy!

Like any reviewer I'd need to see what you have actually written. But perhaps you really need to rethink the organization of your results. You might need to do that even if you put them in the appendix.

Between the two of you, I'd go with whoever has more experience.

An ability to negotiate and resolve issues is super important skill for anyone who wants to succeed and get stuff done.  A lot of people think about that as, what do I want.  But it's  more important to identify what the person you're negotiating with wants and understand their reasons.  In a partnership like the one you're in, you need to size up that you can't win this argument because it really is guided by experience. Give in gracefully and move on to the next item.

Thanks for your insightful advice. I 100% agree with you and I think it's vital for junior researchers to learn how to effectively negotiate/communicate with all parties in a project (including their supervisor). I believe my case is a bit different though, as I'm currently completely on my own.

@linker You're not completely on your own. You have a supervisor. I don't understand why you think you're in some different special case where Nicole Hamilton's advice doesn't apply.

@linker Yes I believe there are irresponsible supervisors, but this isn't an issue raised in your question here. Your question is about a specific manuscript design choice. Your supervisor isn't absent on this topic - in fact they have already weighed in with an opinion. Maybe it's not the kind of advice you are looking for but it seems like they are responding.

@BryanKrause Exactly! the question is specifically about whether putting evaluation results in the appendix (considering the aforementioned criteria) is a good practice or not. Even though the topic is subjective in nature, I believe there should be some form of guidelines/best practices somewhere...

@Linker Yeah, the form of guidelines is mostly "listen to your supervisor" who has more experience.

@BryanKrause "listen to your supervisor" is not a "guideline"... What would you have to say, if I hadn't written that "P.S" in my question? What if I'm the supervisor and asking this question? (or even a junior researcher outside academia with no supervisor)

@linker I would say "you should only put things into appendices if a reader can still exactly understand what you did in your paper without them". Exactly which things fit that category cannot be given in a guideline, and that's why you ask your advisor.

@BryanKrause The point of this question, as I mentioned in the title, is about a very specific section of most CS papers: "details of evaluation results". Things like huge numeric tables, messy graphs, etc. I have a webpage in Github and put all graphs there, but I'm not sure if I should put them in the main paper or just leave them in the appendix. The main problem is that if I put them in the main section,I'll definitely exceed the page limit. I know this is a common practice in scientific magazines e.g. Nature, but I only saw this pattern in a few conference papers ... that's why I asked.


text:
Professor rushing MS thesis
I'm in the 2nd year of a 2-year MS program. The thesis is usually done through the duration of the 2nd year. I have been working on my thesis project, but my PI wants to produce the paper for it ASAP for fear of our competition producing the same paper before we do. So she essentially wants me to finish it by November of this Fall Semester (I finish in Spring). Because of this, she has actually had others in my lab work on it. Now it seems that if one of them solves it, my thesis will essentially be stolen from me.
Is this appropriate that my PI did this? I'm not sure how to react to the situation/ what I should do.

What field are you in? Your concern about "solving it" seems highly field-dependent (i.e., I understand this in math; less so in other fields).

Did you discuss your fear with the mentor?

@cag51 Bioinformatics.

@Peaceful No, on top of all this, I don't have a close relationship with her. She is very aloof, unfriendly, away a lot :-(

If it is that much of a "hot topic" then it isn't unusual to throw more person-hours at it. If it is that hot you might derive considerable advantage from getting your work in under deadline, if that is all possible, because you would go into your Masters defense with a good publication already acquired. And perhaps two, since you'll have four months to write another one. So that's a carrot.
In all cases everyone who materially contributes to the solution can legitimately expect to be a co-author on the paper. You might feel that this is a bit of a stick.
However, in all cases your Masters thesis will contain the work that you did, they can't take that way from you. But you can't claim others' work as your own, so if the pertinence of your own work lies in its contribution to a joint paper, you must explain that very carefully in the thesis. For example, you can claim in the thesis that you established effect X, which is a contribution because when combined with effect Y it demonstrates mechanism Z. It is then up to your thesis committee to decide whether this is enough of a contribution.
You will have a lot to gain in sharing your concerns with your advisor and getting some ground rules laid out. For example, if there is a joint paper, am I first author? Will I be excluded from publication if I don't get all of the necessary results by November? What part of this work can you include in your Masters thesis? Don't be afraid to state your worst fears, you need to know the answers and if your advisor is willing to provide assurances it is important to get them.
Finally, if this discussion is oral rather than through e-mail, don't forget to send a follow-up e-mail documenting your understanding of your agreement. If your advisor agrees to your summary, great; if she doesn't respond then your version stands; if she repudiates it then your discussion isn't finished.


