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I got the following comment from a reputed math journal. What does it mean?
I got this comment after more than 75 days of submission:

The considered problem in this manuscript is a practice in high mathematics and can not be a paper for publication in high-level journals.

What does it mean?

I would considered politely asking for a clarification. It is quite a cryptic message you've got there.

I would politely ask for a copy of the reviews sent from the reviewers to the editor. Normally, one would get a copy of those. The otherwise fluent English used in the letter suggests to me that the comment is not written by the editor but one of the reviewers. Please note that you work is not being classified as bad or wrong. Rightly or wrongly it is judged to be within the grasp of too many. While rejection is always unpleasant, you should not ignore this distinction. By the way, a 75 day wait is very short. Many manuscript take much longer to process.

I would suggest against asking for a clarification. This seems like the whole text of the review. The English is lacking, but the outcome is clear: your paper is (allegedly) way too simple for this journal. Right or wrong, that's their decision. You have little to gain by arguing. After such a comment, there isn't much that you can write that would make the editor reconsider. If they had doubts about the review, they would already have invited another reviewer. Move on, and submit it somewhere else.

But the problem is - the paper in itself deals with one of the burning questions of mathematics. If it was within the grasp of too many why haven't they answered it? Further, does it also mean, all papers need to be made complex enough so that only a few "bright & privileged PHDs" should understand it? If they have taken 75 long days to "carefully" reject the paper, I feel that there is no point asking them to clarify.

No, a paper need not be hard to grasp to be publishable. But it needs to deal with a problem of interest to the mathematical community, and whatever the reviewer meant precisely, it is clear that they do not believe the problem to be in this category.

I think I have already answered that- I just want to tell you that there have been several workshops /talks that relate to the problem I am answering.

Unfortunately, sometimes reviewers don't do a good job reviewing. Worse, sometimes a problem can be very tough and then seem trivial once one has seen the solution. My advice is to send the paper to another journal, probably a slightly weaker one than you saw previously, and make sure that the paper has a detailed section illustrating what prior work has been done on the problem and why people care. that should do a better job getting a reviewer to realize the paper is interesting and non-trivial.

@FedericoPoloni Asking for a clarification isn't arguing. At least, as long as the request for clarification is along the lines of "What do you mean?" rather than "Why do you say that?"

@SidBrown I presume you are a student at some level. Do you have an academic advisor? You should run your work by someone at your institution who can assess its quality and help you find another journal to submit to if it is appropriate to do so. Based on your comments I am worried you might not know what you are doing and without getting some help you will continue to founder. In particular, because you seem to know no journals in your area I suspect that means you have not read any academic mathematics in your area. That almost certainly means your work is not publishable.

I am aware of the journal and perfectly know what I am doing. Otherwise, I might have got rejected within weeks not months (my opinion). No I am not in an academic institution.That's the problem, some journals need affiliation, some ask for institutional email, others have other restrictions.

Could you give some examples of the journals that require affiliation? Because it sounds to me like you may have misunderstood that.

Also a comment about timings: 75 days is actually a relatively short time in pure mathematics, where I've seen (and had) submitted papers, even short ones, take easily more than a year to review (with reviews not much more substantial than what you got).

In mathematics, it is customary to publish a preprint on arxiv.org before submitting to a peer-reviewed journal. Most mathematicians consider arxiv articles almost as serious as the ones published in journals, and have no problem referencing arxiv articles in their own articles. You should try there (it seems that, since you are not affiliated with an institution, you need someone to endorse your inscription to arxiv).

@Taladris yes I did think of that, they asked for institutional affiliation then I stopped. How does that endorsement for inscription go about?

arXiv has a page with all the details you need on how to get endorsed. Basically, you need to find someone who is an endorser in the category you wish to submit to and ask them to endorse you (which will mean you send them the paper and they check that it looks serious). A good way to find an endorser is to look at the authors of papers you cite and check their arXiv papers to see which ones are endorsers in which categories.

@SidBrown Scientific journals are well used to submissions from amateurs that claim to solve "burning questions" in all types of fields.  Almost without exception, the overwhelming majority of these are deeply flawed.  It's easy to make mathematics look ostensibly correct while simultaneously being completely wrong.  Consider the most likely probability falling to this being the case with your article as well.

@SidBrown Maybe this is too offtopic for this site, but maybe if you say what is your paper about and what are your findings people here can say how appropriate the review was.

My educated guess is that the reviewer is a native speaker of German and mistranslated some terms into English:

The German word Übung translates both to practice and to exercise.
In German universities, höhere Mathematik (literally: higher mathematics) was used as a label for mathematics courses for students of other scientific fields or engineering. At times, this only referred to the calculus courses (and not the linear-algebra courses). In particular, these courses usually focus on applying mathematical concepts and do not compare to courses for students of mathematics. (I wouldn’t be surprised if you can still find this label in use somewhere.)

If my guess is correct, the reviewers comment means something along the lines of:

This manuscript is just a (demonstrative) exercise in undergraduate mathematics and therefore not suitable for publication in a high-level journal.

So, your manuscript was rejected because it allegedly does not feature any new mathematics.

I came to a similar conclusion without thinking about it being a translation issue: the problem is (already) a practice in {some kind of} mathematics, therefore it's not suitable as a paper for a high-level journal (which only publishes novel things).

Incidentally the old name for calculus in Vietnamese is also "high-level math". During the Vietnam war we imported education from the USSR, so I wonder if this name also exists in Russian

Also, the German word "betrachtet" translates to "considered" and "regarded". The usage of the first translation seems a bit strange here.

This sentence would mean pretty much the same thing as your German intepretation if you translated it literally into Polish. It may be a bit of a leap, but I suppose the same is likely to be true for (most?) other central European languages.

@Ooker It is the same in most of Central and Eastern Europe https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%8B%D1%81%D1%88%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B5%D0%BC%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B0

Seems to me that there's a missing word, and the correct comment might be something more like:

The considered problem in this manuscript is a practice in high school mathematics and can not be a paper for publication in high-level journals.

In other words, your manuscript is too simple to be published in an academic journal.

Even then, it is a strange formulation, but I suppose the one writing it might not be great at English ("a practice" does not really make sense here on its own).

"a practice" instead of "an exercise" could be poor translation from a different language

Could be. Or maybe they mean something like "a (standard) practice in higher mathematics." Either way, a poorly written comment indicating that the paper's contribution is not sufficiently significant.

@cag51 This should be the answer.

@Allure So you need to get this correction to the editor, not the OP...

Unfortunately it means that the manuscript is rejected.  The only thing you can do is being disappointed that it took almost three months to receive an answer (that in addition might be poorly written).

Maybe they mean "it is a commonly used practice" in mathematics?

There is nothing to suggest that "high school" is the intended meaning here.  That's just wild speculation.

@J... indeed, but this is a simple explanation that makes the sentence comprehensible.

The considered problem in this manuscript is a practice in high mathematics...

In context, I would translate this into native English as:

In higher mathematics, the problem considered in this manuscript is just an exercise...

In other words, a routine calculation that has nothing new to say. Sorry.

Sorry that is completely wrong!

@SidBrown You're asking your question because you don't know what the review means. So I don't think you're in a position to declare that interpretations of it are "completely wrong!"

@SidBrown this seems completely right to me. What strikes you as wrong about it? At least give some info instead of just making a statement like that

@tonyk because the problem the manuscript deals cannot be considered just an exercise.

@SidBrown With all due respect, it is clear from everything here that you have essentially no experience in publishing mathematical research. While this will not imply that your work is not good, it means that it has a lot less weight when you claim that it cannot be considered just an exercise, since this is a judgement that takes experience (though experience that is slightly tangential to actually publishing). You might be correct, but most reasonable interpretations of the reviewer message points to them disagreeing with you on this point.

This seems really odd.  Is this the journal you submitted to?
Why

It took 75 days to receive a 1 sentence answer in English that makes no sense.
Even if it was high-school level, any peer reviewer would be expected to write more than a single bad English sentence.
There should be multiple reviews, and the editor should have sent a single sentence review back for more details without being asked.

What to do
If you are a grad student, take this to your advisor.  There is a good chance they can contact the editor, and will have more clout than you (unless you are a professor).
If you are affiliated with a university, ask others in the field about it.  If there are multiple people with single sentence reviews, push back on the conference as a group.
At least reach out to the editor.  Say

I'm not sure what this sentence means.  This is the only review I
  received from my submission, and I'm not sure what it means or why my paper was rejected.

EDIT:
I thought it might be a desk rejection, but the message isn't boilerplate.  I'm also not convinced the review meant "high-school".
Reasoning

If it was a high-school caliber entry, and the editor caught it, why not send a form letter or ignore it?
I have a difficult time seeing how "high-school math" can be anything but an insult.  Why not just use words like stupid outright?

About the multiple reviews and just one sentence: It could be a desk rejection coming from the editor, so it may not even been sent to the reviewers. And if the paper is really bad, there's no point in writing a detailed rejection.

If someone sends math at high school level to a journal, why should I as a reviewer write more than one line pointing that out? If it truly is an exercise in high school math, then there is nothing that will make it publishable, and it will be a waste of my time to try to point out things that might make it so. And it is very common for even very good math journals to have just a single reviewer.

