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Is it common in any other first world countries besides the US to work while attending university?
I have an old family friend in Japan (born and raised). We were recently talking about academics as he is in his 2nd year of Uni and I have 1 B.S and soon to have another with the goal of moving on to a Masters this fall.
While talking he asked if I "Work or study" as he knew I completed my first degree but was unaware I started my second. When I mentioned that I both go to Uni and work a corporate job in my industry he was, no joke, speechless.
He couldn't believe someone could both attend a Uni and work at the same time without failing classes. He told me that people only work part time jobs very sparingly during school semesters and then work more during the summer but can't even begin to believe working in a corporate job while still studying.
I don't know too many people that attend my Uni and don't either have 2 part-time jobs or a full time jobs (except for those with free rides or very generous parents).
Many people I know from other countries (I try to culture myself) ask me the same question "Do you work or study?" and they get very confused when I tell them "both" and explain my situation.
Is this only common in the US? I've talked to people from Singapore, Japan, Canada, Greece, and the UK and they all can't believe working and going to Uni at the same time.

If you have a 9-5 job, when are you are attending classes since classes are usually in the morning?

My work hours are generally 2-whenever I'm done (8-10pm). I do a lot of analytical work for that day based on properties my company owns residential and commercial so the full results for each day aren't available until 4ish. This makes going to morning classes easy. I also take a couple online courses.

Is this only common in the US? — I don't think this is common even in the US.

@JeffE it may not be but from my experiences most students need to both work and study because loan rates are sky high so at the end of each semester most my friends and I compare costs to cover which range from $2,000-$5,000

Then you do not have a full time job. In Greece, it is common for students especially in the STEM field to have part-time jobs (private tutoring, building websites etc). Also, getting a second degree is easier than getting your first (you have already learnt how to study more efficiently).

Many of us work(ed) only part-time, relying on scholarships, loans, and family to make up the difference. Probably most. There were some who took Memj's approach but not many. And I was at one of the most expensive schools in the country -- albeit one with true need-blind admission; if you could get in, they'd work with you to get it paid.

(I'm tempted to vote to close for false premise, but I don't have any more hard stats than the OP does.)

I have edited the title of the post to match the specific question asked in the body. (Specific, objective titles are highly preferred over non-specific, provocative titles here.)

@Alexandros what do you mean "Then you do not have a full time job"? I work between 40-50 hours a week (depending on work load). In the US 40 hours a week is commonly referred to as "full time"

I said I go in around 2 and work until done which can be usually 8-10 pm meaning 6-8 hours a day 6 days a week. Then factor in days I stay late.

I think the question "What percentage of US college/university students also work a full-time job?" is already an interesting one.  If by this one means students who are enrolled full time in a BA/BS program at a 4 year college or university, I would expect it to be about 1%.  I think we should nail this down before we compare to other countries.  I also think "It seems that I need a full-time job to attend this school" would be a useful thing to mention to a financial aid officer.

Most full time jobs has not such a flexibility, nor in the US or else, so I don't think many does this way, in whatever "first world country". Also, most people is busy with their first degree, meaning they can only do unqualified/low paying jobs. Also, I seriously question a worth of any degree that someone gets doing a 40+ hours workweek, as it means that you can commit less then 30-40 hours to study (including commuting and all other stuff).

My impression was that fewer people worked besides their studies in the U.S. than in the European countries I know because of the loan culture (and lower average living costs).

Many people (including myself) worked full-time while enrolled full-time at my undergrad. It seemed very common. In fact, over 24% were full-time students in the military.

I can answer as to why this is incomprehensible in Japan, but that doesn't appear to be the question you asked.

While I know Brazil doesn't classify as developed, just FYI, by law, 40% of all undergrad offerings must be at night (7-11pm), to allow full time work. Some engineering courses take 7 years this way (3600h-4200h). Not an easy thing to accomplish...

I am currently in Japan, and the vast majority of the students I know (bsc. and master level) have part-time jobs, including during the semester. I'm surprised your friend is surprised!
Back in Switzerland, it wasn't uncommon to have part-time jobs, but not super common either. It depends a lot however what you study (I was in STEM. My friends in humanities tended to work more often I think, though this is completely just a personal impression.)

In Germany, at least one survey reports that 47 percent of students work during the semester, and 63 percent work during the holidays between semester.
Most of these students earn less than 500 Euros a month, but 6 percent earn more than 1000€ after taxes. Over 60 percent that have jobs have one to finance their studies/living expenses. For 7 percent of students, their job is their only source of income.
According to the Sozialerhebung 2012 (a large survey by a federal agency)  figure 9.10, 13 percent of students studying towards their first degree  worked more than 20 hours a week on average in 2012. Whether that's "common" is a matter of interpretation.
The part on financing reports a median income of 300€ from working, with 63 percent of students doing some kind of work. Figure 6.5 shows that 2 percent of students only finance through studies through work, with an average income of 960 Euro, and 13 percent mainly finance their life through working, with an average income of 660 Euros.
(All sources in German)

I have no idea about the quality of those statistics, but I like seeing an answer that has some.

@zibadawatimmy thank you! The Sozialerhebung, at least, is done by the "Deutsches Zentrum für Hochschul- und Wissenschaftsforschung" the German Centre of Higher Education  and Science Research (loose translation), a federal agency and should be pretty reliable.

Many colleges in Taiwan have evening divisions. They offer evening programs for the students who have full time jobs in the daytime.
For example, College of Management of China University of Technology

has set up a daytime program in the four-year college division and an evening program in the extension division.

Usually their evening program will take 5 years for the students to get their bachelor degrees. This is because the evening division students really don't have much time to take classes in the evenings.
Working full time in the day and go to school in the evening is not uncommon in Taiwan. I personally have many friends who received their Bachelors degree from evening divisions of universities.

I am from Portugal and I'm finishing this year my Computer Engineering graduation. I've been working fulltime since I've started studing and here we have a thing called "student worker statute". This statute is very important on examination period were the employers must give two extrad days off per exam.
Here in Portugal there's a lot of people who works and study at the same time although it's more frequent they work in par-time.

In Australia it certainly happens frequently. I know of a few people who have completed masters degrees while working full time in their fields. My former boss started and finished his MBA while running a department.

My country is NZ .When I was at Uni in the 1980s it was normal for students to work over the holidays .In fact well over 90% did so including me .Now days the situation has changed and there is a new normal .I work with lots of students which they now call interns.It is normal for Uni students to work part time during thier studies and work over the holidays .In the 1980s it was normal for a postgrad student to have a research position but I was very lucky as a repeat student which technically means undergrad to have a position .Nowdays most postgrad students do not get any research position .These days most students employment is mainly in the service industry and therefore has little vocational relevence to compensate the low wages.

I am from Germany, and here you are not even allowed to have a fultime-job while being a student
The reasoning is that you cannot work fultime and study fultime, so are only allowed to work 20 hours/week on average (fultime being 40 hours).
If you want or need to work more, you have to either find illegal work (as the word says, illegal) or enroll as a part-time student (at least with respect to some social security issues and such, which is mandatory in Germany)(which has all kinds of unwanted consequences on the level of taxes, social fees and so on).
Probably even more extreme then in Japan :D

Can you provide the source of this, please? I know plenty of people, who already started full-time work before they finished their studies (in Germany). Maybe things have changed?

And since the question was about if people work in other countries, while studying - are you suggesting this is not the case in Germany? I think plenty of people are working (yes, part time only), but I had been working alongside studying since my 4th semester and many people I know did the same. The university even encourages it and employ you themselves as tutors, etc.

I can provide plenty of German language sources, can you read them or have someone translate them to you? Might take a bit longer to find them in english.

I understood the question (and still understand it so, on second reading) this way: the authors Japanese friend says Japanese students work  if at all, parttime, which the author sees as opposed to his own case, where he works fulltime, which he does not deem unusual, so he wishes to know how common it is in other countries for a student to work fulltime. I am not denying that a lot of German students work parttime

yes, I can read them and Google Chrome usually does an "ok" job of translation for others

in any case - my point is - you are claiming this is "not even allowed". I really want to see the law referring to: as a student you can not work more than 40 hours. Also, what are you referring to in terms of "part-time" student? I have never seen such an option in Germany - you either enrol or you don't. More info: http://www.spiegel.de/unispiegel/studium/teilzeitstudenten-halb-studieren-aber-voll-bezahlen-a-454131.html

As you are obviously well able to understand a German article I might as well give you the German source which is here: http://www.studienfinanzierung.de/jobben/studentenstatus.html

Meaning you do not count as a student officially if you work more than that amount, so you have to pay health insurance, social insurance, retirement insurance and so on. And yes there are universities where you can be enrolled parttime officially, but there are few cases where that is important: for instance if there is a rule that you have to have such and such credits after a certain time, that time is usually longer for parttimers. However, for reasons of anonymity, I will not give you an example where you can enroll parttime as I am not mentioning my own university here.

