text:
Knowing that most students submit assignments right around the deadline, is it advisable not to set deadline that is very late at night?
Like many on this site, I use a Moodle-type online Content Management System to give assignments to my students, and receive the finished work for grading. This is in a traditional context where the students are physically present in the classroom, and the online part is seen as a simple tool to be used in addition to the classic paper-based route. Students' first class for the day usually begins at 8 a.m.
For the last few years, I put the deadline for assignment acceptance at midnight, with plenty of time (2-3 weeks) to do the work, so each student can handle his/her workload as they wish. These are young adults aged 18-25, and are in theory very much responsible for their acts. Observation gives us actual hand-in times with approximately the following distribution:

1-2 days before deadline: 5%
3-24 hours before: 10%
1-2 hours: 10%
less than 1 hour: 65%
emails in distress after the deadline has expired saying they have encountered a computer glitch or some other excuse: 10%

Which I guess is about par for the course. :-(
So it is clear that while in theory these students are responsible young adults, in practice they tend to plan ahead in a less than stellar way. The impression that is perceived is that the online nature of the submission system makes students take slightly more liberties with deadlines than when assignments had to be handed in, in a face-to-face situation - although it is clear that even then there will always be a certain percentage of people with difficulties respecting deadlines.
OK, here is the question: without getting into considerations on whether students should plan better (and possible ways in which I and other teachers could help them do so), would changing deadline times from midnight to, for example, 10 p.m. be a good move from the standpoint of their getting enough sleep (moral considerations welcome) and actually attending class at the beginning of the next day? Do I get to patent this Great Idea?
No, that last bit was a joke. ;-)
Reactions from people who are not actually teachers, but have experienced this context as a student are also welcome.
Update
I have ended up accepting the answer by Superbest below, basically because I liked his discussion of alternative possibilities. This is a bit subjective, since many other answers are also of very high quality IMHO - and I would certainly encourage the reader to peruse all the answers given here, and the varying points of view expressed (also in comments). Much appreciated.

I had to take a take-home exam when I was 25. There was no Internet (this was almost 40 years ago). I had to run 3 miles (about 5 km) trying to meet the 8 a.m. deadline. Yes, I was a responsible adult (I swear). No matter what your schedule is, your observed distribution would look about the same. So, I would suggest move the deadline to 8 p.m. so the students would have plenty of time to get on social media or play games after they submit their assignments.;-)

"get on social media or play games": I agree they don't get enough of that already.  :D More seriously, that is probably precisely what they would do, but who knows.

yeah, the last bit was a joke.

@scaaahu Your main point being that some things do not change, whatever tools we use. Sure, we are in agreement.

Yes, that's correct. Your schedule will not change it neither. They would still go to bed late and you will still see red eyes 8 a.m. the next morning.

It seems to me that this problem is easily solvable. In order to answer your own question, instead of, or, rather, in addition to, the theory, just set up a proper A/B test. This IMHO is a tool for exactly such situations.

@AleksandrBlekh Thank you for your input. Unfortunately, this is not feasible since both groups will be aware of each other's conditions, so behavior is not an occurrence that depends only on one factor.

Considering the concept of deadlines itself, I really like the idea described elsewhere on this site (or on Math Educators) a while ago to slowly worsen the grade of late submissions until they automatically fail. So you can still get a decent grade for submitting 10 minutes late but not for submitting 48 hours late (depending on the total length of the assignment, of course). Also, I think that computer glitches are today’s “the dog ate my homework” and should not be a valid excuse.

As a student who recently graduated and used Moodle during my student years the default deadline was midnight. I was always pleased when some teachers moved it to 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. because it felt more in line with a "normal" work day. I also had teachers not set a deadline on Moodle (so that students can still submit after the actual deadline) and use the idea described by @Wrzlprmft

@Autar This was precisely the type of comment I was seeking. If I interprete correctly, your concern would be with delimiting clearly one "work" day from the next. This is actually a bit in line with O.R.Mapper's answer below, though his conclusion is opposite.

One trivial advantage of 10pm over midnight - no danger of someone getting confused over which day is meant!

Just a comment from when I was a student: I never wanted to be the first to turn in the assignment. Especially if the first ones to turn it in heard their grade back fairly quickly. I can evaluate how their assignment compared to mine and whether I need to do more or less (since I'm the type of person who does the minimum to get a good grade) - There was also always the rare, but possible, "pushed back due date" email - which you can't take advantage of if you already turned it in!

Back in your days, how long before the deadline were you summiting the assignments? :)

Back in the steam-powered days of my degree, deadlines were generally either 5.30pm or 9am, either when the relevant person finished their official work day or when they started it. One can argue the fine differences between midnight vs 10pm, but I don't think it even occurred to them that they should be managing our sleep.

As a student, I am usually part of that 65% who turn their hw in last minute, but it's not because it took that long, it's just that I am usually paranoid about handing in something earlier than I have to and then realizing that I made a mistake or could have done better. So, I tend to turn assignments in last minute, although I finished them much earlier.

As a somewhat recent student, one reason why I often submitted close to the midnight deadline was that evenings and late nights were often when I had the time to work. If a deadline were set to be earlier in the day when I had classes and activities to attend, then I would be much more likely to submit the night before with plenty of time to spare. Then again, that might mean I would just stay up until 3 instead of 12 :)

As a student there were times which I  finished my homework earlier but hold till the deadline, hoping to improve it. Inevitably submit it last minute without change it a bit. My  teacher used to turn the hourglass by the time we were assigned the exercise and the class was over. So the deadline would be at the end of the next class where you could submit your exercise in person if you want or justify why you didn't. No midnight deadlines. Another tactic he applied was to give an extension but with 20% readjustment of you grade.

Similar to what David said, I often turn my assignments in very close to the deadline; not because of poor planning, but because of good planning. If an assignment isn't due for a couple weeks, I will check it out a little bit to figure out how long it will take me, then procrastinate on it until the night it is due, at which point I will give myself enough time to finish it. I produce much better work when I know that there is a deadline approaching and I can't be messing around or getting distracted. Turning in an assignment close to the deadline isn't necessarily a lack of responsibility.

@ALANWARD: You're welcome. It seems that you're right, in general. However, I doubt that the fact of knowing about the other group's deadline is a significant factor in that scenario. Why would one care too much about others' deadline or completion of homework, when you have your own situation that you have to take care of?

I loved assignments with deadlines at 5am. Night is the best time for me to work. No distractions make me more effective, and I know I'll run out of cat pictures and other kinds of fuel for procrastination by midnight, leaving 5 hours to work on the assignment.

Make it due at midnight with a 24 hour grace period. Very similar to rent...it's due on the 1st, but it isn't late until the 5th.

While it may seem that students continue to make the same mistakes and fall into the same traps, year after year, it bears noting that every year they are new students - students without the benefit of the hard-learned lessons weathered by those previous. It doesn't mean that they haven't learned from the experience - in fact they most likely do, and continue to. Set the deadline. Let them figure it out. If those are the stats, then 65% of students probably need to learn that procrastination gets you into trouble. If it takes learning the hard way, then so be it. You teach two lessons for one.

Having just submitted a conference paper with a midnight deadline at 11:59:56, I can vouch that this sort of behavior is not the sole domain of young adults.

When I was a student many years ago, I used to get my assignments done in good time.
However more the once, the lecturer would on the due day or the day before spend time in the lecture giving hints about how to do the assignment.   This rewards people that have left it to the last minute.
You get what is rewarded!

@Wrzlprmft "Computer gliches are today's "the dog ate my homework"." Well, not all the time. I, for example, did have some computer glitches before the deadlines. I know that after all, I should do it during the time, but when I planned that "I can do this in three hours", and made room for three hours before deadlines, then the computer (or more corectly, the program) started to have trouble.

Does it need to be said? The classic answer to "I had a sudden emergency an hour before the paper was due" excuses, from "I had to give a drunk friend a ride home" to "my Internet connection was down", is: "That's why I gave you 3 weeks to do the assignment. So you had plenty of time to get it done well before the due date, so a sudden emergency would not be an issue."

Set assignments due 11:55 Sunday night.  (1) 12:00 is ambiguous - is it due midnight or noon. (2) give students enough time so that they can reasonably finish by Thursday afternoon.  Then if they have questions they can raise them to you by Friday and will have a whole weekend to incorporate your answer into their assignment.  (3) The weekend is your free time.  Monday morning, you can mass delete requests for extension received over the weekend.  They should have anticipated the need for an extension by end of Thursday and asked for it by end of Friday.

@Andrew My deadlines were at 23.55 p.m, to avoid that type of confusion

@Ooker: That does not invalidate my statement. I suppose it occasionally really happens that a dog eats some homework (or destroys it in another matter). But that does not render the excuse valid. You are responsible for keeping your dog away from your homework as you are responsible for keeping proper backups of your work.