Just because the journal uses English language, doesn't mean that English is necessarily the first language of any given reviewer. I also doubt that "high school" is the correct implication. I'm strongly thinking "higher mathematics".

@Buffy - I was thinking something like that too.  "Highly-theoretical" was my though.

@sevensevens yes that is the journal.

what makes you think that it's the journal?

@Buffy "Higher mathematics" wouldn't make sense. Why would they reject a paper for featuring advanced mathematics?

"High-school" isn't an insult: it's just placing the level of the work. High school students aren't stupid; the point is that school-level mathematics isn't research.

@DavidRicherby, If I'm right, the implication is that the things in the paper are already well known, just not known to the authors.

@MassimoOrtolano a desk rejection after 75 days would be rather unusual.

@Ooker ...because the letter OP posted is signed "Associate Editor, Mathematical Sciences"?

The editors are implying that what you have reported in your manuscript is already out there. It could be a theorem or a technique already in use by mathematicians, and therefore cannot be published as your research finding now.

Welcome to Academia.SE. As you can see, many other answers have already made this point -- it is considered better practice to upvote existing answers rather than posting a new, duplicate answer.

The considered problem in this manuscript is a practice in high mathematics and can not be a paper for publication in high-level journals

Probably he means "high school". But, Gauss found many solutions in his high school years... Nobody exactly defined where "high school" ends. Because in my high school, I modelled Frank-Hertz experiment. With complicated enough approach this could become Plasma Physics article, enough for publication in any scientific grade journal.
Another probability is that they think subject lies in field of "high mathematics", and they understand it as "mathematical analysis". It exists in some high school programs, but generally considered university discipline, rather then school. Again, it is actually possible to create problem inside mathematical analysis and solve it, creating material of grade which is enough for publication anywhere.
Also you can always publish it in journals for PhD/high school students, which have lower bounds for inclusion of articles.
Not explaining what exactly in your result did not fit into bounds for publication is nonsense. Such uncompetent staff which doesn't even bother to explain the subject of article should be fired because most probably their PhD degree was bought (remember how french physicists had bought degrees in 90s and after great scandal they were both fired and their works disqualified).

But I am looking for a peer-reviewed journal. Does anyone know of other peer-reviewed math journals in Europe with a great reputation?

@SidBrown Other than which one? You have not specified which one this was, and I am really not sure why it would matter that the journal is in Europe. But even with that somewhat unusual requirement, there are plenty to choose from.

Your comment about "high mathematics" and "mathematical analysis" show that you have no idea about what math research is about, so your advise is unlikely to be very helpful.

Correct me if I am wrong but in most of the journals I find the label Springer - I am seeking for math journals that are not related to them and would prefer those from the outside of USA. Another paper their comment -
Due to the long queue of papers waiting to be dealt with, we can not accept your submission to (name deleted) Journal. We are giving priority to papers fully fitting the area editors' scientific interests. I apologize for this but I hope you can understand that this is made for speeding up the publication process. Your paper will be removed from the web editorial system.

Why on earth would "high mathematics" mean "mathematical analysis"? Why that specific subbranch of mathematics and not one of the other ones? I mean, "higher category theory" at least contains the word "high".

Ohh, and since I post here under my actual name, you are free to look up my publication record in mathematics since you seem to think I have no idea what that is about.

@SidBrown Sure, many of them are published by Springer. But also many are not. Again, your wish to use one outside USA is very weird, but if you really want that, just pick pretty much any of the major society journals (London, European, German (i.e. Documenta), etc.).

If you think "mathematical analysis" is all math beyond the elementary math, then that reinforces my point that you really have no idea what you are talking about in this context and that whatever advise you offer is not going to be very valuable.

I am not trolling. But anyone with a decent background in math will find it absurd to guess "mathematical analysis" from "high math". Because the only way that will happen is that the person making the guess has never been exposed to math beyond that and thinks that it must be the pinnacle of math.

(calling it "mathematical analysis" as opposed to just "analysis" is also bit of a give-away).

@TobiasKildetoft Because in high schools, the only math in program is either elementary math or "high math", which includes integration, numerical methods - like casual "calculus", plus simple complex function knowledge. Calling it mathematical analysis would be overlap, but in few countries "high math" was the term for mathematical analysis in universities. So in language of unprepared speaker this is understandable by professionals, but it could not be used in official letters, as it is not widely accepted term.

@TobiasKildetoft: For whatever it’s worth, German universities used to split their basic mathematics curriculum (usually for students of other sciences or engineering AFAIK) into lineare Algebra (linear algebra) and höhere Mathematik, with the latter literally meaning higher mathematics and practically being (infinitesimal) calculus. The modern name for these courses and the German word for calculus is Analysis. So, with a few translation errors (that should not happen to a professional mathematician nowadays), you indeed get high mathematics = mathematical analysis.

@Wrzlprmft I agree with that possible interpretation, but jumping from there to "mathematical analysis" requires no familiarity with math at this level. I see no reason to expect this to be true of the reviewer, but I found it necessary to point out that it holds for the answerer here, since they are providing bad advice based on not knowing anything about this sort of situation.

@SidBrown From the rejection note you've already received, aiming for journals "with a great reputation" sounds like it's aiming much too high.

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Can a PhD be crowdfunded?
Is it possible to crowdfund a PhD, like crowdfunding business?

People will fund solar roads, so I guess they'll fall for anything. So the answer to your question is yes. But does that help? What would a helpful answer look like?

People donate money towards things like cancer research quite happily -- some of that money probably indirectly goes towards funding a PhD student. I think it's possible, but you'll probably need an insanely good sales pitch that has a chance of going viral in order to succeed.

PhD - very unlikely (it is not a cool project you can 'sell' to crowds; plus, if you are famous enough to get such funding, you can get any other funding as well). Certain projects within PhD - maybe.

A crowd-funded quasi-research project

There have been examples of people crowdfunding e.g. a conference trip, but a whole PhD? I'm quite dubious you would succeed.

It's not quite the same thing; but I've seen several distributed computing projects using the BOINC platform that were setup to do bulk computations for Masters/Phd level research when sufficient super computer time wasn't available.

Isn't applying for grants/fellowships/scholarships essentially a form of crowdfunding?

While I'm sure its possible I haven't been able to find any examples of funding an entire PhD. However, there are quite a few examples of people crowd funding smaller individual research projects. I think there are two main reasons for this cost and accessibility.
Cost
It is really quite expensive to fund an entire PhD. If we look at the costs of a PhD (in the UK) we get.

University fees: ~£4000 per year (~£15000 for non-EU students)
Living expenses/stipend: ~£12000 per year
Conferences/equipment/other stuff: ~£2-3000 per year +
approx £20000 per year for 3-4 years = ~£60000 (>$100,000)

Compare this to the average successful crowdfunding amount of $7000 and you'll see why it'll be hard to raise that sort of money and would require a very strong marketing campaign. Which brings us nicely onto
Accessibility
One of the things a successful crowd funding project needs is a good sales pitch. You need to have a very clear goal that will excite lots of people to fund you. Not many PhD projects I know could possibly fall into this category.
For conventional crowd funding you also need to give something back to supporters to make it worth their while. While I suspect this would be less true for crowd funded research there are many people who might like to support you but cannot/will not without the prospect of some tangible return.
What seems to be more common is to fund smaller individual projects for ~$10-20000. For example http://blog.gogetfunding.com/crowdfunding-statistics-and-trends-infographic/ although there are some bigger and smaller examples in this article http://www.onlinephdprograms.com/dollars-for-doctors-a-guide-to-crowdfunding-academic-research/

There is a crowdfunding platform for PhD students. Archived version is here. The portal matches your research topics to the right commercial interests. Right now it contains 6808 students, but only 51 projects and 10 sponsors so I doubt about the activity of the site.

a) People crowdfunding because they want something in exchange, a better world,clean some shame, a videogame and such.
b) PhD is a personal matter where the only people that earn something is the student.   In a personal case, i want to obtain a PhD, however, i don't want others to obtain it, specially colleagues.
So a) and b) are opposite.
Then, the best way to achieve b) using a) is cheating.  Like already said, for example, using marketing or being creative.
I believe your question is wrong, because if you are thinking in a PhD then, if you are reached at this stage of your life then you must have enough experience to know how this World works.
PhDs are expensive for many reasons, one of them is to "separate the wheat from the chaff", they think that if you are enough smart to accumulate such money then, you are enough smart to take the PhD (IMHO: but not enough smart to decide to not to do it and run your own business).  However, it is not always true, some PhD are not quite rich nor brilliants, they are just "floating around here" (yes, im recalling some teacher that i had).
PS: it is not a personal attack but more likely an analysis to your question.

Your answer really makes no sense. What do you mean by "I don't want others to obtain it, specially colleagues?" The point of PhD's are to expand the domain of knowledge through original effort—not to gain some sort of advantage over a colleague.

And while you claim this is not a personal attack, your original response was straddling the boundaries of it.

@aeismail I believe magallanes's comment of "I don't want others to obtain it" was making the point that if I have a PhD, I prefer there to be fewer people with PhD's as they are my competitors. I don't believe that was trying to say that the goal is to keep one's research private.

