text:
Is it considered cheating if I purchase an essay but then don't use it?
According to one of my friend's suggestion, I visited a website and was going to find some tutoring support, then I ended up hiring a person to write the essay.
However, I changed my mind and I did work on the essay by myself without reading the bought essay. I am going not to come back to the website again. So if I just hired the essay writer but am not using their work, am I called a cheater? If I pay for a writer am I already cheating, or only when I use their work?

As an aside: It might be a good idea to report this website to stop other people being tempted to cheat. Websites offering to write people's essays for them can only ever bring trouble.

@Pharap What do you mean by reporting? To whom? And what do you expect to come of of that?

Is it considered murder if I buy a gun and bullets but then don't kill anyone?

Why did you hire someone to write an essay in the first place?

@Alizter I follow my friend's suggestion

@AntoniNguyen Do you not think that merely considering it is a very big problem in the way you view your education?

Another spin on it, still involving "cheating".  If I start talking to a girl online and decide to meet her in a hotel room, but in the end I don't go, my wife is still going to feel like I cheated if she finds out.  Just the fact that I talked to the other girl and went so far as to schedule a meeting would be devastating.  So, to Alizter's point, you have mind-cheated - as my wife would put it.

but in fact, i submitted the my own essay, and i just wonder i have a wrong start but I stop in the right time.

Good decision to write it yourself. Having others do your work will make life easier in the short-term - but far, far more difficult in the long-term as you won't have the knowledge/skills/experiences to build upon (especially if this is all for the same class).

@djechlin I am confused -- I don't see any close vote on this question, and you don't seem to have the 3k reputation needed to cast one.

I voted to close as "Unclear what you're asking" because the OP did not explain whether he ever read the bought essay and used it when he wrote his own. Note that my close reason is different from what @djechlin says.

@scaaahu in a comment, the OP said he didn't even look at the bought essay. I'll edit it in the question.

@FedericoPoloni I think he just flagged it.

@Davidmh I retracted my close vote. Thanks for the editing.

Whether or not it actually constitutes cheating, it certainly has the potential to appear to be cheating.  If the instructor discovered that you purchased the essay, they might reasonably refuse to believe your claim that you never read it, based on their past experience with essay-buyers.  And why should they?  I strongly recommend not posting this question under your real name.

@DSKekaha It could well be attempted murder if you can be shown to have had someone specific in mind while buying them. In the US, that might count as a "substantial step" toward attempting a killing, which is enough to make an attempt if you document your intention.

@Tiercelet: Um, no. No one has ever been convicted for attempted murder for simply buying a weapon, regardless of what they were thinking when they bought it.

@DSKekaha The way things are going right now in the US - soon the act of simply purchasing a gun/ammo could land you in trouble ;P

The OP had a change of heart, people.  He did the right and best thing given that he bought the paper and given that nothing will change the past.  No one can at all times imagine (or be aware of) and prevent all negative consequences that might occur somewhere as a result of each of his/her actions, unless that person were to have a preternatural supra-caffeinated vigilance (and even so, the world would grind to a halt of thinking, fear, and inaction).  I wish the typical person here had an intuitive understanding of this.

Certainly, keep a copy of the essay you purchased, so that you can use it to demonstrate the multitude of ways in which you have not copied from it, if required.  But surely the purpose of writing an essay is to show that you've exerted your own mind in grappling with the subject?  Why would it not be encouraged to go and read a whole bunch of other essays as part of preparation for writing your own?  That would be entirely appropriate research in my universe (which is not an academic one, so don't trust me on it).

@DavidBullock Searching for, reading, and critically evaluating a bunch of related sources, and then doing the difficult work of applying what you've learned to the particular assignment, is appropriate. Commissioning an essay that exactly addresses your assignment, so that you don't have to do the work of finding research material and reinterpreting it in the context of your assignment, is not.

No, you didn't turn it in. Unless you decide to date the essay you purchases and you were already dating another person. Or if by essay, they meant esé , then you purchased a person and that is illegal and you cheated the system.

