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Does being a member of IEEE make it easier to publish in the transactions?
We are in process of finalizing a draft for submission to a good venue for publication (Comp. Sc.). I have never published in IEEE Transactions, though I have a paper under review with one of them. I note that the majority of the IEEE articles have membership details besides the author name.
Questions:

Do you need to be  a member of the IEEE in order to publish in one of the transactions?
If not, do reviewers perceive articles submitted by non-members less favourably?

Note: I am already a member of ACM and its specialized groups. I don't see any reason to join IEEE just to add something with my name in the article.

Related: Does it look bad if I publish an IEEE journal article without “Member, IEEE” next to my name?

Is IEEE reputable? how can I know and check that?

@SSimon are you asking as a whole bunch or a specific venue sponsored or published by IEEE?

@Coder I am very confused by IEEE, I first heard it on here, this website, now my graduate school updated regulation and accept ISI, SCOPUS, PubMed and IEEE indexing, I dont understand how much they are reliable, even they claim they are peer reviewed, they seem to have low impact, but if possible I find journal that is interesting for me to publish there

@SSimon until and unless your measure of reliability and low-impact defined, it is difficult to answer. Ask as a separate question.

I cannot @Coder it is not allowed to aks about it

@SSimon When it comes to Electrical Engineering it is both the most impactful and reputable publisher. No idea why you would  think the opposite unless your field is so outside the area.

@o4tlulz what about Nano?

Simple answer: no. I'm not an IEEE member and none of my coauthors are, but we regularly publish in the IEEE transactions.

+1. Thanks for the answer. Does it apply to all the domain specific transaction such as in computer science? Have you published in one of these?

The only place that looks like it is an advantage of being a member of is PNAS.

@Coder I'm not familiar with transactions on computer science, but in many years I've never heard anyone complaining about such kind of discrimination. Of course, there can be a few reviewers willing to discriminate non-IEEE members -because there can be idiots everywhere- but I'm sure they are rare.

@MassimoOrtolano thanks for the probabilistic answer on the prior being low cases.

One certainly does not have to be a member of IEEE. Although, if one commonly publishes in IEEE journals, then it seems that you would be involved in areas of importance to other IEEE member, a community of practice in some sense. So, why should one not be a member of IEEE if you work in that area and commonly communicate with that group of folks?

I'm also not a member of IEEE and regularly publishes in IEEE transactions. You can also see some IEEE Fellows who became an IEEE member only after they received said recognition..

@JonCuster For computer scientists, IEEE and ACM have highly overlapping coverage, and often one will simply join the one whose conferences they are more likely to attend (conference registration costs for both societies are typically priced to encourage membership).

@jakebeal - No, I understand. But, if you are an ACM member and publish primarily in IEEE (or vice versa) one might want to reconsider. As a material scientist, do I join APS, MRS, AVS, ... -  well, you pick one or two and see how it goes and if you specialty veers a bit you might shift around over time.

I agree with @jakebeal ... conference discounts matter. But more to the point, I know that ACM charges less for providing open access if any author is a member.  IEEE may do the same.  I concur with those who have said it doesn't affect acceptance.

@JonCuster Also if you attend one or two conferences a year, the discount is more than your annual fees anyways.


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Is it okay to reuse the text of a sentence from a paper that summarises the findings of a primary reference?
If x paper says "y et al. [1] have found so and so in the water of India", why can't I use the exact same words as the "x paper" and just cite [1]? My understanding is this- since x paper does not own the set of words that was used to explain what y has found, it's not their 'idea'. And stating that another paper have found something doesn't give x paper credit for the findings. It's a bit like saying that just because some person said "This store makes tables", I can't use these words and instead I have to say "Tables are made by this store", which, I think is an unnecessary restriction.

Welcome to Academia SE! On one hand, when seen objectively, your question is quite pertinent, and it has solicited some high-quality answers. On the other hand, to be quite honest, your tone in asking the question is somewhat off-putting, which might explain some negative votes. You write as if you are complaining about the unfairness of the convention that requires citation of secondary sources. I suggest that you edit your question to simply ask your question neutrally without sounding like you are complaining. In any case, hopefully you will continue to find Academia SE helpful!

Thank you for welcoming me and especially the feedback! I'll rephrase the question to the best of my abilities.

Generally  there are two things to consider and they are not the same: copyright and plagiarism.
Plagiarism is attributing the ideas of others to yourself. Your reuse of "a few words" doesn't have that effect, so it isn't plagiarism. In most places, plagiarism is a social, not legal matter, though there are some exceptions.
Copyright violations involve copying and republishing the words (music, ...) of others, even if you properly attribute it. Copyright is a civil law matter (most places) and laws differ though there is a movement to unify national copyright laws. One of the principles of most copyright law is whether the copying reduces the value of the original to the copyright holders. Again, a few words is almost always unlikely to do that and certainly not in your case. Copying a paragraph, or a chapter, from a copyrighted work is a much different matter.
But another principle of copyright law (generally speaking) is that for some things there is really only one way to say it. Some mathematical definitions and theorems fall into this category and they aren't limited by copyright which is aimed at creative expression.
It seems like you are operating ethically. You properly attribute the idea to Y, just as X did. It is only a few words. There are few ways to express the same (proper) idea.
There could be closely aligned situations, however, in which the idea you are trying to get across is that X agrees withy Y, rather than Y says something. In that case, a citation of X might be needed.
The title question, however, can't be answered without context. Sometimes yes (as above) and sometimes no, depending on what you want to copy. When in doubt cite and also quote, while minimizing your quotes.

"There could be closely aligned situations, however, in which the idea you are trying to get across is that X agrees withy Y, rather than Y says something. In that case, a citation of X might be needed." - This was crucial.

I would be very careful with saying "a few words" is not plagiarism. I think this might give the wrong impression to some people, especially considering the "copy paste" that is being asked about in the question (which to me implies more than a "few" words).

If x paper says "y et al. [1] have found so and so...," then you need to read and cite the original y paper, not the citing x paper.

The OP seems to be asking about citing y but reusing the words of x while doing so, not about citing x instead of y.

In reusing the words of x while citing y, the OP seems to be attempting to cite y without having read y, which is what the linked Q is about.