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Path to a good grad school in math during undergrad?
I'm a high school senior about to graduate in 1 month. I have a strong passion in math, and I want to be a mathematician. What is the best path to getting into a top grad school? How many REU's should I try to do? Any publications? How about graduate level courses? Do you need a 4.0 in undergrad? I'm also self studying as much math as I can, from Artin's Algebra, Munkre's topology, and baby Rudin. How much math should I know by the time I apply for grad school? I would greatly appreciate your feedback!

You should include basic geometry and complex analysis books in your otherwise excellent list.  Geometry: Tu An Introduction to Manifolds.  Complex Analysis: Brown & Churchill Complex Variables and Applications.

Here are my suggestions, having just finished a year of graduate school in math. It's therefore mostly anecdotal and should be taken lightly!
REUs: Try to do as many as you can! You get to meet other people who like math, learn new stuff, practice struggling with research, travel a bit, and get some cash to boot. They also, of course, look good on applications.
Publications: I don't personally have any publications. I wrote a few papers during my REUs and projects, but they were only published on the REU websites. So they're not necessary to get in. However, I did have a great deal of trouble getting acceptances. Maybe a publication would have helped, but I think it's very rare for an undergraduate to actually publish a paper.
Graduate Courses: I took several of these as an undergraduate. I enjoyed them, but realize now that I should have taken them a little more seriously! I've forgotten a great deal of what I saw in them. However, I have noticed that I'm quite strong in the area I took graduate courses in compared to my peers. So they definitely give you an edge! However, don't become too obsessed with loading up with graduate courses. Three of them is quite a lot of work, if you give them justice. Since most graduate courses are graded very lightly, you can make high marks in them without putting forth as much effort as you would in an undergraduate course! (At least, this was how it worked at my undergraduate institution.)
That said, keep in mind that some of your time in college should be spent having fun, too. Don't become a math robot just yet! You have time for that in grad school. :)
Reading Textbooks: The fact you're already reading the "core" undergraduate books before even entering the university puts you far, far ahead of the curve. Many people won't learn those things until sophomore or junior year. I certainly didn't. Make sure you're doing the bulk of the exercises in those books, especially Rudin. Try to prove statements you come across without looking at their proofs. I feel that this is where most of the learning happens. You can easily read things and not understand them, so just watch out! Other than that, finish those books and then you should be set to take the advanced undergraduate/first year graduate courses at your institution.
The Math Subject GRE: I hate this thing and did very poorly on it. You'll blow the math portion of the general GRE out of the water. It's easy stuff for any math major. However, if you don't spend a little time reviewing, you can really mess up the subject test, since it's timed and covers things you might not have thought about for several years. The topics are almost completely disjoint from what a student taking graduate courses has been doing. Look at a few practice tests, identify what sorts of questions are asked, and train yourself to quickly answer such questions. Speed is key. You don't want the subject GRE to be a weak point on your application, especially since it's an easily prevented weak point.
So, do REUs, take graduate courses, don't sweat not having publications (but if you can get some do), and study for the subject GRE!

Let me add one point to Zach's answer.
Your primary goal should be to collect strong references.  Admission committees in top departments are looking for evidence of research potential.  Aside from actual published research, the most compelling evidence is a strong letter from a well-known active researcher, who writes about your research potential in specific and credible detail, based on direct personal interaction.  To get those letters, you need to engage with professors as a potential colleague, not just as a student.
Yes, take advanced and graduate-level math classes, but don't just sit in the back and quietly get As.  Ask (and answer) intelligent questions in class and in office hours.  Don't limit your questions (in office hours) to course material.  Ask about undergraduate research opportunities (not just REUs) with the explicit goal of peer-reviewed publishable research (not just reports on some REU website).
Keep in mind that becoming a published mathematician can take several years of effort, and there's no guarantee that you'll get there before you graduate.  But the sooner you start, the closer you'll get, and the more chances you'll have to impress the faculty you work with.  So start now.
The first three profs you ask may tell you that publishing mathematics research as an undergraduate is impossible, because you need to take a five more years of classes before you can even understand the problem.  They're wrong; ask a fourth.

Sort of along the same thread, let me also say that I wish I had gone to more seminars and talked to professors. It will help you figure out what's going on in the math world. I found that when I started applying for schools, I really didn't know what was actually going on. What did people really research? What topics were hot? I had no idea, and I think it really hurt my applications. It's difficult to talk about where you want to go with research if you don't know where active research is happening.

Warning: I am not coming from an US system.
What I would miss is specialization. You do want to focus on a topic in mathematical research? Shape your reading and background on it.

Can you say where this is important, and maybe explain a bit more?  In the US, I don't think it matters too much for admission.

I work in an european academic system. I would not expect a PhD candidate to be a know-it-all, but rather to be knowledgeable in a specific area of mathematics where she/he would like to bore in and to do her/his PhD. Basically, a specialist in statistics does not need to know a lot of computational linear algebra. While knowing it is a plus, it is not if it comes at the expense of not being good enough in statistics.

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As a co-author, should I add someone who provided access to high-performance computing facilities and engineering technical support as another author?
I have two questions, a general question and a particular case question, regarding the authors of a manuscript.

In general, I would like to inquire about who should be added as authors to a manuscript as well as about the order of the authors.
I prepared a research paper and I was wondering whether I should add the name of this person or not. In particular, this person presented me with an access to his computer facilities (high-performance computers) and he has been supporting me with his engineering technical support. However, he is neither a researcher nor a person holding a PhD degree. In fact, he is an engineer and he is doing this for free. Can I put his name as a co-author to our manuscript?

Authorship conventions vary enormously from field to field, so it is impossible to answer this question in any generality. This is the sort of question you need an advisor for.
However, two general pieces of advice are to (i) make sure to discuss authorship at the earliest opportunity so as to avoid conflict later on and (ii) be generous, particularly with junior people (e.g., non-PhDs). People tend to worry about dividing the credit for the work, but, in reality, adding another author does not deprive you of much credit; a much greater risk is offending someone and harming future collaboration opportunities.

It may be true that adding another person as author doesn't deprive the credit of other authors, but in those authors' eyes, including them without discussion may make them feel unfair. Human psychology is very sensitive with injustice.

Technically, you can list anyone as co-authors, including your cat. If you want general guidelines, you can find several online. In practice I think it is reasonable to discuss this issue in advance with your collaborators — who will be authors and what will be the order of appearance, and who will just be acknowledged. So in your case it really had to be negotiated beforehand, not afterwards. I'd say that technical help is not authorship by default, but if such specialist wants/needs to be an author for some reason, I'd have no problems to include him in the list.

As others have said already, you should discuss authorship as early as possible and make sure that everyone agrees and is satisfied with the position within the list they are getting.
However, if it is too late now to do so, here is my recommendation:

If the list of authors is not too long (i.e. spare space) you might add them if you really believe they played a crucial role in the making of the research/manuscript.
If the list is too long, you can always add them at the end in the acknowledgments section. This is a common practice, particularly in the case of people that gave occasional support.

Additionally, as always in life, you should try to be consistent - include authors whose contribution is of enough value, and not just because of free space or to be a good guy!

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Should I refer to this software in my research?
I have used HOMESTYLER online beta software to draw a room plan to be used in a research. I am not sure if it has to be referred to in the bibliography or not. What do you think?

Please explain the reason for the downvoting

See https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/93248/how-to-cite-software-used-to-produce-data-images

Imagine you are someone trying to replicate the results of your research. Would they be able to do so without knowing about the software? No? You should cite it. If the software is generic enough that similar or identical results could be produced using a different option, you're probably fine just to mention it in the text (in some cases e.g. using Microsoft Word, the software is so common and well-known that mentioning it is unnecessary).

Specifying the tool used is not the same as citing it in the bibliography. The answer could benefit from some information on which tools should be cited instead of just mentioned in the text.

@Pere if you've mentioned the tool, why wouldn't you cite it in the bibliography?

I have read an article about How to cite and describe software. it says that you should ask yourself two questions "did the software play a critical part in my research?" or "did the software provide something novel?". Actually the software that I have used does not play a critical role in the research, so I did not want to cite it. At the same time, I was wondering if the software has a license or not, which I could not find. For this reason, I preferred to ask you guys, since you may have more experience regarding this subject.

@astronat I don't know, and hence I'd like to learn it from an answer. If you use an R package that plays a critical role in your research, do you cite it? If you say you make a diagram with Homestlyler, do you cite it? If you make a diagram with Autocad or Photoshop, do you cite its author? If you mention you used a ruler and a pencil do you cite Staedtler? I'm rather sure about the answer to the first and last questions, but those in between are not clear to me. That makes me think that the answer would be better if it expanded on it.

I think the answer is pretty good as it stands, if a bit glib. Software does not need to be cited if it provides a generic function. You don't cite Microsoft Word for allowing you to create documents for your research. You don't cite MATLAB for allowing you to plot data. These are generic functions that can be accomplished by many programs and your specific choice of program does not influence the work.