If your task is to write an essay and you let somebody do it for you, then you are cheating. If you copy somebody's work (even just a part of it) then you are cheating. If you try to let somebody's work pass as your own, then you are cheating.
You are saying that you are not using their work – I hope that means that you are not using their text (in total or parts of it), you have not just obfuscated the text and try to pass it as your own, or have not rewritten the essay in your own words (keeping the ideas and golden thread of the bought essay). If this is true, then (at least in my courses) you would not be a cheater. In all these cases you could replace the bought essay with the essay of a classmate and we would have a very similar question. The only difference is that you have paid money for it.

I did that essay 100% by my own, I just paid but NOT using ANY word in the bought essay

@AntoniNguyen Here it's important to distinguish between words and ideas. If you have just rewritten the whole essay using your own words but keeping the flow of arguments and ideas, then you are cheating. If however you have independently written the essay, then you are good to go.

About the Essay. I'm not even read the bought essay. My question is PAID for a writer is already cheating or i'm cheater only when i use thier work ?

If you have not read it, then you have done nothing wrong. Here, we would  would not consider this as cheating.

However, you should keep in mind that people may think it's evidence of cheating since if it was found out you'd hired someone then it would be hard for you to prove you didn't use it (depending on how similar the essays are).

i'm ready if they compare 2 essays (mine and the bought one).

@Antoni: You bought the essay but didn't read any of it?  If true, then you have clearly not cheated: an academic essay is not a controlled substance such that merely purchasing it can get you in trouble.  On the other hand that someone would buy an essay in this situation and not read it will sound rather unlikely to many (perhaps also to me...).  Given that what you claim you did is totally kosher but sounds a bit suspicious, assuming everything you said is true I would advise you to simply keep quiet about the entire situation.

@TimB That shouldn't be too hard to prove.  Present both essays.

@gerrit and it's likely there are similarities between them. How similar they are or are not is down to luck. What happens if they quote the same passages or take the same overall direction? In this case people will tend to assume you copied rather than it being a co-incidence since you have already shown an intent to cheat and only have your word that you did not go through with it.

@flo how are you distinguishing 'reading' from 'research'? How is this different from asking a friend or colleague their opinion?

The line gets pretty fuzzy if you read the illicit essay and then write your own - is it cheating if I pay someone to assist me in research, and they provide me with an outline of the things they've found? Maybe, maybe not. Some professors would likely consider it cheating regardless of circumstances. Some professors are OK with students working together on their homework, others would consider that cheating. Much as hard and fast rules are easy to define, they're hard to apply in every circumstance.

Is it cheating to ask somebody to help you? Is it cheating to ask your professor for a hint and then use it when doing the task? Is it cheating to pay your professor to give you a hint (well, not that he'd let you, but let's skip that)? Is it cheating to pay someone else to give you hints? Answers depends on many things. But you don't even need to answer. When the fact of your theoretical cheating comes into the game, usually it will not be you to decide whether it was allowed or not. I'm not sure if discussing it "in general" has any real value to you.

@Gusdor In this context reading is a part of research. Reading is necessary to get an overview of a field or to get the newest results. The same is true for talking to colleagues or friends. The research comes after that and tries to improve known results or find new interesting ideas. Again you can ask colleagues and friends for advise (just give credit where credit is due). The main difference is that for me doing research related to the word new while reading is related to the word known.

@Jason if it was cheating to write your own essay after reading the illicit one in order to better understand how to write an essay on the field, that would mean that in order to publish academically, one would have to cite every article one has ever read, even years ago and half-remembered as if in a dream - because reading articles, understanding their flow and style, etc. is a major way we learn how to write an article! Surely, there's a difference between "reading an essay in order to build or improve essay-writing skills" and "plagiarism".

@quetzalcoatl doesn't "pay someone else to give you hints" mean the same thing as "hire a private tutor"? That's not (usually) cheating.

@RobertColumbia - Whether or not you can make a case for it is irrelevant.  What matters is how your professor, and the administrative bureaucratic construct above them, will react if they found out. Buying a completed essay is considered poor academic practice, shady at best, if you don't use it to plagiarize that's all well and good but you've already compromised yourself with the first act. That may be unrecoverable. If you just want an essay form, you could have bought an essay on an unrelated topic, or gone to any of the journals available to your department. Tutors are accepted practice.