@Wrzlprmft well, I didn't disagree with this at all. I just want to say that sometimes bad things can really happen. I once missed an exam because the road was being fixed, so the bus must go another route. The company did announce that on their website, but who would ever go to that website? I had waited for an hour just to realize that. Who should be responsible for this?

@emory +1  In addition to getting confused on the day, I've seen where fellow students get midnight and noon confused.

@Wrzlprmft I disagree with your statement about computer glitches (in general).  When I was a student, all the teachers warned us "make sure to turn in early in case the Internet is out."  Now, as a professional software developer, do you know what happens if the Internet or power goes out?  We go home for the day (not immediately, but after a bit of it not coming on).  Teachers should have clear provisions for how to handle technical glitches.

For example, students should be able to get Internet/computer access through campus in the case of problems with their own personal equipment.  And teacher's should accept submissions via email in the case that the submission server is down.  And teacher's should accept submissions via other means (such as a USB drive) in the case that there are Internet issues for someone somewhere.  And that means submission deadlines have to be at a time the teacher can be physically reached (office hours, etc.)

So it is clear that while in theory these students are responsible young adults, in practice they tend to plan ahead in a less than stellar way.
Might be a bit unfair. not that these are responsible adults by any means, but a responsible adult might not act like you think anyways. There is no reason to hand in an assignment early, unless you give bonus marks or some such. And you might burn yourself, by later thinking up a better answer, or learning something new (the prof might very well give out hints in class, and if you have already submitted, well you cannot revise your work.)

I think you do not understand the typical students sleep patterns. As a student, years ago, it was very annoying having an assignment you needed to hand in be due at midnight. But for online submit it is perfect. Kids really do not go to sleep that early. 12 is not staying up late.

I have ADD. Nothing will solve it for me. I'll always be in that 65% bracket. :) That said, to avoid the last 10% bracket, say the deadline is 10pm, but keep the actual deadline midnight to give them that 'glitch window'.

A point to consider here is that time management is not the only factor in near-deadline handins. The people who hand in the assignment days before the deadline could also be considered as not having taken all the available opportunity to improve and refine their work!

While I admire your concern for the students, I feel that ultimately your endeavor is quixotic.
To be sure, I see nothing wrong with making your deadline be at 10 pm. It won't change anything, so you might as well. But I wouldn't expect it to have any notable effect, and I would be wary of the slippery slope that leads to you blaming yourself for the students' errors.
The reason I am so pessimistic is that I don't think procrastination and irregular sleep are caused by deadline timing (unless the work demanded is truly overwhelming, but in college it never is). They are caused by poor personal discipline and bad habits acquired over many years leading up to the present. Regardless of what you do, the procrastinators will still invent ways to procrastinate, because the problem is rooted in their own behavior, not yours. You therefore cannot solve the problem by changing your behavior.
For instance, if you have the deadline at 10 pm, the procrastinator will drop everything that evening to work on your assignment and submit it around 10. Then he will still stay up doing the things he just postponed for the sake of your assignment. Because, recall, this person is not selectively procrastinating on your course only - they have also other courses that have deadlines. Even if all courses had the same early deadline policy, the students would still have their own errands with self-imposed deadlines at later times that they stay up for.
By the same logic that makes you consider 10 pm, we can explore other alternatives:

5 pm is a fair time, since it would presumably encourage students to concentrate their last ditch effort in the typical working day. However, there will also be students who have classes right up to the deadline that day, and if they procrastinate (as some certainly shall) they will now skip class to do the assignment, which is arguably worse than staying up!
Noon is another time that sounds like a good idea. Being too early, you might expect that it will make students feel they have no choice but to start working on it early since the morning isn't nearly enough time, and if they can't finish it the night before they can safely go to bed, get some sleep, and finish in the morning. But realistically, the procrastinators who stay up late and hand it in at midnight now will just start working at 1 am and stay up all night to finish it.
9 am can be argued for as a realistic time - it's not like you will start grading at midnight, so there isn't really a point in requiring the assignment by midnight - instead of having the students rush their submission to a deadline just so it could sit in your mailbox for several hours, you could tell them to that you will start grading at 9 am and they should have it done by then. This makes the deadline less arbitrary, since there is now a clear logic to being required to meet it (ie. you will be delayed if they don't do their part). But of course you will again have the same problem of students staying up all night because they procrastinated.

For what it's worth, I think the midnight deadline came about as codification of an unspoken tradition. Often deadlines are given as days, without time - with this, there is always much controversy about what exactly counts as meeting an August 6 deadline: Does it have to be done at the beginning of Aug 6? Does it have to be before the instructor leaves the office? Does it have to be before the end of the day, ie. before you go to sleep? Well, what if you never go to sleep, can you squeeze out a few more hours and still "meet your Aug 6 deadline" by submitting at 3:14 am on [technically] Aug 7?
Even though informally "today" means "until I go to sleep", the convention is that the date changes at midnight, which is also reinforced by how computer clocks show the date. Hence, I think the midnight deadline came about as an extension of this - it's just a date delimiter.
As for the students, since you are concerned about how late they go to sleep, surely you will agree that planning ahead and not leaving everything to the last minute is an important skill to be learned as part of tertiary education. This, then, the students must learn on their own, you cannot help them by tinkering with deadlines, since indeed the deadline is not what is preventing their learning. In fact, one could argue that you should maximize the negative reinforcement, and set the deadline at the worst possible time - say 6 am: The more misery you inflict on the procrastinators, the better they will appreciate how important it is to learn discipline, and the sooner they will take steps to unlearn their bad habits.
Granted, I'm not seriously suggesting you do the above, since it seems like it could go horribly wrong. Realistically, I could instead suggest the following:

Set your deadline at some reasonable, early time such as noon.
Secretly (ie. do not tell this part to the students) have the "real deadline" (for instance, the one you lose points for missing) be quite a bit later, say 5 pm.
In class, say that it is very important they not miss the deadline even by a minute (don't say why), and they should come talk to you if they feel they won't make it.
When they inevitably come asking for more time, be liberal with the extensions, but not before making them explain why they were late and lecturing them on the importance of planning ahead. When giving the extension, explain that they absolutely cannot miss the extended deadline, because then you would not be able to meet your own deadline for grading (whether true or not).
If anyone misses the noon deadline (but not the 5 pm deadline), confront them about it to discourage submitting late without asking for an extension (which allows bypassing the social discomfort of asking for more time).

With this, you might create something like a low stakes environment (you don't lose massive points just for being a few minutes late) while still creating a fair amount of social pressure to increase the likelihood of a lightbulb appearing and the student thinking, "Hey, Dr. Ward is very nice and reasonable about deadlines and everything, but maybe it's worth for me to try to stop leaving everything to the last minute?". Furthermore, if you force them into an explicit discussion about their procrastination, they have an opportunity to ask you for advice on how to plan their work.
But all of this requires quite a bit of effort from you (much more than just replacing "midnight" with "10 pm" on your syllabus). So if you are not willing to commit the energy, there isn't really much that can be achieved with quick fixes.

Basically, you are recommending a holistic approach to the way I use the online platform, am I not correct? ;-) Fair enough. Since I cannot handle the complete discussion in one step, I will be concentrating separately on each aspect. But you are very right to comment on the fact it is a complete process with many aspects to it.

"...unless the work demanded is truly overwhelming, but in college it never is..."
I feel the need to say that this is largely a matter of opinion. What is a piece of cake to one person could very well overwhelm another person. Just because you never got/get overwhelmed by college doesn't mean that nobody does.
However, I realize this does not invalidate your answer, nor does it even invalidate the first part of the sentence saying that lack of sleep is probably not tied to the timing of deadlines.

Imagine a single parent with a full-time job who is also going to school full-time. It is certainly possible that they could get overwhelmed at some point. I like your answer other than that part.

+1 to @PrinceTyke, -1 to this answer. Overwhelming is a relative term. Also, you're way too pessimistic about people's reasons for their habits and generally the whole thing.

@PrinceTyke Well, since it generated so much controversy, I'll take that part out. However, I have heard people express the opinion that the workload in post-grad life (be it the private sector or grad school) is much heavier than college very often, and the opposite very rarely, hence my remark.

From personal experience the work demanded can be objectively overwhelming. In my Compiler & languages course we were required to write from scratch the whole front-end (lexer+parser+type-checker+some static analysis+intermediate code generation) for a simple language in 8 days. Moreover this was done during lessons time, which means you already had like 6 hours of classes during the day. Sure, if you already did this 5-6 times in your life you already know the issues and may obtain something decent in the time, but consider someone doing this the first time ever in this way...

In the end about 70% of the students couldn't provide something compilable and runnable, and basically nobody could complete everything without errors or missing some request. The professor had to skew the votes or nobody could get a decent vote out of that course.

