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Is it a bad idea to use other professors' Youtube videos as lectures?
I am a graduate student at an American university, and I have been assigned to teach an online math class. I have noticed that there are many lecture videos available on Youtube made by actual professors, and since I am a first-time lecturer, their videos are superior to anything I could make.
I am wondering if it would be appropriate for me to assign Youtube videos as lectures? Or would this be considered unprofessional/frowned upon/likely not allowed?
Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of?

I'll note that many students will hate you for it and will complain about it. They will complain here, they will complain there, they will complain everywhere. (Apologies to Dr. Seuss)

Rather than "assigning" them, post the links as "extra help from a different point of view."  I doubt that anyone will hate you for that, and many students will love you for it.

I’m always amused and disappointed by how so many people within the industry of “academia” will tell you to go “make your own” version of something, which in my opinion is extremely wasteful and contrary to the broader goals of academia, when talking about lower level material.

I’d like to point out that just because you are a first time lecturer this does not automatically mean that you can’t make videos as good as or better than those from a professor. Unfortunately, one being a professor does not automatically mean that one understands good pedagogy.

Maybe for part of the class to explain a particular point.  To make this the bulk of your class time?  No way.

Wait, are you asking about these current times? Because some answers assume a regular state of affairs, and one answer regards the covid-19 situation.

From the other perspective: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/145820/103637

Don't reinvent the wheel.  Give credit where credit is due.

Others say "don't reinvent the wheel", ok, but consider the following. Building and testing a such a "wheel" of your own design is an important learning experience, too, especially for a first-time lecturer. It's about acquiring (or honing) a completely different set of skills. It's an exercise in itself, and it has been given to you.

"I have noticed that there are many lecture videos available on Youtube made by actual professors, and since I am a first-time lecturer, their videos are superior to anything I could make." If you apply that logic, why even bother becoming a lecturer at all if you're not already the best in your field? That's sarcasm, but I hope you see the inherent flaw in that line of reasoning.

If that's your line of thinking then don't speak because others are far more articulate, don't drive because others do it safer, don't become a professor because there are better professors, don't walk because so many have done it before you. There's a particular benefit to be gained from learning to lead your own lectures which might not seem important at the low level but you'll need them at a higher level. What happens when the professors better than you retire and you haven't built up the skills to produce a good lecture? How do you plan to get recognized if you're always relying on others

Sadly, Buffy is prolly right. Sadly because Ryan is very clearly wholly right. Is it not true that at every level from primary school to masters' degrees, teachers are expected to waste their time and resources reinventing the same old wheels?
Why not cheerfully grasp anything your own department has already developed? Consider seeking permission to use material from another institution but isn't that a very different Question?

The answer depends on your goals.
If you have plans to work in academia, eventually you might find yourself on a track to becoming a professor yourself. In this role, you are expected to teach. Hence, you should be able to prepare teaching materials of high quality to support your teaching and benefit students' learning. The sooner you start working on your first video lecture, the sooner you prepare the one which you are actually not totally ashamed of. Your first lecture might be half-baked and otherwise of sub-par quality, but that's expected on your career stage, when people start learning the ropes. But if you listen to feedback from your students and your mentors, and reflect on it, then your second lecture will be better than your first one, and eventually you start producing good quality stuff. Most importantly, you will become a better educator yourself, equipped with a wide range of tools and techniques, and understanding which method works best in a particular situation. You will be able to adapt your teaching to the needs of a particular student cohort, and you won't depend on materials from the internet (which may or may not be available).
But maybe your goal is simply to survive this teaching assignment until you graduate? In this case there is probably no shame in using online materials to complement your teaching. Just don't forget, that you still need to support your students and help them contextualise and understand the content. You may achieve this by preparing some examples based on the materials in the lecture and working through them with your students. It may be appropriate to have a discussion regarding the material, or even to critically assess and compare the material presented by different lecturers.
Good luck.

Thanks a lot for your answer! My goal is kind of a mix of the two; I do not really plan to work in academia, but I think lecture-making would be a great skill for me to develop. I just wanted to verify this this is an alright and/or common thing to do. I am very new to academia and don't have much idea about the expectations.

A side comment: It would make sense to give out those lectures as supplementary materials. Thinking back to my freshmen's calculus lecture, there was a book the lecture was roughly based on. And then there was a very different book, I stumbled on it through hearsay recommendations, but it helped me a lot. As a student, I would appreciate hints to alternative approaches to the same curriculum.

@user56202 It's helpful to get yourself a mentor/adviser/friend, who can share some advice regarding expectations, processes and traditions in your Uni/Department. Academia.SE is a good place to find general advice, but we don't know your specific situation as well as your local peers.

I would like to this answer that you will probably also learn much more about the subject itself by preparing teaching materials. Being able to explain complex problems in a simple way requires in-depth knowledge of a subject.

@Louic Good remark. Almost a trope not only on SO that some of the best answers came from simple questions.

-1. this is a classic sloppy answer (better now than later), and it doesn't address the issue of the idea per se being good or bad, supposing you want to be a good teacher, which is independent on the future plans by OP to keep or stop teaching.

@user56202 I don't think it's a common thing to do, nor would it be considered okay if this is a substitute for your teaching rather than a resource you use.  My suggestion is to query the department/university whether there are guidelines on incorporating youtube videos in your teaching (cf. Dan Romik's answer).

Emphasis on "supplement."  No matter what your goals are in the long run your responsibility to the classroom is now.  To replace your role in the room with YouTube videos is a waste of the student's tuition money as they could simply have chosen to stay home and watch the videos themselves.

No, it's a bad idea either way. OP should give their own lectures.

I am wondering if it would be appropriate for me to assign Youtube
videos as lectures? Or would this be considered unprofessional/frowned
upon/likely not allowed?

My short answer: No, this is not unprofessional or inappropriate. Give your students the best materials that help them understand the content.
If someone else puts something in an easy-to-follow or especially interesting way, I think that is a good thing to share. You did the back-end work to find that perfect thing, so sharing it is the natural outcome of your research. We (nearly) all use published materials to assign for students to read or work from, and nobody expects you to retype well-worn material in your own words to disseminate to your class. In fact, if anything, there is sometimes an opposite expectation that you use published texts as the primary content materials.
I think you should find the videos that you think are great and then start getting practice making your own. Maybe set a schedule where for every two videos you use from other people, you make one of your own. I think your students will want to hear from you in your own voice, because they know the examples you go over will probably be most like what they will expect to know for exams, etc.

Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of?

The video could be removed by the owner.
The video might take a non-standard approach to something, so you'll have to vet them carefully.
Students might complain that they don't like a variety of different methods/people/etc. (if you are cobbling together videos from whomever).
The videos aren't captioned appropriately (or at all) for accessibility purposes.
You don't get practice making and posting videos, and something happens at the last minute where one of your videos doesn't work for some reason.

I agree with all of this. As a student myself, I have relied HEAVILY on YouTube videos to supplement lectures from professors who are not good at being educators. Make sure that you really suss out the videos and make them complementary to your teaching.

It isn't easy to curate the right videos and create the syllabus with them. But to make the students not complain about appearances,  make sure to take the organization very seriously, (that is, it needs to be organized carefully from the beginning  which video they are to watch for which topics in the syllabus). And, it will probably go down better within the department  (for the students who always complain/whine) if you then concentrate on preparing great videos/enrichments that focus more on the problem solving, and common mistakes, etc. (flipping the classroom flavor as rationale)

Also, if you use videos from different sources for the different topics that you cover in your module, the notation may be inconsistent and confuse the students.

In normal (pre-covid-19) times, giving lectures is an essential part of the job description of a university course instructor. Planning to teach your course in a nonstandard way that involves not giving lectures without prior approval from your department is something that would have been almost certain to get you into trouble, and to reflect very poorly on your professional judgment.
During the covid-19 pandemic some institutions are getting more tolerant about alternative teaching arrangements, so your chances of having your department consider this sort of thing are a bit greater, if you propose a thoughtful plan that shows convincingly that students would benefit. Nonetheless, the fact remains that in the US higher education context I am familiar with, even these days “teaching a course” is assumed to be more or less synonymous with “giving lectures”. So again, planning not to give lectures means you plan to do things significantly differently than the norm. Therefore even if you think you have good reasons to do so, given your lack of experience and low ranking on the institutional totem pole it would still be pretty inappropriate to carry out such a plan without prior consultation with and approval by your superiors, and likely to result in negative consequences for your career as a graduate student.
TL;DR: it’s certainly a bad idea to do it without explicit approval from your department. The saying “it is better to ask for forgiveness than for permission” does not apply in this situation.

