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Is requesting to change US units to SI units reasonable?
A paper I am reviewing very clearly originates from the US. The authors don't use SI units.
As a European, I am always put off by non-metric units and I would like to request to change the units to SI units, not only because I am more familiar with them, but also because it would make the paper more accesible to researchers worldwide living in countries where metric units are used (almost all countries).
Is this request to ask to change the units unreasonable? In a way it feels like it, because the authors did not do anything wrong or incorrect?
Additional info: the journal doesn't provide a guideline for unit use, the units in the paper are non-SI non-metric (of the pounds per square inch quality) and the discipline is specialized engineering subfield.

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The International System of Units has a universal value, and if the paper is written for an international audience then, yes, ask the authors to change the paper to conform to the SI.
Check also the journal guidelines: most journals explicitly require the usage of the SI. Should this be the case, you can refer the authors to the guidelines.
You can also point out that nowadays the US customary units are exactly defined in terms of SI units. Therefore, also those who use the US customary units, from a scientific point of view, are actually using the SI, because it's the SI that specifies the definitions of those units and their realizations. For instance, 1 in = 2.54 cm, where the centimetre is the SI one (for more about the connection between US units and SI units, and for a comprehensive list of conversion factors, see this publication from NIST).

I don't think this third paragraph is on-subject. Particularly, I worry if OP actually pointed it out to the authors, it would be perceived as condescending.

@ShapeOfMatter In my experience, reviews and response to reviewers are exchanges were people does not make much effort to avoid condescension. So, if that gives the opportunity for the authors to learn something, as reviewer, I'd accept to be perceived as condescending.

@MassimoOrtolano Am I understanding correctly, that you are essentially suggesting to jump the bandwaggon and just make no effort to be non-condescending because nobody does it? If so, that is precisely the reason why I'm so put off by academia.

@infinitezero The key point of a review is to help the authors to provide correct information according to certain standards. If, in doing so, one is perceived as condescending, I think it can be tolerated. And if you're put off by the academic environment, I can say that I have also experience in industry and, in my experience, the industrial environment is no less condescending than the academic one.

@infinitezero while there is a risk to be perceived condescending, I find the fact that they did not use SI in the first place a significantly larger problem. There are standards, and for good reasons. It's not that I would write my paper in Latin or German instead of English. They're action probably stems from lack of knowledge (that SI is the standard in most sciences) and therefore also likely don't know the latter point. Why else would they not use SI?

@Mayou36 To make it clear: I absolutely agree to request the authors to convert to SI units. There's no way to tell why they wouldn't use SI and it doesn't matter. The problem is "[making] no effort to be non-condescending". Even if they were to lack the knowledge that SI is the standard, telling them that "their units" are derived from SI and they're already using SI units anyway, bears no relevance. Make the world a better place, not a more toxic one.

If it's in fields I am familiar with, using metric is mandatory and no reviewer should let a paper through that does not use metric.
However, some metric units are not SI and may be acceptable.  In many fields it is widely encouraged to use eV instead of J, amu instead of g, angstroms instead of meters, etc.  Feet instead of meters or F instead of C is not okay.
You need to know the customs of your field.

Note that the units you mentioned (eV, amu, angstrom) are officially recognised as "Units accepted for use with the SI", alongside the minute, the litre, the decibel, the astronomical unit, mmHg, and some others.

It very much depends on the field. For example – as far as I’m aware – aviation commonly uses feet and knots all over the world. Of course it would still be prudent to convert such units to SI units before doing any kind of calculation with them.

@DanRomik: They use feet for altitude, nautical miles for distance and knots for speed as far as I’m aware.

@Michael Feet is for height above the ground.  Pressure altitude (flight level) is in units of 100 feet.  In some parts of Asia, flight level is in meters.

@Glen O the amu, ångstrøm and mmHg are not currently accepted for use with the SI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-SI_units_mentioned_in_the_SI

If the journal’s intended readership extends beyond the US, Liberia and Myanmar, the only three countries in the world that officially use a non-metric system of units, then yes, it is not only reasonable but in fact your responsibility to the journal and its readers to point out this feature of the paper that makes it less accessible to the journal’s international audience, and ask the authors to address this by using standard (SI) units.
This is assuming that the journal is a science journal. If the journal publishes, say, creative writing or some other non-scientific content that just happens to mention someone walking two miles or describes a hot weather day by saying it was a hundred degrees out, it’s appropriate to let the author keep their units.

The US officially uses SI units. But it’s also a free country, and NIST is a non-regulatory agency.

@Gilbert interesting. I researched this a bit, the real story is apparently quite a bit more complicated than what either of us wrote. Regardless, imperial units are the de facto standard in the US for almost all non-scientific uses. The claim that SI is the official system of units has a kernel of truth to it, but is misleading in the extreme IMO.

oh I agree that it is misleading to say that the US uses metric. I’m just leaning heavily (and admittedly, pedantically) on the word “officially.” It’s indisputable that NIST is the official national metrology institute, and that’s all I mean. NIST is all-in for SI. For example, as a matter of policy, all NIST publications are mandated to exclusively use SI units, and the duty of all calibrations is traceability to the SI. NIST advocates for SI usage in the country and represents the US at the meetings of the General Conference of Weights and Measures.

All of the grocery scales and gas pumps (among other things) in the country are calibrated as a matter of state law, and the state metrology labs all ultimately rely on NIST’s SI-based primary calibrations for interstate and international consistency. In a real way, SI is the bones of commerce in the US, even if Imperial is the skin.

@Gilbert SI may be the official in the US but there are a lot of laws/regulations based on non-metric. Gasoline is taxed at per gallon rate. Property taxes on on sq. feet or acres. Milk subsidies at per hundredweight. Federal/state/local governments have not caught on that we're officially SI.

@doneal24 I agree! And speed limits are in MPH. But nowhere are these units actually defined except by NIST and in terms of the SI.

@doneal24 The US (liquid) gallon is defined as exactly 231 cubic inches, and the inch is defined as exactly 25.4 millimetres. Acres are defined in terms of feet, which again go back to millimetres. A hundredweight is 100 pounds, with an avoirdupois pound being defined as exactly 0.45359237 kilograms. Dig deep enough and it all goes back to SI.

@DanRomik fyi, US customary units are not Imperial units. Imperial units are the system used in the commonwealth prior to various states becoming metric, and whilst most of the units share the same names, and many the same values, some don't (e.g. a US pint is < 0.5 l, whilst an Imperial pint is > 0.5 l). There are also some units only in one (e.g. cups are US customary but don't exist in Imperial, and afaict, stone are Imperial but don't exist in US customary)

@GeoffreyBrent I know the customary units are defined in terms of SI units. My point was more towards why are milk subsidies defined in terms of hundedweight instead of kg.? If SI is official shouldn't the government be using it?

@doneal24 the federal government, at least, should be using it (though not all lawmakers have caught on, and there’s a need to balance principle with practicality). The states and localities are free to do as they please.

@Gilbert It's not the lawmakers that are setting the standards. USDA, Commence, FDA, HHS, etc., all need to get on-board.

I will give up my furlongs-per-fortnight when you pry them from my cold dead hands.

@doneal24 suffice to say, the Metric Conversion Act of 1975 remains a work in progress (although it’s rather sad if even the Department of Commerce as a whole hasn’t embraced SI; that’s NIST’s department!).

If the units are crucial for the understanding of this paper, particularly for replicating results, reusing the methodology and so on, I would point it out. "Take 0.18 ounces of potassium hydrogenphthalate and dissolve in 3 cubic inches of distilled water" probably would not do.
If, on the other hand, the values themselves seem less important for the wide scientific audience to examine or less unit conversion is needed in the first place (e.g. climate studies and temperatures in Fahrenheit) - I would not raise this issue.

You can suggest. I'd avoid it, personally. It would be wrong to vote to reject based on that alone. The editor probably has a view and the journal may have some standards (required or suggested) that cover it.
But a statement that a switch would increase accessibility to a non-US audience is benign. And in some fields in might be more important than in others.

That is not matter of chauvinism, but a matter of standards in the field. Everyday life and science may not use the same ones. I also don't insist on writing my papers in German. That being said, I agree with the rest of your answer (+1)

@SeverinSchraven I think you should write your papers in German if it makes you happy. Seriously.

@TonyEnnis I would have a hard time doing so, given that I know most of the terminology only in English (because this is the standard) :) It is was just a lucky coincidence that my mother tongue is some obscure language to make my point. In fact, I really dislike people whining about being unable to publish in German (or French for that matter) anymore. This is the new standard, just roll with it. If everybody used their own language, I wouldn't be able to read half the research papers... not a world I want to live in.

I have reviewed a paper covering both my field (spectroscopy) and another (diamonds).  The latter uses some units that aren't really used anywhere else - carats - even in scientific writing.
The paper was in a materials journal and therefore aimed at non-specialists, so my review made a strong recommendation to provide SI conversions whenever field-specific units were used.  That seemed acceptable to all parties.