Non of this means that you are not allowed to work full-time - you may have to pay for health care, etc, but you are allowed to work as much as you want. If you can collect the credits at the same time, nobody is going to expel you for the university ...

Exactly, you lose your "Studentenstatus" with respect to these insurances if you work more, it is in the SGB (Sozialgesetzbuch). http://www.freilaw.de/studentenstatus-und-nebenbeschaftigung/2169

Let us continue this discussion in chat.


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Why do universities force students to take unrelated classes for a diploma?
I have my B.S in Marketing and for my degree I was required to take 2 science classes.
These 2 science classes were the only unrelated classes I had to take in my entire 4 years of Uni. While I excel in math I have always been completely awful at science.
I took both my science classes and got a C in both despite my normal A (96%+) average. These 2 classes hurt my record more than I would have liked and it's not because I didn't try. I put in 12 hours a week per science class, went to a study group, etc. I just never got the hang of it.
I've talked to a lot of other marketing B.S/B.A holders and they all had to take at least 1 science class unrelated to marketing and it was generally the lowest grade they got.
So, back to my question. Why require a class completely unrelated to the degree? There were at least 4-5 other business related classes that I would have loved to have taken and would have help me in my current career.

Could it be that as a marketer, you will often try to sell products made by scientists and engineers? Hence you should have some basic scientific literacy, so you can communicate efficiently with the people making your product?

That'll only happen if your company works with  scientists or engineers. Such a small percent of companies do that. Plus the buying center for the said scientists and engineers would generally handle all of the language. For example, I work with a lot of lawyers but my buying center has a lawyer which relates to us markets all needed information.

I'm voting to close this question as it is (1) a rant and (2) about a problem facing undergraduate students that cannot be generalised to apply to graduate students.

There's a problematic premise here, namely that the science classes are completely unrelated to the degree. They are part of the degree program, just not important for your career goals. There are plenty of highly career-focused institutions that do not have any demanding requirements outside of career preparation, but they generally aren't well respected. You could have attended one of them instead, but if you want a more prestigious degree that demonstrates greater breadth and perspective, then you need to fulfill the requirements of that degree (some of which will be in general education).

Such a small percent of companies do that. I am not too sure about the  small percentage. In these days, how many products are not made by scientists or engineers? Starting from farm products, toilet papers, computers, smart phones, cars, airplanes, ... etc. Would you give me some example products you want to market that are not made by scientists or engineers?

By awarding you a diploma, the university certifies that you have attained a certain level of education. That level is determined by the university. It requires you to pass enough classes to attain that level and justify the certification.  Another university might issue diplomas certifying some other level of education, perhaps just barely enough education for a marketing career; such a university might not require you to take the courses you complain about.

@scaaahu Every product is made by an engineer (more or less) but that doesn't mean you ever converse with the product developer. I've worked in marketing for almost 4 years and have never once talked to the engineer because we hire people to talk to them. That's what the buying center (centre) is all about. Like I said, a small percentage of companies don't converse with the engineers. The engineers have their sales or buying center talk to the other sales or buying center.

I understand you don't need to converse with the producers. You do need to converse with the consumers, don't you? How do you market the product without basic knowledge about it? How do you tell your customer the product you are marketing is good and worth the buy?

Google, really. You can have basic knowledge without taking a class about it. I work with real estate companies but I don't know anything about that industry. If I need to, I google it. I could have taken some construction classes at school but not everyone works with real estate. The engineers tell us our center how it works, our center takes those engineering words and makes it plain english for us, we then market it.

Not to pick on you regarding the science requirement, but look around you these days -- the lack of scientific literacy is just as much of a problem as are the lack of reading and writing skills.  This has led to all kinds of ridiculousness regarding evolution,  global warming, vaccinations, etc. etc.  Every citizen should know the basics of science.

In the US, universities see their mission as being to educate students, not just provide technical job training (this is where universities differ from technical schools), so there are various "breadth" requirements established by higher-level units of the university (perhaps a particular college like "Liberal Arts and Sciences"). I assume your university doesn't have any such breadth requirements, and without more information on who exactly makes that requirement and what that requirement is, we would have a hard time diagnosing your specific issue. But generally, the issue is a result of the desire to graduate better-educated students.

Why not let students choose an elective then? I could have taken a criminal law class which isn't business related and I would have: 1). actually been interested in what i'm learning 2). feel like my money was well spent and that I'm not spending $3,000 for a class I can't stand. Shouldn't a university allow students to "explore" other areas rather than telling students you have to take an elective within a certain department? The requirements were a Bio class and a Chem class. I believe that the president meets with a board (not a private school) and-

said board creates the requirements. Heads of departments are able to make requests to change requirements but it's a year long process that most department heads don't have time for.

@Memj You'll find a commitment to a "liberal education" (meaning wide ranging, not the current politicized definition; though that often applies, too) in the mottos, mission statements, credos, and/or vision statements of many (most?) US universities. If you wanted a focused and specialized technical education you should have gone to a different kind of school. Another phrase you might see in this context is "breadth and depth".

This is an American, and perhaps even really a Puritan New England, answer.
Traditionally, the role of a university education is to make a student suitable to be a leading citizen of their town (and church), able to make intelligent and informed contributions to debates on issues of common concern that should be taken care of by the government, and able to play a leading role on a jury trying to make a fair and proper decision in a trial.  To be able to make such contributions, one needs to have a broad perspective on how to tell what is true from what is false across a wide range of disciplines, so that one can evaluate the judgements of supposed experts (and lawyers and politicians).  Part of acquiring this perspective is gaining a foundational understanding of every subject, including science.
Even one's special area of study is meant to contribute to this.  The major is not intended to help you learn skills for a job but rather to give you an understanding of what expertise means by requiring you to have the experience of acquiring in depth knowledge of some particular subject, with the particular subject being pretty much irrelevant.
Think of this study as a kind of tax on your education.  For the privilege of being able to learn something that will be personally beneficial to you, you also have to learn something that will help you be of benefit to society as a whole.
(Personally, I don't think undergraduate degrees outside of the arts and sciences should be offered at all.  After you have paid your tax by getting a proper bachelor's degree, you can, if you want, learn specific skills for a particular kind of job.)

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Public dataset without license: what is allowed?
Many public scientific datasets are accompanied by a license, for example variations of Creative Commons are used quite often. However, in many cases public academic datasets lack any licensing information. Here are two examples:
At PhosphoSite we find it is "created by Cell Signaling Technology is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License", so permissions of usage are clear from the license.
Here is an other dataset where we don't see anything about licensing, not even a statement that the data is free to use for academic purposes. It only states that "can be downloaded", but what can I do after downloading? Can I redistribute it, modify it, sell it? From the context I suppose they intended their data for public use, they are happy if more people use it so they get more credits and citations. But this is just an assumption.
The copyright holder is clear in both cases, the permissions are missing in the second case.
I am wondering, if I write a software using this data, or I construct a more complex dataset including this data, what solutions are legally correct:
1: The software downloads the dataset at each user's own machine from the original source and processes it. However this is not always possible or not easy to implement.
2: Distribute a copy of the original dataset, or a modified version, with attribution to the original source. This is more problematic, I think, but I am not expert in law.
Asking for permission is an obvious solution, but in case of dozens of datasets, it is a tedious and long process to contact all the copyright holders, and wait for their responses. Also, some datasets are supplements of published papers. In this case, if the journal has a license, e.g. Nucleic Acids Research is published under Creative Commons, is this valid for these datasets?

In most jurisdictions, the default assumption is that you are not allowed to do anything beside looking at the data you downloaded for yourself, and maybe distribute severely aggregated information about it (e.g. usually no law is violated by indicating the amount of data, or a brief summary of what the data is about).

Your second link is now broken. Is this Wayback Machine capture accurate?

This may vary by country, but in the US at least, the default terms (if no alternative is specified) are "all rights reserved", which means that you are not allowed to reproduce the work (the dataset), prepare derivative works from it, sell/rent/lease it, or publicly perform or display it. In particular, redistributing it to others is not allowed. In practice, the authors may be fine with it, but legally speaking, you're not allowed to redistribute the dataset in the form it was published in, without having explicit permission (which could be provided by a Creative Commons license, for example).
If you wanted to reproduce the dataset in a different form that conveys the same information, that may or may not be allowed. It would be up to a court to decide whether that counts as a derivative work or just a use of the underlying ideas, and a copyright lawyer could advise you better on whether your desired use is legally acceptable.
You are allowed to read the published dataset and use the ideas contained within it (i.e. the data) to draw conclusions. Copyright law does not allow for the restriction of those rights. I think doing an analysis on the data and publishing the results of that analysis (but not the data itself), as you would do in the process of writing a paper, is generally considered to be fine.

The question seems to be mainly about redistributing the data.

