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Misguided use of offensive figures in student presentations
I recently had an experience while overseeing student presentations in a course I am teaching. While the concrete situation could be handled without much ado due to some special circumstances, I thought the general problem interesting enough to ask for opinions here.
The case is the following: In a course for first year students, all participants are tasked with presentations of a course relevant topic. As part of the preparations, students are encouraged to make the presentations as lively as possible. One student had included a couple of biographical slides (encouraged), but one of the cartoon figures of a key person was drawn in the unmistakable style of "Der Ewige Jude" from national socialistic propaganda. From context, it was clearly unintended. The student had just googled for images, and this came up. The presentation as such had absolutely nothing to with history, and this was just a biographical introduction slide.
Obviously there is a learning opportunity here, but how should I handle such a problem? In particular since the course as such has nothing to do with European history. Some potential issues I already considered:

Having such a figure on a slide could be quite offensive to other students, and as such, the mistake should be addressed.
But by addressing the issue, I risk derailing the discussion about the course topic in question completely.
By addressing the issue in plenary, I risk discouraging the student from making lively presentations in the future.
By addressing the issue in private, I risk giving the impression that I don't care about such issues.

Let me stress that I am talking only about unintended use. Had the student started regurgitating anti-Semitic propaganda, I would have engaged immediately.
How can I turn such a situation into a positive learning opportunity, without discouraging the student, and without drawing too much attention from the main topic?

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Derail the discussion, then re-rail it afterwards.
Keeping the class on topic is useless if students are too uncomfortable to learn.  You are obligated to intervene, once you have learned how to do it.  Here's the method I was taught:

Interrupt.  Example:  "Sorry, I'm interrupting."
Question.  Example:  "Do you know what stereotype does this image represents?"

The purpose of questioning is to allow someone to indicate that they are ignorant, or to allow themselves to correct an error.  In my experience, students usually realize they did something wrong and correct themselves.

Educate.  Explain why something is offensive/discriminatory/whatever.  Example:  "This image is in a style that was used to depict [identity group] as having [trait].  It is a dishonest message and disrespectful."

Once the issue is addressed, direct students back to the usual learning activity.

without discouraging the student

Prejudice is inherently discouraging.  Your students can't learn ethical behavior without being discouraged by awareness of unethical behavior.  Hopefully, the "Question" step will at least reduce the hostility of the interaction.

+1, I will add that all three steps can be done in less than a minute; properly addressing this issue does not necessarily imply a lengthy discussion of race relations.

+1 (and more) just for "Keeping the class on topic is useless if students are too uncomfortable to learn."

This is quite aggressive. It would be more empathetic to skip question 2 and start point 3 with "You are probably unaware that...". This student will probably be remembering this presentation with a cringe for the rest of their life, even the second hand cringe is bad.

@Clumsycat I strongly disagree.  Your approach is is more aggressive, and can go horribly wrong if everyone but the instructor knows the student is aware of the prejudice.

re " ... . Your students can't learn ethical behavior without being discouraged by awareness of unethical behavior.  ... " -> quite possibly so BUT if wholly innocent the behaviour is not unethical. The images are highly likely to be meaningful for their original purposes only within known context. There MAY be a small percentage who are well enough immersed in the broader material that they recognise such an image as an obvious stereotype. Most probably won't. [[That's a very blatant example]].

@AnonymousPhysicist  guess I interpret the question "What stereotype does this image represent?" as implying that the student does know, because it makes no sense to ask if the student doesn't have an answer. Implying that they know the answer and used the image anyway seems like an accusation of bigotry. If we assume the student didn't know then they get to save face without saying anything. In this situation I actually think it very likely the student didn't know as needs to be told asap so they don't make that blunder again.

@Clumsycat I've edited it.  Normally, I ask questions because I think students do not know the answer.  No point in asking them about things if I am sure they already know.

Telling the truth is not aggressive.

Given that is likely that there are other students in the class who would be unaware of how to recognize an anti-Semitic piece of art imitating a relatively obscure Nazi film, I do feel like ideally it would be best to address it in class instead of after. The problem is that unless Nazi propaganda is directly related to the class topic, I cannot think of any way to address it (including this answer) that does not end up seeming to indirectly characterize the student, in front of the whole class, as ignorant or a bigot.

Consider that the class would have gone without learning how to recognize this stereotype anyway if the student had not put it in their presentation, perhaps it would be sufficient to address it with the student after class. One risk might be that students will be convinced that the stereotype is innocuous, of course.

I would perhaps instead ask, "Are you aware of the history of this image?"

@rrauenza Sure, if it's not a new image; we don't know.

@Obie2.0  Of course they're ignorant.  The whole point of being a student is to become less ignorant.

A possibility, to avoid disrupting the flow quite as much, is to interrupt, but state that the slide/image will need discussion at the end, then to encourage the student to proceed, bring up the reason for the discussion afterwards.  In particular, a student who isn't immersed in European culture (thus missing the context of the image) may be struggling enough to give a presentation (in what might not be their first language).  In general I'd prefer to tackle it head-on at the time it appears, but signalling the need to address it and doing so later may have its place

I agree with the title, but disagree with asking the question. It would start a dynamic of a public interrogation of the student.

I still don't think the edit fixes the problem. In normal usage, asking questions implies you think the person you are asking knows the answer. You may have established a different expectation in your classroom, but I don't think that works as universal advice. I know I can't remember a teacher ever directly asking me (not the whole class) a question they didn't expect me to know how to answer, and I would be very embarrassed if I didn't know the answer. To me, the fix would be to directly tell the student that it's okay if they don't know the answer.

@trlkly That's an ok addition.  However, I'm very concerned about the quality of your teachers.

@einpoklum If there's an interrogation going on, you should interrupt, question, and educate about the appropriateness of interrogations.

@AnonymousPhysicist: The question you suggest would be the beginning of an interrogation.

@einpoklum It is a very rare person who will take the advice I have relayed and make that mistake.  In practice, it's minority students who get interrogated, not the bigots.

@AnonymousPhysicist: 1. I'm sorry, but I believe you are "mis-imagining" the scenario. I believe most students will perceive it as you beginning an interrogation of the students for suspicion of either holding racist views or being a complete idiot. 2. What bigots? OP said they are certain this was  unintentional.

@einpoklum Most bigotry and discrimination is unintentional.  In the above comment I referred to a hypothetical bigot.  The difference between interrogation and asking a question is obvious to most people; if you cannot distinguish them, don't follow my advice (well, it's advice copied off an expert).

Having such a figure on a slide could be quite offensive to other students, and as such, the mistake should be addressed.

Yes.

But by addressing the issue, I risk de-railing the discussion about the course topic in question completely.

You are also teaching the students to give presentations. Choosing your illustrations is an important skill in preparing a presentation. Choosing an illustration that isn't nazi propaganda is a vital skill, even if it's rarely taught explicitly. You would not be derailing the discussion, you would be doing your role as a teacher.
If you are worried about derailing, and you are certain that the student made a mistake rather than a fascist statement, then you can talk about it during a feedback/questions time at the end of the presentation, rather than addressing it on the spot. Do not necessarily assume malice, but be firm in that showing such an image is not acceptable.
You can make this into a general point about choosing sources carefully, which is undoubtedly worthwhile. This will also help taking the "pressure" away from the specific student, as you will not be talking about the specific mistake but rather the general mistake of choosing a wrong source.

By addressing the issue in plenary, I risk discouraging the student from making lively presentations in the future.

I don't see how. Asking a student to be careful in choosing illustrations is rather unlikely to discourage the student from choosing illustration at all. And if that's the case, well, it's better to have no illustration than to have nazi propaganda.
Students make mistakes. If they did everything perfectly, they wouldn't be students, they would be masters. We, as teachers, correct these mistakes. A student who takes a well-meaning correction personally and stops trying has a completely wrong attitude. While you can certainly try steering students away from that attitude, at some point it ends being your responsibility. You can bring a horse to water...

By addressing the issue in private, I risk giving the impression that I don't care about such issues.

Sure. But the important point isn't your own personal image that you project to your students, it's what your students actually learn.

"If you are worried about derailing, and you are certain that the student made a mistake rather than a fascist statement, then you can talk about it during a feedback/questions time at the end of the presentation, rather than addressing it on the spot."  This won't work.  The class is already derailed by the image; class is for everyone, not just the presenter.

@AnonymousPhysicist That's not necessarily accurate.  The student themselves did not notice.  Others might not have noticed.  If the class was relatively small, it's possible that no one but the instructor noticed.  Given the possibility that one or more of the other students did notice and was offended, it's important to address it publicly enough that they do not have cause to feel that the environment is hostile, and it's important to ensure that the other students also learn that this sort of thing is unacceptable, but simply having the image there does not necessarily instantly derail.