This. The paper should feel free to use Imperial units, but should also have the equivalent SI alongside for the wider audience. Going through and adding the equivalent values is an easy task to do before publishing.

@Dúthomhas my preference would be SI first, but including SI is a necessity (and I said roughly that in my review)

The paper should present the most precise value first, then the conversion, IMHO.

If I were reading about diamonds, then carats might be the most appropriate unit.

@TonyEnnis about 50% of the target readership would agree.  The other 50% wouldn't have a clue unless they'd been buying jewellery. That's based on my coffee-break straw poll at the time; even some of the diamond growers preferred grams

I agree that the US Government and citizens should migrate to predominantly SI Units by choice and judgement and therefore requesting this of US citizens is eminently reasonable, but I’d add ‘please’, ‘you know it makes sense’ and ‘thanks for your consideration’.
I wholeheartedly agree with concepts of freedom of choice and the like, but in the units case, this must start with schools, universities, teachers and textbooks used by students, so that students firstly become familiar with SI Units from the start and have to ‘mentally convert’ or calculate to use Imperial or non- SI units. The impetus should come from a judgement that academics should choose to make in this field (or should no longer stand back from or defer).
I agree with international practices in fields such as Aviation.
The UK had similar, prevailing  non SI units prior to 1970’s but the Educational system with the help of legislation was able turn it about.
Another field in which there could be world-wide conformity is in the dating system, in which dd/mm/yyyy seems more consistent or logical than mm/dd/yyyy.

If we're changing the way we write dates, we may as well all use the objectively superior yyyy/mm/dd (or yyyy-mm-dd), which is the only date order that will make your digital photo albums automatically sort by date.

Although yyyy/mm/dd is objectively superior, I think that superiority is for machines, calculators and computers. For humans, we think innately in weekdays, date in month and then  by month. We know the year but don’t usually mention it in conversation, unless it is a different year - even then we favour last year or next year if those are the relevant periods.

If you asked me the date, I could tell you without looking that it's 2024, it's Monday, and it's February. I had to check the calendar to see that it was the fifth, because I think very little about specific dates.


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Are many figures in a paper considered bad practice?
I am in the process of writing a paper for one of my PhD test series. As the test series was extensive, with many different materials and specimen, there are quite a lot of figures: images of the different specimen, graphs of the results for each type of material, images of failure analysis for each type of material etc.
A professor from another university, who was at our institute for a couple of days, came by my desk as I was writing the paper and (somewhat negatively) commented that it looked more like a comic book than a paper, due to the many images. Looking at other publications, my paper is definitely---at least so far---on the figure-heavy side, yet I feel omitting too many of them and instead putting them in a repository or supplemental material will impede the general understandability. Personally, I often would appreciate one or two more images that e.g. better explain the layout of a test specimen than a textual description.
Thus my question: is it generally considered bad practice to have many figures in a paper? I am in engineering, but am also interested from a more general viewpoint.

There's an important distinction between a paper that you're submitting for a publication, and a paper that is part of your PhD dissertation.  The former has many more requirements and could conceivably be too figure heavy.  The latter is much more flexible and only has to appease your adviser.  Which are you working on?

@Teepeemm for publication

"If a figure isn't worth 1000 words, the hell with it" (adapted from https://quotefancy.com/quote/1381192/Ad-Reinhardt-As-for-a-picture-if-it-isn-t-worth-a-thousand-words-the-hell-with-it).

Please avoid writing answers in the comments. They will be deleted. (We have a long-standing exception for funny jokes, so I'll leave Ben's comment).

I feel omitting too many of them and instead putting them in a repository or supplemental material will impede the general understandability.

I'd urge you to reconsider whether this is the case; too much material will certainly impede general understandability because people will not finish your paper and will not find the important points in a sea of other stuff.
I think there might be an important missing step in your process which is distilling down the results to something that can be communicated to others in a form less verbose than the original raw data.
You can always provide additional details in another form: in supplemental material, in a repository like Zenodo, etc, so that people who do want all those details can access them while your more traditional reader can also take the main points from your paper. Remember that while you're putting a lot of effort into this paper, your readers will be limited in available time and will have many other papers to read in addition to yours.

Perhaps the OP should focus on detailed analysis of only one material in the paper itself, and have the details of other materials in supplemental material. The discussion and summary would apply to all materials, using summary figures covering them all.

@JonCuster Yes, agreed, that would be one sensible way to organize things.

there are quite a lot of figures: images of the different specimen, graphs of the results for each type of material, images of failure analysis for each type of material etc.

I am only guessing from your description, but this sounds like a case I have occasionally encountered in supervision, but also on conferences and similar: People are show everything they have done, and try to (consciously or subconsciously) impress by pure amount of work. They then run through their slides at an incomprehensible speed saying little more on each one than: “And here are the results for X.” The more interesting higher-level insights are then often omitted or lost to the audience who stopped listening.
The same thing can happen in a paper or thesis, and when it does, yes, this is bad. As you may find it difficult to realise this on account of familiarity, a litmus test would be to think about the respective talk and how much you have to say on an individual item. A good supervisor should also be able to spot this.
The remedy is usually some summarising figures, statistics, or principles, for example:

I have created twenty types of specimen using adhering to principles X, Y, and Z. Here is an exemplary specimen to show how I implemented these principles. And here is another one to show an interesting special case. A list and description of all the specimens can be found in the supplement.

Here is an exemplary failure analysis for material X. You can see Y and Z. What is most interesting to us is measure Ω, which we obtained by …. Here is an overview of measure Ω for all specimens and materials. As you can see, there is a considerable trend towards ….

These examples suggest that there X begets Y. With this hypothesis in mind, we analysed umpteen further samples and could confirm this in all but one case. The exception is Z and can be explained by ….

Be aware that this kind of summary, generalisation, and abstraction may not be easy and you may invest a considerable amount of brainpower or require support with this. However, often it is also this kind of thing that makes for a good publication, thesis, or scientist.
Finally, mind that all of this is not to downplay the effort all the work you have done. But the point of analysing a lot of samples is most often to be able to make a more general statement that is not specific to a given sample – which is often comes with the applicability of reasonable statistics. So from “I have analysed umpteen specimen and material combinations” you shift to “I found a general principle through a systematic study of specimen and materials.”

As a statistical reviewer for a couple of medical journals, I like figures, and I like them in the main text.  But journals may have limits. Unfortunately, this sometimes leads to authors making figures with many panels, all of which are then too small to see, and some of which aren't really related.
But I believe it is expensive to print figures (I could be wrong about that).

I bet it is expensive, but most journals in my field are exclusively or at least primarily online, so lenght of article and number of figures doesn't really matter all that much from a cost perspective.

Ask your advisor, or other mentors or more experienced colleagues!  Other answers (especially Wrzlprmft) give general principles on how to use figures, and how they’re sometimes overused.  But a lot of the judgement on “how much is too much” is dependent on your field, subfield, and your specific work in particular.  You’ll be able to get much better advice from someone who knows that context and your work, and can look at your paper draft.
To go with that, don’t put too much weight on one passing comment from a visitor.  They may not have meant it very seriously, or thought very hard about it; and especially with the snarky phrasing you describe, they could just be someone with a critical personality, looking for faults in whatever they see.  Critical comments like that (including from peer reviewers!) are always worth considering, thinking carefully whether you feel they’re right, and asking advice if necessary — but often after consideration, the right response can be “actually I like my paper how it is, and don’t agree with this criticism”.

It's also worth considering the practical limitations of your target publication. Many journals have an upper limit on the number of figures/panels they'll allow. For digital publications there is basically zero cost to the publisher for adding more figures; the limit is there for the sake of readability. Depending on what you want to do with the work, "many" figures can indeed be "too many".

the limit is there for the sake of readability – That may be the intention, but for many journals, this is not what is achieved. Instead you get a lot of stuff crammed into one figure with too many panels.

I agree with you that in fact, many images that end up in the supplement would be fitting for the main text. The issue is that most journals have fixed formats for their papers - and this includes an upper limit for the number of figures.
For student reports I often prefer to have many figures just in line with the text for readibility. So the question is: do you need to follow a specific journal format here or not? If it is the former, then consider this a good exercise in telling your story with space limits.

Figures are great!
I think that having lots of good figures can make a paper tremendously more readable. Figures are great for quickly conveying a general impression of a situation, and it sounds like that's how you're using them:

Personally, I often would appreciate one or two more images that e.g. better explain the layout of a test specimen than a textual description.

Figures can also make great landmarks: when I glance at a figure, I immediately know what part of the paper I'm in and what kind of stuff it's discussing.
Use figures thoughtfully
When I'm deciding whether to include a figure, my main two questions are:

Does the figure make the paper easier to read?
If so, is the gain in readability worth the work of drawing the figure?