9am is a spectacularly bad idea. I once TA'd a class where the professor set the deadline for the midterm paper at 10am Monday morning. I was the person receiving all the papers by email*. Most students submitted between 2am and 8am, and thus had their entire Monday ruined.
*Because of a combination of university privacy requirements and IT ineptness, the students were required to submit their papers (electronic, including code) to my email, I verified anonymity and passed them on to those grading as files like "10001.zip" etc.

@PrinceTyke, "being overwhelmed by classes" can also be just a symptom of bad time scheduling (taking too many classes, for instance).

@vonbrand I totally agree, but it can still be overwhelming for some people, especially those who try to do too much.

Good point about the "unspoken tradition". In industry, I've experienced that deadlines tend to be either Close of Business (must be done before standard office hours end that day) or before the office opens the next morning. If something is in the second category, a "August 6" deadline is met if it is in the boss's inbox when he walks in to his office on the morning of August 7.

First of all, I think the distribution that you're seeing is not very unusual, and indeed looks very similar to the distribution of times that I see coming from mature scientists submitting conference papers and grants.
It is simply that people, including your students, tend to overcommit themselves and to underestimate the difficulty of work. When that is combined with tasks on which there is a flexible amount of effort that can be invested (e.g., quality of work on an assignment), it is generally the case that "this work is done" is an ill-defined notion, and instead it gets triaged at some point of time shortly before the assignment.  Better and more prepared students (or whoever) simply climb farther up in quality before triaging.
Given that, I generally advocate for a policy of "tight deadlines, lots of mercy."  That means setting the deadline slightly before when you really want the assignment turned in, and then being very liberal about accepting requests for extension up until your secret "real deadline."
Addressing your specific question about timing, I think that if you want your students to get more sleep, moving the deadline up a couple of hours is a totally reasonable tactic: given the phenomena at work, it is unlikely to affect the distribution or quality of the assignments you receive.  Depending on how your automated system works, you may also be able to explicitly support an official deadline of 10pm, with the de facto ability to leave the submission system open longer to receive the main tranche of "just a little bit late" assignments.

Yes, this strategy is indeed possible with our (Moodle-based) system. The only point that hinders me in applying it is the fact that students will rapidly become aware of the rules actually being applied. It is worth some thought, though - and the analysis is well appreciated.

I think this is unfair to students who take deadlines seriously. If they had problems with a homework, they would turn in what they had shortly before the stated deadline. They lose the points they could have gained if they had known the real deadline, and taken a few more hours.

@PatriciaShanahan You raise a valid point here. From a moral standpoint, people who "play by the rules" should not lose out, so I am also inclined to apply some type of penalty for late submissions. Within reason, of course.

@PatriciaShanahan I essentially use this approach in my classes and I attempt to mitigate the fairness issue by strongly and continually encouraging students to talk with me about their assignments and their progress.  Thus (hopefully) the student who turned in the incomplete HW would include a comment describing their problems and, if reasonable, I could extend some mercy (extra time and help) their way.

A good policy they had at my university was staggered penalties. IIRC you'd lose 1 point out of 22 for missing the deadline, no excuses, then another point for each additional 24 hours. So those who overcommit learn a valuable life lesson without their work being completely wasted, and those who plan ahead are rewarded. And if, like me, you discover a catestrophic error 24 hours before deadline, you make a tradeoff between submitting fixed work a day late at -1 point and incorrect work on time at -?? points

@KennyPeanuts: What about students who submitted a complete solution in time? I can imagine they would get a feeling of "having done better work than their peers" (by solving the tasks within the deadline), yet, the result they get is the same. And while their solution may be complete, it is well possible they put extra effort (think stress levels; the necessity to apply one-time solutions rather than set up something slightly more complex, but reusable; etc.) into their homework compared to the others who took their time.

Set the official deadline to 22:00 and let the system accept submissions until 22:30 - this will not really be unfair to diligent students, because 30min will not likely decide between life&dead - but many students will be happy akin wow... already 21:59 and the internet is slow as hell.... 22:03 uploading - yeah I got lucky it sill worked!

@O.R.Mapper you can easily add this as a benefit rather than penalty - if your submission is more than 3 days before the deadline you get 3 extra points for free. Because with an overall assignemtn time of 3 weeks, most students start to work on the problem 1-2 days before deadline... so either you start early to get the bonus, or you are already one of the late ones and don't complain if someone was 20minutes slower...

@O.R.Mapper I agree that the students who consistently do their work on time may suffer slightly from a points perspective under this system but I do not think that everything that you learn in school needs to be rewarded with points. If you are a diligent student you will likely benefit in other ways (e.g., letters of reference, opportunities for research or projects, etc...) as well as simply developing habits of life consistent with a competent and educated person. In the end I strive to make my approach to grading as fair as possible while still exercising compassion and humility.

@Falco With programming assigments 30 minutes makes the difference

"very similar to the distribution of times that I see coming from mature scientists submitting conference papers and grants" Indeed. I have seen this firsthand.

I set a deadline, and allow late turn in. Homework turned in late has a (small) penalty, but the penalty grows with time until a cutoff point. In very rare cases I'll grant exemption from (part) of the penalty.

·@O.R.Mapper, we just try to be fair, we can't guarantee complete fairness. Such is life.

I would consider a deadline at around 10p.m. very wise and student-friendly. I remember staying up late night as long as the submission system allows to post a new version and polishing the hell out of my assignment, although it probably made little difference.
As a lecturer I have always readily given small extensions to people who asked at least a little (about a day) in advance before the deadline, because I think that this fosters good habits in life: it is OK to fail sometimes, but you should handle the failure responsibly and warn people depending on you in advance.
I like the "tight deadlines, lots of mercy" policy mentioned in another answer (which I think is one of the good solutions). If you are worried that students will learn and exploit this policy, you can have a deadline that is openly less strict: for example subtracting 10 points from the evaluation of the assignment for every hour of delay or letting the students to submit until the next lecture, but for half the points. I experienced this a few times as a student and it was motivational yet forgiving to small lapses.

Nice solution. I have applied at times a variant, which is to waive the penalty the first time - but not on successive occasions. As you say, I was aiming for the motivational aspect.

+1 for the second paragraph; this advice is especially useful in professional life. If you have a team of people waiting for 'your piece', then letting them know in advance that you won't have it ready until a day after the deadline is nothing but helpful. At that point, they can work on something else that doesn't need your piece. This applies to group projects especially (university or professional).

I'd like to add my two cents as a current student with three years of college behind me. In my experience, I've always preferred having a deadline of midnight to a deadline of 10pm because during the school year, I'm often up until midnight regardless, and sometimes my workload requires me to prioritize my assignments in such a way that many things get submitted in the eleventh hour, so to speak. Furthermore, I tend to do much of my work in the late evening, as that's when I personally am able to focus on assignments the best. This experience comes from three years from a Computer Science undergrad, so take it with whatever that information brings. I think the deadline will mean different things to different students regardless of when it actually is, and I think students will still end up submitting just before the deadline is due, but I personally prefer midnight to 10pm.

Agreed; also as a Computer Science undergrad, our CS labs are usually just about empty between 8 PM and midnight. I don't like to work from home because there are too many distractions, and an empty CS lab at night is the perfect working environment (for me). Those are the only assignments that I put off (which is a bad idea because coding is prone to a million errors for simple mistakes), but for me it makes the most sense to do that. Midnight for me is a good deadline time.

I completely agree with the sentiment that an empty (I'll settle for simply sparsely-populated, provided I have some headphones) CS lab at night is the perfect working environment. Putting off programming assignments is awful, but I think the vast majority of CS students do so. I know I do.

@ChrisCirefice, I have fond memories of allnighters in the computer lab to which I had a key as a graduate student, as regular labs were closed and the machines weren't hopelessly overloaded at night. But there was no staff on hand to unwedge your account (happened regularly as a result of some stupid command combinations). That was time to go home ;-)

As a PhD candidate who has taught (as in was the primary lecturer, not just a TA) and recently taken classes I have a different opinion than to move assignments to an early time, e.g. 10PM.  My solution for a programming intensive class that I taught was to make the assignments always due at 5AM on Saturday.  I picked Saturday specifically because if they wanted to stay up late it would not affect attending class that day.  My reasoning behind  the 5AM time was that the time you make assignments due can actually relate to your late policy.
By making assignments due at 5AM on Saturday I could be very strict about late assignments.  My late policy was simple: it's late, it's a zero grade, no exceptions.  I had a script that would grab all the assignments at 5:02AM (okay so they got a 2 minute window) and that was the only thing I would look at.  If they submitted at 5:04AM it was never graded.  If a student would come back and complain that they just missed the deadline my response was simple:
Look you had all night to work on the assignment and you obviously had to stay up extremely late which means you didn't budget your time well or you thought it would be so simple you could do it in a night.  Both of those assumptions were wrong.  I hope for the next assignment you do not make the same mistake.
Finally, I had a draconian late policy (which might be a bit off topic to the question but is relevant to my answer) for a very simple reason.  As a TA who has had to grade countless number of homework assignments, you spend probably about 25% to 50% of your time dealing with the 5% of the assignments that were late, either because you have to schedule a demo on a different day than the rest, or you have to go back to problems to see how you previously took points of for a (semi-)wrong answer, etc.  This is a huge unnecessary drain on human resources and can greatly affect research progress.  Now this usually doesn't matter if the assignment is just 5 minutes late but by having a strict late policy I avoided all the: "it was only a day late can I get partial credit", arguments and those assignments do add an unnecessary burden on grader/TA.
And as for how this policy works in practice.  Per semester, I usually have only one student submit one assignment that is just barely late, say submitted after 5AM and before 5:30AM.  The rest get a very clear picture.
I should add that this policy did result in piazza, which we used for class communication,  exploding the night the assignment was due but I made it very clear to the students that after 9PM I was not answering any piazza or email questions.  If they wanted to use piazza to ask each other questions that was fine but I did not participate.