I edited the answer to emphasize that.

In the US at least, there generally isn't an inherent copyright in data. Raw data (facts about the world) generally don't meet the bar for creative or expressive work required for copyright protection, though if it has been actively curated then the curation and presentation may be eligible. You obviously need to talk to a lawyer (or, say, a qualified librarian) before redistributing the data, but the base assumption of all-rights-reserved isn't the same for data as for creative works.

@E.P. Sure; when I talk about copyright, I mean for the data set itself as a creative work, not the data (facts) contained within it.

That's not how the answer reads, though.

Ah, yeah, let me clarify that.

What about training a machine learning model on the data and then publishing/selling the model?

@hans My second paragraph probably applies to that, i.e. an ML model might be considered a derivative work, and a copyright lawyer would be able to give more precise advice about whether it would be.

Also, talking from the point of view of the US. Not quite familiar with other countries.
Generally, data are not covered by copyright, they are not creative expression. You cannot copyright the fact that the temperature in this room at this moment is 32. It is just a fact, it is not creative. Yes, the creation of datasets can take a lot of work, but copyright does not protect hard work, it protects creative expression. In some cases, datasets can be creative. For example, if your research data is photographs, these photographs will probably be covered by copyright. Or if you compile data in an original creative way, this could be copyrighted. Still, what copyright would protect is the compilation strategy, not the data itself.
Scientists and data creators have other options to protect their datasets that are not copyright law. I believe that you can patent datasets, for example.
If a dataset is publicly available and it contains just facts and not creative work, then it is in the public domain. You can redistribute and make derivatives as you like. You are not legally obliged to give attribution. However, in the academic world you are expected to give attribution, it does not matter if the dataset is in the public domain. If you don't give attribution, using the dataset may be considered plagiarism. Plagiarism is research misconduct, and you may get in trouble.
This is a good question to ask to a librarian in an academic library. Many of them have data management specialists or copyright specialists that will know how to answer these questions.

Copyright law says that the creator of a work is allowed to retain all rights of use of said work, period. Unless the owner of the copyright explicitly allows some use (e.g., reading, copying, translating, ...) nobody is allowed to do so. The fancy, legalese word for "allowing" is license. There are some subtleties with data collections, like what you describe, but as far as this non-lawyer understands, nothing that makes a difference here.
If the data is "supporting data for a published paper", the publisher presumably has secured copyright (or some form of license) on the paper itself to publish it, they probably did not secure rights on the supporting data.
So, in short: they (implicitly) give the permission to download, but nothing else. Yes, less than useful. Sure, it is extremely unlikely that they'll turn around and sue you for copyright violation for reading the data or doing some other personal use of it. But in theory, they could. What the court would make of such a suit is anybody's guess.
Unless you get a clear statement from the collector of the data, you aren't allowed to use it. You must contact the owners of data and ask for permission.
You might want to look at some data collection licenses, like the Open Data Commons Open Database License .
Please note that licenses like the Creative Commons set or open source licenses are a poor fit for data. Check them out, and suggest the data owners to explicitly license their data under a permissive licence.

No, copyright law only protects certain rights relating to distribution. You can't use copyright law to prevent someone from reading something or using the ideas contained therein. (At least in the US, but if it works the way you're saying in some other country, I think this answer needs an identification of which country that is.)

If I don't give you a copy to read, you aren't allowed to rummage in my stuff to read it.

Indeed, but the reason for that is the rummaging. That's the illegal part. Not the reading itself. Do keep in mind that when I talk about reading something, I'm talking about content you already have in your possession. Obtaining the content is not part of (though is a prerequisite to) reading it.

@DavidZ without distribution you don't get it in the first place.

yes, I know. My point is that copyright law can make it illegal to give someone a copy of a work, but it cannot make it additionally illegal for that person to read the copy once they already have it.

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

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


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Is it acceptable to ask a professor for advice regarding a subject not taught in, but related to their class?
I'm having a hard time understanding some concepts not explicitly taught in a course I took recently, but quite related nonetheless. I'm wondering if it's okay to e-mail the professor who taught this course and ask them for advice regarding this matter, considering:

I am no longer a student enrolled in one of their courses,
The subject matter I want to ask about was not part of that course's curriculum, even if it does come (very?) close.

Knowing this I've been wondering whether or not it's reasonable for me to approach this teacher and ask for help.
I've tried my best to research this site for simliar questions, but I've come up with little. The best I could find is only tangentially related at best, since it's not a homework matter.

Is it acceptable to ask a professor for [...]?

Yes, the worst it can happen is that it doesn't answer.
But: be polite, short and to the point (if you have a long question, ask for an appointment), and don't expect an answer in two hours.

I would shorten the quoted sentence to "Is it acceptable to ask...?".  Your response applies to asking anyone for advice, not just professors.

Teachers teach some courses, yet they can be knowledgeable in other fields. They sometimes even prefer different topics. Sometimes, they are passionate enough to enjoy talking about them outside lectures. Part of my present research is related to off-course discussions with passionate teachers.
With only a slight addition to @rMassimo Ortolano you can offer to explain it briefly with a phone call, people are sometimes uncomfortable answering even small questions by email, as explaining context if often easier with spoken words, or on a blackboard.


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Is it a good idea to stay an extra year at my masters institution while re-applying to PhD programs elsewhere?
Im getting rejections from my PhD applications and it is rather difficult - emotionally. So, I am doing a 2+3 programme in a non-US country at the moment and I will finish my masters in 4 months or so.
I have consulted my situation with my current advisor and other professors and they said since I have secured 5 year funding here I can just stay for another year or two if I want to. I am tempted but I don't know how it is going to look to admission committees when I apply again to the States for Fall 2015 entry. Should I just leave after my master's? Or should I stay another year? (I think I will learn a lot by just staying another year, I love my supervisor, and I really like the university but it has always been my dream to study in the States and I am definitely re-applying)

Why go somewhere else? You have nice collaborators, secure funding and you will have to start all over if you go to USA (losing another 2 years from your life). Why not finish PHD in your university and then go to USA as a PostDoc?

@Rachel Sorry, once you ask a question on this site the content of that question belongs to StackExchange; users are not allowed to vandalize or delete posts that have valuable answers which others may find helpful.

Staying in your university for a year and reapplying is a GREAT plan. I know some of my friends who actually got into 15-20 ranked universities in the US for PhD, they reapplied to the top 10 universities again (for the next term) and they got in those top 10, and they transferred (well, you basically start a new PhD program in the top university).
As for as you are not concerned about your age (getting old) or number of years (for some reason), you will be totally fine. Since your supervisor is nice, he/she will always understand if you want to go to a better school because its makes sense. Some would say, oh, for PhD it does not matter which university you go to, but it actually matters in most cases. At least, it can be a driving force for you to achieve great things in PhD and make a significant contribution to the scientific community.
Morally, it would not be the right decision to discontinue your current university with the funding. But it happens if you are aiming high and you have to be decisive. So its up to you.
BUT, reapplying with one more year of experience with the SAME supervisor will not help. There are several factors involved. Not to mention luck which we cannot control. So BE CAREFUL. Top universities are hard to get into. This year MIT got 3000 applications for EECS PhD, UW got 1500 for CS PhD, and Purdue got 1200 for CS and they offered 40 students PhD admissions. Its incredibly hard.
So keep your UNIVERSITY as a backup.


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Exchanging co-authorship for proofreading?
Is it an ethical practice to offer co-authorship on a paper to a graduate student in exchange for proofreading the paper? By proofreading, I mean fixing small grammatical or spelling errors right before manuscript submission, not contributing significant comments to the experimental design or methodology that are later taken into account.
I ask because in my old lab we had several international students and several fluent English speaking grad students, and the fluent English speakers are listed as co-authors on several papers where they have contributed nothing more than small grammar corrections.

JK Rowling's editor isn't famous for a reason...

This is a form of gift authorship (use this as a search term on this site, you will find lots of related questions) and is quite clearly unethical.

"Gift authorship - A cause for concern"

As a fluent English-speaking graduate student who has reviewed several papers, proposals, & theses for international students, the only thing I've ever expected (and received) was a "thank you" from the authors. Though one was nice enough to even thank me in the acknowledgements of his thesis. My point is, if someone had offered me coauthorship for that, I probably would have questioned the paper's content in the first place.

@AlexReinking Thank you, that was an enlightening read. My field is engineering, not medicine, but it seems to be quite prevalent in the engineering field as well.

I think this is professionally unethical. Other fields might have different views, but per the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, authorship is based on

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Since this graduate student has no intellectual stake in the work, this is basically lying. The fact that the student would benefit from a publication (and you, if you are their adviser) makes the conflict of interest all the more apparent.
The appropriate place for such a contribution is in the acknowledgements or not at all.

This is the normative answer. The ICMJE are also often referred to as the "Vancouver Protocol" and they are referenced from numerous other professions as well.

