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Can I submit my old PhD thesis to arxiv with the date set to its original submission date?
I have completed my PhD 10 years ago, and back then I was not sure if it was ok with my home institution to have it in arxiv. I then realized it's fine and it would actually be good as my institution never cared to set up an open database of their own PhD theses. My question is: is there a way to post it on arxiv with the proper date, so that it shows on a search but it does not show among the most recent ones?
EDIT: given the popularity of the question, would it make sense to allow the ability to backdate ONLY PhD theses? It seems like my experience is a shared one, and I can't imagine anybody in her/his own mind lying on when she/he got her/his PhD.

Just stop worrying about the date. Seriously, people don't make much out of them. Say in the comments field that the thesis is from 10 years ago.

PS. Just as an example, it isn't unheard of that someone's theses get posted on the arXiv long after the fact: https://arxiv.org/find/math/1/au:+Reinert_B/0/1/0/all/0/1 .

Last time I tried to upload a chapter from my thesis they told me it isn't publishable as a journal paper and I will get banned if I try that again.

@VladimirF Where, on arXiv?

@PaoloLeonetti Sure.

Have you considered other services? Or does it have to be arXiv? If not, you could use https://zenodo.org/ or https://www.authorea.com. Both I believe will even generate a DOI for your Thesis.

@VladimirF Well, a single chapter from a thesis is rarely a complete work in its own right.

I don't think so.
The "proper date" for an eprint is the date you upload it to the arxiv.  If the arxiv allowed people to back date their work (by up to ten years!), then it would at best confuse and at worst totally ruin the use of the arxiv to sort out chronology and claims of priority.  So while I don't know that they don't allow this, I have never seen an example, and I hope that they don't.
What you can do, of course, is to include in the comments that this is your thesis from 10 years ago.  If you do that then everything seems clear.  If you are worried that your thesis appearing on the feed/list of new papers will cause it to get more attention....wait, isn't that why you are posting it to the arxiv in the first place?

I believe the only times the arXiv has ever allowed backdating content is when it was part of a systematic migration from another widely used, public source.  For example, Thurston did not submit this paper in 1994; rather, it was submitted on his behalf in 1999.  However, it was published in 1994.  I'm not aware of any recent cases in which even this has been allowed by the arXiv, and they definitely do not allow individual users to do it.

Re “appearing on the feed will cause it to get more attention… wait, isn’t that why you’re posting it to the arXiv in the first place?”  No, not necessarily at all!  I can’t speak for OP, but for me, I’ve considered posting my thesis to the arXiv for the sake of providing a long-term stable easily-accessible copy, but decided against it because I was reluctant to draw extra attention to something I now feel is both immature and outdated.

@PLL: While your position makes sense, it clearly expresses ambivalence about the prospect of others viewing your thesis work: in some sense you want this and in another sense you don't.  (You also want to ensure long-term access to something that you feel is outdated: more mixed feelings.)  Note that are other online respositories for PhD theses that make the theses much harder to get ahold of (institutional access or payment may be required).  The arxiv is for work that you want people to see.

@PeteL.Clark: As you say, I’m a bit ambivalent.  I want people to be able to see it easily and freely if they are looking for it (e.g. following up references to it from other work), without payment or subscription required (there are obvious ethical reasons for this), but I don’t want to advertise it.  I think this is not an unusual or inconsistent position — and the arXiv is absolutely ideal for the things I do want, it’s just that the newsfeed also adds a little of what I don’t want.

@PLL I agree with you: the idea is precisely that I don't want to attract attention to a 10 year old piece of work. In my case the work was complete (and in fact published on a separate paper) still it is obsolete. The main reason why I would like to have it on arxiv is to allow easy access to anybody.

@PeteL.Clark I agree with you that backdating articles will mess up the entire purpose of arxiv. However, it's a different story for PhD theses. Or would you like perhaps to see a different site taking care of PhD theses? Clearly I do not want attention to my very first piece of scientific work beyond its historical relevance in my subfield.

Not that I know of, but you can contact the Arxiv people here:
https://arxiv.org/help/contact
(those are instructions and an email address, but do read the instructions as a courtesy.)
and ask them to add the feature of having two separate dates - the date of upload/submission to ArXiv and the original date the work was published/appeared on. That's not a bad idea IMHO.

You can already add the publication information of the preprint in the comments.  (Many people go back and add this when the paper is published; many don't.)  So I don't see why a new feature is really necessary.

@PeteL.Clark as per my comment above: I would not like to raise attention to an old piece of work. On the other hand, I do would like to have a chance to store my PhD in a publicly accessible place, the same way as my younger colleagues have done in more recent times. According to the number of upvotes, this feature seems like of popular interest!

@PeteL.Clark: Because it's not just comment text, it's a structural field, and is often just as important as when you've uploaded your file.

I would be opposed to such a feature.  For published work, the journal reference field is already there for the full publication details, including the date.  For most unpublished work, the date it first appeared is not really a precise concept.  (Does it mean the first date you showed it to anyone?  The date you made the final edits?  The date you posted it to a previous website?)  Theses are one of the few cases that have a widely agreed upon date but that don't fit the journal reference field very well, and I don't think it's worth introducing a special field primarily for them.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


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Can I write Research Paper on improving results of a Phd thesis
I do not have any prior experience of publishing any kind of research material, it would be a huge favour if you can give your comments in the following matter:
In a thesis related to Seismic Image Processing, the author has proposed a method for Automatic Fault Detection, I have implemented that method and I have improved the results of the method by introducing some more equations.
My question is, given the above situation can I publish my findings ? and how should I quote that thesis in the publication ?
Any suggestion/comment/idea is welcome.
Thanks!

Hi Ahmed and welcome to Academia.SE; What makes you think you cannot publish your work?

I am thinking this because of the fact that I have improved the results of a 'thesis' ? Seems like I am wrong :D
Another fear in this regard is what if somebody has already done the improvement I have done ?

@ahmed34234, is the PhD thesis your own or someone else's?

@Carl The thesis is not written by me, it is a Phd thesis whereas I have just done my bachelors :D

just remember to cite that piece of thesis and you are good to go.

This is standard practice. Someone does work and publishes it. Someone, possibly same people, but not necessarily, improves on the work and publish that. The fact that it is a thesis should make no difference, so long as the work being improved upon reflects the state of the art.

Hi,
Thanks for the reply, I have one more query:
Should I also refer the research papers which are being referred to in that thesis ?

Refer to paper following the usual conventions.

@ahmed34234 Refer to them if you use the material in them; don't if you don't.

The best practice would be, IMHO, to contact that person, discuss your ideas with them, and make a common paper with them. In general, they will be interested in it (if they stayed in science), and you're sure you don't offend them or anyone. At least for me (in Math/CS), this is the way to go if you really "improve" some other's work. It might be a bit different if you "build on" their results.
You quote the thesis as any other source:

John Doe. My most stupid work on Josh phenomenon. PhD Thesis, University of Neverland, Nevercity, 2013.

(These are the mandatory fields. You can add ISBN, number of pages etc. if you wish.)
In BibTeX, it should be:
@phdthesis { doe_2013,
  author = {Doe, John},
  title = {My Most Stupid Work on {J}osh Phenomenon},
  publisher = {University of Neverland, Nevercity},
  year = {2013},
  pages = {666}
}

If you're improving on somebody else's work, there's no obligation whatsoever to invite them to collaborate on this improvement. Especially when, as described in the question, the follow-up work has already been done. The author of the thesis gets their credit by way of citation.

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Optimal compensation/teaching load policies?
I am a faculty member at a primarily undergraduate institution (PUI). This past academic year, the administration decided to make some changes to the way that teaching load is calculated resulting in many faculty members being unsatisfied.
According to our faculty handbook, we are expected teach 21-24 load credits per year. Typically, a single load credits correspond exactly to the number of credits a student earns for a class. However, the handbook makes it clear that for classes of larger than 50, an extra load credit may be assessed and for classes of 6-10 students, there may be a reduction in teaching load assessed by one credit. However, there are extra caveats for certain types of courses. For example, If you run an independent studies course, you get one load credit for three students; one can surmise that if you do not have three students, then you may get less than one load credit to run the independent studies course.
This system obviously has some unfortunate consequences. As an example, some of our upper division, major only classes will regularly fall into the 6-10 student cut-off resulting in a reduction of load by one credit. Of course, just because a class has 10 students instead of 11 does not mean that you are doing one load credit less worth of work.
So my question is this: what would be an optimal way to assign load credit for faculty that doesn't penalize the faculty unnecessarily and does take into account the variety of classes that are taught (including the variety of content, class sizes, time required by the faculty, etc.)? Ideally the optimal method would also make administrators happy.

Did the faculty have any say in this scheme? If not, why not?

Note the inherent conflict of interest between faculty and administration in such things. So, "optimal" from whose standpoint?

"Optimal" seems entirely subjective, and opinion based questions are discouraged on this site. Better might be to ask about different kinds of policies that are common, and their pros and cons.