In the normal flow of using paid essay-writing service, the point at which the cheating actually occurs is when you try to pass off someone else's work as your own - in other words, when you submit the essay that wasn't written by you. So if you didn't do that, then it's not cheating.
Except... you may have used the essay that was written for you as inspiration for writing your own essay. If the conditions of the assignment say that you are not allowed to receive this sort of outside help, then it is cheating. Otherwise, it could be fine, but you would probably be ethically required to acknowledge the help you received from the essay-writer. If you fail to do so, that is academic fraud of some sort - it may not technically fall under the umbrella of "cheating" but I'd say it's still pretty bad, and will probably be dealt with similarly.
(So to summarize, I've identified three Bad Things to do: pass off someone else's work as your own, use someone else's work in violation of the terms of the assignment, or fail to acknowledge assistance you received.)
As a separate issue, consider that even though you didn't actually cheat, you gave money to a company that exists primarily to facilitate cheating. So perhaps you have indirectly supported other people's ability to cheat. It's up to you whether you're okay with that.

Take cheating on a test.  If you provide your answers for some other student to copy, have you cheated even if they refuse to use those answers?  If the professor catches you sharing them, so that no one gets a chance to copy them, do you think you'll be able to say "Well it wasn't cheating since no one used them?"

Chalk the spent money up to a mistake. They happen. Can't crucify him for that, and there's no undoing it.

@Alizter It is radically and completely different from that.

@Lawtonfogle: not that the criminal law is relevant except as a general framework for ethics, but at least in English-based common law if you are ready to commit a criminal act but are prevented by law enforcers, then you can be guilty of the inchoate offence of "attempt". If you change your mind and don't go through with it then you aren't (although you could perhaps be guilty of consipracy if you've agreed with someone else to commit the crime). So it's reasonable to refuse the excuse that you were caught in the act, but accept the excuse of deciding against the "crime" of cheating.

... naturally it's best from the POV of prosecution, to let someone carry through the act before stepping in, since then there's less to prove. But in the case of a student sharing answers you probably don't want to give them the opportunity to take others down with them. Easiest would probably be just to define in an academic conduct policy that offering answers to others is in itself an offence regardless of whether anyone takes them. But if you actively decide not to do that then actually yes I think you should accept "nobody used them" as a defence.