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A research validity issue and a work around
I am working for a company that wants me to do a research related to using some sort of a technology. The research (which is going to be published) requires me to use a piece of a hardware which uses that technology. The company demands that I do all the analysis and the experiments to achieve the goal without mentioning the name of the hardware used which is an important part of the research.
Should I mention the hardware without referring to the name of the hardware?
I have used many resources related to that piece of hardware and I will not be able to mention them in the bibliography. Is this legal?
Does this affect the validity of the research?
What do researchers do in such a situation?
According to your experience is there a work around?

Did you ask the company directly? You might not be the first to run into problems with their demands and they might have ways to solve such problems. As a workaround: Use another hardware...

@Bemte It is a newborn company with no previous researching experience.

Then you might want to find out why they don't want the hardware to be mentioned. Maybe you can convince them that a paper explaining the benefits of their product can be good for business? Or is it not their own product but rather some random hardware and they just don't want people to know that they have it?

@Bemte It is not their own hardware but it is an integrated part of their own product. They say that if other companies know about this piece of hardware the system could have security issues in the future. By saying security issues I mean it could be hacked.

Before you do research, and before you sit down to write something, it's important to have a clear idea of why you're doing it.  Ask.  Look over the answer critically.  Ask them to fill in any gaps in the answer.  Iterate.  Many times.  Really, you need to understand why they want you to do this.  The path to this understanding is to get clear specifications for the project.

If you're going to publish a scientific paper, you need to give information on all of the significant methodology required to achieve the result.
It sounds like you are being asked to publish a paper that would be concealing vital information about its methods.  That may be legal, but it is clearly scientifically unethical, and reviewers in a quality venue would likely call you out on that failure.
If you're just doing the research for internal use (or informal publication, e.g., as a corporate technical whitepaper), then there is no expectation of methods disclosure, and there is no ethical barrier to being as vague as you like about your methodology.


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From Chemical Engineering undergrad to chemistry graduate school
Right now I'm studying Chemical Engineering My CGPA is 3.4 and I'm a junior.
I'm thinking about joining a chemistry graduate program after a graduate.
So my question is if I applied will they look at my chemical engineering core GPA or only science subjects GPA?
and as an international student if my CGPA was around 3.5 where can i apply in USA, CANADA , UK ?
THANKS

What is your GPA out of? Some schools in Canada use a A+ = 4.0 maximum scale while others use a A+ = 4.3 scale. Also, the country that you took your degree in is relevant because at Canadian universities they use special formulas to convert international grades.

It is out of 4.0.  and I didn't take my undergrad in Canada unfortunately.         I have a question if you don't mind, when u took the science program did they require you to take extra undergraduate science courses?

I took an engineering program in my undergrad and I am taking "Applied Science" for my master's program. We call engineering research "applied science" here in Canada so I wasn't changing fields. It is possible that you might not have the right background courses but that should be evaluated by the people receiving your application. They will let you know if you need to take some undergrad courses to catch up. Although I imagine with a ChemEng background it won't be difficult to transfer to ChemSci. In fact I know someone who went from a ChemSci undergrad to a ChemEng master's.

I am a Canadian graduate student in Applied Science with an undergraduate in Engineering so my answer comes from some personal experience.
What I've always been told is that your grades from relevant courses in the most recent two years of university are the most important when considering you for acceptance into a program. So if you apply for a BSc in Chemistry, your Chemical engineering courses should be considered relevant, but any non-technical electives would not.
In most Canadian graduate schools you are expected to maintain an average above B+ (3.3 out of 4.3 maximum). Depending on the scale used to determine your CGPA you might be just above that threshold, which makes your GPA respectable but not stellar.
You can apply to any university you like, they won't turn away your application. Make sure to check out the U15 Universities if you plan on applying in Canada. They are generally considered the most respected universities in the country.
If you have any co-op work terms/summer terms remaining before you graduate, and if you are a student at a Canadian university, you should consider applying for an NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award. This will get you some research experience in your undergrad that will help you stand out on a grad school application regardless of your GPA.


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What to do when I suspect Research Integrity Office of covering up malpractice
Two years ago I read a paper that I thought had implausibly good results. The data were archived online so I examined them: they were clearly fake. The first author replaced them with other data which were also clearly falsified/fabricated.
I reported the paper to the relevant University. Several more versions of the data were produced, and the University's Research Integrity Office (RIO) closed the case apparently satisfied that the correct version of the data had finally been found. A corrigendum was published. However the new data contain suspicious patterns and several figures in the paper are cannot be reproduced. I don't know of any explanation for the multiple versions of the data. All versions of the had file-creation time-stamps that post-dated publication.
The original specimens are in the RIO's possession. A portion of them could be re-analysed non-destructively in 1-3 days (relevant MSc-grade experience required), which would help assuage doubts about the veracity of the paper. The RIO has declined to do this, citing lack of resources and personal skill.

Am I being unreasonable in expecting the RIO to do more than (apparently at least) take the author's word on trust regarding the final data being correct without verifying them?
How could I arrange for the specimens to be re-analysed by a third party so that the RIO/journal would accept gross differences from the final data as evidence of malpractice?
The RIO tells me that I should contact the author directly to address the irreproducible figures. I doubt the first author will be keen to cooperate - they almost certainly know that I reported their paper to the RIO, know that the RIO has closed the case, and I have no authority to compel disclosure of files etc. Can anything be done here?

I believe the RIO is seeking to avoid making an adverse finding.
PS. The University in question is a large, well-respected and well-funded institution.

You could always write a paper exposing the fraudulent results. For example, look at the Google Scholar search results for "Duke cancer fraud.

That was the solution the editor gave me two years ago. At the time I thought it an abrogation of responsibility on their part. I still do, but am beginning to view it as a possibility. Of course any expose would be stronger if I had reanalyses.

It seems unreasonable for the RIO to devote 1-3 days to investigate this issue. It seems reasonable that you devote time to re-analyse.

@user2768 it is the RIO's job to investigate credible allegations of malpractice, which they agreed mine were. The RIO would not be able to do the reanalysis themselves but would need to ask (and maybe pay) someone else to do it.

I wonder if you could use the Freedom of Information Act to get some of the internal communications?

@44tjr, the RIO is only required to invest a reasonable amount of resources. I think 1-3 days of experiments conducted by a third party is unreasonable. Do professional guidelines suggest otherwise?

@user2768 A Nature new article in 2010 described an US academic malpractice case which cost the university half a million dollars to investigate. That is a high cost for the ROI.

@aparente001 I don't know much about the FOI regulations in the relevant country, but I will check if this avenue has potential.

Perhaps you could also try the FOI regs in the country where the journal is located.  Have you met with the appropriate university administrator?

@44tjr, presumably half a million is an upper-bound, what's reasonable? You might be able to work this out. E.g., from RIO budget and number of cases.

Your first mistake was to report the irregularities to the relevant university. If that was the university of the offender, then their primary interest is to deflect/reduce any possible damage to their institution. Clearly, publicly uncovering unethical behaviour within its own university does not serve this purpose.
There have been documented cases in the UK, where the public reporting by the head of department (HoD) of plagiarism resulted in the sacking, not of the offender, but of the HoD, because of damage done to the University.
If you're seriously concerned, you should expose this to the editors of the respective journals or, better, to the public. The problem with the latter is, of course, that you may make strong enemies. One option may be to find allies, i.e. influential senior researchers in your field who are prepared to co-author any publication and/or to support/sign your letters to relevant editors.
In the end of the day, malpractice like this is drowned in the scientific discussion. If the results cannot be reproduced in independent studies, then they loose credibility and will be ignored. So perhaps, you should not spend too much frustrating effort on this.

Alas, I contacted the journal first with the support of the pre-eminent scientist in the field. It took the editor three months to reply that they were not interested in investigating. They believe that "policing the accuracy of data sets ... is beyond the remit of journal editors"

If your field of research has an active free open access online publication forum, such as arXiv, then a publication there of senior scientists of the field is a possibility.

From what you say about the reply from the editor, it sounds as if you did not really suggest unethical behaviour and in this way allowed the editor to dodge the issue.


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Professor gets funding and does not give to student
I am a recent university graduate with a master's degree, and I secured a position in a sizable company. Interestingly, my master's supervisor is also supervising my sibling's Ph.D.
In a few meetings, I expressed my interest in pursuing a Ph.D. while working, and my supervisor not only supported the idea but also encouraged me to do so. Several months ago, he informed me about an opportunity from a company seeking students for a Mitacs project. He forwarded my CV, along with others, to the company, which eventually selected me based on my background. However, during the orientation, I discovered that the company expected me to relocate permanently to their office without offering any salary, assuming that the university was compensating me. I had raised concerns about the high travel costs, and the professor assured me that he would compensate for it.
During the orientation, it became apparent that the company did not properly value my position, and one of their representatives even questioned my understanding of the company I was working for, despite it being a well-established entity. This raised concerns for me.
Before officially becoming a student, I contacted my professor, who agreed to set up a research assistant role at the university to provide compensation until my student application went through. Everything seemed fine until I unexpectedly received an email from the professor stating that he was resigning me but would retain me for the next significant funding, which would materialize in eight months with the same company.
The following day, during a meeting with the company, they asked for an update. Upon ending the call, they immediately revoked all my accounts, including email and Teams access. After a month and a half, they deleted all my information without considering reimbursement for my high-cost trip and the time invested in the work.
Now, I am contemplating whether bringing up these issues with the professor could jeopardize my sibling's funding and thesis. The entire situation, from the company's unethical behavior to the questionable setup, is both unacceptable and unprofessional.
My question: Could I send an email to the professor and ask for my hours that I put working? Also the trip that was promised to be compensated? How this will affect my sibling's funding?
Please do not advise talking to the lawyer, lawyers are pretty expensive in my country, Canada.