You are also teaching the students to give presentations. Choosing your illustrations is an important skill in preparing a presentation Another important skill is dealing with stressful interruptions, though hopefully these won't usually be due to the student's own choice of materials.

Unfortunately I think most students would take this personally, and there's probably no way around it. Mistakes like that are likely to make them upset, ashamed and damage their confidence significantly. I think it would be worth considering the student might need extra reassurance and support afterwards if public intervention occurred, and to prepare for it. Especially if this is early on in their course of study, an incident like that could drag down their self esteem for the rest of the year, or longer.

@Crazymoomin Students are adults, we are not there to coddle them. Taking their feelings into account is of course beneficial, but again, it stops being your responsibility at some point. Be kind but firm, create a benevolent learning environment, and let the students learn how to react to their own mistakes.

@N.I. I don't think maturity is a major consideration here. Anyone of any age in that position could be very upset by such a transgression, be they a new student or a new hire. Do you want to see an otherwise bright and highly capable student drop out over a cultural misunderstanding?

I agree with the procedure indicated in Anonymous Physicist's answer, but do not think that is the question you should ask. You did not share the exact image but I'm going to assume here that to someone not aware of the historical context, the image could be considered a nondescript cartoon drawing or something (obviously if the image was a whole nazi propaganda poster it's a different story).
You have to realize what the likely effect the question you ask is going to have on the rest of the class: If you, as the instructor, ask a question and the student is forced to respond with "I don't know," that student and all the others in the room are going to going to interpret that as "this is a thing you should have known." This makes "what stereotype does this image represent?" the wrong question to ask, since now students will go and look at their presentations and try and find out if any of their images represent any stereotypes, real or imagined.
Instead, you should ask a question more directly linked to the student's actual mistake: "Do you know the historical background of this image?" It forces the student to answer no to a question that they actually should have known the answer to, and at the same time will make sure everyone else in the class goes back and checks whether their images have unfortunate historical background.

"he wrong question to ask, since now students will go and look at their presentations and try and find out if any of their images represent any stereotypes, real or imagined." Why is that wrong?

"they actually should have known the answer to"  I would not assume all undergraduates are informed about fascism - maybe they just moved from a country that was not involved in any conflicts with fascists.

@AnonymousPhysicist "maybe they just moved from a country that was not involved in any conflicts with fascists" IIRC isn't Hitler often thought of as a "good guy" in India, because his war against the British was what allowed them to overthrow their colonial oppressors? https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/why-hitler-is-not-a-dirty-word-in-india/articleshow/63955029.cms

@AnonymousPhysicist its wrong because they'll find them. A picture of Curious George is either just a cartoon or a racist depiction of a black person depending on whether you're looking for stereotypes or not. Also they should know what the background of the image is not because they should have sufficient historical knowledge, but because putting the image in their slides makes it their responsibility to know the background.

@nick012000-I'd just like to point out that the article you shared is widely off the mark with respect to popular perception. Its largely the opposite. Also, your understanding of the historical period in question appears very misguided. Happy to discuss in chat if you're interested.

Your argument is totally unconvincing.  It's true that racism can be found in many places.  It is also true that many works of art have many valid interpretations.  Those are both good things to learn.  Also, I just read "Curious George" and it's obviously an allegory about the enslavement of Africans.

@AnonymousPhysicist  is "racism can be found in many places" really the things students should be learning when they are checking their presentations to see if they are acceptable to show to a large audience? Also, I'm having some trouble reconciling "many works of art have many valid interpretations" and "it's obviously an allegory about the enslavement of Africans" (nevermind that I have no idea how you came to that second conclusion)

Absolutely.  Students need to learn about respectful interactions before they interact.  That includes learning about prejudice.  Otherwise, they will not know how to communicate appropriately.

Maybe you could interrupt and say something like "So Bloggins, sorry to interrupt, but can I just ask where you found the image possibly please? Just asking because although I'm pretty sure you didn't realise, it's in a style that used to be found in Nazi propaganda, so it's definitely not something that's appropriate in a presentation. Where on earth did you find it?" And then go from there, and explain how to find appropriate images in future.

This is how I would approach it, quick and to the point.

-1 This is passive-aggressive to aggressive which is not ideal in confrontations as it might push the student into a defensive corner, where all learning abilities are shut down.

This could work: whether it does or not depends entirely on tone of voice, relationship/rapport with the class, etc..

@infinitezero depends very much on the tone you say it. You can say it with an ironic tone or with a helpful tone and that changes the perception completely.

@infinitezero On the contrary, this is the only one here that (if I were the presenter) wouldn't make me feel singled out in an unfair light. In a light tone, the "where did you find it" takes the weight of "you mistakenly put nazi propaganda in your slideshow" off of me and onto, say, google images.

@RedwolfPrograms In the answer it's not "where did you find it" but "Where on earth did you find it". That's quite a difference.

@infinitezero I think we're imagining it being said in very different tones :p. To me "where on earth did you find it" would come across more as "I have no idea how you came across that image"

For context, the intended emphasis was on "find", not "earth". I agree it can sound aggressive if you say "Where on EARTH did you find it?" That's very different from "Where on earth did you FIND it?", which isn't aggressive.

But yes, I guess it does depend on your existing rapport with the class. And on the size of the class a bit actually, I suppose. My teaching experience is in tutoring quite small numbers of people (4 or fewer), where you get to know individuals pretty well. In that context, I'm pretty confident something like this would work. It might not be the right tone in a large lecture hall with 200 people, by contrast.

The implied meaning was "I think something may have gone wrong with your search process, what was it?", to at least give the student a chance to back-track (fast) if it was (as suspected) unintentional.

"So Bloggins, sorry to interrupt, but can I just ask where you found the image possibly please? Just asking because although I'm pretty sure you didn't realise, it's in a style that used to be found in Nazi propaganda". This is enough. The rest of it ("this is not appropriate in a presentation, where on earth did you find it?") would make the student feel bad by emphasizing the mistake on their part.

@hb20007 Maybe :) I guess they are supposed to feel a little bit bad about it to encourage them to take more care next time. It might be inadvertent, but it's still a pretty unfortunate thing to have done. I'm not sure the desired goal is for them to feel like there's absolutely no value judgement involved - there honestly is, in reality. It's like if a toddler punches a classmate - you might not want to make them hate their life over it, but you definitely want them to know they've done something wrong, even if they didn't understand it was wrong in advance. Now they know, as they must.

Put another way, it's really not a case of "it's in a style that used to be found in Nazi propaganda, and that might or might not be ok - you decide". It's a case of "this is really not ok, and whether it was deliberate or not (about which I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt), it must not happen again".

It would sounds like the poor ignorant student had surfed the dark Internet looking for something when it is obviously not necessary to do so for finding all sort of bullshit.

@Alchimista Would that ignorance were a sufficient defence in this world ¯\(ツ)/¯ In practice, it can unfortunately lead to you causing other people a lot of trouble, and (sometimes, but not always, thereby) getting into a lot of trouble yourself. Which is a shame, because ignorance is ubiquitous and in some cases inevitable. So we're all guaranteed lots of problems I suppose :)

@StuartGolodetz I see that. Also I am not blaming the educational system first. It is really environmental.

This is sure to traumatize the poor student.

One strategy for the future: try to head this off before it happens. You can do that in a context that does not call attention to the particular infelicity.
When you assign the presentations, devote some class time to describing what makes a good one. Along with the standard advice (pacing, make it lively, no slides dense with text, not too many slides, ...) you can talk about making sure clip-art images are appropriate. Perhaps tell this story about what happened in a previous class.
If time permits, you could arrange to see previews of the presentations. Critiques of drafts are more useful than critiques of the actual presentations. (That's true for written projects too.)

Slide pre-submission
Consider discovering the problem early:

Have the students submit their presentation slides some period of time before they present.
Give the presentations a once-over.
Mail each student (or group of presenting students) some high-level comments; and in extraordinary cases, like this one, point out something that would be inappropriate to include.

Pros:

No need to improvise and act at a moment's thought.
Student is spared the unpleasant experience of being chided, or being associated with the Nazis (however indirect the association may be).
You are spared possible corridor talk about the Nazi presentation in Prof. Nabla's class (rumors don't need much grounding in facts after all).
The students get to fix other potential issues in their presentations, which is useful for first-time presentors.

Cons:

It's a lot of extra work :-(

Consider asking students to go back and create a brief bibliography of source for items used in the presentation...if it is appropriate for the course work. Be sure to ask for a second or third order search to determine the original source of the material.
Then, consider if the addressing of original source can be done in a way to enhance the original instructional intent WHILE addressing the ethical and useful sourcing of material used.
Hopefully this can be done without singling out anyone...as that could push a person from casual indifference to a reaction of alignment against the perceived insult....especially if their home-life or social circle is bent to accepting the unethical dogma.
Shine light without creating what we fear. Give haven to those who are not committed to the shadow so they can reflect the light you offer...though more aggressive tactics can be argued with great validity.

