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Professor creates assignment making students advocate for a bill being presented to Congress. Is this legal?
I attend a public university in Kentucky (USA). My professor has assigned an advocacy assignment that requires students to write three letters of support for a certain House bill that will soon be voted on (H.R. 592 / S. 109).

The professor has given us all a template where we get to "customize" one paragraph with our own supporting statement. The letters must have our name electronically and physically signed. This bill would alter our profession and most of our college is in support of it, including the professors
The letters must be positive and supporting of the bill. The letters must be turned in to the professor for proofreading, then will be sent by the professor to our home county/area representatives.
The template letter repetitively thanks the representative for sponsoring the bill and provides background info as to why the representative should vote in favor of it.

I have emailed the professor, the dean of academic affairs and the dean of the college. The dean of academic affairs responded with basically "not her issue". (Although our student handbook specifically states she's next in line after a professor with any concern.) The dean of the college has not responded. And the professor announced to our class that the assignment is still due tomorrow at noon. Later, I requested to meet with him but his requested meeting time is not until after the assignment is due.
I actually have a neutral stance on this bill. My concern is that a professor is using his position and course to force students to take his personal stance on a bill that will have a major change in healthcare, specifically pharmacy practice. My main concern is that even if the professor doesn't send my letters, he will all of my classmates that may not have expressed their concern. (That's 140 students with 3 letters each = 420 letters sent)
Can a professor do this? Is this legal? Or a violation of students' First amendment?
I turned in my assignment with the preamble edit as recommended by some and met with the professor at his request. His response was that I would receive full credit for my assignment, he was unaware of this issue previously, the other course director and himself have not looked into this issue, he is retiring in March, and he has no regard to continue the discussion besides our conversation in his office. He then proceeded to tell me his personal life stories and asked questions about my history (i.e. where are you from? What do your parents do? What do you want to do in life? etc.)
There is no resolution at this point and he does not seem concerned. He has not edited the assignment (as my initial request to him was to make the assignment not part of his final course grade due to the circumstances of the assignment) and all other students were still required to do the assignment (3 endorsed letters, addressed, and stamped, in support of the particular bill) and turn them in to class teaching assistants to review and mail.
I have also researched university policies on such matters and he is in violation of University policy as well as violating students' academic freedoms. I notified him of this during the meeting and he had no response other than "well you've done your research, I have not."
This professor is in his mid-70s, very traditional, and is retiring in March (2 months) as I stated previously. I believe he doesn't want to deal with this issue and has no desire to take the time to resolve it. Do I contact him again? The assignment still stands and has not been altered. Students were forced to endorse political activity of a Professor or be reprimanded by a failing grade.
What do I do now?

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Even in the US there must be some kind of regulation of pharmacy, and some kind of body responsible for licensing pharmacists and the profession more generally? The University will fear the profession's governing body much more than an irate student, even one with a newspaper campaign. Drop that into your conversations with them. ... Let the university worry about getting a fail grade themselves: it focuses the mind.

Sounds like a job for the ACLU?

“I believe he doesn't want to deal with this issue and has no desire to take the time to resolve it.“ this answers that “Do I contact him again?“ - now your either let it be or take it to someone who does care.

Contact www.thefire.org and let them know this is happening.  They are a foundation that deals with student rights in education, including freedom of conscience.  They are staffed with lawyers that have an intimate knowledge of this field of law, and they take on many cases for free.  Regardless of whther this individual professor is retiring, the university itself should be held to account for the actions of its staff.

The meeting with the professor sounds like he's realised he can't get away with it with you but he can still get away with it with everyone else. Maybe try to raise awareness with other students or with people higher up.

You might consider posting this in "Legal".

This is not an assignment. The instructor has dragooned you into his political activism.

It seems to me this could be a very good assignment. The post does not say what the course is about. If this is a math course then the prof is totally out of line. However, if this is a course in how to become a lobbyist then I think it is a fine assignment.

While it is certainly ethically and morally questionable - do consider how much you are willing to take this battle as a representative of justice or students or whatever.
You can avoid conflicting your own principles, if you write a heading/preamble,

Please note, this is an assignment essay (prof Y, course X, University Z) and does NOT reflect my personal standpoint regarding the legislation (H.R. 592 / S. 109). This is the assignment of X.Y, the essay will be signed as "Donald Duck" to avoid any issues. (your signature here)

And then write a flaming support for the legislation. Sign with Donald Duck. Sign your own name in the preamble.
The professor has already made a serious error. He is liable to take a lot of flak - if the right story comes along. If this recieves a failing grade, or anything less than an A+, then go public - and say you recieved unfair grading due to having a political view that differs from the professor. This is a story that is easily sold, and will ride the wave of offendedness that seems to be on the rise these days.
He really cannot grade you punitively, or something that can be percieved as punitively - he must give you a better grade than what you deserve.
Update: You ask for advice what to do next. It seems it was a mistake on your professors part. Assume no malice. Let it be.

Perhaps "does NOT reflect ..." could be "does not necessarily reflect ..." -- you seem to have inferred that OP opposed the legislation but that doesn't seem to be the case and is in any event not the issue.

This method of signing will get you failed anyway for not following the assignment. Now you have a train-wreck you're not proud of AND a failing score. I wouldn't go this route.

@Mast which route would you go?

@DanRomik I'd flat out reject the assignment, but that's hardly solid advice. I don't see much wrong with the answer you provided either.

This is indeed solid advice in case you don't want to confront said Professor, so +1, but I'd still try to get some students to confront him/her.

@Mast signing it as a legal document would mean you legally agree to the opinion. One cannot legally or ethically require you to do that. If the professor is that unreasonable to see the reasoning behind the student doing that for their own moral confidence then the professor is either needlessly being pedantic or purposely trying to solicit fake support letters.

@Mast I'd say there's a big difference between not doing the actual writing part of the assignment and refusing to sign at the end. One of them can be assumed to be part of the actual course, the other clearly can't.

I feel it is important to note, and have not seen anybody else suggest this: When possible, communicate only in writing, or email, and document everything.  Make a special folder to keep track of communications so they won't get lost.  This is crucial if you want to prevent or negate any adverse repercussions.  Your deans are not doing their jobs, and I strongly suggest you look into who to speak to above them.  "Not my issue" is blatant disregard, and not an appropriate stance. You want a paper trail. Your professor is also telling you it's too late, he has done his damage, and does not care.

