text:
Can I use these letters of reference later?
I was working with some startups as their tech advisory and with some others as tech lead. But now I want to concentrate on my main goal, that is research. That requires me to work with researchers and study. So I asked people I was working with, for a recommendation letter. As I am aiming towards Waterloo for my masters for research. The real problem is I was not so much focused on my academics as I was busy here. Though I still have last two years to cover up at Waterloo, usually checks last two year scores. I just want to know will these LORs will help me, when I will apply, in Waterloo, after my engineering and giving my GRE.

I suggest that if you want letters that won't become relevant for a few years, that you tell the writers that so that they might be able to update their recommendations at the appropriate time, without forgetting you. Keeping in touch is also useful for that.
I don't know the procedures at Waterloo, but some universities require direct transmission from the writer, not the candidate.
Whether they help or not depends on too many things, including the unknown future, to comment directly. But having the "on the shelf" is probably useful.

Actually yes, that's what my end goal is. that if for some reason, i couldn't get writers to update it, for any reason. I can explain my 2 year low performance in academics. and maybe at least, try to stand a chance, not just thrown out of consideration.


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How to convince my professor to let me pass when I got less than the required score in just one aspect of grading
There are various assessments and you need to get a grade of over 50% in each. i wasn’t able to do that in one of them (I came close) although my overall grade is good. How can I convince my teacher to pardon me?

Why didn't you? Disability? Extenuating circumstances? Or did you simply not study enough?

Not all situations are pardonable. Not all professors will accept your excuses.

Extenuating circumstances exist, and need to be taken into account. However, when they occur you need to tell your instructor as quickly as possible. That way something can be done about it. Dealing with difficult circumstances is about creating an environment where students can show what they can do. If you inform your instructor after a test, then you don't give the instructor the opportunity to do that. All they can do now is lower the standard, which is in nobody's interest.

All graded courses involve drawing a line between pass and fail.  There is always some degree of arbitrarity in exactly where to draw this line, but having drawn it, it is generally good educational practice for academics to hold this line to avoid eroding academic standards.  If there are genuine extenuating circumstances then you can put in a formal application for "special consideration" and it will be considered.  However, the mere fact that you were close to a pass does not itself justify moving your grade (and hence, we will decline to assist you to convince your professor to pass you).
Rather than seeking a change in your marks, it would be a good idea for you to review your work in the course, identify the shortcomings that have led you to a failing grade, and do some additional study to remedy those shortcomings.  If you learn the material better it will allow you to pass (or hopefully do even better) the next time you do this course.  You should remember that this failing grade serves a valuable diagnostic purpose --- it tells you that you are not yet competent enough in this subject for the requirements of your degree program.  Take that diagnosis seriously and read it as an indicator that you need to give more attention to this subject.

It might not be possible to get a "pass", but there is something you might be able to do in some places and with some professors.
Go have a face-to-face meeting, discussing your progress and what you might be missing. Ask if there is a possibility to do something extra to make up the deficit (and improve your learning). Some people would respond positively to this, rules and fairness permitting.
But the meeting will have its own value in any case, especially if this is your major subject.

I speculated that he/she missed a major component of the course.

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Why is there a lack of transparency in US tenure-track job searches?
I find it strange that most US departments have so little transparency in tenure-track jobs searches. In the UK the system is a little cleaner. Jobs are generally announced in one place (jobs.ac.uk) and the interview date is often set in advance. In the US there is no central list of jobs and it is difficult to determine where in the process the search is. Why don't search committees set a date for the short list to be decided at the outset and make it publicly available? Even for searches that move sequentially through the short list inviting candidates one at a time for interviews, could still send out a notification. It seems it would reduce the stress of the search for many applicants and not be too much work for the search committee.

What makes you think that there is any such thing as a "short list"?

@JeffE because the searches I have been involved in, and the searches my wife have been involved in, have started by the search committee going through the applicants and deciding who they would be interested in interviewing.

@JeffE: Would calling it a "list of finalists" make it more acceptable?

Sure, my committee does that too.  But there are several layers of short lists.  There's the list of people we want to request letters for, and then the list of people we discuss in committee, and then the list of people we want to interview, and then the list of people we actually interview, and then the list of people we want to hire, and so on. And we do not fix one list before discussing the next; we may start interviews even before the application deadline.

Keep in mind the search committee is being paid to do one task: find and hire the right candidate for this particular job.  Things like fixed dates carry no direct benefit for the employer, so if they make the work of the search committee even slightly more difficult, they are not economically justified (at least in the short run).

There are several factors at work here:

Remember that there are several thousand colleges and universities in the United States. A central database of such jobs would be significantly harder to publicize and organize.
Most universities in the US are private. They are under no such compulsion to post their jobs on any particular web site, unless constrained to do so by the funding sources that are supporting a particular position, or legal requirements to do so. (To my knowledge, there is no such requirement.)
The more deadlines and constraints you build into the cycle, the more pressure you put everyone under—applicants, recommendation writers, support staff, and departmental faculty involved in the search.

So I think there are multiple reasons not to publicize the results of a search, and I think most hiring committees would be reluctant to do so. There could be a better job done of announcing searches, certainly, and that would make things easier (but again, the places that currently advertise would likely complain about losing their business to a central source!).

I don't think there is actually any legal or institutional compulsion for UK institutions to use jobs.ac.uk either, it has just become a de facto standard by a natural process.  At the moment, about 180 institutions have jobs posted there, and they are a reasonably diverse group (a few dance schools and music conservatories as well as universities, for example).

I will tackle the ``Jobs are generally announced in one place (jobs.ac.uk)'' part. As user14449 mentioned in his(her?)(its?) answer some disciplines have society run central job boards. The AMS and MLA are the particularly effective ones from my experience but even they do not attract all the jobs in their fields. Then each state university will post all of its jobs to their own Human Resources job board. But there will never be a centralized site like jobs.ac.uk because the US system is not a single system. many of the colleges and universities are privately run, the rest are run by the state governments, and four run by the military. There is no central authority that can determine how hiring is done beyond anti-discrimination and equal opportunity laws. So any such website would have to start off as a third party endeavor. And since the job ads in the Chronicle of Higher Education already service this purpose but do not cover the entire market it is hard to say that there would be promise for any new one.
Just a side note on the scale of the US job market from Wiki there are ``4,495 Title IV-eligible'' colleges and universities. Title IV-eligible means students at those institutions are eligible for federally backed student loans.

UK universities arn't run by a single authority either, all universities are private entities. As has been pointed out, there is no compulsion to us jobs.ac.uk, it grew organically as people realised they didn't have to pay for naturejobs etc. and it made sense to have a place where you knew candidates would look.

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Getting published: writing a book chapter in linguistics
I am an assistant professor of linguistics. In order to get promoted to the associate professorship one of the things I need to do is write a book or a book chapter. I was wondering how I could write a chapter in a book to be published. Where should I start? Who do I get in touch with?
Many thanks!

In my discipline in the social sciences, book chapters are typical outcomes of workshops or of (repeated) conference panels. The book editors usually organize the workshop, which includes funding, establishing contacts and sending out invitations or an open call for papers. As a participant (rather than organizer), it is difficult to know from the outset whether the workshop will result in any form of collective publication, but sometimes the intention to work on a publication is specifically advertised. As an organizer, this is in your hands; and it of course leads to several follow-up questions (how to edit a book etc.) that are beyond the scope of this answer.

One good way to interact with other researchers in your field is to be the editor of a book. Perhaps there is an existing series of monographs in your research area. If so, you could contact that person with the idea for a research volume which would encompass your field of research. You could then provide one of the chapters (in addition to an introductory chapter!), and you'd have the opportunity to invite others from your discipline to contribute chapters as well.

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Can I cite almost total literature survey from a textbook unit?
Suppose I'm writing a research paper on topic T.
Additionally, suppose there is a textbook or research paper on topic T that covers all the progress of the topic from its initial time to 2018 December.
Since I'm writing a paper during April 2019. Can I cite the research paper or textbook for literature from early days to 2018 December and only explicitly cite the remaining literature from January 2019 to April 2019 or do I need to also write a total literature survey for my research paper? If yes, what is the need to write again if I'm citing a credible source for literature?

I would say no, have they made assumptions when selecting the papers they discuss? Are those the same as the assumptions you will make? Did they ignore a crucial paper that was not relevant for them but is relevant for your direction?