I think this is too roundabout a path for this circumstance.

Another potential issue you didn't mention is the principles of Free Speech and Freedom of Belief. Some people consider Free Speech to be an important human right, and the idea that there are 'things you cannot say' to be extremely offensive and dangerous, in precisely the same sort of way that National Socialist propaganda against Jews was dangerous. Authoritarian regimes enforce a set of social norms on what people are allowed to say and believe, what is socially acceptable, what is moral and ethical according to the regime's definitions of morality and ethics. Those who don't share their norms are considered dangerous influences on society, and need to be silenced, suppressed, driven out, and eventually destroyed. The target for the National Socialists happened to be the Jews, but other groups can and have been targets too. The danger in such propaganda is not about any specific oppressor or target (e.g. National Socialists versus Jews specifically), but in the general phenomenon of any groups, viewpoints, beliefs, etc. being held 'unacceptable' and excluded by society, and Freedom of Speech being persecuted and punished. (Note there is a critical difference between opinion and action. Acting on beliefs where that harms others may indeed be punishable.)
Given that in this case the student was unaware of the context, there can be no suspicion that this was an attempt to marginalise a particular group, and it should therefore be made very clear that the student is not under any moral cloud for having done what they did. It would certainly be appropriate to explain to everyone the historical context of this image and the effect this is likely to have on people who recognise it, but Free Speech includes even offensive speech. (We all hold beliefs that some other people find offensive or wrong.) There may be circumstances where evoking such a reaction is the intention, and appropriate. (For example, in an essay warning against the dangers of totalitarianism...) But it is even more important to explain the point that Academic Freedom requires that there be no forbidden ideas.
Full treatment of such an important topic shouldn't be inserted into the middle of another discussion as a digression. That does neither subject justice. It should certainly be dealt with as a topic in itself, and its importance emphasised. But assuming it has already been presented previously, it would be pedagogically beneficial to briefly link back to it when the issue arises elsewhere, as here.

It may be legal to be a jerk, or to insult people, but that is not the same as passively letting it go without objecting to it. And there's always the pseudo-paradox about tolerating intolerance...? Currently, to my perception, the problems are more about peoples' self-realizations that they do have implicit biases... and, second, should actively object when other people behave badly to others.

Academic Freedom does not require that there be no forbidden ideas; it merely requires an open-minded approach to new ideas, and the occasional revisiting of old, discarded ones. Too many “academics” run poorly-designed “here's justification for my prejudice” studies which, while laughable to experts in the relevant fields, are cited by non-academics as justification for their prejudice – several countries' politics are currently seeing the aftermath of this.

It might be good to reflect on what would have happened if the same mixup happened in a job context. Say, if the official twitter representative for say MoonBucks Coffee tweeted such an image (by mistake).
I do not think real life would be as forgiving as the university setting, so highlighting that this is a learning opportunity where honest mistakes are treated as such, and not cause for termination. If the discussion is uncomfortable, then this is a very mild consequence, compared to what the hypothetical MoonBucks person above would experience.


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Is using author name in order to refer to an other research article a good practice?
There is always a bibliography in a research article, for each quoted paper there is plenty of information (title, authors, year, journal, etc..) and this is very convenient for the reader.
But in the article itself, those articles are always named using the author(s) name(s) rather than their title. An example with this randomly chosen paper :

This is very common, at least in computer science and math. I think it's not a good practice because it's what has been found which is important and not who has found. It would be better use articles titles, if someone needs the authors names he can look at the bibliography.
I assume that titles are well chosen and give a good first idea of the contents, but anyway it can not be more meaningless than authors names.
Someone can argues that name is often shorter than title. I think it's not a good point because sometimes there are three or four names and because we could just use the bibliography reference number in order to be as short as possible, but it's not the aim of an article.
The same occurs with theorems and algorithms names. It's quite difficult to memorize what Kosaraju algorithm is, it would be much more easier to memorize what double traversal algorithm is.
Furthermore, science is timeless and this intrusion of a temporal thing is very unaesthetic.
On the other hand, don't be mentioned by other scientists could be less stimulating for authors. In addition, it could be difficult to find meaningful and short title for each article.
So, is using author name in order to refer to an other research article a good practice ? The idea is to complete my pros and cons lists and then possibly to conclude.

"Science" may be timeless, but the "pursuit of science" and "scientific writing" are very much human endeavors. Considering that metonymy is long ingrained as a part of human language, and is recognized to play a role in human cognitive development (see e.g. this collection), in the context of papers written for and by human beings such usage certainly is not bad practice. (And don't ask about aesthetics: that's "primarily opinion based".)

I do not entirely agree with your claim "it's what has been found which is important and not who has found". Names allow you to place results - for example, if a paper is citing a fields medalist or someone well-known then the reader can take it for granted (whether correctly or not) that the cited results are important.

I'd be terrified to see an in-text citation of a title like "Hydrogen bonding in diols and binary diol-water systems investigated using DFT methods. II. Calculated infrared OH-stretch frequencies, force constants, and NMR chemical shifts correlate with hydrogen bond geometry and electron density topology. A reevaluation of geometrical criteria for hydrogen bonding".

@WillieWong Ok but a math article should be about math and only about math, not about "pursuit of science" and "scientific writing". I don't think aesthetics is only opinion based because this theory isn't able to explain consensus.

@user1729 If the result is cited, it is anyway important within the paper.

@MassimoOrtolano Do you prefer "Since Klein RA paper[54], we know that we can use Hydrogen bonding in diols and binary diol-water systems investigated using DFT methods in order to calculate infrared OH-stretch frequencies, force constants, and NMR chemical shifts correlate with hydrogen bond geometry and electron density topology. It was a reevaluation of geometrical criteria for hydrogen bonding" ? And this too long title is probably not well chosen, it's almost an abstract !

"A math article should be about math and only about math, not about..." c.f. the much-praised article by Bill Thurston in this regard.

@user3702657: No, absolutely: I like the way it is: a name and a year (or a number), or simply a number. Anything longer would lead to unreadable papers.

@MassimoOrtolano What I tried to say is that you never just give a reference whithout anything else, you still introduce a reference : why it is connected to your work, why it is interesting, etc.. So, a good title could subsitute this explanations and could be as readable as they are.

@FrançoisGodi, you can raise the issue on the meta site http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/. However, I doubt you'll have much luck. Stack Exchange sites are good for asking questions that have a fact-based answer. However, they're not intended for discussion or debate. See http://academia.stackexchange.com/help/dont-ask.

I think it's not a good practice because it's what has been found which is important and not who has found.

Basically, I agree with this assessment. This does not mean that it does not matter who discovered or developed something, but it does indeed seem unreasonable to memorize metadata such as author name or publication year.
Like many conventions and customs, what is done in publications nowadays is inherited from earlier times and other disciplines. Some of these conventions might indeed not be suitable forever or for all disciplines, but it takes a lot of time to change commonly applied customs.
Two concrete examples, as you mention the field CS:

Many subfields of CS order authors by degree of concrete contribution. In many cases, the first authors are young researchers who conducted implementation and studies of few or a single project themselves (as opposed to more seasoned researchers, who are rather involved with several projects on a higher level of abstraction, thus rather bringing them towards the end of the aithors list). With large numbers of doctorates awarded each year (providing an impression of the numbers of young and still fairly unknown researchers around), it is questionable whether pointing to a publication in the form "first author et al." is likely to be more helpful than a totally nondescript numerical reference.
Presumeably, CS is slightly special compared to many other fields in that it lends itself to creating concepts that start a life of their own. For instance, concepts presented in papers frequently get fancy names, and reference implementations may be directly built upon by people who have never met or communicated with the original authors. In quite some cases, these concept names may become much more recognizeable than any of the many people who worked on the concept.

Thus, while there are various ways to meaningfully refer to such papers without relying on the author names and by rather relying on the content of the paper, it is difficult to standardize them:

Not every concept gets a name. Some authors prefer not to name their concepts.
Likewise, not every paper title is descriptive. Some titles explain what the paper does, some explain what problem is tackled, some just grab the readers' attention.

The author name, on the other hand, is always around for articles, which is why many authors might rely on using thosr rather than deciding on a by-case basis what is the most recognizeable pointer for a given work.

You point out exactly my problem, this unaesthetic mixture between temporal metadata (unreasonable to memorize for ever) and the timeless article. And you point out two bad agreements to stamp out before : unnamed concepts (If there isn't word, we can create one respecting ethymology rules) and bad titles (including descriptive but too long titles).

And the little meaningful information suggested by this metadata is indeed timeless information which could be suggested by a timeless title as well as in the metadata and even better.

What are the (currently two) downvotes for? Especially as the OP accepted this answer as the, in their opinion, best answer, it would be interesting to know what factual errors other users see in this response.

