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Ethics: Having students use my referral link for a product used in the classroom?
I was using a Web service I particularly like the other day, and noticed that they have a referral program.  (More specifically, UsabilityHub, but the details of the service itself aren't important.)  So then this hypothetical scenario came to mind.
Suppose I'm slated to teach a class, and decide that said Web service would be valuable in my teaching.  Let's say that:

It's genuinely useful in my pedagogy and/or for helping students produce quality work.
It's a commercial service and has no student discount, but the most relevant parts are free.
I don't require use of this Web service, but I encourage it (though not through any formal means, i.e. no extra credit for using this service).
I happen to use this service for both personal/hobby projects and for professional work, all under one account.

Now suppose that this Web service provides a referral program, i.e. if anyone signs up with my referral link, both I and the new user get benefits of some kind.  However, these benefits are not monetary in nature--they're a form of credit for the service, and cannot be redeemed for cash.
Is it ethical to ask my students to sign up to this Web service through my referral link, given that I use this Web service in both a personal and professional capacity under the same account?  Let's say that I tell them everything that I mention in this post, too (including my usage of the service).
Oh, and I should clarify that this is entirely a hypothetical scenario.  I'm not even in a position where this is actually an issue for me.

While the answers below are all thoughtful, I'm wrestling with whether you need to disclose that you get benefit, and that's not real clear below

How about just setting up a referral account for your school or department and let them get all of the referral funds.  That removes any personal profit motive while still giving new users the referral bonus.

It's possible that your institution might have a policy that restricts what you can do, such that the ethics question never arises.

Whether its cash or not matters little, as long as your receiving a benefit and its not directly and openly sanctioned, its unethical.    Your risking your reputation as an academic for a few (usually) meaningless rewards points.

Does the benefit go to you personally or to your employer institution? Is the value of the benefit material? (And if not, why are you bothering?) Will you be declaring the benefit to your employer and to the taxman?

The benefit depends on the service, but for the sake of this question let's say it has no cash value, but can be purchased anyway.  (In the case of UsabilityHub, it's "karma points", which I can use to find testers for any sort of interface design I whip up.  You can either buy them or earn them through taking other people's tests.)

This doesn't sound like a particularly bad thing to me and I think the decision could go either way. However, I want to point out that disclosing to the students and telling them it's optional are not as helpful as it sounds like they should be. It's not unknown for powerful people to say something is optional while still punishing those who don't do it, or to show deliberate or unconscious favoritism towards ones who do. Thus, students may feel coerced even when you're doing your sincere, level best to be noncoercive. This frustrates me greatly but I've seen it happen a number of times.

... and as a result, you may need to forgo the benefits in order to treat your students properly, even if there's nothing inherently wrong with the idea.

@octern As an (perhaps less horrible) example of this, I had a teacher once who, when giving out a homework assignment, worded it such that most of the class interpreted a certain section of questions to be optional (e.g. extra credit) and then were shocked when they lost a significant part of their grade for not doing that section!

Have you considered asking the website if they have some sort of plan in place for educational use of their product? They may offer discounts which could then be pitched where you work in order to acquire a budget for it.

There is a saying, "Caesar's wife must be above suspicion," which I believe applies well to an ethical dilemma of this sort.  Despite the somewhat nasty origins of the quote, what it has come to mean is that in some circumstances one must not only act ethically but also act to ensure a very clear appearance of ethical behavior.
In this case, the question is this: could a reasonable person question whether you might have chosen to recommend this service in part because of the benefits that redound to you yourself?
In this case, since there are a number of other ways that you might have gone about obtaining similar capabilities for the class, it would be reasonable for a student or other person to wonder if you were influenced to recommend that particular site due to the benefits that you would obtain through the referrals.  Given your position of authority, then, I believe that does create a genuine ethical concern regarding the referral program.
I see two basic approaches to resolving this:

Recommend the service, but do not make use of the referral program.
Recommend both this service and several of the other competing services.  Note that this is the one that you personally use, and for this service provide both a non-referral and referral link (being transparent about the benefit to you).

Personally, I would prefer the first option, since it's completely unambiguous, but would not find the second particularly problematic.

Have you noticed that the new user also gets some added benefit from the referral program, not only the referrer? By using your option 1, the OP is reducing the benefit to the students.

@ff524 Yes, but the benefit to the instructor is multiplied many times the benefit to the individual students; a reasonable concern may still remain.  The benefits to the students are also quite small in this case, so not getting them is not a big deal.

Why is that a problem?  Adding more wins on one side of a win-win...sounds good to me.

I find it somewhat problematic to do something that reduces the benefit to students entirely to reduce a minuscule appearance of possible impropriety. It's sort of like writing a textbook, then recommending a different textbook that you believe is almost but not quite as good, because you want to reduce appearance of impropriety.

@PeteL.Clark, ff524: then it sounds to me like both of you would personally prefer option #2 to option #1, either of which I think are reasonable.  If the service really is the best, then the students will likely mainly choose it and get the win-wins.  I have also thought of a third option: recommend the students refer one another, so that they get (almost) double the benefits in total.

I think I have heard of a teacher who encountered this problem and promised to donate any income from the referral program to charity.

If the students were clever, they'd use the referral program to their own end. Daisychaining, e.g. student A uses the link of the teacher, student B the link of student A, C of B, end so on... Which leaves just the last one in line without the added benefit but otherwise equally sharing. Most importantly not increasing the benefit of the instructor too much.

@ff524 The textbook problem is real: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/15136/is-it-ethical-to-profit-by-having-my-students-buy-my-textbook?rq=1 Quote from the current top answer: "In many cases assigning one's own book either requires administrative permission or giving any royalties earned to the university"

I don't see any clearly unethical behavior here.  You use the tag "conflict-of-interest"...but where is the conflict?  To me it looks more like a confluence of interest.
The best argument I can make is that the behavior might appear unethical to others, and as a professional and representative of a professional group (your department, your university...) you may well want to avoid that.  A hard-nosed outside observer may say: how do I know that you did not gain a financial incentive at some pedagogical cost?
If I were in this position, I think I would not have ethical qualms provided that I made clear to everyone how to they can make use of the service for no money and get the full course experience anyway.  I would regard this behavior as more ethical than requiring students to pay a fee (typically on the order of $50-$100 per course) to use a professional service like WebAssign for required course elements like homework grading.  In my mind, providing good assessment and feedback to the students is a key responsibility of the course instructor, the department and the university.  Requiring -- or really, even sufficiently strongly encouraging -- students to pay for an external service is an alarming abdication of that responsibility.  Moreover the slope looks quite slippery to me: this is clearly a step towards a for-profit model of higher education.  Just because in this latter scenario the money is getting put in the pocket of a big company rather than the instructor or the department does not make it any better to me!

Is it ethical to ask my students to sign up to this Web service
  through my referral link, given that I use this Web service in both a
  personal and professional capacity under the same account? Let's say
  that I tell them everything that I mention in this post, too
  (including my usage of the service).

Before answering the "is it ethical" question, let's recognize that this would create (at least) the appearance of a conflict of interest: by managing the course in a way that benefits you monetarily on top of your normal salary, you can cast doubts in the eyes of the students or other outside observers as to whether your actions are purely motivated by the desire to get the best educational outcome or are influenced by the external, and potentially conflicting, interest of making money. Now, it is implicit in your question that you recognize this issue and are trying to think of ways to allay those doubts. Unfortunately this is not as simple as it seems. Consider some of the things you are proposing to do:

Advertise publicly that you believe in this product and use it yourself.
The problem with this is that those actions are also consistent with the actions of a person who is "in it for the money" and doesn't actually believe in the product, but wants people to think that he does.
State emphatically that the students' use of the service is voluntary and absolutely not required.
The problem is that this could still exert a subtle pressure on the students and signal to them that you would be happier with them if they used the service. You are an authority figure and hold substantial power over the students, and some of them may want to curry favor with you, either consciously or subconsciously, and might therefore use the service even if they don't think it's useful to them. Also, even if only a few students end up being influenced to use the service by your recommendation, you are still benefiting monetarily so this does not remove the suspicion of an action motivated by a conflicting interest.
Share the link to this Academia StackExchange question with your students, to let them know you have thought seriously about the ethical implications and strengthen their belief in the nobility of your intentions.
Again, the problem is that an insincere person whose intentions are not noble might behave in exactly the same way.