Actually, the question is improperly posed. Optimal for the faculty is one course per term with about 20 students, the course chosen by the faculty member. But that is impossible financially and doesn't guarantee that the curriculum is covered. Optimal from the administration is, perhaps, to pack students into as few courses as possible given the seating room of their campus, requiring the smallest possible faculty. But that is educationally counterproductive.
What I find optimal is a system negotiated honestly and fairly with the faculty for the overall structure, with plenty of room for exceptions and faculty choice when it is time to schedule.
Two institutions with which I've been associated had a two course rule. Everyone taught two courses per term (actually stated as four per year at one of them). There was some choice of courses but one of those courses might be huge by their standards and one might be a small seminar. Everyone knew that occasionally they would have a large class and need to manage TAs. But the department head could then promise a better situation for the coming term, or even time off, or whatever. People could ask for specific courses, but conflicts needed to be worked out. If people trust the system and the administration it can work.
So, the system was flexible and had room to negotiate.
If you want to get a sense of what a system like yours will entail, you can take enrollment data from previous years and figure the actual loads of each faculty member with the new system. Does it balance? Or does it have winners and losers?

Teaching load policy is typically not a universal policy that holds across the entire institution, but is set at an intermediate level such as a college or a division. This is because there are indeed large differences between how different departments approach fulfilling their teaching mission and satisfying the particular needs of their students.
Within a relatively focused administrative division such as “engineering” or “mathematical and physical sciences”, the similarities are much greater, so there is a much better chance for a dean or other administrator, working with the departments under them, to formulate a coherent and fair policy.
The general idea that teaching credits should depend in some way on class size is reasonable and common. All other things being equal, the labor of an instructor who teaches a class with 200 students has greater economic value than the labor of an instructor teaching a very specialized class with only 5 students. And while all other things are never truly equal, they are often approximately so. Teaching load policies are not an exact science but try to roughly capture a general sort of truth. As such, the policy you describe in the question does not sound to me as one that necessarily does a terrible job of aligning the institution’s economic resources with the combined needs of the faculty and the students. Is it “optimal”? Probably not. But is it reasonable? It very well may be.
So what does an “optimal” policy look like? I don’t think anyone can say in general. The details of the precise formula that is seen as optimal in any given situation, if it is even meaningful to ask for such a thing, would depend too strongly on specific details of the institution, its needs, character, and financial situation. All that one can hope for at that level of generality, as Buffy’s answer says, is that the process for arriving at the detailed formula should be fair, and should involve a good faith negotiation between the administration and the faculty, taking into account the needs and resources available to both.
That being said, one feature of an optimal policy (or any policy) that is indeed completely general is that some people will always find some aspects of it to complain about.

Another point is that the 200 student class will typically involve the labor of several TAs as well as the instructor.

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Tracking reading progress of documentations or ebooks
Challenge: I need to read a lot of documentations and websites, but often in random order. I need to track which articles of a website, or which pages of a documentation I already read. I want to mark pages as complete after reading, and read nothing twice.
So far I found no efficient tracking method. Copy-pasting urls to a text editor works for small sites, but with deep hierarchies it gets messy. For example, reading all github docs would be hard to track because of it's deep hierarchy.
I highly appreciate any hints for Apps, Browser extensions or creative solutions.

Use your brain and remember them?

I went ahead and programmed a Google Chrome Extension for my use case. It colors the links to the pages that are read.
https://github.com/synox/mark-as-done-extension

If you read some page again, it presumably is because there are points you forgot/didn't get the first time around.
Who says you have to read all of it? Presumably you have some specific interest(s) in the subject matter, it is OK to just concentrate on the few documents that go to your points, work through them thoroughly, and at most skim over the rest.

One method is to download everything you read as a PDF to a folder on your computer. Then use any PDF viewer that supports annotations/markup (e.g. xournal) to make a mark on pages/sections you have read.

Actually a simple spreadsheet seems adequate for what you want to do. A row for each publication with columns recording things of importance. Lots of room for comments and such, also.

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Will a 2-year post-doc in deep-learning harm me in the long-term?
I am 28 and will be finishing my PhD in the next 2 months. My PhD has been in the field of medical image analysis so it has covered quite a bit of image processing mixed in with machine learning.
My plan isn't to have an academic career. I see my short-term future as a research scientist/engineer and my ideal career route would be moving into the tech industry (hopefully focused on healthcare) and progressing there.
I have been offered a post-doc focused on deep-learning with a side-element of software engineering in Python/C++. Its in the same lab but with a different group, which is also very reputable both in academia and industry.
I have read that as soon as you know you want to go to industry, every month not working in industry is a waste; both in terms of experience and potential life-time earnings.
My question is: would a 2-year post-doc be detrimental for my future career?
The post-doc seems to tick many boxes that many companies list as job requirements for positions I'm really interested in but do not think I fit right now. The post-doc would involve:

Development of deep-learning algorithms with applications to image synthesis and segmentation
Software engineering in Python/C++ to deploy software at collaborators research centers
Part of the development team for a deep-learning open-source package
Mentoring 2 PhD students

Second question: does it make sense to take a post-doc that would build desirable skills/knowledge for jobs I am interested in? Rather than just applying for industry positions now and taking the best one I can get.
Thank you!

Possible duplicate: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20846/will-taking-a-post-doc-position-harm-my-future-chances-in-industry?rq=1

Since you are explicitely not looking for a job in academia, Academia SE might be the wrong place to ask.

The beauty of this post-doc job offer is that you can be looking for that industry job you have in mind, while gainfully employed. However, if you are not interested in the project(s) in the postdoc, it's probably best not to take the job.

It seems to me that getting a PostDoc post when what you only have in mind is how to secure an industry job, is not a really good idea, especially if you think you do not fit very well.

@FuzzyLeapfrog  OP is in academia now, and is deciding whether or not to accept an academic job offer, even though the ultimate goal is industry. This seems like an appropriate SE to ask this question, IMHO.

Possible duplicate of Will taking a post-doc position harm my future chances in industry?

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Can two universities have the same name?
I am now developing a database having information about universities. The database has a feature to prevent a duplicate name for the university title. I actually wonder of whether it is possible for 2 universities/colleges to have the same name in one country or different countries.
EDIT:
I am actually not asking to make this database field the unique identifier for my university entries, but rather for preventing potential duplicate of a university when the the data entry guys use the system. I know I can do a quick check on duplicates but I thought to use this Unique attribute if universities have unique names worldwide.

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

Consider adding city name to the key, as in "SUNY Buffalo"? Or address, which should be unique even if a city has two Saint Mary of the Incomplete Thesis Universities.

There are a number of Belgian universities which were one institution formerly, but have been split in two independent institutions during the language conflicts between the French and Dutch speaking citizens in the 1960ies. At the moment they in principle still carry the same name, but in the different languages. Examples are the Free Universities of Brussels (Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Université Libre de Bruxelles) or the Catholic Universities of Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Université catholique de Louvain).

In Leuven/Louvain they did not only split off to start their own university, they founded an entire new town, such that there are now two cities Leuven/Louvain each speaking a different language.  In a country where signs are only posted in the language of the location of the sign, that must be incredibly confusing.

@NajibIdrissi You'd hope so, but if their sign making is as bad as their road maintenance (and I've seen some very troublesome sign collections in Belgium), I wouldn't count on it.

Yes, for example there is a Heidelberg university in Heidelberg, Germany, and one in Tiffin, Ohio, USA.
Note that non-English names are sometimes rendered inconsistently in English, e.g. Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg is sometimes called "University of Heidelberg", sometimes "Heidelberg University" (even on their own website).

Yes, two universities can have the same name.
Many universities are named after the place they're located in.
Many places in North-America, Australia, and New Zealand are named after places  in Europe, in particular after places in Great Britain and Ireland.
Although I haven't done a complete survey, the chances would seem pretty high that this leads to a collision somewhere.
As ChristianW, OBu, and user2768 have all correctly pointed out, you should design your database such that a key is designed to be unique, not the university name.

Yes. As another example, many Catholic (or historically Catholic) Universities are named after Saints. For example, there are several "St. Mary's Universities". On a related theme, many colleges have Christianity based names including Trinity College, Christ College, Wesley, Concodrida, among others (Thanks to Pedro, Peter, and Nate for suggesting these).
Also, it seems "Queens" and "Kings" are popular college/university names.
Another thing to be careful about is the change of "Colleges" to "Universities". At least in the US, many "Colleges" changed their accreditation to "Universities". On a related note, you may also want to consider historic names versus present, depending upon the purpose of your database.

Also "Trinity", like Dublin and Cambridge, among others.

@PedroTamaroff : Trinity College also exists in Hartford, CT! http://www.trincoll.edu/

@PeterK. - and Trinity University in San Antonio, TX just to further confuse things...

@JonCuster It's ... disappointing that there are more than three of them. ;-)

And the Lutherans seem to be very fond of naming things "Concordia".

@NateEldredge yes they do. I recently noticed this as well. thanks for commenting here.

As far as I can tell, the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul is entirely unrelated to the University of St. Thomas in Houston and they share a name.