I think it's not a good practice because it's what has been found which is important and not who has found.

That is not the perspective that many mathematicians take. If you read the American Mathematical Society Ethical Guidelines, they state:

The correct attribution of mathematical results is essential, both because it encourages creativity, by benefiting the creator whose career may depend on the recognition of the work and because it informs the community of when, where, and sometimes how original ideas entered into the chain of mathematical thought.

As you can see, there is a strong focus there on the ''who'' and ''when'' of a result. The focus on remembering who proved each result is a deeply ingrained aspect of mathematical culture.

On a separate note, the question states

It's quite difficult to memorize what Kosaraju algorithm is, it would be much more easier to memorize what double traversal algorithm is.

That may be true, but I think it is easier to remember what Djikstra's algorithm is than to remember what the "spanning tree algorithm" is, because there are many spanning tree algorithms. The same would hold for the "prime factorization algorithm" -- which one is that?

In regards to the final paragraphs: there is a further obvious context dependence. One should usually try and refrain from writing "Euler's theorem" without additional descriptors; but everyone knows what "Galois theory" refers to.

It seems to me that it's not very useful to know "who" and "when" and it can even enclose the reader in an historical point of view which restrain him in finding a better point of view. But you point out a first problem to solve : some mathematicians don't really like maths, they like to be mathematicians. But this is a subproblem of a more general current one, individualism.

i like the focus of your answer, which is on a particular aspect of the question, namely the value of the author vs the message. in this regard the OP's concern seems to be that emphasizing authorship encourages (fallacious) argumentation by authority, whereas your response states that emphasizing authorship expresses recognition were it is due. there is a trade-off here.

@WillieWong: The context remark is an important one. Interestingly, as I am not a mathematician, I had never heard of the term "Galois theory", and as it is not self-descriptive, I had to consult external resources to find out what it is about. Contrast this with "binary search", "bucket sort" and "quicksort", which - even if I did not know them - are instantly recognizeable to refer to searching and sorting, respectively.

Which in-text citation handles are used depends on the style manual of the journal in which the article is published. Some use footnotes, some are numerical, and many are variants of the author-year style, for example APA and MLA. I have never seen a citation style that uses full titles as in-text citation handles, certainly because they are much too long to be read conveniently. Some styles use keywords from the title, though.
Multiple author names are usually abbreviated "et al." and reference numbers convey even less information than the author name (which often already is a good short-hand if you are familiar with the field).

I understand that it depends on the style manual of the journal, but I think many style manual are bad concerning this rule.
Ok, the entiere title would difficult to read, but it could be just the reference number in the text and a foonote for the title.

So essentially you are advocating a system which makes papers harder to read. No thanks, I say.

@user3702657 sure, some people prefer footnotes over in-text citations, probably for this reason. i find this much harder to read, in particular with recurrent citations of the same source, which then take up too much space or require op. cit / supra note or some other inconvenient work-around. in the end, it is a matter of taste.

This answer somehow doesn't respond to the question. From the example in the question, it seems that the paper does use numeric in-text citation handles. However, the question asks about the way these are embedded into the text, which in the case of the paper seems toninvariantly happen by mentioning the author name(s), which may or may not make sense depending on the circumstances.

@O.R.Mapper OP specifically asked if it is a good practice to use the title as a citation handle.

@FrançoisGodi Does "[1] proved something great" is grammatically correct? Some might say yes, others no. The use of the authors' names at least makes for a grammatically correct sentence. And that's maybe all there is in using such a format...

@PatW: "Something great was proven [1].", "Project X showed something great [1].", or simply "Something great [1] ..." (followed directly by a statement referring to the great thing) are all correct sentences, as well.

@O.R.Mapper it all goes down to: has the reference number a grammatical role in the sentence, if any, and how is your sentence built around the references? As I've said, some might say that my example is "bad English" while others wouldn't care at all. In your examples, the references can be omitted and the sentence would still be correct, my example would not.

Furthermore, science is timeless and this intrusion of a temporal thing is very unaesthetic.

Name and year citations give a lot of information to a reader: knowing when and by whom something was proven often tells you a great deal about what techniques were likely used to prove it and the broader context the result fits in.  Knowing the title tells you basically nothing, other than how to look up the paper (and you can look in the references for that).

Knowing who wrote something is only useful if you happen to know the author, which can be somewhat unlikely if you only see the last name of the first author alone, as I have described in my answer.

@O.R.Mapper: Even then there may be some use (for example, identifying that multiple cited papers are written by the same person, or by overlapping people).  But in my experience, that situation is quite unusual: reading a paper in a topic I know, I generally recognize the majority of the names being cited.

@Henry: Granted, that may well boil down to personal preference. Personally, I usually fail to recall or recognize even names of authors whose papers I have cited in my own works several times, but I also know some colleagues in the same field who are somehow able to remember names and even use them as a kind of a mnemonic device to remember the works published by the respective people.

To expand upon hennings answer there is (I think) a rationale behind the use of abbreviations and/or numerical references. The number of pages in a journal generally falls into a certain range and even with abbreviations some authors struggle to convey all the important information.
Then there is the point of readability. A general title will - most probably - be longer than the (leading) author's name which will just clutter the page. Whilst an informative title of a paper should be the norm not everybody thinks this way. Including the title of the reference into the body of the article will certainly make it harder to read or skim over to asses the importance/correctness of the paper because one will have to filter more text.

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text:
Does doing an undergraduate math major make an applicant for philosophy phd programs more competitive?
I'm majoring in philosophy at my undergraduate university but I've also taken a fair number of math classes. I've generally found that taking math classes is very time consuming and dramatically limits the amount of time I can spend working on philosophy classes. On the other hand, I feel like I learn a lot in the math classes that sometimes influences how I think about philosophy. I'm a junior and I would need about 4 more math classes for a math major (I have three semesters left before I graduate). For purposes of admissions to philosophy phd programs, should I continue to take math classes and get a math major (in addition to philosophy), or should I just focus on philosophy?
ADDED: I understand that math will be helpful to me in studying philosophy. I am specifically interested in whether it is worth studying in the remainder of my undergraduate career given the opportunity cost for my ability to focus on philosophy.

Mathematical logic should be one topic useful to philosophy

@Kendall Philosophy phd programs only require a bachelors degree in philosophy or even undergraduate coursework in philosophy without a degree in philosophy. I will be getting my B.A. in philosophy.

Ah, you know what, I had read the question as I'm majoring in math, but want to do a PhD in Philosophy, please disregard me!

Recommend getting the math major if you can. (I have double bachelor's in philosophy & math myself, although my graduate school and professional work was in math.)
The undergraduate study is the best time to expand yourself into as many fields as you'd care to take. Generally, graduate school is the place that demands exclusive focus on one narrow area. So the opportunity you have now will not be available later on; and the degree will document permanently that you can achieve in any field you need to work in.
Plus, there's the possibility that later in life you may wish to adjust or switch fields. Having the math degree will allow you to immediately step into programs in any science-related area you wish.
Standing astride two separate fields like an academic Colossus gives you a perspective and options that few others can match, and now is the very best time to establish that.

I get the feeling that it always helps to have a second major, and math is seen as a difficult subject (most often) from the perspective of social sciences/humanities (reflecting well on your abilities). If it's only a course or two I'd probably say its worth it regardless if you end up using it or not. Ultimately, it will depend on the specific professors and their subject areas that you apply for -I'm sure a logics or cognitive science professor would be more inclined than an ethics one. This also depends on if you can spin your math interest in a philosophy area -just having a second major in math and then wanting to work in an area that never uses it, or, never including that in your applications to professors/universities, doesn't really make it worth your while (unless its minimal effort). Being in psy+phi myself, we'd probably have more use for you in psy than phi, but that's my specific area. Match what you want to do with what you are doing, and think about if you can use it as an argument in your favor when applying to PhDs (then roughly match the effort for the gain).
[Edit1: I'm doing Ecological Psychology and Dynamic Systems, we check our assumptions far more than other psychological areas and philosophy is tremendously helpful with that. Dynamic Systems relies, in part, on difference equations and ODEs, so maths would be great to be good at ;).]
[Edit2: Also read Daniel's answer for a more long-term perspective than the 'getting into grad school' part.]

Please elaborate psy-phi.

I'm doing Ecological Psychology and Dynamic Systems, we check our assumptions far more than other psychological areas and philosophy is tremendously helpful with that. Dynamic Systems relies heavily on equational modeling and other maths-based reasoning, so maths would be great to be good at ;).

Edit your answer to include this information.

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text:
I have a MSc degree, want to apply for PhD degree. Should I submit my BSc transcript during admission?
I have a BSc and an MSc degree on Computer Science. My BSc CGPA was too low. I somehow got accepted to an MSc degree(two years) and got 4.00 CGPA. I think I am good at my field.
Now I want to apply for a PhD degree, but all universities I checked requires transcripts received from all higher education attended so far.
I don't want to submit my BSc transcript. Is there a way for me to get accepted to a PhD programme without submitting BSc degree? Is there any chance that my MSc transcript override my previous(BSc) degree?