To summarize this part of the answer, although it seems likely that your motivations are pure, which I assume is why a wise person like Pete L. Clark decreed in his answer that there is no conflict of interest here, it is still the case that there would be an appearance of a conflict (which would also mean that at least in principle there could be an actual conflict), and it is not obvious how this appearance can be completely removed.
Now let's turn to the ethics question. I happen to be on a committee of my institution that oversees potential conflicts of interests (which we refer to as COIs). The context is different (COIs that arise in scientific research funded by a mixture of public and private money on topics with commercial potential like pharmaceuticals) but many of the issues are similar to those raised by your question. One of the first things you learn when working on such a committee is that academia has many areas with a strong potential for conflicts of interests. Unfortunately it is completely impractical to take an approach that would simply forbid such conflicts to exist (e.g., by forbidding research to be funded by an entity with a commercial interest in the outcome of the research), since that would mean that a lot of very important research would simply not get done. So, the question becomes instead how to manage the conflict by taking steps such as disclosing the conflict in various ways and other measures.
The point I am trying to make is that just because there is a potential for a conflict doesn't mean that the proposed action is unethical. However, it certainly means that special care is necessary to make sure you are not even perceived as acting unethically, and it also means that there would have to be a fairly compelling reason for the proposed action to be taken. In your case, I have to admit that I am not seeing such a compelling reason. The small monetary gain and other benefits you are likely to receive from the referral links are overwhelmingly smaller and less significant than the benefit of a research that could lead to the development of a new drug or medical device. So I think the risk that your actions would be perceived negatively by your students or employer in this case far outweighs what you stand to gain. My recommendation is therefore: don't do it. The only exceptions I would make are 1. if you ask your department chair and he or she specifically approves this; or 2. if you announce that you will donate the proceeds you will make from the referral links to charity (and specifically, a charity whose mission is completely uncontroversial and could not possibly be frowned upon by any of your students).

Good point, but a minor detail: The benefit of the small monetary gain you are likely to receive it may not be a monetary gain per say, it might be a little perk like extra storage space as with dropbox.  (I'm not familiar with the specific site the OP mentions, but I think the type and amount of perk received would color the perception of the OP's motivation.)

Minor comment: If the professor is getting a benefit from the students' use of the site, that is definitely a conflict of interest. Conflicts of interest are not necessarily unethical and do not need to be avoided in all cases, but they do trigger regulatory and ethical requirements for reporting.

Create a second account with your university email address and use that referral code.

There's a clear conflict of interest by using your professional role to benefit your personal side projects. If I were a student, noticing a referral link in which you benefit personally would be a huge turn off.
However, you are missing an easy opportunity for yourself and your students to benefit from this. When you act under your professional role that benefits the university, your students, or your department, use this account and the credits that come with it. When working on side projects, use your personal account and cover the costs yourself.
When using the link make it explicitly clear that you/your department are getting a credit for it.
Because all the credits obtained are going back to the students and the university, the conflict of interest gets eliminated.

As the meaning of "ethical" is rather personal and there is no evil lurking here I suggest you get around the problem. One way of doing this is to...

Make the issue clear in your syllabus or course site: just stating
what you write in your question should do it.
Offer you students two links, one being through the referral program and the other not, while explaining the differences in terms of consequences both for you and the student. (having access to click-statistics would be interesting, btw.)
To be extra-safe, inform you head of department.

My opinion as a former student:
It is known, that a percentage of persons in a position of authority are seen as corrupt or at least not as honorable/neutral as they should be according to there position. For example I know about doctors which get gifts worth at least 4-5 digits sums from companies for prescribing their drugs instead of other ones. A patient knowing this might ask himself if alternative drugs might be cheaper or more effective and the doctor prescribes it only for his incentitives and question if he does his duty to the best of his knowledge and belief. The same goes for teachers at universities. Your question suggests that you don't want to be one of them.
I know that neutrality is impossible for universities because

they have limited funds and they get free learning material or samples from private companies for their own products
there is no company neutral product/method and there is no time in the curriculum to cover all of them at the same extend

So what should you do?

If you are affiliated to a product/company or get money directly or indirectly, make it clear
There should be no comparable product, which is noticable cheaper. (comparable in the sense of quality and depending of the use of it in class)
Especially if it is not the standard product used by most other universities and there is no special reason for it.
If you are unsure, ask a neutral colleague, if they would recommend this product for this course.

Other points to consider:

Is it free for the students and are the students required to use it?
What/How much is the incentive? (like there is a free plan which gives you 15 free x and with the referral you get up to 30 free x or you get x$ per person up to unlimited, especially if multidigit sums are expected for referring all your students)
What are the benefits for the students? Do they also get free x? Is this the only affordable way for the university to provide an acceptable teaching standard? Is it even connected to the course?

We once managed to get a class replaced by the administration because the teacher was paid by a company and tried to force all of us to get a credit card and use an online service of the company which didn't provide any significant benefits for this class.
In my opinion there is no black/white line. It should be clearly visible that you don't recommend it for your benefits but for the benefits of the students. Sometimes it's better to show it instead of only saying it which sometimes requires not to get benefits or at least provide a non-referral link too. Not only one politician was discredited because they awarded a big contract to commpany from which they got big donations while elections although they said this was not the reason for this choice.

Similar to several other answers:

When I taught computer science and referred students to the company I
consulted for I had the company send the referral bonus to the
department.
When I assigned a textbook I'd written I arranged a no-royalties
price with my publisher. Had that not been possible I'd have donated
the royalties to the university. (I think that in fact my school's
faculty union contract specified that I could not profit from those
royalties, but I'd have done what I did in any case.)

You should be able to make a similar arrangement for the web referral.

This is not fundamentally different from recommending (not requiring) a textbook for which you receive royalties.  I would be very uncomfortable doing either.
For another comparison, my students can buy others' textbooks from Amazon for less than from the bookstore.  I could have an Amazon Associates account that pays me every time a student buys a book through my link.  (So, both the student and I receive a benefit.)  I have chosen not to do that because I believe it would be unethical.
I refer you to Meyer's* Rule of Ethics: in  any ethical dilemma, the thing you least want to do is the ethical choice.
* From the Travis McGee novels.  Also from Baruch Spinoza.

I'm having trouble seeing why any of the action you suggest are unethical.  Your proposed Rule of Ethics looks pretty fishy.  (Let me try it out: I believe the thing I least want to do at the moment is kill myself and the family member I am currently staying with.  Pretty sure this is not the ethical choice.  I suppose you could say that this was not an ethical dilemma but still: quite unconvincing.)

I think though that it is a good caricature of the way that ethical question are often viewed by academics (and the kind of answers to ethics questions we often receive on this site).  I could summarize it myself as "If you have to ask, the answer is no."  For instance, keeping this rule in mind has enabled me to rapidly pass "ethics training tests" my university gives out to me periodically.  Getting back to the matter at hand: why do you think it is unethical to suggest that your students should save money and you should make money?  Who is being harmed: the university bookstore?!?

@PeteL.Clark: WRT your first comment, if the "right" choice is what you want to do anyway, then there is no ethical dilemma, just as you say.  A dilemma only arises when what you want to do conflicts with what your conscience (sense of ethics) tells you is right.
I have no trouble suggesting that my students save money, even though it disadvantages the bookstore.  My problem is doing something that makes money for me because I am a faculty member other than what the institution pays me.
(Whether the bookstore deserves to be disadvantaged is beyond this question.)

I'm having trouble understanding why your proviso about what constitutes an ethical dilemma doesn't render your principle completely vacuous.  Also, people often act unethically while being blissfully unaware of it; that does not inherently render their behavior ethical.   "My problem is doing something that makes money for me because I am a faculty member other than what the institution pays me." That is very clearly expressed, and I am saying that this position -- though rather commonly held -- doesn't make much sense to me.  Why is using your job to make money inherently unethical?

Here's another test of your principle: I am a member of ethnic group A, and I have been raised to believe that I should promote ethnic group A at the expense of ethnic group B at all costs.  Placed in a situation where I have the opportunity to give unfavorable treatment to a member of ethnic group B, I don't want to, even though I think that's the right thing to do.  This seems to show that your principle doesn't hold up: or rather, it only works if we assume that you already know what the correct ethical behavior is, which makes it rather useless as a Rule of Ethics.

I'll have to think about the first part of your comment.  Concerning the second part, a county commissioner here was recently reprimanded for voting to hire a construction company that was paying "consulting fees" to the commissioner.  The difference between that and making money for suggesting a source of textbooks students are required to buy is one of degree, not substance.

Concerning your last comment: as I addressed in my answer, the issue here is the verifiability that the financial profit of the commissioner did not influence the decision in a way that was against the interests of the community.  If any member of the community had an option to exercise which manifestly overrode the commissioner's choice: what's the problem?

The whole point of the referral program is to reward you for referring people to the product. What's the problem?

I downvoted this answer, because it was the thing I least wanted to do.

"In any ethical dilemma, the thing you least want to do is the ethical choice" - an example of another heuristic for shortcutting the need to think things through.

I understand @BobBrown point about the non-dilemma of Peter L Clark's murder suicide.  But what if we faced the Trolley Problem.  Could we really resolve it by determining what we least want to do (i.e., sacrifice the attractive person to save the unattractive person) and doing it?