Example: There are three unrelated instances of Westminster College, all in the United States.
Missouri (founded 1851):
https://www.westminster-mo.edu/
Pennsylvania (founded 1852):
http://www.westminster.edu/index.cfm
Utah (founded 1875):
https://www.westminstercollege.edu/

There is a Metropolitan State University in Denver CO and another one in Saint Paul MN. They are completely separate. So, yes, two universities can have the same name. As others have recommended, you should use a surrogate primary key in your database design. That is usually a good idea anyway since you don’t know when something that is unique today might become non-unique tomorrow. Plus integer surrogate keys are more efficient in joins than text fields.

Yes, two university can have the same name. One example is the Indian Institute of Technology, which is located in several places in India.

Welcome to SE Academia. Please consider improving your answer by adding more specific references, e.g. websites and/or addresses. Also please double-check for grammar/spelling.

But that's a common case, and no big deal. People say "IIT Bombay" or "IIT Hyderabad". It's not much different from, say, "UC Berkeley", "UC Los Angeles", etc.


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Paper accepted by a journal without comments
Did you ever get a paper accepted by a journal without any comment at all? It has happened to me twice; both times with a very high-standing journal in my field.
I was initially confused, did not know whether to be pleased, or horrified. I then settled for the latter. In my opinion, this is a terrible consequence of the current publishing model where editors are not necessarily qualified to review papers, and referees do not have either financial or prestige incentives to do a good job.
Is this common? What did you think of this phenomenon?
EDIT: after all your nice answers and comments, and talking to people working in the editorial side of peer-review process, I came to the conclusion that the lack of replies was due to the fact that both papers were - somewhat - interdisciplinary. I understand it is way harder for editors to understand interdisciplinary papers (they are expert in a subject, not necessarily in multiple subjects) and thus judge for themselves and to find appropriate reviewers. If this was true, it would be particularly scary as the most groundbreaking papers are typically multidisciplinary and thus most likely be accepted with little criticism (if the author is already renowned) or dismissed without further ado (if the author is relatively unknown, at least in that area).

Do you write good papers? I.e. well-cited and positively commented upon in meetings and conferences? Perhaps you just do a good job? If not, and you still do not get comments from a top journal in your field, then your community is in serious trouble.

it happened to me once (of only three first-authored, peer-reviewed papers), also in a respected journal, both of the reviewers accepted the paper as-is. I was unhappy about the missed opportunity to improve the quality of the paper. However, none of my colleagues faced this issue before

That was always my goal - write a clear paper and have it accepted as is. Counting on somebody else to improve your paper seems to me a little off target. The paper is good when somebody else can read it and understand it as is.

To Captain Emacs (great name, by the way!) these papers were in a highly quantitative field with tens of thousands of practitioners over the world; the journal was the no.1 of the field. Both papers were signed by a very large collaboration, as it's typical in my field. Still, it was atypical not to receive any comment. To snalx and Jon Custer: it's not really about the missed opportunity. It is about what if I was wrong? I am afraid nobody would have realized. Disseminating ideas is about being challenged so that you can improve your results, not about increasing your own h-index.

@famargar (Thanks for the compliment!) There was a time where peer review was not standard. It was a matter of personal honour to produce the most complete and error-free manuscript possible. Peer review, unfortunately, has turned quite a few submitters sloppy, and more often than not I felt I as reviewer had to do the job that the students' superviser who submitted the paper hadn't done or getting some early beta version. If you did your very best to produce an error-free manuscript, I think that you have fully done your duty. Peer review is rarely a guarantee for anything, anyway, nowadays.

Perhaps you got lucky in the sense of having reviewers who understood the difference between an objective improvement to the paper and subjective personal opinion. It's easy to suggest changes to any paper, since there is always more than one way to skin a cat, but "changes" and "improvements" are not necessarily the same thing.

@alephzero This is a valuable comment, I wonder if you could expand it to an answer. Specifically, from the reviewer's perspective, I'm interested in how one can tell apart objective improvements and subjective opinions (although that maybe would even warrant a separate question).

@famargar Your comments really ought to be integrated in your question, the context seems very different from what I assumed when reading the question. Your own assumptions are also questionable: Ensuring your results are “right” is not the purpose of peer review, nor could it possibly be, especially in empirical fields. It's about the research being minimally competent (aware of what's going on in the field, standard methods, etc), relevant and described in sufficient details.

@Relaxed Even in empirical fields, the reviewers can judge if the conclusions drawn from the results are right, which is a very complex question (involving in particular external, internal, construct, and statistical validity).

@lighthousekeeper Yes, see my answer. But that does not undermine my point.

@Relaxed I guess it depends on what the OP wants to have checked specifically (set-up, results, or conclusions), so it would be best if he/she could clarify.

Just curious, did you pay an article publishing fee?

Yes I did pay. And no I do not expect the journal referee to reassure me - I do expect them to do their job, which is also to ensure VALIDITY, not minimal competence. From the jjournal website: "Referees should check for Validity.— Work is valid if it is free of detectable error and is presented in sufficient detail that this may be determined."

Journals that accept payements to publish have no interest to reject or delay acceptance. I'm not really surprised.

This has happened to me twice. The first occurrence was for a paper that was accepted in a decent computational fluid mechanics journal with a single reviewer. The comments were purely aesthetics ( Color change to some figures, etc.). The second time was in a chemical engineering journal (also a pretty good one), and there were absolutely zero comments from the single reviewer that reviewed the paper.
Initially, I found these occurrence quite alarming because the papers had been accepted after significant delay (2-3 months at least), but had been reviewed by a single reviewer. With time, I think this is just a proof that the review process is by itself flawed, but there is little we can do as researcher except carry our own reviews with as much care as possible.
However, from a career point of view, no one knows how many reviewers actually reviewed your paper once it is published (except for some very specific journals). What I did, and maybe I can suggest you do the same, is to take extra care when you do the proof reading of the paper and the corrections. I would even ask some colleagues or at least your co-authors to help you as much during the proof reading.

Thanks BlaisB, I agree with your conclusions about the whole process, and that we can just try our best. I am afraid what happens is editors seeking reviewers, finding in a reasonable time only one who's not responsive, or simply zero. I would love to have someone who worked as journal editor commenting here. I do not understand last part of your comment: the paper is finally accepted, then during proof-reading I got minor or none aesthetics/editing comment and work them out. What do you mean that I should I put extra care in that part of the process?

What I mean is that even though your paper is accepted, there might be some mistakes remaining therein. For instance, typos, errors in formula, etc. Generally, there is always something slightly wrong in a paper because after all, we are human. Generally, if the review process is good, incoherent elements should be identified by the reviewers (such as a symbol not defined, a formula error, etc.). When you get a single reviewer, this is rarely the case. Therefore, it becomes more and more important to take extensive care when carrying out the proof reading of your paper.

I would be suspicious in that case. You may be a very good scientist, but I still think that no two readers would have exactly the same opinion about the paper (let alone two reviewers and the author). I am deeply dissatisfied with the review process as it is, since I get sometimes unreadable papers to review even from good journals. It is pure waste of my time. So I honestly cannot believe that two people would 1) read the paper 2) understand the paper 3) have an opinion about the paper and would have really nothing to add. It never happened to me as an author, and only once as reviewer, and in that case I wrote the positive aspects of the paper in the review (including "I have rarely a pleasure to review a paper which needs basically no revision"). So ... I would be suspicious, yes.

I've had the same experience with unreadable papers.  I'm not fussing about a grammar mistake or two.  I mean the obvious non-native English is so strong that it interfered with comprehension of the material and made it painful to parse the paper.  Given how "low the bar is" in some sense (that editors of decent journals send stuff like that to review), perhaps if you just do a solid job, your papers can fly through.

It happens with one of my earliest papers, which was very technical in establishing a close-form derivation of a statistical error, hence could not be much improved or modified. I took it in a positive mode! I would say it all depends on the paper and on the journal: some electronic journals aim at quick acceptance or rejection and ask referees to refrain from suggesting aesthetic modifications.

One of your comments clarifies your question as being about inaccurate findings slipping through the review process (“It is about what if I was wrong? I am afraid nobody would have realized.”) I don't share this view of what the peer review process is about and I think it's totally the wrong thing to be concerned about.
Depending on the venue, peer review is about ensuring the research is minimally competent (the researchers are aware of what's going on in their fields, standard methodology, etc.), internally coherent (the data and argument presented support the conclusions), described properly (with enough details and clarity) and relevant. It's not and cannot be about the results being true. Maybe mathematics or computer science can occasionally be different but that's certainly the way it works in empirical fields.
So what if you are wrong? If the result is important enough, other people will hopefully notice, publish their own results and correct the record.
That said, I would still be a bit concerned about receiving no feedback at all. The reason for that is that, in my field at least, reviewers always find something to say. It can be wrong, it can be nitpicking, but it's very unusual to get empty reviews. Personally, if I get to review a paper that's good enough to publish as is and I really don't have any suggestion to improve it, I would usually at least write a paragraph restating what I think are the authors' main contribution and praising them for it. Not writing anything does suggest the paper might have been reviewed very superficially.