Regardless of what your undergrad GPA was, not submitting a transcript would be a more negative reflection on your application

I've personally witnessed a few occasions where students were rejected from PhD programs due to poor undergrad GPA even though they had amazing master's GPA (which is prompted this question).  You may want to avoid submitting if not strictly required.

Go ahead and submit your undergraduate transcript.  The admissions committee will be expecting to see one and your application might be screened out before consideration simply because this transcript is missing.
The fact that you've had good grades in your master's program may help you to overcome the bad impression left by your poor undergraduate GPA.  Having good letters of recommendation and one or more publications (of high quality) will help a lot more.

So, can a very successful MSc degree erase all the bad impressions of a BSc degree?

I'm afraid that your bad BSc grades will still leave a bit of a bad impression- you certainly need to address this in your application, mostly by highlighting your recent success and explaining what has changed in your life so that you now are a good student.

Application components should be clearly stated for the institution you are applying. If they ask for a  transcript and you do not provide one, you likely will not be accepted.

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text:
What is the meant by "A high standard of illustration (both line and photo) is an editorial"?

A high standard of illustration (both line and photo) is an editorial
  priority.

What is meant by "line" here? I am not getting this into my mind. The sentence above is taken from the "Instructions to author" part of a journal.

It probably refers to line drawing.

So, why it is written as a whole that is "line and photo" ??

It's not written as a whole: it tells you that both type of illustrations, line drawings and photographs, should be of high quality.

It says "both line and photo" so 1. line and 2. photo (image). Yes, it would be clearer if they said "line or photo".

They probably mean "both vector and raster", but use non-technical language.

"line" means "line art", and could be anything from pen drawings to graphs (plots) or other illustrations drawn with a thin pen or its electronic equivalent.
The reason line art is often listed separately from photos is that it requires a higher resolution image and usually also a different file format for high quality output.

I believe the distinction is also partly a hold-over from earlier (print) publication processes, where photographic illustrations and line art had to be handled differently by the printers when they were preparing things for the printing press. With modern digital publishing techniques, the distinction between the two types of illustrations is less critical, but the terminology sticks around.

Though it depends on fields of the journal, it could mean the following:

A line is a plot of the results in terms of a curve, a bar plot, some statistical demonstrations in such a curve (a 2D picture).
A photo might mean the physical problem demonstration, for example, a set of steps, a set of environmental parameters available in the problem.

E.g. variation of our function f with the parameter x. (Line)
The following figure shows the growth of bacteria under several conditions of the parameter x. (Photo)


text:
Is preparing for a lawsuit a valid reason to defer an exam?
An employer owes me wages and I have not been able to get them to comply without escalating matters. As a result, I have been preparing to take them to court, but I have an exam for my masters that I have not been able to focus on at all due to the substantial stress and uncertainty caused by dealing with this employer.
Does a UK university accept defering an exam due to legal matters as a vaild reason for deferrement especially when the missing payment comes at a time when it is really needed?

I can't answer and certainly not for the UK, but it may make a difference that it is the OP that has initiated the legal action, not that they are subject to legal action brought by another.

Instead of trying to defer the exam, maybe you can offer to take the exam early?  Then maybe you won't be lumped in with other students trying to get more time using bogus reasons.

@GEdgar It doesn't seem like OP is describing a scheduling conflict. They are looking for more time to prepare.

Just go ask the university administration. Ask the professor who will administer the exam first. Usually if there is a makeup exam prepared already, the professor won't mind. It really depends not just on the policies but on how much discretion the professor or faculty has over those policies. So go ask. It is definitely ok to ask even if your court hearing is not on the day of the exam.

@BryanKrause I took the liberty of changing the title to clear up this misunderstanding.

You need to ask your university's administration and do so as soon as possible. We can't answer the question because it depends on your university's regulations and probably mostly on the discretion of your administrators.

Your case will be greatly improved if you can get a doctors note stating this has been causing a significant portion of stress and stress based symptoms. if not then its unlikely that failing to balance study and life will grant you mitigating circumstances.

Your original title seemed to imply you are talking about an ordered court appearance, which could be scheduled in conflict with an exam, in which case you should reschedule one or the other. If the court would refuse to reschedule, you would have fairly good reason to request the exam be delayed (I cannot answer the legal question of whether a school would be required to do so for that reason).
However, the body of your question makes it clear that you are just stressed out over a long time period. People are stressed out about all sorts of things. Other people in your program may have sick children or other family members, may deal with chronic illness themselves, may have to balance an additional job with their schoolwork, may have relationship problems, etc. Sometimes these issues are disruptive enough that a school may agree to give some lenience, and in some cases of disability or illness they may be required to, but for the most part you are expected to simply deal with them as part of life.
I can't know your specific situation, but being owed wages does not sound like it rises to the level of interruption that would require deferring an exam. You could consider asking, but this would probably be a favor rather than something you have a right to, so ask carefully if you must.

The fact that somebody is in school should not mean that they should be deprived of their legal rights in the court system. And you're assuming that the money at stake is insignificant, which it may not be. It could pay for the OP's tuition or support their family, for example. Telling them to walk away from a huge chunk of money will not solve stress issues. I think its very unfair to be automatically dismissive of the OP's problems.

@user71659 I don't see where you are reading anything about depriving anyone of their legal rights. If the court appearance coincides with the master's exam and can't be rescheduled the answerer recommends trying to reschedule the exam. It's just that there doesn't seem to be a particularly strong argument for asking for a delay on the exam if it's just extra stress from dealing with the court that's preventing the OP from preparing for it. In life there are often multiple competing sources of stress and you have to learn to deal with them.

@user71659 Neither did Bryan say the money is insignificant, nor did he say that OP should "walk away from a huge chunk of money". He did say, that everybody has to deal with all kinds of hardships. People seem to forget that sometimes due to the egocentric nature of our existence. I think the answer is fine.

@user71659: There is a gaping chasm between "encouraging personal responsibility and intelligent life management, in an often challenging human existence that's nonetheless nobody else's fault" and "depriving you of your legal rights". Just because you have the right to legal challenge does not mean everybody else must bend over backwards to accommodate you when you do so -- and them not doing so does not in any way constitute a violation of your rights. It would be beneficial to cease thinking of the rest of the population as tools that exist to make your particular life easier!

@user71659 The question reads "I have been unable to prepare for an exam due to a specific stress in life. Is this a valid reason for the professor/university to defer my actual exam?" and the answer is "For this specific stress, probably not."

I disagree with this answer. Preparing for a court case seems to me that it would be an exceptionally stressful situation - literally, unusual and difficult enough that exceptions should be made for it. It is true that everyone has stresses in their lives, but sometimes those stresses cross a line from manageable to overwhelming, and I can see planning on going to court crossing the line to being a little overwhelming.

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text:
Can I cite an accepted, pre-publication paper without DOI and the citations gets counted correctly?
My situation: I got two papers underway and the second one was accepted only days after the first one. The second one cites the first one and, naturally, I want the citation to be attributed correctly. Currently, both publications are "accepted" and probably on the editor's desk or something.
How should I provide the bibliography information for an accepted paper? Can my citation still be accurately attributed to my first paper if I do not have a DOI for it (e.g. in Scopus)? Is there anything I can tell the editors of either journal to guarantee everything is going smoothly?
The field is solid matter physics/materials science.

This depends on the specific system that does the citation counting. For example, the one of Google Scholar definitely doesn't require DOIs.

Even if I can only provide authors, title and journal? Usually, you'd have number, volume, pages and the DOI as additional information.

In Google Scholar, yes - I have had citations counted with exactly this information. BTW, you may want to edit your question if you refer to a specific system, like Google Scholar.

It might be worth checking that neither journal assigns DOIs in advance - this is now supported by CrossRef, though not yet very common, and it's quite possible that they are able to tell you what the DOI will be now even if they don't normally inform you until later in the publication process. (For one thing, many journals issue DOIs based on an internal MS tracking number...)
Regardless of this, however, cite each paper as comprehensively as you can - accurate title, journal name, and clearly marked as "in press" or similar. This will make it easier for someone to know that there is probably a completed version out there somewhere, and give them the information they need to find it.
As I understand it, Scopus and Web of Science have a human involved in checking citations, not just an automated matching script, so hopefully they will be able to do the link manually when they see this. Both of them tend to lag a bit behind publication dates for citation records, meaning the chances are good that by the time the citation links are put into their database, the target will be online and citable.