Your intended audience should be able to read your paper without referencing other papers. So, unless your entire target audience will already have read the survey in question, you should summarize it for them. Saying "go read this survey, then come back" is a dereliction of duty. Note my reference to "your intended audience" -- a publication in Nature has a wider audience than J. of Machine Learning, and so your Nature paper must explain past work that the latter journal's readers would certainly already know about.
Further, the survey in question is unlikely to be suitable for your specific purposes. Yes, it may contain all relevant information, but it is likely addresses all the major results for the field as a whole. In contrast, your paper is offering a specific advance on a specific problem -- so, you need to explain which aspects of which results are relevant, and which avenues have not been addressed. Further, it is typical for survey to omit results that are unimportant for the field as a whole, but important for the topic of your paper.
Either way, the survey sounds like a great resource -- you should definitely cite it.

Imho there's no such thing as a "total" literature survey, a survey is a summary of the research in a particular field so there is some selection involved.
If the research paper that you're writing presents a new contribution to the field, then you should show how this particular contribution relates to previous work. This usually requires you to give some level of detail about who has done what before. You don't have to of course, but reviewers are likely to take this into account.


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What to do if cited papers are not freely available while reviewing a manuscript?
Recently I was reviewing a manuscript. I found that few cited papers of this manuscript are not freely available to my institute. So what should I do? Should I ask those papers to the editor?

Reviewing a manuscript does not mean you have to know or have read all the literature cited. In some cases, however, you can be unsure of a statement or a method used and need to consult the original source.
You have multiple options here:
1-Try to access the article on the web. The OA button can help you here, but there's many other way, some less legal.
2- Contact the authors of the article you want to obtain and ask for a PDF copy. Academians used to send each others postcard to access articles! A demand by email is most often met by a yes.
3- In your reviewer report, write something along these lines:

The authors cite Smith et al 2005 in line 105 to support this statement. I have no access to this article and I can't confirm that this statement is correct.

There's probably some other possible actions here. Unless the article you want to access is from the journal for which you are reviewing, I wouldn't bother to contact the editor.

There are several things you can try. Björn Brembs made a very good list which fits your question, even if it was created with respect to the Elsevier cut-off in Germany since January 2017. My favorite ones for your situation:

Google Scholar
DOAI / oaDOI
#icanhazpdf
Contact author
Inter-library-loan
Open Access Button

For a moment I thought #icanhazpdf was supposed to be an IRC channel, but then I remembered we live in the modern world where Twitter exists.


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List *all* journals for which one has done peer-reviewing
Can it be counterproductive to list in one's CV all journals for which one has done peer-reviewing (both top- and low-rank ones), or whether it's better to list only the top ones and omit the ones too low.
The area in question is pure math and, if there are any journal metrics that might make sense to look at in the first place, I'd be happy to provide them to get a feel of the situation.

Unless you have been a peer-reviewer for a journal on Beall's list or one that is exploitative in some way, why leave it off? In the same way that not all papers can be groundbreaking, not all service work is high-prestige - but being a referee at Society Journal X is valuable to the field. Feel free to put Ann. Math first on your list, though!

Even more strongly, if a professor claims to only review for the top journals in the field, you could easily think that they will, by analogy, only do service work if it helps their own prestige, and ignore important gruntwork.

For young researchers, I think it is okay to list every review you've written, even when the review was written indirectly, e.g., editor X asked Y to review, and Y delegated to you. For senior researchers, I think indirect reviews can be omitted, mainly because they take up space and they are less prestigious.

I expect the answer depends on your circumstances.  Here are some cases that might apply.  I can't specify precise cut-offs between them, but I doubt it matters too much if you're near the dividing line.  (Keep in mind also that you may have specific rules to keep in mind.  For example, some particularly bureaucratic universities have guidelines for exactly what you must or must not include in your CV.)
For most junior academics, I think it's helpful to list all of them, and it's almost certainly not harmful, assuming they are at least respectable, mainstream academic journals, even if they aren't prestigious.  Each time you've been asked to referee a paper is a vote of confidence from an editor, and it's worth demonstrating that you are starting to become widely known.  Listing seven journals, some really not prestigious, probably looks better than listing just the two or three more prestigious ones.
For people coming up for tenure at research universities, and even more so for mid-career academics, I'd recommend focusing primarily on prestigious journals.  At this stage the goal isn't just to show that people have heard of you, but rather that editors of excellent journals trust your opinion about important papers.  (But be sure to add some short comment to make it clear that this is a selected list.)
Once you are sufficiently senior and widely known, I don't think there's any need to bother listing journals you've refereed for, except perhaps very briefly to indicate that you still do your duty.

Possibly slightly off-topic, but: have you ever witnessed a situation in which anyone at Prof. X's university actually cared about Prof. X's refereeing work?

@PeteL.Clark: That's a good point!  It's worth keeping in mind that this is a low-order effect.  I think it can help very slightly for junior candidates, and I'm told it can be helpful as a sign of scholarly engagement for people at teaching-focused universities who aren't publishing much, but this is way down the list of things people care about on CVs.

@PeteL.Clark sounds pretty on-topic to me.


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Is it cheating to use solutions to identical problems from other universities to do my homework?
Is it unethical to refer to solutions to assignment questions that have been asked at other universities before? The questions are the same word for word.
EDIT:
A lot many answers are very helpful. Most of them revolve around introspection and the classical definition of plagiarism. I agree with that. I know I am digressing from the original topic and may seem to justify copying but at the end of the day I have to pass the course. I spend hours trying to learn all the background concepts and then try to apply them to the assignment questions. Thats what I have done till now. Not all the times I get them correct. Many of my classmates get the solutions online, rephrase the wordings and then submit it. Its a no brainer, they end up getting more marks than me. Sometimes(many a times) it feels really bad. Am I just being stupid in that case? should i follow their approach when I am not able to get some questions or to verify just to be sure?

It depends on your university/course policy. In general, I would consider that to be plagarism, depending on your amount of referral...

@darthbith thats the official policy. But the teacher isnt writing those questions off the top of her head. doesnt that amount to plagiarism too? and the TA uses the exact same solution as a sample solution set.

@Scrooj questions may come from a question bank, or the textbook, and an associated answer key. The department may likely have a license for the material.

If you do that you're probably cheating yourself. Homework isn't set because people enjoy marking.

Should it be considered as plagiarism if the teacher does not spend time and copies assignment from other universities.

The question you should ask yourself is: are you enrolled to learn or to get a diploma? The answer follows.

@SalvadorDali Maybe, but so what? Two wrongs don't make a right. Also - what Raphael says.

@xLeitix definitely no, but the thing is that if a teacher does not care about plagiarizing questions he gives example to his students.

The department may likely have a license for the material — What the... Since when do departments need licenses for questions?

But the teacher isnt writing those questions off the top of her head. doesnt that amount to plagiarism too? — NO.  The point of homework is for students to demonstrate their mastery of the material.  Any question that reads "Solve X" is really asking "Demonstrate that you can solve X."  When you submit solutions, you are claiming to demonstrate your understanding.  On the other hand, the point of teaching is not for the instructor to demonstrate their mastery of the material.  There is absolutely no implicit claim or expectation that instructors pose original questions.

@JeffE horrible wording on my part. I don't know how to describe stuff like Mastering Physics. Students get a license to use the software from their textbook, but surely the institution has a license for the teaching end of the software as well.

@Raphael: I am enrolled to learn but it wouldnt it be a waste, if i dont get my diploma?

"may seem to justify copying" yes, I'll have to say most of your question primarily looks like an attempt to rationalise cheating. Cheating remains cheating, even if the profs. don't make the assignments themselves, even if the tasks are really hard, and even if everybody else is cheating as well. None of this makes cheating the right thing to do. None of this will help you if you are caught.

@Scrooj Some authority determines what the diploma should be worth. If you can't show that you fulfill the criteria, you have not learned enough. A waste of your (and your teachers') time, sure, but there is no alternative. (That said, cheating on resp. copying solutions of exercises is usually not even helping: you are even farther away from passing the exams. That's no surprise since you deliberately ignore, nay, sabotage your teacher's offer to learn from them.)

"Many of my classmates get the solutions online, rephrase the wordings and then submit it. Its a no brainer, they end up getting more marks than me" - No one in the real world cares about marks (as long as you didn't outright flunk). The world does care very very much about what you know and if you can learn things you don't know. Your cheating classmates will struggle later in life despite their marks.

Assignments are to let you practice for your exam.  If you don't practice you risk failing the examn.  Or the course later where you need what you learned in this course...  The only one you really cheat, is yourself.