@LightnessRacesinOrbit  I get to choose the textbook.  If I choose an expensive book, I make more money.  That's problematic even if the expensive book is the best one for the course.  Jake's answer above explains this better than I have.

@BobBrown: That makes no sense to me sorry. I can see justifications for concerns of conflict of interest, if you were talking about someone else, but it's you, and as long as you know your decision-making is not being influenced by the financial rewards, this looks like a complete non-issue to me. In fact it's as good as saying all referral programs in the world should be scrapped. Why not just donate your referral rewards to charity, then?


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Expecting students to use a code base that is known to be buggy?
Suppose an instructor is teaching a course on a particular field in computer science. He uses a language that is popular for said field, but itself is not the topic of the course (though its use is still required).  The instructor provides a code base he wrote that the students may base their course project upon.  However, this code base is very buggy and does not follow many accepted "best practices" in the language's usage.  You are not technically required to use this code base, but to use anything else is most likely impractical given time constraints.  Is it justifiable to expect students to use a buggy code base you prepared, or is it lazy?  Or neither?

The body of the question doesn't seem to add up to "intentionally buggy"; rather, it sounds like you mean "intentionally using a code known to be buggy."  Could you clarify?

Let's say that the bugs are known to the instructor, but not documented in the code.  Whether the bugs are intentionally inserted, left due to laziness, or existing because of insufficient skills with the relevant tools is uncertain.

Thanks, that clears it up.  (By the way, of course a teaching practice can be both justifiable and lazy.  I speak from direct experience, unfortunately.)

@BenCrowell Then vote to close if you feel that, but I think this is a legitimate question.

@BenCrowell indeed it is more like a rant than a question. I do not see how the OP would try improve the situation, only pose a loaded question if he is right to blame the teacher. He can get 100 votes saying the teacher is lazy, it gives no solution to the problem. Also no code without bug, so buggy may mean many things.

The answer to this question is "Sometimes."
Given that an instructor has roughly X hours/week to devote to this course (given their other responsibilities), sometimes the best way to utilize that time may be to write a code base for students to use in some fraction of those hours (even though it will be buggy and not up to best practices) and devote the rest of those hours to other things.
Sometimes improving the code base isn't the best way to utilize instructor time - sometimes that time is better used offering more office hours to answer students' questions, or writing better lecture notes, or something else that is of greater benefit to the students' learning than making the code less buggy.
It's usually up to the instructor to make that determination of what will best serve the pedagogical goals of the course.
(I'm assuming the professor isn't intentionally trying to give students some experience working with a buggy code base. But that's also a possibility.)
As a student, I didn't think about the time and resources my professors devoted to preparing their course materials. As an instructor, I gained a very different perspective.
For example, the first course I taught as instructor of record was a course that I was only assigned about a week before class started, in a subject outside my area of expertise, and I had very limited time to prep the first few lectures and assignments. I agreed to teach it despite knowing that my teaching would be underprepared (by my own standards) for the first part of the course, because I thought it would be better for my students than the alternative (the course being cancelled because the department couldn't find any other coverage.) As a student, I would never have thought about my professors being put in situations like that.

The instructor's expecting you to use poorly written code with known bugs that you might have to work around?  Sounds like he's doing a good job of preparing you for real-life programming work.
I'm only about 25% joking - while I wouldn't think he's inserted the bugs intentionally, having to work with existing buggy codebases is something that every programmer faces routinely, whether in academia or industry or elsewhere.  So it's certainly not unreasonable to expect students to be able to handle it, or learn to do so.
Evidently the professor has decided that having you work with this code, although it has issues, will be a better educational experience than an alternative.  That's a matter of his professional judgment, and we here on this site are in no position to second-guess it.  We have no way of knowing what alternatives exist, what their pros and cons might be, and what other constraints the professor has.  On the basis of what we know from your post, I think it would be irresponsible of any academic to judge someone "lazy".
If you think you can improve the code, or know of alternatives that would be better, this could be a great opportunity for you to contribute.  You might be able to earn independent study credit, or money, by working on the code or helping adapt the curriculum to some alternative software.  At a minimum, you can write useful bug reports for the professor, which should make it easier for him to fix them, and save some hassle for future students.

I have been that instructor.
When I was a TA in graduate school, we were trying some innovations to improve a class that I was teaching.  Overall, they worked, but the reality of the situation was that the first time around there were a lot of bugs because:

We didn't have time enough to get everything perfect before the semester began, and were in fact racing against the clock trying to improve the code for each problem set before we hit the point in the semester where it was released.
Being academics rather than a professional software QA team, our imagination in testing was much more limited than the range of interesting problems and abuses of the codebase that the students invented, particularly those who were shaky programmers or poorly understood the course material.

The second time around, things were a lot better, thanks to the discovery of problems the first time, but there were still bugs --- either because they were low-triage issues that we hadn't been able to fix or because the students were quite inventive in finding new ways to work with our codebase.
Interestingly, this whole situation was in fact partially created by an attempt to improve away from another buggy code base, which had been created by a former instructor and which nobody teaching the course at the time could improve because it was a large and poorly documented codebase that we were all too scared to touch in case everything broke.
In short: sometimes it might be laziness, but, as @ff524 notes, other times its simply the realities and constraints of development with limited resources.

If a codebase had to be perfect before using it in a classroom was pedagogically appropriate, the number of codebases that could be used in classrooms would approach zero.
(Adding my $0.02 to the other stories: I'm teaching very basic PHP this semester. I have zero experience with PHP, and am far from a phenomenal programmer to begin with. My students are lucky anything I give them WORKS. Of course it's not ideal code.)

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Can I publish a research paper without notifying my supervisor (the corresponding author)?
My professor doesn’t want to publish and he keeps delaying it. I had an intense argument with him and I feel that if he will publish, he will not include me. He is quite rude to me recently, although I worked so hard on two projects under his supervision. It has been about two years and he didn't publish my work.
Do Journals contact the corresponding authors when a research paper is submitted? What happened if (for example) I published an article without notifying a corresponding author and he found out? What could happen?

You worked hard, that's not enough to publish a paper. Did you get new results? Did you work the results out so they convince others, i.e. experts in the field? Are you waiting for your prof to write the actual paper? Waiting for his input/corrections?

Generally the 'corresponding' author is the one they correspond with, so yes they will find out.

No, you absolutely may not do this.  Every author must consent to the publication of an article.
If he finds out, he could have the journal withdraw the article.  They would typically publish a notice about this, which would effectively inform the whole world that you had done something unethical.  That is a potential career killer.  Additionally, a serious breach of academic ethics like this could cause you to be expelled from the university where you study.
Many journals do directly contact every listed author, to prevent this sort of situation.  (For instance, in many cases every author has to sign a copyright form.)  Others will ask the submitting author to certify that they have the consent of all other authors.

Thank you so much for your information. What I should do if he published my work without putting me as a first author or didn't put me at all???

See https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13700/my-advisor-submitted-a-paper-with-my-work-without-including-me-as-an-author

If s/he had any substantial input on the work, s/he should be on the paper.
You say that s/he is the corresponding author but there is no reason that a student cannot be a corresponding author, and no reason why a supervisor would be happy not to be on it (for their own reasons) while simultaneously happy for you to proceed. But you cannot submit a paper while stating them as being the corresponding author. Apart from the academic fallout, this would actually constitute forgery.
You had a fight about it and I have a feeling that the intellectual input from your supervisor is not at issue: you do feel they should be on it.
You also say "He is quite rude to me recently" - so English is not your native tongue and your command of English is poor. This further reduces your chances of navigating this issue all by yourself.
However, I do know of a student (not one of mine!) who submitted to PNAS without the senior author's consent. The latter was quite upset about this, until the acceptance email arrived. Then all was forgiven.

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Should I include books I used for independent study in personal statement?
I am trying to write me Personal Statement for applied mathematics graduate admission in the US. I did an independent study course when I was a senior. The topics were about mathematical foundations of image processing and reading papers. This is definitely something that I would like to mention in my personal statement.
But I am not sure how detailed it should be. For example, should I just say: "we read two papers", or should I go deeper and say: "the first papers use variational calculus to develop an active contour model for detecting edge"?
Should I mention some of the specific books my professor assigned to me, or do I just say: "I read about functional analysis"?

If the statement has a limited word count, write up by the word count. If you have enough room to go into details, go for it. Also, is your independent study ground-breaking and unique, or is it fairly bog-standard and will not stand out of the crowd of applications?

@G-E What could I say? My whole life and person do not stand out ╮(╯_╰)╭ Otherwise I would be chilling on some island right now

I'll take your word. I was not judgemental, just asking questions to help with your reaching an answer to your own question.