My university explicitly suggested doing this as a way to cope with the sudden change to an online format. Your case is a bit different, as now the change to an online format is no longer sudden. But still, I would suspect that this would not cause too much trouble if I were to do this in the comming winter semester. You'd have to think about what your contribution to the course is going to be: You have saved time by not having to create those videos. How are you going to use that time to make the course better in another way? Having a convincing answer to that question would definately help.

@MaartenBuis I would suspect that this would not cause too much trouble if I were to do this: but you would check with your department first if you were thinking about doing it, right? “I would suspect” does not suggest a high level of confidence. Also you are not a grad student, and not in the US. Again, I strongly recommend to OP to make sure this is okay before proceeding.

Institutions matter and differ. In case of a PhD student in the US discussing this with the department is no doubt very important. However, to illustrate the differences possible, I would not check with my department. In my university each faculty member is pretty much a kingdom on its own. There is a department with a person who coordinates educational matters when necessary, but if I were to come to him with this question, he would look weirdly at me and respond: "do what you think is best".

Perspective: I am currently a TA for a first-year Logic course, in a university that had to move its lectures online mid-semester. The lecturer I work for is new at this university and decided on an ambitious overhaul of the logic curriculum, using a different notation and some different definitions, so none of the previous handbooks precisely match his teaching.
This hasn't gone very smoothly. Even before the crisis hit, TAing for a lecturer who's writing the curriculum during the semester is hard. You don't have a lot of preview to the material to prepare your own classes with. There may be mistakes in the material you get, or things that haven't been explained well, that you have to then re-explain to the students. Also, this was my first time teaching.
But I was getting better at it. I noticed that students would be very timid in practice class, but after I'd demonstrated an exercise and left it on the board, after a while, they would start asking questions about it. I'd often have to explain the same bit to three students sitting in different parts of the class, who'd arrived at the sticky bit in their own time. But repeatedly explaining the same thing seemed to get them all past it and their homework was pretty decent. Students told me that my explanations helped them more than the lecturer, although I personally think what really helped them was circling round the same topic two or three times and taking stabs at it from different angles.
When the crisis hit and lectures moved online this created a lot of logistical troubles with actually getting the online classroom systems to work. And when they finally worked, students were far more timid about asking questions. So far, we haven't been able to get them to participate as actively in Q&A as before, and there's a definite dip in homework quality.
Which brings me to my points to you.
Setting up a curriculum of your own material is hard. Doing it all at once makes things harder on the students. If you teach this course for more than one year in a row, you can improve it every year, replace bits from other professors that you don't like with your own that fit better into your overall curriculum. Doing it all at once is likely to overwhelm you with work and not give the students the best material.
Curating a selection of online lecture videos is not a one-time job. New lectures will appear, you'll discover weaknesses in the existing ones, and perhaps add some of your own. You can refine this selection year by year.
Part of your job is coming up with assignments that use the lessons from the online lectures. A good assignment forces the students to attentively consume the videos and readings you prescribe, and prompts students to come up with questions. A structure that has worked well for us is separating it into Exercises and Homework.
Exercises are questions posed to students, and after a while you give the answer and how to get there. The point is that students can examine "how it's done". The exercises can be relatively hard, and are intended to demonstrate some interesting property of the theory they've just seen in a video, or a technique to approach a particular problem.
The homework on the other hand is graded for points - in our class the mean mark for the whole semester's homework counts as 30% of the total grade for the class, which is enough to motivate most students to do it. It's not a lot of homework per week, and it's intentionally and obviously easier than the exercises. But to solve it, students will try to really understand the exercises and use those techniques to tackle the homework. And it'll get them to ask you questions.
In an online teaching situation, student-teacher interaction is extremely important and one of the hardest things to make work. What you really need is conversation starters, and the combination of "watch this video, then think about this exercise, then ask me questions" could be that. You may need to split the group into manageable subgroups, too. You may find that this ends up being a lot more work than in-class lectures!
Analyze the homework. After one homework assignment that was done disastrously bad, we identified which topics the students clearly had trouble with and made new tutorials specifically for those topics. If you grade the homework yourself, take time to analyze what kind of mistakes your students are making. If you have TAs, ask them their impressions. Because it can be harder to get people to ask questions in an online classroom, you need to get more of your information from this channel.
You should notice that a lot of what I'm advocating is that you should shy away from doing a "big bang" development of your own material and focus on interacting with the students and reacting to what they can't get out of the videos/texts. I think if you push this interaction heavily, you won't get (a lot of serious) complaints about you lazing off.

I got my Ph.D. in math at a U.S. university about 20 years ago. Teaching, one course each semester, was a core part of the experience. It helped to make the funding work out for grad students, it gave students a small-class experience, and it developed grad students' (=future math academics) teaching skills.
Wholesale reliance on someone else's lectures is a cop out. Your students will object, at least some of them. You will not learn a key skill. Your department, sooner or later, is likely to not be keen about it. Don't do it; bite the bullet and learn and practice this core academic skill. (Even if you become a research mathematician, you will occasionally teach!)
Now what is OK is to provide your students a list of additional references for their supplementary reading or watching. So pointing to a couple of really good online lectures by others, complementing yours, is a good thing. Ideally that wouldn't be just others presenting the very same material, but in some way more exciting. And if your students decide they prefer to spend their time watching the other lectures rather than yours, so be it.
But don't turn your back on developing an integral skill of a professional mathematician. Yes, you'll have a learning curve. Yes, your students are your guinea pigs. But it's part of what you need to learn at this stage of your career.

I would say that using other professors YouTube videos as lectures is perfectly acceptable. This is the digital age, it's not the 20th century any more. If we have access to the boundless knowledge of the internet, and especially the YouTube, why not use it. People who object are still locked in their outdated mindsets. You absolutely don't have to reinvent the wheel. Just use the knowledge of the internet hive mind machine.
When I was a student I didn't even attend professor's lectures, preferring to use YouTube to teach myself instead. Academia must understand that they should either use the internet to their advantage or be swept away by the tide of free online learning materials.
If you can make the entire education online, why not do it? Why not use YouTube videos to accomplish this goal? In my old university, the calculus classes were always full, making students have to wait an entire semester before they could take that class. I always wondered, why do they not just open an online class with YouTube videos replacing traditional lectures?

There is a whole spectrum of what you can do, from "show this tricky experiment with a nuclear plant done by Dr X" to "prepare a playlist of online courses and just launch it when the course starts".
It is absolutely a good idea to use some interesting, famous or otherwise complicated to replicate videos. It adds a lot of spicing to your lecture.
Do not overuse it, though, as it will not be your course anymore. On top of that you learn enormously when preparing a lecture (this is the time when you sometimes actually understand what you are about to teach).

There is a danger of the department will find out. Next term, they can just ask the students to look at the lectures on youtube without you. You will be out of a job. So make sure you bring other values to the students.

Not true – time saved not creating crappy lectures can be put into providing more value in other ways, e.g. by answering more of the students' questions in more detail that you could normally afford, or providing more exercises and helping solve them, etc. (If you just cut effort and don't do anything that's of course not good.)

If you find it too hard to come up with your own lecture in a short amount of time, you might as well write down the script of the mentioned Youtube lecture and learn it by heart or make it into your own version and give the lecture yourself rather than just playing someone else's lecture?

I don't see how this is any different than playing the other person's lecture, except for being a large amount of extra work.

OP is qualified to teach. she/he can prepare the lesson how she/he pleases, including this way, but this is not quite optimal.


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How to cite the same author multiples times in IEEE style?
For example:

According to Smith [5]...

For the second reference to the same author, would I write the following:

[5] argues that...

Is it appropriate to begin a sentence with a bracket?  Can someone please show me the correct options for referencing the same author multiple times?

In the IEEE style, and more generally in numeric citation styles, one only rarely writes the author names.
I'd thus rewrite the first sentence as

According to [5] [...]

Starting a sentence with a citation may not be inappropriate but may reduce readability (this kind of issues if frequently fixed by the copy editor anyway). I'd thus rewrite your second sentence as

In [5] it is argued that [...]

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What should I do if my former advisor wants to use my research project data (including dissertation) for the current PhD student's dissertation?
I finished my dissertation about 2 years ago and currently continue for a clinical program in the same department. I collected the data from many subjects for my research project including dissertation while doing my PhD and all subjects and experimental supplies were paid from my own pocket. I am now preparing for publications. Because I am now taking a pretty demanding professional program, the writing process is pretty slow and all manuscripts are still in progress. I think that it will probably take some time to publish all of them. For this reason, I am a little bit cautious about sharing the data with someone who wants to write their dissertation using my data.
My former advisor and their current PhD student decided to use the pre-existing data for the dissertation and the student asked me for my research data including the dissertation. Even though the research question will be different and some survey data will be added (the subjects who participated in my research may need to be contacted), basically my data would work as the main data for the new dissertation in consideration of research in this field.
Additionally, my former advisor does not know about my data and whenever the PhD student has questions and needs some help with data interpretation, I am pretty sure that they will ask me for help. I will leave the school next summer and it is not easy to work with them in a remote location especially because I will be working full time. I am not sure if this is conventional and a general case. I like to get some advice so I can figure out how to deal with this.