Agreed, but the OP does not mention that they did not read y, so this seems a bit tangential to the question asked.

Agree: this answer would be improved if you explained how OP needs to handle the x paper. Do they need to cite x? Under circumstances are they allowed to use the same words that x used?

Correct, I have not read y paper

@BruceMurdock https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1922/whats-the-correct-way-to-cite-a-paper-cited-by-another-paper

No, paper x does not own the words. You could obviously write a very similar, if not identical, sentence like it is written in paper x after reading paper y. And as long as you really, really do not use paper x as a source there is no issue at all. In this case, the identical wording is pure conincidence and you would not have to cite paper x.
However, if you use paper x as a source you must make that transparent, especially if you in fact copy and paste their words. Never ever simply copy words you read without citing properly. There really is no reason to deny the authors of paper x the credit.

If this is a piece of assessed work, then leaving aside the copyright/plagiarism issues (well covered by @Buffy), it is worth bearing in mind that assessments are set to give you an opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of the topic (as that is generally what is being assessed).  Direct quoting or close paraphrasing only demonstrate that you are able to identify a suitable source, not that you understand it.  Use the literature review to demonstrate that you understand the relevance of the source for your project/work.  All to often literature reviews are just thinly paraphrased quotes from the abstracts of the papers, which does not create a good impression and conveys little useful information.

It's like saying that just because some person said "This store makes tables", I can't use these words and instead I have to say "Tables are made by this store", which is totally unnecessary.

I don't think you have a correct understanding of the issue of plagiarism. If copying the words "This store makes tables" were plagiarism, then changing it to "Tables are made by this store" would still be plagiarism (but the change in words might fool some plagiarism detectors). If you find yourself changing words or "paraphrasing" then you are trying to hide something, you should stop and reconsider what you are doing.
Plagiarism is about presenting somebody else's work as your own. It's not about whether you use the same words or not, but whether you use the same ideas (without proper attribution). If you write your literature review by very closely mimicking the structure of another literature review (citing the same references in the same order, synthesizing the ideas in a very similar way) then it's plagiarism. It doesn't matter how many words you replace by synonyms and how you change the structure of the sentences, it's still plagiarism.
As a general rule, I would never, ever, use the literal ctrl+c, ctrl+v way of copy pasting anything from another paper without immediately putting it in quotation marks with a citation. Even if the amount you copy is "small enough" to not be plagiarism, I think the fact that you are even considering copying and pasting from a paper is a very troubling sign that you are writing your own work with the other's work too close in hand, and there's a very real risk you would mimick the structure and synthesis of ideas too much.
If you end up writing the same words by chance then it is okay and not plagiarism. A good lithmus test is the following: if you were to forget about the paper for a week and then continue writing (without consulting the source you are "copying" from again), would you still use the same words?

The fact that you are able to write "x paper says 'y et al. [1] have found so and so in the water of India'" strongly suggests that x paper has been helpful to you in identifying the original Y et al. reference. This suggests that you did not come up with these exact words yourself, but that you got them from x paper. This raises the issue of copyright. Facts and ideas are not copyrightable--no one owns the fact that y et al had a particular finding. However, the precise way that ideas are expressed in recorded form (specifically in writing, sound recording, video, etc.) is copyrightable. The first person to express an idea in a specific way gets copyright to it. Others who come after them are supposed to find their own original way to express the same idea.
You seem to object to this application because the phrase ("y et al. [1] have found so and so in the water of India") is so short. But if it is so short, then you should have no problem reading y et al yourself and then expressing what they did in your own original words. If you read y et al yourself and then use your own words to summarize what they found, then there is no need to cite x paper at all and then there is no problem. But if you somehow feel that you cannot come up with an original way of saying "y et al. [1] have found so and so in the water of India", then indeed you should quote and cite x for their original way of saying that. (That said, as some of the other answers have indicated, scholarly rigour expects you to read the original source and cite it directly rather than taking the shortcut that "x said that y said…".)

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Showing demand for my research - referencing forums
I want to show that there is demand for my research.
There are lots of comments on the internet, e.g. on forums, from people seeking the answers my research will provide.
How do I quote these comments in my paper correctly?

If you are trying to justify your research for a funding committee, for example, they are unlikely to be persuaded by some comments on the internet. Are you able to at least cite a literature review that highlighted a gap in knowledge, or some data about how many people are affected by the underlying problem or similar?

I'm not trying to get funding.

A comment in a forum tells me that a random internet guy doesn't know the solution. A published literature review tells me that a leading expert doesn't know the solution (and a couple of referees agree with him).

I can't find a suitable literature review.

Yes Google Scholar.

As others have mentioned in comments, I can't imagine forum comments being useful for proving anything much (unless you have literally thousands of comments all asking the same thing). Even if 50 people have asked, that's not really proving it's in demand.
If it's of a big enough magnitude, I'd suggest some sort of keyword analysis across forums. That or try to do some proper polls with a big enough sample size.
Anything else just shows 'someone on the internet was wondering this too'

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Is it in poor form to write a paper on the same two texts that someone has already written about in a published article?
I have a proposal for a comparative literature paper that I hope to publish and/or include in some form in my dissertation. I’m discussing a wide variety of texts in my article, but the primary focus is on two novels. I’ve been planning to build upon the central thesis of one academic, but not especially well-known author’s argument in my own paper to an extent.
I later realized that this author has coincidentally published another article that focuses on the same two primary texts that I’m writing about. Although the author’s argument in this other paper is largely different from mine, and I’ll certainly cite them if any of our ideas sound similar, would it be in poor form to analyze the same two texts that this author has written about?

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How to quote in the title of a thesis in APA style?
I am writing my bachelor thesis (in psychology) and I am planning to use a quote from the series Game of Thrones as my title. More specifically, my title is:

‘The lone wolf dies but the pack survives’: The influence of perceived social consensus on the fear of death

Now, I am really unsure how to quote this. According to APA Style, I would have to write the producer, director and the year in brackets but it doesn’t make much sense to this for the title (it looks stupid).
Is there any possibility to quote in the title using footnotes?