Note that unpaid internships are illegal in Canada unless you recieve course credit for them

Hiring lawyers is expensive, but there are a lot of places where it's possible to get a free consultation with a lawyer.

What is a Mitacs project? Perhaps provide a link?

I have no link for that

This is simply to provide a reference for the statement made by @joey-eremondi above ... https://www.canada.ca/en/services/jobs/workplace/federal-labour-standards/interns.html

Your options are probably to either talk to a lawyer (we can't give you legal advice) or cut your losses and move on. Sure, you can ask for funds you're promised but given what you've described that doesn't seem likely to happen without a lawyer's support. Canada no doubt has employment laws that would protect you but only if you assert your rights (which often requires a lawyer).
Don't do any more work for any of these people involved without a signed contract.
If your sibling has a problem, it's that they're working for a shady/flaky professor, not anything created by your own situation. Keep documentation as best you can of what has occurred; if you work with a lawyer they can instruct you on this.
One final note: you say you "secured a position" with a company, but they weren't planning to pay you. I would not describe that as securing anything. It does not sound like there is anything of value for you to try to preserve in this relationship.
A second final note: you say in your title "professor gets funding" but nowhere in your story do I see the professor getting anything. I see a company that thought they could get a free worker and a lot of miscommunication. It's possible there never was any money to pay you with.

Nothing occurring in your own program and work with the university, nor any complaint you make in relation to the events you have described, should have any effect whatsoever on your sibling's PhD candidature.  If it were to do so, that would be a sign of extreme corruption in the university and grounds for serious ethics complaints and reports to the university ombudsman (and possibly also legal action by your sibling).  Indeed, it would be a shocking scandal for a university to retaliate against the sibling of a complainant over a workplace dispute.
As to your own problem and circumstances, it is likely that you have some protections from Canadian employment law.  Typically there are broad protections against "misleading and deceptive conduct" in employment as well as specific protections against unfair termination of employment.  It is not clear from your post whether you would be considered to have been an employee of this company, but you certainly put in some time, expense and work, in the expectation of some reciprocal benefit that has not materialised.  If this is something you want to pursue, you could speak to an employment lawyer.


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What do you do when a professor saying that he has not received a link for recommendation?
I'm applying to a university for a Ph.D., which requires 2 letters of recommendation. I asked a professor to submit this letter 8 days before the deadline (and provided him the necessary e-mail link within hours). It is now due 2 days before the deadline. This professor still hasn't submitted his letter (my application is otherwise finished). I've asked him, and he tells me that he has not received any email for a recommendation letter submission. I told him the deadline is due in 2 days he said that he needs at least 1-2 weeks to send it.
Should I wait for him, hoping that he turns in his letter after the deadline? What should I do with him? He was my master advisor and I wrote 3 papers for him, all good journals.
Update: It has been more than a week since I asked that person to fill out the letter. He agreed to do that, but after I submitted his name, he just says he has not received an email yet. Even when you ask him to send the letter directly he just does not respond. I need two-three weeks. The letter is very simple, it looks like a questionnaire can be filled in 10 minutes. I asked the university to resend but god knows if he really puts an effort to search through his emails to find it. There is a lack of respect, and this prof does not bother himself to search his email.

Why do you phrase it as "keeps saying" if he seemingly only has said it once and provided you with his timeline in response - it is not like he is ghosting you...

I asked the university to send him the link. Still, he said that he has not received it.

I guess you've double checked that you provided the right address, and asked the professor to check their spam folder?

I'm not sure I understand. Did you ask him earlier (several weeks ago) to write this letter, and inform him of the deadline when you did so?

It has been more than a week now, why does not submit his part? How much would it take for a prof to submit a recommendation?

@nikki -- can you please address the questions we have already asked? How long ago did he first agree to write this letter? How long ago did you ask the university to send the link?

8 days ago he agreed, the link was sent a few hours later after he agreed.

I totally understand why you are worried and stressed by this deadline, but it is totally reasonable to need more time to write a solid letter. Your estimates of how much effort it takes are completely incorrect and bordering on offensive. If someone actually took 10 minutes to fill out this form it would be clear to the admissions committee it was done in 10 minutes and that could possibly harm your application worse than having no letter.

"the link was sent a few hours later after he agreed." How do you know the link was sent to the professor's e-mail address without accessing the professor's e-mail?

University send me this email saying that links were sent.

Two days is an extremely short notice. That your masters' advisor is unwilling to act upon it is completely understandable. He has provided you with sufficient information in response; your options are to find someone else (good luck doing that, given the rush) or ask the submission committee for a deadline extension.
Finally, your question does not mention any reasons for giving such short notice. If you have extraordinary circumstances, it is reasonable to ask everyone involved for some extra help. Otherwise, learn from this transgression: it is already despicable to not value time of your subordinates to make them adjust everything to your schedule, and it is absolutely crazy to expect that from people who are not your subordinates.
In this specific case, you needed your advisor to write a LOR (a reasonable expectation), but entirely disregarded accommodating them sufficiently. I am sorry, but that is just unacceptable. Things happen, but you have forced yourself into calling for a big favor from what normally is very routine, and your went into it without realizing you were asking for that much.
Even if something appears trifle to you, never ever assume others will do it on a whim and give them some breathing space.
So, address that mentality and ask someone else.
P.S. Given you rely on having asked the university to send the link to him, did you also assume they have done it the same very day? If so, this is also unreasonable.

Thanks for the reply but I do not think you understand my question.

My read is that OP asked for the letter with plenty of time (and the professor agreed to write), but for some reason (probably a spam filter), the e-mail with the link to the portal where such letters are submitted never arrived. So, I don't think there's any indication that OP's "mentality" is fundamentally problematic.

@cag51 I could not interpret "it was due in 2 days" any other way with how the question was posed, sorry. Maybe I rushed responding, but I believe some clarifications about the timeline are due in that case. If your reading is correct, it would help to know if OP asked the university to send the link X time before the deadline, got to the professor Y time before the deadline and found out they have not received it. In some cases, the inconvenience caused would be a good reason to push your cause, but I just could not read the post that way.

Ah, I see what you are saying. Agree the question is far from clear -- hopefully OP will clarify.

@Lodinn, you did not understand my question and the answer you provided is not addressing my question. It has been more than a week since I ask that person to fill out the letter. He agreed to do that, but after submission, he just says he has not received an email yet. Even when you ask him to send the letter directly he just does not respond. There is a lack of respect, and this prof does not bother himself to search his email. Maybe in your country, profs are following the same procedure, what is important is that you should respect your student and her/his future.

@nikki I have provided options to consider; not sure why would you say the answer is not addressing your question - these options are even in bold and quite hard to miss. Your attitude is still greatly irksome - why would your advisor respect you if you apparently do not respect their time? They are not responsible for your future, you are. One is also not entitled to a LOR just by being someone's student. They probably do have good will, but that does not make them a doormat. You catch more flies with honey; making requests instead of demands goes a long way...

By the tone and the wording in this question, I'd say there is a huge tension between you and this professor -- although he was your advisor.
You feel like he ignores you, and too lazy to do a simple search through his emails, and you, in return, don't give the benefit of doubt as to him being extremely busy for a couple of months.
In these type of situations, I personally believe that it is not beneficial for the person who asks for a recommendation to push things. It is always a possibility that the professor is choosing not to write a letter instead of writing a really bad one which will make sure you get an immidiate rejection.
All considered, I think your best course of action would be to ask another person.
Also, a pro tip: It is always a good idea to ask people whether it is OK to put their names as a reference even before starting to submit applications. This has a lot of benefits, the most common one being the referees drafing up a template for you so that they can change a few sentences/words for every other application you submit.

As I mentioned in my post, before even submitting his name, I asked whether it is possible to put you as a referee and he said yes.

@nikki nowhere in the question you mention that you got the professor's confirmation to put his name as a referee


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What to do if a professor confused me with another student in a letter of reference?
Last year one of the recommendation letter writers wrote incorrect information about my character and this was the reason I was rejected when I applied to graduate school.
After hearing about the rejection the professor realized his mistake and told me about it. Basically, he wrote I had serious mental health issues, but this was about another student.
I will apply again this year, what should I do about this error? Can the professor simply mention this on his new recommendation? How will the committee view an error as serious as this?

I moved some content you provided in the comments into the body of the question. I think that information is of critical importance. Is there a reason you deleted it?

Did you at least share a name with this student?

Is the professor senile? Seriously?

Not a lawyer, but maybe worth investigating some legal compensation for a whole year wasted.

@dgrat I don't think this is a 'small' flaw. The professor told incorrect information about a student, and because of that the student was rejected. That is a serious mistake.