@Scrooj You are missing the whole point. This question is ultimately about honesty and integrity, which goes beyond getting good grades (achievements). Your future employers wont make a big deal out of a few bad grades on your transcript. They will hire you because they understand that everybody may struggle in certain tasks. But they wont hire a dishonest cheater. Same thing about your partner, family, friends, etc. They don't want a cheater around but they will be happy with an honest person who does not excel in everything. The choice is yours, do you want integrity or devious achievements?

I do not view it as generally unethical to refer to these solutions.  This situation is more complex than I think some other answers have admitted. Here is a list of claims:

In an ideal world, the point of homework is for the student to learn the material.
In a perfectly ideal world, we would not need to grade homework, because students would do it on their own to master the material. They might refer to other people's solutions to see if theirs are correct, and that would be fine.
Experience shows this world is not perfect. Students will often skip ungraded homework, and their learning and exam grades will suffer.
So instructors assign homework for a grade. But this isn't because the grade is really important: it's because we want the students to do the homework and learn the material!
Some students then get the idea that the grade is the real goal of the homework, and simply copy their assignment from others. Professors often find this unacceptable.

One important point that others have answered is that, if you are going to turn in the homework, what you turn in should reflect your own understanding of the assignment. But, equally importantly, it is important to let yourself struggle with problems for a while before looking up the answer.  That is the only way to really learn how to solve problems.
Most professors accept that the internet exists - we know you can look up other people's answers. It used to be that fraternities had giant files of old homework and exam answers for this purpose (maybe they still do).  And students study in groups all the time - research shows study groups can dramatically increase learning.  So getting help is not a bad thing.
But you don't want to get help too quickly. Make a genuine effort to answer the problems yourself first. If you find that you are looking up the answers to all the problems (even the easiest ones), then something is off - try going for more tutoring, or studying more before doing the homework.
If you find that you occasionally need to look up one of the most difficult problems, that's perfectly normal (but it still wouldn't excuse directly copying the solution into your homework, of course).
Of course, the usual caveats apply: some professors may specifically tell you not to collaborate with anyone or use any other resources. But most professors know that students usually collaborate with each other on homework (e.g. study groups) and know that students can look up answers using other resources. We have no problem with that, as long as each student's submission reflects their own understanding in the end.

thanks for the reply. This seems to be the most realistic option to me.

For example, in my classes I allow students to consult each other and online materials, but I insist that the final write-up must be their own and they must understand what they turn in.

Yes, it is unethical. Copying the answer from a solutions manual is considered plagiarism, even if it's from another university's website. The question bank and solutions are likely part of a question bank belonging to either an educational group or the textbook.
Additionally, there is also no guarantee the answer key is right. For example, one answerer to another plagiarism related question said this.

Then I went to Yahoo Answers, made a bunch of fake accounts, and posted tantalizingly wrong answers to all of my own HW questions. I have told all subsequent students not to google the HW answers because there are wrong solutions out there.

I'm not too sure about whether or not checking your answers once you've done the work yourself is unethical, however. That's a gray area for me that someone with more experience in academic misconduct might be able to help cover.

Not is it unethical, where I teach, it can get you an academic misconduct F for the course.

@BobBrown just for comparing the results?

@Davidmh: For copying from the solutions manual, Internet page, or whatever.  (It is often easy to prove because many solutions manuals have a few errors obvious to professors but subtle to students.)

Is it ethical to post fake answers? What if someone (not a student in the course) comes across this fake solution and is misled into believing it?

@JimConant It's not ethical to post fake answers. See my comment in the linked answer. That doesn't mean that people don't do it, as the answer indicates. I definitely don't advocate going out and posting fake answers, but if someone has, there is a possibility that someone is your professor.

Probably I should have clicked that link. :)

Well that would explain why Yahoo Answers is full of people asking questions with obviously wrong answers (which the asker then accepts and thanks the answerer for!)

The question, as I am reading it now, is about "referring" and "using" not about "copying". I'm pretty sure your answer to the question you're answering is reasonable, but it does not appear to be closely related to the OP. IMHO.

If you get a solution from another school (or a previous year, as questions are often reused on problem sets), it's no different than getting a solution from another student in the same section who happened to finish the problem first.  In other words, it is unequivocally cheating, unless there is an explicit policy to the contrary.

I am not sure that it is unequivocally cheating - I can think of several situations where it would not be cheating at all to refer to solutions to homework problems. The easiest example is when the homework is ungraded.

If you copied it from another classmate, is it cheating?
Of course it is.
Some other student wrote the code and you're copying it, so you are also cheating.
If you are unable to solve it yourself, you need to seek help from the professor.
A personal case in point:
My CompSci teacher gave me an F once, for allowing someone else to copy MY code.
He simply wrote on my printout:
   "Did copying from X help you learn anything?"
I explained to my teacher the circumstances.  She had missed classes due to a death in the family. I tried to explain the assignment to her, but it didn't sink in. So, I shared a hard copy of my code, as I had expected her to read my code, and try to understand how it worked.  Instead she typed it back in verbatim.  So, she learned nothing beyond how to also get an F on a coding lab assignment.
My F did not get changed, and I agreed with him on his decision.
It certainly taught me a worthwhile lesson.
Hopefully it will help you too, without an F.

Ask yourself: would you be comfortable telling to your Professor that you got the answers from a website? Do you think she or he would think you did a good job with your homework if you copied it from a website?
The problem is much less about whether there are rules (and there are, no doubt) than about what is the intended purpose of homework, that is to help students learn. If you don't learn from your homework, you're not doing it right.

Ideally, your professor should have a policy about this. For example, here is mine. (It get's adapted a bit for each course, based on things like whether or not there is a textbook, or whether the course has TA's.)

Homework Policy: You are welcome to consult each other provided (1) you list all people and sources who aided you, or whom you aided and (2) you write-up the solutions independently, in your own language. If you seek help from mathematicians/math students outside the course, you should be seeking general advice, not specific solutions, and must disclose this help. I am, of course, glad to provide help!
I don't intend for you to need to consult sources (books, papers, websites) outside your notes and textbook. If you do consult such, you should be looking for better/other understanding of the definitions and concepts, not solutions to the problems.
You MAY NOT post homework problems to internet fora seeking solutions. Although I participate in some such fora, I feel that they have a major tendency to be too explicit in their help; you can read further thoughts of mine here. You may post questions asking for clarifications and alternate perspectives on concepts and results we have covered.

If your professor does not have a policy, your university probably has a default one.

The value of university is the learning. So the point of homework is not to solve the task but to learn how to solve the task.  If you take a shortcut not only is it unethical but you cheated yourself out of your actual goal!
What your classmates do is irrelevant, they won't be there with you in your career when you need to call upon these skills.
So the question becomes more obvious.  Did this additional material help my understanding where there was some lacking or did it make the question substantially easier where I will lose the benefit of working out how to solve the problem myself?  You know the honest answer to that.

Either the policy is, "Do your homework however you like, and the teacher will grade it to let you know if you got the right answer," or the policy is "Homework is a graded assessment that is used as part of your overall course grade. Your homework is subject to the honor code / academic integrity rules / ... just as if it were an exam."
If the former, it's up to you to decide what helps you learn. If it's the later, you're cheating.


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Within social science research, which research practices are generally regarded as problematic?
I am very interested in understanding the aspects of current social science research that are generally accepted as being problematic (by researchers and other commentators).
I regard problematic aspects as those which at least some academics regard as as sub-optimal and present as problems which a discipline (or academia in general) should endeavor to address.
The problematic nature of the concepts (i.e., names for practices) that I have listed below can be inferred from the references that I have linked to them; which draw attention to issues that the authors feel are detrimental to research (either in general or within a specific area of inquiry).