Yours seems like yet another good justification for moving the deadline into the middle of a night. The only slight disadvantage that I could see with having it on a Saturday night is that (probably (?)) you aren't going to grade the assignments on Sunday, anyway, and some students may specifically plan to use their weekend, including Sundays, for working on assignments. On the other hand, it might of course help them arrive at a work-on-Saturday-get-a-free-Sunday schedule to some extent.

@O.R.Mapper actually it was due on Saturday 5AM specifically so I could use the weekend to grade and have the grades given back by Monday, when the class would meet.  This reaffirmed the "its done don't talk to be about an extension" mindset.  You could push it back 24 hours so it was due on Sunday at 5AM, same idea basically.

Oh, and one remark on your text: I take it "piazza" is the name of your online submission system, but it suddenly appears somewhat out of nowhere in your last paragraph.

@O.R.Mapper piazza is communication platform for classes, I have added a link and context.  Thanks for the point.

Interesting solution, and one that seems to have fit in quite well with the rhythm of your classes. I take it assignments were pretty short, short enough to be able to grade them all within a weekend, and so maintain a rather dynamic dialogue between you and the students. This system may or may not work well in other contexts, where assignments could be complete projects, so rather heavy-weight both for the student and for the grading process.

@ALANWARD actually the assignments were somewhat large, 3-4 weeks, but I did automate some of the grading as it was a programming class.  I would argue that it would work if it took longer to grade as that was not a key thing in my experience just a nice bonus, but I can't say with any level of certainty.  If the assignments took longer to grade, perhaps students would argue for the assignment to be extended to include the weekend.

5am on Saturday morning seems an excellent time. Nobody can claim with a straight face that they intended to work until five minutes before the deadline and were a bit too late if the deadline is at 5am in the morning.

Without getting into considerations on whether students should plan better [...] would changing deadline times from midnight to, for example, 10 p.m. be a good move from the standpoint of their getting enough sleep.

Most likely, yes, students on average would get more sleep. I was TAing a class last term (a computer science class for 4th-year undergraduate students in college), the weekly assignment deadline was 10 AM on Sunday. Here is the typical submission time cumulative distribution we would get:

As we discussed with the professor when to set the deadline, we simply based our decision on when the assignments would be graded, and left students freedom to organize their schedule. While some need to sleep early, others prefer to work at night.

Please, is the graph cumulative? Does it show number of submissions submitted until time t or number of submissions submitted around time t?

@yo' cumulative

I suggest the opposite course of action by moving the deadline further into the night. Set it at a time where no-one voluntarily would want to hand in their work. In my opinion, that is the best incentive to have them reconsider their personal scheduling.
As for the online system, you write:

The impression that is perceived is that the online nature of the submission system makes students take slightly more liberties with deadlines than when assignments had to be handed in, in a face-to-face situation

I suspect this is coupled to how the online system is generally presented, as I have made the opposite experience. We generally communicate a very strict "hand in via the system, or do not hand in at all" policy. That is, e-mails will generally not be accepted as an alternative to submission via the system (as long as the system is not actually having internal technical issues). As opposed to e-mails, where there is always a certain leeway for asking for exceptional treatment along the lines of "the e-mail sent at 09:59 was routed in a way so it only arrived at 10:01", when the online system is announced to close down at 10, it will automatically close down at 10 (ideally, while displaying the server time in its web-based interface). This way, non-uniform acceptance of delayed submissions between different instructors for one class is avoided.

although it is clear that even then there will always be a certain percentage of people with difficulties respecting deadlines

Indeed, unfortunately, that is unavoidable - but as being able to stick to deadlines is one of the factors expected of a professional, these people simply will not get their degree in the end.

would changing deadline times from midnight to, for example, 10 p.m. be a good move from the standpoint of their getting enough sleep (moral considerations welcome) and actually attending class at the beginning of the next day?

I would somewhat doubt it. A pattern that I seem to perceive in people around me, both students and non-students, is that either they work until late at night and are very exhausted from that, or they work slightly shorter, are not totally exhausted ... and instead stay up doing whatever they like doing until they are equally exhausted. Maybe yours is not even the only deadline in the same evening, and changing your deadline only changes the order in which the tasks will be treated. I simply do not see a strong connection between your submission deadline and the time they actually go to bed.
EDIT: Reading Ángel's answer made me aware that it cannot be taken for granted in an online submission system that students can replace their submission once they have uploaded something. I consider such a feature essential. I am fully in favour of encouraging students to plan thoroughly and be on time, but if a satisfactory submission that solves the declared task has been made well within the deadline, I see no point in disallowing the respective student from replacing it with an updated version that is even a bit more tidy or well-explained.

Interesting take on the problem. You make an assessment of the email system that corresponds very well to what we have observed here: it is just does not precise enough (as regards timing) to use it for submissions. However, as regards enforcing a very strict system, unfortunately some excuses will inevitably be receivable ("my father just died" has happened to me - and it was actually true :-( ). So, we are back to the dilemma of where do we draw the line between receivable and non-receivable reasons. Hmmm... some flexibility seems unavoidable.

@ALANWARD: Well, it may be a question of how obvious the path to stating the excuses are. E-mail is a means of communication, and accordingly, students may readily use it not only to submit their homework, but also to communicate why it is arriving late. A web-based submission form that does not allow for any "message", on the other hand, may not to the same extent signal readiness to accept any additional information, and it is primarily only students that actually have compelling reasons for excuses that will, in addition to the submission, send a message some other way. With that said, ...

... in cases like the one you alluded to we usually do not extend the submission deadline, but rather tell the respective people to wait until the end of the semester. Should they be missing points compared to the score required for "passing" the course, we can work something out then (e.g. a brief oral exam, or an extra task, ...). That minimizes the administrative hassle and does not imply any penalty for the student. (Of course, it works only if the overall course result is binary, or discrete enough for a missing submission not to have any effect.)

@O.R.Mapper, passing is not sufficient for most students in the US. Grades are basically numerical scores in the end, so good students have the right to try to maximize them. I agree that we can accommodate true emergencies, but it often has to be in a way equivalent to them having handed in on time.

@BillBarth: In such a case, a more immediate solution is probably adviseable indeed. In my place, the system mostly works by each course coming with assignments during the semester from which a score can be accumulated, and only if a minimum score is reached from those assignments (thus making this a binary choice), the student is allowed to take the exam on the course, which will then result in a grade (a numerical score) that will form a part of the final degree grade (also a numerical score). Hence, there are some places where binary decisions sometimes appear, as a preliminary step.

@O.R.Mapper, yeah that's pretty different from most US schools that I know about. Generally here (law schools being the glaring exception), the final grade is based on the accumulation of grades on assignments, during-course exams, larger scale projects, and final exams (or some subset thereof) all with different weightings.

Remember: it's not your duty to clean your students noses and make sure they submit everything on time or weeks before the deadline. If you want to be merciful you can apply increasing penalties or you can set a hard cutoff if you're not feeling merciful. You'll probably get less pleading emails and headaches if you apply a sliding scale of penalties but it's up to you and you shouldn't feel you have to.
You have no duty to hand everyone a pass. Don't feel bad if some people screw themselves over by not submitting on time.
I encountered lots of variation as a student and have few strong feelings about it though I always somewhat preferred late-night deadlines because I worked better in the evening.
As long as the deadlines don't change: the only time a deadline ever pissed me off was when the professor kept changing it. 3 weeks, no 2 weeks, no 4 weeks, no 1 week  etc.

You have no duty to hand everyone a pass.
He is being paid to teach them. So you could say it is his duty to have as many pass as possible. Every failed student is a failed teacher, to some degree.

@JonathonWisnoski no, if he was teaching 4 year olds that might be true but at collage the students are adults. He's being paid to provide an opportunity to learn and an opportunity for the person to prove they've learned. If people don't take one or the other opportunity when provided with a fair chance that is 100% on them. Universities also provide a third service to the rest of society: They certify that their graduates were competent enough to pass a university course. If they pass someone too inept to hand in assignments they've failed utterly in that last duty.