Maybe just leave the quote out and just use the subtitle


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Salami Publication
I recently read two journal papers from the same set of authors published in different journals.
In the first paper, the authors proposed an algorithm and tested it on a real-world system and published the results.
In the second journal, the same set of authors added some new steps on top of the old algorithm and tested it on the same real-world case, used the same data. The steps described in this paper is "Do the old algorithm first, get outputs and then do the second algorithm using the outputs of first". In this paper, they don't execute the old algorithm rather they refer to the results published in their first paper and build on top of it directly.
I personally felt that they could have potentially included the second paper scope into the first journal as it is just an additional step and provides less value. Is this an example of salami slicing? Is this a good strategy?

Its a good strategy if their job success depends on the number of papers. At some jobs 3 papers in impact factor 2 journals is better than 1 paper in impact factor 5 journal. For others the reverse.

Can you tell us when the journals were published?

« I personally felt... », most probably the reviewers of the second paper did not feel that way - they had the chance to query and address any concerns...

@Roland: "but maybe not so good for science" - and even that is debatable. I have always held the belief that many small publications, each about a single, "atomic" result or technique, are a lot better than few all-encompassing papers. Better for reading, better for getting an overview of the existing literature, better for accurately targetted citing, better for placing each publication precisely in a venue where it fits, and so on.

I once put two different but related results in the same paper. Nobody even realized the second one existed, because people expect one result per paper. Putting two different, but related, results in two different papers is not necessarily salami slicing.

This can be a salami slicing strategy, if the authors deliberately split their results into two papers, where the second one has only a slight incremental value.
However, it also might be that "some new steps" they added significantly improve the algorithm so it becomes faster / more accurate / more reliable. It might also be that the improvement has not been known when the first paper was submitted. In this case this is not a salami publishing, but a normal development of their method.

So is salami slicing is so subjective? Does it depend on the person who reads that article? If it adds only small value, could that be submitted for a conference instead?

@Muk Conferences have lesser meaning in some fields.  In some fields it's all about the journal publications, and conferences are purely for spreading the word, socializing, and stumbling into new collaborations. And I happen to be in a situation where I have made public some specific results, and several months later when I got around to wanting to publish it I had an epiphany: I could do it all in a more general way that makes the prior results just detailed examples, and I could go more in depth. Am I wrong to keep these as separate publications, or wrong to delay for months and combine?

It is not per se bad to publish papers that build on one another. In contrast, a researcher who is an expert in a given topic should be encouraged to improve his methods.
The crucial point is if the contribution of every publication is high enough to justify a new paper. This is, of course, quite subjective, but the same rule ("the contribution has to be high enough") applies to every publication and every reviewer should be able to make an appropriate judgment. So what is so special about the salami slicing technique that it should be considered in particular?
In the case of salami slicing, the pitfall for a reviewer is that he is making the judgment based on the whole contribution by the author built up over several publications and not only on the new contribution. Far fetched example: Imagine someone has developed a  vaccine for HIV and describes it in a first paper. Then in a second paper he describes the same method, but also describes how to add raspberry flavor. He might use the words "We developed the first reliable HIV vaccine and it tastes like raspberries". A reviewer reading this might get the impression that the contribution of that paper is the development of a raspberry flavored HIV serum (that would surely be worth for publication), while in fact, it is only about adding raspberry flavor to a given serum (not very impressive).
My rule of thumb to avoid this pitfall is to ask the following question. Imagine the second paper would have been written by another, previously completely unknown researcher and the actual author would review it, would he accept this paper?
If you expect the review sounds like "These researchers do nothing than adding raspberry flavor to the serum previously developed by us", then the second paper is a salami slice and should be rejected.

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Name of a fictional scientist with fictional publications invented and ‘working’ at an existing British university
At some British university a fictional professor was invented in the 20th century. He also had is own office and his own (fictional) field of research, in which he published about three papers (in a fictional journal). I read about him a few years ago. I think that he had his own Wikipedia article (English Wikipedia). His publications were cited a few times in real publications.
The persons is similar to Albert Wormstein (Stewart & Wormstein, 1992; cf. Math.SE Question) or the Poppleton University.
It is not a fictional character in a book or a movie. (Otherwise I would have asked this question on another Stack Exchange site.) But he was invented by the people working at the particular university.
I am looking for the person’s name (fictional), his field of research (fictional), and the university’s name (real).

Interesting, I had a couple of ideas for the title of the question [now deleted] but it wouldn't match the details of the question

One of typical approaches is to combine name and last name of well known scientists, in order to make obvious on the first read that the person is fictional. e.g. Isaac Clarke or Sigmund Jung...
(I fallen into same trap as JosephDoggie -- you daniel.neumann might want to rephrase the question)

@hardyVeles : You mean I should rephrase the title of the post or the question in the body of the post?

@hardyVeles Is it clearer now?

Are you thinking of Professor Moriarty (he's from a fictional book series, but he did author two works that have been cited in the literature), or one of the three fictional winners of the first Ig Nobel Prize, Josiah S. Carberry, Paul DeFanti, and Thomas Kyle?

Thanks, it was Josiah S. Carberry who works in the field of psychoceramics at Brown University in the US (not UK -- I mixed it up). He even has his own ORCID (0000-0002-1825-0097).


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What is the difference between plagiarism and copyright infringement?
In this several times up-voted answer, it is suggested, among other things, that 'if someone using an image [...] that they do not own (it) is inappropriate and should be first reported to the PI of the paper and, potentially, the publisher if no action is taken.'
In my understanding, using images you do not own is not a good idea, it's illegal in many countries and the owners of the copyrights might react and claim their rights, but it's not plagiarism per se.
Let's consider the authors of an image processing paper who use a copyright-protected stock photograph to test their algorithm. They can cite the source of the image, in which case they would still be infringing copyright. But let's say they don't: they are not claiming that the photograph is their own, they just figure the readers won't care.
Edit: I recently came across a paper where it was written that images were from a commercially available CD of example images, without saying which one. In this case it's clear that they do not claim that they generated the images themselves but they didn't give any reference.
Is this academic misconduct that should be reported?