Thank you for the thorough response. I was not involved in any of these questionable activities, but it seemed unethical to me and I wanted to check to be sure.


text:
PI puts up a "facade" of great research, but doesn't support real academic work. Is this common? How to recognize this kind of situation?
I am not sure what word is best used to describe this situation, but the PI puts up a facade of great research, advertised to incoming students as groundbreaking, but after one or two mediocre papers in low-tier conferences (heavily publicized) the support for the research disappears, so the work never gains momentum. Is this kind of thing common? How could an incoming graduate student recognize this kind of lab?
In my situation, I am a PhD student at a well-regarded, top-15 STEM program. My advisor is decently well-regarded in field A, and also purports to do work in field B (not specifying the fields as they are uncommonly found together). He heavily recruited me into his lab for field B. In field A our lab regularly publishes work in top conferences, but in field B the work never seems to gain momentum. However, when my advisor discusses his work publicly, he only advertises field B as it is a "sexier" field and more exciting to talk about, and to hear him talk about it we are doing exceptionally ground-breaking work. However, behind the facade, I am one of just two students working in field B, my work is not supported, I have little to no funding to do the projects he recruited me for and continues to recruit good students for. I have managed to get a couple of publications in decent venues, but the last publication I tried to work on he actually told me I should not publish (upon discussion with someone actually in the field, that person said it was very worthwhile work). Instead, I find myself regularly writing newsletter-style articles about work in its infancy, for non-academic venues, which bring a lot of publicity to the lab but are worth nothing to my academic career.
Additionally, as I progress (slowly) in my research it is painfully apparent that he knows absolutely nothing about this field. In my last meeting with my advisor, I came prepared with a list of 5 different research ideas, and after presenting them all, I was told "You should work on simple, practical things, not hard academic research." I told him what the top conferences were in my field and he said I was wrong (I am right) and told me to publish in incorrect venues. I am early in the program and am looking for a new advisor, because it is obvious that if I stay in this lab I will never be able to publish in my field and thus never be competitive for an academic (or likely even an industry) position in this field--at this point I am basically an academic publicist.

A lot of detail, but is this "research facade" a common occurrence? It is almost analogous to falling victim to an "academic con artist." For awhile I thought it was my fault, that I just wasn't working hard enough and that I just had to work harder to make the work gain momentum, but every time I am on the cusp of making progress on something the funding dries up and I am diverted to another project (after of course writing several press releases). Also, how would one recognize this type of lab in the future? It seems difficult as an incoming grad student being promised exciting projects to tell the difference between active research and sham projects.

I tried to edit the title to more accurately reflect what you're asking about, since it was kind of hard to understand before... Did I understand your question correctly?

I am early in the program and am looking for a new advisor — Good for you!

Re: investigating a potential advisor, see the advice in this answer.

In this question, I see two separate issues: First, you have the impression that you fell for someone similar to an "academic con-artist". Second, there is a conflict of goals between you and your supervisor. Your question is worded in a way that emphasizes the first issue, but in this answer, I want to make the point that it would be more productive to focus on the second issue.
Let me summarize the situation from my perspective. Your goal is to make an academic career, and for this goal you (reasonably) strive to produce work that gets published at top-level conferences. Your supervisor's goal, however, is to establish a new research direction which may or may not ever pan out to be of interest to top-level conferences. Since these conflicting goals seem impossible to reconcile, it is clear that you need to change your supervisor.
Since you don't want to wind up in the same situation again, you're wise to ask how can avoid that in the future. By focusing on your goals, this question becomes almost self-answering: Choose an advisor whose goals are easier to align with yours. The ideal advisor would be one who lets you work on a topic where he has recently published papers in top-level conferences.


text:
Can I use one job offer to speed up another offer (on my dream job)?
My question is all about academic job offers. This is my first time on the job market post PhD, so I'm completely new to this. Here's my dilemma:
I was interviewed for an academic position last month at University A and they made me an offer today, but want me to decide within the next two weeks. The job at University A is ok, and actually pays very well (more than I expected) but is in a location both my spouse (a non-academic) and I greatly dislike. And I am not completely thrilled about the job itself. I think for the most part I'd enjoy it, but there's a lot more "managerial" aspects that I am not particularly interested in.
I found my dream academic job at University B and applied there a couple of weeks ago. University B is in a location that both my spouse and I love, but it would pay less than the job at University A. I am extremely qualified for the position at University B and am confident that my application will stand out. But, they are still taking applications for another week. The problem is that the timelines are really not matching up here.
If I had both offers in hand, I'd take University B, even for less money. I am that much more excited about the position and the location. The problem is, I don't know when University B will really make decisions. I'd like to email or call someone to try to speed things up, but don't really know the correct etiquette in academia.
I guess what I'm asking is this: what's the most appropriate way to call University B and say "I recently applied for this position, and I think I'd be a great fit, but I have another offer in hand. I'd much rather be a part of University B's project, however. When might you know what candidates you are interested in?" I don't want to be rude or sound arrogant, but really think I have a good chance if they can move fast enough.

This isn't particularly specific to academics. There are a number of questions on The Workplace about similar situations (though this specific question would be off-topic there). They may help provide some insight.

What kind of position is it at Uni B?

You can certainly ask University A for an extension. They might not grant it, but you might point out that your spouse loves City B and you promised him/her you would investigate this opportunity fully.

I recently applied for this position, and I think I'd be a great fit, but I have another offer in hand. I'd much rather be a part of University B's project, however. When might you know what candidates you are interested in?"

That is almost perfect. Instead of asking when they will know, tell them when you need to know by. With two weeks notice it is not clear what they can do, but they probably could tell you if you are ridiculously strong (think an associate professor who is ready to be promoted to full professor applying for an assistant professor position), a reasonable candidate, or not in the running. You may want to talk to the university that made the offer and see if the deadline can be extended.
For an extremely qualified candidate with an application that stands out, and I find that a dubious statement, a university could move you to the top of the short list, interview you, and make an offer in under a week. That said, it is extremely unlikely that a search committee would be so impressed that it decides to move that fast.

I don't find this claim dubious. If you are say an R1 level professor with great teaching experience and desire to be at a teaching college mentoring mainly undergrads (more common than you'd expect among people who do great research) this claim makes a lot of sense.

@WetLabStudent: Yes, the scenario you describe is relatively common...but such candidates often have a hard time convincing the "teaching college" that they're the right person for the job.  In general, the job market is so competitive now that I raise an eyebrow at any candidate for any academic job who is confident that their application will stand out.  Conversely, if the candidate is truly overqualified for a position then he will have to work to convince the hiring committee that he is sincerely interested: many departments do not simply offer the job to the strongest candidate!

"For an extremely qualified candidate..." This is presumably true at some places, but unfortunately some places impose hoops to jump through, and the process can sometimes not be rushed.

this is my... time on the job market

... that says it all, really. Unfortunately, in the "job market" it's employers vs employees, manipulating each other to get the better of each other. In this capitalist world of ours, and with the dearth of tenured positions, this is almost unavoidable. So,

Can I use one job offer to speed up another offer...?

Yes, and it's customary to do so.

I guess what I'm asking is this: what's the most appropriate way to call University B and say etc. etc.

I basically agree with @StrongBad here. I'd change your text to:

I recently applied for this position, I think I'd be a great fit and I would really like to join the faculty at University B. However, I have an outstanding offer from University A to which I must reply soon. Do you believe you / the university / person X would be able to indicate already at this point whether you are likely to make me the offer?

That doesn't sound too arrogant IMHO. However, in many universities the hiring process is quite involved, long, and cannot be sped up much if at all; if that's the case at University B then, yes, you might come off as having an overly high opinion of yourself, so check before you ask.


text:
How do free speech protections of permanent positions in the UK/Europe/Canada comparable with those of tenure in the US?
I believe Tenure offers strong protections for speech in the United States (and I think Canada as well).  As I understand, the UK and Europe don't have "tenure" but have something very similar, where a position is made permanent, typically after a 5-year review (as with tenure).
However, it seems that these permanent positions do not have quite as much job security as tenure provides in the US, based on answers to this question: What is the difference between permanent faculty positions in the UK and tenured faculty positions in the US/Canada?.
My question is specifically about the free speech protections of tenure.  Are similar protections common in Europe/UK/Canada?
EtA: I was conflating academic freedom and free speech, as noted by other users.  However, I've also found this article that says: "In cases brought by professors in North Carolina and Washington, federal courts have given greater free speech protection to college faculty than ordinary government employees would enjoy."  Note that this only applies to public universities.

Free speech is generally protected by law, so it's not clear to me what other kind of protection you have in mind.

Note also that free speech doesn't mean that one can utter whatever one has in mind and get away with it, as some seem to think way too frequently.