If you paid for all the data, then get them to pay for the data - otherwise you are funding that student.

It would be good if you can find a way for this to work to everyone's benefit.
I'd suggest that you start with your advisor and express your concerns and get some assurance that the other student won't be stepping on your research. You should be able to get a great acknowledgement in work of the other student. And your own work might well be eligible for citation under these circumstances.
But also express your need for the time for your own work and that  you can't prioritize helping the other student at this time.
Once you have some agreement from  your advisor, initiate a three way conversation in which everything is made clear. You'll help when can, but have other priorities that must come first. But from your description, it sounds like it is possible for everyone to win as long as the others respect your limits.

Communication is always a great idea, IMO. But make sure you create a paper trail, i.e. if you make agreements in person send a follow-up email summarising what you agreed on.

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Is it bad for professors/supervisors to have their PhD students drop out?
Does it hurt the professor's career in any way if their students drop out? Assume a PhD student gets the professor's funding and publishes an adequate amount of papers. They then decide to quit (maybe with a master's). What benefit is it to the professor for the student to continue working?
Professors seem to be concerned about taking students who might not survive the entire program, but I don't see what the problem is.
For reference, I am particularly interested in the USA within CS.

See also: If I quit my PhD, would it make my advisor look bad?

Why do you need to know this, i.e. what's your goal here? I'm asking because this consideration should have next to zero bearing on your decision to quit.

Just a warning for future visitors: The answer really depends on the country and the type of PhD position.

@henning Just curious as to the reason why grad admissions cares

Advisors care only about publications. That is ir. For assoc and full prof you would need to supervise students

From the title I expected this question was asking if it is advisable to join the group of a professor who has had many students quit. I would have emphatically said no to this question. For that reason, it is not good for a professor to have many students quit: it would look like they are somehow driving students to quit.

The answer might be depended on the country - especially "(maybe with a master's)" doesn't make sense in countries where the master and PhD are completely separate.

In my research group, at least a half of PhD students dropped out or transferred to another research group at one point. It is hard for me to say how this was perceived by others, but in my opinion, the research group became healthier and more productive, without the burden of weaker students that are in principle smart, but take a lot of time and require a lot of advice to make a little progress despite being close to graduation.

@Jake Which university was that?

@JobHunter69 a Big Ten university

I know this happened all the time but really depends on the exact conditions.

EDIT: I am in the UK, and therefore my answer is relevant to there. Things may be different in the US, although I'll note that others have stated that student graduation rate is a performance metric there as well
I am a bit hesitant to answer this because I guess the answer might put people off making a decision that is the correct decision for them, but honesty is always best, so the answer is yes, it can hurt a supervisor for their students to leave.
Where I am, the % of students who submit a thesis within time limit is a key metric on which an academic is judged. One reason for this is that government funding for PhD programs requires that submissions within time limit are above a certain threshold. This is also the reason that many universities will not initially register a student for a PhD, but will require the students to undergo a confirmation review after a year - if the student is dismissed at this point, it doesn't count against the department, but after this it does.
An academic will probably not suffer too much from a single student not completing in time (although yes, they will lose the right to say "my graduation rate is perfect" on a promotion case or job application). More than one and questions will definitely be asked, and that PI might start to find it more and more difficult to win the right to recruit students.
However, none of this should affect a student's decision as to whether continuing a PhD is right for them or not, and the damage done to a student staying in a programme when it is not right for them massively out-weighs the damage done to the supervisor if they leave.

To clarify, are you in the US (which is what the OP is interested in)?

Good point. I missed that the OP has stated they were in the US. I am not, this is the UK, but I believe it applies to other European countries and Australia as well. I'll edit to make clear.

"I am a bit hesitant to answer this because I guess the answer might put people off making a decision that is the correct decision for them"
I like your assumption that the PhDs should think of their supervisor as the mighty entities that allowed them the chance to enter academia, putting their career at risk. If I read it cinically, it shows how much entitled are people in the academia (don't take it personally, it is a Fickian process, it diffuses from few super-entitled, although it pollutes the whole academia)

UK academia is a bit too metric-driven, which ignores the reason why the student drops out.  A PhD is a good way of finding out whether a career in research is for you.  If you find that out early on that it isn't and decide to withdraw, that is a success rather than a failure.

@EarlGrey I'm genuinely interested in how advising students to make the decision that is correct for them relies on an "assumption that PhDs should think of their supervisor as the might entities that allowed them the chance to enter academia, putting their career at risk".

"the damage done to the supervisor if they leave". It is not a damage done to the supervisor. It is the supervisor poor choice of candidate, poor support to the candidate, poor planning of the work of the candidate, a combination of the three OR pure bad luck.
No candidate is inflicting any damage to the supervisor. The supervisor is not providing an opportunity to the candidate at his/her (supervisor's) own risk. The supervisor must provide a proficient working environment to the candidate. Candidates to PhD are failing because the system is failing them.Are they part or agent of the system?

"my graduation rate is perfect (on a promotion case or job application)" is a great way to indicate that who is making the selection is using purely non-sense metrics.  I hope that such a statement would be taken as absurd in the near future. People going after promotions are human-beings, not piece of machinery. What if one of your supervised students remains brain-impared after an accident? In your application X would you say "I would have a perfect rate if it wasn't for that disabled student I had"? Are you unlucky or the other applicants lucky for not having such life occurence?

@EarlGrey You are right on several points: some of the selection metrics as used currently, without context, are fairly nonsensical. There is a lot of academic that hope context would be taken in to account in their applications. However, the unlucky supervisor who's first student was left unable to complete due to an injury might not get the chance to explain their context as they might be skipped over in a shortlisting process in favour of a more lucky colleague who's first student completed in time. And just because there was no intent to do damage, does not mean the damage does not exist.

@penelope the student can drop off for whatever reason, can be invalidating disability as well as the student stealing all the secret from the labs to set up a multi-billion company, it does not matter. What matters is that a deficiency of the system is off-loaded to the most insignificant gear, the students, and the students make this process so interior to them that then we have answer like yours or from the poster saying that the student damages the career of the supervisor (directly or indirectly). NO WAY. The metrics (and career) system is damaging the career of the supervisor itself.

I never said in my answer that the student was inflicting damage on the supervisor. I said the supervisor was damaged, which was the question asked and is true. I reject the your list of possible causes of a student leaving. It is impossible for a candidate to know if they will be suited to academia until they have experienced it, and no way the supervisor could know. Or the student could be offered a fantastic job that doesn't require them to finish their PhD.

" the students make this process so interior to them that then we have answer like yours or from the poster saying that the student damages the career of the supervisor" I specially said that students should look to what is best for them. I was directly trying to convince any students reading this not to blame themsevles for the damage to supervisors.

I apologize and I disclaim that I am very political and philosophical on the topic: the supervisor is damaged by the student leaving, the supervisor feels that is damaged by the student leaving, but the student should not feel responsible? that would be a zero empathy world, it is as ugly as hell. I have no particular suggestion, maybe setting a minimum threshold (good supervisor = >70% PhD graduating, +10 points in the magic metrics), unfortunately meaningless "objective" metrics deciding the lives of people and forcing them to lack empathy bothers me too much to be rational.

I can agree that meaningless "objective" metrics decideing the lives of people is very damaging. And of course students will feel responsible, that is why they have to be reminded at every step not to feel bad, or at least to put aside those feelings and concentrate on making the correct decision, because irrepsective of who is to blame, the total harm is greater if the wrong decision is made.

@DikranMarsupial Don't know how it compares to continental Europe, but it's certainly much less metric-driven than the US.

@EarlGrey "It is the supervisor poor choice of candidate" if supervisors never select students that find out that research is not for them, that means that there are students that would do well in research that never get selected.  There are always false-positive and false negative errors whenever we have to perform decision making under uncertainty.  Students can withdraw from their studentships without there being poor selection, supervision or support.  They do also sometimes withdraw for health reasons or because they have found a more financially appealing studentship elsewhere etc.

@Noldorin There isn't much scope for the U.K. to be any more metric driven than it already is, but if the US have found some way to do it, then that is a great pity.

@DikranMarsupial I have to disagree. It is not that hard to thrive as an academic in spite of metrics compared to some other countries.