I feel like intent (though hard to prove) should be important here. Academics make honest mistakes from time to time. They may even repeat those mistakes if they do not realise that they are making them. Unless the consequences of those mistakes are very large, that should be treated differently from people who set out to systematically undermine the scientific endeavour through repeated acts of premeditated dishonesty.

By not citing something, you are in fact claiming that something is your own.

@StrongBad should we assume authors have gone back in time and taken the photograph of Lenna, if they don't cite the original Playboy issue?

Even apart from fair use, it is not clear to me that using a copyrighted image to test the algorithm would in itself be a copyright violation.  If the authors had legally obtained the image, they could use it all they want; they just can't redistribute it.  In other words, you could publish a paper describing how you tested the algorithm on a copyrighted image; you just couldn't include the image itself in the paper.

"Let's consider the authors of an image processing paper who use a copyright-protected stock photograph to test their algorithm." But this has a long history - Lenna is an industry standard, Playboy never got paid.

@peter Apparently Playboy did try to enforce copyright, to no avail. At any rate, it's a clear case where no one would think the authors claim the image as their own, which goes against StrongBad's comment above.

To the best of my understanding the two differ in the following way:

Plagiarism is primarily an ethical issue: it refers to a false claim of creative work.
Copyright is primarily a legal issue: is refers to use of a work without a legal right to do so.

They can be confusing to differentiate because a person committing one is also often committing the other as well.  However, it is possible to violate copyright without plagiarizing and to plagiarize without violating copyright.  For example:

Darwin's "Origin of Species" text is old enough that it has entered the public domain, and thus is no longer protected by copyright.  A person who claimed chunks of it as their own would be plagiarizing, but not violating copyright.
If a person reproduces an image in a new paper with appropriate citation to its original but fails to pay the publisher of the original paper a $35 fee that publisher demands, then they have not plagiarized, but are in violation of copyright.

From a scientific perspective, plagiarism is a major problem, since it is a deliberate ethical violation that significantly undermines the credibility of the author.  Copyright violations, on their own, are much less of a big deal, since they may well be caused by legitimate misunderstanding or disagreement about the interpretation of a minor unclear point in a gigantic wall of legalese.
Thus, in the example given of image processing being applied to an unattributed image: if the contents of the image are not of scientific significance, I would interpret it as primarily an issue of copyright and thus not a significant violation worth reporting (as a scientist).

Funny that you mention Darwin, there are in fact people who do (try to) cite him: http://judgestarling.tumblr.com/post/100771670031/seven-citations-of-a-paper-that-doesnt-exist-has

@CapeCode I see we both read Retraction Watch...

The concepts of plagiarism and copyright are largely orthogonal.
Plagiarism is about taking credit for somebody else's work. You could copy and paste an entire book, and so long as you made it clear whose work it was, it would not be plagiarism. (although it would be a bad idea for other reasons!)
Copyright is about using a copyrighted work without permission. Briefly, any work that somebody creates is automatically covered by copyright, held by its creator. The copyright holder may sign that copyright over to another party (this is common when submitting to journals), or they may place a work in the public domain, but otherwise, any use of that work without a license can constitute copyright infringement (There are various exceptions to this, such as Fair Use, that depend on national laws in specific countries). Some works are licensed under broad licenses such as Creative Commons, which allows anybody to use the work for certain purposes. Others are not, and a specific license for a specific use must be obtained from the copyright holder.
Two examples: Imagine that I am building a presentation for an upcoming conference. For slide one I find a great image that is in the public domain, and I put it into my presentation and claim that it is my own work. In this case I have plagiarised, but not violated copyright.
For slide two, I find another suitable image, but one that is not in the public domain and does not have any permissive license attached. I use it, crediting the photographer. In this case I have not plagiarised, but I have infringed the creator's copyright.
EDIT: Just realised that I answered the question in the title, rather than the (different) question in the question body. Strictly speaking I think that the authors of your hypothetical paper have both plagiarised the image and violated copyright with it. Whether this constitutes academic misconduct is a question that I shall leave for those with more experience in such matters.


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Research statement for liberal arts college: how much detail should I go into?
I am currently a math PhD student, and will be graduating next spring.
If I'm applying for a position at small liberal arts college, what should my research statement look like? How detailed and how long should it be?  I have heard/read that small liberal arts colleges are focused on undergraduate research. I am wondering how much of my own research I should talk about in the research statement. Should I go into as much detail as I would in the research statement for a postdoc?
(My advisor has never worked at a liberal arts college, so he doesn't really know the answer to this question.)

You really need to ask your advisor these questions.  I'm a R1 guy, but based on everything I hear, one key thing is involving undergraduates in research, FWIW...

@Matinking: Despite the name, a "liberal arts college" doesn't usually focus exclusively on "artistic" fields - they typically offer a full range of programs through the arts, sciences and humanities.  There's no particular reason to think the OP would actually be changing fields.

I don't know why @aparente001’s answer was downvoted. I teach mathematics at a liberal arts college, and when we hire, a detailed research statement is not very important, but a research area that has the possibility of involving students is a plus, and we’d like to hear about how you might do that. But chances are good that no one in the (very small, teaching-focused) department will be well-informed about your specific area to be interested in great detail.
What I look at first is the cover letter. If it’s nothing more than a summary of your CV, and/or mostly about research, my interest is diminished. If it’s not well-written (good communication skills matter, even in the math department) I’m worried. But if it elaborates sincerely and believably on “Your position interests me because I want to teach at a liberal arts college. Here’s why.” If it shows you did your homework and know some particular things about my university that attract you (and I don’t mean generic praise for “our excellent reputation” and “strong department”) I’m more interested.
We (I don’t know about all liberal arts colleges, but I might speak for many) want great teachers who will remain professionally active and engaged in their discipline, but that can be interpreted broadly and doesn’t have to include a fancy research program. We also like colleagues who are interested in other disciplines. Maybe you’re a world-class analyst, but we’d rather hear you tell us about the time you helped an art student study perspective for her thesis than tell us about your improved bound for some well-known (to analysts in your area) asymptotic formula, not that there’s anything wrong with that. We’d rather read your thoughtful blog on teaching or frequent, patient and carefully written answers on math.stackexchange.com, too.
Related to your question is the issue of recommendation letters. All too often we get letters for new R1 Ph.D.'s that go on and on about research and assume we know all the best young recent Ph.D.s from that school (“Janet’s research is comparable to ”) and then barely mention teaching (“She gave a seminar talk that was very good,” or “She spends a lot of time with students during office hours.”) This, even though we ask for letters that specifically address teaching excellence or potential. Tell your letter-writers that you want them to address your creativity, your ability to explain, your cross-disciplinary interests, and so on. Perhaps even choose teachers you think you did great homework or exams with, or ones you T.A.’d for. Even a letter from a LAC faculty member who finished a few years before you, knew you well in graduate school, and has kept in touch with you.
Honestly, I find it incredible (not in a good way) that so many R1 senior faculty think the research-focused letters they write will be helpful at places like LACs. It’s more understandable that applicants don’t know what we want, but asking, like you’re doing here, is a great idea.