I have dealt with this issue in setting closing times for Webwork assignments, which is a kind of online Content Management System specific to mathematics.
After having tried out various times, I have converged on 7pm.  Why?
Originally I had it due at 5pm.  There is something about 5pm that is hard to complain about: in the US it is widely regarded as the end of the work day.  It is the latest in the day you could set a meeting or an appointment without apologizing or confirming in advance that it is okay.  There is a wide cultural feeling that people should be working until 5pm, at which point they want to go home.
Well, I said hard to complain about.  The complaints I got were that people were submitting their solutions at 4:59:47 and not getting accepted by the system.  Such complaints are very hard to verify (especially if you don't try) and pretty annoying.  So what I said was, "You should think of the assignment as being due at 5pm and work accordingly.  The extra two hours is a grace period that will nullify any technical difficulties."
Two other benefits of having roughly this due time:
1) If students want to ask questions before it's due (or rather, until 5pm), those questions will come during my normal work day.  I might get a chance to answer them, and I certainly will not resent them.  It can be annoying to get an email at 11:47pm for an assignment which is due at midnight with the implication that if you do not reply in time you are impeding their learning.
2) I post the solutions after a two hour delay.  This time frame makes it more feasible to push back the due date a few hours before the deadline if that really seems like a good idea.  If the due time were, say, 3 am, this would not be as convenient.

As a current student and full time worker I think 5 pm is way too early for a due date, this would force me to have to finish the assignment the night before because I work all day. I think midnight is much more flexible and fair to night owls like me

@reggaeguitar: Yes, part of the point of this due time is to discourage students from waiting until the last day. There is no problem in finishing the assignment the night before.  The number of late nights that you have to do the assignment is the same.

Also, I should clarify that this policy was for a course taught in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia.  Students who work all day could not attend such courses, since they are only scheduled during the 8am-5pm work day.

I've been a procrastinator my whole life and never run into problems because of it; I wait until the last day for literally all of my assignments. In my opinion the teacher's job is to teach, not to "discourage students from waiting until the last day".

@reggaeguitar: Many instructors believe that encouraging students to spend more time rather than less engaging the material is one of the most important parts of the teaching process.  If you stay in academia long enough, you will unavoidably receive assignments that it is literally impossible to complete in a single day, e.g. a PhD dissertation.  Even as an undergraduate, if you never receive assignments that require more than one day of work, you are probably missing out on some important learning experiences.  Consider whether you are taking courses that really challenge you.

Interesting solution. I must say I had not thought of putting the deadline so early - basically because students (and faculty) may well be still physically present at that time. Does a 5 p.m. deadline not kind of defeat the utility of using an electronic system, when just tossing a printed solution into an income basket could work just as well?

@ALAN: " Does a 5 p.m. deadline not kind of defeat the utility of using an electronic system, when just tossing a printed solution into an income basket could work just as well?" It depends a lot on what you're doing.  I was assuming that the electronic system was doing something other than merely collecting the work.  In my case, it is grading the homework, giving students multiple attempts, and so forth.  If it's just a conventional problem set: sure, why not have them turn it in in class?

@PeteL.Clark My thought, precisely. ;-)

I just set a deadline for questions, just as a deadline for turning in homework exists.

The system is flexible precisely for allowing that. For those 65% students sending in-the-hour, you can't know if they did it at 23:00 or if they had the assignment ready in their hard disk for a week, but didn't hand in until then.
I agree they are probably doing the work at 23:00, but a big point to take into account shall be their other duties. If yours was their only commitment, the graphic would probably change, but other subjects will be placing their own tasks, they may be practising sports, etc.
The main reason for delaying a task was having many other assignments due earlier. I should also note that if you open a task before it has been fully explained, it will actually deter from trying to complete it early, since you transmit the idea that "it can't be done yet".
I would keep the late hour, or perhaps even move it later (the 5 AM proposal is a good idea).
(Hint: Never place a deadline at day X at 00:00 but to day X-1 at 23:59, there's a big UI factor there)
Another option I initally liked was to place it at 7:59 the next day (just before the begin of the next day), but it has the drawback that you may delay the "final submit" when you wake up, and fail for a "computer error". OTOH, you may allow that way that they can hand it in manually to you the next day (or if your class is at 11:00, the deadline could be at 10:59, thus you can start the class asking for phisical submission of anyone that otherwise failed).
Another point to ids that you should allow, if supported by your platform, multiple "draft" uploads. Make clear that you won't be viewing them (until the deadline passes). Thus, you can submit the almost-ready work, and if there's a catastrophic failure after it gets the final revision, the draft would be considered final (you may eg. miss some spell-checking fixes).
A problem I identified is that as you are only allowed to submit once, you delay for the final version, even if it's almost ready, and then problems kick-in like "it takes too long to upload", "you included too many graphics in png, and the generated file is now over the size limit" (and you end up rushing to change all of them to jpeg). Limits which are not always clearly stated (eg. an email filesize limit, the webmail taking forever for accepting an upload...).
I would also accept that they commit a hash of their work in case they have some upload problem (although your students need to be a bit computer-savvy for that). [They provide before the deadline a hash of the file they are going to turn in, so there's no way they can provide a different file later, even if the upload fails at that point in time]
If you want to encourage early submission, I would provide bonus points for submitting early. Sending an automatic reminder to people who hasn't submitted yet may also improve the submission times (the right timing is very important here, though. The due date shouldn't be far away, and the email should be received at an , you are unlikely to remember at home -or in the weekend!- the email reminder received on Monday morning).
PS: There are cases where the students program meeting during a break previous to the class for doing the task, so I don't think it is right to consider that they take "more liberties with [online] deadlines than when they are handed in in a face-to-face situation".

I somewhat disagree with your examples for other duties. While it is true there are also other courses with assignments as a part of the studies, at least at my place, university rules generally make it very clear that studying a major is a full-time job that must be granted the first priority in the student's life. Part-time jobs, if any, and hobbies such as practising sports have to be scheduled in a way so as to not conflict with the university courses. At least in such a setting, only another university assignment can serve as a valid excuse. Good point about the option to submit ...

... several versions of an assignment, though. In my answer, I had taken that option for granted, but I will add a remark that such a feature is essential and should always be there.

@O.R.Mapper, I was not talking about additionally having a job, but different subjects, all of them setting tasks and fighting for the student time. At least in my experience, teachers tend to be completely unaware of each other assignments, and there's not even one with a whole view of the students duties (even for a "classic" students with the expected subjects).

@O.R.Mapper And I mentioned sports as a reason for scheduling the assignments late at night. So, with the original midnight deadline, you could plan ahead and probably prefer to practise X at 7pm, after all university courses, and do the assignment later at night, instead of doing the assignment early and playing football at 1am ;)

Interestingly enough, I can take your comments to heart since I have recently passed another Master's at an online university. This last semester I had four subjects. Most assignments were due on precisely the same day, and the others within a three-day window. So, I agree teachers do not (and perhaps cannot) reliably take into account other subjects' calendars. This is perhaps an area where online systems should allow us to better synchronize, but the underlying problem is complex when handling a large number of subjects and an even larger number of students.

Referring to the submit once/submit many times problem, luckily enough the systems (plural) I use allow the student to submit many times, and only the last version is taken into account. I actually encourage them to submit work in progress, since they will at least get partial marks if the final version does not make it into the system for whatever reason.

I don't think you should be choosing between 10pm and midnight at all; deadlines should not be in the middle of the night, or the small hours of the morning, or at the weekends or... any time outside a standard working day.
Students are not just at university to get grades; they are also preparing for the rest of their lives in employment and society at large. Also, on the whole, university is not a hobby, it is a full-time job. The messages I'm hearing from your question (and some of the answers) is that it is reasonable to expect to not complete your work until the middle of the night, that it is reasonable to expect others to continue working long after they should have gone home, and that expectations should be adjusted to fit your personal preferences. The last of these will not be true when they start being paid. The other two I personally think are negatively affecting our society. I've become aware of a battle quietly raging over whether it is acceptable to not work overnight, at the weekend and while on holiday.

Indeed, some active professionals seem be "on duty" 24h/24 and not to have much time for rest and private life at all. I agree this is somewhat not fair. However, I would also like to point out that a student's timetable will typically show some 20+ hours of class, which is not a full work day. If students choose to program their personal study and homework within the 9-to-5 span, fair play to them - they are showing self-discipline which will probably end up in good results. But if they prefer working at night ... I guess I agree with many that is not my business.

Sorry, no, this is not how it works at many places. University is worse than the true company quite often in that they put really varying workload on the students. Sometimes you get loads of free time, and sometimes you work hard and you can't get around it. Ignoring this as a teacher is plain wrong. Many people simply do work late nights and for students, this is more than usual. It is also given by the fact that at their age, they easily get used to such lifestyle etc. -- this is also not true in industry.