@G-E I was just kidding. It was a two-quarter independent study, mostly reading books, going through derivations and writing Matlab. There was no original research going on. I did that mostly because I would like to see what applied math is like (outside the classroom)

Would you agree my first comment as a good answer to your question then? ;)

From personal experience, I'd think these are important information you should add (especially if you have nothing more interesting to say!)

If this is so central to your personal statement, perhaps you should approach the whole thing a different way: First figure out who the researchers you might want to work under/with are, then talk to them about applying, and have them advise you on what to focus your personal statement on.


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Suggesting connection to one's own paper in a referee report
When acting as a referee, I frequently find that some of my papers could be relevant to the paper I'm reviewing (let's say, in a tangential manner). Is it reasonable to suggest the author take a look at my paper, or should I avoid this at all costs due to the risk of revealing my identity and sounding that I'm shopping for a citation?

How "tangential"? I think it would be definitely appropriate in a situation where your paper is the original source of a particular bit of knowledge that is important to the paper - in that context it is helpful and not even that obvious whose paper it is. I am frustrated when a reviewer suggests their own paper when the original paper already cites an earlier work for the same point - in that context it is not helpful and painfully clear whose paper it is.

It happens quite often that as an expert asked to review a paper, your own work is relevant.  But you are right to be concerned that it might seem gratuitous.  So just like it is often the case that papers authored by any member of the Technical Program Committee (TPC) are held to a slightly higher bar at a conference than other papers, to try to avoid the appearance of nepotism, I try to recommend my own papers only if I'm really sure they deserve to be mentioned. Avoiding them at all costs would do a disservice to the publication because important work might be missed.
As an aside, I recently served on a TPC where I contemplated mentioning one of my papers and decided not to.  A different reviewer went to great lengths to point out why my work was relevant, and I'm 95% sure the authors would conclude incorrectly that I was the reviewer in question.  Meaning: just because you suggest a paper doesn't actually mean someone can be sure you're the one suggesting it!
You show a reasonable sense of caution in posing this question.  That is certainly all that is required.

What does TPC mean?

Sorry, @pete_l_clark, technical program committee

I agree with Fred. When I receive peer review comments for my own papers, it is not uncommon for the reviewers to suggest literature they find relevant. I sometimes assume that the reviewer may be the author of the paper suggested, but I also recognize that the reviewer is, ideally, knowledgeable on the topic of my paper (since he or she was asked to review it) and therefore I do not know for certain.
I think that if your paper is related and would be helpful for the author, then suggesting it is fine.  If there are others, you can cite additional works to your own. Then, it would be more difficult for the author to identify you, if that is your main concern.


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Taking individual subjects not related to my career
I would like to ask for advice in this particular situation of mine:
I am a Mexican medical doctor, and I am applying for a Master Degree in Biomedical Engineering at a german university. The program offers bridging subjects for students from non-engineering students in the first semester, however, when I e-mailed them about more in-depth information to prepare a more robust application, they told me that mathematics, physics and chemistry subjects are compulsory requisites for this program.
At medical school, I took chemistry and statistics, which may suffice the chemistry and maybe maths with a little bit of imagination, but the physics one eludes me. They specifically required for it to be taught at university so I am struggling a little bit.
As a solution I have tough I may ask for a physics course at my home institution and maybe they will allow me to take it and it may be shown in my transcript (even though I have already finished my career). I don't even know if it is possible to this yet.
I have studied maths and computer science on my own and I have held a chief developer position at a software company for two years now, however, no university is backing up my knowledge on math nor computer science. This at no point does anything for the physics requirement though.
Can anybody offer advice on how could I overcome this complication?

Dont worry about chemistry, but you are going to be screwed with the math and physics. And you will not be able to immediately start catching up on them there, because undergrad math and physics are taught in German. Unless of course you ve learnt the language long ago.

I'm unclear about your work situation. You're a medical doctor and also now a chief software developer and also your career is finished?

As a faculty member of a German university that also offers a Biomedical Engineering program I can confirm that the admission rules can be quite strict.
However, in almost every study regulation is a clause that the program's examination board (Prüfungsausschuss) can overrule any formal requirement.
The keyword here is "equivalence". E.g., being a software developer can compensate missing software classes, etc. Additional certificates from courses at your home university (as you suggest), even if you take them outside a regular program, can help as well.
So my advice is to bypass the administration and contact directly the head of the program's examination board, or (if such person exists at your target university) the head of the study program (Studiengangsverantwortlicher, sometimes, s/he is the same as the study dean of the program, but not always) and ask what would be needed to prove equivalence.

this is exactly what I did. Sadly, some engineering prerequisites were essential to the course, but they were really kind to me and I graciously accepted his desition. Thank you very much.

Ask the institution whether you can enter using prior recognition of your work history? However, I do not think chief developer uses much physics though but they may have a policy about work recognition.
Definitely worthwhile asking the institution whether there is a bridging course or whether you are able to take subjects with the German institution prior to formal entry into the course to make up the difference? You will probably need to pay for the subjects upfront.

Note that German institutions tend to be pretty strict about these sorts of things. I think it is worth asking, but be prepared for a "no".

They are strict but it is worth getting clarification

Danke schön c: That is a very good Idea. I have recieved a lot of "no"s so another one won't kill me

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


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What to say when a first year PhD student can't handle basic courses?
One of my first-year PhD students wrote to me saying that she is desperate as she is not handling her course load well (she is in the middle of her first semester), and she is afraid she will fail the courses.
There is no possibility of dropping the courses anymore and her funding is strictly dependent on scoring well on these courses.
Do you have any suggestions of what are good responses to this?
Edit: Thank you for your feedback. I think it's probably the case that she is not used to this level of intensity of the courses. I gave her a word of incentive, saying that me and the hiring comittee believed in her potential, so she should also. We also scheduled a face to face meeting.

If you think she is not an idiot, you can request incompletes or talk to her professors about extensions. If she is in fact an idiot, then there is nothing to do.

Yes, some incompletes might help.  Also, if she is having health or mental health problems, she may be able to withdraw from one or more classes after the normal deadline. That would probably not resolve the funding issue, though.  // If you believe in her potential, you could help arrange for tutoring.  I have seen this done for a student with potential and it did the trick.

Tell her it's okay to work in the industry without a PhD. If she's not good enough, then she shouldn't be doing it.

Have you asked your colleagues?

Just curious: what kind of calendar do you have where late April is the middle of a semester?

Had you noticed she was doing badly before she wrote to you?  If so, what were you doing/planning to do, or what had you done, before she wrote?  What safety net detection and procedures does your department have in place?  In general, would you describe your department as sink-or-swim for new grad students? Did the department assign her a temporary advisor? // What type of funding does she have?

@NateEldredge. 1st semester: Mar-Jun, 2nd semester: Aug-Nov. summer courses in Jan-Feb.

I suggest having a discussion with the student to see if you can determine together what the issues are and figure out how to address them.  There are many reasons why the student may not be handling her courses well: personal issues, poor preparation, poor study habits, culture shock, etc.  It is also possible that she's not doing worse than other students, but her impression is negative because the courses/material is harder than her undergrad courses.  From what you have said, it's impossible to say whether she'll be able to do fine in the PhD program or not, or how much help she may need, but it certainly sounds like she could use at least some emotional support, if not tactical advice as well.
In addition, as Nate suggest in the comments, it may be helpful to diagnose the issue (for you and/or her) to talk to her instructors to get their impression of her in the courses.  If you have/know some reliable senior grad students, you might also suggest her to talk to them.

Many PhD students are not good at discussions, especially under pressure.

@Insulin69 If your students aren't able to have a conversation with you, that's a whole nother issue.

just putting it out there.


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Can it be unfair when the same referee reviews a manuscript again at a different journal?
I know it is fairly common to review the same paper twice. However, I want to ask whether this can be unfair to the authors.
I recently had a paper rejected in two very prestigious applied math journals. Both times I received one very good review and both times I received the same very negative review (with minor adjustments to accomodate for the improved manuscript).
The problem is that the negative review is blatantly wrong and off the mark, criticizing everything and not suggesting anything specific. It seems to be a very peculiar opinion about my paper, written by someone that can only appreciate his own views of the subject.
It seems unfair to me that one single person was able to ruin my chances in both journals, with a possibly odd opinion. When I was at the other end of this situation, I denied to review the paper for a second time, as I'd want the authors to have a fresh judgement of their work.
So, can it be that our common policy of giving multiple reviews of the same paper, especially when we don't propose any improvement to be done, is unfair to the authors as we can be the ones wrong?
And can I, as an author, do something about this situation?

In some subfields, the total worldwide number of qualified reviewers could be very small.  So if you have a paper of moderate quality and you submit unsuccessfully to a few top-quality journals, you might "use up" all qualified reviewers and make your paper effectively unpublishable, even though those same reviewers might agree it is perfectly suitable for a medium-quality journal.  Is that good?

Much of this question is a rant I want to advocate is not generally a good question on SE. You might want to edit it down.