It sounds like you're including the figures that you'd want to see if you were reading the paper, so your answer to the first question is yes. For figures that you've already made, the answer to the second question is also yes!
Since not everyone can see well, you should make sure that your paper is fully understandable with the figures removed. In my experience, it usually feels natural to do this, because because figures and text tend to complement each other: for example, a figure is a great way to describe an experimental setup quickly and qualitatively, and text is a great way to describe the same setup slowly and quantitatively.
Examples and context
Here are a few papers and books, grabbed off the top of my head, that I think use figures richly and effectively. I've tried to choose stuff that's relatively accessible.

"Geometry of the Space of Phylogenetic Trees", by Louis Billera, Susan Holmes, and Karen Vogtmann.
"Stripe Patterns on Surfaces", by Felix Knöppel, Keenan Crane, Ulrich Pinkall, and Peter Schröder
The Road To Reality, by Roger Penrose.

My research background is in geometry, so maybe figures are especially effective in my area. However, I regularly read about physics, programming, and other topics, and I think that what I've said here applies broadly.

Using many figures is almost invariably better than cramming many subfigures into too few figures.  That ends up with overly complicated captions and quite likely too-small text (some journals have a minimum font size in figures for this and related reasons).
The solution is to be selective.  For that the input not just of more experience colleagues is useful, but less experienced ones.  If they get lost in the mass of results, for example, you may have put too much in there.
Of course the comment that prompted this could have partly been to do with your writing style - if you put the figures in early in the drafting process, then write the text, the figures appear more concentrated than they will be at the end.

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How to handle reviews that are not about the content of the submission, but about the expanding the scope?
We recently submitted a paper and received the first round of reviews. For the sake of this question, lets say our paper was "On the bending durability of different types of natural reeds in underwater basket weaving."
While the assessment was generally positive and some of the comments were about the actual content of the paper, quite a few of them were along the lines of:

why did you not also research the influence of water quality?
why did you not also look into the influence of artificial reeds?
why did you not also test for tensile durability, salt water resistance and biodegradability of the reeds?
why did you not test the reeds' applicability for open air lampshade knitting?

I am kind of baffled and confused by this. The only answer I can think of is "We did not do any of these things because the scope and focus of our research was to conduct a study on the bending durability of different types of natural reeds in underwater basket weaving." I don't want to appear rude or unwilling to improve my paper, but honestly, the only way to entertain these requests would be to rerun the entire research which is just not feasible. Especially given the paper is already rather lengthy and were we to rerun the study with all requested features, we could probably fill a small book.
If the reviewers felt the scope is too narrow, they could have voted reject, but instead their general feedback was very positive with high scores for novelty and importance in the field. What is the best course of action / response in this case?

Say what you say here about your focus. Thank the reviewers for suggestions about future work and that you will look in to that as appropriate.
There is nothing really to criticize here. These are thoughts that occurred to the reviewers who considered it worth a few words to pass on to you.
It would only be a problem if you are rejected for lack of impact, which doesn't seem like a possibility here. And, if the reviewers did, indeed, feel that the scope was too narrow, they might well have recommended reject. The fact that they did not, apparently, tells you something.

The best course of action if a reviewer asks a question is to take it at face value and answer it. In your examples, this means you just explain why you did not do the mentioned things. If the reviewers want to be more demanding, they could write that you should do these things, which apparently they did not.

I agree completely with Buffy and Snijderfrey’s answers: these are not suggestions to redo everything, and you shouldn’t treat them as such. But an additional angle that I would consider is that if these additional scopes/aspects came to mind for the reviewers while reading your paper, it is likely they will also spring to future readers’ minds.
As such, it may be beneficial to add a note somewhere in your preamble or introduction, to the effect that other properties of natural reeds and the suitability of artificial reeds are outside the scope of your study, but that you hope you may provide inspiration for other studies to examine these aspects of underwater basket weaving.
This sort of thing is, in essence, quite low-density waffle that doesn’t really affect your paper much – but it can be useful to explicitly acknowledge that you’re aware of such adjacent aspects, to prevent the reader from thinking it’s an oversight that they’re not dealt with.

Preamble or introduction might be fine. Further, it could go into the outlook as future research questions. Maybe for your next application of funding or a master's thesis or somebody else.

@usr1234567 Yes, if there is a dedicated section for that (not common in my field of humanities), that would be an obvious place to put it.

Based on my experience, reviewers who pose these questions aren't thinking of rejecting your paper; they're just wondering about possible extensions.
If you can discuss why the proposed extension does not help, you can do so ("We didn't investigate the water quality because it is not likely to have an impact for so-and-so reasons"); otherwise you can also write "so-and-so is an interesting extension, but beyond the scope of our study". If you can add the relevant text to the paper without disrupting the flow, that would be great; if not, a direct response to the reviewer without making any changes is still usually OK.

I have seen properly negative reviews for the only reason that the authors didn't do some additional stuff the reviewer thought should be done on top of what was already there and more or less fine. However in such cases there is a good chance that the editor who ultimately makes the decision would accept a response as outlined in the answers here, even if the reviewer doesn't.

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Is there any website for announcements of journal's special issues?
I was wondering if there is a site or something where I can find announcements for all (most of) the special issues of journals (upcoming and past) . For example of Springer, IEEE, Elsevier, ...
If I search for this now, I find scattered call for papers. Also, I can't seem to find this on wikicfp.

Are you looking for sites with announcements of journal special issues? Or the actual contents of these issues?

I'd say announcements. I can always google the title then  or go to the publisher's site.

No, there is not.
Speaking as somebody who has dealt with a number of special issues on both sides of the editorial table, there is simply too little coherence in how different journals advertise their special issues.  Sometimes it's hard even to find a coherent explanation of how a journal is approaching special issues even on its own website.
Maybe somebody like Google could address this, but it would be a hard problem requiring either serious investment in human curation or serious natural language processing mojo.

There are similar services for conferences, but there is no such service (as of yet) for special issue journals.
Hence, the better option at hand would be to periodically and selectively look through publisher sites for special issues.

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I used a solution that I happened to already have on my laptop on an exam. Did I cheat?
In a programming in-class test, one of the problems was to write up a certain famous program in Maple. However, I had already written up this program prior to the test just as a hobby, and it was in a folder on my desktop [we were using our own laptops, no internet access]. I just copied that code into a new file, cleaned it up, and uploaded this file to the course website. I left an hour before anybody else [the exam lasted 2 hours, and I sat around pretending to be busy for 45 minutes before I left the class and went to the canteen].
Question: Is this cheating? Self-plagiarism? Have I done anything wrong here?
Should I admit this to my TA?

If the rules of the test allow you to use any material you have offline on your laptop, then how could this be cheating? But it seems strange to me, allowing use of arbitrary offline information and then asking to reproduce something which is famous and thus has probably been solved thousands of times and could likely be in someone's collection of offline information.

It's a badly designed test, in any case. But, pulling a test out of a box, even if it was yours, is strictly spoken self-plagiarism; it's not quite as bad as copying from others, here, as it was of your own making and thus your own achievement - but it was not prepared against the clock. An entirely different story if you had remembered your solution. Then you deserve fully your well-gained extra time.

This really depends on the specific rules set for the exam. Allowing students to use their own laptops without internet access, in my opinion, would imply that you are free to use code/material you already have on your computer but not online content. It is possible that the test designer wanted to reward students who were well prepared, but didn't really anticipate that someone would have solved the exact same problem before. If this is the case, I'm inclined to say that you did not cheat.

@CaptainEmacs:  Self plagiarism on an exam is an absurd concept.

For future reference, and for others reading: if you have an exam like this, make sure you are clear in advance whether you are allowed to collect materials on your computer for use on the exam, or whether this is forbidden.  That way you wouldn't have to ask this question.

@Buzz The precise term may be, but the question is not. The problem is not that OP solved it earlier, but that having done so, perhaps with more time and less pressure available, may skew the marks for the the question. As I said, it is by far not as bad as copying from someone else, as it was OP's own work. Probably the examiner, whose fault the situation chiefly is, should treat the case with full lenience, even if he found it out. But I wouldn't bet on this if I were the OP.

Weird exam if you ask me. You had no internet access but you had to upload the files to a website? How does that work? And what prevents you from using the internet in the first place? You can easily set up a hotspot on your phone if there wasn't any wifi already available

There is no way this was cheating.

My recommendation is not to say anything unless asked. There are really some idiotic professors out there that accuse students of cheating instead of taking responsibility for poorly designed tests.

Strange to me that you have your laptops for a test. If you're wondering, yes, for my computers science tests, we had to write out code by hand on paper, and no we weren't graded off for minor typos or things that wouldn't exactly compile, as long as our algorithms were solid. Back on topic, one thing to check is your university honor code, if it exists. It might have some guidance. There may be a whole honor system committee or section of the university web site about the honor system that may have good information.