I agree on the limits of the peer review. As you said, peer review guarantees minimum standards of the scientific work behind the paper. That is roughly 1) ensure that the problem is relevant (to the field) 2) ensure that experimental design is appropriate 3) ensure that the conclusions follow the experimental results (and are not broad, beyond what the results prove). If someone makes the error in experimentation itself (e.g. when implementing the method or processing the data), the peer review cannot uncover that. And for math, there is Mathematica.

I think we disagree on the core idea of what peer-review is. As I said, publishing should be about disseminating science, not growing h-indices. At any rate, at least the journal I refer to seems to share my view of what a reviewer role is: "Referees should check for Validity.— Work is valid if it is free of detectable error and is presented in sufficient detail that this may be determined."

@famargar Who said anything about h-indices? Disseminating science is exactly what it is, and that include preliminary, uncertain or plain wrong results and ideas. It's kind of naive to think that truth could be adjudicated prior to publication or that that would be the role of peer review. That's just not how science works.

@Relaxed sorry do not remember where my comment on h-indexes came from, please ignore that. It seems we just come from different academic branches. In quantitative sciences, a paper can be proven wrong (the math isn'r right, the findings ignore prior knowledge, the statistics are inaccurate). So yes publication should ensure correctness to the best of current knowledge. And yes that does not mean the paper isn't going to be proven wrong afterwords.

@famargar No, I come from a quantitative(ish) science too, that's exactly what I wrote in the answer already. The examples you give are exactly the kind of basic checks I mention in the second paragraph and doesn't preclude wrong results at all.

It's certainly not common, but can happen. Example: Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid, the first paper to describe the structure of DNA, was accepted without review. Nature's editor, John Maddox, later had this to say about it:

... the Watson and Crick paper was not peer-reviewed by Nature ... the paper could not have been refereed: its correctness is self-evident. No referee working in the field ... could have kept his mouth shut once he saw the structure.

One of my articles was published "as is" in J. Math. Phys. The two referees just mentioned that the result was correct. The article was relatively short, the result was good (even if I say that myself) and relatively easy to check, so I am not sure any profound conclusion can be made based on this outcome of my submission.

There are two variables, your work product and the actions by journal.  If you think the journal is lax, just see if they accept things from other authors without revision.  (I would think this is a basic scientific problem solving idea.)
In all likelihood if it is a good journal, it is not common that they accept without revision.  For various reasons.  Papers aren't that great.  Reviewers are fussy.  (Most journals you can see on the papers the dates of submission and revision so it is obvious what the practice is.  Otherwise talk to people to get the skinny.)
So your papers were the variable.  Given there were two of them you can't even figure it as luck.  Probably you write well.  Not just clear English but clear science logic (e.g. some authors play games with dancing around limitations rather than just being candid about them).
Finally, I would see yourself as the overcontrolling Hollywood director of your first author paper.  That is your baby.  Sure, if someone can give advice that helps it, take it.  But don't TRY for a committee process.  And when you submit papers make them as ready as you can.  You should always have the attitude that the thing is as perfect as you could get it, before next person went to review.  So if it hits the street (after typesetting), fine.

I had similar thing happen with my papers.  I am very far from an English major.  But I did try to do my best with them (writing clearly and honestly and following the notice to authors for the magazines).
Funny thing was my advisor didn't think the my first paper would be accepted because I was not bragging enough and making the work seem too simple.  I just told him to send it in as is and see how it went.  It ended up being accepted without revision (good ACS journal, no page charges).  We never even saw the reviewer sheets but I learned afterwards who 2 of the 3 were.
My prof was in shock.  Said he had over 100 papers and had never had one accepted like that.  We just got the letter back and he came and asked me what "accepted" meant as editor response.  He even said as a subeditor he had done 500 papers and never seen it.  Prof didn't fuss at me after that.  And I ended up having the next 4 first author papers after, all that I was FA, accepted without revision.
And I did not discover DNA. While I am a native English speaker, I'm not some trained writer either.  I really think if you just do solid, honest science and tell it straight that the papers can/should move through smoothly.


text:
How can I put myself in the best position to get a postdoc in a different field?
Im a graduate student in my 3rd year studying theoretical plasma physics. I'd like to stay in academia but I think I would be better in an area of experimental physics where data analysis plays a more important role (such as High Energy Experiment). I wanted to know wether or not it was possible to get a postdoc in another field than the one I write my thesis in. I'd like to hear from anyone who has done this.
If this is a possibility (a realistic one), what can I do to prepare myself in the remaining 3 years of graduate school? Thanks!

I'm in the same boat as you, but then for my thesis I added a few elements of the thing that I want to do later in my career, so I can use it as background. If you can incorporate something related to experimental physics in your plasma physics research, that'd help. Otherwise, you may join some research lab that works in the field of exp. physics, that'd look good on your resume.


text:
Is it normal that my adviser remove my information, pictures, everything from the lab homepage after I suspend my school?
First of all, I studied in Japan. After I complete all graduate courses. There will be 3 years to submit my thesis. During this time, I drop school and work in a company. So my professor removed all my information from the lab (%100) like I was not there, even Alumni name list. I would like to ask is it common for other schools.

@Drecate: Normally students working on their dissertation want to discuss their work with their peers... it's not good when the lab website undermines their claims of doing research in such-and-such group.

Where in the 3 year period are you? Are you going to complete your thesis? Are you still in regular touch? Does your adviser know where you are, what you are doing, and how to get in touch with you? If you just stopped showing up and aren't in regular contact, what exactly did you expect would happen?

The university doesn't require you to be enrolled while working on your dissertation? Todai appears to allow up to a 1 year absence only, as an example.Are you on an official leave of absence?

I don't think this is answerable in its current form, OP needs to clarify his current status in the program and the school.

Consider your relationship with the professor at the time that you left. There are at least two cases I can think of where a professor may remove your information from the lab page.

You didn't finish, and you are no longer part of the lab (not quite alumni). It's not clear if you will finish. A lot of unfinished students can make a bad reputation for the prof.
The professor does not want you to represent the lab.

As you probably know, Asian culture is a lot about 'saving face'. The professor may feel disrespected by you taking a job before finishing the thesis. Or possibly even taking the 'wrong' job.
One place that the professor is very, very unlikely to remove your name is the lab publications list. Work on publication, and use that as your work reference rather than the lab webpage.
If possible, try to discuss your research with the professor.

I'd even put it more strongly: OP is neither a current student nor a graduate, therefore it is correct to not list him/her as one.

It's normal to remove old student content from the group page.  Get your own page if you want.
I'm not as used to seeing ABD or "got masters and quit" students removed from alumni list.  Most professors want to emphasize how many students they have helped and take credit even for those who did not finish.  However, it's still a very minor thing, and "his dojo" and not your concern.
Really, I think worrying about stuff like group inclusion when you are gone is a little "off".  I mean you left the nest...you shouldn't even be snooping that page...or at least act like you are above it.  ;-)  Keep your eye on the current job who is paying you.  And just submit the thesis and fight to get your union card...don't let it get away.  Priorities...


text:
Should I cheat if the majority does it?
I'm taking the last and hardest exams of my master degree. During the exams we aren't allowed to use anything else but our brain. Cheating is pretty easy though: one has the lecture notes and all the past exams with solutions on the phone and can easily consult them without being caught, therefore the majority of the students does it. I scored pretty good on the first exam but didn't get the best mark like some cheaters did. I feel at a disadvantage here with respect to the majority of my colleagues who will take better grades in these exams and I'll end up with the US equivalent of a C
My main problem here is my disadvantage towards everyone else, especially in PhD application where the transcript of records plays a role.
I also firmly believe that the cheaters will be be caught sooner or later by showing their own incompetence when they for example do research, but this isn't helpful since they may have been given the chance to do research instead of me.
So should I put morals aside and simply go there and cheat if I need to? Is there any justification for someone to do it?
I never did it so far but this time I've taken I've been very tempted.
I can't actually think of any way of justifying me cheating in the next exams. On the other hand I'm not having a fair competition at all here and even if I know some of them are better physicists than me and I'd finish behind them anyway I also know that some of them are worse than me.
I know I'm basically asking if cheating can be condoned, can it?
I don't want to report them, I probably don't have the guts to do it, especially because it's such a socially accepted practice.
Do I have any alternatives beside taking the exams while pretending other students don't exist, pass the exams and go on without looking back?

Don't cheat

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Why are phones even allowed during an important exam?

The way the exams are marked might have a bearing on this.  Do the top few get an A, the next bunch a B and so on, regardless of the actual marks?  Or does A mean all marks above 80%, B above 60% etc. In the former case you're competing directly with the cheaters.  In the latter case cheaters are irrelevant: it's just you and the exam paper and your grade directly reflects your ability.

@AaronF I'm sorry I never read your previous question: I looked now for someone asking me where I am and I found out was you in the chat. If somebody asks me if I'm in China I say that I'm not in China. If you ask me where I am I say that I'm Italy.