None of that has anything to do with setting a deadline at a sensible time of day rather than in the night time. You can do your work in the night if you want, but you have to do it the night BEFORE the deadline. arguing that the workload varies for students is not relevant to moving a deadline by a few hours, if they're getting at least a week to do the work.

And the reason many academics work all night and weekend is it's the only time they can get on with their jobs without students pestering them about the assignments.

I think midnight is reasonable.  I've been known to set certain cut off times with the same thing in mind.  My students had to have their online workbooks done by 2:00 am when I started realizing some of them were working on them all night long the night before the test (traditionally due by the start of the test).  Because our department policy was 50% late credit for those assignments, I would tell them to just stop at 2:00 and get sleep and take the test fully rested, and finish up their (now late) work the next day.
Back in the day, I'd tend to turn in papers at the last minute, but only because I wanted to have the maximum amount of "rest time" between writing it and doing a final check for those typos you can only find after removing yoursef a bit, so I'd caution against saying they're rushing the writing bit just because they turn it in at the last minute.
The only way you can address people trying to rush to finish an assignment is to have periodic due dates for particular elements of the paper.  Not knowing your subject, you could do something like this (not necessarily in sequential days, of course):

Day 1: general topic defined
Day 2: preliminary bibliography
Day 3: 25% ish written
Day 4: 75% ish written
Day 5: Completed copy

The first four days could just be checks (rather than graded) so as to not add to your workload.

OK, basically you are giving the student a bit of extra guidance as to how to manage their time doing the final assignment. This is certainly actually quite helpful and necessary for some students, but perhaps a tad complicated since you now need to think about late submissions for each element of the paper. What happens if the general topic is still in a state of limbo on the day the bibliography is due? Can the students submit the two together? Must they? Decisions, decisions... ;-)

Do not do this except for very long assignments, and do not do this unless you plan on giving the students feedback on each submission they can use to improve the next (and final) product. Don't assume you can manage your student's time better than they can themselves. They have a lot more information about how they work and their schedule than you ever can. I worked full time to pay the mortgage and feed the kids when I was in school. Any attempts at help like this generally resulted in more late (or sleepless) nights as it forced me to work on the instructor's  schedule rather than my own.

@Mr.Mindor if a student has a personal situation and communicates it with me in advance, I'm generally willing make reasonable exceptions to policy for them. But when I've tested distributed due dates versus the single one, student evals (and, honestly, quality of work) pushed me towards preferring distributed dates for work. If due dates posted well in advance, a working student can get things done likewise well in advance or make any other adjustments they need.

Personally, from my experience as a student, I think midnight is a good deadline. Many students have jobs and other obligations and a midnight deadline gives them time to come home from work, have dinner and unwind and then spend a few hours double checking the assignment before they hand it in.
Moving the deadline to 10pm may not give enough time to students who work.

well, they have got enough time ... the day before ... and the day before that ... and ...

Almost all comments here from students state that they like to proofread or double check before handing in. I was not referring to actually doing the assignment but just a double check.

Having implemented a 10 pm deadline, I think it works fine. I have two comments to make:

There is no "neutral" answer here. By selecting an hour you are necessarily nudging students in one direction. We cannot get away with this. I suggest you nudge them towards more sleep, also because of point 2.
I would be very annoyed if another professor puts a deadline that nudges students to have a short night before my class. Students might skip my lecture or be tired at it for working close to the deadline. As such, I think it is a good practice, for solidarity with other courses, to set an earlier rather than later deadline.

I recommend that you set the deadline to the time that makes the most sense for you. Arbitrarily setting it earlier or later has no effect on student's time management skills.
As an example, I used to set online homework deadlines to be one hour before the class in which we would go over them started. That way, students wouldn't be trying to work on them until the last minute and would be able to get to class on time. That wasn't out of concern for the students - it was for me. I didn't want to deal with "I was doing the homework" as an excuse, or even a temptation, for being late.
Likewise, setting the deadline earlier would have no benefit to me, and would be arbitrary. I don't know what is going on in my students lives, and giving them the maximum possible time to finish the assignment gives them the freedom to manage their time as they see fit.
The only time I deviated from these rules are when I wanted to make sure that multiple classes had the same amount of time to finish an assignment. In that case, it was still for my convenience, since I wanted to use the homework as an evaluation tool and keeping the length of time to work on it consistent helped with that.
If you think about it, the "real world" works this way too - deadlines are not typically set for the convenience or out of concern for the person doing the work. They are there because someone else (the person determining the deadline) needs the work done by a certain time, or something bad will happen.
That said, it is hard to imagine a situation where "at midnight" is a deadline that makes sense for either you or the students.

This. If you plan to start grading them at 4pm on tuesday, then that is the deadline.

Got interested at the point "Moodle-type" (system); If possible, I would recommend keeping midnight and removing the "hard" deadline, i.e. people can still submit after the deadline, but will be highlighted (at least that's how it works in Moodle) and disable the assignment some time later (e.g. the next day), but state that submissions after the deadline will not be accepted.
Why?

5min off doesn't matter: you can overlook anyone who has a slow connection / forgot to check the clock on their "final sprint" / or whatever
If someone submits way too late, you can either outright ignore the submission or reduce their points by some value / percentage (e.g. 10% per day)
Midnight is feasible for some nights-but-not-overnights-action, so people "learn" there is a deadline, but still can act a litlle short-term-ish

There will be people deliberately abusing this, but in the end, they (could) end up with 0 points.
Seen & used this approach in a few courses (both as student and teacher) and had little to no problems with it.
Clarification Note: I also rarely started grading 1 or 2 days after the deadline, if you cannot afford such a time-frame, such a "tolerant" approach might not be suitable.

Submission time may or may not have anything to do with when a student STARTS the assignment, so even the students turning it in at the last minute may not be under pressure.
As long as you give reasonable deadlines and clearly post them to avoid "gotcha" situations, any deadline you give is certainly fair.
Personally, I usually base deadlines on my needs, but make every effort to give the students the most time I can without creating a burdensome situation for myself or my TAs.  For example, if I'd like the TAs to be grading over the weekend, I'll usually make the due date late Friday PM.  This way, the TAs have time to assemble their weekend work, and if there are students (actually, teams in my case) that need to be tracked down because there was a problem with the submission, there's still time to do it without impacting the work flow.

A different issue is whether it is reasonable to expect TAs to grade over the weekend.

You could also consider setting two deadlines: one deadline for an initial submission, and a second deadline for the final submission. More students might submit the final version shortly after the second deadline, since they would have received a reward: I already completed that much of it.

You then need to clearly define what counts as an initial submission. Is a header file enough for a programming exercise? What if it doesn't compile? And if you do so, then you essentially turned the assignment into two assignments with separate deadlines.

authors: ปิยพงษ์ จันทร์ขาว


text:
How to react being the 6th reviewer of a first submission to a renowned journal?
Recently I was asked to review a paper for a renowned engineering journal of IExx.
After all reviewers submitted their comments, I downloaded the review PDF with all commments and learned the manuscript got comments from SIX reviewers. The manuscript was not outstanding in any way, no room temperature superconductor and no very trendy technology at all, just bread and butter fundamental research.
4 reviewers voted for minor revision, 2 for major revision, no one for outstanding contribution. There was a lot of redundancy in the different comments, especially on missing references.
I'm publishing and reviewing papers for over 10 years now, I never heard of more than 3 reviewers in physics journals. The journal above was a journal with a main scope and focus on sensors. Even for a room temperature superconductor submission I cannot imagine and suggest to use more than 3 reviewers, maybe more after the first review if the 3 reviewers vote reject, publish as is, major revision.
So what happend here?
Personally I feel this is a huge waste of my time (nearly one afternoon), the other reviewers and the manuscript authors. No one of us would likely have started to interact with the journal knowing this procedure.
So the question is, within the review process, if, how and whom I should contact to communicate this?! The ADM and associate editor is not sufficient for my taste. Personally, whatever the revised manuscript will look like, I don't feel the obligation to read it again (anyway voted for minor revision). If I can trust the editor to do his job and check if the minor revision was handled correctly I also don't know after this procedure.
To me this review process looks like a complete mess. I have an idea and will to communicate this to the journal AND the other anonymous reviewers (if possible in the online review mask at all), but the biggest problem I see is that this will mostly harm the manuscript authors, who were the last to know of the SIX reviewers.
Actually, I was thinking also already several times to publish in that journal. Currently surely not.
So who is and what is the diplomatically correct way to inform everybody on the journal site that this is a mess and waste of time and from my point of view several people on journal site made here mistakes or didn't pay attention without harming the authors or myself for future submissions?
And how "much" "unnormal" is this kind of case. On a scale from 1 to 11 reviewers! (Sorry for sarcasm)
EDIT to the commenters:
I'm upset because it is a waste of my time and many authors pick a journal for max. 2 or 3 reviewers. If the associate editor has a hard time to find reviewers, it's rather a issue of the manuscript or wrong journal pick, but not to be solved by sending 6-10 invitations for review. When many journals seem to be able to organize 2-3 reviewers, then this is simply unprofessional to me. I'm also not hiring 2 grad students for same topic in case one fails, because it is tax money. Avoiding any kind of redundancy should have highest priority when time and money is limited in research, not only in manuscripts.
The solution is quite simple in the digital age: When 2-3 reviewers have downloaded on the website the manuscript, no further downloads/reviewers are allowed. This is a journal issue, not one of the associate editor who does like the reviewers an voluntary unpaid job.
I'm even more surprised, some of the commenters find this an acceptable situation? If this becomes the rule, then your future manuscripts will have a hard time to find reviewers at all. But you can answer, why you think, and my reaction is totally wrong...
The underlying important question here is simply: How much review is enough and how to practice and establish this in the community, not how can we explain such waste of time still happens in 21th century in some cases.
And personally I can only recommend to publish and review in journals that keep this practice to limit the peer review to the maximum necessary amount of work for all. The opposite of it is redundancy. This time should be better used to reproduce work of other authors.