Ask the professor to call the head of the program to which you're applying, and explain that there was a mistake. This is pretty gross negligence. (My wife proofreads my rec letters before I send them, because I also sometimes make mistakes.) There's also legally actionable stuff here - maybe for you, but definitely for the other student. If I have a student that I couldn't recommend ask me for a letter, I do my best to gently explain the situation to the student. I won't send a bad letter - that's just wrong.

"this was the reason I was rejected when I applied to graduate school." You can't know that, unless each school indicated that in their rejection letters. You may have been rejected from these schools anyway. Still, a grave error on the prof's part.

Is it worth a separate question of if he should have written that about anyone?

I sense that this professor is not going to be affiliated with this institution for much longer.

@PStag Exactly what I was going to ask. I always thought that letters of recommendation were a voluntary exercise where "if you have nothing good to say, don't say it". So when students get no recommendation letters or even very lukewarm, highly generic ones - committees can generally "read between the lines" and infer what they need to - that the student in question couldn't get anyone to write anything specific and good about them.

@dgrat - It's pretty clear that this has delayed his life moving forward, and delayed the start of his career, and the start of his earning a living by a full year, and he will potentially be behind by one year for his entire life (sorry to be so blunt). By that I mean, at any point, he will be behind by what he will earn in the next year, so he is definitely due significant compensation for the damage.

Mixing up two students in a letter of recommendation is a serious mistake. Erroneously suggesting that a student has serious mental health issues when in fact (1) they don't and (2) you don't think they do, is an even bigger mistake. Apart from choosing a new letter writer (one who will be more careful attending to details), there is nothing you can do. If you ask him to write letters again, I would remind him of his past mistake (be gentle) and let him know which schools are repeat applications. Only he knows what he said and he will be capable of figuring out the best way to handle it (e.g., a disclaimer in the new letter, a phone call, a blood offering).
This type of mistake is probably extremely rare. Sending the wrong letter probably happens, although I have never had the name in the letter not match the application. mixing up two students while sending a bad letter seems crazy. Most people don't write bad reference letters. When writing even a luke warm reference letter, I am very aware of the student I am writing it for. I cannot imagine mixing up two students in that way.
In terms of fixing it, if decisions have been made, there is probably no fixing it this year. As for next year, the admissions committee may not remember you. If the letter was so memorably bad that they do remember you, if the new letter explains what happened, all will probably be fine (i.e., the old letter will not hurt you).

Hopefully, if the same professor writes another letter, he will explicitly acknowledge and apologize for his earlier mistake, just in case the previous letter was memorably bad.

@JeffE I would hope at a minimum the professor apologizes in the new letter, but it is the type of thing I would also pick up the phone for and call someone (not really sure who).

"If the letter was so memorably bad that they do remember you, if the new letter explains what happened, all will probably be fine (i.e., the old letter will not hurt you)." Wow. It must be a weird feeling wishing for your recommendation letter to be even more damning than it already was!

I'm not sure how much weight would a letter from the same professor would carry, even if it is an extremely positive one, given that in the letter the prof. should apologize for such an unbelievable mistake.

I am flabbergasted that the Professor here would not take the initiative to correct his own mistake.  Writing a letter of recommendation for the wrong student ---and making negative remarks that do not apply, that cost the student a graduate position--- is a huge stuff-up.  Any decent marginally-competent person would be mortified at making this mistake and would immediately take action to correct it, without having to be asked.  (It might be too late for the admissions process that occurred, but the least the Professor could do is to write to the affected universities and correct the record, so that it doesn't negatively affect you in future applications.)  It is good that he told you about the error, but that is really insufficient without him taking some further action to correct the error.
If this Professor has not already taken it upon himself to correct his error by writing back to those universities, to at least correct the record, then he is a total deadbeat.  You should consider putting in a formal complaint to your university.  This could also be legally actionable as negligence, breach of contract, defamation, etc., and it reflects terribly on the university that the student would be the one to have to take the initiative here.
If you are more forbearing than me then you should take Strongbad's excellent and sensible advice of approaching the matter gently, to get a good reference for next time.  However, if you are as pissed-off about this situation as I am reading about it, and you decide you want to go full scorched-Earth, here is an alternative course of action:  Speak to a lawyer and get him to write a letter to the university putting them on notice that their negligence/defamation has caused actionable damage to you, and that you expect them to take action to "mitigate that damage".  (They will know what this means.)  Make an appointment with a senior administrator at the university (e.g., their legal counsel, vice-chancellor's office, etc.), and turn up with a senior support-person (e.g., a lawyer, or if this is too expensive, at least a middle-aged person who knows how to handle these situations).  Reiterate that the university has been negligent and has defamed you to other institutions, and this has caused actionable damage to you.  Ask them for suggestions of how they intend to go about mitigating the damage to you, and make sure these are accompanied by guarantees.  Advise them that if the damage to you is not mitigated by a successful application in the next round of grad-school entry, you will be left with no choice but to make a formal complaint to the relevant university Ombudsman and take legal action to recover damages.

+1 -- this professor effectively cost the student (at least) a year off their career for no reason. While I do not know if legal action is likely to be successful, it does seem that in justice, the student would be able to do more than just passively wait out the year.

It is unbelievable isn't it!  I think legal action on this would be a slam-dunk --- there is clear negligence and defamation (false negative claims about the student) and an obvious causal link to damages.

I have no idea if this would work. The letter is probably confidential so I am not sure what proof the student has. My guess is the other university would not claim the letter was a direct cause of the damages. Finally the student asked the prof to write the letter. That said, I agree this is a massive screw up.

That is why it is important to seek legal advice, from someone familiar with the laws of defamation, negligence, etc., in the jurisdiction at issue.  A confidential letter can easily be obtained via discovery in a litigation (or pre-litigation), and it is unlikely to be relevant that the student asked the professor to write a letter of recommendation (certainly not the letter).

I wonder if the professor is trying to avoid it because he knows he's would be in deep shit if anyone found out.

Possibly, but that is one of the things about that kind of mistake - it's the cover-up that kills you.  Although the initial mistake is a large one, it is the failure to take any action to rectify it once known that really reflects worst on the university.  In those situations, you just have to summon up the courage to walk into your boss's office and say, "I F-ed up!"


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How can I ask a teacher to follow the textbook more closely?
This term I'm taking a (graduate) course which is crucial for my degree. The teacher's plan for the course is quite ambitious and all along he's been following the structure of a given text, but he doesn't follow it completely and quite often omits (what I consider) key results from it, e.g. results which motivate or deepen the understanding of definitions or other results. To put it bluntly, he leaves a lot of gaps that the book covers nicely.
It's been a frustrating process and we're soon going to start with a very important topic and I've been wondering how to approach him about this. My idea at the moment is to ask him to follow the textbook more closely, even if by doing so we sacrifice how much we cover, but I'm looking for suggestions.
Final edit (concluding remarks): I've chosen the answer which I think gave me the best course of action and I think summarizes some of the most important points in comments and other answers. Anyone reading this thread in the future should definitely check all of them anyway. They all provided valuable feedback for me.
I'd also like to point out that Shane's comments in chat are spot on. I believe said comments capture the exterior root of my problems, which I was unable to see at the time when the question was written. On my end I also learned a couple of important things on how to deal with these kind of situations.

Good pedagogy is organized around objectives, not texts.  It sounds like your objectives are different from the teacher's.  In graduate education it is reasonable to expect you to study independently.

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

David K.'s suggestion that it's up to the professor and you are responsible for any additional study that is required is essentially correct; however, I do not think his approach of asking politely and expecting a "no" is all there is to it. I would suggest a different approach. (Also, I would not follow Dan R.'s advice.)
Rather than assume that you know how the course should best be taught, figure out why the professor does it the way he does. See your professor in office hours and say that, because you may yourself have to teach this material in the future (doesn't matter if teaching is actually in your plans), you would like to know more about his approach to the material. At that point, you can say something like, "I noticed, for instance, that you didn't cover some cases and skipped some sections. How do you make those choices?" That's still a rather broad question, so be prepared to give examples of specific things that the prof. skipped that you thought would have been interesting to cover. Do not tell him that he should have covered them. Simply ask how he made the choice to skip those particular ones and not others.
This way, you'll come across as an interested and motivated student, not an overconfident, whiney type. Good luck.

Might choose better wording than "You gloss over big points", especially if the instructor doesn't think they're big points, and/or doesn't think the treatment was a "gloss", for example.

You haven't really explained what you find wrong with my advice. Care to elaborate on that?

Paul, I'll adjust the wording a bit.

Dan, sure. My own feeling is that if the professor is not actively soliciting feedback, suggesting a substantial change to his course format in the middle of the semester is not helpful or appropriate. It is simply not among the student's prerogatives. I think the better approach is to try to learn why the professor formats the course as he does, learn from that, and study the extra material not covered by the prof. in the way one thinks best on one's own.

Okay, thanks for the explanation. For what it's worth, I'm a professor and I really appreciate it when a student comes to me with feedback about my course (unfortunately this happens much too rarely, perhaps because of the common misconception among students that offering such feedback is a rude or disrespectful thing to do), Whether I end up agreeing with the student or not, giving feedback and making requests (even mildly unreasonable one) should always be a prerogative of students and something they should be able to do without fear of negative repercussions.