I have worked both in academia and in the industry (currently). The best way to set yourself apart is to relate what you have done or what you're planning to do to the things being done in the place of your prospective employment. In your case, you can do a bit of research on the specific research projects that the undergrads are doing and point out how your current or future research might result in similar projects. Concrete examples work best. You should also try to figure out who will be reading your research statement and what language to use. The more people can understand it (without watering down the essence) the better. You can also reach out to their recent math hires (perhaps through intermediaries) to get more reliable info.

Your research statement does not need to be exhaustive, but it should give enough information that the reader will be able to see clearly two or three concrete examples of ways you could incorporate undergrads into your research program.  This might require rethinking your plans somewhat.

I'm a math professor at a small liberal arts college (SLAC). I largely agree with everything Steve Kass wrote. I would like to add that a good research statement for a SLAC should start off by explaining a bit about the field, to a mathematician who is not an expert. I study algebraic topology and homotopy theory. My research statement did not start off with "Let M be a cofibrantly generated model category." Instead, it started off by discussing how localization is a fundamental human idea, and many real-world examples of times we might look at two different objects and decide that they are "the same" for our purpose. Then, I remind the reader about homotopy. Sure, they saw it as a PhD student, but that might have been 20+ years ago. Then, I get into how we can abstract that notion into a model category. My research statement was around 8 pages long, and the first two pages were entirely background. The point was to show the hiring committee that I was good at explaining things. The point of the rest of the research statement was to show them that I had been successful in proving some things, had publications and/or papers submitted, and had ideas for future work that would drive an independent research program that could get me tenure. I only devoted half a page to ideas for undergrad research.
I've been on many hiring committees in the ten years since I got hired, and I still think research statements like the one described above are best. For sure Steve is right that the most important thing is the cover letter, and expressing that you understand the nature of the job, that you want it, and that you'll be good at it.
I realize I'm several years late to this thread, but the OP is now an assistant professor at a SLAC, and I want to point out that this way of writing is also a good idea for the research part of your tenure dossier. Furthermore, if it's read by non-mathematicians, it's good to go even more general, to show the committee that you are good at explaining things and at recognizing the level of your audience. I guess, big picture, what I'm trying to say is that the research statement is one way that your teaching talents get assessed. Same goes for the research question in a 20-minute interview and for the job talk in an on-campus interview.


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Drop a Course After Add/Drop Deadline
I am a graduate student working on a double major, one in mathematics and the other in geology. The minimum required workload/semester for a grad student in my school is 9 credit hours/semester.
This semester, I am taking 13 credits hours, the majority of them are math classes. There is no research credit. That said, I still have to work on my research (both in geology and mathematics) independently. I am also a teaching assistant, working on average 9 hours/week.
I found the workload overwhelmed, but only after the deadline to drop courses without being counted as withdrawal (meaning a 'W' in the transcript). The instructor for the math course I want to drop, my advisors, and the maths department head all advised me to drop the course so that I can focus on finishing my thesis in geology by the end of this semester. FYI, there has been no grade/test/exam so far in the course.
My school has a petition form for students to fill out so that they can drop a class after the deadline. I submitted the petition with all the approval signatures from the advisors, course instructor and department head to the office of the registrar. In the petition, I told them the same reasons as above. However, my petition was disapproved by the university registrar. He left a comment:  "I see no basis for drop, but withdrawal".
I am looking for a way to get my petition accepted. I believe my reasons are valid and they shouldn't make it hard for me. I am dropping the course not because I am slacking off or failing the course. In fact, I am already doing extra workload, more than most other graduate students.
Could you please give me some advice about how to convince the university registrar to approve my petition?

My only advice is to beg. Arguing with the decision will probably get you exactly nowhere. Beg from the department chair, not the registrar.

Do you have a student union? Could you ask them if people in your university are likely to accept this and what you would have to do?

@Hatschu I don't understand much about the union thing. I guess there is a student union at my school. But I have never paid attention to anything besides my study so I have no clue how it works and how I should proceed.

@ASlowLearner I added the relevant country tag.

Related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/117190/withdrawing-from-course-in-a-phd-program-i-e-w-on-phd-transcripts

Somewhat related: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/29494/how-do-some-ws-on-transcripts-affect-phd-admissions-in-mathematics?rq=1

@ASlowLearner: Please, then go there and ask them what they do! Not paying attention and only concentrating one thing is most often the worst mistake. You will see this more if you continue in academia or go to industry.

Having a "W" on your transcript is not that big a deal. If someone asks about it later, tell them what you wrote here.

"I am a graduate student working on a double major" -- I'm confused. Graduate students don't typically have "majors", and certainly not two. Can you clarify?

@cag51 I am not sure why you think graduate students don't have majors...For instance, I am working on a M.S. in geology and a M.S. in maths concurrently. I have one research advisor from each department.

Hmm, strange...in all the programs I'm familiar with, the funding and admission come from a particular department, and so there's no real concept of "major" -- obviously you're a member of the department that admitted and funded you. Anyway, probably just a different system...thanks for explanation.

@cag51 yes. I was admitted to the geology program first and funded by the geology department through TAship in my first year. This year, I am funded by a research grant from my maths advisor.

The maths department head called the registrar and asked him to reconsider his decision. Today I just received an email from the registrar. He was very polite in the email and told me that he's reconsidered his decision and agreed to let me drop the course instead of withdrawal. So, thank you, everyone, for your help.