I like this answer, but disagree with your update "It seems it was a mistake on your professors part. Assume no malice." The assignment seems quite full of malice. Its a glorified form of extortion and potentially forces people to act contrary to their own beliefs. For those unopinionated on the subject, it potentially indoctrinates them into a position. Seems quite ill intentioned if you ask me. Definitely unethical and immoral. Even if the student takes your advice, they now have a target on their back from an unethical, potentially vindictive professor. Not good.

@James The professor is retiring, and if he just lets it be at where it is, I doubt there is any ill will in return. After all, it has had no consequence thus far for either part. Also, while it is easy for you and me to advice taking up the banner of a crusader against injustice, in reality the easier and more productive path is to let the matter drop and just get back on track with the original plan. Save the zeal for changing the world until it actually matters. This issue has been resolved already, why keep beating a dead horse?

IANAL: I hope Disney corp. will not have any objection about Donald Duck signing that letter! :-)

@StianYttervik, I see your point. I only disagreed with the quote I gave. Your answer is the most pragmatic course of action. One must pick their battles. It's just unfortunate the assignment and compulsion to support the position was very poorly thought out and executed.

This answer seems very unethical. You're essentially just blackmailing the professor to get a better grade. If the student is willing to go far enough to lie and pretend to be offended, why not just confront the professor right away?

@JiK There are several things wrong in your comment. Firstly, the concept of blackmail necessitates knowing a secret you leverage for advantage. There is no secret, this is all public in the first place, there is no information to reveal, it cannot be blackmail. Furthermore, the answer simply states a method for avoiding getting the short straw by using the leverage already known to all relevant parties. As written in the answer, doing it like this had the desired effect, with minimal "casualities".

@StianYttervik How was the primary problem, the professor coercing students to do activism for his political cause, "resolved"?

@StianYttervik The question specifically says: "My concern is that a professor is using his position and course to force students to take his personal stance on a bill that will have a major change in healthcare... My main concern is that even if the professor doesn't send my letters, he will all of my classmates that may not have expressed their concern." The OP writing a preamble in his letter and "letting it be", as you've suggested, doesn't solve this problem.

Can a professor do this? Is this legal? Or a violation of students' First amendment?

You are 100% correct to be concerned. No, the professor most certainly cannot do such a thing; his behavior is deeply unethical and a blatant abuse of his authority. I am not a lawyer and can't comment about legality, but for a professor to coerce students to express political opinions they may not hold would certainly violate longstanding traditions of academic freedom and freedom of speech. Honestly, while the behavior may well be illegal, it is in any case bad enough that in my opinion you have more than enough ammunition to fight it even without resorting to legal arguments, so I don't think legality even necessarily matters that much.
As for how to respond, I think the emails you sent to the deans are a good start. Basically you need to alert some sensible people at your school (I am sure there are some) to what's going on and get their help with stopping the professor from sending out the fraudulent letters -- these could be student union representatives, the department chair, an ombudsperson, or all of the above. You can even consider contacting some local journalists and/or state legislators, although I would advise keeping things within the campus for starters.
In the meantime, while you are waiting for help to arrive, I would advise you to do the letter-writing assignment as you were asked and submit it by the deadline, but following the guidelines in my answer to this question regarding how to prevent the opinions you are being forced to express from being attributed to you against your will - that is, do not sign the letter, and preface it with a disclaimer in big bold letters and a verbatim quote of the assignment. The point of this is that the professor can reasonably ask you to write a letter where you advocate beliefs you may disagree with if he sincerely believes that that promotes the learning objectives of the course he is teaching, so it would be prudent of you to complete that part of the assignment in order to not get a failing grade and maintain the high moral ground in any battles that lie ahead; however, I do not believe that he has the authority to force you to pretend to endorse the letter's content. It would also be a good idea to seek legal advice, for example on law.se and/or by talking to an actual lawyer. Good luck!
————
Edit, added a bit later: It’s fascinating to me that this is taking place in the context of a course called Leadership in Pharmacy. It seems to me that by fighting this injustice you are showing a much greater understanding of what leadership is (and will likely learn much more valuable lessons about leadership) than either the professor or those among your fellow classmates who will follow the professor’s instructions without questioning them. Please allow me to congratulate you on your good sense and initiative. In my book you have already earned an A+.
————-
Also, as others have said in the comments, do come back and add an update to your question later to report on how the situation resolved itself. Further edit, added in response to OP’s update of the question: Since it looks like you won’t be getting the cooperation of the professor, I suggest continuing to send emails to draw attention to the situation. The key is to recruit allies who will be in a position to get the professor to see how unacceptable his behavior is. Some specific ideas I can think of are:

Write an email to the department chair, dean and the university general counsel in which you describe the behavior, explain why you believe it violates university policy (and why it’s illegal if you think you can substantiate such a claim). Describe your conversation with the professor and its unsatisfactory outcome, and ask for their intervention. Consider adding a threat, either explicit or veiled, that you will contact the media if no action is taken.
Alternatively and/or at the same time, try to find some classmates who are upset about what’s happening. If a good number of students band together and begin to voice loud dissatisfaction in emails to the department and university administration and/or social media, the university will be compelled to act. That will also reduce the risk that you will be singled out for retaliation.
Use social media. A single tweet or short blog post may be all it takes to attract some serious public and media attention to the story.
Get a lawyer. Official-looking letters bearing a signature ending with “Esq.” are a hell of a lot more scary to university officials than an email from an undergraduate and will command immediate respect.

As before, I think it’s advisable to try resolving the situation quietly without attracting attention from outside the campus if possible, since that carries the least risk to you of retaliation or somehow being dragged into a serious public scandal that you have no wish to be a part of. However, it seems that you are fast approaching a point where you have exhausted your options within the campus and it may well be beneficial to seek more public attention, so going public should be an option to consider seriously, while keeping in mind that that means a higher level of commitment and risk of disruption to your life.
One final piece of advice: in all your communications with university officials and/or the media, keep your tone neutral and factual. Describe facts (“this is a violation of university policy XYZ”), not opinions (“this is an outrage”, “I am deeply offended”, “the professor is behaving unethically”, etc), and let people draw their own conclusions. The facts are (very, very) strongly on your side here, and are your greatest weapon.