Any good test, in whatever the field of study may be, should be designed for precisely one purpose: to determine how competently the subject will be able apply his learning in the real world. What you have done here is prove without any ambiguity (apart from the fact that your examiners will never know this, of course) exactly that: would you be able to apply your learning in the real world? Well, you already had!

Did the exam conditions allow using reference material (e.g. books) you have saved on your computer? i.e. the computer equivalent of an "open books" exam (I had a few of those in physics).

Was it cheat? Kind of . Need to report it? No, risk of facing actions

On the basis that had you asked the invigilator, they would probably have told you not to use pre-prepared material, your actions were almost certainly inappropriate.

@Karl: nothing in the question said that the OP previously solved the problem without any exterior help, so it is not clear if the test really measured his competency. Also,  a test is designed to determine if the testee is able to perform certain tasks competently in a timely fashion. What if it took the OP three times more than the other students to solve the problem? Even if the OP solved it in a reasonable or short time, copying a previously written solution saved him/her a substantial amount of time, which is an unfair advantage.

@Taladris , valid points to raise. Although, ideologically, I don't believe in such constraints. These "exam conditions" only serve to disconnect the subject from the real world. Again I say, ultimately we should test our students in line with the conditions they will meet in "the real world". Nevertheless, fairness is important, and so it is perhaps right to say that whatever conditions the other students faced, OP should have to face. On the other hand, as long as there is no competition, that is to say that the other students' scores are independent of the OP, then there is no harm done.

What if you were one of those people with a really good memory and you memorized the code because you worked on it so long? Did you cheat because you inadvertently memorized the test answer?

Some people are arguing any information stored off-line is fine. Would it have been inappropriate to take a data-dump of Stack Overflow in on your laptop?

I wouldn't ask my students to re-type something they'd done before. It seems petulant and stupid. However, I'd be curious about how you came up with the original implementation: was it really your work, or copy-paste from another source? If the latter, I would consider it the same as using a cheat sheet. But,  if I let you use your laptop, then I get  what  I deserve.

The exam had some clear policies in place: a time limit of 2 hours; no breaks; no internet access. Did you break any of them? To be more specific: did it take you more than 2 hours to write your program? Did you take any breaks in between to rest? Did you use the internet in any way while coding your program? If the answer to any of those questions is "yes", then you had an unfair advantage over the other students. Your faking to be busy for 45 minutes already shows that you (rightly) felt it was wrong to use your existing code. Should you say anything? No, but don't do it again.

@Buzz Self-plagiarism is an absurd concept. Plagiarism is passing someone else's work off as your own. So self-plagiarism would be passing your own work off as your own? (And yes, I also think asking someone to redo work in a situation where reusing is possible is a strange thing on its own and very hard to enforce because it become a matter of a reverse ship of Theseus)

I once had a similar situation in a job interview.  The first interview, person 1 asked me a programming question.  I gave a few OK answers, not what they were looking for, but "good enough," and then he explained that the answer he was looking for was this other thing.  The next interview, I got asked the exact same question, so I gave the "right answer" immediately.  The interviewer was astonished--he said nobody ever got that one right, especially not right away.  So I told him that person 1 had already given me the question and the answer.  I ended up getting the job.

I would say no, unless this was explicitly prohibited beforehand. Look, what's the purpose of a test?  To gauge the extent to which one has comprehended the material. The fact that you did the work indicates you do. Hell, the fact you did it on your own for fun deserves recognition.
What's the point of re-doing the work while sitting in class during a test?  Worse yet, suppose you did and made a mistake due to nerves/time pressure.  You still did and comprehended the material, thus you pass.
Others will disagree, but in my mind, I just want to know if you do or do not understand the material.

@user37208, that is not the student's problem. It's not the student's responsibility to gauge how well prepared the other students happen to be. He solved a problem that happened to be on the test beforehand. To me that shows initiative. Maybe he just got lucky. Either way, he's not to blame. Nothing for him to feel guilty about. The other students could have done the same thing.

Couldn't agree more. Also @user37208, whoever designed the test knew that 2 hours would be enough. Not having a code the OP wrote at hand would just mean them remembering the algorithm and typing it anew, which might take maybe 90 minutes instead of 45, that's a (needless) inconvenience, not an obstacle. Maybe I'm misunderstanding "curved" (that's just the Bell curve, isn't it?) but the only way this would be improper in my eyes is if earlier submission counted towards a higher score.

There is, however, a big difference between "I solved this in my spare time and am now reproducing my solution from memory" and "I am submitting the solution I wrote up previously, possibly written with the aid of reference material I do not have access to during the exam."

@chepner He would have had access to the reference material as well since he can use his own laptop.

@user7019377 Note that he said "no internet access".

@AlexC Irrelevant, that is to prevent live help from third parties. The laptop can contain all kinds of textbooks, solution manuals, encyclopedias, open source code, scientific papers etc. If you don't want to allow that, you can't allow the students to have their own laptops. If you are allowed to use your own laptop, it would be a sign of lack of preparation not to stock up.

In general, the rules and norms of a test - what is expected, what sources can be evaluated, if any, etc - should be known before the test is taken. This usually takes the form of a syllabus or verbal instructions at exam time.
A typical set of norms is along the lines of: open book, open notes, no cooperation; closed book, open/limited notes (like 1-page hand-written sheet, or index card, or "anything that fits on a letter-sized sheet", etc); closed book, closed notes; and so on. In an electronic lab, there is usually also a policy on general internet use, and you noted no internet access - so obviously some rules and norms were in place.
These rules and norms are what makes fairness and useful evaluation possible in the academic context. If no one cared when or how you did the work, then of course the rules would reflect that; if people do care specifically to know how, when, and/or who did the work, then the rules are made to reflect that. We don't know what rules were in place at the time, but as a student it's your job to find out what they are - and if you don't know, ask as early on as possible so there are no possible misunderstandings.
I will close with my general advice on all matters of honesty: if you feel like you need to hide it, you should think very carefully about what exactly it is that you are doing. If you pretended to be busy during the exam so it didn't look like you finished impossibly quickly, that suggests that at the time you thought something was fishy - or ambiguous - about what you were doing then.
In the future you should ask in advance what the rules are if you don't know them, and if an unexpected scenario comes up - ask the person in charge right then!
I cannot really offer advice on what to do now, though, as that is going to be a pretty personal decision. If you have a good relationship with the teacher I'd especially advise you to contact them to talk about the issue, noting how you thought it wasn't against the rules but now you are concerned that you should have said something at the time and had no idea that the solution you had - which was your work in full - was going to be on the test.
As a final note, if you wonder why using the solution might not have been allowable: the solution you had was not completed in a verified time limit, and you obviously would have had access to the internet, other people's potential help, etc, in preparing your solution. No other students had such an opportunity, so when the person is grading it would certainly not be fair for other student's work to be compared to yours when your work was not prepared in the same environment (and the grader has no idea you had advantages the other student's did not have in the exam).
Ultimately how you handle the current (past) situation is up to you, but I hope in the future that you'll act differently so you don't end up in such an uncomfortable position - when in doubt, ask.

I disagree. Answering an exam question log before it is asked is the consummate mark of the person who will invent the next world-changing paradigm shift. Fearing to violate unwritten phantom "rules" and "norms" and fretting about "ask[ing] in advance" are the defining attributes of his potential lackeys.

@A.I.Breveleri That's basically the base rate fallacy - or to use a saying, "They laughed at Einstein...but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." For 6-7+ billion people, there are a handful of world-changing outcomes per generation (base rate). The vast majority of people who ignore rules and normative ethics do not fare well in society, finding themselves made suspect, reprimanded, fired, outcast, or jailed.  Successful "self-actualized" individuals who are willing to be contrarian do so to a tiny amount of all social rules, in a tiny amount of situations - and they choose very carefully.

"Successful "self-actualized" individuals who are willing to be contrarian do so to a tiny amount of all social rules, in a tiny amount of situations - and they choose very carefully" - brilliant quotable statement.

This is completely false... The professor allowed laptops to be used... obviously offline materials were allowed, otherwise why would he allow this situation to occur? It's not the student's job to read the professor's mind. The professor is responsible for the uncomfortable situation and he's the one to be blamed if anyone is to be blamed. Lazy professors creating ambiguous scenarios... if they thought a little they could avoid these situations.

@AmeetSharma Ambiguity and the need for mind-reading can be easily resolved by just asking - resolves the need to guess. Anyone in charge should certainly make the rule clear, but my answer is focused on being pragmatic - the professor almost always has very little to lose in a situation like this, where you as a student have all the risk in a misunderstanding. Blaming others can make one feel better, but it doesn't necessarily protect you - especially when there is a large power differential, as there is in a case like this, where complaints can fall on deaf ears. Better 'ask' than sorry.