My general answer.
I would pipe in with the general consensus: usually, paying for an essay that you never use is not cheating. I feel like people who are saying "well, you funded the cheating industry" have a somewhat valid point: you probably don't have warrant to feel proud about what you did and might even feel bad about it. But the question of "cheating" is, "did this give you an unfair advantage over the other students," and in the usual case, that is "no."
However, please note that a university policy on cheating may forbid things which are not themselves cheating! The classic example is if, after you've taken a course, you write an essay for someone who is currently taking it: you might be kicked out for helping someone cheat even though you didn't cheat yourself. Your university's policy may also ban paying for essays even if you don't use them as a matter of course. So if we're not talking about "cheating" but "violating the policy on cheating" then we need to know the policy.
Now let's get clever.
To me this is actually a fun question insofar as we ask, "well, what about that word usually up there: you said it's not usually cheating, but how unusual can we make this?" In other words: are there situations where you can pay for an essay that you will never read or submit, and you still somehow use it to cheat? And the answer is yes.
As a vehicle to explore this, I would like to introduce you to Dr. Alicia Alice, who teaches at the University of Cheating (named for the city it is in, of course). Her course is in Advanced Floozels -- do not worry about this word, it is a nonsense word. Unbeknownst to her, lots of her students are rather amenable to cheating in principle.
Dr. Alice has a very strange policy for her Advanced Floozels course: since nobody can truly memorize everything there is to know about floozels, her final exam begins with one essay question: students must, in a 24 hour time period, research the given question and write an essay response. She wants to give them some ability to study for the exam by guiding their general research on floozels, so one week prior to revealing the question, she reveals 10 possible essay questions, one of which is going to be the chosen question. Let's also say that there are 30 students, with the top 10 getting a significant boost on their actual final exam and the bottom 10 getting a significant penalty.
Bob and the random testing insurance
Bob only finds a small niche of floozel knowledge interesting. When the study week begins, he only really likes one of the questions, so he buys the 9 remaining essays from people who have taken Advanced Floozels before, for each of the other questions, and then he spends a week studying only the one question that interests him. Bob is very lucky: Dr. Alice chooses this question for the exam, he writes a perfect essay with eight whole days' research behind it, and he rockets into the top bracket.
Bob has gained an unfair advantage over the other students even though he did not read or submit the 9 papers he paid for.
Carol's curvy screw-up
Carol and Dennis are also taking Advanced Floozels and Dennis wants to spend the test day goofing off, even though he is a great student. He offers in advance to pay Carol, another good student, for her essay, so that he can rewrite it in his own words and try to pass off his essay as independent work. Initially, Carol accepts his money and agrees. However, when the essay question is revealed, she chickens out and wants to return the money. Unfortunately, Dennis is out whitewater rafting and she is unable to reach him by phone or text to retroactively decline the offer. She therefore instead approaches her friend Ellie, who now does some floozel research. It turns out that the question is very similar to Ellie's research from last year and so Ellie offers to write (for some of Dennis's money) a paper which looks to Dennis like it is cutting-edge research but which Dr. Alice will realize is total garbage. Carol agrees.
This is not always cheating, but we could maybe expect that Dennis would get a slightly better paper in than Carol's, so if Carol was just between two of these categories (bottom 10 gets penalized, middle 10 is neutral, top 10 is rewarded), tanking Dennis might give her a reward that she wouldn't have otherwise had, had she not agreed to this whole strange state-of-affairs.
Anonymous exams which the instructor nevertheless reads.
There are a lot of ways to cheat if we broaden the "I didn't submit it" to "I didn't submit it in my own name." For example, we can do "insurance" this way too: Felipe might pay for and submit a nameless exam and then intentionally not write his own name on his exam. He does this because he's taking a very difficult risk on his own paper, writing about some very cutting-edge floozel research that will either be extremely forward-thinking to Alice, or else will seem like complete drivel. Now when she has a paper with no name, the compassionate Dr. Alice grades both normally and posts both publicly, and expects them to get back to her. Felipe looks at the nameless posts and sees that his paper, in fact, has the highest grade there, so he claims it as his own and apologizes for not writing his name on his essay; perhaps she even asks him to prove it and he shows her the original file on his laptop.
Other people claim their papers and Dr. Alice has no idea who the 31st paper belongs to, and cannot necessarily prove that anybody was cheating. Nevertheless, we know that Felipe was: similar to Bob, he was buying a "safety net" which other students did not have access to.
Or, Gertrude might buy so many low-quality papers and submit them anonymously that Dr. Alice realizes that something has gone awfully wrong, and might ask everyone to privately email her their submissions from their school email account instead, since that will be better-tied to their identity. Gertrude uses the extra time from this distraction to gain an unfair advantage over other people who have completed their essay on-time.
Harold pays for an anonymous essay which ultimately insinuates that if Dr. Alice failed any of her male students, she would be subjected to physical danger. The police are unable to trace it and she is scared enough that she doesn't fail any of them, and then Harold has an unfair advantage over the female students. (Technically this doesn't have to be submitted, but it happens to be the best way to ensure Dr. Alice or one of her TAs reads the work.)
Irene pays for an essay in the sense that she pays someone else to steal some early drafts of several essays from some of the top people in the class, with the explicit essay being composed of complete sentences from all of them weaved into a cohesive narrative. She does not read them directly but anonymously posts it to FloozelTalk, the premier floozel research chat forum, where Dr. Alice reads it and thinks it's cutting edge research being done as we speak. Dr. Alice penalizes everyone who appears to have plagiarized this essay, and Irene thereby gets some benefit from it.
Then there are the ones which go outside the box completely.
Implicit in this I have been looking for solutions which use the information content of the paper but, I mean, it's also a physical artifact as well. Jacob pays for an essay which is 300 pages long (needing it to be a coherent essay just in case someone stops him and demands to see it, for example) -- and then he rigs it above the turn-in slot so that he drops it on Dr. Alice's head as she is picking up the papers, knocking her out cold: he then anonymously calls an ambulance and uses the added time that she is recovering in the hospital to complete his actual essay.