@Noldorin I didn't say it wasn't impossible (or even difficult) to thrive, the point is that it is almost entirely metric driven.  In some ways metrics make it easier to thrive, it is why people indulge in salami slicing their publications, for example, which is gaming the metric.

@DikranMarsupial Well, you implied that was the difficulty. If that's not a difficulty, what is? I think your personal experience with UK academia (presuming you have it) may be particularly negative. I can't say this is my impression or those of the people I know.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

That would depend on the reasons that students drop out. Some will do so for health and family reasons. Some leave because they have decided to follow a different path. None of that reflects on the advisor.
But if students (plural) drop out alleging abuse by the advisor, personal or professional, then it certainly should reflect badly, though some get away with bad behavior for a long time.

Then why are admissions so worried about whether or not a student will finish the program?

The administration is also concerned with effective use of resources. When students drop out the program isn't efficient/effective. Everyone wants students who are highly likely to be successful, but there are no guarantees.

@JobHunter69 When there are more candidates than positions, why take people who won't finish when you could take someone who will? Taking on a student is putting your resources toward training someone.

@BryanKrause What's most important is the publications done by the student, not how long they stay. If you look at industry, no top tier companies care how long u stay at a company. In fact it's quite normal to move around every year or two.

@BryanKrause hmm, this is implicitly saying that a masters has no value and that there is no value in the student completing it. Funding agencies are also invested in training citizens(or they use to be) regardless of if it leads to a PhD or not. It appears many academics don't really understand why they get $$$.

However, the effective use of resources can very well also mean dismissing an ineffective student instead of trying to lead them to graduation by the hand. That depends on the competitivity of the program, some unis are so lucky they can only accept the best of the best from the program so mayassume the problem is only in the advisor.

@JobHunter69 That doesn't seem right. Retention of top talent is a major issue for them.  Just because short stays are common doesn't mean they are desirable or that the companies don't care.  As I understand it, they make considerable investments in trying to attract and keep the top talent.  They also don't want to invest in training you, that's why they're always trying to influence what it taught in universities rather than allowing universities to focus on core skills.  They often want some particular tech rather than people that have fundamentals and have  learned how to learn.

@JobHunter69 Academia and industry aren't the same thing. Some cynics here may think that all a professor wants from a student is to work them hard for publications and then abandon them, but I don't find that the norm.

This answer is not realistic in my personal experience. I am my supervisors one and only phd. He has long list of failures (4+ students) in the last 10+ years.  Upon successfully defending my dissertation, I sent scathing emails to anyone that would listen.  The very next year, my supervisor won 'faculty of the year' award. He was a hero for the lives he destroyed. The department looks out for number 1 and students that will never return to that field are not their problem.

@user140367, Why not realistic? The last paragraph says that such things happen. Glad you were successful.

In addition to the existing answers: inevitably, PhD students tend to require more input from their supervisor in the first half of their programme, and then gradually become increasingly independent towards the end. Conversely, outputs and impact tend to be low in the first half of a programme, and increase towards the end. A student who leaves half-way through may therefore have consumed considerable amounts of the supervisor's intellectual resources (time, energy, ideas) but not yet delivered the anticipated payoffs (papers, impact). This is undoubtedly a negative from the supervisor's perspective.

True point, but it might be limited to the case of PhD students who develop their skills and independence in an at-least average way. For a low-performing PhD student that keeps on taking supervision resources without showing much pay-off, it can be a relief to cut your losses and move on.

@lighthousekeeper Fair point!

Wish I could upvote it more than once. At least in here, the main quoted (and very much perceivable) reason is that you put a lot of resources in and then they quit academia and go chase money in the industry. End result - more resources are spent doing the work as compared to just doing it yourself and no other positive outcome (more human resources for future work) is observed.

I think the answer is yes, it will hurt a bit.  This is mostly because it is good for a professor to have a record of graduating a high proportion of graduate students they take on, and anyone who leaves without their degree reduces this proportion to some extent.
It is true that the reasons for the student leaving matter, particularly in terms of the evaluation of the professor by their existing department.  However, if a professor applies for an external role, one of the things they are going to do is to give information on their experience supervising graduate students, and the proportion of students who make it to successful completion is going to be a rough proxy measure for outside universities to evaluate their success.  In an academic job application, it is much better to be able to say "95%+ of my graduate research students have successfully completed their programs" than to only be able to say "20% of my graduate research students have successfully completed their programs, but here are the reasons this wasn't my fault".
In regard to this issue, you should bear in mind that successful graduation of graduate research students is one metric that universities use to evaluate the success of their higher-degree programs.  In some countries (e.g., Australia) it is also a metric that directly affects government funding of the university, and so the university has a financial reason to care about this.  Since it is important to the universities, there is always some pressure on professors to do a good job in this regard, and a student drop-out will usually have some negative effect even if it occurs for reasons beyond the professor's control.

"successful graduation of graduate research students is one metric that universities..." is a raw sum, and not a percentage in my experience.

@user140367 yes, but the resources the university spends on these students is also roughly proportional to their total number. So, taking in 1000 extra students to get funding from graduating 2 more is certainly a net loss. Percentage is a reasonable metric.

If a student drops out (or is forced to leave!), and the student's work is in such shape that there is no recovering it for publication, and the next student cannot simply pick up where that student left off, than the mentor has sunk time into wasted effort.  This is true regardless of the reason the student left.  You do this too often, and it will hinder a career.
If students periodically end up leaving a mentors group, then that mentor may develop a reputation for not being able to get his students through their research programs, and that will not help in future recruitment efforts.

My experience is that graduate students in a tight knit community make this info apparent to incoming peers.

I'd like to add to the main point in Ben's and Ian Sudbery's: yes, for the reasons they both discuss, it can hurt an academic, and especially an academic at the start of their career.
It takes a while for a new academic to be able to say "I have supervised a PhD student to completion" -- a year or more to obtain funding, several months to hire a good candidate, and then 3-5 years (depending on the country; I know you asked about the US but most of my experience is in Europe and the UK) until completion.
And while I'm not sure this is a formal requirement for a promotion/career advancement in the US, certainly some European systems will explicitly require that an academic has supervised a number of PhD students to completion, so I would assume it is an important factor in the US.
Early career researchers (and in general, academics in more postdoc-oriented systems such as the UK) will rarely have PhD students "lined up" one after the other. So if the first or second PhD student of a supervisor drops out of the programme, it might add a couple of years before the academic will be able to claim they supervised a PhD student to completion (which is often needed for career advancement, as well as grants certain advisory/supervisory independence to the academic).

A student dropping out or the professor categorically failing that student will absolutely not hurt the professor, as there is no mechanism for that to happen. Of course, this will give the department something to spread rumors about, but there are no consequences. There are no written policies to punish professors for not ensuring success.
There is only one universal truth: funding.
A PhD student dropping from a program will not have any affect whatsoever on that professor's ability to gain funding, and as a result, there are absolutely no negative consequences. That professor is infinitely more valuable and visible to that department than is the student. The 'last man standing' is the professor, and the student will get flushed down the drain. The professor can then say or do anything to justify why that student wasnt able to perform. God forbid they take any responsibility, because that would inevitably involve a failure on behalf of the entire department. That is not realistic. The student is at fault. period.
Success is rewarded. Failure is externalized.

It depends. If the prof is the PI of a grant-funded research project, and the grant funds a PhD student who is in charge of a work-package of this project, then the prof has a problem if the PhD student drops out. Replacements take time to find and transitioning between the quitting and incoming PhD student isn't easy. As a result, the project's success is endangered, which hurts the prof's chances of obtaining grants from the same agency in the future.

That assumes professors get grants competitively and not from corrupt cronyism. My project was funded from the latter.

Yes, it does.

Some of this may be true in the US and other countries. It is emphatically not true in the UK, where all PhDs are externally funded and the department/supervisor is answerable to the funding body. But a bigger problem with this answer is that it assume that a student leaving a program is always a failure. As  @Dikran Marsupial points out in response to my answer, a student leaving a program can be seen as a success if it enables them to discover what they do and don't like, and realise they can get the things they want without a PhD.

authors: Vladimir F Героям слава


text:
What do "minor" and "major" mean (in relation to degrees)?
I hear "major" and "minor" when discussing college/university degrees, e.g. having a major in X and a minor in Y. What does it mean to have a "major" or "minor" in something?
At my university (in a Nordic country), we say you have a master's degree/bachelor's degree. Is this the same (i.e., "minor"=bachelor's degree, "major"=master's degree)? Also, what's up with e.g. "having a major in physics and a minor in computer science"? Does this mean you got a bachelor's degree in computer science and then went and got a physics master's degree? Or does it mean that you take some subjects in computer science that are not part of your master's degree?
Is it more common in the US to take multiple degrees? Is this why people say "I have a major in X with a minor in Y"? I heard that because university is expensive in the US, you try to get more "value" out of your enrollment by taking multiple degrees. Is this true? Where I am from it is not common to hold multiple degrees in different fields. Usually, you just have one bachelor's in your field and one master's, or alternatively, a master's without a bachelor's degree.