Sometimes I'll pretend to be busy after finishing an exam early just so I'm not the first person to leave. No fishy behaviour involved.

While it would be nice to ask, it is responsibility of the professor to state the rules. That could happen on the very first class, and it's the OP's fault if (s)he forgot. However, if the rules weren't stated, unless specified otherwise (like the aforementioned "no internet access"), it is expected for the students to use their laptops in full capacity. In particular, using whatever materials they had stored on their drive, even if it's stackoverflow dump. And it is fair – every student could have done that, after all we expect the students to prepare before an exam.

One important distinction here is that when writing software, it isn't the actual writing that's the time consuming part, it's the thinking and verifying that your solution does what it's supposed to.
No matter what else, you've already done this. In this context it wouldn't take you half-again as long to write it from scratch compared to your classmates that haven't, even if you didn't reuse any of your actual code. That is not your problem.
Every experience we get and project we do gives us the resources to solve problems we are faced with. The only thing that may be an issue here is whether or not you should have copied your previous code, or written it from scratch as all your classmates did for a more fair comparison. We can't really answer this, as it is dependant on what rules your  college / university / class set.
If you feel nervous about this, bring it up to your TA or professor as a question for the next exam:

If we get a problem that I've solved on my free time, can I reuse
  that solution?

They allowed you to use your laptop. Were offline materials (pdfs, notes) prohibited? If not, you IN FACT did not cheat, regardless of what anyone else may say.
This is no different than a situation which I experienced multiple times when working on my CS degree, where well-known code-golf/basic theory questions were asked and I had already seen them. That's just good fortune, there's nothing to do but enjoy it.
And, regardless of the ethical contortions you might go through to conclude that you acted wrongly, don't turn yourself in. Academic disintegrity is taken very seriously and depending on who received your admission, a series of needless escalations later, you could find yourself at the business end of an uncaring and unthinking bureaucracy.

Indeed. The instructor was naive enough to let students use their own laptop. Further, any programming student who is serious enough in their studies is likely to have code snippets on their personal machines developed from their own studies of how to solve common programming problems. Bad assessment vehicle plus naive instructor equals well-prepared student gets to sleep at night.

Yes, this is cheating.
Imagine it was a hard problem that you set out to solve on your own time at home. You would not be under any time pressure to solve the problem. You would have any resource you wanted to research and solve the problem--textbooks, google, etc... You then work on the solution, find bugs, refactor, and come to a final working solution.
Now, during the test you simply cut and paste your solution and you're done in 60 seconds on a 2 hour test. Since you intuitively know this is wrong you fake working for 45 minutes until boredom overcomes you and you leave.
The proper thing to do, would be to derive a solution given what you already learned working on the problem at home. If this were not the intent of the test, it would have been a take home test with lenient deadlines.
It's rather appalling that the most upvoted answers here seem to think this behavior is ethical.

To solidify my argument, consider the following scenarios:

Your professor assigns you a homework assignment during the semester. At the end of the semester he puts the same problem on the exam. You pull out your homework during the exam and transcribe your answer word-for-word.
You write your program at home. Anticipating various programs will be asked for on the exam you transcribe your programs to little pieces of paper. During the exam you pull out the hidden paper and transcribe the solution for the exam word-for-word.
No internet access is allowed. Therefore, you write a web scraper to download all of StackOverflow's content to your personal laptop for offline use. During the exam you reference your local copy of SO.

The crux of the ethical argument, hinges on the intent, or spirit, of examinations. It seems as if many people are simply arguing for technical loopholes to avoid the actual intent of the examination for personal advantage.
The spirit of an exam is to test your mastery of the material and to see how you can regurgitate and apply that information under time-limited conditions. The method of copy and paste violates the spirit of the exam.

I studied for my history test beforehand. When I got to the part on who won the Civil War, I memorized "The North". I put that down on my test, because I worked out beforehand that it was the correct answer. That is not cheating.

Covered in paragraph 4--"the proper thing to do." Most people don't have cut-n-paste loaded into their brain. The point of a test is to see if you can regurgitate and apply concepts you have learned (from your brain). A test is not a semester long project, where you just paste the solution you worked out beforehand. An anecdote (even a real one) is not a valid ethical argument. You have an excellent memory, congratulations; not the point of the test. Why not just type up the answer before hand, bring it in on a separate hidden sheet of paper, and copy the answer down?

@TechMedicNYC Most people don't have cut-n-paste loaded into the brain.  But if given the opportunity to to prepare notes several people might have implementations of specific algorithms written down.

@Taemyr They would still have to translate that algorithm to actual, runnable code here. No matter how you slice it, unless existing solutions to problems already stored on your computer are explicitly allowed (and can you really imagine a professor allowing the full contents of your hard drive? Every open source project you've checked out or HTML page you have cached?), it gives the OP some unexpected, unfair advantage to simply copy a fully working and tested solution.

@jpmc26 they where allowed to bring their private pc to the test.  That suggests that the contents of the hd was allowed.

jpmc26, Exactly. To consider even another angle... @Taemyr Say no internet is allowed, only the contents of the hard drive. Why not just build a web scraper and pull all of StackOverflow's content to your hard drive for offline use during the test?
The crux of all of these arguments, hinge on the intent (or spirit) of examination. I believe it is fairly clear that the OP's method violates the spirit of the exam.

@TechMedicNYC What's cheating or not has to be objective.  The pupil, lacking psychic ability, does not know what the spirit of the exam is.  Allowing the contents of the HD explicitly allows scraping StackOverflow ahead of the exam, so doing so is not cheating.  If this causes problems with the grading then the exam is poorly designed.

@Taemyr, We agree on one thing: the exam is poorly designed. However, the things I state do not rely on pseudoscience such as psychic ability. All the student and teacher need to posses is ethical character. This is why there exists an entire academic discipline of ethics--to settle this precise debate we are having. The student knows right from wrong. Sometimes it may be ambiguous, but the examples I gave show clear unethical intent--aka cheating. We should be instilling stronger ethics in the students, not rationalizing their attempts to exploit technical loopholes.

@James The spirit of this exam is not mastery by regurgitation, but apparently mastery by getting things done. Allowing a personal computer obviously allows your #1 and #2 scenarios (reuse homework, predict code snippets). The instructor may be happy to allow this, since in the real world coding can be done with access to other resources. Only your #3 scraping scenario strikes me as dishonest, although not technically cheating on this particular test unless it was expressly forbidden.

No this is not cheating in any way. If the professor allowed laptops to be used, then obviously offline materials were allowed. Otherwise he would have given explicit instructions to the contrary. It is not the student's job to read the professor's mind and second guess his own actions. All a student can do is follow the rules set, and that's what you did here. It is not the student's responsibility to gauge what's "fair" and "unfair" in the middle of a test.
What if I learned a shortcut method of solving a problem... a method that wasn't discussed in class, and I use that to get an answer to an exam problem, and nobody else does. Have I cheated? I had an "unfair" advantage. Should I be punished? Makes absolutely no sense. To consider this cheating is getting into loony territory.
What if I find an online resource that explains material better than the text we use in class? I have an "unfair" advantage now. Am I cheating?

"then obviously offline materials were allowed" This does not follow.  Professors are as human as the rest of us, and as such they make mistakes.

Unless it was an open-book test, yes, you cheated.

But did the instructor say not to use any information saved on your laptop?

@immibis The OP didn't just use "information saved on his laptop". He used the solution saved on his laptop. Given that in some exams the time constraint is used as a way to see how well the students understood the subject and sometimes even their ability to work under pressure (i.e. the average student wont complete 100% of the test perfectly in X hours, but will do so in, say, 2X hours) by reusing a solution he had already written he basically extended his exam time by a lot. Given that he had already done that task even starting from scratch he should have had already a big advantage.

Plus, when he did the actual coding, he had resources available the other students did not.

I downvoted because the reasoning is not sound. If a student has an eidetic memory, a resource which other students clearly do not have, is he prohibited to use this to his advantage to immediately write down the answer because it was already repeated earlier ? If a student does immense work in preparation and solves questions to train it and the same question is asked in the test and he writes down the answer, did he cheat ? Nobody forced the asker to do this on his own free time. So as long as the rules of the exam explicitly do not allow to reuse a solution, I do not see a violation.

@ThorstenS.  Oh please.  This is not reusing a solution.  This is evading the conditions of examination that every other student in the course had to abide by.  If the student had simply used the experience he gained by doing it - or looking it up - the first time around, and recoded, this would be fine.  Try this in front of an academic honesty board, telling them "it didn't say NOT open book", and see what the board comes back with.

Yes or no, are not very helpful answers here. Value in questions like this comes from explanation and reasoning, and when possible, references to related information and argument.