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"It seems to me that by fighting this injustice you are showing a much greater understanding of what leadership is (and will likely learn much more valuable lessons about leadership) than either the professor or those among your fellow classmates who will follow the professor’s instructions without questioning them" I wonder whether this assignment is a double-bluff and the professor is actually hoping for such a response :)

@LightnessRacesinOrbit If that's the case it's not a very good one because it will only work for people who don't agree with the bill (or wish to remain neutral to it). Even if there were a perfect context* in which all students would disagree with what they're being asked to write about, it could still possibly be against the rules/legislation. (* I expect you'd find at least one student out of some arbitrarily high number who secretly thinks (for example) "slavery is a good thing" or "hitler was a nice person" .)

@Pharap Not really. Were I in that situation, I like to think I'd take issue with it whether or not I happened to agree with the position I was being made to support.

If this is a state university in the USA, this is almost certainly a serious violation of the First Amendment and may warrant involving the ACLU or similar. If it's a private institution that receives federal funds (including for financial aid), it may also be a major big deal.

The professor has given us all a template where we get to "customize" one paragraph with our own supporting statement.

If your original contribution is only a small portion of the letter, that seriously compromises the argument that this is of academic value.

The letters must have our name electronically and physically signed.

This has no academic value.
On the legal side:

Amend KRS 158.183 to permit students to voluntarily express religious or political viewpoints in school assignments free from discrimination
  http://www.lrc.ky.gov/record/17RS/SB17.htm

You can also make an argument that a reasonable person would expect a university to give grades based on academic merit, not political activism, and this is thus a breach of contract. You could look through your university's handbook and other documents to see whether there's anything that touches on this.
Furthermore, this could be viewed as bribery, extortion, and/or embezzlement: your professor is soliciting personal/non-academic services in exchange for grades (bribery), threatening you if you don't comply (extortion), and using employer resources to advance personal interests (embezzlement).

Agreed. The professor is absolutely out of his mind.

I don't know about the legality.  If you don't get an answer on that here, you could delete your question and ask it at Law.SE.
I do have a practical suggestion regarding the academic aspect of your dilemma, though.
I read that "The Pharmacy and Medically Underserved Areas Enhancement Act (H.R. 592/ S. 109) is bipartisan legislation that will amend section 1861 (s) (2) of the Social Security Act to include pharmacists on the list of recognized healthcare providers."  And that this is analogous to the transition nurse-practitioners underwent at some point to be able to treat and prescribe, similar to what doctors do.  Apparently this bill is a bipartisan effort.
I'm confused -- are you against this bill?  Or are you just bothered by the instructor requiring that students take a certain stance?
But either way, I think the solution to your dilemma, in the immediate term, is to write a short, persuasive essay explaining your position, and hand it in without the envelope.
You can certainly continue working your way up the ladder expressing your concern about the nature of the assignment (regardless of the legality, you can in either case express a concern).  But I don't see how you can be certain of getting your point of view heard by the higher-ups before the due date.

Edit: Thanks to the reference to FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) provided in a comment by @rath, I found a similar case from Citrus College for you.  An excerpt from FIRE's description of the case:

A Citrus College professor had compelled undergraduate students to write anti-war letters to President George W. Bush, penalizing the grades of students who dissented or refused to send the letters. After FIRE intervened, the Citrus College administration repudiated this outrage and resolved all issues in favor of freedom of conscience.

FIRE has resources that could be helpful for you, including an outline of the "fundamental right of freedom of conscience and the threats to this right on college campuses."  An excerpt from the intro:

Freedom of conscience is the right to arrive at one’s private beliefs without coercion from those in power. Differences of opinion are the natural byproducts of a vibrant, free society. Unfortunately, at some of our nation’s colleges and universities, students are expected to share a single viewpoint on hotly debated—and often highly personal—issues. The two primary ways freedom of conscience is threatened on college campuses are through viewpoint discrimination and thought reform.
Thought Reform: Listening to different opinions and being exposed to unique perspectives, especially those with which you don’t agree, is a fundamental aspect of the college experience. Colleges and universities overstep their role as educational institutions when they demand adherence to certain values and subject students to disciplinary charges or mandatory counseling for failing to demonstrate a commitment to those values.

It can be helpful to look up your institution's mission and policy documents, including the code of conduct, and quote from them, because when administrators reading your letter recognize their own rhetoric, it will be easier for them to read with a mindset that's favorable to the letter writer.
On the other hand, if you can't find a clear institutional commitment to freedom of conscience on campus, that's a problem, worth pointing out.
Hopefully your instructor will realize that he didn't think things through enough, and will take the opportunity to open up a class discussion of this issue.

I actually have a neutral stance for this bill. My concern is that a professor is using his position and course to force students to take his personal stance on a bill that will have a major change in healthcare, specifically pharmacy practice. Thanks for your advice!

The issue is not the bill. The issue is one of coerced speech. I support legislation X; if you make it illegal for me to support any other legislation contrary to X, we'll have a problem. This is what is being discussed here. Engaging in debate about the merits of the bill takes attention away from the actual problem.

what the bill is doesn't matter. The assignment is a disgrace if as described here.

@kbc - Thanks for clarifying.  Also, thanks to rath for pointing me to the FIRE website.

I think this merits a much stronger response than handing in an essay that advocates OP's position rather than that of the professor. This is a quite scandalous abuse of power, for which the professor should be at least reprimanded, or even sacked if it's a repeat offence. So the first thing should be to file a complaint with whomever is the prof's superior (probably the dean) and to make the issue public.

@henning - In my experience advocating for my special needs son (Tourette Syndrome), I have found that rarely does a situation require emergency action; and even it if does, emergency action is not necessarily effective.  Also, I've found that keeping a cool head is, 99% of the time, the single most important determiner of success.  I did provide guidance about how to advocate within his/her institution around this issue.

@aparente001 I can't argue against keeping a cool head. Perhaps take some time to consider the issue and be cool... and then get all political (or not, as the case may be).

@rath "You'll get a bad grade if you don't support X" is not the same as "not supporting X is illegal."  I agree that this is coerced speech and a big problem, but classroom rules do not carry the weight of law.

@Timbo - Let me clarify.  If OP's grade suffers due to not submitting the homework according to the political specs, that's discrimination -- illegal in the US since OP is at a public university.