Problematic practices:
Authoring practices

Plagiarizing:  researchers using another writer's words without proper citation (Loui 2002)
Self-plagiarizing: researchers reusing their own work without proper citation (Loui 2002)
P-hacking: researchers engaging in different processes until they find significant results (Simmons et al. 2013)
Harking: researchers hypothesizing post-results so that they appeared to have predicted something you they did not (Kerr 1998)
Data dredging: researchers searching through data to find anything that is significant (Smith and Ebrahim 2002)
Underpowered studies: researchers conducting studies with research designs which lack sufficient power (Maxwell 2004)
Lack of relevance: researchers conducting research that has little practical relevance (Bolton and Stolcis 2003)
Lack of studies which replicate other studies: researchers conduct too few studies which attempt to replicate prior findings (Ioannidis 2005)
Selective publishing of results: researchers running multiple studies and only reporting the most favourable ones (Turner et al. 2008)
Unjustified self-citation: researchers citing their own work without valid reason (Gami et al. 2004)

Journal practices

Publisher paywalling:  journals make much current research [some publicly funded] becomes paywalled and inaccessible to most people (Teplitskiy et al. 2015)
Dissemination delay: journals' review cycles are too slow and delay publication (Smith 2010)
Editorial favoritism: journal editors may be biased toward accepting certain researchers research (e.g., due to familiarity, or prestige) (Yoon 2013)
Significance favoritism: journals have excessive preference for significant results: Most journals will generally only accept research with significant results (Fanelli 2011)
Self-citation favoritism: journals have excessive preference to publish papers that cite prior publications (Tighe et al. 2011)
Blind faith in peer review: Despite being almost universally adopted by prestigious journals, peer review doesn’t result in higher quality research and has many known flaws (Smith 2010)

My question:
Which concepts (if any) from the list above would you modify, add, or remove?
For instance, do any of the concepts mentioned have alternate names that I should know about (e.g., data dredging and harking are similar), or better, more accepted names that I should use instead?
Similarly, there any concepts (i.e., practices) that I have failed to include in my list or any which you think should be removed from the list? Maybe some research says that actually a given practice is good for academia, or there is additional research which highlights issues that I do not mention?
If you, based on your personal experiences, or opinions, can rule out, or contribute even a single concept then that would be a very valuable answer.
It would be an even more valuable answer if you could provide evidence (e.g., a published source) to argue why the concept is, or is not, considered to be problematic within social science research.
Thank you :)

References:
Bolton, M. J. and Stolcis, G. B. (2003) 'Ties that do not bind: Musings on the specious relevance of academic research', Public Administration Review, 63(5), 626-630.
Fanelli, D. (2011) 'Negative results are disappearing from most disciplines and countries', Scientometrics, 90(3), 891-904.
Gami, A. S., Montori, V. M., Wilczynski, N. L. and Haynes, R. B. (2004) 'Author self-citation in the diabetes literature', Canadian Medical Association Journal, 170(13), 1925-1927.
Ioannidis, J. P. (2005) 'Why most published research findings are false', PLoS medicine, 2(8), e124.
Kerr, N. L. (1998) 'HARKing: Hypothesizing after the results are known', Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2(3), 196-217.
Loui, M. C. (2002) 'Seven ways to plagiarize: Handling real allegations of research misconduct', Science and Engineering Ethics, 8(4), 529-539.
Maxwell, S. E. (2004) 'The persistence of underpowered studies in psychological research: causes, consequences, and remedies', Psychological Methods, 9(2), 147.
Simmons, J. P., Nelson, L. D. and Simonsohn, U. (2013) 'Life after p-hacking', in Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, New Orleans, LA, 17-19.
Smith, G. D. and Ebrahim, S. (2002) 'Data dredging, bias, or confounding: they can all get you into the BMJ and the Friday papers', BMJ: British Medical Journal, 325(7378), 1437.
Smith, R. (2010) 'Classical peer review: an empty gun', Breast Cancer Res, 12(Suppl 4), S13.
Teplitskiy, M., Lu, G. and Duede, E. (2015) 'Amplifying the impact of Open Access: Wikipedia and the diffusion of science', arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.07608.
Tighe, P., Rice, K. J. and Gravenstein, N. (2011) 'Artifactual increase in journal self-citation', Anesthesia & Analgesia, 113(2), 378-382.
Turner, E. H., Matthews, A. M., Linardatos, E., Tell, R. A. and Rosenthal, R. (2008) 'Selective publication of antidepressant trials and its influence on apparent efficacy', New England Journal of Medicine, 358(3), 252-260.
Yoon, A. H. (2013) 'Editorial Bias in Legal Academia', Journal of Legal Analysis, 5(2), 309-338.

While I haven't downvoted your question, because I think that it is a good and interesting question in general (and I applaud your comprehensive - for a question, that is - lists and references), I think that it is not a good fit for Academia.SE. Two reasons: 1) it is pretty broad; 2) adding, removing or modifying practices you've listed require specifying criteria for assessing those operations, which you haven't provided (without criteria, those decisions become very subjective - actually, they are most likely quite subjective even with criteria).

Hi Aleksandr. Thank you for your comment. I can understand your concerns even if I do not fully agree with them. In my humble opinion, the question, while not perfect, is not overly broad. I am clearly looking for answers that can increase my relevant knowledge in this area of academic practice and result in the modification of my list. Additionally, while some concepts within the list may be unclear, I think that they are generally quite clear. Finally, even if it is not a perfect fit, I don't think there is a better venue to get answers for this question than Academia.SE.

Hi, Peter. You're welcome. I understand your points. Please take my words with a grain of salt - I might be right only partially or completely incorrect. Also, I quite agree with your last point, though you can also try Quora - some answers there are very good (you can even use Ask to Answer feature to select experts in a field).

At the very least, to make this exercise useful, you'll need to define "problematic". For instance, I would consider conducting "irrelevant" studies not to be problematic, at least not in the same way as plagiarizing is.

Also, you are almost certainly missing an item with regards to data forging, i.e., partially or completely making up your data.

Some of those practices seem to be on a gradual scale. Taking again "irrelevance" as an example, there is no clear border when exactly a study becomes irrelevant enough to be considered problematic.

Finally, "data dredging" and "P value hacking" seem to be pretty much the same thing to me, based on what you wrote above. Clarify if there is a difference. Further, clarify what the difference between "data dredging" (bad) and "exploratory research" (presumably ok) is.

Thank you for your comment XLetix. I have amended the question to address some of what you have asked for. Please let me know if you can recommend further clarifications.
Thank you also for the suggestion of "data forging". I looked it up but I could not find any literature on the concept within google scholar. On that basis it does not seem to be a research practice that is generally regarded as problematic within social science research. I can see how the practice of making up data could very well be an issue, but perhaps it is under a different name?

"Fabrication" is more common than "forging", I think - you'll find plenty of discussion using that term. See, eg, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2685008/

I would add:

Disguising political opinions and agenda as scientific facts.

The majority of scholarly work in social science has political motivations or implications. Too often the tools of experimental sciences (statistics mostly, but there are other examples) are used to legitimate what is really the author's political opinion.
Possibly, the source of this unwanted, if not fraudulent, behavior, is the push from funding sources to evaluate social sciences output the same way that experimental and STEM research is. Hence the absurd push to use statistics and show "significance" for issues were they are really not indicated.
I would remove:

Publisher paywalling

Although unfashionable, that is an efficient way of funding quality publishing.
Also, for non social-science fields I think what you refer to as "data dredging" is not problematic, and actually an interesting approach. There is growing interest in computer programs mining large data sets in search for clusters, co-variance and correlation. Although it would then be dishonest to obfuscate the fact that the relationships were found that way, of course.

Thank you for your answer Cape Code. Do you know of any paper which provides support for the claim that "Disguising political opinions and agenda as scientific facts" is regarded as problematic within social science?
I appreciate your option in relation to the removal of "publisher paywalling" - I will take that view on board. Do you know of any paper which provides support for the claim that Publisher paywalling is needed to fund quality publishing, and thus suggests that it is generally regarded as a bad thing?

@PeterSlattery there's an enormous literature discussing the economics of scholarly publishing, of which Teplitskiy is only the tip of the iceberg. It's widely accepted that non-paywalled literature is a nice thing to have, but this is not quite the same as saying paywalled is inherently problematic

@PeterSlattery incidentally, the Teplitskiy paper has some pretty major limitations - see notes at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2015/August#.22Amplifying_the_Impact_of_Open_Access:_Wikipedia_and_the_Diffusion_of_Science.22 - so I'd try looking at a broader review than just that one example :-)

In my opinion "harking" and "data dredging" are sufficiently dissimilar to merit separate points. You could run the tests you had planned to run (therefore probably not "data dredging"), find results that seemed quite opposite to what you hypothesized, and then change your hypothesis when you saw it didn't line up with your initial predictions (therefore "harking"). So they're both problematic practices, but different enough to warrant separation.
I do think however "data dredging" and "P value hacking" are essentially the same thing. Both involve going way, way off the path you'd originally planned for your analysis and scrambling around to find literally anything significant, even if you had not made a single prediction about any of the tested relationships. If I had to pick one name though I'd say "data dredging," because "P value hacking" makes me think more of outright falsifying p values... which is a different issue from running a million random tests until something produces a p value you like but didn't tamper with.