@ScottSeidman "This is evading the conditions of examination" is begging the question because exactly those conditions are unclear. Conditions are not only a source of inconvenience for students, they are also a protection (!) for students against arbitrariness of evaluation. BrianDHall's answer which I find personally the best makes the problem very clear. I attack your specific reasoning because you claim unfair resource advantages where I do not see the vital difference between students who are smarter, more prepared or having unusual advantages (speedreading, good memory).

@ThorstenS. .., or students who can write answers on their arm without being caught.

@ScottSeidman I would be extremely disappointed in his mental capability if the student would have used his arm when he actually used his own (!) laptop of GByte storage capability and the ability to search very fast to solve the problem....

The fact that you are asking others about whether you cheated is a sign to me that you feel guilt. Though you are not considered liable for cheating simply because you feel guilty about your actions, your conscience tells you that you had unfair an advantage over other students.
Because you have such a desire to learn, you effectively studied for an un-study-able test, which is a huge and fair advantage over other students, but to use your previously written material for an exam (it sounds like a closed notes exam), I think is an unfair to other students.
The question that you have asked is about morals. There are many different standards of morals, and every person has his or her own set of morals (including the authors of the answers written above), but to me it seems that your set of morals is asking you to talk to your TA/ Professor. I agree with BrianDHall:

" If you pretended to be busy during the exam so it didn't look like you finished impossibly quickly, that suggests that at the time you thought something was fishy - or ambiguous - about what you were doing then."

Many others have answered your question not regarding the ethics of the situation, but whether you merit justice. Ultimately, the decision is up to you, but I wish that you had considered asking the professor/ TA during the exam, rather than feel guilty afterward, and that you will more carefully consider consequences before making your decisions in the future.

Although "pretending to be busy" brings up suspicions, the fact that they were allowed to use their own laptops leads me to assume it was open book test. Either it was open book(allowed to use pdf notes) or just a poorly designed test. Therefore, unless the professor specifically mentioned pdfs weren't allowed, I see no wrong in using old code in which he wrote himself.

I agree that the test was poorly designed, but @ImeanH asked the question because s/he felt that using previous material is dishonest.

You assume that it was an open book test, which is probably not the case; if the test were an "open-book" test, @ImeanH would not have asked the question. I assume that it was not an "open-book" test, otherwise, there would be nothing to discuss. At the end of the day, ImeanH will never feel at peace justifying what s/he considers to be dishonest behavior.

"Self-justification describes how, when a person encounters cognitive dissonance, or a situation in which a person's behavior is inconsistent with their beliefs, that person tends to justify the behavior and deny any negative feedback associated with the behavior." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-justification)

In my opinion it you did not cheat on your knowledge of your programming concepts but exams are conducted to also test how under a stressful condition (like an examination) a student will be able to cope with it and still come up with a solution. If you already programmed it as hobby it should have been easy for you to do it on your own and still finish early (may be not as early as you did but still).
Also consider another scenario. If few days before exam while revising for it I made a note and by mistake that was left in my pocket and by luck or chance that note related question is in the exam and I copy it from my self-made note which was by mistake left in my pocket is it cheating? If copy-pasting is not cheating then why is that cheating while in both cases I'm simply copying my own content? Just because it will take more time than copy-paste? The only thing which classifies your case as no cheating is the test was poorly designed because usually before entering exam room they ask you to leave behind any paper or note outside the room and in your programming test they should have clarified it in advance to not use your material on your laptop or made sure everything was cleaned before entering exam room.

one of the problems was to write up a certain famous program in Maple.

What do you mean by "write up"? Convert a famous piece of code in (say) C++ to Maple? Perhaps it was "eratosthenes sieve"? If you had already done that you were ahead of the pack anyway. And if you were allowed to use your laptop, and there was no requirement for it to be wiped of extraneous information prior to the exam, then you didn't break any rules.
That would be like if you were doing an English Literature exam, and you knew one of Shakespeare's plays might be asked about, and you just happened to spend the night before the exam studying the exact play that was in the exam.
That just shows good preparation.
I don't see what the alternative is. "Oh, I knew the answer, but because I did I had to pretend I didn't".
Imagine the question was something you could memorize. Like, "what is the principle crop grown in Bogotá?". If you happened to have memorized that in advance of the exam, well, good work!

This, if anything, shows a flaw in the examination question. If the question had been about some code that no-one had seen before, and it had to be converted to Maple, then no-one could possibly have worked it out in advance. But if the question was about converting a function that does a random shuffle of playing cards, then there would always be the possibility that someone would happen to have already have such code on their laptop.

I just don't see it that way.  The situation is more as if the student suspected that he might be asked to write the Constitution on an exam.  Spent all night studying the Constitution, then wrote it down from memory on a piece of paper.  The next day, on the exam, the student stapled the paper from the night before onto the exam.

If he was allowed to bring the paper with him, surely that is OK? If the rules of the exam allowed a laptop, with any documents on it that the student cares to bring, with them, and the question asks for the Constitution to be quoted, surely it is valid to copy and paste it into the answer? What would you have him do? Retype it? What would be the difference to the end result?

Yes, and if there was no message about whether he was allowed to bring the paper, the assumption is that he wasn't, because this is an exam.  It was a poorly designed exam, but I'm willing to bet that an academic honestly panel wouldn't see it your way.

It depends on what type of test you were in.
if your test result depends on how much time toke to achieve result , obviously you cheated.
but if time not matters and test was made to evaluate your programming skills you done your best.
You 've made it with Reusability feature of your code.
Reusability is one of the most important subjects in programming context.

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


text:
How to get Chartered Engineer in the UK? Should I pay some fees (every year) to keep this title?
I have completed PhD in Computing in UK. Can I apply for a CEng title as I have a Computing degree (not exactly engineering)?
If I get one, should I pay some subscriptions (every year/month) to keep this title?
What are the advantages of having CEng?

A CEng qualification (it is post-nominal) is awarded on the accreditation of the engineering experience and qualification achieved. The full specification of the necessary standard is shown in the document entitled The UK Standard for Professional Engineering Competence (UK-SPEC). Although CEng is not a title it does enable you to work towards the Engineering title of EurIng (pre-nominal) which is awarded by FEANI.
In Academia in the UK it would be expected that researchers and Academics in engineering (STEM) hold both professional and academic qualifications and titles as they are part of the education path for professional practicing engineers. Thus only possessing a PhD would make you a less qualified than other applicants or colleagues. For career development it is useful to have a full set of qualifications, including membership of the relevant professional bodies.
A BSc and MSc (in an accredited degree subject) would normally be considered the academic level necessary for the CEng topped up with an appropriate amount of relevant professional practice. If the PhD contained an appropriate amount of project management and technical engineering content it could satisfy the professional component of the CEng, but not always. Sometimes a period of employment might be needed to top-up.
A fee is payable for the application to cover the accreditation of your qualification and experience and then an annual membership fee thereafter. If you stop paying the membership fee you are not considered an active professional and therefore the qualification/title lapses. If you use the qualification/title without paying professional fees then this is considered an act of unprofessionalism.
I have a set of such qualifications in computing and use the letters:

Eur Ing MBCS CITP CEng

in formal academic contexts. It is useful in explaining to students about the paths to qualification and professional practice in our subject. It also shows that the person teaching them is fully qualified to do so, and knows the material from professional practice and not just from books.


text:
How to efficiently engage undergraduate students in my research program?
I'm a fairly new Assistant Professor at a 4-year university. As is often the case our teaching load is high and we are also expected to do research. Personally, I like both teaching and doing research.

The difficult part of it, however, is to attract the students to work in your lab (often on a voluntary basis) that will make it worth the time and effort needed to train them.
The other challenge is this: once you have a student that you clearly see has the ability to perform well (both intellectually and skill-wise to work in a lab), how do I motivate them to spend as much time as they can in the lab?

It's obviously not worth it when a student starts an experiment and then loses the motivation to come in in-between classes to make a measurement. It's my feeling that the students see it like this: "if I come in and do some work in the lab, then that's good and useful for the professor", but without the true engagement to learn something from the experiment, without the student having the curiosity and passion to follow-up, it becomes more like waste of time and money.
Obviously, I realize that I'm asking a lot. It's generally accepted that this kind of behaviour/motivation can be expected from a Ph.D. student, but not so much from an undergrad. Nonetheless, this is the situation that many professors are in since they only get to work with undergrads and are still expected (and genuinely want) to do exciting research. If I could, I would spend much more time in the lab myself, but it's just not always possible.

I disagree. There is plenty of good work that got  published and that was done by undergrads collaborating with the faculty. Some are better at managing this, hence the question. Also, I didn't mean to say that the effort-return must be equal, but how to optimize it.

What are the students getting in return for this?