Cautionary note on FIRE's ideology. Re: "Colleges and universities overstep their role as educational institutions when they demand adherence to certain values..." is without justification, and directly in conflict with widespread, long-standing practices. Consider religious schools, for one case. Also consider accreditation standards for public schools. E.g.: Middle States Standard #12 General Education: "incorporates essential knowledge, cognitive abilities, and an
understanding of values and ethics" http://www.msche.org/publications/CHX-2011-WEB.pdf

@DanielR.Collins - Tangentially interesting -- and thanks -- but one doesn't have to agree with their ideology to find some of their materials useful.

@DanielR.Collins A religious institution lets everyone know going in that there are certain values they must agree with in order to be admitted.  This institution does not seem to have advertised anything of the sort, so imposing such a requirement after the fact unilaterally seems to breach the contract. (IANAL)

@aparente001: Agreed; the professor is doing something illegal. The comment I was responding to claimed that the students' actions were being made illegal.

@Timbo - Thanks for explaining.  I see what happened now.

FIRE is a right-wing group so I doubt you'll get help from them as this bill is a bipartisan effort.

@RobRose - As I commented above to Daniel, one doesn't have to agree with their ideology to find some of their materials useful.

Somebody else mentioned "you can even consider contacting some local journalists and/or state legislators, although I would advise keeping things within the campus for starters."
I'd highly recommend raising as much public fuss as you can - call the local news stations and so on. Oftentimes things kept within the campus never leave the campus, and never get fixed.

Why escalate to this degree so early in the activism process?

Because nothing is going to happen without escalation.

While this what I would do, it is certainly possible the professor would retaliate by finding (inventing) some other plausible reasons for a bad grade.

It is possible that the professor could retaliate, but in the grand scheme of things, one bad grade shouldn't keep you from getting a degree.
If I were in that situation, I would be perfectly OK with retaking that class with a different professor.
Regarding escalation: Universities as a whole do not have a great track record for doing the right thing, take a look at recent cover-ups for abuse by professors, fraternities, and so on. As far as I'm concerned, academia can't be trusted with conducting internal investigations.

A local journalist can keep you confidential as a source. Just don't use the student paper, if someone is a student, they can be pressured to reveal their source by the school. And/or you can contact the relevant legislators anonymously, just use a dummy email address account in case they have follow-up questions. Just be careful, I wouldn't trust legislators to keep your identity secret. If I were you, I would investigate the bill more closely. If that bill is really a bad one, or if the Professor was being paid to lobby this bill by a company, I would be going on a warpath.

Actually, the bill doesn't seem that bad. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/592 If your own State legislator is from Kentucky, he/she is not going to listen to you. Most of Kentucky is a Medically Underserved Area. Plus, 20% of your residents are enrolled in Medicare (as opposed to 17% which is the National average). For those of you outside the US, Medicare is health care for old retired people.

No outside escalation before clarification. Until submission deadline, it is still thinkable that the assignment is a trick question to check how many students would silently accept the task (either because they support the bill anyway or for fear of bad grades). Anybody not in favour of the bill should obviously deny submitting such a letter, anyone in support of the bill should still reject the assignment in solidarity with other people's possibly different opinion. So maybe the professor's real goal is to find out how many would dare to resist (to repeat, this is at least thinkable).

It doesn't matter if the bill is bad or not. What matters is that the professor is using a position of power to force students to adopt his political position.

The only potential downside to dragging the papers in is that future employers might see it and view the OP as a troublemaker.

Cherrypicking statements from the scenario to make sure I've got it right:

My professor has assigned an advocacy assignment that requires students to write three letters of support for a certain House bill that will soon be voted on (H.R. 592 / S. 109).
The letters must have our name electronically and physically signed.
The letters must be positive and supporting of the bill. The letters must be turned in to the professor for proofreading, then will be sent by the professor to our home county/area representatives.
It repetitively thanks the representative for sponsoring the bill and provides background info as to why the representative should vote in favor of it.

Now your question:

Is this legal?

Uhm, no?
How is this anything other than coercion? This is absurd.
I'm very sorry to hear that your Dean doesn't want to know, and unfortunately do not have any useful suggestions for you. But there is no way in my mind that this assignment can be anything other than laughably invalid.

do you have evidence it is not "legal" in Kentucky?

@PatrickT: IANAL but some things in life really are just blatantly self-evident everywhere Patrick.

I'd hand it in, but make it very clear on the assignment, and under separate email cover, that you certainly do not authorize any release of your document outside the school, and that you're uncomfortable with the premise of the assignment.  Cc the Dean of students.
By way of justification, the assignment itself, asking you to write a letter of support for pending legislation, is quite reasonable, and has nothing to do with your personal level of support of the bill.  Sending it to your Representative does not seem reasonable, wise, consistant with educational goals.  The prof cannot and should not force you to petition your government.  He or she can make you write an assignment.

I Cc'd the dean of students and academic affairs originally and received no response from the dean of students and the response from dean of academic affairs was basically "I'm too busy, this isn't my problem".

Makes no difference.  This will just about guarantee that nothing happens in your name.  If you want to elevate,  cc the provost, and include the non response from the Dean of students.  This profs assignment is problematic, and its hard to believe that the provost wouldn't want to deescalate.

How do you include a non response?

Among other things, the student can most likely invoke copyright in preventing dissemination of the essay.  The professor and university can rely on Fair Use exemptions from copyright for many of their activities, but sending the letter to a politician's office would not fall under Fair Use.

@cfr -- you send the original email in the new email, along with the cc list showing who saw the message.  If the provost sees the actions of the prof as problematic, and new the dean had a chance to intervene and didn't, I'm sure the provost would mention it to the dean.

While potentially less serious, this strikes me as very similar to the Lindsay Shepard case (potentially with the partisan roles reversed, but I have not read the details of the bill).
Do what she did - go public if it goes bad - if they fail you. I do not know the laws in your locale; but if they summon you to a meeting (and it is legal to do so) record the conversation.
Compelled speech is not, and should not, be acceptable anywhere, especially not at a University, so fight this. University should provide a space conducive to forming and sharing your own opinions, not being forced into a viewpoint.

While I am not a lawyer, this sounds like you are being asked to make a public statement under duress.  If you write a separate letter (under your real name), notarize it, and send it to your representative, he may have no choice but to take your complaint seriously.  That is, of course, if your representative does not support this bill.
If he does support it, find a representative who opposes it and send your letter to them.
If you want to make sure it does not get lost in the noise, you can also call their office and explain that you are forced to write the letter and stress that it will be edited after you sign it.  Mention that you will not have a chance to withdraw the letter after the edits.  If this is illegal, the representative who opposes the bill should jump at the chance to expose any support for the bill that is being drummed up illegally.  That is the benefit of a multi-party system. The opposing interests keep each other honest.