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Is it appropriate to bring coffee and cookies to a PhD defense?
First of all, I've already asked my adviser about this, but I just want to see what is the overall idea of the community on this.
In Mexico it is usually required for the student to do this, but that is about the only place I have references of people doing defenses.
I was thinking of bringing bottled water, but since is the middle of the winter I thought coffee might be a better choice.

It may vary a lot with respect to countries, universities, departments etc. And the best place to ask is to people at your department.

Remember: that food might change the outcome :): http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/04/11/justice-is-served-but-more-so-after-lunch-how-food-breaks-sway-the-decisions-of-judges/#.USmoElojr_U

How I have seen it handle in France: usually, no food and drinks is given out during the defense, except for a bottle of water and a glass who are set on table of each member of the defense committee. However, as you say, it may be cold outside and committee members may be glad for a hot drink and/or maybe something to eat (depending what time it is). So, it is quite customary for the thesis advisor(s) to actually invite the committee members to join him some time before the defense starts, where they can make small talk and drink coffee. If the defense starts early afternoon, they committee can even go to lunch together, giving them an opportunity to discuss practical stuff (who will chair the committee? what order will people talk in? etc.).
Then, after the defense is concluded, there is a celebratory “cocktail” (buffet and drinks) to which the defense committee is invited, and to which they usually attend at least for half an hour.

As others pointed out, the answer depends on the country, particular university, as well as local habits at the department.
Just to complete the international picture:
In Germany (at places I had an opportunity to observe), it was customary to provide a treat in a style of "wine & cheese" of course modified to local tastes (meat in Germany :-) ) including a glass of sparkling/normal wine (usually "Sekt"), but all that after the defense. People would normally order the food by a local butcher (many of which specialise in this kind of stuff as a side business).
The same would go for some Eastern European countries, like Czech Republic, or Slovakia.
In the Netherlands, at places I saw, there is often a small reception after the defense too.

In mine, there are no conventions per se, but I've seen people get food ready for just after the defense. Since it's extremely rare to get to a defense and fail it, I'm not too concerned about the 'foregone conclusion' problem.

As a grad student in the US the tradition in my department was that all meetings involved a snack (usually doughnuts for morning meetings and cookies for afternoon meetings) and coffee. The snacks and coffee were set out before the meeting started. Our thesis defenses included a public and a private portion. The snacks at defenses were sometimes a little fancier (if I recall correctly, I sprung for a $20 cheese and fruit platter and a couple bottles of fancy water). As a post doc in the US the meetings typically only involved coffee. I think this was because a number of faculty in the department had strict dietary requirements (e.g., a number of vegans and kosher people), but I am not sure. In my current department in the UK we never have snacks or drinks. I really miss it.
I would suggest you ask other people in your department what is the norm. If the norm is not to bring snacks and drinks, think if you want to start a new tradition: everybody likes cookies/biscuits.

I think it's highly country-dependent. In Italy, it is normal to offer food after defending a thesis (not only phd, also bachelor and master), either directly on the place or by taking all the friends attending to a bar after the defense. Sometimes the university itself even offers a small part of the refreshment.
Often there is enough food that you can skip your lunch (if it's in the morning).
If you find it weird to bring coffee and cookies to the defense, you can simply move to a bar, a common room or another place to celebrate.

Another variant:
My defense (UK) was informal, but very much an examination and as such there was no food or drink. However in the evening my supervisor invited myself and my examiners to a restaurant (not sure what would've happened if I hadn't passed!).
I have also heard of situations where the examination was particularly long and the examiners and candidate broke for lunch and came back - again there was no repast in the examination room.

This is all standard for the UK.  Part of the point is that some other systems will not let you have a defense unless you are almost guaranteed to pass, but in the UK it is a genuine hurdle.

@NeilStrickland, indeed as a case in point, the Graduate School ran a course on preparing for your Viva, to help allay fears etc., during which they showed a video of someone failing their Viva...

@NeilStrickland those systems that will not let you defend unless you can pass also fail your whole graduate education if you fail the defense. Turkey is one of the examples.

It depends on the department I would expect. Mine for example bans food and drink at a PhD defense, both because they think is puts an undue burden on the student (why should you have to cater your defense?) and creates an inappropriate atmosphere. Cookies, generally, are a celebratory food for example, and while you should pass your defense, having already broken out dessert suggests that its a foregone conclusion.

I don't think there is a set rule prescribing the food and drinks that are welcome in the doctoral defense rooms/halls but I am afraid it is culture- and convention-dependent. I have never heard of such a thing that doctoral students can bring in any food or hot drinks when they defense their dissertation. Bottled water is ok. However, personally I don't reject any idea of taking food to defense rooms as long as the chair and the committees think it is fine. Food and drinks sometimes ease nervousness and anxiety and may make the whole process an easier one, as we all know. So why not food and drinks?

It is illegal for a student to bring jury food. It is considered bribery, even if you give it after you are successful.

Where is it illegal? Could you please specify? Because in many parts of the world, as other answers pointed out, it is not illegal at all.

Do you have a reference for this?

Juries are considered public servants in this duty and gifting public servants is considered bribery.

It varies in the U. S. by field and department.  Most at my school did not but I had relatives with opposite experience.  Use your judgment and don't go overboard.


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Monitoring students in the lab
My professor recently had a problem, and he asked me for my help to solve it, and of course I ask for yours.
He was made the School of Engineering Dean, an while it sounds important it takes most of is time through an administrative black hole, also, because of this his office is now in another building so he cannot come to the lab as often as he would like to.
He started noticing less and less people come to the lab, and some only come for a space of a couple of hours and then leave, while he perfectly understands that research can be done everywhere, he is very big on cooperation and discussion among lab members, which can't be done if there is only one guy in the lab.
Do you impose any kind of restrictions on students going to the lab for a specific time? If you are not able to monitor it, how can you ensure they will come. I was looking into some companies that have IP based checking in systems, but seems like an overkill for a 10 person laboratory.

This might be irrelevant to your question but:  One way to ensure students keep on track is setting up a regular meeting for the group. Say once a week or biweekly where each student is required to represent what has been done and what's going to be done in the near future.

Thanks, we do have weekly meetings, with some mixed results.

RFID tags? Inciting to log each other’s presence? So many ideas come to mind… ;-)

For creative works it is much harder to control how much one works other than looking at it's fruits. First, it's very uneven, and enforcing standard 8h routine day may be not the best approach. Second, it's easy to trick (other's, oneself) by just sitting for 8h, or 12h, but doing less then if one were working efficiently for 4h. Sure, "working from home" sometimes means "'working' from home", but just checking number of hours spent like in a mine can be counterproductive (not to say - easy to circumvent).

@PiotrMigdal this is analogous to judging a programmer by the lines of code he types, or a manager by the amount emails he sends.

@PaulHiemstra By "fruits" I didn't mean lines of code or amount of e-mails. (However, I don't know if you use "this" to refer to "hour in office" or "fruits".) My point was that looking at things which only correlate with efficiency (and are easy to simulate) is usually counterproductive (especially as it's both optimizing the wrong parameters plus sending a clear sign that one does not trust PhD students).

@PiotrMigdal I totally agree with you and added some examples of equally useless ways of judging the quality of someones work.

There’s one obvious way: to send a signal that lab presence is important, the research group leader and permanent staff must be more present in the lab. Most students are looking for opportunities to increase interaction with professors and advisers, thus by being “accessible” in the lab for discussions, you will increase lab presence. In addition to inciting students to come, that will be a even greater stride toward “cooperation and discussion among lab members”.
This also works with post-doc and the more experienced grad students: you need to avoid the idea that “lab presence” is only for the newbies, while the grown ups get out of there as often as they dare!

+1 for taking a positive attitude towards this problem. Enforcement of rules will probably lead to a sour atmosphere.

Two anecdotes that might be useful:

9:15 coffee time: When I was a PhD student, our professor (or the lead assistant) would round-up everyone for "coffee" every day at 9:15am. It was usually only 15-20 minutes, and nobody cared if you went home at 11am. You weren't excused from missing "coffee," even if you worked all night and went home at 5am. Of course, there was some flexibility for jet-lag, vacations, article submissions, etc. The prof was paying our salaries and this kind of request was simply a question of not being insubordinate. The positive side effect was that people were fairly disciplined and there was a good exchange of "status" during those meetings. It made the lab feel like a family. Everyone knew more or less what was going on.
Use it or lose it: My current university has card-access to all the lab spaces. A few years ago, one of our labs was "physically downsized" by the administration, and their argument was it wasn't being utilized enough, and other researchers needed the space. They had the hard data to prove it. So, many of our students complained they had no more cubes for their books, etc. But in the end, I said it was partially their fault for not "occupying" the space, partially our fault for not forcing them to. It's an argument I use to explain the necessity to be in the lab every day.