Were all reviewers invited at the same time? Some journals seem to run with the approach of sending many invitations, expecting most invitees to decline to review or never to respond, and so the journal is left with a reasonable number of reports in a shorter time. I agree this is disrespectful to the reviewers.

Related: Peer Review, round 1, 6 reviewer reports, what could be the reason?

Why are you so upset? I'm really curious. Why is it worse to be 1 of 6 instead of 1 of 3 or 4?

You should just be very happy that you were part of the ultimate creation of a very well-reviewed publication.

Try to put yourself into the associate editor's shoes.
It is very hard to find people to review, but you are also supposed to find reviewers in very short time. It used to be that you find people you liked to review, extended them an invitation, and they would usually accept. This is no longer the case, at least in my (of course limited) experience. So, as an associate editor, you have to invite quite a number of people at a shot. Under rare circumstances, you suddenly have more than enough reviewers. If you do not have a strong personality, you will feel bad about sending someone an invitation, saying that you had too many people willing to review, and that you decided that this someone was not making the cut. Much easier to get more reviews than are needed, because also, sometimes, reviews are not very thorough.
Of course, I do not know what has happened in your case, but this would seem to me to be the most likely scenario.
To whom should you complain? The editor and the journal set the policy and maybe should think of a procedure to deal with this rare occasion. But as journals compete for short overall review times, and as authors really appreciate short review times, the best policy might be to ask for forgiveness if this happened. The associate editor is the one that is at fault. It might even be that the submission setup is not even alerting the associate editor that this might have happened. As an associate editor, one might check every day or every other day what needs to be done and the only message popping up is that this paper now has enough reviewers and its status changed to "under review".
I am sorry to hear that you are considering severing your ties with the journal and no longer be available as a reviewer. I would like to mildly suggest that you communicate your feelings to the associate editor and allow her/him to explain what has happened.
If the journal would have indeed have a policy of six reviewers for uncontroversial papers, then you are right to consider this journal to be a journal for which you do not like to review.

thx, I think it is a policy or technical mistake of the journal to involve more than 3 reviewers at all here after reading your answer and the linked similar question. The associate editor is possibly not to blame strongly to invite more than 3, when he gets no reply and has to keep overview over several to be reviewed manuscripts. Yet, the journal and he will be on my blacklist to publish and review in future.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Can I trust new articles in a high-impact journal with abnormal number of corrections for older ones?
Currently I survey new literature by subscribing to the RSS feed of high-impact journals. Especially for the journal nature communications (IP > 12) I see much much higher number of  correction articles than in any other journal, also other journals of the nature publishing group.
How should I judge this? Especially when mostly author corrections? Or can this be explained by factors like:

pure online journal, corrections in printed journals are less common or editing more thorough
many submissions and articles published im comparison to average journal
open access

So, in other high impact journals from science, APS, AIP, ACS this doesn't seem to happen.
As the reviewers of all journals are likely and mostly voluntary academics, I'm really wondering what is so special/the problem with this high-impact journal.

Did you consider reading the article and the corrections? That normally helps to decide if it is thrustworthy.

Sorry, but either I misworded our you misread my question, which is about the trustworthiness of the journal publishing so many corrections and especially articles in that journals without such corrections (but probably soon to come given above number in the screenshot). I will edit title...

When I compare this to your answer to a Covid question you wrote here too, you seem to be on a vendetta against Nature (and Science). One wonders why.

There is definitively variation in how willing different journals are to publish corrections. I'll note that many of these author corrections seem rather trivial, and that, since 2018, APS will make minor corrections without issuing similar correction articles.

Communications and other rapid publications are likely more prone to corrections. That is why they are communications, not regular articles. They have their place to get stuff out fast, and refine later.

the 4th and 5th comment are possible answers and yes the corrections seem minor/trivial mostly. The 3rd comment is just clownish or from a nature/science employee. The last activity I had on this site was months ago, lol...

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


text:
Should I stay in PhD program I dislike to have a shot at liberal arts teaching?
TL;DR: I'm a pure math graduate student who doesn't like research mathematics. Should I continue and get the PhD because I suspect I might like teaching at a 4-year liberal arts college?

I am currently in a pure math PhD program at a fairly good university. I just finished my second year there, and after passing qualifying exams have been awarded a Master's.
Ever since I arrived in grad school, I have been fairly dissatisfied. I went to grad school because math in undergrad felt relevant, and I loved the feeling of leaping from logical lily-pad to logical lily-pad en route to proving something. In grad school, though, these feelings have become fewer and far between. I feel like things have become more mechanical and more like banging my head against a wall. For the most part, I find it very difficult to motivate myself to do my work; I never look forward to getting started in the morning. I have finished required courses and qualifying exams, but the difficulty continues as I do a reading course in preparation for work with an advisor.
Overall, I have realized that research math is not for me. I have quite enjoyed my teaching experiences, which so far consist of leading recitation sessions, tutoring, and the first week of teaching a summer course. Because of the heavy emphasis on "teaching to the test" in secondary education, among other things, I suspect I would enjoy teaching at, say, a liberal arts college more than teaching at a secondary school. However, I feel pretty inexperienced in teaching, and so I don't feel certain by any means about these feelings. This is now the only reason I would want to stay in graduate school. Is this enough reason to continue for the next 3-4 years to the PhD?
According to my advisor, I would be in graduate school another 3-3.5 years for the PhD. I would love to work at a liberal arts institution in the US, but ideally one where the research load is minimal/nonexistent. The impression I got from skimming MathJobs recently was that such positions were relatively rare compared to research-intensive positions. Do you feel like I would be very likely to find such a job if I stayed for the PhD?
Any advice is much appreciated! Thank you, everyone.

You should know that these days, most 4-year liberal arts colleges in the US expect their tenure-track mathematics faculty to do research.
Colleges want to be able to offer their students the opportunity to be taught by experts who are contributing to their field.  There is also increasing interest in getting undergraduates involved in research, which means the faculty have to have research programs to get them involved in.
Of course, there is a wide spectrum of expectations.  At the most selective liberal arts colleges, research expectations can approach those of a mid-level research university, demanding a regular output of papers published in good journals.  Elsewhere there can be more flexibility, replacing a specific requirement for "research" with the broader term "scholarship"; they might require only occasional publications, and they could be projects with students, or articles about teaching.
But in general, if you want an academic job in mathematics that doesn't require you to do any research at all, you're going to restrict yourself to the least selective tiers of liberal arts colleges, or to non-tenure-track positions (and often liberal arts colleges tend to have relatively few such positions, compared to large universities).
You might have a look at MathJobs to get a sense of what jobs are out there, and what they expect.  Note that there are not so many listings in summer, since this hiring cycle is mostly finished; many more will appear in the fall.

Thank you so much for your answer! Do you happen to know any data/anecdotal evidence about the number of less selective liberal arts jobs out there? MathJobs seems to suggest there are not that many right now...

@user7380: I don't know of any data, though the AMS or MAA may have some.  One other point: It's my impression that less selective institutions are less likely to advertise on MathJobs.  Sometimes they use EIMS instead.