Experience/interesting work? Then it's fun, but don't ever expect them to treat it as more than a hobby or fun project.
Money or course credit: Then it's their job to show up and work. The will show up, or you will fire them / fail them.
Publication: are your students credited on the publication? Will doing this work build their CV and make it easier for them to get jobs, or accepted into grad studies?

Anything else seems to fall dangerously into "how can I turn undergrads into unpaid interns". They have their own classes to work on and their own lives to run, and doing experiments probably isn't what gets them out of bed every day.
Does your university have a "Capita Selecta" or "Project Course" or "Individual Study" option? If so, you could give your students course credit for their involvement in your work, in which case they would be obligated to show up. They would get enough out of their contribution that it would be worth their time.

It's generally accepted that this kind of behaviour/motivation can be expected from a Ph.D. student, but not so much from an undergrad.

Because the PhD student is being paid to be there, and the undergraduate isn't.
The takeaway
Being an undergraduate is hard. You've got 4-5 classes, all of whom want you to work like that class is the only one you're taking. You are probably having to work to pay your way through school, and you are trying to have enough leisure time that you don't go insane.
Your best way to get them interested is to take away one of these stressors: pay them (so they don't have to work), give them course credit (so they can take less classes), or treat it like leisure (so they can do something they enjoy casually).

I agree with you. In my university, the undergraduates can work with the professors in some projects, and the work is paid from the grants. The salary is not much, but it is something, and also they appear in the journal papers, which is important for the admission to the PhD.

Decades ago as an undergrad I had the opportunity to do research with a professor. I got 'independent research' course credit, got to do fun experimental and modeling work, got an APS March meeting talk, wrote junior and senior theses, and got a really good letter of recommendation to grad school out of it. No money, but all the above was worth far more than the money both at the time and in retrospect.

What they can get from it: I would definitely put them on the publications that come out of the research, and I tell them that. Course credit is also possible, as well as pay. The curious thing, however, is that I've had a bad experience with paying a student. Even with the pay (15$/h) the student was just not coming in. I do write recommendation letters and I want to be able to write outstanding ones. My feeling is it's only useful to me as a Prof. when the student has a true curiosity in science and plenty of time to spent on it. Unfortunately, those are often the more privileged kids

@oaklander114 "when the student has a true curiosity in science and plenty of time to spent on it". These two things may be mutually exclusive: students who are really curious will be taking difficult classes, and true curiosity doesn't necessarily mean that they are able to devote all their free time to this, nor should they.

@oaklander114 Also, keep in mind that what you are having them do might be "grunt work" that students who are actually interested in research will probably not enjoy: taking measurements and such. Curiosity in science doesn't make you immune to the tediousness of real work. This is probably part of why you don't want to do this work yourself! You wouldn't work for the university for nothing, so why should a student?

@oaklander114 As for the previous negative experiences, perhaps you can have set hours that the student works, and if they don't show up for work, then they can be fired, like for any other job. But if you're looking for the truly curious, then course credit might give you a better success.

@jmite: Maybe it's not only curiosity, but also ambition then, that i look for. But how to know a student has that? You're inaccurate in that it's the grunt work that discourages them. I try to do as much of that myself (like "dishes") and try to have them do the real science not just the boring stuff. Actually students sometimes seem to be more comfortable doing the menial work than doing experiments. So, maybe it's a confidence thing.. and sometimes also just "I wanna have the experience, but I don't want to work for it".

@jmite other professors have actually bad experience with the course credit (I haven't had done it yet) because it's a pass/no pass. The word is that often they just do the absolute minimum, in a lousy way, to just get the credit they need (often to graduate). As a result, my colleague now only allows course credit after a semester without it.

Your best way to get them interested is to take away one of these stressors: pay them — In my experience, paying students to do research at the undergraduate level only gets students interested enough to sign up for research, but doesn't do much of anything else that is of any value for me. I've found that the best undergrads for research  are the ones who have long-term career goals already mapped out, and see that the research experience fits into that in some useful way.

@Mad Jack: I agree with that. It's similar to my experience. Do you interview a prospective student to get better idea about the meaning they attach to "working in your lab" before you accept them? Do you give them a try-out period? Many of our students have ambition to become a M.D. and I see a problem in that: they are mostly doing only to put on their CV and to get a recommendation, although a majority does not get the grades needed to get into medical school.

@MadJack when I was an undergrad, I needed a summer job. That was non-negotiable. I got paid to do research. If I hadn't, I would have gotten paid to flip burgers. Long term career goals are great, but many undergrads will focus on their career goals by getting good grades, which is hard to do if you're spending hours every week in a lab.

@oaklander114 I only take the best undergrads from my classes for my research program, but I don't interview them. The problem with interviewing, I think, is that undergrads that I've met talk a good game, so you aren't really sure who is for real until you give them something to work on and see if they really want to do it, or if they realize that it is not for them, after all.

@jmite I also needed to work in the summers, so I get that. The key question is: how do you ensure that you get truly motivated students to work in your group? I don't think paying them is the right motivator. Put another way: if I had a choice to either scrounge up money for undergrads or do the research myself/with grad students, I would choose the latter every time.

Because the PhD student is being paid to be there, and the undergraduate isn't. — That is not the only reason!

@JeffE certainly not, but they're also getting a PhD out of it, which undergraduates wouldn't. They take classes to get their degree, and incorporating the research into a course for credit is something I've advised! This isn't the enlightenment: we're not wealthy scientist-philosopher-nobles who pursue science purely for its own good. Even those who live and breathe science have bills to pay, relationships to manage. It would be a cool utopia if people could pursue science purely for science sake, but that's not the world we live in.

I was more thinking that PhD students are older, and therefore (on average) more mature and responsible.

You have to relate this lab work with their theoretical knowledge which they acquired in their classes.  In your lab, do the experiments which are related to the theory classes of the students, so that students can understand how it can be implemented in pratical scenario.  These classes will be different from theoretical classes and is more interactive and fun to work.   In this manner, they get the chance to refine their skills and also get strong hold on their class subjects.

Good advice. I will think more of these connections. That might help.


text:
Handling a case of reviewer reporting a result he read in a paper he had rejected
Long ago, as a new researcher to an established field, I submitted a paper to the leading journal, with the first time experimental observation of a weak but theoretically predicted quantum transition. The paper was rejected by the reviewer, a professor and leading specialist in the field, claiming my observation was impossible.  I did not resubmit the paper elsewhere.  I have discovered that this same reviewer and his group published a later paper claiming to have observed the same transition first, which I had submitted.
What are my options for handling this situation?

Very interesting. What documentation do you have of the original paper being reviewed by the reviewer in question?

(1) Why did you not resubmit the paper elsewhere or push back on the reviewer comments?
(2) How much later did the reviewer publish his paper?

Also, how close is your result to the one presented in the paper? Even though the results may look similar, there might be key differences in the new paper in the theoretical presentation and experimentation process.

Did the supposed reviewer really copy your result/idea?
Double check the paper in question to see if it does match your result exactly. Many papers tend to appear similar but would've obtained with different approach and methods. This is a perfectly acceptable scientific conduct. So make sure your claim can be justified.
If your manuscript was copied, do you have proof?
If you are absolutely sure that the manuscript was copied by the reviewer, you may file a plagiarism report to the publisher of the concerned paper. But, the chances of you winning is slim. You may have your submission report from your mail or submission repository, but it wouldn't help much. From your post, it doesn't seem like you have a preprint in arXiv either. Sadly, you couldn't do much at this point.
To avoid this in future it would be better to make a preprint available in arXiv. Just make sure you confirm if it is allowed by the publisher's guidelines. You may consult with the editor if this is unclear.


text:
How do you get to research about theoretical high energy physics as an undergraduate?
I am an junior undergraduate in the U.S, and Interested in HEP "Theoretical High Energy" in Physics. I have had some  exposure in research (i.e. Quantum Field Theory, General Relativity), besides having a GPA around 3.67/4.0.
I am currently working with a faculty, on Experimental Particle Physics, but would like to study its theoretical side, in the future, as well.
Further, I have tried to reach out in my university about this topic, in particular. I could not find a research vacancies, Unfortunately.
What should I do to secure a place in research? If I am unable to do something related to theoretical HEP ( while I am still an undergraduate) is it possible to do that in grad school?
Edit:
Thank you all for your recommendations! I have tried to reach out a faculty again, and he said he could be my instructor over the summer!

Are there faculty at your institution that do research in theoretical high energy physics? How did you get into work in experimental particle physics?

It's absolutely best to start in grad school. Your background is good, with some HEP work under your belt already even as an undergrad. Ask your current faculty advisor if they have any contacts on the theoretical side. Then, apply to the schools where they are---or even just apply to grad schools with HEP-Th researchers that seem like a good fit, and reach out to those professors with whom you'd like to do research. If they think the fit is good and would like to work with you, then that's about all there is to it.