I cannot stress enough that you need to take a positive atitude towards this. The people, including the students, are there to learn something and do good work. On the whole, these people are motivated, and if they are not, strict enforcement of some rules will not get the motivated scientists you want. Therefore, reward postive behavior, not punish negative behavior.
For example @F'x's suggestion, make the lab a stimulating environment where it is nice to work. This means having senior members (professors, postdocs) present, and stimulate interaction. This can for example be done by organizing literature groups where someone prepares a good paper and the group discusses the content. Or organize weekly sessions where people present their work to each other and discuss it.
In addition, make the students and employees part of the solution. Explain that the attendance has dropped, and tell them why you think this might lead to less coorperation and productivity. Suggest and discuss possible solutions with them, and try to improve the situation.
These things said, at some stage people need to get freedom, especially the PhD's and postdocs. Judge people on their output, not their attendance. Although master students might need more monitoring...

Since you said that the "research can be done everywhere", the same can be said about collaborations. As long as things that needs to get done are done, you can't really complain. So: make "cooperation and discussion among lab members" one of the things that needs to get done. Enforce a culture where during the weekly meetings you begin by asking a random member of the lab to describe what some other random member did during the past week. If the goal is "cooperation and discussion", it shouldn't matter whether the lab members do it in the lab, in the office, or over a cup of coffee in the break room.
If, on the other hand, the goal is really to make sure that people come in to the lab and not slack off, then the best way is to tell them to their faces (during the weekly meeting, for example), that "they should come in to the labs regularly and not slack off". Give them an expectation of "working hours" and chew them out for not following it (if he can notice that fewer people are coming in, he can surely pull out 10 minutes every two or three days to do lab inspections during the expected working hours).
If the members of your lab cannot be trusted to behave like responsible adults, then you either really need new lab workers or you should just install one of them video baby monitors. :-)

Scenarios like this ended up with the Chemistry Professor's popular letter. I'd highly advice against this. A discussion group seems to be a far better and constructive idea.http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/03/i-expect-you-to-correct-your-work-ethic.html?m=1

Trying to force people to become productive scientists is not going to get your result. You might increase the attendance rate, but not te scientific output.

...in addition, if the members of the lab do not behave like adults than you are already too late and the restrictive policies will not get you any results.

The first point is a good idea though. I once took my entire group out for lunch and had each person explain what the person next to them was doing :). It was both amusing and interesting.


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When is it prudent to argue against a suggested revision to a journal paper?
Most journals have a peer review process, where there are several rounds of reviews and modifications over a single paper.
In my particular case, one of these reviews was, in my opinion, a bit over the top. In this case, the reviewer asked me to expand a set of equations that are explained in any undergrad numerical analysis book. It even has a very well described Wikipedia page. And the set of equations took an entire page of my paper.
Yet, my PI at the moment told me it was just better to comply and get the paper ready (it had already been accepted subject to these changes).
My new PI told me it seemed wrong to him, since it is a very basic set of equations and the fact that one reviewer is not familiarized with it, is not an excuse to break the rhythm of the paper, since suddenly a whole page of equations can do that for you in a paper.
He told me he would have fought it back.
What is the overall opinion in different fields with respect to this?

I think this gets the "primarily opinion-based" close vote.  Reasonable people can disagree on matters of style.  Some prefer to make papers self-contained, others would rather focus on their own work and cite everything else.  Some are willing to fight to publish their papers exactly as they want, others would rather just defer to the referee.  I don't think there are any "overall opinions".

The top-level question is on-topic. Asking "what do you think" is not.

If the editor asked this person to reivew the paper, it is because he is an expert of the research topic. If this reviewer does not know a particular notion, it is safe to assume that many readers will be in the same situation. Everything that may help readers to understand the paper should be encouraged. However, if you feel it slows down the pace of reading too much, what about putting the details in an appendix?

Have you given any reference about those equations in the article? Even though some equations can be very basic for you, they might not be as basic for the reviewer or for other readers. Never assume that things that are basic for you are basic for everyone, even if one is from your very same field.

Depending on the journal, you may submit Supplementary Material for your paper. It could be a nice way to comply with the referee's request while keeping your paper's rhythm (which I agree is important) intact.

From what I know (I am a mathematician with some publishing experience), it is perfectly okay to argue against a referee's demand, as soon as

you do it politely, and you explain your arguments in a non-conflictual way;
you are ready to delay the final acceptance of your paper;
you are ready to either ultimately  accept the demand if the referee does not change her mind and the editor backs her up, or to get your paper ultimately rejected.

In the case you describe, I do not think that explaining your point of view would have turn the editor's mind right away. In a similar situation (a referee asked for some terminology to be changed into something more standard), with my coauthor we argued with success (our argument was that to date, no terminology existed for what we discussed, let alone standard terminology).
Added in edit: I forgot an important point; in many situation, including yours, you can find a middle ground that may be considered an acceptable answer to her query by the referee, and that avoid departing too much from your initial intention. For example, in your case, you can propose to add a precise reference giving the derivation.

Does "okay" here mean morally okay or having no consequences for your chances of getting the paper published?

I mean both, with the provisio given in my answer (mainly, possible delay).

My experience in this regard, being in Epidemiology as a field and having both successfully and unsuccessfully pushed back against reviewers:
You are best served arguing against a reviewers requests when you have clear, definitive case. This does not necessarily have to be "the reviewer is wrong" but can be "This was done deliberately, and here is why..."
In my experience, this appears mostly in either the generation or interpretation of results. Stylistic arguments, such as the one you're currently considering, have less of a defensible "Here is why this was the way it was..."
In your particular case, consider the following:

While you might think the expansion of the equations is trivial, at least one person who is both sufficiently qualified and interested to agree to review your paper thinks it is better served fully fleshed out. For most papers, this actually represents a fair fraction of the total lifetime number of readers of the paper.
A reader needing to expand your set of equations, and do so without error, also breaks the flow of the paper.

The fundamental question you should ask yourself is "If I say 'No', and the editor replies with 'Thanks, but no thanks...' was it worth it?"


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Are there any studies on the effectiveness of Qualifying examinations in Graduate Schools
Is any of you aware of studies that show how a Qualifying examination affects things like success in an Academic career, publications, etc.
As many of you know, there are many countries that do not have Qualifying examinations in Graduate school. I just would like to know if there is solid research on this topic.

One question would be whether qualifying exams are a pedagogical tool or a management tool. In my graduate institute is was either pass and go on to PhD research, pass but write a Master's thesis (marginal pass) and if that was good proceed on, or fail and leave the program. The question being asked was basically if you currently had the tools the faculty thought necessary to be successful in a PhD, not a successful career necessarily. Certainly failing would impact success, but it was not set up to quantify future success.

I am not an applied statistician, but in my amateur opinion the effect of having qualifying exams on academic success could be hard to quantify.  I can't think of two academic departments that are otherwise very close but one gives exams and one doesn't.  (I am hindered by the fact that all departments at US institutions I am familiar with have these exams.)  If you want to compare departments across different countries it seems...well, hard to compare.

I guess the only way to really do a fair assessment would be to have a control group and a group who doesn't make the Quals in the same institution, but I see all sorts of implications that prevent the school from doing that.

@user37208: Yeah, I did a BA/MS at Chicago, so I took all of their first year courses.  I think it is fair to call it their own somewhat eccentric take on quals.

Fascinating question.  Perhaps you could start by backing up and looking at the role of exams in general in pedagogy.

@aparente001 Indeed, but for example, when you have large groups (200+) students, is a bit hard to actually have a more personal way to evaluate the students, os I understand the need of an exam. In Graduate school, however, classes are relatively small.

In my department, the results of the qualifying exams are only "pass" and "fail". Numerical grades are computed and made available to the faculty for comment, but we're asked to destroy those records almost immediately. I know of no official records that distinguish between "passed with flying colors" and "barely squeaked through". So I don't see much hope for extracting serious statistical information. (An example from the other side of the fence: I don't know how I did on my own quals, except that I passed.)

It seems that a project along these lines was proposed some time ago. The project website notes that "surprisingly little research exists on understanding the evaluation process to Ph.D. candidacy" and proposes to fill this gap. Some of the authors later published this article, perhaps the most interesting conclusion from which is that quals are U-shaped: the best and worst schools have been abandoning these exams (the top schools see no need for them given how competitive graduate admissions is, while the bottom schools have nothing to lose by dropping them), while the schools in the middle have generally retained them. The authors raise the concerns that these exams may be psychologically harmful, poorly correlated with long-term success, and may disproportionately weed out minority students.
Unfortunately, I don't see any published papers by these authors on this work, so they provide more questions than answers. Thus, the answer to your question seems to be no: grad schools have certainly been reexamining the role these exams should play, but there does not seem to be any published scholarship or other "hard data" that could inform this conversation, at least as of now.