I don't want to report them, I probably don't have the guts to do it, especially because it's such a socially accepted practice.

A "Snitches get stitches" mentality will not solve your problem. Cheating is unethical. You know that you are "at a disadvantage" if you keep your ethical behavior and the others don't.

Cheating is pretty easy though: one has the lecture notes and all the past exams with solutions on the phone and can easily consult them without being caught

You seem to know how people are able to cheat at the exam. I would suggest that you report how people cheat (not who) to the professor in charge of your exam. He will either be able to implement counter measures to prevent cheating or change the exam format. This way you can avoid denouncing specific individuals while still preventing them from cheating.

I think the issue is that many professors already know that (and how) people cheat in their exams, but they still won't do anything about it because they don't really care.

For a clear conscience, you could let your peers know on top of the professor. e.g. spread some rumors that you have heard that someone said that the prof caught on to the cheating and might adjust the exam. Then everyone has the chance to learn properly and you can't be blamed/blame yourself for people failing. Of course, if you prefer them failing hard then go for it.

@LorenzoQuarisa Wouldn't that be a case to be taken to the dean?

@Dirk If the dean cares, perhaps. It doesn't sound as if that's particularly probable.

@Dirk That depends on the culture. I'm pretty sure, while I was at Uni, all the professors/TAs knew how students cheat (there were 2-3 widely popular ways for getting notes through, and much less frequently having somebody from the outside solve your exam). It was so widespread it was out of control; almost a social norm, and there was not enough resources to control it (or maybe they just didn't want to fail 2/3 of a single generation). But it was so common that I was used to most people around me preparing their "exam notes" while revising in the uni library before the exam.

@penelope Exactly. One doesn't bring a knife to a gunfight. The primary reason cheating is considered inappropriate is because it puts other people in an unfair disadvantage. In the environment where absolutely everyone cheats and the regulators (professors) don't care, cheating itself becomes a new de facto rule and by not abiding to this rule one puts themselves in an unfair disadvantage.

This is honestly a silly answer. I completed my masters at an ivy league and reported cheating methodologies. The teacher said he acknowledged it and did ABSOLUTELY nothing about it. I reported this to the administration and again, nothing happened. What are you going to do?

@Run like hell I apologize if I hurt you in some way. It is certainly most uncomfortable on your side to denounce comrades. But doing nothing will not solve your problem. Inaction is not an option if you want things to change.

You didn't hurt me in any way whatsoever, don't worry. You gave some your opinion and I think good advices, I just think I can't follow them, not in this moment at least. And another reason is that I considered the option of cheating so viable that I asked a question.

@Lonidard: I agree that it is a silly answer, but I put it to you that it's no sillier than the question. If this answer works, problem solved; if not, then the context makes the question nonsensical. You are then asking a "should" question in a context which might not be giving you any other choice, in which case the point is moot.

@Runlikehell, write (or print) a note and leave it in the professor's mailbox, no signature needed, no social interaction, no confrontation. You might even also leave one for the dean.

A group of us did a study in our undergrad years ago asking our fellow students to anonymously report whether or not they considered various actions to be cheating and if they would do it anyway. The level of people admitting that they would do something they considered cheating was well over 80%. I am of the opinion that the system is calibrated around the presence of cheaters and has probably been so since its inception. Furthermore, the cost of cracking down on it would be more than any institution could bear. Some fundamental changes to the entire system need to be made.

@Runlikehell regarding "I don't feel like I can report tens of people, not until i take the exam and then I'll tell the prof that people cheats", this seems like a particularly strange way to address the situation. I don't know what courses of action are available post-exam but what if the exam was completely annulled due to evidence of significant cheating? You'd have wasted everybody's time including your own. Also walking away with a good result and then reporting cheating may be misconstrued as you being a cheater who is trying to lighten his conscience by making a "soft" confession.

@LairdPleng I saw it  more like I don't have the right to complain officially if I don't  show that I can take the exam, but I notice it doesn't makes much sense

@Lonidard: Did you report it to the board of directors?

@user21820 No. If the TAs know, the professor knows, the admin knows, I have a hard time seeing how the board should not? You can only go so much up the chain of command, as a student. When I tried emailing the chair, he didn't even bother to reply and I received a snarky email from his secretary.

@Lonidard: That's precisely why I said "board of directors". Very rarely do problems get reported up the chain by itself, because most people are too lazy to. If you want to get anything done, you'd have to push hard enough. Of course, you should take into consideration which are the right battles to fight, so it's your own personal decision to make, and not mine to judge.

@ayorgo I would say that by not leaving an enviornment in which cheating is the norm, you are at a disadvantage. Everyone graduating from there will be tainted with the suspicion of having cheated, and the institution's accreditation will be robbed of prestige.

If I were you and my primary concern was the PhD application (but also not being bugged for the rest of my life if I cheat), I'd ask myself the following questions:

How limited is the number of available PhD positions in my university?
Are all those cheaters going to sign up for such a commitment as PhD[1]?
Where on that imaginary unbiased leader-board do I belong? I.e. what are my odds of getting high enough grades to be able to do my PhD elsewhere without cheating?

Answering these questions will help you to be more honest with yourself and distinguish between the two possible dilemmas here:

I am good enough as a physicist but I'm being robbed of my future by the cheaters. Should I give them a taste of their own medicine?
I am not that good after all and I want an unfair advantage on the international arena because everyone in my class does it. Is it OK if I just go with the flow?

[1] My personal anecdotal experience suggests that a cheater's mindset is often to cheat their way out of the situation as quickly and with as least trouble as possible and forget about all of it the next morning. If this is the case you may not face that much competition in the end.

This actually reads like an answer from somebody who experienced such a culture where it looks like cheating is the norm.

This the best answer so far and really made me think. While the second dilemma is almost rethorical I've thought a lot about the first one but my institution and the "policy of high grades" never helped me. Taking the best marks was never a sign that I could make it in the end because it was relatively easy to take them and especially in the master degree I've taken sometimes the same marks of some really outstanding guys and at the same time the only difference between me and some people that can't compete with  me has been the difference between best mark with laude and best mark.

Therefore I don't know on what I should base my answers on the first dilemma, I'll probably take the opinion of my thesis advisors at the end of my work with them as the only sensible answer to that dilemma

@penelope I'd say the situation can easily be generalized to an arbitrary life context where the said dilemma boils down to: How much of my own (and often others' too) well-being am I ready to sacrifice for those unreachable Platonic ideals.

@Runlikehell Since I intentionally worded the second one to sound like that I wouldn't call it rhetorical necessarily especially if we exaggerate a little bit and think of it from the perspective of a mega rich vs dirt poor person being robbed at the street corner. It's a horrible experience for both, but for the former being parted of a couple of notes isn't that much of a big deal whereas the latter may end up in a death fight for what could be their last mean of survival.

@ayorgo but still getting that "unfair advantage on the international arena because everyone in my class does it" is not acceptable in any situation, I think. The Phd is something I want, not getting it would be a first world problem, it's not my last mean of survival. I mean If I am so bad that I need that advantage I should simply fail to get a PhD and give up.

@Runlikehell When I select a PhD student (and I am very selective, as we do not have many positions and need to fill them well), I look at the grades last. Secondly, try to be far better than your competition and be as good or better without cheating as the ones with the cheating tools. Take it as a challenge for yourself, it will pay off, if not on the short, then on the long run.

@CaptainEmacs thanks for the advice and the perspective. great name btw

@Runlikehell and for one moment imagine the following situation: You are applying for PhD and the committee asks you point blank "did you ever cheat on your exams?" - could that single question ruin everything if you cheat now? Since you seem to have trouble with confrontation, cheating would probably be very bad for your psychological well being.

If you have to ask, you know the answer. Don't do it. Cheating now puts you on the same level as the other cheaters. Pass the exam on the strength of your knowledge of the material, not on the basis that you cheated better than your compatriots.
Tell your professor about the cheating. If you are scared, it's OK to do this anonymously. You'll feel much better about yourself.

You give very direct instructions while knowing nothing about the culture OP is from, or of their university. These instructions may carry extremely negative consequences for OP while achieving nothing that's positive. What's appropriate in a US university isn't appropriate in every university, even if you can (probably succesfully) argue that it should be.

@sgf, I take your point that these standards are country and culture-specific, and as a US, privileged, white, cis-gendered, non-poor, somewhat-educated man I should not project my standards on the other.  What shall I do where the other and I intersect to compare numbers?  If I were on an admissions committee, how should I view the grades from the OPs institution?  How do I map those measures of talent and competency onto the standards of my institution?

@cmm I don't see how this is about privilege. This is about the fact that your standards aren't everybody's standards. If cheating is endemic at the university, one person's not cheating won't affect the view others have of that university, nor will it change the culture of that university. If that's the case, OP gains nothing from not cheating. (Not even, I would argue, moral superiority, though perhaps a nice feeling of moral superiority.)