Great answer, but Kentucky is not a "multi-party system," so this issue would have to go federal. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/KY

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Is it okay to cite a Wikipedia page address as a definition of a concept used in my thesis?
I'm using a concept in part of my thesis that is not very well-known, so it's good to give an explanation before going through the rest of the thesis. I'm wondering if I can simply give a Wikipedia page reference for it, so that readers who are not familiar with it can have a look at the given page. For example, let's say I'm using some stuff about Quaternions, can I just add a footnote to the page \footnote{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternion} instead of repeating the same material in my thesis?

I think this is a duplicate, see other related questions: http://academia.stackexchange.com/search?q=cite+wikipedia+is%3Aquestion

@Ehsan What do you feel is not addressed by the recommendations in the linked post?  Can you please clarify your concern?

source: Stack Exchange

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Commercial publication of your PhD thesis
I'm wondering what it is like to publish a PhD thesis commercially?
Has anyone done that before? What would the contract be with the publisher regarding sales profits?

It is recommended to not give your PhD thesis to publishers, especially who contact you by email (or spamming is a more convenient word for that.) First of all, by publishing like this your thesis, in most cases, you consent to give all rights of your thesis to them, which would be a problem in future if you want to publish some part of your thesis as a journal publication.

So then how can you publish it both online and hard copy?

There are countries (e.g. Germany) that require that you publish your thesis, and in those countries there are publishers that specialize in that. You'll loose money if you do that. You can be your own publisher. You'll loose money if you do that. If you don't want any journal publications to come out of it (for some disciplines that is acceptable for others it is a huge problem), then you can try to convince a serious publisher. Do no expect to be succesful: they need to make a profit to, and a thesis doesn't sell.

In the fields and countries I'm familiar with, online publication is handled by the local university library (they have a repository specifically for theses, which get a stable and citable URI). Hardcover publication (beyond the small number of required copies for the examiner, the local and the national library, and hapless family and friends, which are usually printed and bound at a local copy) via a publisher is mostly seen as a vanity project and even frowned upon (in particular if the agreement prevents making the thesis available online). It is still routinely done, though.

(cont'd) One exception is if the thesis is substantial enough to be picked up as a monograph by a respectable publisher, but this a) is very rare and b) requires significant additional work to bring it in the proper form. In principle, you could just 1. pick the right publisher, 2. find the managing editor for the right series, 3. send them your manuscript, 4. wait. Monographs even from respectable publishers rarely make the authors any money, though.

I have a friend from UCL who has published his PhD Thesis in Theoretical Physics at Springer, but the financial benefits were very small(~500$). However, it seems that a book published would gain more when you apply for grants.

The answer to this question is very field- and country-dependent.  In the sciences, a thesis is very rarely transformed into a book (except in certain locations, such as Germany), while in the humanities it is a relatively common end for high-quality theses.  To a first approximation, this is because science theses are often best "republished" or "prepublished" as a set of several peer-reviewed journal papers, whereas it is more common for a humanities work to be a single large monograph not suitable for such sub-publication.
There are a large number of pseudo-scam organizations which will contact you and offer to turn your thesis into a book.  Don't bother with them: they will merely waste your time and taint your reputation.
Instead, I would recommend beginning with a discussion with your advisor, who will know the common practices in your field, and may be able to help assess whether it is a good idea to publish your thesis as a book at all.  You may also contact a reputable university press, who can help assess your work and guide you through the process of transforming it.
No matter what, however, don't expect to make any significant amount of money from such a venture.

+1 for "No matter what, however, don't expect to make any significant amount of money from such a venture."

I think there's a decent amount hidden in the "relatively common end" bit of while in the humanities it is a relatively common end for high-quality theses. Almost always, this will entail substantially rewriting and adjusting for style. There may be exceptions.

@virmaior Absolutely: see the link I included.

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


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Order of authors for a tenure-track assistant professor in the USA: second author after Ph.D. student or last author?
I am a second-year Assistant Professor in an engineering department at a US university. I did my Ph.D. in a non-US university and post-docs in the USA. I have a two papers that my Ph.D. students are about to submit, with 5 and 7 authors respectively. A Ph.D. student of mine will be first author in each of those, since he contributed the most, no doubt whatsoever with this.
But what is best for me? I am definitely the person who contributed the most after my student. I had always assumed that I should be the second author. A colleague in Europe told me, however, "Are you crazy? You should be the last author of the list, which is the most prestigious spot after the first author! The main PI or person who helped most the student is always the last author in the list!" So now I am doubting my choice.
Where should my name be on the list, given that I am the main PI and I helped the most? I know it is surely not the main factor for tenure, but I'd like to do this in the most correct way.

The "most prestigious" position in a list of authors is field dependent. Sometimes first, sometimes last. Sometimes immaterial. You can use the acknowledgments section to detail contributions if needed.

Be distrustful of anybody who freely uses the word "always" when it comes to such things. Basically nothing is really agreed-upon outside of, sometimes tiny, regional and disciplinary bounds. The truth of the matter is that I have heard both versions (plus some other variations), and there is no way of using author ordering alone to communicate that you did most of the advising to an imaginary future reader with an undefined background.

That said, it also usually doesn't matter that much - people rarely care that much who did the "second-most" work on a paper. For your tenure case, the fact that your student is first author will mean that most people by default assume that you did most of the advising, unless there is strong indication to the contrary.

How did you  become assistant professor without knowing how the ordering of authors is usually handled in your field? Have you had a look at your own papers from when you were a grad student?

The answer for appropriate author order is very dependent on the culture of your (sub)field.  For example, if you are a computer engineer, you should probably be second author, while if you are a biological engineer, you should probably be last author.  Follow whatever you see others doing in the venues where you are submitting.
That said, these days it is often possible to make the contributions explicit so that there are no questions about contribution.  Many journals now request or require an "author contributions" section that attributes specific work to specific authors. Even if the venue that you are submitting to does not have such a requirement, you can still  add that information into the acknowledgements section.  Furthermore, the CRediT taxonomy provides a set of standard widely-recognized roles that are useful for describing such work.