Related (though strangely, closed and heavily downvoted): How do academic minors work?

You don't mention a specific country (except that it's Nordic) but it seems that the concept of a minor also exists in Denmark, for example https://studieordninger.cbs.dk/2022/minor/1018

As @Ivo notes, the concept (or at least a very close equivalent) exists in the Nordic countries too, the OP might just not be familiar with the English terms. For example, I believe Sweden (and Finland) traditionally use huvudområde / huvudämne (pääaine) and biområde / biämne (sivuaine) for "major" and "minor" studies, although some variation exists. See for example this page from Uppsala University (also available in Swedish).

@cag51 just upvoted that Q&A you linked. Wow, how uninviting this group can be huh. Seems like there's a bandwagon effect with downvotes?

@Lamar: normally there is a historical reason for such a bandwagon effect (e.g., OP starts insulting people in the comments, the downvotes start rolling, then the mods clean up the comments but the negative score remains). I don't recall what, if anything, led to that question getting such a poor reception though.

Ok, I can see how that could happen. I'm guessing if there was a solution it would have been implemented already, but I'm guessing it may have its own side effects..

Since this question asks about majors and minors, might want to toss in "concentrations", to cover the set of related things.

@IlmariKaronen To be more spesific: I study in Norway. The closest thing I can think of is that it is a requirement to take 1 subject outside of your field of study. However, this often end up being something like "how to be a good leader" or something.

@IlmariKaronen I think a lot of Nordic students are unfamiliar with this because they are studying through a programme, with all courses planned for them to automatically fulfill the requirements of a major. It's typically still possible to take freestanding courses and stitch together your own major, but that is less popular, especially if you have a clear goal and a suitable programme for that exists. So in the US basically everyone has to think about choosing a major and fulfilling it's requirements, but in Sweden many will finish their degree without ever having heard about huvudområde.

@Vebjorn I don't know how it works specifically in Norway, but if you are studying through a programme, maybe you are looking through the lens of what is offered and required through that programme, rather than the full Norwegian university system?

Dansk: "sidefag sb. (1993) (universitetsfag som læses ved siden af hovedfag, indført i forbindelse med studiereform, erstatter bifag) bifag"
Specialet skrives i hovedfaget.

did you know? "majors" and "minors" were originally named that way because one usually finds, in a degree whose "minor" is some subject X, that the quality of learning X in the middle third of the degree often falls significantly flat. [/music joke]

@Ivo: That is due to the ongoing Anglification. "minor" is not a Danish word. They don't even try to translate or find a better word. There is a perfectly fine existing word, as soegaard
mentioned. The previous name of that institution wasn't smart enough, so they had to change it to an English one.

In the US, your "major" is the thing you have your bachelor's degree in. "I have a BS in Biology" means the same as "I majored in Biology." Everyone "majors in" something. It is often possible to "double major" by completing all the course requirements for more than one major degree, though few students do this.
Usually there are two requirements for graduation: completing a set of courses required for your major (sometimes specific courses, sometimes "choose one from this list"), and completing at least a set number of credits (typically expected to be completed over 4 years in the US, but some students may take more than 4 years and others may complete far more credits than the number required). The set of courses for a given major is less than the set number of credits, which is how Americans take so many credits unrelated to their major.
A "minor" is a lesser add-on qualification. It usually involves taking 4-5 classes (roughly 1 semester of work; possibly more if other courses are necessary as prerequisites) in an area but the qualifications are entirely up to a given institution. The courses for a minor aren't any more advanced than for a major (unlike a typical masters program), instead it's a minor area of study alongside the main degree. So someone who majors in Biology with a minor in Music took all the classes necessary to graduate with a bachelor's degree in Biology, and also took some additional classes in Music, enough of them to qualify for a "minor". Someone with a major in physics and a minor in CS took all the courses they needed to earn a bachelor's degree in physics while also taking a few undergraduate CS classes.
In the US, undergraduate education is quite broad and involves taking a lot of elective courses outside of the major. Personally I got two minors without really needing to take any "extra" classes, I just chose enough of my elective credits in specific areas to qualify. So, while minors are completely optional, a lot of people end up collecting them because it's not that much additional work.
I would say also that a minor doesn't count for a whole lot. It's not really a separate degree, it's just an added notation to the main degree. The courses you take might be useful themselves, but it's not usually a qualification people are looking for directly when hiring or something.

There are cases in the US where a major isn't required for a bachelor's. My undergrad offered a Bachelor's of General Studies which required a broader-than-normal set of courses across fields in lieu of the intensive set of classes within a major. I know people who used a BGS to take coure courses in many different languages but without fulfilling major requirements for any of them.

@CompEcon Ah yes, the danger of ever saying "everyone"/always/never/etc. :) Colloquially, though, even in that case it's common to say "I'm majoring in General Studies" or something like that, even if the school officially calls it "no major".

This is perhaps extraneous (since OP didn't ask), but at least at my alma mater, you could double major - if the degrees matched; i.e. filling the requirements for two BAs or two BSes. If they were different, you had to get a double degree which was difficult to do in a typical 12-quarter undergrad enrollment.

As an additional example, I majored in Computer Science, and just needed one additional class from the Math program to gain a minor.  Additionally, I regularly took high level English classes as an elective (to take a break from computers/science/math) and ended up picking up enough credits for a minor there as well.

@MichaelRichardson - I loved those upper division English classes. One evening a week to just sit in a comfy chair and read a novel or a Shakespeare play instead of cranking through a problem set…

When I went to MIT, the humanities portion of the graduation requirements required you to have a "concentration" of N classes in a particular humanities area (e.g. music, literature, languages). But it looks like this is gone.

At my institution in my year, there were several people who triple-majored in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, and Mathematical Sciences (i.e. applied mathematics) because if you selected your in-major courses carefully, you could triple-major with only an additional semester's worth of courses. My institution did not have the concept of "minor" at that time.

Some university programs require a minor in addition to a major to graduate.

Does this mean students just enroll in something like a "general Bachelors degree" at first and later choose their major? And is it possible to achieve a degree without choosing a major at all? If not, there surely needs to be a point in time where you have to decide latest.

@kopaka Depends on university policy; some may make you declare a major from the start but allow you to change, others may let you go undeclared, some with a deadline and others without. But universities also want people to graduate in time, so they'll at least encourage taking any early prerequisite courses right away. E.g., for most biology degrees if you aren't taking general chemistry your first year you will never finish in 4 years because it's a prereq for courses that are prereqs for courses that are prereqs for courses.

This answer is slightly misleading. If I double major in Bio and Chem, I can graduate with just a degree in Biology. Double degree's usually require additional requirements. You would not only have to fulfill major requirements, but also college/dept requirements which this answer ignores.

@chevybow I think rather that this answer is simply not exhaustive to cover every institution's policies. If your institution has separate requirements beyond major requirements, that's their business; OP doesn't need to know that to understand what people are talking about when they refer to their majors or minors.

@BryanKrause I am not aware of public universities in the US giving you 2 degrees if you major in two completely different fields. Can you point me towards just one?

@chevybow Where do I say you get two degrees for majoring in different fields?

@chevybow I think you might be confused about what Bryan's answer and clarification are saying. What they're saying is that at most institutions in the US, if you double major in Bio and Chem, then you do receive a single Bachelors Degree, but that degree is officially in both Bio and Chem, not one or the other; it will have both fields listed on it, and it will satisfy either requirement for graduate programs or employment. And that's distinct from a double degree, by which I assume you mean two separate Bachelors degrees in Bio and Chem respectively.

@chevybow "If I double major in Bio and Chem, I can graduate with just a degree in Biology" I don't understand what you mean. Your college lets you opt out of being awarded the major? Why would you do that?

It might be better to start by thinking what university study is like in the US. You go to the university, register as a student, and start working towards certain degrees. Those degrees will usually require you to take certain courses to graduate.
Here're the relevant webpages for physics at the University of Florida. This university has two kinds of bachelor's degree, a BS degree and a BA degree, and also a physics minor. Look at the three degrees and see the different requirements:

The BS degree requires 41 physics credits, plus 7 chemistry credits and 21 mathematics credits, plus a few more courses required at university/college level.*

The BA degree requires 32 physics credits, plus 7 chemistry credits and 18 mathematics credits, plus a few more courses required at university/college level.

The physics minor requires only five physics courses.