To conclude from the UK to the whole of Europe is rather uninformed. E.g. in Germany, professors are civil servants who cannot get kicked out except for serious criminal offenses (>= 1 year sentence), and traditionally obtain this status immediately.

@Massimo I think in the academic context, free speech refers to the right to take any position with regard to your research without fearing consequences. Not too relevant in physics, but quite so in humanities.

In my experience (10 years tenure track in both places) Canada is pretty similar to the US. e.g. https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/dispatches-academic-freedom/the-price-of-academic-freedom/ https://www.caut.ca/latest/publications/academic-freedom But it seems you're mostly asking about UK/Europe vs US/Canada, not US vs Canada?

@MassimoOrtolano The OP is talking about academic freedom, the right to say unpopular things and not lose your job.  That is not guaranteed by the First Amendment in the US.  It is guaranteed by tenure.

@user151413 It also matters in policy issues in every department. For example, to combat cheating on online exams, is it okay to put cameras on students?  Last spring when this question came up, I said, no, it's unethical, inconsistent with our honor code, wouldn't work anyway  and that I'd quit rather than do that.  I took some blowback our then-chair that would have been a lot easier to dismiss if I had had tenure.

@NicoleHamilton Then the OP should edit their question to clarify whether they intend free speech or academic freedom.

@MassimoOrtolano Tenure is the third word in the post.  I think it is clear.

This issue is always confusing because general employment law protects employees to a much greater extent in Europe than in the US.  In most of Europe, a company cannot dismiss a permanent employee without giving a legitimate reason, holding an unpopular opinion is not a legitimate reason, and an attempt to give some other reason as a pretext can be challenged by the employee.  In the US, a company can dismiss a permanent employee at any time for any reason or no reason, except that the reason cannot be the employee's race, gender, religion, or a number of other similar statuses.

A senior American mathematician (whose anonymity I shall preserve) who was for a time a maitre des conferences in France put it this way: "In France, even the janitor has tenure."

@AlexanderWoo Could you write that as an answer?

" it seems that these permanent positions do not have quite as much job security as tenure provides in the US". You realize that most of Europe already comes with quite a high level of job security? At-will-employment is an US thing.

In additiion to what @user151413 mentioned, academic freedom is explicitly protected in the German constitution (article 5, paragraph 3).

Tenure does not protect free speech, but academic freedoms
Professors can be fired for free speech issues separately.  Tenure in the U.S. system means you've completed a tenure package and been awarded tenure by a panel of tenured professors.
Tenure isn't a free pass to do whatever you want.  It just means as long as you continue doing your job (teaching + research), you won't be fired.  Not getting tenure usually means leaving the university.
There are A LOT of advantages to Tenure (see this question).  It generally means your job is secure, and you have much more freedom to research things others might see as silly or moonshot ideas that may not pan-out for a while.
Free speech isn't protected by tenure.  The university may be more tolerant of a tenured professor stating an unpopular view, but that has nothing to do with academic freedom.  A quick google search will show you if a tenured professor causes enough problems they will be fired.
relevant XKCD

EDIT in response to comments
It's uncommon to fire a tenured professor, but it does happen.  Usually after repeated warnings or obvious abuse of power.
Selman Akbulut was fired from MSU for refusing to teach an undergrad class.
Rick Mehta was fired for controversial statements.
Denis Rancourt was fired for teaching his political views instead of physics.
All were found in a few minutes using Google.

"A quick google search will show you if a tenured professor causes enough problems they will be fired."
Nope.
I looked at all ~30 professors who were "canceled" according to this website: http://www.canceledpeople.com/cancelations.
Only one professor with tenure was fired, Rick Mehta.  And according to the linked article, "The Acadia University Faculty Association announced last week that it plans to pursue arbitration on Mehta’s behalf".
The example you gave is of an adjunct professor, as are the majority of examples of professors listed on the canceledpeople website.

"It generally means your job is secure"  Obligatory:  Tenure is useless if your university is unable to pay you.  This is increasingly common.

Some of your examples are just people refusing to do their jobs. Tenure doesn't protect you in such cases. And free speech guarantees, alone, don't protect you from being fired (in US). They keep you out of jail, of course. And, harassment and privacy violations are grounds for dismissal in most cases.

"In France, even the janitor has tenure."
This quote is from an American mathematician (born/raised in US) who was a maitre des conferences in France earlier in his career.
In most of Europe, it is illegal to dismiss an employee without a legitimate reason, the employee's views on matters irrelevant to job performance is not a legitimate reason, and any attempts to dismiss an employee on some pretext can and will be challenged before some administrative body.  This means all employees, not just professors, enjoy most of the protections that come under the umbrella of ``academic freedom'' in the US.

Free Speech and Academic Freedom are two separate things. The first is a legal concept and the second, while there may be laws in some places, it is usually more of a contractual matter.
I can't comment on the relative balance between Europe and the US (or other places), but the purposes of the two are quite distinct, philosophically. The first is a political matter, encouraging a robust "marketplace" of ideas in which, hopefully, the best ideas come to the fore and drive policy, while still permitting dissent. This is, or should be, the right of every person, regardless of their political system. Sadly it is not universally recognized.
Academic Freedom, on the other hand, is intended to permit certain academics to pursue ideas, even unpopular ones, in a research and teaching context without (much) interference from authorities. But the "authorities" are usually those within the academy, not the wider public. It is therefore supposed to permit the development of ideas, rather than just their dissemination. There may not be a lot of controversy about most mathematics, but there is in the world of philosophy, social science, and other, more human, domains. There are some people who would much rather that some ideas not be developed or even considered. Academic freedom works in this space, if imperfectly.
However, there are abuses of both. The reference article on academic freedom notes a few of the cases in which academic freedom protected statements that were not really germane to the research of the speaker. Both William Shockley and R. L. Moore were noted racists who were permitted to continue work while espousing some pretty evil ideas. But part of that was just that their professional work was exceptional and people didn't want to interfere with it.
But the opposite thing has also happened. The mathematician Ed Dubinsky was fired from a tenured slot at Tulane (about 1969) for speaking out against the Vietnam War. It caused a stink in the wider mathematical circles and he had a lot of help to continue his career. That was a free speech issue, however, but tenure and academic freedom didn't provide any protection whatever.
The world is messy. Protections are imperfect.

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


text:
How does one figure out how hard it would be to get tenure in a given department?
Anecdotally, I've heard that it's easier to get tenure in UK/Canada than in the US.
I've also heard that some departments have a reputation for denying tenure.
Are there statistics about this? (related question: Tenure and tenure denial rates by universities)
How can a job seeker determine how difficult it will be to get tenure when weighing offers from multiple departments?
EtA:

For instance, are there polite/coy ways of asking about this?  Would students or post-docs know and be in a more honest position than the profs?  Are reputations widely known and so just asking some senior people would likely give you a good sense?
Another aspect of this question: are there regional differences, as I alluded to?

Is there some aspect of your question which is not answered by my answer to the linked question?

It used to be said that some top universities very seldom tenured people, but still provided an excellent springboard for junior faculty to enter their next position. Possibly this was before the prevalence of postdocs such as is now the case.

The concept of tenure does not really exist in the UK. You are either on a fixed-term contract (postdoc) or in a permanent post (lecturer, reader or professor, in order of seniority).

@Buffy it used to be said, but I'm not sure it was ever true.  Not even Harvard actually uses the mythical Harvard tenure model.  (Contact everyone in the candidate's field of study, in decreasing order of stature, offering them a tenured faculty position.  The candidate gets tenure if and only if nobody else accepts the position first.)

Voting to reopen.  "How hard is it to get tenure?" is not the same question as "How often are people denied tenure?"  Among other reasons, many departments strongly encourage under-performing assistant professors to leave before they come up for tenure, so they don't count toward the department's denial rate.

@astronat IIUC, permanent post ~= tenure

@JeffE this is exactly the sort of thing I'm curious about!  I heard it was hard to get tenure at Harvard in certain departments, but did not know this was a (well-known?) "myth".

@AnonymousPhysicist yes, my question is much more broad.  It is about how to answer the question of "how likely am I to get tenure at this or that institution", not "what is the statistical base rate of different institutions".  see my updates for more.

If you have a job offer, you can just ask the department chair directly.

The so-called "Harvard tenure model" may well be mythical, but that doesn't mean it's not hard to get tenure at Harvard...

@AnonymousPhysicist Why wait for the job offer?  This is a great question to ask during the interview!

"Voting to reopen. "How hard is it to get tenure?" is not the same question as "How often are people denied tenure?" "  @JeffE The other question asks for tenure rates too.  Even if it did not, the answer to both "how do I find out..." questions is the same.

@JeffE "This is a great question to ask during the interview!"  That would be a waste of an opportunity to promote yourself as a candidate.  Be greedy after you get an offer.  It's a greedy question.

@AnonymousPhysicist what do you mean "a greedy qestion"?