Your colleague was right. Whatever your contributions or advice/information aimed at resolving a problem are important but all that thing was done by your student so you should be always at second position. Moreover, if there have another CO-PI in their research then their name would be the last.
The order should be

Student or researcher
PI
CO-PI

This is incorrect, see answer of jakebeal or comments for more correct info.

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


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Is the author obliged to answer all emailed questions regarding his or her paper after it had been published?
Is the author obliged to answer all emailed questions regarding the details of his or her paper after it had been published?

No.  You would be surprised how many automated inquiries i get.

What's the context? I should think it is in the interest of the author if people are interested in the work, and so, to answer relevant questions. I can only imagine a scenario where some unexperienced student "overasks" the author, i.e. wishes detailed explanations, in an almost supervision-like fashion. Personally, I try to answer if it's not a clear abuse of my time. Don't you want our paper to be read and understood? More information is required.

No.  Where did you get that idea?  Neither is a university professor obligated to answer all emailed questions he gets, even if he works at a publicly-funded university.   Microsoft is not even obligated to answer all emailed questions about Windows 10.

From a formal or legal perspective, there is no requirement that an author do anything: you can go full J.D. Salinger and vanish into a hole if you want.
From the perspective of scientific ethics and custom, however, an author is expected to share sufficient information in order to support their colleagues in understanding and building upon their work.  This does not mean they need to answer any and all questions, however, but only those that are a reasonable part of the process of scientific information exchange.
Among questions that a scientist should answer would be help with interpretation, methods, and replication (e.g., "I can't track down the reagents you used: can you please tell me where you got them?").  Just like on StackExchange sites, it is reasonable to expect the asker to show evidence that they have worked to understand on their own before asking.
Among questions that a scientist a not obligated to answer would be:

Requests for pre-publication information (e.g., "Can you please give me your next unpublished dataset so that I can try to scoop you?")
Requests for remedial education on a subject (e.g., "You wrote a paper about protein evolution, so if people evolved from monkeys why are there still monkeys?")
Requests for personal or otherwise scientifically irrelevant information (e.g., "Do you have a crush on any of your co-authors?")
Straight-up craziness (e.g., "Given your expertise in artificial intelligence, will you please help my trash-can robot learn to irrigate the Sahara Desert from Archie Bunker?" [this one is from personal experience])

Now, many scientists are generous with information and will still help with remedial questions, share pre-publication information with people they trust, etc.  I would consider many of these things a matter of ethics on a broader stage and of good citizenship, but not so much something that colleagues are likely to look down on you for not doing.


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What is the point of journals nowadays?
I'm not sure if this question is too broad or opinion-based, but I have been wondering about it for sometime.
In the old days when communication was not as abundant as is today, periodicals were a very effective means of communicating one's research and findings to interested people. Books and personal letters were also available, but were either not suitable for short communications or narrowly accessible. Thus, journals made sense at that time.
Today, however, especially with the widespread use of the internet, I find it hard to justify the existence of journals other than to preserve the status quo from the past. In fact, I can see several disadvantages such as:

Economic burden on institutions and individuals.
Unnecessary delay in publication due to processing and reviewing times.
Subjective editor/peer-review process with many decisions made based on personal and/or journal-specific reasons.

So my question is: are there any real advantages of having journals nowadays? Wouldn't it be better to adopt an open publication method (maybe similar to that here at SX) in which people can rank, cite, and vote on publications instead?

Would your suggestion be better... yes of course: IF it could work... - That was the aim (in a way) with OpenAccess and what has it become... yet another money making machine with (in some cases) highly problematic "standards"...  - Journals in the form today are really just the lesser evil in many ways...

What is the point of journals nowadays? Same as before: editorial rejection.

Arxiv is essentially doing what you are asking.

Arxiv is not doing it! If arxiv had a review/discussion and profiles with reputation system like SE does then the whole problem would be solved! I trust highly voted answer on maths SE and MO more than pretty much anything in most journals! More people looked at it, and had the chance to comment and discuss. I can't see any down side. So many reviewers do a weak job anyway, peer review doesn't really protect us from nonsense getting published I don't feel.

@Benjamin we should make a proposal in Area 51: ArxivOverflow

Have you seen this? https://gowers.wordpress.com/2015/09/10/discrete-analysis-an-arxiv-overlay-journal/

The primary reasons for the continuation of academic journals are correlaries to some of the things you've mentioned as negative.

Peer review. This a key driver for academic publishing in general. It provides a way to control the quality of published material, and an enforcement of accepted standards, and (for the author) feedback prior to publication.
Communication. Journals provide a means of communicating research to a targeted audience. Conventional subscription-based models do so for a fee, while the rapidly growing open-access model (which I highly commend) provides even broader and easier access for researchers, students, and others.

In short, journals serve to curate content to meet the needs of a particular audience, and thus they are unlikely to completely disappear in the near future.

But journals as they are today are not the only possible way ever for peer review and targeted communication of research. In fact, current journals are per se a standalone business model. People keep saying there should be someone who pays - well, pays $1350 for typesetting, peer review, and targeted communication of a 10-page article. Really?!

@Orion And also the guarantee of stable web hosting in perpetuity. (Or that's the journals' claim - it's up for debate how perpetuous that perpetuity ends up being, but it is not really an issue for big enough journals.)

@E.P., good point, but stable web hosting can be effectively done using public fund - e.g. PubMed Central, so no real need for commercial publishers.

@Orion One could argue that a per-journal standard for LaTeX (and a modest understanding of it) coupled with a well-refined online peer-review system for quality control (much like SE has) would be a good alternative to the process that is in place now for publishing. As a computer science student, I am of the strong belief that many archaic systems should be revitalized with software (look at the public housing industry; it's atrocious); I believe that this is one such system that could greatly benefit if done correctly. PS - stable hosting of 1 MB text documents: easy.

@Orion I don't see the answer defending business models, or claiming that journals are the only answer. But today, there is (as least in some disciplines) no alternative to the journal peer review process. (I'd be the first to say that printing stuff is no longer necessary, but well.)

@Raphael I didn't write nor mean that the above answer is defending business models or is claiming that journals are the only answer. I just added another strong(er) reason why today's for-profit and branded journals continue to exist. Also, to be clear, I'm urging that peer review can be effectively done outside the commercial model represented by most of today's journals (including most OA ones). See eLife.