Your example with Bob is not convincing to me.  He has set up a situation in which no matter what happens he could gain an unfair advantage, but in the actual outcome, he ends up studying hard and doing well.  But for all we know, if one of the other nine topics came up, Bob could have -- and arguably, should have -- a last minute change of heart.

You seem to want to convict Bob of cheating for his intention to cheat but that's not the way things work.  Suppose instead Bob decides to assassinate a favored, incumbent presidential candidate assuming they win the election, the chances of which are regarded as 90%.  Bob makes considerable preparations including buying plane tickets, firearms and so forth.  It turns out the other candidate wins and Bob stays home.  What crime are you going to accuse him of?  (I didn't read all of your other scenarios, but the last seems more appropriate for a humor site than an academic advice website.)

@PeteL.Clark Preparation of a crime can be illegal in some cases (e.g. conspiracy to murder). Considering example with Bob, suppose he doesn't know much about exam subject Y, and brings a covert cheat sheet. Subject Y does not come up on the exam. Even though he did not use his cheat sheet, I contend he still cheated because (if you view the subjects that come up on the exam as random events) his expected value for the exam was higher than that of students who did not make such preparations. OP had "insurance" of being able to hand in the paid-for paper if his own turned out substandard.

@PeteL.Clark I'm not convicting Bob for his intention to cheat, but saying that he cheated, if cheating is defined as gaining an unfair advantage. So there are only two ways you can say he didn't cheat: either (a) he didn't gain an advantage or (b) his actions were fair. I regard (a) as a no-brainer: if it weren't an advantage he wouldn't have paid for it, and there is no real question that if he hadn't bought the essays his behavior would have changed and his essay would be worse for it. So then there's (b), was his advantage fair? No: he didn't work for it. Ergo, he cheated: the end.

@PeteL.Clark but if you are interested in the philosophy of such things they are called "counterfactuals"; insurance that goes unclaimed provides a counterfactual benefit, for example: it's still a real benefit (as long as the insurance is appropriately priced) which you'll pay for, but sometimes it does go unclaimed. Yes, there is a strong temptation in all of us at some point or another to neglect counterfactuals, but they seem persistent, hard to shake, and crucial to understanding things like causation.

@Chris: I disagree and, speaking as a faculty member, find it very unlikely that a student would be convicted of cheating under this situation.  The flaw in your reasoning is (a): he has only gained an unfair advantage if you accept as given what he will do in other situations.  If a student had cheated similarly in the past, then it might be reasonable to assume this is part of a larger "conspiracy".  But on an individual level you really cannot convict people for what they might have been planning to do.  Of course the example is also very contrived...it will probably never actually arise.

@Tom: Again, expected value computations are predicated on the assumption that something will happen in every given case.  They are appropriate and vitally useful in many contexts but work badly in determining guilt.  Legal experts know well that criminal conspiracy charges must be applied sensibly: in the example I gave, there is no way that one action would lead to conviction.  If you had similarly murdered nine people and cancelled one trip in the past, that would be different.  Finally, bringing a cheat sheet to an exam is by definition against the rules whether you look at it or not.

By the way, cheating is not defined as "gaining an unfair advantage", since there is no systematic way of evaluating which advantages are fair.  Is it fair that some students think more quickly than others or have prior background in the area or have parents who are experts in the subject or who have access to private tutors or....In actual universities cheating is defined much more specifically as breaking the rules of an assignment or exam.

The difference here is that you are concerned with whether he would be convicted of cheating (which depends on the university code, how sympathetic his listeners are, and whether he is caught) whereas I am purely concerned with whether he cheated, which is a much simpler question (did he gain an advantage; if so, was it unfair?). I can answer the latter definitively and your statement "I disagree" doesn't address the whole "here are the two defining criteria, and he meets both." Rather, you are stating that not all cheaters are punished, and I agree wholeheartedly with that.

I mean, you can be nihilistic about fairness, sure. That doesn't bother me in the slightest.

@Chris: No, I am concerned with whether a student would be regarded by his institution of having committed academic dishonesty: this is what the OP asked about, and this is the appropriate notion of "cheating" for academia.se.  You seem to be asking whether a student behaved unethically...but not this student; instead you are picking cases precisely because they create interesting ethical questions.  That sounds more like philosophy.se.  Not getting carried away with philosophical reasoning is actually rather important in dealing with actual students an academics.