I almost can't imagine there is a human (or more) checking all references of everything on Scopus and WOS. Thanks for your answer! Based on this, I won't delay the post-acceptance stages and hope everything just goes its way.


text:
Should I ask my co-author before I upload an article (that he already told me is okay to publish) to arXiv?
At our institute it is not common to upload a pre-print of your submission to arXiv. I got told by a friend that it is basically a no-brainer and there are virtually no downsides in doing so. I checked with the journal I want to publish in, they even allow submitting arXiv links, so I am safe from there.
Since nobody at my institute seems to upload their pre-prints, should I ask my advisor before doing so? He is also co-author of the paper.
My field of research is materials science (and to some extent more general physics).

"virtually no downsides" may not be true, otherwise you would probably not be asking this question.

The only downsides I know of are that some few publishers do not accept papers that have been previously published on arXiv and that you basically cannot ever completely remove it. But if you stick to journals that have less strict policies and are confident about your research, I think not much can go wrong.

Why wouldn't you ask?

@JoãoMendes good point, I edited the title.

@user2390246 I guess it was just general insecurity about asking allegedly obvious questions.

Yes, you should check with any co-authors before publicly posting a preprint of work that is not yet published.
They may prefer that you not post it at this time (e.g. if they have a particular timeline in mind for when they want to publicly share the work, given other related things they are working on). Even if they have no reason to object, you should check with them as a courtesy.

As you suggested I wrote an e-mail to my professor and he called me afterwards. He said he never heard of it before and asked what it is. After explaining everything I knew, he agreed to submitting it to arXiv. So asking was probably the right way to inform my supervisor about what arXiv is. Thanks!

@ian_itor Now I have become very curious what field you are in which is within the scope of arXiv but where it is possible for a professor to not even have heard of it.

My area is materials science. I guess arXiv is not as common as in other physics-related fields, but it is there.

Submitting to ArXiv is a form of publication. You always need the consent of all coauthors to publish anything, anywhere.

This is the best and simplest answer. It's not a courtesy to notify your co-authors, it's a professional requirement.

I love when a one-liner answer falls together.

About "virtually no downsides": the following is a real story. A mathematician proves his best theorem ever. Writes the paper, sends it to a very good journal, and uploads to the arxiv. The very good journal takes a year to referee the paper, and rejects it (happens all the time, at least in my area). During that year, a group of other mathematicians read the paper in the arxiv, worked on it, proved a generalization,  and got it published in a journal. So, a year later, the original paper is virtually unpublishable, and our friend has to scrap it.
As you can imagine, this person never again uploaded anything to the arxiv.

Thanks for sharing! I don't think that this will be an issue in my field since my submission is of rather experimental nature.

But at least the paper from the other mathematicians has to cite his arxiv publication, haven't they?

Of course. But he went from the possibility of having a highly cited published paper, to having a single citation to an unpublished work.

@MartinArgerami If people are only citing the more general follow-up article, I'm pretty sure that's because it's more general, not because your friend's article is only on ArXiv.

And how would the story be different if he published the paper and soon after, the other group would had proven the generalization?

@NickS: It is not probably not easy to quantify it. But whenever you are applying for a grant, to a job, or to a promotion, a paper in an important journal is a big asset.

This is a very sad story, but I wonder if "never again upload anything to the arxiv" is the right moral.  Would the mathematician really have done better to keep his important work absolutely secret for several years?  He could find himself in the same situation at the end.  I would rather blame several other aspects of mathematics publication culture.  In particular, if someone writes a paper explicitly generalizing your theorem, then that should enhance the value of your paper, not diminish it.  The entire community should understand this and be sympathetic to it.

@Pete: I learned about this story many years ago, and I kept using the Arxiv, so I understand its value. But I can understand the frustration if that were to happen to me. I fully agree about the publication culture.

Maybe journals should not be allowed to publish a paper that cites a preprint without taking responsibility for publishing the paper that was cited.

It looks like you are afraid that he would refuse, so you are asking us whether you should ask him, when you could have asked him directly in the first place.
Since he is the co-author you should definitely ask him. Perhaps the question you should be asking us is how to persuade him that uploading pre-print to arxiv is a good idea.

Thanks for your comment. You are partly right, I could have just asked, but you know how it is with asking professors, you tend to overthink stuff. I just thought maybe it is such a common thing to do, that it goes without saying.

Not should ask the coauthor; must!

@DavidRicherby: I think in English logic we have the tautology ( should definitely ask = must ask ). =)

@user21820 I agree that "should definitely" is stronger than "should", so my comment was a little unfair. However, I think "should definitely" is still at the level of advising somebody to do something; I would say that there is a moral obligation to consult all coauthors before publishing something in their name.

@DavidRicherby: Yup I'm not disagreeing at all. English is weird; the "definitely" definitely leaves (at least) me no doubt that there should not be any case whatsoever in which you have reason not to ask him. But then "should" is the outer operator...

Regarding the interpretation of 'should definitely'...  There are different dimensions of 'stronger' here, namely the confidence of the speaker in the judgment, and the asserted strength of the obligation.  Compare 'I suspect that it is absolutely obligatory' and 'it's certain that, all else being equal, it would be a good idea.'


text:
Is it OK to have subsections with the same name?
One chapter in my thesis is going to have the following style:
3.1 Topic A
3.1.1 Problem Description
3.1.2 Proposed Solution

4.1 Topic B
4.1.1 Problem Description
4.1.2 Proposed Solution

Is it OK to have subsections with the same name? Or should it rather be something like:
3.1 Topic A
3.1.1 Topic A Problem Description
3.1.2 Topic A Proposed Solution

4.1 Topic B
4.1.1 Topic B Problem Description
4.1.2 Topic B Proposed Solution

Update:
Many thanks to all for the comments and answers. I think understand now that it's more a question about the document structure than about the subsection titles.

Yes, it's ok. You can even have sections with the same name across different chapters (e.g. Introduction).

It might look a bit boring on the contents page but unless your institution says otherwise I don't see why it would be a problem. Check your institution's guidance.

There is generally no problem to have subsections with the same name. I have seen that many times in thesis and papers. However, although it is possible, it does not guarantee a good organisation of your ideas.  So perhaps that other organization may also be considered as alternatives.  For example, it may be more appropriate to define all problems that you will address in the first chapters and present the related work, and then present all the solutions (your contribution) in the remaining chapters, rather than presenting problem-solution and problem-solution. As a general advice, it may be better to also validate the thesis structure with your research advisor.

Presenting a bunch of problems, then a bunch of solutions doesn't seem like a good alternative, to me, especially if the problems are largely independent. It's much easier for the reader to flick back a couple of pages to remind themself of a definition than to skip back a few chapters. Also, it's easier to deal with one thing at a time than to try to remember all the problems before reading any of the solutions.

I think that it depends. I could see some scenarios where one way is better than the other and some other scenarios where the other one is better. Since I don't know what is the actual content of this thesis, I just suggest to consider alternative organisations.

You typically have a great deal of freedom in deciding how to structure the presentation of your thesis.  If parallel construction is a good way to present your work, and if you aren't constrained not to by your advisor or your institution's regulations, I see no reason to prefer an overly verbose subsection title over a succinct title that happens to be the same as a subsection title in another section.


text:
As a grad student how to approach a possible breakthrough research?
I am in this peculiar position whereby I started off my grad school in subject X and got very boring projects in it and eventually around my 3rd year I started studying a new subject Y  (partly because I met some inspiring profs in Y who motivated me)
Now in some sense it was just lucky that after about 6-7 months of working in this new field I along with another co-grad student hit upon a breakthrough research idea possibly solving a famous long-standing open question in this field Y! It was sheer luck that we hit upon an idea which seems to work! (though we are struggling hard to prove the theorem)
Now when I am trying to officially shift departments/institutes to pursue Y, I am explaining in my statements this new possible breakthrough that we hit upon. But I am a bit worried as to how senior established profs in Y will react seeing such a thing in my statement.

I think all answers till now are completely missing the point of this question and what I am worried about. So let me break-up the context in parts.
(1) In mathematical stuff no one wants to put on arxiv a "possible" method unless one has a rigorous proof for it to work. If we had a proof then I wouldn't be asking this question!
(2) In my SOP if I don't write about this progress then what else do I write about!? This is the main stuff that I have been working on ever since I decided to shift fields. So I don't see a choice but to write about this idea!
(3)  The professors who have seen the idea seem to have no opinion at all. They take the view that unless there is a rigorous proof how do we know whether this is right or not. At this point all evidence is numerical simulations. (and the prof who originally inspired me to start Y remarked that he had himself independently also tried one of the ideas we came up with)
(4) I have anyway linked from my SOP a draft which explains the idea.

Are you planning to apply for another graduate school or stay at the current one?

Most probably trying to shift grad schools to pursue Y

If you plan to stay at the current school, what do you mean by "explaining in my statements"? A research proposal?

A 'statement-of-purpose" that one typically submits in any grad school admission process.