+1 for treating the teacher as a teacher who has made conscious decisions with an experienced concern for the students' learning. Always better to ask -- politely, wanting to learn, not demandingly or dismissively -- why choices were made by someone who knows the material way better than you do.

Hi Atlas, thanks for your (constructive) reply, I really like it. Even though I agree with everything @DanRomik says in his comment, this whole thread has made me decide on taking a less radical solution, for which your advice is pretty helpful. In fact, after seeing this whole thing explode and think through some of the answers I emailed the teacher to meet up with him tomorrow.

You may certainly ask -- politely! -- but you should expect to be told "no", and you should accept that answer if it is given.  In most graduate courses, it is the privilege of the instructor to decide what are the important points and how to organize them.
If the course is preparation for a qualifying exam (for instance), then there may be a more rigid syllabus that needs to be adhered to.  In such a case, if the instructor were deviating strongly from the expected objectives it would make sense to complain.
As an aside: since the book presents things so well (from your perspective), you can learn the material from it and consider the lectures as supplementary.  It then seems to me that having lectures that approach things from a different perspective than that of the text is a benefit.  An instructor who parrots the text would be redundant.

If the course is preparation for a qualifying exam (for instance), then there may be a more rigid syllabus that needs to be adhered to. And in some cases, the instructor may well be deviating from the book in order to more closely follow that syllabus.

The job of the lecturer is - especially in advanced topics - not to cover the book but highlight how to read the book. If it is well done, you have a birds-eye-view which allows you to use/read the book more easily as it connects aspects from further apart. A lecturer that just covers the book, does s/he add value?

Hi David, thanks for your reply! Fortunately I'm past qualifying exams by now :).

@CaptainEmacs I hadn't seen it from that perspective and it makes complete sense. Thanks.

If you decide to say something, you should present it as a problem instead of presenting the solution you expect the teacher to implement. Nobody likes being handed solutions, but if you explain why you're struggling, the teacher may find ways to help you out (possibly more elegant ways than what you thought he should do)/

Wow.  I deliberately "leave a lot of gaps that the book covers nicely" in advanced courses.  I say "this is in the book."  And I actually aim to leave them especially in the parts that the book does best.
Now, I always ask for any questions from the class, about anything I say, whether it is in the book or not.  But I do believe advanced students should get what is in the book from the book unless they have specific questions they want to raise in class.
So, if your teacher does not even take questions about textbook material that he does expect you to learn, then that is your problem.  Ask the teacher to take questions -- and of course ask it politely.
If the teacher does take questions, though, then rather than ask the teacher to better anticipate your questions maybe you should work on asking more questions yourself.

Suppose a student approached you trying to get you to cover less material in favor of spending more time covering everything the book covers. The student is reading the book and understands the material you did not cover. How would you react?

@PatriciaShanahan  I would listen to their request. But, you say this student does understand the material in the book? Then what is the problem? Is it just that they want to learn less than I am teaching?

@PatriciaShanahan Maybe asking specific questions the student does not understand is better than generally just asking for less material. In the later case the students effectively ask the teacher to modify (reduce) the requirements for that grade.

Hi @ColinMcLarty, thanks for your answer!  "I deliberately "leave a lot of gaps that the book covers nicely" in advanced courses. I say "this is in the book." And I actually aim to leave them especially in the parts that the book does best." Point taken.

I'm seeing a general disdain for postdocs (who are simply more junior than the professors; one day, some of them will be the hotshots of your field), and I can't decide if your feeling superior comes from the actual bad teaching, or from your disdain. Are you sure that the postdoc is omitting important results? Are they important in your opinion, or did you get this information elsewhere? In any case, a bit of respect would go a long way, when you ask the "postdoc" to follow a single reference.
I am more concerned by your attitude than your professor's plans, however. It is quite common to not recite an entire book, and pick and choose the important topics from a text. This leaves room for your proactivity: if you want to learn the material in more depth, you can do so by reading the text, including the part the instructor has left out. That's really what grad school is for. You take control of your own studying.
That being said, most postdocs are very receptive to feedback, as they have not been teaching for very long, so if your comment is a valid one, and if you can do it without hurting his feelings, he should be open to your suggestions (however, don't say things like "you should sacrifice the material you intend to cover for clarity", as the power to decide on the syllabus rests entirely with the postdoc.)

Hi Anon, after rereading my message I don't see the 'disdain' or my 'feeling superior' in it, but maybe noticing why you think this is the case could help me realize how I'm failing to solve the situation (for me). On the other hand, I want to clarify that my personal opinion of the teacher is good. I personally like him and realize he's putting a big effort into the course (I know teaching a course can take a huge amount of time and effort). But I think that his inexperience may be showing [1/2]

OR MAYBE NOT and I'm completely wrong in how I'm perceiving the situation and need to re-evaluate what I think is wrong. In any case, that's the reason I'm asking, to listen to some constructive experienced advice. [2/2]

Here is why I think that there is underlying disdain towards postdocs: you assumed that the postdoc was assigned to teach this course because there is shortage in the faculty. In fact, a lot of graduate level courses in my department get assigned to postdocs because they are judged to be the best ones to teach the course. Furthermore, the fact that you even had to mention that your instructor is a postdoc (and the fact that you find it relevant) means you feel some mistrust towards his position.

Since you have said that you're not explicitly feeling this, you should be very very careful when you're talking to this postdoc, to not inadvertently say something insulting.

"who are simply more junior than the professors; one day, some of them will be the hotshots of your field". In my field a lot of them already are.

@PVAL I stand corrected :)

Furthermore, why the word "teacher" and not "professor" in your title? It may very well be a cultural phenomenon, but some instructors don't respond well to misplaced titles (Mr. Doe instead of Dr. Doe or Professor Doe, or teacher instead of professor). This kind of attitude almost always shows in interactions with students in my experience, so you may want to stop and reevaluate your attitude towards your more senior colleagues, because, you know, academia is a very small community, and impressions are hard to change.

@Anon I see where you're coming from, and it's spot on. To be honest I didn't think postdocs teaching graduate courses was a common practice (it's not in my university afaik), specially because they don't have as much experience in the pedagogical side of it as some/all professors do. For this reason as you say I mistrusted him as a teacher.
To your second comment: He's the one who explicitly told me he wasn't a professor.
Anyway, thanks for your answer and time!

This is more a comment than answer - perhaps a good comment.

@hjhjhj57 it is very common. In fact, I twice taught a one-week graduate course that was part of a Master's program while I was still studying to get my PhD. While I didn't have much teaching experience at the time, I most certainly was very knowledgeable about the very specific subject I was doing my PhD on and was more than capable of teaching it to people who were not familiar with the subject.

If you need someone with superior pedagogic skill and throughout explanation of every point of a closely matching textbook to get through a graduate course, you may want to re-evaluate what you are doing at a graduate program. At that level it is pretty much assumed you can master a textbook yourself and the lectures are not about to recite the book. It is also assumed you can learn from a senior colleague even if he/she is not having decades of experience teaching the very subject.

@hjhjhj57 Not having much pedagogical experience is a strong argument in favour of teaching a graduate course rather than a lower level one. By graduate school you should be able to look after your own learning, rather than needing everything to be worked out for you by the 'teacher'. Teaching an introductory undergrad course is much harder.

@JessicaB Agreed.

@Greg I don't see where did I say I "need someone with superior pedagogic skill and throughout explanation of every point of a closely matching textbook to get through a graduate course" Nowhere in my OP or anywhere else I've stated I'm having trouble getting through the course, in fact I'm doing quite well in it. The problem is I do feel I'm getting too little out of class.

How to ask a teacher to follow a single reference?

In the same way as you would ask him anything else: respectfully, and in a way that makes it clear that it is a request, that is, that you are aware that he can say no and accept his authority on the matter. For example, if you wanted to do it in an email, the following may be appropriate:

Dear [title/name]
My name is [your name] and I am a student in your class [name of class (useful to mention in case he is teaching more than one class)].
  I wanted to give you some feedback about our class. I noticed that you sometimes skip results from the textbook that seem to me to be an important part of [topic] - for example, the other day you did this with [insert a recent example].
  I'm not sure if you were expecting us to read those results on our own, and I'm prepared to do that if necessary, but my feeling is that this part of the theory may be important enough to justify covering in detail in class. I realize that would take more time, and I would hate to miss out on [some advanced subjects the teacher is trying to get to], but at the same time I feel like covering the material in such a way may have the effect of leaving me and the other students with somewhat shaky foundations, which would make it difficult for us to handle the more advanced material when we get to it.
If you feel my feedback is reasonable, would you perhaps consider covering the textbook material in a more uniform way and not leaving out important results like the one I mentioned? I feel that would be helpful, at least for me personally. Of course, I know that I don't have enough of a perspective on the subject to be able to tell for sure which results are the most important, so I completely understand if you think it's preferable to stick with the current approach. I also wanted to tell you that generally speaking I'm really enjoying the class - thanks!
[sincerely, regards, best wishes etc.]

Finally, I'd like to add that although I see nothing wrong with you making such a request (and for all I know it could be a very sensible and reasonable one), you should keep in mind that what I wrote in the second paragraph of the template email could very well be true: your teacher, although he may not be very experienced, still likely has a much better understanding of the subject of the class than you, and generally speaking is better equipped than you to judge which results are worth covering in detail in class. So be prepared for him to say no. At the same time, even very experienced teachers can still benefit from feedback, so I think this email can only lead to an improved quality of teaching, whether your specific request is granted or not.