text:
Professor not giving solutions to exams and assignments that I need to grade
I am a grader for a CS course at the college institution I attend. The professor I am TAing for is a full-time employee at a company. He is teaching this CS course on top of doing that. The first exam and homework assignment have been collected. He has effectively told me that he "trusts my judgment" in the grading and is not giving me solutions to grade the exam and assignment against.
Is this a fair practice? Whether the solutions are supposed to be given me was not established before I started as grader.
I'm just unsure since I have not heard of this type of situation happening. In my experience the professor has always given solutions to the grader. I am unsure of what to do at this point.
Edited Update: Prof still wants me to use my own solutions and the CS dept has decided as long as he is "supervising the grading," he is permitted to allow this. I will be grading them with my solutions. I suggest for anyone to possibly contact the department for the official policy. In terms of whether it's a fair practice, I see that the discussion still stands.

Although I provide solutions for the grader (and for the students), I'm not aware of any rule requiring me to do that. When I was a student (in the 1960's) I took some classes in which we got solution sheets prepared by the grader.

I ask TA's to take the test themselves for feedback on how clear the questions are, plus to double-check my answers. That much is certainly not beyond the pale. Trusting them completely for tests seems pretty risky though. If CS homework means looking at their code and checking if it works (or spotting what's wrong with it), that certainly seems like something that can be left to you.

Based on my experience, I would say the answer to the question of whether it is OK for an undergraduate (as opposed to a grad student) to grade undergraduate exams in the first place, with or without a rubric, is a big, fat "no." Can you clarify your undergraduate/graduate student status?

I think the main question is not the fairness to students (is it "fair" to have lecture hall classes? to tout Nobel Prize faculty that don't really teach much?).  The main issue is just one of workload division between the TA and the instructor.  There are probably a lot of different models here (in terms of TA workload) and just occasional tussles on exact divisions.  That this prof has a real job is relevant (likely trying to manage his time commitment, just as TA is).  I would try to push back (less assignments or easier ones to grade).  Don't completely roll over...tussle a little!

I can't tell quite what your concern is, so I'll address both.
Is it OK for a non-professor to write solutions and design a rubric?
In my experience (large US universities, STEM), this is extremely common. I disagree a bit with others saying that only professors can make such determinations (though of course the instructor of record can make such determinations if they are inclined to do so).
Is this abusive toward the TA?
How are you being paid?

If it is hourly, then there is no issue; you should solve the problems and make a rubric however you see fit, and then bill for that time as normal.
If it is a set stipend, then there is usually a nominal time requirement (in my university it was 20 hrs/week for grad students). If making solutions will put you way over this, it's fine to raise the issue with the professor and/or with the administration (in fact, you may technically be required to do so)

One other tip -- you might consider taking the top-performing students' solutions and using them as a starting place for your own solutions. Of course, you'll have to be sure you're grading those students fairly and catching any errors. But I've found that the I can often create a solution set just by mixing and matching solutions from the top ~3 students and adding a few expository details.

I use the top two or three students solutions to check my solution set...

For the first question, clearly I think it is OK. However, in my circumstance I don't believe it was in his original intention (I think he's being lazy and just wants me to come up with the solutions). I don't have the solutions or a rubric. I am being paid a set stipend. But nonetheless, thank you for the tip! I will definitely be implementing that.

Completely agree he is probably being lazy! But unless that's requiring a time investment far beyond what is normally expected for your stipend (and absent some specific policy to the contrary), he is probably allowed to have you do this.

Ask to be paid for all the work you are required to do.
Most graders are employed on casual rates and paid per hour.  If that is the case then you should speak to the administrator in charge of employing you and confirm with him/her that you will have to find the solutions to the assessment problems and determine an appropriate marking scheme (for partial marks) as part of your grading duties, and that this will take you extra time.  Make it clear that you expect to be paid for the additional time you spend on the work, and get confirmation that this will occur before you start working.
If you are usually paid a flat-amount for grading, or an amount per script, and this usually includes being supplied with solutions, then you should again raise this matter with the administrator that is in charge of employing graders, and get confirmation that you will be paid extra for the additional time you spend finding solutions to the assessments and creating an appropriate marking scheme.   Again, make it clear that you expect to be paid for the additional time you spend on the work, and get confirmation that this will occur before you start working .