Good news, take care.

Perhaps the only other course is to get the maths professor and maths head of Dept. to petition the university registrar as a "special" case...
But don't hold your hopes up, it is worth a try though.


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How to judge the quality of education of an art school?
I know that most question in this community refer to (natural or engineering) sciences. This question is concerned with the quality of higher education in the field of arts though, I hope it is on topic here.
My question goes along the lines of "What is the proper way to judge the quality of education of a university?". It is different from the question linked in that art schools have to be judged by looking at different metrics.
In user6726's answer to the question linked above, they state:

[...] If students from institute X stumble more over questions at
  conferences compared to those from institute Y, or if they publish in
  lesser venues, or produce less-solid papers (more errors, more
  failures to think a problem through), then you can conclude either
  that Y attracts better students or that Y does a better job of
  training students than X [...].

Former students of an university of arts will not attend conferences as often as graduates from other fields, and rarely publish papers at all. While it is true that a university of art's value for a student's career is heavily dependent on the reputation of that university, this is not limited to the field of arts. Additionally, the reputation of an educational institution can be difficult to assess, if one is not in the same place and get hands-on experience there.
What should be considered when judging a university of arts, if one considers to study there?
This should be applicable to both undergrad and postgrad programmes.

Are you talking: Arts in general; fine arts; performing arts; or any more detail in particular? (In general I expect that there will be some analog to conferences/papers, such as exhibits, public-arts grants, performance roles, etc. -- much as is the case for tenure procedures.)

@DanielR.Collins Sorry if my vocabulary is mixed up. I'm talking fine arts (painting, sculpting..), illustration, and design (product, graphic, fashion...). What term would represent those better?

So replace « conferences » with exhibitions... ie how many graduates run exhibitions? How many exhibit in exhibitions? How many graduates have exhibitions dedicated to their own work exclusively?

Graduation rate, and time to graduation. A school with a graduation rate of 50% is not a good thing. Nor is a school with average time to bachelors degree of 6 years. Historically, the 'rejection rate' of students applying has also been a sign of school quality, although many schools (Harvard, etc) now game this by providing free or reduced priced applications so as to raise this rate. They also market like mad, so they can pocket your admission fee...

Further, what percentage of graduates are employed in, say, six months (in art-related fields, and in general)? And how do graduates' starting salary compares to their student debt?

Is graduation rate really a reliable proxy for quality? It seems to me that it isn't, at least not on its own. On one extreme you have great but challenging programs with high drop-out rates, and on the other hand diploma mills, which presumably have close to 100% graduation rates. (Although a school with a great program but low graduation rates certainly might want to rethink how they structure things.)

@Anyon: Yes, to a reasonable degree. Better schools attract better students--better prepared, with more 'grit', who are more likely to complete, and complete on time.

@cactus_pardner: These are also good information; good luck finding it in compiled form.

Luckily, the U.S. now collects and publishes some of the relevant data. (The salary data is the median for students who had federal financial aid, 10 years after graduating; they probably use tax records to get this information.) Here are the College Scorecards for Visual & Performing Arts programs at Private, For-Profit colleges. (Though they use the typical measure of graduation rate: what percentage graduate in 150% of the stated time.)

Did you tell what you want to do with your degree? Think this through. Then ask the admissions office in schools that you are considering to please refer you to some recent alumni who might be willing to exchange a few emails with you. Ask those former students what they thought of the program and how it enabled them for the work they have chosen.
All the other metrics make sense and are reasonable, but unless you know what you'd like to do upon graduation, the measures of a quality education might not answer your question.
Finally, I'm an artist and I suggest that you look critically at the quality of instruction in drawing. Other fine art courses will stem from the drawing courses, so pay particular attention to drawing and you should be able to build your skills well.


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Advice regarding advisor-student relationship
I'm a first semester student in a PhD programme on a bioinformatics related topic. Before being accepted, I spent around 7 months in learning about the topic of my project. I have a BC degree in Biology, so I'm not exactly well informed in bioinformatics.
I have been losing motivation to continue due to being constantly sent to ask my senior labmates for advice in technical issues regarding code by my advisor.
I have asked for my senior labmates' advice and my advisor is aware of that. It's just that in the long run, I can't see how this will be sustainable. I confronted my advisor regarding my thoughts and was told that I shouldn't expect "technical" issues to be resolved by my advisor due to not having time for that (and sometimes not knowing about troubleshooting them).
So... Am I asking for something I shouldn't be asking? Is this standard in a PhD programme? Am I wrong to expect my advisor to help me solve technical issues about something I am not fully aware/accquantanced with (that being coding, not the biological part in which I have a background)?

It seems to me that you're in a good position, as there are senior lambastes who seem ready to help you. Imagine without them, and you'd have a more or less standard scenario.

@AlessandroDellaCorte - an interesting auto-correct from labmates to lambastes... The joys of spelling...

@JonCuster Wow, lol, good catch. Missed it.

My personal favorite was when an old (90's) spell checker wanted to change Catania to Satanic. I certainly did not think that was an appropriate characterization of my Sicilian friends...

@JonCuster In some cases this might just work: “… and here’s one of the famous Catania delights: cannolo siciliano”. ;)