@Orion Keep in mind that there are other ways for peer review to happen, at the moment they are away to ensure that everything gets at least a modicum of peer review. Most open peer review systems have a decidedly non-uniform (and non-anonymous) distribution of reviews.

@ChrisCirefice, "easy" if you mean a year or three, quite problematic for a hundred years or more.

@vonbrand Not only is it possible, it has been done by more than one entity. Take Google and Web Archive as simple examples. They archive the entire internet (almost literally). That includes academic publications that are available online (which I would say constitutes a good percentage of the total). So how would a dedicated service have any trouble only keeping academic publications archived? It wouldn't. Not even in the next thousand years with today's available hardware and software..

This is an incomplete answer. I think this is a very pertinent question I too have been considering for some time. I'm eager to read what other people have to say.
One of the reasons why authors seek publication in traditional journals, despite apparent nonsense such as paying an institutional subscription for access to your own work, is that funding agencies, institutions and authors ourselves rely too much on the ranking of a journal to assign a quality/relevance tag to scientific work. In practice, this means that to obtain reputation and credit for your work, secure future funding, etc. you have to publish in prestigious journals.
To give you an idea, Scandinavian countries have a ranking 1, 2, 3 that gives you points depending on where you publish. For instance Nature scores 3, and respectable journals with a lower impact factor, e.g. Physical Review E, score 1. This is regardless of whether the peer-review process was more or less rigorous in each journal.
I think the point of peer review is a non issue because it's voluntary and authors could organize ourselves to solve this in an open access non-for-profit setting.
So to sum up, I think journals are necessary only in the present context of how credit and reputation are assigned, and that both authors and institutions (in that order) will eventually realize and the paradigm of academic publishing will gradually be shifted.

I agree, but this is a self-created legacy. Researchers created journals to communicate, then journals were used to rank researchers!

@jak123 I guess this kind of feedback process is at the core of any culture, not only scientific culture. People initially start doing something for a reason until eventually the reason is forgotten and everybody just carries on and nobody really knows why.

How journals like Nature, Cell and Science are damaging science

You obviously have access to your own work regardless of the journal you publish in.

@Cape Code I was referring to my institution paying a suscription fee to have access to my work.

You do not self-archive? Does the library of your institution have a self-archival system?

@Cape Code Some journals impose embargoes or other restrictions on self archival and institutional archival.

Many journals have asked the same questions that you are asking, and are experimenting with different approaches to shifting the notion of "journal" to better fit our evolving world.
So far as I can see, the key persistent value that journals are serving is one of curation.  No matter what call the institutions or how we organize them, it will always be necessary for science to have some means of bringing important information to the fore, winnowing out problematic information, and preserving information over long periods of time.
In most fields, journals are the institutions that have historically served that purpose.  Some fields have already radically changed the way in which they interact with journals:

In computer science, high-importance peer-reviewed conferences typically remove the problems of long delay and restrictions on number of accepted papers, though they add their own problems, such as travel requirements and single-round review.
In mathematics, long circulation of pre-prints on arXiv removes long delay, monetary barriers, and restrictions on number of accepted papers, though it adds its own problems, such as lack of filtering and returning to a "default" word-of-mouth promotion.

Likewise, a number of journals are experimenting with alternate approaches designed to alleviate the problems from how journals are currently organized.  For example, PLOS ONE has been fairly successful without any restriction on topic or notability, and has a fairly reliable and decently fast time to publication.  Another interesting example is the "Frontiers" journals, which have an interactive review process which invites back-and-forth discussion between authors, reviewer, and editor, followed by publicly identifying the reviewers of accepted papers, which helps mitigate many of the issues of bias in peer review.  Neither of these is "periodical" either except in the loosest sense of the word: papers simply go up when they are ready, and then later might be post-facto grouped into collections.
Bottom line: I suspect that "journal" in the traditional sense is an endangered concept, but that the aspects of journals with ongoing value will continue to be promoted and preserved by the scientific community, and that some of them will still be called "journal" as well, no matter how different their model.

One function is in fact to provide a way to “rank, cite and vote” on publications. Journal publications show that you can publish in journals and are used to identify people who can. It might sound circular and not as valuable or noble as disseminating findings but, for better or worse, it's a very real function nonetheless and one that is not easy to replicate from scratch elsewhere.
Arguably, it's one of the functions of universities too (it's sometimes called “signalling”). Many students don't learn that much that is directly useful to their life or their career or could learn those things in other ways but earning a degree is a way to show you can in fact earn a degree. And people pay a lot of money for that kind of certification, it cannot be dismissed as a mere historical oddity or unwelcome side-effect without fundamentally misunderstanding what's really going on.
That's also why it's so difficult to switch to another model and why the “brand” and reputation of a journal is perhaps more valuable than anything else. It's now easy to put together, print and distribute a new periodical. Conversely, it would be easy to get rid of paper journals entirely. But there would still only be one Nature, one Science, etc.
And I know some scientists who are proud not only of having published a paper in Nature but of having made the cover (let that sink in for a minute: any pretence that this is about communicating the substance of the research or anything like that is gone, it's only about prestige and recognition)…
In fact, on a purely technical level, the transition to another paradigm has already mostly happened, we currently have a myriad of initiatives and platforms, open-access archives, open journal publishers like PLOS and even traditional journals are already mostly read and distributed online anyway. But online subscriptions to these journals are still very expensive and the system has not fully “opened up”, which shows that the medium isn't really the issue.

Well, what does the scientific community need in terms of publications?

Somebody who organises some sort of peer review. This does not necesarily have to happen in the currently common form, but some mechanism that avoids total nonsense and ensures quality is needed. This cannot be done (in my opinion) on basis of a voting and commenting system, as people would either not do it (and thus no peer review would happen) or abuse the system (which is not to say that no abuse of peer review is happening now, but this would be worse).
Somebody who publishes papers, be it online or in printed form.
Somebody who typesets papers or otherwise renders them in a digestable form. While many scientists may be able to do this themselves if provided with a proper LaTeX template or similar, they are still the minority, and at least I do not want to have to read papers set in Word or similar.

Now at least in my opinion, the above points are also the defining properties of a journal,¹ and some journals, e.g., PLoS One do nothing more. So unless you want to propagate a different definition of journal (in which case this question becomes one of definition), we cannot do without journals.
Note that I do not claim that there is nothing wrong with the current publication system – on the contrary: there are a lot of things that need radical improvement. But the mere existence of journals in general is not the problem and cannot really be avoided.