Where I taught, it was spelled out in the TA/grader policy that the professor had to supply the rubric.   So you might check what the written rules are at your school.  They might be on your side.

No, this is not fair practice (here I mean 'fair' as in fair to the students being graded). That's because without knowing what the ideal answers are it's awfully hard to grade fairly. For example take this question:

Explain how mirages form. (3 marks)

You probably have some idea how mirages form. Realistically, grading this question would depend on keywords. These processes X, Y and Z are involved in forming mirages, and each one is worth one mark. Or is it? Maybe the professor taught in class that only X and Y are involved, in which case each should be worth 1.5 marks, since it would be extremely unfair to expect students to say Z.
What to do: speak to the professor about the questions that you can't easily grade. Don't ask him for ideal answers or a grading scheme (since those he's already left to you); ask instead "what did you teach for this question?"

I think you have misphrased the question. The question should say "The professor isn't giving me a rubric"; if the professor isn't giving you the solution, then presumably he isn't giving you a rubric, either, which is more of an issue. Unless there's no partial credit or anything along those lines, it's the professor's job to decide not only what answers will be accepted, but how many points each question is worth, and what level of answer receives how many points. Even if you solve the questions correctly, that won't answer those sort of questions. Plus, what a correct answer is can depend on the course. To take a math example, some teachers might take 9 pi as a correct answer to "What is the area of a circle with radius 3?", but there are probably math teachers out there who insist on 28.27. If the professor has solved the problems himself, then he is making you redo a lot of work. And if he hasn't, that's rather odd.
So rather than asking for solutions, for which he has come up with the dodge "Just solve them yourself", you should ask for the rubric, for which it's going to be harder for him to pretend that he isn't avoiding something that he should be doing himself.

"It's the professor's job to decide not only what answers will be accepted, but how many points each question is worth, and what level of answer receives how many points."  I wouldn't be so dogmatic about that.  In my experience, it's not unusual for this to be delegated to a TA or even a grader.  Maybe you don't agree with that, but I don't think it's so extreme that a grader would get automatic support if they objected, unless the institution has specific rules on the subject.

Where I'd be especially concerned is if there is more than one TA sharing the marking. If it's only one person, at least it'll (hopefully) be consistent.


text:
Should I publish my working papers before they are accepted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal in Economics?
I am currently doing my PhD in Economics in a UK university and have a couple of working papers —one of them almost finished—. Each of these working papers corresponds to one chapter in my PhD Thesis, which is in the field of Game Theory (Theoretical Microeconomics). I am expected to complete my PhD Thesis with a total of three chapters. This month, I am presenting one of my chapters in a couple of relevant conferences in my field, and have been asked whether there is an available working paper that can be checked (and perhaps circulated and cited). Whether one should make his/her working papers public is a question that depends on the field one is working on. To be honest, I do not know what to do because I do not know what is the standard practice in my field.
Some time ago, all my working papers were available on my personal website via a public Google Drive link. However, I decided to make them private because I was afraid of getting my ideas stolen by other researchers. Now I do not know what to do. On the one hand, I see the benefits of making my working papers public: I may get useful feedback and may also get my paper some attention before it is published in a peer-reviewed journal. On the other hand, I’m afraid of other researchers publishing my work under their name, and I am also afraid of reputable journals rejecting my submissions on the basis that they have been published as working papers prior to being submitted to the journal.
I currently have three options:

To make them public in my website via a Google Drive public link;
To make them public by uploading them to arxiv.org (or some similar repository);
To keep them private and unavailable to the public.

With this post, I would like to ask fellow theoretical economists what they think I should do. I am inclined to upload my working papers to arxiv.org, but I do not know whether reputable journals in my field will reject my submissions because of that. I am also not sure whether this is a useful measure at all against the theft of ideas.
I am a newbie in academia, and therefore any help will be much appreciated.
Thank you all very much for your time.