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7200/asked-again-to-review-a-paper-when-the-authors-dont-wish-to-modify-it

@StrongBad Yes. I'm sorry. It is kind of a rant. But I think in the end I managed to come up with a question.

@NateEldredge my problem is in the other direction: making the paper unpublished without necessarily using up all qualified reviewers.

I think the edited title was much better, but don't want to start an edit war.

@ZeroTheHero nobody is perfect. The referee may be simply wrong, that's why he shouldn't review the same paper twice.

@ZeroTheHero: "One should never blame the referee: he/she is representative of the community," That doesn't make any sense to me.  It's like saying "One should never blame the president; he/she is representative of the United States."  Clearly this is not followed, and it shouldn't be.  First, the referee is a representative of the community, not the only representative.  Second: the community is not automatically right either.  There are notorious examples of academic communities discriminating against individuals or groups of researchers.

one single person was able to ruin my chances in both journals — One single person did not ruin your chances.  Referees do not accept or reject papers; they only make recommendations.  The editors decided to reject your paper.  If you believe that the referee's interpretation of your results is wildly off the mark, appeal to the editor.

@JeffE I feel this is not true in my area. I often see that editors, while very prestigious in their field, deal with submissions from a wider range of expertises, and thus, will reject a paper that receives a single negative report (probably due to the volume of submissions).

@ShakeBaby Even under the circumstances you describe, the editor is making the decision.  (My area is not that far from yours.)

So, can it be that our common policy of giving multiple reviews of the same paper, especially when we don't propose any improvement to be done, is unfair to the authors as we can be the ones wrong?

I don't think it's unfair. Moreover, I have a feeling that if it was the positive review of your paper that you got twice from the same reviewer, you wouldn't come here to complain that this was unfair. This reminds me of the joke about a professor who had a student who failed the final exam in his course and had to retake it. On the second attempt, the professor gave the exact same final exam, and the student failed it again. He then went to the professor and said "professor, I think it's unfair that you failed me a second time." Incredulous, the professor says "but I gave you the same final exam and you still failed it!", to which the student replies "exactly - I already failed that exam so it was unfair of you to give the same one; you should have given me a different exam!"
Jokes aside, what is potentially unfair is to get a negative review from someone who clearly hasn't understood your paper or even bothered to try. Even then there is an argument to be made (that has been made here by various people in connection with past questions) that that means your paper is at fault for not making it easy enough for the referee to understand your results. In any case, whether it's unfair or not, the unfairness is the same whether that lazy/ignorant/mean-spirited referee reviewed your paper once, twice, or any other number of times.

And can I, as an author, do something about this situation?

Yes, you can. You can write the editor a polite email in which you give your best attempt at explaining why the reviewer's report doesn't make sense and should be ignored. You should have done that already after the first submission, but you can equally well do it now after receiving the same negative report the second time. You can also point out to the editor that this is the second time you're getting the same referee report, but personally I don't think that's a valid argument that should sway the editor's decision. My advice to you is to focus on the substantive issue of why the report is not a useful one, and not the number of submissions it was used in.

Thanks. Great answer. I was already convinced and I've written to the editor after @JeffE's comments.

The joke is great (I knew it, but it is still great!) - and the response, of course. "focus on the substantive issue of why the report is not a useful one, and not the number of submissions it was used in" +1

If you have concerns that the reviewer isn't being fair or just, you can always contact the editor and ask for a new reviewer. It is not entirely uncommon, I know of researchers that have a "blacklist" of people that they do not allow to review their works.
But consider that the reviewer might have a point. I know it is not your case, but I get really disappointed when I get the same paper twice and it is exactly the same text. Regardless if is the same process or not, a proper review would most likely improve the paper, so to see that not even the typos got fixed (in my case) is hard.
More to the point, how did you change your paper to make sure nobody else reading it would reach the same conclusions as this reviewer?

So why not just turn down the review instead of forcing your opinion on the authors again. If you are right, then the other reviewers should catch the issue.

Thanks for answering. I would definitely blacklist this guy if I knew who he was.. As for your suggestion, I haven't had any good outcome in replying to rejected outcomes. I think the editor would only see me as a complainer independently of what the reviewer has said.

If the reviewer makes suggestions, I'd definitely try my best to incorporate all of them on my revised manuscript. However, if he blatantly misreads my paper and disagrees with my first sentence, I don't see how to rewrite anything.

@ShakeBaby Well, maybe your first sentence is wrong...

I rarely see the same paper for multiple journals, but I frequently see the same paper in multiple conferences.  As a reviewer I want to provide feedback when I've already read it.  Sometimes I can see it's been improved, sometimes I feel they've ignored my comments, and sometimes the paper is literally submitted unmodified.  When completely unmodified, they are frequently rejected without review when this is pointed out.  // Reviewing is an iterative process.  Authors are expected to try to address comments.  And reviewers are assumed to be competent to evaluate.

@DavidRicherby what if it is not?

@ShakeBaby Then maybe you wrote it in a way that's so hard to understand that an expert in your field misunderstood it. If an expert in your field cannot understand your paper, you need to consider the possibility that you didn't write it very well.

@DavidRicherby the point is not the first sentence, but the fact that he disagrees with the whole research. I can't fix the whole research. It's not a matter of presentation.

When you say that the person disagrees with the whole research, is that because there is a well-known theoretical or methodological rift in your field? If not, then the person is probably misunderstanding. I have multiple examples of someone thinking my work is worthless until I identify the source of their misunderstanding. Then I add a paragraph or diagram and poof -- they now think it is amazing work. If I get a reviewer who totally misunderstands, I know I have to find and add the poof.

Continued - Sometimes the paragraph takes the form of "The problem at hand is somewhat similar to the established problem of X. However, it is distinct in several ways... Because of these differences between the two problems, the approach used in problem X is not suitable here. ..."

@StrongBad Nobody is forcing anything on anybody.  The editor is asking for an opinion.

@Dawn. I think the problem in my field is more dramatic. Simplifying, the issue at hand is that a more theoretical inclined review will only judge my paper based on my theory, disregarding all other aspects of my contribution.

@Dawn Exactly what I was trying to convey: If the reviewer misunderstood, your text let that happen. Fix the text, fix the reviewer :)

Yes, like almost everything in life, it's possible that it's unfair, e.g. for the reasons that you describe. Often, though, it's an advantage:

It puts less pressure on the system in general, since fewer reviewers are required per paper. It's much quicker to get up to speed on a revised paper if you've read a previous version before.
It's almost always possible to find something wrong with a paper. If it's sent to a new reviewer each time, they won't see the improvements being made and will simply identify new things that need changing. You'll get caught in an endless cycle of revisions.

And consider the alternative: if papers were sent to a different set of reviewers each time, authors would be more able to play the odds, and simply keep submitting until they happen to get a favourable set of reviewers. As the most suitable reviewers are used up, it gets sent to people with less expertise until the paper's (possible) flaws get overlooked. This is still unfair, just in a different way.
Finally, bear in mind that a reviewer cannot accept or reject a paper, that job lies with the editor. Therefore, the editor provides a check against possible rogue reviewers: if the reasons for suggesting rejection are unreasonable, the editor is at liberty to ignore them.


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What are the economic incentives for professors to hire and train graduate students?
I am a current graduate student at a research-oriented university. Nonetheless, for me, it is a big mystery why and how the professors are incentivised to recruit and train the graduate students.
In an experiment-oriented research group, graduate students are the work-force of the principal investigator, so the professors train the graduate students to conduct experiments and research so that they contribute to the research group. However, in theory-oriented research areas such as pure mathematics, theoretical computer science, and theoretical physics, in many situations, graduate students do not contribute to the professor's research. They receive training and guidance for their research career unilaterally.
It should depend on the system for each nation, but what are the designed incentives for the professors in such areas to hire and train graduate students other than volunteer service spirit? In addition, I have heard that there exists an incentive system to push the professor to let their graduate students graduate within a reasonable time. What is such a system?

Well, in applied topics the funder is often the government and the government threatens to revoke funding unless graduate students and undergraduate students are used in research.

Many professors simply enjoy working with graduate students and get satisfaction out of the work, and the feeling that they are helping advance research in their field and train the next generation of researchers. There’s more to why people do things than economic incentives.

@DanRomik that should be an answer!

@astronat well, it doesn’t technically answer OP’s question, so I think it makes more sense as a comment.

@Dan Romik I have heard that what you have mentioned is absoultely true, espcially for those who already are tenured. However, as you noticed, I wonder the mechanism in the system, rather than the general mood of the society.

Can't professors pocket a percentage of the grant? 10%? 20%?

In some cases the university either forces them or strongly pressures them to do so. Professors and other academic staff will have an expectation to have X-Y graduate students on their roll at any one time. Have too few (or indeed too many) and you may be questioned about it by your superiors.