Therefore we can say:

The physics major will generally be working towards either the BS or BA degree. Because the BS degree requires more physics credits, people with a BS degree tend to know more physics than those with a BA degree (but those with a BA degree still know quite a bit about it). They also know a little chemistry and some math.
The physics minor knows some physics, but relatively little of it. They've only taken five courses, compared to physics majors, who've taken at least twice the number.

You can see how this works for someone who's a physics major and a computer science minor - they took enough physics courses to know a lot about physics, and enough Computer Science courses to know something about CS (but not nearly as much as CS majors).

I think I may have heard somewhere that because university is expensive in the US, you try to get more "value" out of your enrollment by taking multiple degrees (?).

Depends on how you view it. For example the university might expect you to take five courses a semester. Physics majors will generally take 3-4 of those in physics, and spend the remaining courses on the university or college requirements. If you major in physics and minor in CS, then you'll be focusing those remaining courses on CS. Comparatively, someone who's only majoring in physics will likely take a greater variety of courses (e.g. they could take a history course just to see what it's like).
It's also possible to overload. If the university requires you to take 5 courses a semester, you could take 6. It will take effort, but you'd learn more that semester, getting more "value" from your money.
Yet another possibility is to study longer. A hypothetical physics major could take CS courses and also the history course, plus economics, and archeology, and what have you. They might end up graduating in 5 years as opposed to their peers, but they'd still graduate with a physics degree.
Finally, it's possible to take enough courses to graduate with a double major (two major degrees), but it'll usually take longer because it's improbable to take all the required courses within the same time. (However, universities will usually have a limit to the maximum number of years you can study, and of course, it's not cheap.)
*The university might also have requirements - e.g. they might say "all science students need to take at least three courses outside their major, and at least one of those outside their faculty" (here "faculty" refers to the faculty of science, i.e., the university says you need to take a course that isn't a science course).

Meanwhile at UF, the Physics B.S. requires 21 credits in mathematics, while a Math minor requires 23-24. One required math class for Physics doesn't count for a math minor, so you need maybe 1 or 2 extra math classes.

Note that the map between "courses" and "credits" isn't obvious. One course could typically be anywhere from 3 to 5 credits. A credit maps more or less to the number of hours per week the course meets.

@mkennedy Well yes. The BA is also almost certainly set up to make it easier to double major in this respect. It's a common setup at UF.

Worth mentioning that while in that case (and in general) a BS requires more and more intensive of courses, there will be significant differences between schools. My college didn't give BSs, even in STEM majors, and my (single) major was 72 STEM credits of the ~130 I took during my time there

The field of study one gets their bachelor's degree for is usually called the major. The minor is a package of a few courses in a different field of study that you take during your bachelor's.
netherlands
For instance, in the Netherlands, most bachelor degrees require six semesters (180 ECTS) of study. This duration refers to the regular (or minimum) study time. Of these six, one semester (30 ECTS) or half a semester (15 ECTS) is allocated to the minor program. This is a group of courses arranged around a specific topic of study that doesn't need to relate to the major (e.g. major in Aerospace Engineering and minor in Forestry). However, some students do choose a minor on a narrow topic that deepens their knowledge in their major field of study (e.g. major in Aerospace Engineering and minor in Airport Development). You can do the minor at your home university or a different university. Most universities in Belgium and the Netherlands offer several packaged minor programs on specific topics that you can choose from (e.g. Translating English to Dutch, Artificial Intelligence and Societal Impacts, and many more). Alternatively, you can pick some courses that arguably cover a coherent topic and get it approved as your individual minor program. The latter option opens the door to doing the minor semester further abroad, which is popular.
The main study program completed in the remaining (e.g. 5) semesters is called the major.

What's a semester in this context? Granted that we're both Europeans of sorts, but the term is virtually unknown in the UK.

@MarkMorganLloyd a semester is half an academic year just like everywhere else. It's only an informal term. Many Dutch universities formally divide the academic year into shorter periods. We had five: two in the fall semester, two in the spring semester and one in the summer "break".

Right, half a year thanks. As I said, it's not used in the UK so your "everywhere else" is spurious.

Semesters do exist at some UK universities ─ BCU has them, apparently Manchester, Sheffield and St. Andrews do too. There are probably more.

I work at a UK university, and we always talk about our academic year as organised in semester A, semester B and semester C (where C is the summer semester, where not much happens)

@penelope So in at least your case they correspond to traditional third-of-a-year terms.


text:
Issue creating IEEE Xplore-compatible document: accepted with caution
I am currently submitting an already accepted paper to an IEEE conference. I validated the paper with the PDF eXpress tool. However, my paper is accepted with caution. The warning message received via e-mail is the following one.

PDF links are allowed for supplemental electronic material (multimedia) only. ALL OTHER LINKS WILL BE DELETED BEFORE POSTING TO IEEE XPLORE.

If I understand the message correctly, for the document to be IEEE Xplore-compatible, it requires me to cancel all links that are not PDFs. However, many of my sources are links to other sources (e.g., GitHub or an official wiki).
What I am supposed to do? Simply upload the file as it is and wait for editors' complaints?

Rewrite the paper without hyperlinking.  If you want to refer to a wiki or github, use a typed citation.

e.g., replace a \url with \texttt


text:
Is it okay to ask my advisor what he'll say in his letter of recommendation?
I'm applying to postdocs this fall. I'm not asking for a copy of the letter, but I would really like to know, generally, what the letter might look like and how positive it would be. I haven't been the best student (kind of late to publish, and I haven't been taking as much initiative as I think I should, considering my advisor is pretty hands-off).
Is it considered rude to ask my advisor something like "Would you be able to share what your recommendation might look like or how positive it would be?" It's not that I need this information, because I will ask him for a recommendation either way, but I would like to gauge my likelihood of getting a job offer.

I have always shared my letter with the postdocs. However, that always followed one or more strategy sessions with the postdoc. Where are they applying? What are the important criteria? What needs to be emphasized? How will the various letter writers address the important criteria and how can the emphasize it? Each job posting will be different, each application should be tailored to it, and ideally each letter is also tailored to the application. But, have the conversation(s) up front about what you think the letter should address and if the writer feels they can do that.

I don’t think it is standard practice sharing letters with students.

This question is similar to: How are Ph.D. applications evaluated in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students? Am I likely to get into school X?. If you believe it’s different, please edit the question, make it clear how it’s different and/or how the answers on that question are not helpful for your problem.

@ScottSeidman I'm applying to a postdoc. I pretty much understand the role of a letter of recommendation and the application process; this is more of an etiquette question.

ooops, wrong duplicate https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/47373/20457

This question is similar to: How do I effectively solicit a strong letter of recommendation from a professor?. If you believe it’s different, please edit the question, make it clear how it’s different and/or how the answers on that question are not helpful for your problem.

@scientist - sure, it may not be standard practice, but after the strategy sessions and my commitment to write a letter in support then I see no harm in providing the text of the letter to the postdoc. You may choose differently.

@ScottSeidman and Sursula thanks! that will be helpful.

I agree with the strategy session suggested by Jon Custer. This could be helpful for both of you if you approach it right. I would open with something like "Would you feel comfortable writing a letter of recommendation for me?" If your advisor says yes, I would follow with, "Could we talk about my goals, my strengths and weaknesses, and I how I fit with this position?" This will naturally lead into how you can make the best case for your candidacy in your application. By the end of this conversation, your advisor will have a better idea of how he or she will approach the letter of recommendation, and you will have a sense of how strongly your advisor is likely support you, without having to ask to see the letter. Or you can say diplomatically, "Do you prefer that your letter be private?"

I have found that the following approach has served me well, initially as a student applying for scholarships, then as an undergraduate applying for graduate school and a PhD graduate applying for postdocs, and lastly as an academic applying for promotion ...
I ask a question along the following lines: "I'm considering applying for XYZ. Would you feel able to offer your enthusiastic support."
I've sometimes gotten responses (for job applications) like "Well, I've already told Dr B that I would support her application", or "I'm kind of snowed-under with exam marking at the moment", and other similar lukewarm responses  It might seem a little unusual, but I have never been misled into actually asking for a recommendation letter from anyone who was anything less than very positive about me. Another aspect of my approach that I think helps grease the social wheels is that the person I ask isn't embarrassed by potentially having to offer a direct rejection. This is important especially when I know that I might continue working for some time with the person I'm asking.

It is ok to ask, but you might take another avenue that would give you an idea about what it would contain. Instead of asking about a letter, ask about their view of you and advice for your future career. Ask about any issues they think you need to address to be successful.
There is risk in this, of course, if it gets them thinking about your shortcomings, so be sure to work towards leaving it on a positive note.
But just asking how strongly they would support you in faculty applications is ok, but caries risk itself, depending on personalities.