Advisor-student relationships can vary widely depending on both the advisor and the student's needs, the project, the field of research, all sorts of things, that it can be difficult to pinpoint a standard or best way to go about it. I am not in a bioinformatics field, but what you described still felt similar to a lot of the advisor-student relationships I've come across in my more fieldwork-based field, so I thought I would use it as a comparison to possibly help.
With marine fieldwork like my lab focuses on, a single student might spend 30 days spread out over the course of months on the boat conducting sampling, or they might even need to travel outside the country for several months to their field site to conduct work. Many students, even in a field-focused field, might not know how to drive a boat and need to learn or may need a lot of field hands to get their project done. Advisors usually don't have the kind of time needed to offer that much field help or take the time to teach their students how to drive a boat, as an example. For these purposes, my labmates share a lot of the effort with each other and teach each other as we work. I personally had to get a lot of help from a more experienced grad student to learn everything from how grad school worked, to species identification, to trailering a boat.
Many advisors also may not have a complete knowledge of how to accomplish their student's project. I frequently explore different statistical analysis options or coding languages for my data that my advisors might not be familar with, so my labmates are actually sometimes better resources for working through a problem. My subtopic of research was also something my advisors had no experience in conducting sampling for, so I've had to ask many other researchers even outside my university for help to make sure I'm doing everything properly.
If any of your concern is coming from taking up your labmates' time, then you can try to focus on either finding ways to help them with their own work in return or just expect to pay it forward once you have more knowledge and other new students enter your lab.
So from my own experience, I think it is fairly normal to not use your advisor to solve more technical issues related to coding like what you're describing, due to either a lack of time or a lack of knowledge, and where you may actually be better served by your labmates. Some grad students I've met have said they have had a couple long how-to-code or how-to-write-a-paper sessions with their advisors, so circling back to the variety in these sorts of relationships, it is possible to have that as well, but even in those situations, they also had to do a lot of the learning and extra work on their own or with others.
I hope my response has been helpful in giving you some outside perspective and examples, but what might be even more helpful is to talk to other students in your lab or department about their experiences. They'll know your advisor's particular style and could maybe help in telling you how they've worked with them and navigated possibly similar issues or concerns.

Thank you a lot for taking the time to read my question. I will talk to my labmates and understand my advisor's style. Like I said, I'm new to grad school so I didn't have no one to talk this sort of things with. Thanks again for the advice :)

I think it really depends on your program as to whether they will help you or not.
For example, in my program, I study bioacoustics where programming comes into play quite a bit, and the same with my lab mates who have another advisor. It is definitely quite common for them to send us to ask others, but at the end of the day if no one can help us/if we are still stuck they do engage with us and try to solve the problems. Either through an additional meeting or through our personal one-on-one meetings with them.
So no I do not think it is wrong of you to ask, especially since you seem to be using your resources before going to them. Like the person said above every relationship is different, but I hope you get the support you need soon!

Thank you for taking some of your time to address my issue. I always try to ask my labmates and leave my advisor as a last resource because of time issues regarding my advisor's schedule (and I fully understand) I just hope it keeps more or less a sustainable relationship before I have no idea what to do. Thanks again :)


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What is the benefit of submitting to a special conference session instead of the regular track?
Assuming that I want to submit a paper related to the topic X to conference Y in CS, and there is a special session in that conference which covers the topic X; in that case, is the best choice to submit the paper to the special session?
Well, as far as I know, the special sessions have a small pool of submitted papers around similar themes, from which they need 5-6 papers to accept. So I was wondering if I would lower down my chances by submitting to a SS as the pool becomes more competitive for me?

I understand that your question is specifically about special session vs regular tracks at conferences, but for the sake of completeness, I'd be happy to add another answer shortly addressing the interest of special journal sessions. Would you be interested in that as well? If not maybe you can edit "conference" into the question title to leave the space open for a similar question regarding journal submissions.

@penelope: Well, the journal special issues are also interesting to me, but are not in the scope of my question as i do not need to decide on that at the conference submission which is my concern here. But thank for the suggestion, and i'd be happy to read about it even in another topic. :)

It depends on the conference. Sometimes, "Special Sessions" are organized by an individual to "fill the program" and the organizer will try to find people willing to submit to this session. In those cases, you might even be asked to submit your work for the session and review might not be overly tough.
In other cases, it might happen that the special session is overcrowded - in such cases you might have a hard time.
Nonetheless, a good paper chair will move your paper to the session which is most appropriate - so it might happen that you submit to the special session and end up in a common track, or vice versa.
One good thing about special sessions is, that they draw the audience interested in the field, and they are a good opportunity for networking and exchanging ideas. Therefore, I would recommend selecting the special session.


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How do Universities deal with poor teaching?
At one school I worked at the strategy for dealing with poor teaching was to get feedback from students around midterms. If the students criticism was strong enough the teacher was pulled from the class and replaced by someone else in the middle of the semester.
Naturally this led to administrative and departmental chaos when, at times, a handful of teachers would be shuffled in the middle of a semester.
I would like to know if this is common practice at other schools and if not, what mechanics do other schools have to support teachers struggling to perform well and ensure the quality of the courses assigned to them?

In some universities teaching is regarded as an « occupational hazard » associated with research...

I assume this would vary greatly between country to country. Are you interested in a specific country or rather getting examples from all around? As an example, my understanding is that Professors in the UK are employed subject to successful performance evaluation every couple of years, while in some European countries a Professor appointment is for life (with exceptions of them committing gross misconduct), where I'm afraid the strategy might be "ask them nicely to improve and hope for the best".

@Penelope I want a survey of how other institutions hanfle this problem. This is not limited to any geographical area

The only time I've heard of a teacher being pulled out mid-term in the US was for extremely inappropriate interactions with students.

"get feedback from students around midterms" <- who the heck approved this idea? Why would you choose to solicit feedback during a time of elevated stress from a group of people that don't even understand why using a phone in the middle of class is problematic? It sounds like a tactic used by unscrupulous universities with worthless degrees whose goal is to retain students via appeasement rather than provide a useful education.

@MonkeyZeus the idea that learners don't have anything of value to say about the quality of teaching is, thankfully, not universal.

@DeNovo How do you propose to filter out the input from students who think "this course has a high quality teacher" means the same as "this course is so easy I can get an A grade without doing any work?"

@DeNovo The action of taking words out of context is unfortunately all too prevalent; almost universal as you've aptly demonstrated. Feedback from learners is very valuable but the timing of OP's particular situation is conducive of having biased results.

@MonkeyZeus there is a great deal of literature on the utility of midpoint teaching feedback. I don't think I took your words out of context. It seems like you don't place a high value on the viewpoint of learners when you disagree with them, as demonstrated by your link and the way you worded it, as well as your use of the word "appeasement" to describe getting feedback from students around midterms.

@alephzero that's a common concern among teachers who aren't familiar with modern methods for evaluating teaching. It might be a good question here. If you're at a US university, there is probably a Center for Education Research, Center for Teaching and Learning,  or some similarly named department. They'll be able to tell you how they do it.