@AnonymousPhysicist  You can't possibly be serious. Expectations for tenure are the first topic that untenured faculty candidates should bring up with the department chair. Questions about salary or startup packages I could see as maybe being greedy, but tenure expectations are central to the department's culture, and their treatment of assistant professors. Never forget that faculty candidates are interviewing the department just as much as the department is interviewing them!

@JeffE Absolutely serious.  You interview the department after you have an offer.  What you are suggesting comes across as "I want to be sure your standards are low enough for me." which is not something you want to signal before you get an offer.

If the department thinks you cannot meet their tenure expectations, in today's job market, you're not even getting a phone interview.

@AnonymousPhysicist Remind me never to apply to your department. The question is absolutely not "Are your standards low enough?" but rather "Do you have consistent standards/expectations?" or "Do you provide mentoring support for assistant professors?" or more brutally "Do you think of assistant professors as first-class citizens of the department?": Your response strongly suggests that your department's answer is no.

@JeffE "How hard is it to get tenure" is the title question.  That's totally different from your questions.

Let me mention some aspects not covered by the other question.
I think that for an individual case it is nearly impossible to make a prediction with any validity. Even if you can determine the historical record for a given department, things change. Things always change.
The decisions on tenure are based on both the needs of a given department, which evolve over time, and the actual record and performance of an individual candidate. Nothing in this is very predictable. You can do a "good" job that isn't "quite" good enough as measured by the evaluations of your peers. You might be a bit unlucky in your research production or your teaching evaluations. Or you might be especially lucky. It varies.
Worse than that is the question of changing economic and even political situations. A legislature may decide to reduce funding for a university or for a specialty just as it becomes a factor for you. Economic conditions might be especially good or bad for bringing new students into the university (or your department) at just the point at which decisions are made.
There have been situations in which a department recommends a person for tenure, but the university says no, due to decreased or even uncertain funding. After all, tenure is a long term commitment that may be difficult to make in uncertain times.
And, of course, a pandemic might hit.
While one can gather statistics about such things over time, such things are essentially meaningless as a predictive measure for an individual. You take a chance. You work hard. You hope for the best. But also, you keep flexible if you are wise and look at how your current trajectory is going with respect to the trends developing around you.
The one thing you can do is try to match the stated priorities of an institution to your own skills. If you are a better teacher than researcher, then a teaching college will almost certainly be a better "bet" than a research focused institution. But that, I assume, is obvious. But be realistic about your self evaluation.

On top of this, how many tenure cases come up for consideration in a department each year? What fraction of those are useful comparators for a given individual? You're always going to be trying to make inferences based on a very small number of samples.

It is a game-theoretical exchange, of sorts. The university (or institution offering tenure) does not really want to offer tenure. However, since other institutions ARE offering tenure, it has to match. It will tend to offer tenure if they believe a) you would bring more prestige (and grants, etc) to the institution than it will pay out over time and b) there is a chance some other institution coming to the same conclusion. Supply, nice to see you again, have you met my friend Demand yet?
In being that - it is basically as any other job - but tenure being as it is the assessments and the appetite for risk are likely different.
Thus we can conclude - if you are a stellar intellectual it is easier to get tenure at lower rank institutions than higher, if the grant/patent/prestige economy is volatile it will be more difficult and if there are several candidates available to the institution per field it will be more difficult. Questions to ask to assess the likelyhood of tenure would be as to the financial health and prestige of the institution, the "hotness" of the field in question, the grant/patent economy of the field and finally, what is the competition like.

The university (or institution offering tenure) does not really want to offer tenure — This is completely inconsistent with my experience.  The culture in my department is that every tenure denial represents a failure in either hiring or mentoring; we only want to hire people who are likely to earn tenure.  New faculty are expensive.

@JeffE they sure are. I admire your departments view on it, more mature than most organizations I have ever been involved with.

I suspect that @JeffE is right and this is more about culture than game theory, most of the time.  My impression is that the culture in Canada is that you will probably get tenure unless you underperform (like graduating grad school).  Whereas in the US you might need to be in the top of your "class" (like getting admitted to grad school).

@JeffE is sort of right.  The overall trend is that universities that do not want to offer tenure do not offer tenure track positions.  Instead they hire people on one year or adjunct contracts.  Most tenure track positions are offered with the intent of granting tenure.  A few elite universities never award tenure to their tenure-track faculty as a way of demonstrating their eliteness.

@AnonymousPhysicist which ones other than Harvard?

@capybaralet This depends on the field, but in math -- at least Chicago (which doesn't even advertise those positions as tenure-track) and MIT.  I'm guessing Princeton too.

@capybaralet What do you mean "other than Harvard"?  At least in my field (CS), even Harvard tenures a significant majority of its assistant professors. Same with Chicago, MIT, and Princeton. Departments with a reputation for not tenuring their faculty have a harder time hiring faculty!

@JeffE, the departments in question prefer to grow by poaching established researchers from next-tier places.  But they still want to keep some young people around.

@JeffE referring to comments on OP.  Also I've heard that from someone else, anecdotally (about Machine Learning at Harvard, as it happens...)

Heh. No, Berkeley is just really good at poaching.


text:
In a revision, is it essential to address editor comments, even if they misrepresent a reviewer comment?
We recently received a "revision" notification for a submission in a good journal. The reviewers raised a few valid concerns. In addition to the reviews, the notification e-mail also contained a summary by the editor. The editor asked us to make a change which was not explicitly requested by any of the reviewers, but could be read as a wrong interpretation of one particular reviewer comment. Performing the change would take a substantial amount of work.
Would we hurt our chances if we didn't address the editor's summary, including the comment?

It would hurt your chances. An editor can be a reviewer and in my experience, responsible editors tend to read an assigned article also to make sure the reviewers are not barking up the wrong tree or are being unfair.  In your case, given that your editor has made a comment not raised by any reviewers, you will have to address his/her comments, even if you are emailing him/her for clarification.  Your best bet like any reviewer comments is to simply address the comments if they are valid, and if not, provide reasons.

@Prof.SantaClaus that's really an answer (and a good one) rather than a comment

Your best bet here is probably to contact the editor requesting clarification on what’s being requested before you put in a lot of work. Perhaps something along these lines:

Dear $EDITOR, we welcome the reviewers’ feedback and would like to obtain clarification on the recommended changes. Reviewer 1 has suggested $THING1 but the summary proposes $THING2, which is different because of $REASONS and would be a broader change. Could you please clarify whether these broader changes are required, or if it will be sufficient for us to address $THING1?

Or, if you really don't want to do $THING2:

Dear $EDITOR, we welcome the reviewers’ feedback and would like to obtain clarification on the recommended changes. Reviewer 1 has suggested $THING1 but the summary proposes $THING2, which is different because of $REASONS. It is not feasible for us to do $THING2 because of the amount of extra time this would involve. Would it be acceptable for us to submit a revision that addresses $THING1 without the broader changes implied by $THING2?

Only write this if you are to some extent open to the option of doing THING2. If you're set against it for whatever reason, you need to make your reasons clear from the start.

@user2390246 good point, I've edited my answer to acknowledge this possibility.

On these lines. +1 for answer and comment.   However I would formulate more carefully trying to politely makes the editor answer to be " yes I mean the same as reviewer # "....... It is most likely the case that the editor misrepresented the wish of the referees as his her letter was a resume.

@Alchimista I agree, definitely want to nudge the editor towards whatever makes the least work for the authors! Any suggestions for how to tweak the wording in that direction?

Well we would need to see right the editor letter.  I think OP got what you mean,  as well as what we the commenter means.


text:
Handling reviewer comment challenging the novelty of a used method
One of the Reviewer comments for a paper that I sent to a journal is the following:

The authors claim that they are the first to use subjective
  questionnaires  to develop predictive models. This is not accurate, there
  are many studies on the literature that use questionnaires  and some of
  them even compare PQ to objective data coming from sensors in order to
  find correlations.

Now the problem is that I have done a thorough check and have observed that this paper indeed is first to use questionnaire to develop predicitve models for the particular disorder. Now how do I handle such a comment?

It seems that you are not the first to have used the method. Rather is the first time for a particular disorder.  I wouldn't stress "we are the first using SQ to. ....." which gives emphasis to method novelty but rather " we are the first obtaining a predictive model for particular disorder using the SQ meth". Obviously I am not writing for your paper :) I just suggest the cut that your paper should probably have.

I think there's no contradiction. The reviewer said "...first to use subjective questionnaires to develop predictive models", while you said "...first to use subjective questionnaires to develop predictive models for the particular disorder" (emphasis mine).
I would just write in a response what you said, and ask for clarification - something like "I have done a thorough check ... the particular disorder. If the reviewer is aware of a previous paper has also used subjective questionnaires for this disorder, please point it out".

The reviewer have actually pointed out some references defending his point. But they do not use questionnaire to develop predictive models and use different data or analysis.