If you know which journals you plan to submit to, you can easily check whether their policies allow upload to arXiv by looking them up on Sherpa/Romeo.

Not an answer, but ssrn might be more pertinent than arxiv for economics.

I don't know about the area of economics but my advisor published several papers and conference articles and correspondences that were variations on a theme.  Therefore, you could make a distinct publication that isn't the same as your paper, if needed.

Many researchers in theoretical economics publish their works on ArXiv or similar venues. No semi-reputable researcher will dream of stealing ideas that were already published in a preprint. This is of course not an ironclad promise - there exist bad actors that will absolutely steal your ideas if you put them up online, but these instances are very rare.
To ensure that this does not happen, I strongly suggest that you

Position this work as yours, by presenting it at seminars, workshops and the like.
Work towards getting your ideas published sooner rather than later.
Discuss your work on social media: putting a link to the ArXiv version on twitter with a few words describing your work is excellent both for outreach and for establishing your ownership.

In the long term, disseminating your work is a strictly dominant strategy over keeping it to yourself. This is especially true in a relatively fast-moving field like game theory: I think that the risk of having someone else scooping your work and publishing faster than you is much greater than the risk of someone stealing your work outright.
Put another way, the field of game theory (and most other scientific disciplines, I would imagine) is populated by a lot more brilliant, hungry researchers who will scoop you than unscrupulous actors who will steal your work. In that kind of ecosystem, it's much better to publicize your work.

Thank you for your comment. Where you write “arrive” in the first sentence, you mean “arxiv”?

Of course, thanks autocorrect!

Publishers seem to work under one of three (at least) models.
Some will prohibit prepublication and won't consider anything that has previously appeared. My guess is that this model is slowly disappearing.
Some journals encourage preprints of articles where the author(s) upload the preprints to some site. In mathematics, for example, this seems to be current practice pretty widely.
Some journals will, themselves, upload papers to a preprint service before final versions are finalized.
Separately, many journals will publish final versions online as well as in print.
But, for any paper you expect to submit to a specific journal, you need to explore what their policy is. Perhaps there is a (more or less) standard for economics, but don't make assumptions. Explore the journal's website or ask an editor directly.
Of course, "work in progress" can mean a lot of things. It may be that a paper based on that work is sufficiently different from what was previously visible that it becomes less of an issue for a journal.

To find out which model applies, check Sherpa/Romeo, as @David Ketcheson remarks above.


text:
Can I use the same words in my manuscript in writing my accessible summaries?
I am drafting an accessible summary for my article almost ready to be published in a top-tier peer-review journal. I wonder if I can directly use what is in my article without the concern of self-plagiarism? Technically the summary is a part of the article and they will be published at the same time but I searched online, no specific requirement or restriction were offered.
FYI: What Are Accessible Summaries? Written in nontechnical language, accessible summaries provide information about each manuscript’s goals, its design and approach, and its results, highlighting findings that may be of interest to those outside academia, such as language educators

There should be little doubt that you aren't plagiarizing yourself. The ideas are yours and you are expressing them as such. Moreover, there is a clear link between the abstract and the original. This is equivalent to a citation. It is that "citation" that avoids the issue.
Note that plagiarism isn't fundamentally about "words" but about ideas.


text:
How do I get records proving that I was an Erasmus exchange student?
I was an Eramus interchange student in the UK for my final year project 20 years ago.
Whilst I have that in my CV, and even have in the Internet my final report in an old site of mine, I do not have a single proof in writing I was ever there. Even while there, I never had a proper student card, but just a provisory piece of paper.
Come to think of it, the most tangible documents I have ever with me even at the time where the check with the grant money and the programme evaluation form.
My tutor is probably retired. I recently emailed my project supervisor with this doubt, he did not answer.
Note that I myself work in Academia nowadays, and although it is in a different city and unrelated University, I might also pose them this doubt.
The document would come in handy someday, for instance to help me getting the nationality of my wife. What would be the best course of action for getting it after all this time?

I ended up contacting the Academic Services / Student Requests Information Team by email.
They said immediately they would provide a document, and they delivered; Pretty much professional and very attentive people.
They found my records from 20 years ago, but not my grades. Fortunately my dissertation grade is not so important, as I have it in another set of documents.
I already have the document in electronic form, and they also sent a paper copy.