Although it is generally a good rule to think that one oughtn't commit to things one doesn't want to do... and the other answers reflect this in several good ways... sometimes there is an "entry fee" that is unpleasant to pay.
Yes, it is true that there is an ever-greater pretense that all faculty in colleges and universities "do research", but, as one might imagine, not quite all of this is cutting-edge... In fact, the requirements of completing a PhD at most "good" places are a bit more strenuous than the "research" required at little colleges. In particular, as I gather from substantial anecdotal evidence, it is possible to be much saner/human in "small" situations, about pretension-to-research. True, it may not be wise to be "too honest", as in many professional/human situations.
That is, you might try to view "the PhD" as simply a college teaching license. Certainly if you do not have it you'll be at an extreme disadvantage forever... One might view it as a prolonged licensure ordeal?
And, at the same time, it is quite excellent that you have realized so clearly that you don't want to "be a researcher". This is much better than the self-conflicted delusional versions of the story. But what remains is to gain the credentials. "Cred".
This is not necessarily a recommendation to stay in your PhD program, especially since your recoil has been fairly strong (though one doesn't know how to interpret printed words' intensity...) But, sure, no one likes to take "drivers' training", and many other things. But it can be done, routinely.
The last adverb is a significant point: unless you're at an elite place, and unless you are truly severely allergic to "higher math", ... "it's not that hard" to finish the PhD. The fact that you've already done the qualifiers and such shows that it is easily within your power... if you so choose.
So, srsly, the question is about what you want your appearance to be for the rest of your life. Not that being PhD'd makes anyone a better person! But, it adds something to the ol' resume, undeniably.
And, again-at-the-end, being "too honest" about one's disinclinations is not necessarily a good thing.
Good luck, ... in figuring out complicated things.

Notably given the especially difficult employment market in academia (in France but I guess it is the same everywhere), I always advise: do a PhD for the years doing research themselves, not for what you expect to gain from the title. As Dave Clarke stresses, doing a PhD requires a lot of motivation and hard work; but if you do not like the good times enough, it can be really wasted years. If you think you won't enjoy the years of your PhD, you should consider seriously all other opportunities you have.
By the way, I think the same applies to postdoc positions.

I know of people who have completed PhDs at prestigious institutions (in computer science) just so that they could teach at a liberal arts college. It certainly seems to be one way into that profession, and an admirable profession it is indeed.
Doing a PhD requires a lot of motivation and hard work, even if you are not aiming for a high profile research career. The question you need to ask yourself is "Are the benefits of finishing the PhD worth the effort? Will you be motivated enough to complete if you are not interested in research?"
Consider also doing some pedagogic studies, so that you know the theory of how to teach and, more importantly, how to help students learn.

I find the question "Do you have what it takes...?" a bit insulting.  Walking away from a PhD is not failure; lack of passion for research is not a character flaw.  A much better question is "Are the benefits of finishing the PhD worth the effort?"

I will change the question.

"Consider also doing some pedagogic studies..."  I absolutely agree (though the worth of such classes varies considerably, depending on the teacher and the curriculum).  I would also strongly consider trying to get assigned to teach a full-on class which you are wholly responsible for.  Planning, grading, coordinating, dealing with student concerns (sometimes aka "whining") are all part of the bigger picture, and you should know that you like that before launching a career in teaching (and I and many others love it!).

I can't comment on the US, but in Canada there are a number of "lecturer" positions, even at research universities. Lecturers only teach; they don't do any research, and it is not necessary to get a PhD to be a lecturer (though I'm sure it doesn't hurt, and some positions do request a PhD). It seems that these positions are becoming more common, especially because the current Canadian government likes to cut costs, so funding is harder to come by. I would suggest searching for these types of positions, and hopefully that will give you an idea of what is out there, how many positions are available, and how many require PhDs.
Here's one example at my university that does require a PhD (in Psychology, not math, sorry).
EDIT: Having said all that, I don't think it's worth continuing your PhD if you're not enjoying it. If you don't like what you're doing, it's going to be very difficult to put the time and energy into completing your thesis. If the area of research is a problem (you're not interested in your research project, or you simply feel stuck), perhaps you can ask your supervisor for a different project, or switch supervisors, or even switch to another department, program, or university.

"Lecturer" or "Institutional instructor" positions are rare in the US, but they are a growing trend.

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


text:
How to search for an open access journal with no publication fee?
I'm having some trouble trying to find a place to publish. Therefore this question is about how to find these places.
For this I provide the following example, my particular case.
I'm searching for:

A journal, not a conference, workshop, etc.
Where publishing is free (no cost for processing the paper)
That is open access (no cost for readers)
Where the reviews are transparent/public. I.e. anyone can follow the review process
Where my drafts are also public (for people to follow the review process) The point is that I would like not to need arxiv.org or similar services to dissuade reviewers from shifty actions
In the field of computer science theory (like lambda calculus and such)
LaTeX should be accepted, this is very important
I don't need trees dying, online publishing is fine
I don't care about impact factors, as long as the journal is trustworthy

This is my particular case, but I'd like to make clear that I'm not asking for this specific fish for me, but for a good method about how to fish that can be useful for everybody in academia, specially those that are new and do not have this kind of knowledge.
PD: maybe a workaround would be using two services where one should be. Now I am thinking about uploading the paper to arxiv.org (or similar) and asking for reviews and comments on cstheory (or similar). I think that would meet all requirements and implicit requirements (implicit for journals) as allowing citations on my paper, proving authorship, etc. I'm not sure about being overlooking something or which considerations should be done to find the right place(s) to publish in this new context.

I've edited your title to be a bit more specific, featuring your three main criteria.

Open access journals which also don't charge a publication fee are quite rare. I think that journals published by scholarly/professional societies might satisfy this criteria in some cases. In those cases they would be funded by universities or member fees. However, I've no specific knowledge about computer science. Note that in some cases if you are unable to pay, "reputable" open access journals will waive the fee.

Putting aside open drafts and peer review, see also this question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11536/how-to-find-oa-free-to-publish-journals-with-a-jcr-ranking#comment21275_11536

@YoavKallus thank you, I did notice that question some time ago but please note that I'm not asking for specific journals but a way to search for them (something better than simply using Google, which is not of much help in this case).

@faheem - in fact roughly 70% of the journals in the DOAJ do not charge a publication fee...

@DavidRoberts: What is the DOAJ?

Directory of Open Access Journals

The question in the title is a duplicate of http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11536/how-to-find-oa-free-to-publish-journals-with-a-jcr-ranking#comment21275_11536.  You should make the title more specific.

Use this link http://doaj.org/doaj?func=csv  to download the complete list of journals from DOAJ, with metadata as scientific field, license (if CC) and whether you have to pay to publish.

The fee field in that file seems to be empty.

This answer could definitely use some actual instructions on how to extract the required information. The relevant field seems to be "Has other fees". There are many examples for which the answer is no. However, since that is the only entry about fees it is very weird and some fees that are "not-other" might be hidden somewhere. (How I tried to analyze the data: I uploaded the file to chatgpt and ask for entries matching certain criteria.)

The set of journals you are describing is almost guaranteed to be equivalent to the null set. You are specifying way too many criteria on the journal. You are basically asking for a complete wish list that no single journal can reasonably satisfy and still survive. For instance:

How does it pay its ISP hosting bill?
Who handles the processing and editing of articles?
Who does the typesetting and copyediting?
Who maintains the web site?

All of these things require labor, and is not something that anyone is likely willing to donate pro bono. That means income has to come from somewhere.
Some of these criteria are not problems (for example, a CS journal is unlikely to refuse a LaTeX submission). However, in total, I think you really need to decide which criteria are required, and which ones would be nice to have. Then prioritize accordingly.

Thank you for your answer. That's what I thought, but I was ensured that there are many and even thousands of journals that meet those criteria. Now I am thinking about uploading the paper to arxiv.org and asking for reviews and comments on cstheory or a similar place. I'd be using two services instead of one, but I think that would meet all requirements. Do you think this is worthy of a new question?

almost guaranteed to be equivalent to the null set — Journal of Machine Learning Research.  Electronic Journal of Combinatorics.  Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications.  Journal of Computational Geometry.

How does it pay its ISP hosting bill? Donated by the editor's university, run on a free wordpress or google site, or paid by a whopping $5/month donation by one of the editors. Who handles the processing and editing of articles? Software and volunteer editors. Who does the typesetting and copyediting?  The authors. Who maintains the web site? Software and volunteer editors.

@JeffE: Where are the public reviews for the journals you've listed? Where are the previous drafts?

@Trylks: Your original question didn't include open drafts and a public review process. Those additional criteria are vastly cutting down on the number of feasible solutions. As for how to handle the change in question—the question isn't so different. (You could basically ask this as a "subcase" of the original question, so I wouldn't spawn off a new question.)

I don't mean to sound provocative, but saying "is not something that anyone is likely willing to donate pro bono" strikes me as just a little curious in an academic setting. The two most important, difficult and time-consuming functions performed in academic publication, namely writing the articles and reviewing them, are done pro-bono, as everyone knows. These days authors also essentially do their own typesetting and proofreading. The journals are increasingly doing less and less. I think with some institutional support from universities, OA free to publish journals are quite practicable.

Just an example I know of the top of my head: Scipost (https://scipost.org/). (Don't know about whether there are paper versions printed somewhere. I've never seen any but I'm guess there will be some. (About the how funded question: Donations.)

Here is a link for DOAJ search listing open access journals specifically involving the no-author-charges condition, and another one restricted to the computer science (again with zero publication charges, of course).
Unfortunately, I do not quite see how to restrict the results of the above searches to meet your other criteria(accepting (La)TeX submissions etc.) without checking the specific journals by hand.

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