It may be the case that your paper is the first to use this method for a very specific area/field/subject/topic. If so, it may be unclear to the reader that it is the first in that sense.
You may try to argue that, if there is a rebut option; if not, try to make it clearer on the text for the final version if it gets accepted.


text:
What usually happens during the conference peer-review process (technical field)?
Suppose you are submitting a paper to a conference, your draft paper has been submitted, and it will take approximately four month in order for the reviews to come back, the acceptance/rejection will be given and if accepted you will be told to submit the final draft.

Can an insider shed some lights into what exactly happens in between
  these four months for a typical conference in technical fields such as
  computer science or engineering?

For instance, how many people are usually on the peer-review committee? Are these usually professors or PhD students? How do reviewers inform each other about their opinions and comments? How long does it actually take (during the span of the review period) to evaluate a single paper? Finally, how are decisions made by the reviewers evaluated at the end? What if there is the same number of people in favor of rejecting a paper versus accepting one?

This is my experience in software engineering, a subfield of computer science.

For instance, how many people are usually on the peer-review committee?

This committee is typically called program committee (PC), and the number of involved members differs significantly between conferences - I've seen numbers between 25 and more than one hundred. The PC is usually listed on the website of the conference.
The number of reviewers for any single given paper is usually 3 or 4, and each PC member may be assigned to review a larger number of papers, often between 10 to 25. To manage this workload, PC members may delegate their reviews to colleagues or PhD students. Consequently, the actual number of reviewers involved in the conference can be much greater than the PC size indicates.
In addition, especially at larger conference, there can be second tier of reviewers, called "Expert Review Panel" or something similar, whose members typically review a smaller number of papers. For example, they can be assigned to papers if they are at the borderline between acceptance and rejection after the initial review.

Are these usually professors or PhD students?

Mostly professors, some post-docs, and, in some rare cases, late PhD students. However, again it's worth pointing out that professors may delegate some of their reviews to their PhD students.

How do reviewers inform each other about their opinions and comments?

To organize the reviewing process, conferences typically use a dedicated software called conference management system, such as EasyChair.
If you have submitted your paper using some website, it was probably a conference management system - apart from the author perspective, there's also a dedicated perspective for PC members.

How long does it actually take (during the span of the review period) to evaluate a single paper?

Reviewers are typically given between one and two months. Some conference have a rebuttal system, where there are actually two  rounds of reviews, with an author response period in between. This would then be specified in the call for papers.

Finally, how are decisions made by the reviewers evaluated at the end?

There are different options: There can be a physical PC meeting where all PC members discuss the papers in the same room, a virtual PC meeting using some online platform, or even no PC meeting at all, but just a discussion period in the conference management system.
In any case, there is a discussion about each paper, and the discussion needs to end with an unanimous agreement between the PC members. Since the discussion is open to all PC members, it can also happen that people contribute to the discussion of a paper that were not originally assigned as reviewers.

What if there is the same number of people in favor of rejecting a paper versus accepting one?

It all depends on the discussion. It happens that the numerical decision on a paper is actually reversed based on the discussion.

This answer is quite good, but I think it could be somewhat misleading concerning the fact that the number of reviewers for any single given paper is usually somewhere around 3 to 5, and that these can very commonly indeed be PhD students. If I imagine reading this answer without knowing anything about the procedures, I could easily conclude that a submitted manuscript is thoroughly analyzed by more than 25 professors.

+1 The only thing I would add here is that each PC member usually is responsible for reviewing a large number of papers in these 1-2 months, often between 10 and 25. Consequently, one does not have a month time to review a paper, one has a month of time to review or delegate up to 25 reviews, in addition to one's usual workload. That is, it's usually infeasible to invest more than a few hours or a workday on a single conference review.

Thanks, both comments are right, and I updated the answer accordingly.

@xLeitix 10-25 papers seems very light. For major theory conferences, each PC member is responsible for 30-50 papers. Theory PCs are kept deliberately small, because PC members are forbidden to submit anything themselves.

@JeffE The things you learn. If reviewers at ICSE etc. would have to review 30+ papers and be prohibited from submitting themselves, the conference may find itself without a PC.


text:
What makes an online course a valuable learning experience for a student?
I just taught my first course that finished last week and I was asked to teach the same course for next semester. The only difference is that this time I will be teaching the course online.
I have taken online courses before and haven't been super impressed. In my experience the instructor will assign reading to be done within a week and any assignments that will be completed from that week. The instructor doesn't teach in an online environment but more so moderates that way students learn. The student reads the text, does the work. The instructor responds to emails, grades assignments, and moderates discussion boards posted in the online forum for students to collaborate.
This format has the student teach themselves and from personal experiences students who are not familiar with the course material beforehand generally don't do as well.
What are methods to make the online learning experience less informal and more of a learning experience?

I've had good and bad learning experiences online.  Here's what the teacher in the good case did: The reading and homework assignments were paced well throughout the semester, and the instructions were very clear.  The instructor was polite and respectful, and included brief positive comments sometimes, so that students felt they were doing the right thing by asking questions.  Most importantly, the instructor religiously checked for questions at least twice a day, every single day throughout the semester, and answered the questions clearly.

When teaching online, I'm very careful about the capacity of students to pay attention and stay concentrated. Since they have up to 7h/day of online course atm, I give them short breaks more often (at least 5 mins every 40 mins). Don't overestimate people's ability to remain focus in front of a zoom call (think of yourself after 5h of webinar in a day).

Check out this free online course about teaching online.
I think that teaching online has yet to be perfected, and most programs do not have success rates as high as in person programs (though they may reach a wider audience).  The basic pedagogical techniques are the same, but I suggest you take them even more seriously.  If students who are not familiar with material beforehand are doing poorly, use scaffolding.  Scaffolding is the process of building up new ideas or skills bit by bit.  If students are not engaged in active learning "call" on them with a message asking them to participate.  Do the same things you would do in person, except do not lecture since that does not work well in person either.
Set goals.  Be proactive.  Use variety.  Tell students to do stuff.  Perform assessments.
http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tsot

If your course delivery platform has things like forums or collaborative writing spaces, you should make use of them to get students interacting with each other.  I don't know what discipline you're in, but you can ask students to comment on the readings online, write responses to each other, that kind of thing.
I was teaching a regular course but was ill for a week, and not wanting to miss that whole week of class, I scheduled a live chat during the time the class would ordinarily meet.  I think we had the best discussion of the semester that day -- students who wouldn't ordinarily speak up in class "spoke" during the online chat.
Also, set boundaries for yourself; otherwise you'll find yourself answering emails at midnight in your bunny slippers.  Tell students if they email you after a certain time, they will get a response the next day.  And think about how you feel about responding on the weekend.
What is your discipline?  We might have more tips, depending on what it is.

Business Studies. I've been invited to teach both management and marketing courses and the course I will be teaching online is a management course. I did a lot of  mock situations where I would randomly call up students and they act as a customer or employee and have them handle the situation appropriately to test their reading comprehension.

Ah, then it seems as if you could set up various situations online.  Good luck with it.

-1 I have never heard anyone say that forums or collaborative writing improve their learning. Not once. They are a useful for the instructor in that they are easy to apply grades to, and so are commonly required as "participation," but they have no benefit to the student.


text:
What can I do if I am constantly invited as a reviewer, but don't have the time?
I've recently started as a PhD student, but had previous publications in forms of conference papers and various talks, so I consider myself very experienced with my particular field of research. One of my supervisors had once assigned me for a review task for a journal because she did not have time to complete it. This was fine with the editor of the journal, too.
Starting from that date, I began receiving invitations to review manuscripts every few months. Of course, I took that opportunity and completed the reviews – which naturally takes a lot of time.
Now, I cannot really invest the time anymore. I've previously rejected two review invitations with "I do not have the time to complete this review" (or similar), but I keep receiving invitations.
What could I do to politely ask the editor not to consider me for review?
Is there anything I'm about to do that could be considered inappropriate? I understand that reviewing activities are positive contributions to my academic career, but I don't think I can take it now.

For some more creative ways to decline an invitation, check the comments on this FSP post. My favorite: "Last time I accepted a manuscript to review, the last 2 pages were chewed to oblivion by my toddler before I could read them. As it turns out, her assessment of the quality of the writing was fairly spot on, and she was simply trying to save me much pain. As such I am not reviewing any more manuscripts unless they have survived a battery of test toddlers. Feel free to call me when your journal has implemented this procedure."

@dgraziotin Sure, you can't review seven papers in two months but, presumably, you declined most of those. Your workload is determined by how many papers you agree to referee, not how many you decline. If you'd only agreed to do one, it seems perfectly plausible that you'd have time to take on a second paper so asking again seems reasonable.

I've been told by several senior people in my field who edit journals that they prefer not to ask graduate students to review, since they should have other priorities. A lot of the answers haven't addressed this aspect of the question. It's not like the questioner is saying she will never review again, just not right now.