Final comment: if your point is "Is it possible to imagine a situation in which a student could buy a paper, not read it, and in which those with perfect knowledge of the situation would know that the student was behaving unethically in so doing?  Yes." then I do agree.

"either (a) he didn't gain an advantage [...] (a) as a no-brainer: if it weren't an advantage he wouldn't have paid for it" This is a non-sequitur. If I intend to eat and buy a meal for this purpose, but then throw the meal away without taking a bite, I didn't eat. It would be an advantage if he actually used what he paid for, but he says he did not use it in any way.

@G.Bach Straw man. I'm not saying he "bought a meal to eat it" but rather that he insured himself against a future which would wreck him, so that it would merely injure him. I am saying the fact that people will pay for insurance reveals that it has positive utility for those people. And that's no non-sequitur: it's a standard way of figuring out what peoples' utilities are, called in its most abstract "revealed preference." I mean, you can view insured people as irrational because you think counterfactual thinking is bogus, sure: unfortunately you will probably enjoy insurance at some point.

Not a strawman, because the direct analogy would be not claiming insurance money.

It's only an unfair advantage if there's some circumstance under which he would have used it. It's possible that he buys his insurance essays, the teacher assigns his least-favorite topic, then he decides he's better than cheating and writes his own essay. He might have actually given himself a disadvantage if he didn't bother to study the other topics. This Bob has not cheated. If we know Bob would have used the other essays, then I agree he cheated. There's some probability of using the essays that gives neither advantage nor disadvantage. Anything above this is cheating.

I'd like to point out a slightly more tangible benefit Bob gained over the others. Having bought 9 essays, he gave himself the ability to spend the entire week researching the one topic in which he was interested, whereas everyone who didn't cheat spent less than one day researching each of the 10 topics throughout the week assuming they studied all 10 questions like they should have if they were wise. This gives Bob a clear advantage because he gets roughly 10x more research in on the topic that's chosen, and even if the professor had chosen another topic he was still ready for it.

I very much enjoyed reading this scenarios, especially the last few.

I'm going to be to a bit presumptuous and say:
That's not what you really want to ask.
Are you a cheater, philosophically? Ethically? Morally? Historically? Well, maybe so, maybe no, anybody can voice their opinion. Suppose that you are. Now suppose that you aren't. That has no direct bearing on reality.
I believe what you're really asking is:

Should I suppress my feelings of guilt?
What will the academic institution I study at do if they ever find out?
Will they ever find out?
Will I tell them myself or not?
Will I be able to feel at peace with my decision about that?

The answer to No. 3 is: Unlikely, since the essay writer will not start blabbing about how he helps people make a mockery of the academic system.
The answer to no. 2 depends on information we don't have.
But all the rest - well, they're really hard questions. I would suggest you talk to a good friend of yours, or your significant other, or your parents, or therapist/counselor, about them.

There seem to be two interpretations of "cheat" here. One refers to academic standards (and is probably what you meant, since you asked on the academia web site); the other refers to general morality. As far as academic standards are concerned, I agree with the others who have answered that you did not cheat.  General morality is another matter.  Even though you never used the essay that you bought, you presumably originally intended to use it, and that intention was immoral.  Fortunately, society in general and academia in particular do not (usually) punish private intentions, only external actions.  So you're OK as far as society and academia are concerned.  On the other hand, you may not be quite OK as far as your own conscience is concerned.  That's a separate issue, and probably off-topic for this site, but I'll tell you what I'd do in your situation: I wouldn't tell my professor or TA or dean or anyone in academia about any of this, but I would mention it the next time I go to confession.

I think this is the best possible answer to this question.

You should clarify your final sentence — are you referring to Christian Roman Catholic ceremony? Or something else? Not everybody is of your faith!

@LightnessRacesinOrbit Please note that the last sentence of my answer was specifically about "what I'd do in your situation". Other people may well have other ways of dealing with a troubled conscience.

@AndreasBlass: Right, so I'm wondering what you meant by it. What would you do? It's not clear!

@LightnessRacesinOrbit I would do exactly what I wrote, namely to mention my sin in confession.  In my case, this means confession to a traditional Roman Catholic priest.  (As you pointed out in your previous comment, one can't expect that others would do the same.)