@MonkeyZeus  That's definitely not the norm.  Students come from a high-school environment where phones are also not allowed, and further more, grew up with them.  most modern students natural reaction is not to think it's okay to have phones out in class.  Additionally it isn't something looked positively on by your peers, for example in my undergrad we had some students who would use their laptops to play league of legends in class.   Other students didn't exactly take kindly to that.

There is only one true answer: they don't.

I think the quality of the school is also worth noting. The spectrum regarding the quality of schools affects how the school responds to poor teaching (as answers already implicitly point out). A research university puts less emphasis on teaching (not that terrible teaching would be tolerated but subpar teaching can be handled by only assigning upper division courses in which the expectations of the professor are just part of the coursework). A community college (at least, most) will care more about the teaching aspect of one's job than the research aspect.

@MonkeyZeus My university collects feedback from the students about their classes/courses as well. There is nothing bad with it, who else should or even could do that? What is problematic is pulling the teacher in the middle of the semester. At my faculty, results are used to generate rankings, lecturers with bad ratings are approached between semesters and improvements are made. You can then compare their results semester over semester and with other lecturers to identify problematic areas. The problem isn't with getting feedback, the problem is pulling a teacher in the middle of a course

At my university every course is evaluated at the end of the semester by the students. The results go to the head of the department and are also presented back to the students by the professor. How they deal with it? A quote that seems represantative: "I see that nearly everyone brought up this point in the evaluation but I don´t care and I won´t change the course."

This is the first time (in 45 years) that I've heard of acting on a mid-term teaching review. Even a mid-term review is, I think, very rare. At least in the US. Students here usually provide a course evaluation at end of term and the department head is open to student complaints at any time, but I think that any formal system of supporting struggling teachers is also very rare. Prior to obtaining tenure, you are subject to being fired for poor teaching at many places. But, in general, it needs to be a pretty clear cut case for that to happen.
Instead, poor teaching is dealt with at the time of hiring and often as part of the tenure process, including at mid-tenure review. At most places, poor teaching is a mark against you, though at some universities a star researcher will still be hired. Such a person won't normally be put in a class room with novices, however, and teaching will be at upper levels where advanced students may be more able to deal with it.
Generally, though, if a major part of the job is teaching, you are expected to already be good at it in order to be hired. In many of the top research institutions where teaching isn't really expected of researchers, there is a special faculty track for teachers who handle much of the undergraduate program. These jobs can come with (eventual) tenure and a different set of responsibilities from those on the research track.
In many fields people are employed as TAs as part of the doctoral education and some of these positions involve actually teaching a course. Thus, you can get some experience teaching before entering the job market. That isn't universal, of course. If a TA turns out to be a poor teacher, they won't be put back in a classroom (one hopes, at least) and will be given other duties.
There are also, in some fields, special interest groups who hold conferences dedicated to teaching that subject: SIGCSE as part of ACM, for example, which holds several conferences per year. Here teachers can learn about the craft of teaching. But it is up to the individual, with encouragement from the administration, to participate in such things.

In some cases a university will choose to do nothing in regard to the quality of an instructor's teaching.
This can be for several reasons:

The professor is very good at research and brings in a substantial amount of grant money.
They have tenure and are practically untouchable.
They are placed to teach lower level classes and will weed out less capable students.
The instructor is a graduate student and they will only be teaching a laboratory. In this case the university will care more that they are progressing on their thesis.

This comes from my personal experience in multiple US research focused engineering universities.

My short answer based on my experience in mathematics is "often not well". It's a very hard problem.
Longer version.
I've never heard of switching instructors mid semester based on evaluations. Even multiple delegations from the class to the department chair are unlikely to lead to that, although they may have some effect for future semesters.
Supporting

teachers struggling to perform well

is difficult, but rewarding. Colleagues talk with them about teaching, visit classes, share difficulties and experiences. What's harder (for a chair) is working with poor teachers who don't know or can't admit that they are not doing a good job.
Student evaluations (customary at the end of the semester) are generally not a good way to measure teaching quality, for many reasons discussed in many places.

I expect this varies quite a bit between departments and schools within a given university. In professional schools where there is an accrediting body that is very concerned about the quality of teaching, these problems get more attention.


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How to ask your PhD promotor for a letter of recommendation for another PhD position
I may quit my current PhD position after a year and a half due to supervision-related reasons. My promotor is the professor who is head of team (and supervised my master thesis), while I am currently supervised by another academic. My promotor is a very kind and considerate person. I have looked up another PhD position in a different country that suites my interests best. How to ask him for a letter of recommendation for the new PhD position?
I don't have any publications yet. My current promotor is currently evaluating a paper I wrote from my master thesis. I may also write another one from my master thesis. I would like to continue my work on these papers with him - how do I approach this situation without affecting the review process by him?

Does this answer your question? How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor?

"Promotor" means your current primary PhD advisor? I think this is uncommon terminology in most places, except perhaps where you are.

@BryanKrause: this indeed is the terminology used in the Netherlands and Belgium for the PhD supervisor.

Do you have a scholarship or a research assistant position (in a project)? And what do you mean by "reasons related to supervision"?

To answer everyone! First of all promotor is the main professor of the group. He was my direct supervisor in my master studies. Now, in my PhD, I have another supervisor between me and the promotor. I didn't want to explain more about why I don't want to continue, otherwise the post would have been very long and the question would have been closed due to individual factors. When I say "reasons related to supervison", it refers to bad direction by the current supervisor.

@User Please don't assume anything about why I want to leave the PhD. Please focus on the question. At this moment, all I can share is that I accepted the PhD knowing that I was going to research in my area of interest. Problems can occur from the supervison side as well. I've just mentioned the tip of the iceberg.

I edited some of the clarifications provided in your comments into your question. It would be good if you could also clarify what is the role of the promotor towards you (I understand he is the head of the team; however, is he just the head of the team you are in and somebody you worked with in the past, or does 'promotor' entail some more formal role towards you as a PhD student)?

If you say that your promotor is very kind and considerate person, I tend not to think that your recommendation letter request will change them and, moreover, influence the review process. So just explain why you took this decision, what motivated you and I believe you two will understand each other.