I think in normal circumstances advisors try their best to praise their students’ strengths and avoid talking about their weaknesses directly. They want to help students secure good jobs, because that will help attract new students and grant money for themselves. In many cases letter readers have to discount advisors’ positivity.
No student is perfect. There is no need to worry about what happened in the past. Just focus on your research as much as you can.


text:
What is the best philosophy and practice to use smartphones for academic life?
I am doing research in theoretical physics, and have learned that smartphones can bring in a lot of distractions to your life if you want to focus on your research and study. Like facebook, twitter messages, random news feeds and so on. If I disable all apps, on the other hand, I will loose the benefit of owning a smartphone. In the limited time of using smartphones in my life, I have collected the following list of apps and things to have on a smartphone. I also have some questions marks for better alternatives. Please let us know if you have any other suggestions and recommendations to make the smartphone great for academic life.

There is an arXiv mobile app so that I can read paper anywhere whenever I find a chance (like sitting on a bus for commuting). I am sure you can use smartphones for StackExchange Q&A as well. Any apps that can allow me to read recommended papers based on my interests from all sourced journals as well as arXiv if possible?
Use a PDF scanner--in my case, clearScanner--to transfer a paper/blackboard note to the e-version and synchronize on a cloud (like dropbox or OneDrive) by taking a photo to a black/white-board or paper note. I also use EndNote to put all my notes together in order to edit them on my Thinkpad Yoga or X200 tablet when I get a chance.
Use twitter to only tweet academic content and build a network with researchers in the field. Then connect twitter with facebook to synchronize my content. This way, maybe less spam for me. Any other social network sources I shouldn't block and should cultivate using a smartphone?
I do use open-source version-control ideas for academic writing and coding. But I haven't found a way to get benefit from a smartphone for this purpose as I have a tablet and laptops to handle most of the mobile jobs. For example, I use github to version my bibtex file for bibliography records, but I haven't found a proper app to mobile bibtex on the go. Maybe there are some apps useful on a smartphone.
Use voice record to record my own talks and discussions with people if things are hard to understand and solve in a short time or I want to put the talk online along side with my slides. I haven't found an efficient way to combine the voice and slides seamlessly, though.
Keep the calendar running in the background for scheduling things with notifications. Same to emails.
Smartphones can easily track my physical fitness, but is there any way to track my academic fitness?
I have heard people using smartphones to track experimental equipment remotely and use all kinds of smartphone sensors to demonstrate physical lab experiments, but I really didn't go that far. Let's also keep this thought of train open if you have any recommendations.
Install a bar/QR code scanner, and it could be useful to scan and download a poster on your phone in conferences/workshops nowadays.

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How to get out of a data use agreement?
My project is based on data hosted by a different university than the one where I used to work. When I requested the data, I understood that the work (and cost) to extract it from the database increases with the number of items I wanted. I had no research funds at the time and therefore asked for a rather small sample, with an informal agreement with the director of the inistitute that the person extracting the data would be my collaborator and coauthor.
Several months passed before I received the data and then the sample turned out to be too small to be really useful. I did not make another request as the data extraction process appeared so time-consuming. Instead, I moved on to work with other projects for a couple of years.
The data became relevant again when I started as a visiting researcher at this institute. Although I wasn't employed by the institute, I had direct access to the database and could download all of it in a matter of minutes. I expected that the person who extracted the first sample would be willing to collaborate on data classification and other things where he was an expert. Instead, he seemed hostile and would only answer to exactly what I asked, rather than make an attempt to be helpful.
The most recent development is that the institute made most of this database and classification open for anyone to download.
What should I do to get out of the original data use agreement? I feel trapped in a forced collaboration with a person with whom I'm not in speaking terms. I'm not in a position to renegotiate or entitled to any help from the institute, as it is not my employer.
I took this situation more seriously than anyone should, as my depression renewed and I went to psyhotherapy for nine months. That's telling something about the amount of time I have wasted with this dilemma.

So some guy sent you useless data a few years back and you promised to include him should there be any interesting results obtained from them? Now, you got the data yourself, without his help and far more than what he send you, and he doesn't want to work with you. Do I understand this correctly so far? If yes, the question is why you want to work with him at all. The data he provided was useless and you have free access to better and newer data, furthermore this was years ago. You could of course be nice and offer him collaboration, but if he declines, you shouldn't feel guilty about it.

Good point from @DirkLiebhold. Does the person want to collaborate and be a coauthor anyway?

@DirkLiebhold I made a promise and I'm not at all sure that his lack of interest releases me from my obligation to keep the promise. He could contribute to the paper in many other ways if he wanted to, but I haven't dared to ask directly. We are barely on speaking terms.

If you want to hold up your promise, write him an email that, according to said agreement from a few years back, you invite him to collaborate with you if he should be interested. If he doesn't respond or is not willing to put work into it, that's his decision. All you can do is make the offer.

This isn't a question that can be properly answered here as it may have legal implications that are local to the actual case. Don't make assumptions that your old agreement is null, just because the data became public. No harm no foul might not hold up anywhere, especially if lawyers get involved.
You indicate that the director is a different person than the one who helped you. He/she can give you advice. The legal department of the institution can give you advice that should hold up. If your new work is truly independent of the old, make sure that they understand that. The other person may have no moral hold over you for co-authorship, but only an expert can speak about a legal hold.
The question is likely too old to be of help to the OP, but future visitors may have similar questions, hence this very late answer.

First I'll say that your description of the situation is quite vague. Are there two universities and one institute involved? What were your relevant positions? Why did you need permission to get the data in the first place, if it's not private/secret and can now be downloaded freely? etc.
Still,

What should I do to get out of the original data use agreement?

It's not at all clear any agreement is still binding at this point, since it was made in a specific context and not intended to cover far-future work on other projects. Also, it's not clear what exactly your original agreement was, since it was not only verbal, but informal, and probably not much was spelled out. So it's possible the answer is "nothing". Also, you said the agreement was that:

the person extracting the data would be my collaborator and coauthor.

This time around, you are the person extracting the data, so no harm no foul. However, if you want help from that guy who helped you last time, perhaps he should be listed as a coauthor on whatever you produce now as well, or at least consulted on the issue of credit.
More generally, and regardless of your supposed contractual obligations, I would go talk to the person who helped you the first time. Start by apologizing for having acted offensively, say it wasn't your intent, and politely maneuver him into telling you what it is that he wants/expects.
PS - I just noticed this question is rather old. So this answer is intended mostly for people facing similar situations I guess.

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Should one cite unethical research that may contradict one's current research?
Most people are familiar with the controversy over citing Nazi medical experimentation and related unethical findings. I'm not questioning that.
Assuming that citing unethical research in order to bolster or support one's own findings is, in fact, unethical, does the situation change if the prior unethical findings may contradict, falsify, or otherwise be potentially detrimental to one's own findings?
For example, many feel that publishing this is unethical:

In this paper, we demonstrate that splines are reticulatable in six-space under the Transhalpine Coordinate System. Evil Nazi Supervillain (1941) demonstrated that a spline can exist in six-space. Assuming this to be true, our model demonstrates how such as spline can be reticulated with respect to the Transhalpine system, to wit....

Assuming that would be, in fact, unethical, would this be any different:

In this paper, we demonstrate that splines are reticulatable in six-space under the Transhalpine Coordinate System. Goody-Two-Shoes, Angel, Seraphim, Hero, Superhero, and Person-Who-Was-Mostly-Good-Except-That-He-Jaywalked-Once-When-He-Was-Eight-And-Was-Continuously-And-Justly-Punished-Throughout-His-Lifetime-For-Said-Act (1932) demonstrated that a spline can exist in six-space. Evil Nazi Supervillain (1941) obtained a contrary result in which splines cannot exist in six-space, but we only mention this because ethical requirements require that we disclose to you that we are are aware of a prior result that may affect our findings. The result was gained by attempting coordinate transformations on splines that had not granted informed consent for geometric experimentation. In this case the researcher was, like, a super bad guy and you, like, totally should ignore his findings because he was even more evil than Dr. Doom and his paper is probably full of shoddy praxis, negligent notetaking, and even outright fabrications.
Assuming that a spline can actually exist in six-space, our model demonstrates how such as spline can be reticulated with respect to the Transhalpine system, to wit....

Generally speaking, is it more ethical to cite or not cite the potentially problematic prior result?
I suppose the gist of this question is which ethical duty is paramount:

The duty to honestly account for the current state of research and disclose potential findings that may affect the current paper.
The duty to not acknowledge or use unethical research.

Could this one of the "unusual circumstances" mentioned in this answer?
I suppose that the Don't Cite Unethical Research rule could be clarified as actually meaning that it is unethical to benefit from prior unethical results, so a citation that does not benefit the later researcher (but in fact serves more as a disclaimer) would be allowed. Would that be more along the lines of how this would actually be handled?