@AndreasBlass: Thank you, that is the missing detail. The sentence as written assumes a certain audience, you see!

I think you need to distinguish "did you cheat" from "did you violate the rules against cheating".  Interestingly, this answer turns out to be essentially the opposite of the answer by Andreas Blass, although I think that is also very good answer.
If you did not read the essay you purchased, then I would say you did not cheat, in the end, although apparently you intended to cheat originally. That is my personal take, at least,
However, how can you prove you did not read the essay? At my institution, cheating is defined as "Any action that, if the instructor of the course knew about it, would not be permitted." (That is almost a direct quote from the policy.) Certainly, buying an essay would be considered a violation of my school's policy as it is literally written: an instructor would prohibit buying an essay if she knew a student was planning to do it.
I do agree with the conclusion of Andreas' answer: I would not tell anyone at the university about it, but perhaps a discussion with a counselor or religious advisor might be helpful.

Using a simple and extreme analogy: are you a murderer if you buy a knife but you end up deciding not do anything with it?

This analogy does not work. Knifes are useful tools, the fact that they can be used for murder is one of many uses. What are the other uses of getting somebody to write an essay for you other than cheating?

I use to think that but i changed my mind .

@Alizter To have research material? I was given a task to write an essay, so I went to library and read some reports and books and written my own thoughts on the subject. Have I cheated?

@luk32 Asking somebody else to write an essay on what you are researching is not you researching.

@Alizter Well it's poor work if it's the only source. I still would say that I am able to formulate my own thoughts after reading someone's work. IMO it's grey area. What if it became one among other materials. What if one purchased 10 essays on the topic? Do you say that's after reading it it's impossible not to become a cheater? Sounds pretty ridiculous.

@luk32 However note that 'someone elses work' is also paid for by the party. The work only exists because the party in question asked and paid for it.

@Alizter Libraries and newspapers also cost money, precisely to provide research materials, reports and opinions. And I guess using it is very encouraged to formulate one's own. I am playing a devil's advocate a bit, but honestly I cannot find very much difference between reading a paid article. If you don't plagiarize it, I guess it's the same. I am not saying it's white. It might be not black though, IMHO.

Unless the assignment was 'be a librarian for a day' then I do not think the behaviour was ethical.

If you hire a hitman but stop them before they kill the target, but they then use your money to fund their next attack and this gets proven in a court of law, are you guilty of a crime?  Maybe you aren't guilty of direct murder, but I doubt you would be leaving that courtroom with a clean record.

Using a simple and extreme analogy: are you an offender if you buy 1 pound of cocaine and never use it? Yes, I know that's controlled substance :) but you now, in some places some knives are controlled too (i.e. blade length limit, and so on). This indicates that buying things or services may be or may be not problematic, and that it depends not only on the kind of goods/service but also location/time/circumstances/...

@luk32 If you use the essay as a source, then you should cite it as such, to avoid cheating.  However, citing such an essay will look rather suspicious, especially as it is not public.

@Kimball Haha, yeah that's what I was missing. Sure it's hella weird, but for me it would be ethical. I mean, the work is quite genuine then. It's just like any other source. Imagine having a legitimate work, in terms of originality and plagiarism etc., using and citing such a source. A very interesting casus IMO.

@Kimball It would look suspicious but it would not be cheating.


text:
How future-proof is the arXiv license?
The arXiv license is the "default" license under which most preprints are being submitted to the arXiv at least in my subject. Out of dark curiosity, I am wondering how safe it is at doing what it is meant to do, namely ensure that these preprints are widely and freely available through the reasonable future. Let me quote the license in full:

The URI http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/ is used to record the fact that the submitter granted the following license to arXiv.org on submission of an article:
I grant arXiv.org a perpetual, non-exclusive license to distribute this article.
I certify that I have the right to grant this license.
I understand that submissions cannot be completely removed once accepted.
I understand that arXiv.org reserves the right to reclassify or reject any submission.