So, you want to go to any school/department which would shift to Y? Not necessay your current school? Is my interpretation correct?

Do you have reasons to believe that this professor will react badly at other people joining his field? Since he was the one who encouraged to take on this field, have you talked to him and discussed the relevance of your findings?

@Davidmh I think you and I are onto the same thing. Why not talk to the prof who motivated the OP to Y?

The issue what would the reaction be of the profs in an institute where I might apply to pursue a PhD. in Y. Think of a senior prof in the field who reads my SOP. They would obviously be aware of this famous open question : but how will they react to someone like me claiming to have found (along with co-grads) heuristics to settle it.

@RandomGrad "Dear Prof. Y, Mr. Coauthor and I have been working on this problem, and would like to hear your opinion. Find attached the preprint/tech report/WIP. Do you think we are on to something?" If he is positive about it, go ahead and publish it! Either way, you will have a better grasp of how important this is.

If your breakthrough turned out to be unoriginal, or to have some fatal flaw, would you still want to switch to field Y?

I am trying to figure out what you are really up to. Are you asking whether you can use this possible breakthrough to get into the very top tier school?

No proof => no breakthrough. The fact that you have some heuristic that works for some cases, does not prove anything. You need to: a) Test with as many instances as possible b) Find a common pattern where your heuristic works for those instances where it works c) Based on that, find more problem instances where your heuristic works d) Describe where it does not work and why. e) Describe why it is useful to have a partial solution for working instances f) Give theoretical bounds where your instance would work and where it would not

^I think you are reading the question unfairly. I think the author clearly means that the heuristic is seen to be working in as many cases as they have tested and that they have tested extensively. I feel that its obvious that all this basic diligence has been done.

As a good researcher always be cautious with "breakthroughs". I would explain that you think it is a good idea worth pursuing. Coming off too strong may put new professors off. Unfortunately I have witnessed many times people believe they have come across breakthroughs when they are nothing of the sort. I think partly because unlike how science is portrayed in the media, "most" excellent science is a long grind, through years of experiments, thought, collaboration and trial and error. The road is often long and winding, and to approach someone well versed in the field with a "breakthrough" may be hubris. But, if it is a strong idea and worth pursuing with good reasoning/logic/science behind it, I cant see a problem convincing anybody in your field the importance of what you propose! Good luck!

This is precisely the risk that I am playing with. That we have made a progress in this big question in Y in 6 months of starting the subject is my argument for why I should be allowed to shift departments. But at the same time there is always the risk that may be everything is wrong. I don't know what is the solution to the dilemma.

This progress that we think we have made is the crux of my argument in the SOP requesting the shift in departments/institutes.

@RandomGrad There is no risk talking to the prof who motivated you to pursue Y. The most you lose is the time (6 months) you spent on it if the profs shows that your idea won't work. If he thinks the idea is fine, you get to go to his department and become his student. I don't see the problem talking to him before writing the statement unless there is something else you are worried about.

Its not about this one prof. I am asking about a generic grad application that I am now making to pursue the subject. (and no one can say that  the idea won't work because all computer simulations show that it does work)

As I suggested in a comment, I think a key issue is whether your wish to switch to topic Y is conditional on the validity of your breakthrough. If it is, I agree with prior advice to document your priority on the idea and then start presenting it to professors as "Does this direction have any merit?".
If your wish to switch to topic Y is unconditional, there is an alternative strategy of delaying presenting your idea.
In order to have an opinion on the originality of your idea, you must have done a formidable amount of study of Y, including the history of attempts to solve the problem you are working on and related topics, despite the relatively short time you have been working on it. For purposes of an application SOP, you could present yourself as having become extremely interested in Y and wanting to do research in it.
That plan gives you a good chance of getting into Y research with no embarrassment if every serious, experienced Y researcher is already aware of flaws in your idea. It avoids the risk of being seen as a crank - the statistically most likely cause of an inexperienced researcher thinking they have a breakthrough on a long unsolved problem.

I have added more details into the question. Does any part of your answer change now?

@RandomGrad No change, except the edits make it clear that you are working in an area in which proof is needed, and you don't have one. Given that, it is very, very important that you think through whether you want to switch to Y if the idea does not work out.

I don't see an obvious connection between wanting to shift to Y and this amazing project that I landed into.

@RandomGrad I am confused. Obviously, this amazing project is connected to shift to Y if the project is in Y unless you want to be an independent researcher. Is there something we totally missed?

@RandomGrad I think you are putting too much weight on "this amazing project" and not enough weight on everything else. If your switch to Y is really a good idea you should be able to find enough to say in an SOP about why you should be a Y researcher independent of the one project.

This is my advice,

You and your co-grad student write up your idea with your plan of attacking the solution and put it on arXiv. Then talk to the professors who motivated you to study subject Y to get their opinions. If the professors think you do have a possible breakthrough, ask them if you can shift to their department/school. If their answer is positive, start the formal application process.

I am not sure if you are worried that your idea could be stolen. This is why I suggest you to put it on arXiv first. Once it's on arXiv, that worry is gone. You should feel free to talk to the professors. If your idea is indeed workable, you have options.
You can stay in your current school/department so you won't waste your three years there. If you want to shift department or school, you'll have very strong recommendation letters from those professors because you already have possible breakthroughs.
You don't need to worry about the reactions from those professors. They are the experts in Y. They can tell if your idea is good after you present it. If it's not workable, you just lost six months of time and it's better you learn that fact before you waste even more time on it. If your idea is workable, they are going to be very happy because you have a breakthrough and you are their students.
Writing an SoP for the breakthrough at this moment may not be a good idea unless you are fairly certain that it is workable. Frankly, two graduate students spending 6 months to solve a famous long-standing open question is doubtful, but it is not unlikely. You do need experts to confirm it.

@scaahu I think everyone here is missing the issue totally! (1) In mathematical stuff no one wants to put on arxiv a "possible" method unless one has a rigorous proof for it to work. If we had a proof then I wouldn't be asking this question. (2) In my SOP if I don't wrote about this progress then what else do I write about!? This is the main stuff that I have been working on ever since I decided to shift fields. So I don't see a choice but to write about this idea!

(3) The professors who have seen the idea seem to have no opinion at all. They take the view that unless there is a rigorous proof how do we know whether this is wrote or not. At this point all evidence is numerical simulations.

@RandomGrad I am confused. In your question, you said "But I am a bit worried as to how senior established profs in Y will react seeing such a thing in my statement". Now, you say "The professors who have seen the idea seem to have no opinion at all". What exactly is your question?

I am talking of possible reaction from senior professors in an admission committee looking at my SOP. (the idea has been discussed at length with certain other professors I know : they think the observations are intriguing but they don't have an opinion if it will eventually work out : they think that any proof is going to be very hard given that there has been no progress till date ever till we suddenly came up with these ideas in the last few months)


text:
What habits should I build in the first part of my PhD?
I'm a first-year PhD student in a computer science department. As is usual at this school, my first three quarters are spent rotating with different professors, finding an adviser and a research fit that I like. However, unlike previous rotations, I can see myself working in this subfield for my PhD, and I've moved from wondering what subfield I'll be working in, to wondering how to get acclimated in this field.
I've always been a person to run an "outer loop" of self-reflection, advice-asking, and habit-forming. In undergrad, I followed a few blogs about making the most of college. However, it's been a lot harder for me to find useful advice about doing top-quality work in getting a PhD.
I hear that in the first part of your PhD, students are significantly less "productive" than in the fourth year and onward. That makes sense, and I'm becoming comfortable with the banging-head-against-wall feeling that is creeping up on me. However, I'd like to know what the three years of "unproductive" time teaches you to do, so I know what I should focus my energy on during these years.
I've heard it's important to read papers, develop a "taste" for useful problems, and hone in on a larger research question. However, each of those has a lot of follow-up questions that few people seem to talk about. Reading papers: how many? what about? what for? Taste: how do I get as many "data points" as possible in learning what's a useful problem?
Edit: I'm at school in the United States, and I'm unsure whether I'd want to go to academia, industry or run a startup. If I were to bet right now, I'd say 50% academia, 30% startup, 20% industry.

These all depends entirely on the student, field, and problem. Spend that time figuring out what works for you.

I feel like there are common reasons for reading papers, though - are you doing it to learn about the field in general? to look for innovations you can carry into your research? to solve a particular problem you have in your current research project? to see the next "hot" topics you should tackle for the year?

Yes, that is correct.

And whether those questions are strong or silly depend on your own field, self, and problem?

Doing all of them could prove helpful, maybe.

@MarkMiller Could you clarify: in what country are you studying? Your description of the first three years could apply to the US-style system or to the UK-style, but would have quite different answers for each.

I would also ask what your intentions are after you finish your PhD... academia or industry?

@owjburnham - That's interesting to hear.  Both viewpoints would be good for the site.  I have never studied or worked in the UK.  Why don't you write up a UK answer -- or both?