There is no "duty to not acknowledge or use unethical research". Science is not a game where a result that was achieved by breaking rules doesn't count. And citation is not endorsement, or else how can you criticize bad studies? The only duty is honesty. If scientific results were obtained unethically, the question is: Can they still be trusted? (In the case of Nazi research, the question is complex and depends highly on the domain -- a lot of the medical research was tainted by bias, and the maths was generally low-quality due to brain drain, but a lot can still be used.)

I took your "ignore because shoddy, negligent, fabricated" statement to be an exaggeration, an ad hominem rather than taking it literally. Others seem to be taking it to mean that you really believe the prior research cannot be trusted. If you do not intend to insinuate that the research cannot be trusted anyway, then you might want to remove the rest of that sentence after "Doom"

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/115451/do-unethical-acts-that-are-tangential-to-methodology-taint-research?rq=1

This question might be improved by giving a more realistic example. I'm guessing you have something like the Dachau hypothermia experiments in mind, and I can understand why you might feel more comfortable presenting an obviously fictionalised example, but in this case I think it just confuses the question.

Your question is fundamentally based on a false premise. As such I think it’s unanswerable. The example you give of an “unethical citation” is in fact a perfectly permissible — and, if relevant, necessary — citation. You seem to misunderstand the reason for not citing some of the research done by the Nazis: it’s not due to their moral flaws, it’s because the research itself is tainted (apart from methodological flaws, it is inadmissible as a reference due to not being reproducible because carrying out the experiments itself is unethical).

It is not about their purpose for science or their cruelity, which should prevent you (you cannot undo it anyway), but the validity of their methods. An easy example: I think most people acknowledge that things people said under torture cannot be assumed to be valuable. This makes all literature about how to identify witches from that time useless. The same applies to many nazi experiments, which had no correct scientific methodology and were set up to "prove" prejudices instead of finding facts.

The premise on which you base your question is the oposite of the point made in the article you link... I´m confused on why you would link that in the first place. The premise for this question is absolutly false.

Activists of animal rights might say you're a monster for testing on animals. The point being that what one considers unethical is subjective.

Off the cuff, it seems to me that a scientist who publishes a paper while knowingly ignoring contradicting data takes on that responsibility. You could later claim that the only reason you've ignored it was only because it was gathered unethically, but you are likely to get a "yeah right" response from a lot of people.

@darijgrinberg - Would you be willing to post your comment as an answer?

Are you conflating evil people with scientific results that they achieve (by valid means)? They should not be conflated. Condemn the people and the evil acts that they do, but not any valid results obtained by honorable means. Evil monsters don't need to always act in an evil manner.
There is, for example, a lot of both computer engineering and mathematics that was done by total racists. This was in the US and in fairly recent years. This doesn't make it invalid to use computers, nor does it invalidate the mathematics itself.
It isn't even necessary to state that X was an evil monster otherwise when citing X. However, if you are writing about racism or other evils, then it is perfectly appropriate to point out the flaws.
Of course, the spline research would be discredited if to do it evil acts needed to be carried out, but you don't seem to be saying that here.
What is true is true, even if uttered by monsters. What is false is false, even if uttered by angels.

Since the question was changed, I'll add this. If "research" has been discredited for any reason then there is no need to cite it other than as something not to be done. There is no need to cite failures to prove a theorem when you provide a proof, and there is no need to cite research that was done unethically. The results themselves are in question.
There are a lot of ways to fail at research. Lack of ethical behavior is only one. Don't cite the failures, except as failures.
In the case at hand, the research resulting from unethical behavior doesn't "contradict" the current work. It wasn't valid in the first place.

Don’t think Mengler’s results were honorable on any level...

I clarified the question, sorry. In my introductory paragraph, I was trying to say that I am asking about research in which evil, or at least seriously unethical, actions were taken to obtain the result rather than just results obtained by people with low morals. I have clarified my question. Thanks.

@RobertColumbia, and you made it entirely hypothetical. Why do you think that unethical acts need to be refuted at all? Why is there any need to cite discredited research whether it was carried out ethically or unethically? If it is discredited, ignore it.

I'm confused about "discredited research" in your comment. Do you mean research obtained by means evil actions (as in the comment fromRobert Columbia that you're answering), or do you mean research whose results are (known to be) false. To put it another way:  Would you still say "What's true is true, even if uttered by monsters" if the monsters had arrived at the truth only by monstrous methods?

@AndreasBlass, Both kinds of discredited, actually. And yes, truth is independent of who says it or how it was arrived at. But don't take that as an endorsement. I find it hard to think of a situation in which monstrous methods lead to truth, in fact. In the US, we learned how to build rockets and get to the moon based on the studies of Nazis who were "accepted" into the US after WWII. But I don't know if their rocketry was carried out in an evil way. (continued)

@AndreasBlass, Hypothetical. Suppose a teacher beats a student until he proves a theorem and the student is successful only to stop the beatings. Is the theorem proved then false? Can it never be used in future mathematics? You must still condemn the teacher, of course.

I agree that the theorem proved only to avoid beatings can be used and cited (and the evil teacher condemned). My concern was with "Why is there need to cite discredited research ...?" in the context of your reply to the previous comment in which the problem with the research was not that the results are wrong but that they were obtained by evil methods.

I think it's going to be difficult to answer a complicated question like this with anything besides "it depends..." unless there is a less trivial example given.
I also find the trivial example a bit bothersome, because although I understand what you are trying to get at with your arbitrary splines example, the actual real-life work you are weighing it against includes destructive medical experimentation on individuals who died or were permanently harmed for the remainder of their lives, and I don't think making a joke of it about "unethical acts committed against splines" is helpful to the discussion.
The answer you refer to basically says already in citing Baruch Cohen that the answer of when to cite questionable research depends on the circumstances, and I don't think there is anything to add to that:

In essence, Cohen argues that in certain extreme cases it may be possible to use the data, but only when accompanied by strong condemnation of the methods and only when it concerns information that is both otherwise impossible to obtain and of life-saving importance.

In summary, if not citing unethically produced research is likely to cause harm then consideration should be given to citing such research. In a trivial or arbitrary example, like the one you give, it is impossible to evaluate the level of harm so it is impossible to weigh this against the concerns with citing unethically produced research.
Note that in some cases it may be possible to refer to unethical research without citing it directly, for example by citing research that specifically critiques that prior work.
I would also refer to another Academia.SE question that addresses the less extreme example of citing retracted works: Is it right to cite a retracted research article?

(This is a comment expanded into an answer.)
There is no "duty to not acknowledge or use unethical research". Science is not a game where a result that was achieved by breaking rules doesn't count. And citation is not endorsement, or else how can you criticize bad studies? "Against Them Who Shall Not Be Named"?
(It is true that some career-relevant metrics reward researchers for getting cited often. It is also true that notoriety doubles as a form of fame in this world. None of these are the fault of researchers, and there is no moral duty to adapt to these effects through self-censorship.)
The only duty is honesty. If scientific results were obtained unethically, the question is: Can they still be trusted? In the case of Nazi research, for example, the question is complex and depends highly on the domain: In medicine, a lot of the medical research was tainted by bias and outright fabrication (see, e.g., this appraisal of the Dachau hypothermia experiments), while other work has been generally accepted despite ethical taint. In either case, the original researcher's ethical standing and even whatever Faustian bargains were involved in the research are not the deciding criterion. In mathematics, the consensus appears to be that, while the general quality of NS-German maths research is low except for a few lone talents, it was better than nothing. You take what you are given.


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Etiquette for undergraduate research and job search
I am an undergraduate currently conducting research in a physics research group at my university. I really enjoy the group and am planning to stay with them during my next few years here.
However, as an undergrad, I would like to explore many possible career paths. This summer, I'm looking to apply to a few industry positions that would have me performing very similar research (as an intern).
My question: Is this "proper etiquette" in academia? Is it okay to apply to other similar research positions that are possibly competing with the group, as an undergrad?
I honestly am not sure. I know outside of academia it would be perfectly okay for an undergrad to apply to other jobs, as we are expected to figure out what we want to do for a career. But in research, what's the right thing to do?

What field are you in? It's certainly OK in mine, but it may not impress anyone, but on the other hand, plenty of UGs don't work over the summers (they go home, etc)

Physics! When you say "it may not impress anyone" what exactly do you mean? I don't want to burn any bridges..

Oh, I just mean people aren't going to be blown away by you doing an industry internship, but in general should be fine with it. But I'm not in physics, so I don't know how accurate that generalization is to you.

Yes, it's okay to seek industry internships while you are conducting undergraduate research.
Discuss this with your supervisor.  They should help you.