@sgf ... OP gains an actual education by doing this, compared to his cheaters who do not.  This answer seems to look at it from that perspective.  Does OP want to out-cheat his classmates, or does he actually want to be able to understand and apply the material?  I think the point is more geared towards contrasting the attitude of the cheaters with the apparent attitude of OP.

@JMac I don't see how cheating prevents OP from gaining an actual education. The most likely outcome is that OP learns just as much, but performs better at the exam. I agree that it's preferable that OP gets the best grade on the strength of their knowledge, but OP already proclaimed that they'll get a C based on the strength of their knowledge. I took that to be true.

@cmm Obviously poor-quality schools can't fool anyone for long with their worthless degrees. We analyze application info alongside student performance and figure out who isn't producing grad-school material. At my school we place low value on their grades and look more heavily at standardized test scores. We also sometimes require them to "retake" introductory courses unless they can test out of them (which they always fail to do, though every single one of them thinks they will be able to). Other schools won't even accept students from "low tier" schools like that.

@sgf I think it's a symptom of a deeper problem. Cheating cultures arise when everyone thinks the thing that matters is the letters and certifications, not the knowledge and skills. Schools cater to that, selling them a useless degree that covers nothing in useful depth but touches on a lot of hot topics to pad their resume with. The lack of a feedback mechanism (like a strong economy that only values the skilled workers and rejects cheaters who learned nothing) to induce the school to actually teach properly, leads to all of it in my opinion. At least in developing countries.

@ASimpleAlgorithm I think I agree with everything you wrote, but I cannot deduce from that that OP should not cheat. I don't see what they would get from that.

@sgf I suppose one could still imagine goals which would be served by cheating, such as getting a job teaching in that same culture, or perhaps a skilled worker visa with an exploitative firm that uses them for unskilled tasks. But I responded to your statement about whether those in cheating cultures gain an actual education. If my hypothesis is correct there is no hope of that due to the lack of real feedback to the school (both from employers and their own grades). Rather than treating the symptom, the OP needs to address the real problem and find a better school.

@ASimpleAlgorithm Immediately before their final exam? Cheating serves a very obvious goal: Getting a better mark on their final degree. Of course that completely decouples their mark from their actual education, but it doesn't follow that they didn't get one. From experience, most of the things I learned for exams didn't turn out to be the things my actual education consisted of.

@sgf you seem hung up on defending the act of cheating. My logic was based on my own postulates and hypotheses. And I'd say yes, my conclusion does indeed follow from them. Perhaps there's a logical step you're missing? As for your argument, ironically, in my classes the exams (and quizzes) are the only grades I can trust; students can and do cheat anywhere else especially the desperate students that are in over their head. Take away un-cheatable exams and they will con their way through the entire degree. Then hurt our school's reputation with their incompetence.

@ASimpleAlgorithm hung up on defending the act of cheating I'm more reacting to hyperbolic language: cheaters (...) do not [gain an actual education], there is no hope of [getting an actual education]. Of course cheating environments will have lower quality education, and of course a cheating mindset is a stumbling block for learning. But the point remains that making a decision about cheating immediately before the final exam will not change anything about OP's education.

@sgf unless of course the OP gets busted and failed or worse. They still do call it cheating, cultural differences or not.

@ASimpleAlgorithm As far as I understand, OP is finishing their degree. We've so far assumed 'an actual education' to mean the things you learn, not the outer appearance of having learned things, so even if they get busted and lose their degree in the event, that doesn't change anything about OP's education. In fact, as far as I can tell, OP's university education has concluded, so I don't see how anything that happens now can change anything about it. (Although I'm open to the perspective that getting busted at cheating might be an education in itself.)

@sgf the "education" section on one's resume lists degrees, not retained knowledge. So it should be easy for you to surmise I was defining the word more broadly than you in that comment. As for learning and retention, I think it's also overwhelmingly likely that students who aren't planning to cheat will study more. Even if their study habits are terrible (i.e. last second cramming where they try to memorize everything and integrate nothing) their retention will be low but low is still greater than zero. A better use of that time would be to apply some good last-second studying tactic.

@ASimpleAlgorithm You wrote:But I responded to your statement about whether those in  cheating cultures gain an actual education. If my hypothesis is correct there is no hope of that due to the lack of real feedback to the school That's about what you learn and reatin, not about what you put on your resume. But I've been in enough circumstances where passing a test was significantly more important to my future than retaining the knowledge it needed to question your statement about a better use of that time. (Leaving aside moral considerations.)

@sgf  Indeed the words "actual education" successfully qualified what you meant, while the words "anything about education" left you vulnerable to a snappy retort. As for better use of one's time, there I was comparing good studying tactics to naive cramming. It also beats getting busted and failed.

@A Simple Algorithm I have found naive cramming a fairly successful (and time-efficient) learning technique if I didn't particularly care to retain the knowledge. Even more valuable than the time efficiency I found that it's very easy to motivate to learn two days before the exam, while it's rather hard to do a significant time in advance. (Although now I realize that learning to motivate myself without immediate pressure at an earlier time would come in handy at this point of my life.)

Have you considered what happens if you get caught during the exam?
Unless I've missed something you haven't talked about what actually happens if a cheater gets caught (during the exam I mean).
If it's a bigger deal than a slap on the wrist, consider that if you go ahead, cheat, and get caught, you'll probably be treated like any other cheater, and saying "I cheated because everyone else does it, but I still studied and did my work and I wanted to secure my place [...]" will put you in a very awkward position, perhaps even more awkward than an "actual" cheater.
Yes, eventually most of the "true" cheaters will appear to be frauds when they reach the research field, but getting caught cheating in an exam? In some countries (mine included), that gets you a five-year interdiction to pass any other exam, may it be school stuff or driver's license.
Don't cheat.
It may appear that cheaters won't get caught, because if they've been watching their phones all this time without being afraid, the supervisors likely don't mind. True, but what if this year is the one they wake up and get stricter? Or, another student warned them/the dean/higher-ups of the situation? You're probably not the only non-cheater facing that situation.
Don't cheat.

Complain about cheating. You don't have to report any person if you don't want to. But complain about having a disadvantage because of playing fair.
When you feel like "everyone cheats", it could be that the professor also feels like "everyone cheats". The professor might need to see that not everyone cheats. To see that not everyone is on board with that.
Receiving complaints should encourage professor to fight cheating. It will equip professor with something more than "cheating is bad" when arguing with cheaters or superiors who want everyone to pass. These will become available and the prof will be able to say it with confidence knowing it's true.

No, not everyone is cheating. You are cheating. There are others who are not cheating.
No, it's not harmless, there are honest students screwed over by this.

As for yourself - don't cheat, of course. The cheating mentality is idiotic. You are taking the test to test your knowledge. If you cheat, you just waste your and the professor's time. That might be desirable for some of those other people, but not for me or you. For us it's unacceptable, as you have already stated in the question.

"The cheating mentality is idiotic" - no, those exams where you "aren't allowed to use anything else but your brain" are idiotic practice, based on nothing but barbaric traditions. Unless you are in a mnemonic school, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

@Headcrab That's as strawman. Who does that? For instance, in engineering exams, sophisticated calculators may be used. It is not uncommon to be permitted to bring a sheet with useful formulas.  An exam has to delimit what is allowed into the exam room and what isn't. There have to be rules. Those who break the rules are cheating.

@Kaz Who does what? Did you actually read the question, particularly the "we aren't allowed to use anything else but our brain" part?

I would argue that the real problem here is deeper, provided that it actually exists.
Grading of exams should not be competitive
On any exam, the grade given should depend only on how the individual student does, not on what others do.
A system in which the only way that one student can do better is for another to do worse is deeply immoral. It also provides a serious inducement to cheating.
Sometimes "grading on the curve" has an aspect like that. The grade distribution is assumed to be normal with C as the median. That is a foolish assumption. First, the sample is too small to assume that the sample distribution is close to the population distribution. Second there is little reason to assume that the sample is randomly drawn from the entire population. If I happen to teach the 30 best qualified students in the world on an exam, why should anyone get less than a perfect mark.
But, perhaps you are only assuming that this is what is going on. If the system is such that everyone can get perfect marks and the grades are determined only by your own performance (objective grading), then it doesn't really matter that other people cheat. You get the grade you deserve - good or bad.
If, however, that is the situation (competitive grading) then that is a valid basis of complaint to the administration. Other people cheating should have no affect on your grade.

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This answer is a good commentary but doesn't help OP at all

In reality though, there may be limited places in the next stage (in this case, a PhD application) and even if you're not graded on a curve you're still in competition with the others. So while you might rightly get a well-earned A2, all the cheaters got an A1 and while you passed with flying colours, you fail in the sense that you didn't get a place on the PhD course.

Ask your university to change its policy on mobile phones in exams.
My university has a university-wide policy that all mobile phones and similar devices are to be turned off and removed from your person during all exams (typically being placed in your backpacks at the front of the examination room). This should help minimize cheating since if they don't have mobile phones, they can't use them to cheat - and if they do have a mobile phone, they're violating university policy and can be punished as cheaters.