The "article" you link to is recent enough that something might be forthcoming. And, good sleuthing.

That article is, at best, confusing.  They start off talking about qualifying exams, and then talk about candidacy exams, and at many places these may be different sets of exams.  And the only info about their sample size is n >= 2.

Agree, they seemed to jump straight from the problem statement to the recommendations; the only "finding" given is the U-shaped result I mentioned above. Hopefully they are preparing a manuscript with some actual data. Personally, I find it a bit ironic (and troubling) that grad schools have been giving quals for generations -- and are now changing the quals -- based only on opinions and speculations (such as those in the below answer). If anyone should be able to make data-based decisions, it should be grad schools....

In the institutions that have qualifying exams, 0% who fail them go on to earn a degree. I joke, but it is true!
I can't speak for all disciplines, but for those that take an apprenticeship (as in the sciences), quals are less about the exam and more about the process.  It is often (but not always) the case that quals are taken very well into the graduate process, and by the time you get there,  your committee already has high confidence that you will pass. Rather, the quals are meant to force you into a period of intense scholarship, reading, and reflecting that will shape the rest of your career.
I don't know of any research on the relationship between qual exams and academic success, but I suspect that the process of having quals does at least two things: 1) provides for an objective system to weed out students who should not progress forward and 2) provides a platform for successful students to focus for an extended period.
Remember, the prestige (of the university) standing behind your degree is connected to the quality of people who hold it. Having high standards and a difficult process (quals) only strengthens the reputation of the institution and by association, your degree.
So perhaps the better question is whether or not places that do not require qualifying exams award degrees to less prepared students?

In the institutions that have qualifying exams, 0% who fail them go on to earn a degree — This is an exaggeration.  Some students switch to a different degree program at the same institution.  Some students move to a different institution.  Some students successfully appeal the failure decision.

@JeffE exactly, and many many MANY schools allow multiple tries at the exams... very much an exaggeration


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Etiquettes and content of review text for replying to reviewer comments?
I submitted my first paper to a reputed journal and it came back with major revisions. One review is positive while other suggests to reject the paper. Though the reviewer who rejected the paper was under a wrong impression that a smaller version of the paper had earlier been published somewhere else (I provided a preprint on arXiv and declared so in the cover letter).
I have made significant changes to some sections of my paper and now writing the review text. So my questions are:

What is the etiquette for replying to the reviewers. "Thanks for such comments" etc after each comment seem very repetitive to me and seems they sound just as formality. Are there any established etiquette to reply to reviewer comment (specifically for very negative comments)
Is it OK for the review text to have 5-8 lines in response to comments which are not there verbatim in the revised manuscript. (Since I want to connect to the revision as compared to the previous version)
Should I include the changes (such as tables for new results etc.) in the review text or rather point to relevant sections in the manuscript ?

One specific point not mentioned in answers so far is "the reviewer who rejected the paper was under a wrong impression that a smaller version of the paper had earlier been published".  When a reviewer makes a factual error, it's important to tactfully but unambiguously correct it. You can simply quote the reviewer's comment and say "The reviewer is mistaken; this paper has not been previously published".   If the reviewer is flat-out wrong about something, the editor can put less weight on rest of their negative comments.

The more you write the more people need to read before they get to the stuff they need to know, so I would keep the formalities short. I typically start my response letter with a general thanks to all reviewers. If one has been especially useful I will mention that there.
If there was a comment that happend in all (or many) of the reviews I will discuss that at the begining as well.
After that the letter becomes very "tabular", For each reviewer I just discuss point for point how I dealt with that comment. Usually it is just a sentence and the page (and line) of where that change happened in the text. Occationally it may make sense to write a bit more, and I do so whenever required.

Different people follow a different 'style' when replying to reviewers. I have seen several different ones while reviewing papers and also while writing my own replies. Based on these, I can say the following:

I generally thank the reviewers and editor for taking time to go through my paper - it is voluntary work so the least they deserve is this! I do not thank them after every comment but if I am making specific changes based on their recommendations I make sure I make them aware of that. For example, "this figure has been changed following your suggestion" or something like that. Because the reviewer may not remember that was their suggestion in the first place (rare, but it does happen). This works specifically for negative comments as you don't have to thank them but if you are changing something partially based on a negative comment then they are somewhat being "acknowledged". Do reviewers care about these? I don't think so but its just good practice. If you are vehemently defending something and not making any change (i.e. sticking to your guns) then you can still explain that politely.
Yes, nothing wrong in that. You can even have a page of comment if you need to especially in major revisions.
That depends on you. I generally don't include it in review text and just point out the figure/table number.

Good luck with your revision and you may find this post of mine interesting about how to tackle a major revision.

There are many ways to write a response to reviewers, but this is generally how I approach it:
An introductory paragraph, mainly directed at the editor, discussing the broad-strokes themes of the changes. "Reflecting the comments by the reviewers, we have included additional information on the simulation approach used, as well as expanded the discussion of the work's implications in practice. We believe you will find the enclosed manuscript to be significantly improved..."
A point by point addressing of the reviewer comments, formatted something like this:
Reviewer 1:
I think this paper is excellent, timely, methodologically interesting, innovative, and in every way an exemplar of it's kind.
Thank you.
Figure 2. When printed in black and white, it's impossible to distinguish the results of Scenario 1 vs. Scenario 2
We have altered the lines in Figure 2 to have different symbols as well as different colors to distinguish between Scenario 1 vs. Scenario 2, which should improve readability when printed.
Reviewer 2:
I don't trust the results of this paper. The authors used X, when they should have used Y. This is a curious decision that cases doubt on the rest of their analysis
We considered using Y when approaching this analysis, however because of A, B, and C properties of the data, Y would be inappropriate, and yield a biased result. The method we used for X is detailed in Science, P. Methods for using X in Circumstances Exactly Like This. 2013. Society Journal (7)11.
And so on, and so on...
When addressing reviewer comments where your response is "Yeah...no.", I find being firm but polite, and giving a justification, to be your best bet. I don't tend to include the exact changes to things like "This has been reworded to be substantially more clear", but then several major journals in my field require manuscripts with Track Changes enabled to do exactly that.


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What can I do if I can't pay the fee to have my paper published as open access?
I have had a paper accepted to a journal. In the submission process, there was a question whether the paper would be Open Access, I said yes, thinking there was no fee!
After the acceptance, the publisher told me that I had to pay the Open Access fee! I did not know that there was a fee at all! Otherwise, I wouldn't have submitted  my paper in this journal at all.
I am from a developing country and I can't pay the fee without a fund, which is not possible! What can I do?

I edited your question for English. I also would note that usually papers are not "published" until the fee is paid, so I changed that. However, I don't know every journal, so I could be wrong about that.

@AzorAhai-him- I've learned through this site that some predatory publishers will say that the paper has been "published" and post it on their website before demanding a fee, presumably because they believe this makes the authors feel compelled to pay even if they didn't expect the fee. Then if someone won't pay they start making threats, and suggestions like shaking down coauthors for money, etc. So, I do think if any of that happens it would increase the likelihood that the venue is not reputable.

@BryanKrause You may be correct. I defer to your modliness to adjust the language.

You can:

Pay the fee, perhaps after asking for a reduction or waiver based on your location.

Ask them to change to no longer Open Access.

Ask to withdraw your paper from the journal.

If you don't want to do (1), and they say no to (2), your only remaining option is (3). In this case, you're also probably lucky you didn't do (1), because this would seem to be a predatory publishing practice; you might even be lucky they didn't say yes to (2), because it might indicate that the journal is worse than merely predatory and is outright fraudulent. If they refuse (3), that's okay, you can just ignore them, be certain that they are predatory/fraudulent, and take your paper elsewhere (as long as you haven't already signed anything giving away your rights to your work; if you have you may want to look for an opinion from a lawyer at your institution).
In the future, also read carefully any "instructions to authors" content on the publisher's website for any information on fees. If a journal is not clear about their fees even if you've looked for them, I'd take that as a good indication the journal is not reputable and you should stay away.

@leonos Well, probably that should go first.

And a "5". Request a discretional waiver. I did for SN (SpringerNature) journal: post paper acceptance. Though, I only requested a 50% APC discount.