@RodrigodeAzevedo Hahahahaha. Well, ok, in some countries they can. But in the UK at least it's pretty hard at times to even spend it on your own research. A colleague won a large grant, and was allowed by the uni to freely decide how to spend something like £50.

@DanRomik you forgot the /s.

it is a cheap labour, what else do you want

Perhaps a related aspect of the question is "why grad students rather than post-docs"? Post-docs are generally more qualified and usually cost about the same (in the US at least, since a grad student's "tuition" offsets the lower stipend).

@DanRomik. I was going to suggest that being a professor indicates that someone is not really prioritizing economic incentives to begin with. Perhaps long-term incentives for humanity as a whole, but certainly not personal ones. For most of the quality professors I've met, a small side-step into industry is all it takes to give up some personal values (not many, really) in return for a very large pile of cash.

@MadPhysicist The yearly pay of professors in the University of California system is available online. For example, Terry Tao is not exactly poorly paid.

@RodrigodeAzevedo. Having some connections in that area, I strongly suspect that the professors are getting a comfortable wage, but nothing unusual. It seems pretty clear that a professor with many decades of experience is earning about what you would expect an engineer at amazon to make after about a fifth of that time. I'm looking at https://ucannualwage.ucop.edu/wage/, locations "ALL", and sorted by regular pay. Seems like sports coaches are the ones that are financially minded, even more than executives :)

@RodrigodeAzevedo. I'm not implying that you have to be an ascetic to be a professor. Just that you aren't likely to be motivated by the pursuit of money to the exclusion of everything else.

There are many possible incentives to training grad students (depending on many factors): future professional network, possible way to build collaboration with other groups (training together students), assist in topics that one is interested but have not enough time to follow (intellectual curiosity), also often a requirement for job, grants, position.

Since you mention economic incentives, one obvious answer might be for teaching, at least this was the way it was in Germany. Even the most theoretical professor is supposed to teach a certain number of classes each semester. Generally the work involved in this is too much for one person alone, that is why the professor is supposed to do the lectures and the PhD students handle exercise classes and organisation. So its either supervise a bit on a research level or spend twice the time dealing with undergrad students having missed the deadline for their homework again because their grandfather died for the fifth time in this semester. Personally I'd know what I'd choose...
To this end each professor has a number of positions available, which can only be used to hire PhD students or postdocs. In particular it is not possible to hire someone to just help with the teaching without supervising them scientifically (Not that many qualified people would be willing anyway), or use the money for something else. Also like with any budget item, not using positions for too long is a great way to have them reallocated to someone else.
Regarding incentives to have them graduate on time, that one is also simple, if a bit unrefined: There is a maximum amount of years one can be employed in such positions. So in order to supervise the next student, the old one should be finished.
But I have to say that homo economicus is a spectacularly bad model for professors in theoretical subjects. Most of the ones I know are primarily motivated by science and would gladly work with a gifted student even without receiving any compensation.

I also would not restrict the last part to theoretical subjects. The other way around, there is a subset of applied sciences or rather sub-fields in some sciences that focus on applied branches with a particular notion of close industry collaboration and there the likelihood is larger to meet homo economicus in professor garb. There are lots of professors in applied sciences that kept their ivory tower intact and like it being built on non-monetary motivation just like your theoretical subject profs. Okay, and then there is law ;)

Most of the ones I know are primarily motivated by science and would gladly work with a gifted student even without receiving any compensation. Just means one needs to ascribe a monetary value to "science", no?

A few reasons:

It might be required by the funding agency.
Graduate students let the professor expand his/her research program. If one is interested in the results, but don't have the time to do it yourself, then graduate students are great.
Successful graduate students produce papers which have their advisor's name on them, and if they go on to become successful, the advisor benefits professionally (since it indirectly shows they are a great mentor).

To expand on point 3: A history of successfully mentoring graduate students may increase the advisor's chances of getting funding and/or promotions in the future.  (Also note that it is not universal for advisors' names to appear on their students' papers, particularly in the fields mentioned by the OP, as discussed in many places on this site.)

point 1 seems answer my questions. Thanks !

But point 1 is only an issue if you have a grant. What is the economic incentive for having a grant?

@user151413 "If you don’t get funding, you can’t do research. If you don’t get funding, you definitely won’t get promoted. In my university, if you don’t get funding you won’t pass your probationary period to get a lectureship, and at many places if you don’t keep getting funding, you are in danger of losing your job." source

@Allure It was a rhetoric question, given that the OP asked about economic incentives but then was happy with an answer which didn't explain any economic incentives (it is linked to economic incentives, but this is already true for the topic of the question itself). This aside, once you are tenured there is no need to get grants in many places (though of course it is often frowned upon), and in theoretical research, funding is not needed to do research.  There are quite a few outstanding mathematicians or theoretical physicists which work by themselves and rarely take on students.

@user151413 While you might have meant the question rhetorically, it has been raised in all earnestness on this site before: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/107227/101

@MarkMeckes Fair enough. I was not saying that this wasn't a good question - as I say myself above, there are outstanding theoretical researchers who work more or less without grants.

It's a requirement of their job.
(Longer version: in the UK at least, universities seem to be increasingly setting explicit requirements of academic positions, and at least some of those lists of requirements set out minimum rates of research students you must have graduate under your supervision.)

If you are not tenured, one criterion for tenure will be how many (successfully completed, ideally) PhD theses you have supervised.

If you apply for a grant, showing that you successfully supervised X PhD students will help.  In addition, having good students increases your publication output, which is again helpful when applying for grants.

You might argue that there is no reason to apply for grants in theoretical research, since all they buy you are PhD students/postdocs, so if you don't want to supervise PhD students, why apply for grants?  However, even for tenured professors part of their salary might depend on dynamic factors such as grants acquired.

And finally, already mentioned by others - though this is not part of your question - most people really supervise students because they enjoy it, and not for economic reasons.

I question your premise. For the theoretical groups I have encountered it would be extremely unusual for the graduate students to not contribute to the professor's research.
Yes, the professor may be more efficient at doing research. And the professor may have to heavily invest in the graduate students' training first. But overall over the course of an average graduate career the student will contribute much more to the professor's research than the professor would have achieved by themselves instead of supervising a student. (That is true even if the professor hypothetically could do the work that takes a grad student 8h in just 1h, to pick an extreme & somewhat unrealistic example).
I think that explains why theoretical research groups have graduate students. Any additional incentives are secondary (but exist, because society puts some value on training experts in itself independent of research output).

I think your answer is by far the closest for my field, but it goes even further. Professors have duties that prohibit them from spending enough time on research to be as productive as graduate student's can be, at least once a graduate student has been trained somewhat. In my field, professors manage graduate students and post-docs and hardly have any time to be doing the "grunt work" of research...

... The incentive to hire graduate students is to lead them into interesting topics that further advance the field, helping develop the professor's reputation not only as a solo researcher, but as a leader in the field who is pushing in multiple directions of work simultaneously, far more than could be done with just one person.

At my university and several others I know of, our annual raises are based in part on a 'merit score'; all of our activity (publications, undergrad and grad teaching, grad mentoring, departmental and University service) is tabulated [by us] and judged [by a departmental committee or by the department chair]. Faculty with above-average merit scores get above-average raises, and below-averagers get below-average raises.
This makes a fairly small difference in the grand scheme of things, and I agree with the other answerers about the relatively low importance of economic incentives, but since that was your question ...
For an important non-economic incentive: faculty without graduate students often end up with a heavier course load, and many people would rather train graduate students one-on-one rather than lecture and mark exams ...

As a professor you typically like to do and/or teach science and have influence over what research is done in your field. You also like to stay employed. Your department will do well if it can teach and/or research well. The likelihood that you are perceived as being effective typically increases if you can increase your output in either field (with sufficient quality). To increase your output, it helps to have "employees". PhD students are employees. They might not always get paid (very much) with money, instead you pay them (also) with your time. You invest some time but get typically more of their time - to teach or research for you, do the menial tasks you as a professor are too busy to do yourself.
If your department does well, that increases the chances that your institute or your university does well. It also increases the chances that you stay employed if there are budget cuts or that you even get promoted. Therefore more graduate students help you do more teaching/research (with you influencing the research of your field by advising them) and it helps you to stay employed.

It is economical for a professor when you look at the correct 'currency' that an academic strives to maximize: For those who have decided to stay long-term in academia, this currency is not money (if money beyond the getting-food-on-the-table level were of importance, they'd not have stayed in academia long enough to become tenured professors) but academic output (measured in papers, citations, conference contributions etc.) associated with that particular professor's chair.
They optimize for academic output given the funding available to them (in Germany, a full professor usually has funding for several postdoc-equivalent positions associated with their post), and advanced grad students - while time-consuming to train - can become almost postdoc-level resources at roughly half the price (since a PhD student in Germany gets about half a postdoc salary) or even for free if the grad student brings her own grant money.
Another criterion a professor might optimize for is 'legacy', i.e. having trained (and thus influenced) a large number of students, some of whom might go on to make research contributions in their own right, and thus each grad student they teach is another potential contribution to the academic legacy.