They can already be punished as cheaters. But no one does. And I suspect no one will after the mobile phone ban.

@Alexander proving the student has a phone is much easier than proving they were cheating. Someone still has to care, but not as much.

Here's a relevant story about how someone in a very similar situation resolved the problem:

Getting into medical school is pretty competitive, and the desire to
  do well and be successful puts a great deal of pressure on the new
  incoming freshmen. My husband had worked hard on his studies and went
  to attend his first examination. The honor system was expected
  behavior at the medical school. The professor passed out the
  examination and left the room. Within a short time, students started
  to pull little cheat papers out from under their papers or from their
  pockets. My husband recalled his heart beginning to pound as he
  realized it is pretty hard to compete against cheaters. About that
  time a tall, lanky student stood up in the back of the room and
  stated: ‘I left my hometown and put my wife and three little babies in
  an upstairs apartment and worked very hard to get into medical school.
  And I’ll turn in the first one of you who cheats, and you better
  believe it!’ They believed it. There were many sheepish expressions,
  and those cheat papers started to disappear as fast as they had
  appeared. He set a standard for the class which eventually graduated
  the largest group in the school’s history.

An amazing story that illustrates a excellent way to prevent cheating.

Don't Cheat.
As you have stated, there are students in your class who have cheated, and others who have not cheated. You have noted that cheating is pervasive and accepted. You observe that the majority of students cheat. It is not clear whether this has been the case for previous courses, and whether grades are already final for other courses. Are there any students who have not cheated on any courses, projects or exams? Have you or the other students learned the material, and how well?

Cheating Harms Everyone

As you have noted, students who cheat have harmed you and other students who have not cheated, and they have harmed the reputation of the school. The sad part is that because cheating behavior is accepted, you will finish your Master's and find it has diminished value because of the cheating.

Report Cheating

Report the cheating to the professor(s), the dean, the office of student integrity. Report the cheaters, inform the school both that they cheat and how they cheat, and request that the exams be monitored to prevent cheating. Document everything. And do not cheat. Should the Uni do nothing, then you may get lesser grades, but you will have earned them.

Caution

Do not study for a PhD at a Uni that accepts cheating, that would further waste your time. Find (another) Uni where you can study and succeed. Have you learned and prepared well, and are you ready to succeed at the PhD level (without cheating)? Then find a Uni which aligns with your principles.

Excuse: "I'm taking the last and hardest exams of my [M]aster degree."

Irrelevant.
PhD study, research, and work do not get easier. Whether the exams are hard or easy, do not cheat. Learn and master the knowledge. Find your own place. Earn what you can; accept what you earn.

Constraints: "During the exams we aren't allowed to use anything else but our brain."

Irrelevant. Learn the knowledge.
This is one of the more asinine practices at Uni. Especially at graduate level. You should learn to think, synthesize knowledge, and seek deeper understanding. Exams should not be the only measurement.
Rote memorization is for elementary school.

Cheating is Easy, Pervasive

"Cheating is pretty easy ... one has the lecture notes ...  past exams with solutions on the phone and can easily consult them without being caught, therefore the majority of the students does it."
You stated that the Professor and Uni do not allow anything but brains.
The Professor and Uni should not allow these materials, and the Uni should have policies and procedures to enforce the integrity of exams.

Fairness: "I feel at a disadvantage ... [cheaters] will take better grades in these exams [in comparison]"

Which is exactly why the Uni (and Professor) must express and enforce clear integrity policies. It keeps the playing field level.
Read about the Prisoner's Dilemma. Suppose you cheat, how does that affect those who do not cheat?
Your PhD application may already be impaired by your Uni's reputation, which may be known and have been damaged by tacit acceptance of cheating.

Consequences: "[C]heaters will be be caught sooner or later by showing their own incompetence ..."

No guarantee here.
Sadly, some cheaters are not caught because they have learned the material, and cheat to make the exam easier. They harm their own preparation, but may still have learned enough to perform well. This may be a consequence of the weak exam format.

Morals: "[S]hould I put morals aside ... and cheat if I need to?"

No.
Your integrity is important. Earn the grades you deserve on your own.

Justification: "Is there any justification for someone to do it [cheat]?"

No.
You have already answered this question. Don't let others or even your own struggles diminish yourself. You have done your best.

Temptation: "I've been very tempted."

Learn and grow.
Studying an advanced topic in depth is hard. It challenges our ability and forces us to think (hard), learn, and grow (when we can).

"Even if I know some of them are better physicists ... anyway ..."

This is an interesting observation that some students (and cheaters?) are better than you. Which implies that students have learned the material, and there is a disconnect between the exams and the material. Clarify with the professor that students are not allowed to lookup answers. It appears that the problem is the exam format.

Cheating should not and cannot be condoned.

You will face decisions in your life where you will need to choose between right and wrong. Make the right choice and stand by that choice. You will become a better person.
You are about to earn a Master's degree. You are an adult. Act like an adult. Accept responsibility.

Actually don't pay attention to what majority do. It's vital you know that cheating makes you weaker and weaker over the time. And you get  more stress and torment instead of self confidence and pride. Be the strong C , not a weak A . :)

This is truly a dilemma. But let's analyse your options:

Do not cheat. Cheaters will outperform you and you might get compared with their grades and considered to be among the worse ones.
Cheat. If successful, you will catch up with cheaters and get a good grade. If caught, you get the worst case scenario.
Do not cheat and anonymously expose the cheating issue without calling names. If there was a leak, that should fix the issue entirely.

Now let's evaluate each option (with scores, highest being best) (see "Moral" as a broader term mixed with consciousness, and "Result" as your grade with context):

Result: 2/4, Moral: 3/3. This is the passive option. But you came hear to seek for alternatives. You will get the worse grade and compared to others you'll be among the worse ones.
Result: 4/4 or 1/4, Moral: 1/3. You cheat, you are lucky, everything is fine. You may betray yourself, however be reminded - it's only grades. Real skill and competence does not only come from the amount of knowledge you can sponge together for a short time, and then forget most of it anyway. It's quite possible that the cheaters will perform well in normal job domains because they possess other characteristics will are good as well. Also it does not mean they are incompetent in the matter either, just may have just skipped a bad educational procedure. Regardless, you still need to compare it in regards to those who don't cheat - it's unfair to them. But many/most are willing to do it already. However, if you get caught, you'll get the worst outcome. Be reminded that it also takes some skill to cheat, and perpetual cheaters may be less likely to get caught unlike you.
Result: 3/4, Moral: 2/3. Sabotage your colleagues and friends, flatten the ground and force them to be measured based on true test-writing performance. You may inflict 1-2 semesters of additional study time or even cause an even greater consequence. Maybe it's good, maybe it's bad, maybe the people affected deserve it. Compared to cheaters you should come out ahead or equal, however you'll still get the worse grade.

Personally I'd advise you to option 3. Let the bomb lose, even the playfield, play fairly, and let your colleagues feel the consequences of cheating, by being unable to do so when they relied on it. You are in a vague competition after all, and this is the compromise which yields the best outcome for you, each with the second best outcome by result and moral. I'd rated it 3/3 for "Moral", but I assumed you care about your friends being sabotaged who intend to cheat. If not, you bring justice and fairness to a place which was devoid of it. Still, depends on if you consider these barricades as reasonable in the first place.

Isn't "snitching" a pretty strong term for reporting the cheating but no names?

@sgf - I think I misunderstood the word, I rephrased it.

If everyone cheats, and the professeors tolerate it, you might as well do it too.
In every modern society, there are things that are formally forbidden but informally everyone expects everyone to do them anyways. If that's the case, you're not doing yourself any favours by trying to stick to honor codes from US universities - your university is not in the US, and neither their written rules nor their unwritten rules apply to you.
For what it's worth, in my European university, especially in the undergrad, it would have been unthinkable for me to report a cheater. That was something between the cheater and their own conscience - there are no honor codes here, and I would have felt like an horrible person, since the mindset is generally "If the professor doesn't care enough to prevent it, go ahead and do it."
If it was clear that a professor didn't care, I wouldn't have felt bad for cheating myself - the idea was that preventing that behavior isn't on the students but on the teachers.
If it was clear that a professor did care, I would have hesitated to devise some elaborate scheme for cheating anyways -- if the teacher cares, then going around it would have felt like doing something morally wrong.
If everybody else cheated, repeatedly, and the department did nothing about it, I wouldn't have cared. The idea behind honor codes is precisely that you can't expect students to report cheaters, or not to cheat themselves if it is made too easy for them, unless you respond to it with draconian measures.
The goal of preventing cheating is of course to keep test grades meaningful, which is only possible if there is a large amount of non-cheaters. However, I don't see how any moral claim follows from that at a university where everybody cheats -- if you personally don't do it, you can have a nice superior feeling, but it won't help to make the grades meaningful.
That's a bad situation, to be sure, but it's really on the university to improve it. You don't have to throw your grades away to make a statement that no-one but you will know about.
Note that I'm assuming here that cheating is actually wide-spread, and that professors know about it but don't really care. If you think that reporting the ways of cheating would make a big difference, you probably should.