¹ and yes, this means that even conference proceedings, which are the dominant form of publication in computer science, are some variant of a journal

The mere existence of journals in general is not the problem. I agree. IMHO, the real problem is, in addition to resistance to change, that the serious disadvantages of the current dominant model(s) of publishing are widely unrecognised among scientific communities.

@Orion "widely unrecognized among scientific communities" Citation needed.  There's a LOT of debate in the scientific community about publishing.

@Orion don't mistake sound skepticism of 'new' publishing schemes with ignorance or 'resistance to change'.

@Orion You're vastly underestimating how hard it is to change very foundational traditions and culture. Without (and even with) compelling and immediate reasons, it's almost impossible to do so (quickly) in any non-trivial community.

@jakebeal Dose a LOT of debate mean something like > 5% of researchers fully understand the pros and cons of today's scientific publishing models, or are at least aware of the debate? I hope so.

@CapeCode Clearly I'm not mistaking sound skepticism of 'new' publishing schemes with ignorance or 'resistance to change. All models should be equally critically assessed. I'm pointing to the prevailing dogma that makes many researchers far less skeptical when it comes to the dominant commercial publishing models.

@RogerFan No. I'm not underestimating the difficulty of change of academic traditions. I even meant the opposite. I'm wondering how did you conclude that from my comments! ;)

@Orion Consider that it might not be a 'dogma', but a consequence that they are objectively better.

@CapeCode They may be objectively better (than what?), but anyway this is the alternative hypothesis that needs to be proved ;)

This is what I was going to post, but I wanted to add that it's not just typesetting, but also style. This has an important benefit such as preventing papers from sprawling into 20+ pages, for instance (whether paper length should be limited is a different matter).

@Superbest: If you refer to using an economic layout, then this is a defining feature of proper typesetting in my opinion.

@Wrzlprmft No, I refer to limiting the word count and number of figures.

In my field, optical engineering, formats and layouts are dictated by publishers, however no publisher performs the formatting. Authors are required and expected to do it for free, with OA fees still remaining at high cost ($1850 for 7-15 pages). The journals perform no editing services, no typesetting services. The editors work for free, the reviewers work for free, and our primary publisher, OSA, is a non-profit, so I don't understand where all the money is going...

@daaxix "Non-profits" still have costs, and there's nothing to preclude them from making money in one area to help fund others.

@Fomite, good points, but it still shouldn't be as high as it is in my opinion.

You're partly right, of course, that journals' prominence is a historical artefact.
But let's look at this some other way.  Would you want to learn mathematics from a bunch of tweets?  How about following developments in Ukraine by reading Facebook posts by people with very strong interests in having people think a certain way about the topic?
Well, no, that wouldn't be so great.  Sometimes you want to have information presented in a way that's easier to learn, where the source conveniently contains most of the background you need to know to understand the new material (once you know the basic prerequisites).  Sometimes you'd like to have at least some basic fact-checking.
And that's why you always would want something like a journal: a place where fully-crafted, peer-reviewed stories reporting on original research are published.
But many of the other features of journals are anachronistic now.  Do you want to know how to run a protocol?  You should have something more like GitHub for protocols (but better-indexed that GitHub) so you can search for ways to do something, then clone your own branch, modify, and update as you go.  Do you want to know the latest research?  Well, it should be there online right away, ideally, as soon as the person knows about it and manages to make it into a figure or something that they can share.  (Computers are awesome at tracking citation-like metrics; credit needn't be a problem.)
So I think that the role of journals in transmitting groundbreaking research, or in evaluating the worth of a scientist, ought eventually to be replaced by something faster and more accurate.  But that doesn't mean that they'll go away any more than it means that textbooks will go away now that we have Wikipedia.  It diminishes the role somewhat, but a unique and vital role remains.

The key function of journals nowadays is to certify quality of papers.
(Of course, this is a oversimplification and it is field-specific, but I think that this is essentially true, at least for mathematics.)
It is not at all easy to judge correctness of a paper just by looking. It is even harder to judge a paper's importance. On the other hand, if a paper has been published in a journal, it is guaranteed that at least someone read it and verified that it is correct. If the journal is a somewhat prestigious one, it proves the quality of the paper - it is innovative, important, or good in some other way.
Knowing if a result is correct is crucial when you want to apply it somewhere else. Being able to prove that your results are important is useful when applying for jobs, etc.
All this having been said, there is a spreading belief that journals do not provide enough utility to justify their continued existence in their present form - see for instance the Cost of Knowledge campaign.

My take on some of these questions, particularly as they regard public health and medicine in terms of journals:

They help support professional societies. Profits from society-level journals, if they indeed do turn a profit, allow professional societies to engage in other activities, from political advocacy to supporting students attending their conferences.
They provide typesetting and layout, as well as proof reading. While this is not true for all fields, generally speaking it is true in biomedicine and public health. To my mind, all but the most carefully done LaTeX templates are a poor substitute to actual page layout tools, and typesetting is something that is not necessarily an academic skill set.
They provide a means for manditory, potentially blinded review. Most alternate systems rely on optional post-publication review, whereas the conventional journal system ensures somebody saw it before it reached the press. This might seem like something of a low bar, but it's better than a paper that never attracts reviewers. Additionally, it's essentially impossible to make post-publication reviews anonymous. I'd suggest that the quality and level of criticism for identical papers published by a "Senior Luminary in the Field" and a "Female Graduate Student with a Foreign Sounding Name" will be markedly different. This is just as subjective as the existing peer-review system. For something like SX voting, you're also going to conflate two issues - popularity and quality.
You mention in the OP that there is an economic burden on institutions and individuals. Disaggregating the publishing process doesn't change that there will be costs associated with publishing and hosting papers.
Journals, through their editorial boards, provide a means of field-wide advocacy. I would, for example, suggest that the ICMJE Guidelines carry far more weight because of the associated journals.
Journals also provide essentially a curated collection of papers that meet a certain quality standard (whatever that standard may be) and are topical. I can read Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology every month and get a sense for what's going on in a particular field. And importantly, I can find papers there that I wouldn't necessarily have read if I was just searching through somewhere like arXiv. Journals provide a means to browse a field in addition to targeted searches of the literature.