At my Alma Mater, one particular tenured prof exclaimed the first lesson of grad students first class:
"My lessons are aimed at the top 10% of you."
He then proceeded to breeze through the curriculum and teach waaay above it
Not all profs are incentivized to teach grads.
This particular one did it to find future academics in his field.

This seems a singularly inefficient way to find the future academics...

@denis I am certain they do it primarily because they have to.... Then, having to do it, do it to teach the brilliant ones their field...


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How to complain about an abusive editor?
It is well known in my field that a particular good journal has an editor-in-chief that frequently asks authors to cite a particular (largely unrelated) paper whenever he has the chance.
Looking at google scholars citations of this particular paper, you can notice that it has a large amount of citations from this particular journal. Reading the papers you can almost see the struggle of the authors trying to cite an unrelated paper.
This has been going on for years.
What can I do to try to stop this? I frequently avoid submitting to this journal due to this issue.

"I frequently avoid submitting to this journal due to this issue." That's a solution.  Why do you think this is a "good" journal?

Prestigious overall, high impact factor, etc...

Seems like a highly dangerous practice if true

I agree, this is highly dubious. Usually the EIC is simply farming out to an editor, and in turn to reviewers, so for the EIC to add such a requirement would be astonishing. The EIC normally just forwards the recommendation without comment. If true, this should be reported to the publisher.

In my own area, I have experienced this first hand, both from the EiC and also an area editor who wants me to cite 30+ of his papers before acceptance.

I had a rather similar experience. I simply withdrew my paper. After all, I think there is no shortage of good journals.

There should be a paper trail of the editor requesting the citations, cases where people are uncomfortable ("but this is not related to my paper") and the editor dismissing their concerns. This paper trail should reach the owners of the journal or whoever is responsible at some point.

The editor is one of the reviewer and he has right to ask for citing a particular paper if he thinks it is highly related to the submited paper (the reason might be different but you can never prove it). However, it is very easy to avoir citing the paper if you think it is unrelated, by politly responding in the letter that there is no way to cite the paper.
PS. it happend to me two times and it worked.

If you want it to stop, the best way to address the issue is to address it with the editor himself. That's not a guarantee that it will be addressed, it could very well be the case that the editor is aware of how his requests are perceived by the most people in the field, and is choosing to run the journal this way anyways.
You mentioned that you avoid submitting to this journal. If you want to lower the prestige of the journal, you could publicize the unprofessional practices of the editor, and encourage your colleagues to submit to better, more professional journals instead. As MxNx mentioned in the comments, there are many good journals they could submit to instead. If many people in your field stop submitting to this journal, chances are it will fall in prestige and possibly fail eventually, unless the practices change.


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Reviewer changed their mind after positive earlier feedback
I find myself in a very unusual situation. After sending the paper to a top journal, we received two positive feedbacks after 12 months, asking only for minor revisions.
We promptly did the revision and 6 months later we received the reports: one reviewer recommended acceptance and the other rejection, saying simply that the paper was not suitable for such a top journal.
The editor sent out the rejection to us saying that he agrees the paper is not suitable for such a top journal.
I wonder if this is a reasonable behavior of a reviewer (and editor). Is it reasonable to simply "change your mind" about the paper (without a justification)? I feel disrespected as a researcher for receiving their honest opinion on my work only after a second round of review.
My question is: Should I reply to the editor or not? What should I say?

Edit: I replied to the editor pointing out two things: i) How should I have replied to the minor revisions to meet the journal standard? ii) Asking for a third reviewer given the unusual radical change of mind of the reviewer
Edit 2: It turns out the paper has been handled by an anonymous associate editor. The editor in chief replied agreeing that the reviewer and the associate editor made a poor job in the first review. However, at this point, there's nothing that can be done.

Did the reviewer actually change their mind? They literally said they think the paper should be accepted, and later that it should be rejected? And are you sure it was the same reviewer?

This has happened to me, and also as a reviewer, where an editor seek my comments on a paper after existing reviewers recommended minor revision;  unfortunately for the authors, I recommended a reject.  In the review process, many things can happen.  A reviewer may not read an article in detail in the first pass.  In the second pass, he/she may review the paper in more details if an editor is thinking of pursuing a paper.  Moreover, authors may reveal more information after a revision, and reviewers finally 'understood' the paper, and hence, recommend a reject or an accept.

Was it the same editor?

Did the reviewer give any explanation why the paper isn't suitable?

@Prof.SantaClaus It is seriously unfair to an author to first ask for minor revisions only to later reject on something that was present in the first round, especially when turnaround times are so long. If you are going to reject, do it right away. It is ok to ask the authors for clarification before a decision, but a minor revision decision should be just that: "minor revision".

Yes, it is the same editor and same reviewer. I understand that the editor didn't pay much attention at first, given that both reviews were minor. The problem was the reviewer changing his mind (based on something that was already present in the first submission), which forced the editor to read the paper in more details. I don't think this is a reasonable behavior of the reviewer, especially without pointing out something specific. This is a bad review and should be disregarded by the editor.

@ShakeBaby It's also possible the reviewer also originally suggested a rejection and made it more clear the second time. The rejection reason is that it's not suitable for this journal. There may be nothing wrong with the contents scientifically, so nothing specific to comment on to improve, and yet the result itself is not that interesting. Top journals reject lots of papers that are otherwise suitable to publish, that's what makes them top journals.  No reputable journal should be accepting papers with major flaws without correction, regardless of stature.

Can clarify in the question when you resubmitted the revised version?

@CaptainEmacs I disagree.  I've had reviewers recommend major revision because they thought that their comments required major work.  However, in most cases, at least for my works, most comments can be addressed with some clarifications and no major work on my part.  On the other hand, a minor revision could result in a major work or even a withdrawal of a paper!  In general, I only see 'revision'.  The point is, any type of revision does not guarantee eventual acceptance; all the journals I submit to note this fact in all correspondences.

@Prof.SantaClaus Well, if the reviewers require only minor changes and then change their mind because they didn't pay enough attention in the first round (yes, that does happen), I think they should not agree to be reviewing in the first place. I am not talking about unraveling an issue that looks small initially and turns out to be big; that can happen, of course - I am talking about minor issues that were in the first version and they bother only mentioning in the second round and use this to kill the paper. Sorry, that's seriously disrespectful to the authors, their time and priority.

@CaptainEmacs Sure.  In this case, what constitute a 'minor change'?  Also, the reviewer that recommended a reject could be a new reviewer as well.  It is quite common for the editor of top journals to ask for more opinions if existing reviewers did a poor job; e.g., an editor thinks that the existing reviewers did not read a paper properly or less than qualify as their comments are superficial.  In this case, a 'minor revision' is meaningless or a false positive.

@Prof.SantaClaus All my comments refer not to a new reviewer, of course, but to an existing reviewer switching from 'minor revisions' to reject because they claim not to have seen something in the first round (i.e. sloppy reading). Again, that may have been an honest mistake, but then they need to be extra careful in the second round and in my experience they can turn more pedantic, but do not become more careful.  Why should they be any more trustworthy in the second round than in the first? This does not apply, of course, to being alerted to an issue by co-reviewers.

May I ask about the discipline?

The last time this happened to me, it was because one of the two original reviewers was unable to review the revision, but journal policy mandated two accept recommendations before acceptance. So the editor invited a third reviewer, who recommended rejection. I do think it's pretty unfair to the authors when this happens. After all, if the paper is not suitable for the journal, the journal ought to desk reject immediately and save everyone's time.
I suggest writing to the editor and asking them if they're sure of their decision. After all, they did say minor revisions in the first decision. If they say they're sure there's nothing you can do but submit elsewhere, but there's a chance they'll agree they have been unfair.