Hi Dan, thanks for the great answer. I understand perfectly all you say, and your email seems spot on. I completely understand that I'd be making a request, and it's up to him how to respond to it. I'm just perceiving a problem (for me) and trying to fix it in the best possible way. He's very receptive to  feedback (we've talked about the class structure once before), so I'm pretty sure however this turns out it will be for the better.

I would consider this email super long, quite annoying and patronizing, and I would have probably preferred that the student come and talk to me face-to-face where it's easier to express nuances of how we both feel about this issue.

Thanks @jwg, actually I agree face to face would probably work better. I don't know what is patronizing about the email though - it is trying to give feedback to the instructor in a polite way, but I guess some people will be annoyed about such feedback no matter how it is delivered.

Personally, I would expect the lectures and the text-book to complement each other rather than to duplicate each other. If the lecturer was merely reading from the text book I would feel cheated. It's good that there is material in the book that's not covered in the lectures, and vice-versa.

Hi @MichaelKay, thanks for your reply! I don't have to much to say about your answer, I completely agree with it.

You and me both! At least one of my syllabi reads: Course lectures are designed to augment (and not simply rehash) readings from the course textbook. We have better things to do in class than cover what the book already covers quite nicely.

(Student here)
In my experience, books and lectures are meant to complement one another.
In some courses, lecture follows the book to a T. In others, the book is unrelated to the main idea of the lecture and is really just helpful material.
This being said, I don't want to take a course where the instructor just reads the book to me. This is kind of insulting -- I know how to read. I go to lecture to get information from a different angle or to get the main points.
If I don't understand a concept in lecture, I read the book and likewise, if I don't understand concepts from the book, I get more detail from the lecture or just ask the professor.
Since your course has a book, perhaps it should be assumed that it is required reading and should be used in conjunction with the lecture instead of following an approach where one or the other will suffice.

Hi @MelanieShebel, thanks for your reply! I completely agree with your first statement, which is the same as Michale Kay's in his answer. There are different ways to base a lecture off a book. I also believe an instructor simply copying the book in class is terrible. But I also think there's a whole spectrum between this and "leaving a lot of gaps" and such. In my particular case the point of the spectrum in which my lectures are do not help me too much by themselves. In any case, I think I'll start relying on office hours more heavily from now on.

I would suggest you ask indirectly. The first thing I would is look at the skipped sections and decide if they are useful or not. For the ones you think are useful, try and learn the material on your own. When you get stuck, go talk to the instructor. At that point you can ask about the sections whose importance you are not sure about. By showing the instructor which sections are important to you and that you are not equipped to handle, you will be indirectly telling him where he should go in greater depth next time. The instructor may even be able to extrapolate to what he should do in the future.

Hi StrongBad, thanks for your reply! After all the feedback in this post I've decided not to take action for now. I'll use the classes just as a guideline and learn the material from the book and office hours, pretty much doing what you say in here.

I used to ask lots of questions after lectures.   And some of them even coincide with the examination question (final year Physics in BSc).   Well,  that is just pure coincidence.   But generally, by talking and asking about it, the abstract contents usually become much more easily understood/intuitive.   And you will remember better by talking it loud.

First, my advice is to not ask him to change his teaching technique. I'll give you 8:5 that you will get nothing more than a dirty look and some form of "No. If you don't like the way I teach, then there's the door."
Some reasons that teachers will do this:
1. They want you in class! If they just teach from the book, then you don't really have to attend lecture, do you?
2. They have their course materials set up a certain way, and they don't want to invest the time into overhauling them.
3. They have tenure.
4. They don't really want to teach, they want to be working on their research. They will put minimal effort into teaching; enough to satisfy their job requirements.
5. They don't really know how to teach. There is a huge difference between being a good Mathematician, and a good Math Teacher. Example, a Ph.D. may have taken years of advanced mathematics, but not a single course in Education! They really don't have a grasp of pedagogy.
Some options for you are:
1. Switch sections, and take with a different teacher. I used to do this when I was in school. I would scout out all teachers for a specific class, and take with the one that I liked best. If you have the foresight, do this the semester before, so that you can audit a class and see them in action.
2. Perhaps you can defer this course next semester, if a different teacher is available.
3. If it's really that much of an issue, or even take an equivalent class with a different school and transfer the credits.
4. Knuckle under, and take the best from both sources of information. This is also a good reason to team up with others in class. Strength in numbers :)

A note: points 1-3 might be applicable only to a few, probably very few, countries (the OP didn't specify which country he is from).

Your answer seems to imply that the student would be better off in a section where the instructor covered the book more closely. That may or may not be the case.

+1 to all your points.   Teaching really take up a lot of preparation, and so changing the directions how it is taught may not be easy.   on the other hand, if the teacher did not spent much time preparing for his lessons, and you want him to change the way it is taught?   well, will he spend the effort of doing that?   the way being taught (which is spending minimal time preparing) comes naturally from his insights, intuitions, and background training and therefore requires minimal preparation, and changing this is not easy.

It can be very frustrating for a student when lecture content is different from book material, especially homework and assignments. Imagine a teacher that lectures on fractions, but homework assignments are problems from the book, on decimals. It leaves the student in a position where they have to teach themselves from the book, when this is really the teacher's job. the student thinks, "These problems have nothing to do with the lecture, why didn't they teach this in class?" Worse still is when EXAM questions are different from lecture material.

@kmiklas this is a rather bizarre answer. So you wouldn't ever try something that could be beneficial for you but only has a 38.4% (5:8 odds, per your cited estimate) chance of success, where the sole risk of failure involves someone giving you a dirty look? Such an extreme level of risk aversion doesn't sound like a recipe for success in life, and I strongly doubt that you even practice it yourself. I suggest you reconsider if this advice really makes sense, or clarify what you were trying to say.

@Dan, by 8:5 I mean a good bet--better than 2:1, which is typically the favorite in a horse race. Not sure how you interpret this as an "extreme level of risk aversion," and I never recommended that he apply this in "life," just in this situation. To clarify, I believe that a student request of a professor to change their teaching technique will be fruitless. He can try if he wants, but I think that it will be a waste of breath, for reasons cited above. Most professors will take it under advisement, and ask him to take his seat.

authors: ÆĪěx Ømēř Øřô


text:
Asking for Editor comments even before submitting to the journal, Is it ethical?
I had written a manuscript and had got it verified by a Professor (as it was closely related to some of his work) who said it was correct. I later came to know that he is also an editor of a reputed journal. So I Wrote to him (the Editor of a journal (math)), asking to comment about suitability of the manuscript for that journal, even before submitting to the journal, is it ethical? and not something frowned upon?
PS : I have not submitted to that Journal.

I don't believe there is anything unethical in asking. You are just getting an opinion, if anything. Of course, the editor may decline as it may raise ethical issues on that end, but not on yours. You aren't asking for an advantage over others, but just advice on suitability. That is the editor's function, though they may prefer, and have rules, to only comment on proper submissions.
He has seen the paper already, of course. Some editors would actually encourage you to submit it without even being asked. It will be judged by reviewers other than the editor, of course.

I am asking, as he is not responding to my request to comment. I was worried if I had asked anything wrong.

No, not wrong. He may be busy or he may have rules preventing a reply. Some people take a long time to answer, even for more official requests. Wait a bit longer, perhaps, or just submit the paper.


text:
Doing two PhDs one from Electrical Engineering and other from Theoretical Physics
I am currently doing MPhil degree in Electrical Engineering (Sensors & Robotics). I did my bachelor degree in Electrical Engineering as well.
I have real motivation and love to do research on Theoretical Physics as well. The more I learn physics more I need to do a research on physics.
My initial thought was to get an M.Phil on the current University in EE and get my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from some other more reputed university. But since now I have an idea of doing Ph.D. in physics, now I am thinking of extending my M.Phil to a Ph.D. and finish it and do another Ph.D. on physics in a foreign University (Australia).
I have two questions,
1)what is your opinion on this path? I appreciate answers, especially by PhD supervisors.
2) Does getting a Ph.D. in electrical engineering minimize my chances of getting selected for a PhD( funded Ph.D.) in theoretical physics? (I mean is it better to apply for Ph.D. in theoretical physics after completion of just M.Phil).
Note: It takes only one extra year for Ph.D. if I extend my M.Phil.

If your aim is to do a PhD in theoretical physics (TP), then you should attempt to get on a corresponding PhD programme straight after your MPhil.
However, this may not be so easy, depending on the suitability of your current qualifications and qualities to TP research (and to the openness of potential supervisors to applicants from EE). So, failing to secure a PhD in TP, you can attempt to secure a PhD in EE (though in practice you may need to apply to both options simultaneously).
I don't think that obtaining a PhD in EE diminishes your chances for a PhD in TP, on the contrary. However, after a PhD in EE, you may very well change your mind and go for a career in EE. You should definitely allow for that option at the outset, i.e. choose the University for any PhD with care: don't just consider a PhD in EE as a step towards TP or a stop gap.