As far as I know, there is no official please-do-not-bother-me-ever-again button that removes you from the reviewer list in a journal's submission system. That being said, I assume just writing the editor a polite email should do the trick. Other than that, you can always continue to refuse reviewer invitations, and I am pretty sure editors will relatively quickly stop sending you invites (they hate wasting their time, too).
That being said, I would personally urge you to reconsider your stance on this. Reviews are an important community service that are essential to the functioning of science, and one review every few months really is not an over-the-top amount. For instance, I review at the very least one journal submission every month, plus proceedings papers for conferences and workshops where I am in the Technical Program Committee. That you recently started your PhD studies should actually only be more of a motivation to keep reviewing, as this is actually a pretty good way to stay on top of your field.

This is an excellent point. A rough rule of thumb is a 1:1 ratio between papers published per year and reviews accepted is entirely reasonable.

A 1:1 ratio actually seems too low. If every paper needs 2-3 reviewers, and most papers need multiple review rounds, every academic actually needs to review a factor of probably 6 or 7 times as many papers as he publishes just to keep the wheels turning.

(and this is without even going into rejected papers, which is also a very significant factor)

If every paper needs 2-3 reviewers - but many papers also have several authors, so if all authors review it balances out :)

@xLeitix: I was thinking more along the lines of what's reasonable for a graduate student. But this applies, as ff524 mentions, to all authors, not just the corresponding author.

@ff524 indeed :)

Remember, it's important that this valuable, difficult and time-sensitive work is done for free, so that it can be sold back to the academic community at a profit by large commercial publishers. Make sure you review as much as you can people.

@jwg: ...unless the journal you're reviewing for is diamond open access.

Your problem is that you get a review request every few months? As in, three or four a year? Seriously, dude, get over it. Writing a polite "Sorry, I'm too busy – why don't you ask Dr X and Prof Y?" a few times a year is hardly a significant drain on your time so just keep doing that.
You say that the issue is that you don't have time to do reviews now (your emphasis). This is a temporary situation so trying to set up a permanent "don't call me" isn't a good solution. It's also not a practical solution. If you're only getting a few requests per year, what's the probability that you'll ever, in your whole life, see two requests from the same journal editor or conference programme committee member. (OK, the events aren't independent but you see my point.)
Also, you should try to do some reviews; as has been pointed out in the other answers, reviewing as many papers as you submit is a reasonable rule of thumb. And if a paper comes along for which you're the "perfect" reviewer (for example, it extends your own work and makes detailed use of your technical material), you ought to at least try to make the time to review that.

Yeah, it's really just temporary. I generally enjoy doing reviews, and the journal is very relevant to my field of work, but personally it's just too much to handle now. I understand your main point though.

The answer already given all have very good points; I will just add my editors perspective. The system of peer review relies on everyone doing a share (I refrain from saying "their share"). People who agree to make reviews are often remembered by editors as "nice" and will receive additional offers. It is difficult to say how many no answers there is to a yes answer in general when it comes to agreeing to review but it sure is not balanced. Therefore, a no is not a great surprise. If the no is accompanied by a nice explanation and suggestions of other potential good reviewers then the no and the request is productive in the view of an editor. Many electronic systems usually have links to agree or decline reviews so it is only a matter of clicking once. With the decline you may receive a request for suggesting additional reviewers but even that can just be ignored.
If you think you are requested too often by a journal for which you do not want to do reviews or as you state, you do not have the time, a short note to the fact to the editor may be sufficient. But, remember that an editor handled quite a few papers and even more review requests so even that request may not be entirely heard. In addition, many automatic systems have data bases over reviewers so that one editor may find your name and use it although another editor was the one asking you earlier on. In ScholarOne Manuscripts, which is used by "my" journal, you as a reviewer can yourself assign periods for which you are unavailable. So depending on your situation, you may be able to at least partially fix the problem yourself.
In the end, declining a review is not a dramatic issue and should not take very long. If you are inclined to continue in academia, you will be asked to review again. How often will usually depend on the usefulness of your reviews so the fact that you are being asked repeatedly probably says your reviews were useful or your expertise is in demand.

You can suggest names of potential reviewers to the journal editor, if you have not done so. He/she might not know who else are specialists in the area; hence you keep being invited. It also helps to be more precise in specifying the period window you won't be available for reviewing, because the editor does not know if you will be available the next time he/she invites you to do a review.


text:
To what extent can you change a conference article after review, when implementing reviewer suggestions makes the paper too long?
I recently submitted an article. After review process, I added all suggested changes to the article and now it is longer than formatting restrictions allow.
It is a conference article and any extra pages are charged. That extra page contains only some references. My question concerns the extent to which I can modify my article after receiving review. I am not talking about results or conclusion or any other major topic related changes, only e.g. grammar, style, figure location, text and section rearrangement,  layout, etc.).
Can I remove some of the suggestions of reviewers? To what extent are any other (non-required) changes acceptable and/or permitted?

Related, with many example of how to shorten: How to shorten an article before submitting to a journal

Within the guidelines set by the conference publication process, I see no reason why you can't make small changes that can reduce the page size. I will often edit things down for the final version to fit in the desired format. Of course, if your review comments were "everything is too terse, please expand", then you might have a problem with complying with review comments and page limits :)

In my field (information theory), conference papers only got accepted or rejected, there was no such thing as "major revisions" that included another round of review. Therefore, as a senior researcher in my group once pointed out, theoretically you could change the entire paper after acceptance and still be allowed to publish (and yes, there were several conferences where a conference paper was considered a "true" publication). If your field is the same, you can ignore any suggestions from the reviewers.
However, I personally wouldn't ignore a comment just because the paper got too long. Changes I made in such a situation usually were:

Remove DOI and weblinks from the references
Make the figures slightly smaller
Find paragraphs where the last line consists only of a single word and try to reformulate that paragraph to make it shorter
If your paper contains formulas: change some smaller (unreferenced) formulas to inline
If all that didn't help, try to shorten the introduction (the part where the background is explained)

If you are using Latex, the effects can be amazing even with the slightest change you make. Anecdotal source: I was once working on a paper that just fit the 5 pages limit. At some point, I decided to add the word "that" (the sentence was something along the lines of "the formula we obtain by" and I wanted to change it to "the formula THAT we obtain by..."). I recompiled and suddenly had a paper that was 5 pages + 1/2 column! Adding the word "that" made the last word in the paragraph move to a new line, as a consequence, another paragraph at the bottom of that page didn't fit any more and Latex decided to move two lines over to the next page. This caused a formula on the bottom of that next page to exceed limits and so on. Taking the word "that" out again made the paper exactly 5 pages again, so I decided that keeping the page limit was way more important than one sentence sounding great instead of good ;)

The papers I have published have generally required some documentation addressing the reviewer comments when the paper is resubmitted. Even if not, it's a good practice to keep notes on what changes you make to a paper through the review process.
I have not always adopted reviewer suggestions, but have written these items up with explanations just as I've written up comments on changes that I have made in response to reviewer suggestions, giving a rationale why I haven't made adopted specific suggestions. Bar one submission, the journal editors and reviewers have accepted these unaltered passages as readily as they've accepted the other amendments.


text:
Will I get in trouble if I miscapitalize on the works cited page?
I just realized after submitted my works cited page that I used uppercase letters instead of lower case. For example Federalizing Medical Campaigns against Alcoholism and Drug Abuse. Instead I capitalized it all. Is that something I would get in trouble for?

Where did you submit it?

Miscapitalize on? As in, make money out of? Oh, you mean capital letters. Look, noone will care. Really. Worse problems happen with references all the time. Here is a famous one: "Death of Dr. O. Uplavici", http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1659886/pdf/calwestmed00357-0034a.pdf?origin=publication_detail

Thank you for your confession. The Interpol Typography Squad (SHOUTY DIVISION) will be visiting you shortly.

There is no need to worry.
People have a hard enough time agreeing about what should be capitalized at all.  No people who is concerned with the content of your work will care in the least about capitalization that is consistent and at least vaguely plausible.  Many people will not even notice.
Rather, what you should expect is:

If there are review stages and you will have a chance to revise, it will make no difference to the decision you receive, and you can fix it in the next revision.
If there is no further review/revision stage pending, then:

If the venue you submitted it will send it through a proof-reader before publication (e.g., some journals), then it will get corrected to their preferred standards in the final proofing before publication.
Otherwise, you can expect to see the errors in print, entirely unremarked upon.

For some reason I get the feeling that the OP is referring to coursework, in which case the instructor might actually care about capitalization.

@ff524 If that's so, then I would expect to close the question as "undergraduate only" --- I've answered as I think would be expected for anything at graduate level and beyond.

I consider this question "unclear what you're asking," hopefully the OP will come back and address Nate Eldredge's comment.