Useful problems? Those won't do- this is academia!

Make good ideas. Courses will dull your mind.

This question is impossibly broad. It will invite all kinds of questions from "get up early", via "exercise" and "read a lot" to "start to write research notes from day one".

@henning: Having spent most of my time around StackOverflow, I won't be offended if this question is marked as "too broad," but I'd note from the interest received from the community it does provide some value.

To get the ball rolling, I will offer an answer.  I will invite others to edit my answer to improve it, or write another answer.

In the early part, spend about 5 - 10% of your time looking at journal articles and other scientific literature (if you are on top of your coursework).
Form one or more study groups, if for no other reason than to get practice communicating about your subject area.
Attend seminars.
Visit office hours.
Try to keep your notes organized.
If there are foundational exams in your program, get some old exams and start looking at them, as time permits.
Find fun ways of getting exercise.

Why specifically journal articles? For most parts of CS I believe conference papers are (also) of high quality. Also, this answer seems to assume a USA style PhD (which I suspect is what the OP is after), it may be good to emphasise this for other readers.

@J.Doe - I didn't mean to restrict the reading to journals as opposed to proceedings.  I meant scholarly or technical articles.  What term would you use?

Perhaps "scientific articles" or "scientific literature" could work?

To elaborate on the second point, practice communicating your ideas is particularly important in academia.  Try to seek a variety of formal and informal opportunities to explain existing literature, your hypotheses, and the result and conclusions from any data you collect.  Make sure you can speak to different audiences as well; you should be able to adjust your explanations so they make sense for experts in your field, researchers outside your field, and individuals without higher education.

@J.Doe this question is not about CS. Journal is totally fine.

@Rüdiger The question starts with "I'm a first-year PhD student in a computer science department."; so it may be relevant to the OP.

I've heard it's important to read papers, develop a "taste" for useful problems, and hone in on a larger research question. However, each of those has a lot of follow-up questions that few people seem to talk about.

The reason why those questions are not typically answered is because they are (a) very individual and (b) impossible to put a concrete number on. I would argue that focusing on "how much I still need to read" is not the right question to ask anyway.

Reading papers: how many?

Until you know what the common research directions are, and what the state of the art and open problems are in the one(s) that interest you. Frankly, most students seem to typically stop primarily reading and move on to primarily doing when they get bored reading because they feel they know most of the important stuff anyway.
Generally speaking, I tell my students that it's better to read 1 good paper than 5 mediocre ones. I would also initially not recommend taking the most complicated paper you can find and trying to understand everything. Initially, breath is more important than trying to "get" every little detail.
I also suggest that you start thinking about what you could see yourself doing as early as possible. Do you see any follow-up questions, and do you have an idea how they could be answered? Do you see yourself conducting a similar study to the one explained in the paper? What do you still need to learn to do such a study?

what about?

Initially: very broad. As soon as you get a feeling for what kind of papers are of particular interest to you: those.

what for?

For three reasons: (1) to learn what scientifically the state of the art is, (2) to learn what research methods are commonly used to address which problems in the field (and, implicitly, what the typical expectations in terms of scientific rigour are, e.g., related to sample sizes), and (3) to learn how to write up and sell your research in your community.

Taste: how do I get as many "data points" as possible in learning what's a useful problem?

Primarily by reading broadly. I am not sure what else you can do.

Reading broadly and reading one good paper for complete understanding sound a bit at odds with each other.  End result, this could exacerbate school anxiety, if the student tended in that direction.  I'm saying this because I don't think you intended your advice to have that effect.

I will offer one additional piece of advice that I think is important:

Set up and tune to your liking several search alerts that notify you of interesting new papers in the literature.

This is essentially the only scalable way of keeping up with research today. There are many flavors of search alerts, including

Journal TOC alerts: gives you a title & authors list of every paper in the latest issue of a specific journal. Only useful for the key journals in your field.
Preprint alerts: e.g. on the arXiv you can set up daily alerts with new papers in the field you are interested in, these are title/authors/abstract lists.
Topical search alerts: e.g. on ScienceDirect you can set up search alerts for custom keywords. You can use this to track papers on a specific topic, papers by specific authors, etc.
Non-paper-based: e.g. mailing lists for specific research interests/software/etc. that you want to follow, RSS feeds of blogs by scientists in your field, etc.

You probably will want to start by adding many of these, and then unsubscribe from the ones you find less useful. And your interests will probably change over time.

@semi-extrinsic: Wait, arXiv has an abstract-search subscription service? I whipped one up myself this past week because I only saw the subject-matter [e.g, cs.HC] subscription service

This helpful information is a bit buried here.  I suggest you write a question keyed to this answer.

@aparente001 what information / who are you directing this comment to?

@MarkMiller I was referring to the subject-matter search, by "title/authors/abstract/ list" I meant these are the items in the email you get.

@MarkMiller - The suggestion was aimed at semi-extrinsic, but in principle you could write the question.


text:
Cumulative Thesis/Dissertation
I am writing my PhD thesis now and my supervisor said it can be in the cumulative way because I've got enough papers, 3 in sum. So now I look for publisher permission to reprint the papers. My university uploads every thesis after it is defended to the university database, which is open access for everyone.
I got a little bit scared that I won't get the permission from Taylor & Francis, where my first paper is published, so the first chapter of my thesis is published. They need 6-8 weeks to answer, maybe more. So has anyone made some experience with permission to reprint their papers in cumulative thesis?
The other paper I use is published with Sage, and they say on their website, that it is possible to use the whole finale PDF in the thesis.
Is it common to just include the original paper PDFs in the thesis?

Worst case you cannot put "your" article in the public available thesis, and you must put a link to the original article only, where chapter x consists of one sentence "the publisher did not give explicit consent to republish here the paper xxyyzz I authored. The paper can be found at doi:xxcsacsacas".

I can't speak for the publisher, but expect it to be fine. You may have been given an explicit license when you published with T&F and these usually include permission for exactly what you want to do.
I'd proceed in the short term as if it is going to be permitted, writing the other needed parts to complete the whole while you wait for their answer to an enquiry.
But, clear this with your advisor.
It is likely that the publisher will want you to use the same exact paper that was published (the PDF) rather than a different version. A different version would complicate things.


text:
Data supporting educational entertainment media as an ineffective method to stimulate students to learn academic concepts outside of the classroom?
I define educational entertainment media as books, films, animation, video games, board games, toys, and such, designed with embedded practical examples of academic concepts. I am unfamiliar with a better word for this category of commonly entertaining things with embedded education components. Please let me know if there is a better word for educational entertainment media. I narrow the criteria of educational entertainment media to something that students would be willing to buy for their own pleasure.
I have noticed that many of my students spend a lot of time reading books, watching movies, episodes, animation, playing video games, board games, and such. I pondered the idea that if all of my students could perform these activities in such away that while they have fun on their down time, they would be indirectly applying, relearning, and studying core academic concepts, they could improve their performance in the class and final exams.
I have no idea how to engineer educational entertainment media to entertain students during their down time, yet engage them to learn academic concepts, but if such existed they may be providing subtle results on academic performance in classrooms.
Is there data that either supports or denies engineered educational entertainment media as an ineffective method to stimulate students to learn classroom concepts outside of the classroom?

Per @CapeCode's answer, it depends on what you teach.

If you consider the ability to perform robotic surgery a 'classroom concept', there is this study showing that surgeons who play video games are doing better:
http://archsurg.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=399740&resultClick=1
On the other hand, it cites an earlier study that links violent video-game use (for kids) to lower grades:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140197103000927

Thanks for the answer. May I receive your blessing to write another question similar to this one. I made a mistake to include engineered entertainment media. I am familiar with the data that you posted in your answer. When I wrote the question, I was thinking about media engineered to incorporate academic concepts.

@linuxfreebird you certainly don't need my blessing to do anything. As per how to handle the fact that my answer doesn't answer your question (I actually see how now that you mention it) I would suggest un-accepting it, and just leave a comment to say that it's not what you are looking for.

Thanks for your response. I removed the approved answer, but I still gave you an up vote for a good answer.

For video games at least, the classification that you seem to be describing is Serious Games and in particular Edutainment (which may also describe the superclass of educational material engineered to be provided as a form of  any non-particular entertainment medium).
As for studies on the effectiveness of such tools, there are many but it is obfuscated by the fact that researchers have a lot of difficulty eliminating tertiary factors.
Some worth considering are:
A study on the effects of using 3D multi-user serious gaming as a tool for reinforcing and introducing conceptual programming models:
http://www.jucs.org/jucs_20_12/exploring_interrelationships_among_high/jucs_20_12_1608_1628_pellas.pdf
A study on using gamification and edutainment techniques to reinforce practical musicianship among students in and out of a class:
http://repositorioaberto.uab.pt/handle/10400.2/3478