You do not say whether the journal has a policy on how soon revisions must be returned. Some "top" journals only allow a return within a specific window of time. Otherwise, the dust gathers, new information appears that supersedes the publication, and what was once acceptable is no longer acceptable. Otherwise, some "top" journals consider anything submitted after the deadline to be a new submission worthy of an entirely new round of first (not second) reviews.
You should confirm that you submitted your revisions within the allotted deadline.
Considering the case where you did submit the revisions promptly enough, a period of 6 months or 12 months to hear back is rather long. Have you maintained a record of email correspondence asking the editor for a status report over those periods? In such a case, the onus can fall on the editor to explain the change in opinion. Otherwise, the long delay may be a case where the work simply and inadvertently fell through the cracks, as the saying goes, both from your side and from the editor's side.
In the meantime, you may also want/need to justify that your paper is still "top" quality in terms of meeting the guidelines for the journal. Have findings from your work already been published in the meantime, so that what you once submitted those 18 months ago as fore-front work is no longer fore-front work? Have the findings from your work long since faded out of the appeal for the journal, so that what once was occupying a significant chunk of reports in your field is now occupying perhaps only a sporadic hiccup in some on-line journal in a foreign language? You can only do well to present supporting information to show that your work is still worthy of publication in the "top" journal even after the 18 months time. You may even have the foresight to provide a revision to the citations with any updated information to support your case (e.g. a recent publication that shows the continued relevance of your work even after this time). If you are inclined to put in the additional effort and if the option seems to arise, you may even consider asking the editor whether, in light of the circumstances, you might have permission to resubmit with revisions that will highlight the article's relevance even after the 18 months. Given the previous history of long delays, I suggest that you may want/need to negotiate a definitive frame with the editor to get this done in short order if at all.
You can also do well to determine whether your report represents an anomaly or not. What are the typical turn-around times from submission to publication in the journal? You can generally find this by looking at the submission and acceptance dates. Is a period of 12 months representative? Are there clear cases where the turn-around was even longer? Also, this report is being considered in a time-frame under COVID-19 contingencies. Does the journal provide any notice of grace periods for such contingencies?
In summary, you are within bounds to ask the editor why your paper was accepted with minor revisions (after 12 months) and then, 6 months later after those revisions were submitted on time, is flatly rejected. You are within bounds to go one step further above the editor as supported by any records of follow-up contacts with the editor over that extended period.
Unfortunately, even with all this, your paper may remain rejected, you may not be able to find out entirely to your satisfaction why, and you may have a suspicion that something was "dishonest" about the process. Reflect that your perceptions may not be the full reality. Perhaps, all things considered, this is a case where the work simply got lost in the administrative shuffle for the two periods of time and that, after 18 months, the same reviewer had an objective change of mind.

I replied promptly. It’s the same editor and same reviewer.

I see now. The reply from the editor and reviewer are 18 months late. Perhaps you can improve your question this way: "We returned the minor revisions promptly (within xxx weeks). About 18 months later, we received the second reports ... ". In such a case, the onus can fall back to the editor for the untenable lapse in time.

So suppose the onus can fall back to the editor for the unreasonable lapse in time, even so, what is the editor to do as a remedy?  Print an article he doesn't think should be in the journal, because it was their error?  This kind of thing doesn't seem to have any resolution that won't leave most involved people unhappy ...

@davidbak The editor was apparently (fully) prepared to print it 18 months ago. If the OP has followed up routinely, the onus could be on the editor if nothing else at least to provide an objective explanation why it is abruptly not acceptable at all now. That does not mean the editor has to publish it. Perhaps the editor could offer a compromise to propose edits that will make it publishable. Yes, the outcome may leave some unhappy. It does not have to leave the OP feeling that the process was tainted.

Sorry for not being clearer. The first review took 12 months, and the second one took 6 months.

Your new time lines change the dynamics rather dramatically. You should take responsibility to 1) assure that you constantly ask for a status update and 2) provide supporting evidence that your work is still relevant even after 18 months. Finally, periods of 12 months + 6 months for reviews may or may not be common in your field or for this journal. You should check.

I can imagine two different scenarios in which this might logically happen and possibly be appropriate.
First, a fair amount of "stuff" has been published in the interim, perhaps making the paper appear less important/innovative.
Second, it might be that a reviewer has been "thinking about it" ever since the first round, and now thinks they were overly positive and now see some deficiencies that they didn't previously.
You can ask the editor, of course, for reasons and for any advice. You can try to submit elsewhere as well, but if the first case holds, then you may need to revisit the problem in light of recent research.
But that first case is also especially unfortunate if it was delays in review that resulted in the paper being less "current". You might have a complaint to make about that.
But in future, I hope you follow up before an 18 month delay becomes a factor. Ask for updates fairly regularly.

While "thinking about it" could also include delaying a reply to get own stuff published that's almost ready.

"First, a fair amount of "stuff" has been published in the interim, perhaps making the paper appear less important/innovative." This is arguably an antipattern. A paper should not be considered outdated just because it took long to review! (Besides being unfair, this would create a major temptation to plagiarize and publish in fast-turnout journals.) I think a more likely backstory is that the referee learnt more about the topic in the interim, which made him hold the paper in less regard.

@darijgrinberg, I think that is a good guess. And I agree that the long review shouldn't affect publish ability.

Two things from my experience:

In the journals I'm involved with on the editorial side, reviewers give a response to the authors and a separate one to the editor. The editor will not normally disclose the individual decision recommendations of the reviewers. It is absolutely possible that the reviewer in question already had doubts about the suitability of the paper for the journal in the first round. They may not have written this to the author (because it doesn't have implications about how the paper should be changed) but only to the editor. The editor may have recommended "minor revision" because they tended (maybe just about) to the positive side, maybe not being sure whether the paper is acceptable, but deciding that revisions required are only minor in any case (more major revisions wouldn't save it either if the minor revisions don't). Now, having finally rejected the paper, it seems like the editor has made the wrong call initially, but these things happen. Such a decision can be very narrow, may in the perception of the editor rely on the revision (even if called "minor"), without the authors knowing. Of course it's unfortunate that is took so long.

As reviewer, I often ask for revisions because something is not clear. I may even ask for "minor revisions" in such a case, not expecting ensuing problems. However, after the thing is clarified in the revision, I understand more and may realise that the whole approach is more flawed than I initially thought. I am not proud of situations in which I have recommended minor revisions in the first go, then changed to "reject", but it has happened, and the reason was that either the authors were not able to clarify something that is essential and I would have expected them to do it, or where the clarification has made me see more fundamental issues with the paper.

In such cases, complaining will not help. In order to accept this, you may think about it in the following way: Had everything turned out in the same way with the only exception that the initial decision letter would have sounded slightly more negative and asked for "major revisions", you wouldn't be in any better situation than you are now (in fact you may have put more time into the revision, only to find out afterwards that it was in vain), but you wouldn't have any reason to complain.

I agree in general with your answer. However, I would expect that when a reviewer changes from minor to reject, he should make it clear in his report why he did so, which didn't happen. The minor revisions he asked were only typos, and then he recommended rejection simply for not being suitable for the journal.


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Submitting multiple distinct papers to the same journal
I've recently submitted three papers to the same top journal over a period of two weeks. Can this fact alone impact on the chances of any of the papers being accepted? There is no overlap of content or dependencies among the papers, but I'm a bit worried that it may look odd from the editor's perspective and raise doubts on my work.

I've done this, but the probability of acceptance is no different to submitting the articles one after another -- i.e., the submissions are non-overlapping.

In CS the reviews are blind so the committee won't know if the papers are from the same author or not. Accepting a paper depends on how many good reviews it gets and whether they are strong or weak accepts. So unless there is a quota for the paper and there are many other strong papers it wont have any effect.

@pizzaEatingGuy this is usually true in CS conferences, but usually not true in CS journals. As far as I know, the reviews are only half-blind.

I imagine this may be field and journal dependent, but in mathematics (where we have lots of journals that can be good fits for the same paper, unlike some other fields), this can reduce the chance of acceptance.  Editors are under pressure to reject lots of submissions (e.g., they may have quotas), and if you have two (or more) simultaneous submissions, and the decisions are not no-brainers, many editors like accept one and reject the other(s).
Note: in mathematics, there's a tendency (not a strict rule) for people not to publish the in the same journal too often, and one of my colleagues recently got a rejection because they has "published too recently" in that journal.  (I don't think it's good to enforce this practice as a rule, but apparently some people do.)

I agree with @kimball and disagree with the comment from @prof_santa_claus.  As an associate editor of several publications and a former editor in chief of an IEEE magazine, I think 3 is at least 1 too many. And it also depends on whether this  is precisely the same author(s) or just OP is intersecting.
I'd be ok if A submits with B and C and around the same time submits with D and E...especially if it's for a special issue with a single deadline.  But I wouldn't take 3 from ABC around the same time regardless, I'd pick the best one or two. And I'd be really careful to be sure that indeed, the overlap is minimal.
So I do think it hurts your chances, significantly, if all the papers stood a chance independently.  If one was a Hail Mary, you're just wasting your time and the reviewers, but it probably doesn't affect the others.

Would you desk reject one of them? Under this argument?

Not unless it was so bad i would desk reject even as the only submission,  but i would be very reluctant to take all 3 regardless of reviews.  If every paper had fantastic reviews that i trusted,  i might be hard pressed to reject,  but i would look for any excuse not to take them all.  Don't know that i speak for other editors with this opinion of course.

I also agree that this is less of an issue if the sets of co-authors are different.  I didn't mention this in my answer because it didn't sound like this was the OP's situation.