If everyone cheats, and the professor tolerates it, I'd be either escalating to the head of department or looking for a transfer.

@Allure Care to explain why?

I am not really familiar with how the honor code works. The prof. doesn't seem to care: it's so easy that you can put your phone on the desk and copy proofs and everything you want. At the same time he's one of the very few that during the written tests doesn't allow us to use any kind of note, while it is common practice to give us the possibility to consult our notes. Since he refuses this common practice he must be really against using the notes. I plan to ask him directly when I finish with these exams since I'm a good relationship  with him, but I can't have certainty that he allows it.

If everyone cheats, a degree from the university is not worth the paper it is printed on and employers will dismiss candidates with it.

@Allure : Not everyone is studying at a very prestigious institution. Unfortunately, there are places where cheating is an established practice, and the leadership is supporting it. Escalating it might lead to them releasing your name to other students in order to get you being bullied. Or they might even punish you directly. I know of cases where the dean explicitly demanded professors that they allow certain students (children of prominent businessmen) to cheat, and threatened them with dire consequences if they refused. Sadly, there are places where this is common.

Couple of typos: "professeros" and "cheatin"

"The goal of preventing cheating is of course to keep test grades meaningful" - Assuming they are meaningful in the first place, even without the cheating.

@zero298 I agree that this is the way it should be. I see no reason to assume that it is. For the longest time studying in Oxford simply meant having lots of money, and employers in England loved it if you had an Oxford degree. Moreover, there's occasionally courses that everyone, professors included, mainly consider bureaucratic hurdles, or courses where everyone considers the test itself a bureaucratic hurdle. I don't see how either of these invalidates a degree.

@sgf basically per zero298 - if everyone cheats and the university condones it (and awards them a degree to boot) then why am I attending the university? I might as well save my time and attend a diploma mill. More likely, the university's degree isn't worth anything in which case I should still seek a transfer.

@Allure You might attend the university a) to learn things you couldn't learn on your own, and b) to get a degree that will enable you to practice your chosen profession. You can do both at a university that condones cheating. Very probably a university that doesn't will be superior, and if OP has the choice, looking for transfer might be worth it. But everybody doesn't have that choice.

@Runlikehell: Something doesn't quite make sense here. If he doesn't allow students to refer to their notes during written exams, he should also not allow students to look at copies of their notes on their phones. So it would make no sense that he wouldn't care if he knew they did.

If the professor didn't care if the students looked at notes and past exams on their phones, he would have explicitly permitted it. There is a difference between not caring about cheating at all and not caring enough to invest the necessary effort to stop it. Even if you don't consider dishonesty to be inherently immoral, cheating still inconveniences the professor by wasting their time. Grading answers someone copied from old tests doesn't take any less time than grading real answers. But grading real answers is worth that time, because it provides useful feedback to the honest students

@Ray From experience, grading correct answers takes significantly less time than grading incorrect answers. And by not investing the necessary effort to stop students from looking at their phones, the professor is much more at fault than any student that decides to cheat in a setting where honesty doesn't help them. The professor could easily do something that would change the culture of cheating. The student could not.

@sgf That agrees with my experience as well, although it's also been my experience (largely on projects rather than tests) that cheaters don't necessarily select good work to copy from (either because they can't distinguish good and bad work, or because good students won't let them copy their work). I don't excuse professors who are aware of cheating and don't try to stop it, but I can at least understand that time spent trying to stop cheating is time not spent doing other useful things. A tradeoff exists. And the student can do one easy thing to decrease cheating: they can not cheat.

@Ray Yes, of course. But my point is that while not cheating does, as you say, decrease cheating, it also doesn't, as I say, change the culture of cheating. It doesn't increase the prestige of the degree or increase the need for their peers to learn. And the tradeoff for the student is much more critical than for the professor. The professor needs to tell people at the beginning of the exam that they have to put their phones away. That's easy. The student gains a significantly worse grade on their final exam. If that grade is anything but cosmetic, there will be negative consequences.

My philosophy about cheating is somewhat morally relative.
I must confess that, on some of the take-home exams, I had collaborated with another student or two.  But it was mostly in the effort to clarify what the exam problem really was and what it really meant.  But it was really in clarifying a deliberately nebulous problem that the solution becomes apparent.  (i.e. the prof was not gonna do that for us.)  Probably, the other students benefited more in the collaboration than I did.  It's not exactly plagiarism but something like it.  As a result the three of us, collectively, got a better grade on the take-home exam than we would have if we did not collaborate and that was unfair to other students that did not collaborate.  But, word spreads, and I don't think there were many others, if any at all, that did not collaborate in their own little cliques.
That confession made, I think that you do yourself little favor by joining in on wholesale cheating similarly by joining in on looting with the crowd.  Consider your long-term best interests.  Also consider (if this interests you) the qualities of leadership.  Sure, with Trump (or W), it looks like a successful cheater has no limits, but, for most of us, it's the people who accomplished impressive goals based on their authentic skill and authentic gifts that are appropriate leaders and that quality will (eventually) be recognized.  Just because cheaters like Trump or W got to be President, doesn't mean that you will make genuine accomplishments by cheating.
You're in college to learn stuff.  Stuff that really works.  Cheating will result in only the illusion of learning something.  You might, in your professional life, be called upon to accomplish something based on "knowledge" that you "learned" by cheating.  But because you cheated, you may not have really learned it.  And bogus "knowledge" will become useless for really solving real problems that really come up.
Once in a while, someone like Trump comes along pretending that they can solve these real problems and brags about their "solution" (sometimes to a problem that they created), and it's only later enough people figure out that the solutions are bogus and don't work.

One way to approach the problem is: "How do I equalise or negate the value gained by the cheaters?"
To answer this one needs to carefully examine what the value gained by the cheaters is.
You say that the cheaters access notes and past solutions on their phones. How useful is this information? Perhaps the instructor expects you to have this material committed to memory (in some way); in that case you need to put more effort in that. Perhaps the instructor is looking for new approaches and solutions to existing problems and all he is getting is the same old churn; in that case you need to try out-of-the-box approaches to the old exam papers.
Grading "on a curve" still means that the questions are set to meet the expectations of the examiner. Perhaps these are unrealistic and students are cheating to meet these unrealistic expectations. Even in such a case, trying to meet these in an honest way will improve your skills.
Talking to the instructor to find out what the expectations are can help in some contexts. In others, you may need to change your approach.
Ultimately, learning is about increasing your intrinsic value, examinations are a way to learn to evaluate yourself (by understanding the corrections to your answers), grades are what determine your opportunities.
In that sense, your worry about being denied opportunities is correct. However, how much of the first two aspects have you incorporated?
Here are two examples.
It was common for students in the school I went to to memorise English essays on various topics and reproduce them in the exam (a form of plagiarism). Some of them may even have brought the essays unethically written on "chits" into the examination. It turns out that the English teacher was tired of these boiler plate essays. When I wrote an essay giving free rein to my imagination and my interests, it was given a high grade.
In a certain physics paper, the instructor often had questions like "Describe such-and-such apparatus and a give an example of it's use". I requested the instructor to make this either/or with a "numerical" which made use of experimental data from the same apparatus to analyse the experiment. So, at least for me, the "advantage" of the rote memorisers and "notes copiers" was equalised.
Both the examples may give you a feeling that they are dependent on an enlightened instructor. However, you must remember that, the examiner gives the grade. Hence, regardless of what you feel the purpose of the course is, you need to meet the instructors expectations. If you can find these out, or perhaps modify them(!), you will get better grades.

IMHO, there's no need to cheat.
Students are fed the lie "you need to get good grades, because..." almost from birth. It's rubbish. Many very successful people were dropouts. Sure, grades can open doors in the short term. But a grade rapidly becomes unimportant as time goes by.
In my experience, opportunities find you if you forget about being competitive and focus on being awesome. My motto was always "why cram for exams, when you can study properly and actually retain valuable knowledge and skills?" If you are competent, capable, creative, or quick, people will want you to solve their problems and great opportunities will come your way.
My advice is to treat exams like:

something to keep you motivated to work hard; a goal to keep you focused
rough and imperfect feedback on what your strengths and weaknesses are.


text:
Does the journal Physical Review require an institution in the affiliation field?
Does anyone know what politics or rules the journal Physical Review follows in regard to not writing an institution in the affiliation field?

To my knowledge, there is nothing preventing someone from submitting a paper to a journal without a formal institution as part of the reader's address. You might have to write something in a web form such as "self-employed" or something similar if institution is a required field for submitting the form.
However, it is fair to say that under most circumstances, if you are submitting a paper without institutional affiliation, it will probably be subjected to heightened scrutiny relative to a paper with more "traceable" affiliations. Unaffiliated authors are usually treated with some skepticism in the academic community, and papers by such authors tend to to be viewed as "crackpot" papers. (Granted, having an affiliation does not preclude the possibility of submitting such papers, but the likelihood is somewhat lower.)

Thanks. I am aware of the bias in the peer review process due to the lack of institutional affiliation.