You might want to search out an REU for next summer (if it is not too late - too far removed from the process). See https://www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/reu/list_result.jsp?unitid=69

Look through the faculties websites -> see which ones work in theoretical physics and teach undergrad courses -> take their courses -> do exceptionally well in their courses (do not miss a single office hour, ask additional not hw related questions) -> closer to the end of the term, at the end of a lecture come to the one you like the most and beg him to let you work in his lab (of course, without any salary), tell him you want to do your undergrad thesis on any of his topics. I assume you want to get to the Ph.D. level. The easiest Ph.D. is when you work on the same topic since the undergrad.

"Junior" means 3rd year? As in freshman, sophomore, junior, senior?

@IvanNepomnyashchikh "without any salary" no!! Absolutely DO NOT work for free. No supervisor should employ people they can't pay. It's exploitative and skews an already unbalanced system further in favour of students with a pre-existing financial cushion.

Consider it from another angle. "There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere." Isaac Asimov
Find any aspect of research that any of your profs will let you participate in. At your level, pretty much any sort of research will be good for you. It will teach you things. It will look good on your CV. It will build relationships with other researchers. You will see how these things are done, what the mundane aspects are, and so on. You might even get your name on an article as a co-author. And the prof involved will be a good source of letters of recommendation when you apply for grad school.
And don't be concerned if you get to do some mundane task. For example, extracting data and making graphs or some such. Or standing around running some bit of equipment or something. Science is not all glamor and AHA! moments. A big part of it, even for the most senior people, is turning the crank.

You get to do research in the way you tried: by asking around.
Given the highly mathematical nature of this field, I’m sure you realize that very few faculty will want to invest time and money to hire an undergraduate when these resources can be better invested in graduate students (especially students with a much broader exposure to mathematics than you).
In other words, it’s unlikely that a summer position for an undergraduate would be productive to a faculty member in this area.
I’m not sure why you worry about getting into grad school: it’s putting the cart before the horse.  Just complete your degree and apply to graduate programs at the same time as anyone else.
It’s likely you may have to complete a year of courses before anyone in THEP commits to you anyways, so you should concentrate on doing well and look at experimental HEP as a way of broadening your perspective on this field.


text:
As a person outside academia, can I e-mail authors if I have questions about their work?
I am autistic and I hold a bachelor's degree but, sadly, had to quit grad school due to health reasons. I have a special interest in a subfield of hematology-oncology and have read a fair amount of research papers about that subject. I have some – hopefully – sound questions that I'd like to get answered but these are very precise questions regarding a specific subject that only a couple hundred researchers know about (so no luck getting answers elsewhere). Since I am not in academia I can't post them in the comment section on ResearchGate (which would have been more practical).
How appropriate is it for me to e-mail the corresponding author to ask for details about their paper and/or ask for their insights about a possible research gap? Should I mention that I am autistic with a special interest in their research subject?

It's likely your questions are on-topic for Medical Sciences Stack Exchange. Of course, it's possible no one there will be able to answer. Questions there will be best received if they include references to the specific papers you're asking about.

Should I answer email from a student who based her project on one of my publications? and the answers may provide some insight into the diversity of possible reactions (sans autism)

I don't know how well this will work for you, but on several occasions I've posted Stack Exchange questions about a recent paper in the appropriate site, then as a courtesy emailed one or more authors to let them know, inviting them to either reply to me directly or consider posting an answer in Stack Exchange or asking a colleague or student whose already active in SE to do so.

I'd prefer to get a direct email rather than a comment on ResearchGate, which I very well might miss.

+1 to @uhoh's comment. Here is a question I recently posted. I sent the link to the corresponding author of the paper in question, and they very graciously answered at great length. If you have a question on a paper, some other people may well have similar questions, and discussing them on an appropriate StackExchange site makes the clarifications available for more people than just having an email exchange.

This comment is not worth an answer but you should realize that some researchers (especially in a bit more niche topics) are thrilled when someone gets in touch about their work.

@WoJ I’d second this - I personally get very happy when someone reads something I wrote, makes me feel like it wasn’t a total waste of time after all :)

I respond to all the emails whoever has questions about my published peer-reviewed manuscript

Email anyone at anytime for any legal reason. This is a free country.

It's always entirely appropriate to email the corresponding author of a paper to ask about the details of that paper (indeed, that's what the role of 'corresponding author' is all about). The following (at a minimum) don't affect that answer, and don't especially need to be mentioned (unless you want to mention them): (i) whether you're in academia, (ii) whether you hold a research degree, and (iii) whether you're autistic. Conversely, you might want to mention that you have a special interest in their research subject, if you genuinely do - people tend to enjoy talking to kindred spirits :)
As another answer implies, the tone of the message you send them may affect your chances of getting the desired response. A reasonable formula might be:

Hi <>,
I'm <>, and I have a particular interest in <> because <> (keep it brief). I recently read your paper on <>, which I found really interesting because <> (imply that you actually put in the effort to read it in detail, and so you're not asking things that could have been trivially answered by reading it). However, there were a couple of things I didn't quite get from the paper, and I wondered if I could run them by you if you have time please?
<Question 1>
<Question 2>
(not too many questions in a first email)
Many thanks!
<>

Basically, keep it brief, friendly and non-onerous for them, and you're more likely to get an answer.

Nice answer. This may be culture-dependent, but starting with "Sorry to trouble you", seems a bit odd and unnecessary to me.

Since academics get a lot of spam, you want to phrase the email in a way, that does not come off as written by a bot. This means including some details of the paper written in your own words, rather than just copying something (worst of all: the title!) directly from the paper

@And Yes absolutely!

@GoodDeeds It’s possibly a bit cultural (I’m from the UK). Also possibly a bit my personal style - maybe I should desist :)

I'm with @StuartGolodetz - Starting an email with "sorry to bother you" is pretty par for the course over here

Concerning personal information to include that would affect the answer: you might want to say something like "I have a bachelor's degree in [field] and attended grad school in [field] for a few years."  This lets the author know that you have some familiarity with the field and they can use more technical language & concepts than they might use with a member of the general public.

You left out the most important part from the formula, and the trickiest to get right – the subject line.

@typo I tend to base that on the subject of the paper in question - hard to say without the full context.

One more thing: don't email asking if you can ask questions. Just ask the questions (a few) in the first email!

I've written to authors to ask details about the diets they fed to mice in their experiments, from an entirely non-academic e-mail address and they responded very quickly.
Just don't ask them to submit a research paper to your journal! (as corresponding author that's the type of spam I always get).
From my most recent paper, altmetric score of 800, reported in 100 newspapers, I got around three real people writing to me and I was happy to respond properly to all of them.
Go for it.
If anything writing to researchers sharing your interest, could potentially be a first stop on rejoining your career working in their labs. Of course that's a very distant goal that relies on a lot of other steps. But definitely embrace your interests, and do reach out, researchers don't bite.

How appropriate is it for me to e-mail the corresponding author to ask for details ... and/or ... insights about a possible research gap?

Very appropriate. Just don't write them in a presumptive or accusative tone, and be respectful. Now, you mentioned autism, which sometimes makes it difficult to adhere to the finer points of social convention; so, if this is the case for you, perhaps you should ask someone to give your email a once-over to make sure you're not being unintentionally offensive somehow. Or, indeed...

Should I mention that I am autistic

... possibly do that. But only if it's important for them to be aware of your autism when answering your question. Otherwise, who cares what you are?

with a special interest in their research subject?

If you're not an academic and are writing these authors, then you obviously have such a special interest. But you should probably write what your interest is, i.e. whether you or people you know are suffering from some medical condition the book discusses; whether you are considering about a diagnostic, therapeutic or palliative method; or whether you just find it interesting, period.
On the other hand - don't write an essay. Be relatively brief and to the point, or split off a long description-of-motivation to an appendix after the request proper.

It is fine to do so. I recommend that, if possible, you have some academic introduce you to the author. This might be a former professor, for example. It is harder to ignore a mail from another academic than from an otherwise unknown person.
But, for first contact, write a short mail, introducing yourself (briefly) and asking if they would be willing to answer some questions in the future.
Your mail might look quite a lot like your post here.
But, don't flood them in a first contact. Many such mails are simply discarded. If you start out slowly you'll probably have a better chance of success.

Are you recommending to send an email without asking the questions about the paper, and instead, just asking if it's okay to ask?

Not exactly. I'm suggesting that you don't flood them with questions and comments in a first email. You might also mention what you bring to the task.

This seems unnecessarily cautious.

@Carl-FredrikNybergBrodda, it is intentionally cautious. Better that than having a long mail trashed. A long term conversation is probably more valuable than a one shot in any case.

@Buffy It is possible to write a short email that's not as overly cautious as your answer (see e.g. the other answer). Honestly, I'd find an email like that a lot more attractive than one where someone is asking me permission to ask a question (which is already paradoxical).