Thank you Sir, in fact I shall try (2) and (3).

I'd add "6. Write to members of your scientific community that you know, especially those involved in the journal, so that they are aware of your situation and realize that people like you are excluded from the publication system they are currently supporting." This may not solve your immediate problem (although maybe important people at the journal could pressure the publisher into accepting a discretional waiver); but cases like yours may eventually encourage your community move towards publication models (such as diamond open-access journals) that do not exclude authors who cannot pay APCs.

You are right sir!

Is the journal in question open access only? Or is it a hybrid journal that has both a subscription option (where you would not be expected to pay publication costs) and an open access option. This would obviously change what options you have.
First off, you can always explain your situation and ask for a waiver. Generally, waivers have to be requested early in the process of manuscript submission (whatever the reason for the waiver is). Most major publishers have explicit rules for this. So I wouldn't count on a waiver this late in the process. It's worth a try though and I think this is your best bet - especially if you are from a developing nation.
Alternatively, you could ask to switch out of open access (assuming the journal is hybrid and has a subscription model as well). I think you might run into an issue here though. Submissions usually contain binding language and the publisher/journal might not let you switch. I don't necessarily think that this is an indication of (low) quality - rather it's dependant on behind-the-scenes bureaucracy.
I don't think there is any harm in pursuing either (or both) of these options.  If neither works out, you could always look around for some money to pay for publication. I don't know your situation or affiliation but it may be that your university has some money for this sort of thing. Or there may be some other source of funds. I think it's worth looking into.
Personally, I would not pay out-of-pocket for this. At that point, withdraw and resubmit elsewhere. Assuming you've initially submitted to a quality journal, you should have no trouble publishing elsewhere. It isn't unusual to include previous reviews and you could certainly let the editor of a different journal know what's going on (i.e., that the paper was accepted but withdrawn due to funding issues). That isn't a way to circumvent further review but it would likely smooth the process and increase your chances of a quick acceptance.

+1. "Funding issues" is good wording, because it covers "I did have funds for OA, but they were cut" as well.

Thank you Sir,  the journal is  a hybrid journal that has both a subscription option. So in fact, I didn't  expect to pay publication fee! If they asked me before publication, I had to withdraw my paper, but after the publication, it is a problem.

Given that you are from a developing country, be aware that most - if not all - journals providing some sort of funding (i.e., vouchers, discounts, ans other subsidies) to support open-access publishing. I doubt this journal is any different. If you have not already done so, just inquire about this. Please feel free to continue keeping us abreast!


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I have been asked to be on a tenure evaluation committee during my sabbatical, how should I respond?
I have been asked to be an external tenure evaluator for someone I don't know. It would be my first case. Knowing myself, I am sure I will spend an unreasonable amount of time and energy to do it right.
The problem is that I need to use my semester off to catch up on publications (I am way behind) and kick-start my book project (necessary if I want to be promoted to Professor). Adding to the stress, part of my research is abroad, and I am moving my entire family out of the country for the semester, which is another time sucker.
I feel wrong for saying no because our field is relatively small. However, as a minoritized female, I also feel I have been socialized to say "yes," which I do constantly. I really need help thinking this through.

"Thank you, but no"

There is nothing to "think through", the answer is very clear from your short description of the situation. Just say no. And use this as an opportunity to develop the skill of saying no, which is an important (some would say, essential) skill in academia and pretty much anywhere else. The first time saying no is the hardest, it gets much easier after you practice it a bit. :-)
Also, good luck with the sabbatical, the move abroad, and the book!

My wife once gave me good advice for academe. When asked to do this kind of job feel free to say no right away. Never say yes right away - take time to think about it. That's just what you've done here.

@EthanBolker of course, if you say no, you can always change your mind; if you say yes, it is much harder since you have made the commitment

Say you'll be more free next year.

You should feel free to say no.
If the ask is for you to serve on the committee, attend meetings and vote then given your time constraints, do say no.
If you are just being asked to write a letter in support consider saying yes. You could offer to do this when you decline fuller involvement. You might learn something reading this person's work. Set yourself a time limit so you don't in fact spend an unreasonable amount of time.
I suspect that as a minoritized female you are in great demand for tasks like this. That fact coupled with your own inclination to say yes can make for an unreasonable drain on your time.

I think it is really unfair to minorities to impose on them an extra drain of time just to tick boxes. Maybe to "pay their due to the system", they could increase the background load by 10-20%, but I think that's about it. After all, there is a reason why they are where they are, and they should use their talent there.

@CaptainEmacs I agree. That's what I meant my last paragraph to say,

@Stian She could have earned the job entirely on her merits (the only fair assumption) and still be often asked to be a token representative ...

@EthanBolker If so, saying no is viable and justifiable just as you write.

@EthanBolker Sorry if it wasn't unclear, I wanted to support your point, not contradict it.

Before you say yes or no, make sure that you know the parameters. How long is the process, how intense, travel required, zooms, what should be evaluated, ...?
Note that such a thing would be a plus on your CV for promotion to professor, I think, so there is some payback.
If the time and scale are OK, then it might not impact much on your time. It is often useful to have a "side project" when you are doing something else, like starting a book. You get stuck or bogged down and it can help to switch gears for a bit.
You can/should also ask someone at your own institution (or the asking institution) with more experience about how much time and effort are required. Perhaps someone who evaluated your tenure case.
Having written a lot of books, it isn't all that much effort/time to "get started". The hard part is at the end, in finishing up and getting everything right for publication. Papers are a different matter, perhaps.

Books have two obstacles: Getting started and getting finished. Most books fail at the first part, the remaining get delayed by the second.

There might be an added benefit that participating in a tenure review might leave the poster better prepared for putting together her own tenure case when the time comes.

Sure, there is a trade-off that you are facing. I believe you are also trying to understand the opportunity cost of saying no. If hesitation stems from the belief that saying yes might compromise your career path, I think it's equally important to consider the cost of saying yes.
There isn't necessarily anything bad about saying no to requests from individuals or committees, especially if you feel it could impact your professional trajectory. In professional relationships, decisions are typically pragmatic rather than sentimental.
I don't think anyone would take a 'no' personally or view it negatively. My advice would be to carefully weigh the cost and benefit of saying yes or no for yourself. Understanding this balance will make the decision-making process easier for you in the end.

There will always be administrative tasks with too few people to do them, so be assured the opportunity will very likely come again -- most likely well before your opportunity for a next sabbatical.  This weighs the scales into working as hard as you can to complete the goals of your sabbatical.
Chances are reasonable that the people who brought your name up for this role were simply unaware of your sabbatical.
"I'm on sabbatical and my dance card is full, but thanks for thinking of me" is a fine response.  Doing this will be far less injurious to your career than a non-productive sabbatical would.
I'd encourage you to learn to say no without feeling guilty when the situation demands it.  It's an important skill.

I assume when you say you don't know the person that you've never heard of the person. I would say no to this request even if you weren't on sabbatical and working abroad. If your field is a small one then you should only be evaluating tenure cases for people you know. Part of the process of achieving tenure entails becoming well known enough that everyone in the field knows who you are, and doubly so if it's a small field. So the candidate should be able to put together a committee on their own merits. If you don't know the person, it's an automatic no.

I would suggest consulting with HR. If they say it's not ok then if you want to say no you can appeal to their authority. Depending on the country, saying yes might cancel/postpone your sabbatical or have other work time consequences that might be in your favor, such as extending your sabbatical by some amount of time. So you could then communicate the newly informed options to the head and ask what they advise and agree to. Finally, maybe the evaluation date could be shifted? To before or after your sabbatical? That might also be something communicated with HR.
In the long run, your tenure is more important than evaluating someone else's. But on the other hand service is part of the evaluation for tenure right? So it might count towards yours. If you have other service activities in your portfolio then you don't "need" this. But also since this is your first time also you might get valuable insights about the process. What are the chances that the same person you are evaluating now will be on your committee later? So weigh the benefits for you personally, not for your department. Since you don't have tenure yet, you have to be a little selfish...

This really isn't an HR sort of request.  There's little reason to ask them (at least in the US -- maybe other places are different).

It would be an HR thing in those places where sabbatical leave is administratively and legislatively defined (as other kinds of leave are). And it would be strange if it exists without being administratively defined. And if there's a formal framework for it, HR would know it.

It becomes an HR thing if the progression is to say to the requestor "Sorry, I can't -- I'm on sabbatical" and then somebody tries to say "You have to do it anyway" -- but before that contacting HR probably isn't a good idea.