I am wondering what this entails in any of the following hypothetical scenarios:

Cornell University decides to sell arXiv.org off for whatever reasons (which may be far lesser reasons than bankruptcy -- e.g., someone might catch wind of the fact that a great many PDF files are not ADA-compliant; or publishers might unleash a barrage of lawsuits on Cornell for hosting what they believe are not quite preprints; or it is simply decided that continued hosting of the arXiv is too much of a cost center), and the new proprietors don't see public access as a priority. Someone with a full dump uploads it on a server in the Ukraine.
(Comparable cases: SSRN bought by Elsevier, although the full-dump analogy is broken here -- I don't know if anyone ended up re-hosting the papers taken down.)

The HTTP protocol and the WWW are superseded by something new and shiny, and the ".org" domain and the notion of a "server" lose their meaning; arXiv involves into a service which may have a hard time arguing that it is the same arXiv.org ("a highly-automated electronic archive and distribution server") that the license was granted to. (Comparable cases: The precursor of arXiv.org was a mailing list; it is far from obvious that mailing out a preprint on an ephemeral medium like a mailing list grants any rights for future perpetual hosting on the internet. Now imagine the next step after the mailing list and the internet, whatever that may be; ignore the current social media hype, which is not a relevant development for hosting documents.)

Various countries block the official arXiv domains (or force arXiv to geo-fence them out), causing the creation of multiple not-quite-official mirrors, some even on the dark web (.onion) or otherwise hidden-from-view. How can these mirrors argue that the arXiv license was granted to them?

The arXiv team splits along a political fault-line, resulting in two different groups/servers/teams with claims to the arXiv name. Are they both allowed to host the papers?

The TeX and PDF formats lose their universal support, and new formats come up (or new versions, breaking backwards compatibility); the arXiv team can no longer keep up writing compatibility scripts, and volunteers end up fixing the papers and posting them on github. (The compatibility nightmare is already happening to some extent -- the arXiv has its share of broken PDFs, and I recall even seeing a TeX that did not compile until I made a tweak. So far, most of the damage has been repaired, probably with a lot of manual drudgery, but the arXiv is getting more and more papers, and the next generation of formats to be deprecated will have a much higher amount of papers posted in it.)

What these scenarios all have in common is that, in a sense, the arXiv does not disappear -- it just evolves, changes its skin, reincarnates, as times change. My question is: Does the license follow it, or will the "new arXiv" be in troubles trying to prove that it still has a right to host preprints uploaded under the (standard) arXiv license back in the early 2000s?

PS: There is always the possibility that in 20 years, copyright will not apply to scientific work. But it is far from a certainty, whence this question.

arXiv.org is the entity, not the website itself. While Cornell hosts it, I do not know the legal standing of the entity itself. Cornell has a long history of hosting such sites (including the APS archives).

@JonCuster: according to the arXiv FAQ "CUL [Cornell University Library] holds the overall administrative and financial responsibility for arXiv's operation and development, with guidance from its Member Advisory Board (MAB) and its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB)". And on the homepage: "arXiv is owned and operated by Cornell University, a private not-for-profit educational institution." So it looks like arXiv.org is not a separate entity, but legally part of Cornell. I do not have any legal training, but I would assume that ultimately they have the possibility they sell or transfer ...

.. the rigths to arXiv.org and the content there to another party. That is, I would expect that the rights could be transferred to the new "legal successor" of arXiv, even if it would not be called arXiv.org any more. In the end this seems to be more of a legal question, and I don't think it would be specific to the arXiv, but also applies to journals, for example.

Note that the license transfer is non-exclusive. Should Cornell disappear, the authors would still hold their rights to the work to share with arXiv 2.0.

These concerns are an excellent argument for choosing one of the Creative Commons licenses for your arXiv submission. They are just better in every way.

@JonCuster Often not, since many authors have since signed their rights away to some commercial publisher, after having submitted to arXiv when they had the right to do so. Also the authors might be dead/forgetful.

@BorisBukh - well, that is an entirely separate question. Overall I'm having a hard time figuring out a credible scenario where Cornell dumps arXiv.

@JonCuster Many things were not credible before they happened. The point is not having to worry about this being one of them.

@BorisBukh - well, I'm not going to chisel my papers on to stone tablets and bury them in the desert... If your worst worry is arXiv disappearing forever, count yourself lucky.

Interesting speculative question, but I think impossible to anticipate such things. As recently [sic] as 25 years ago, it was completely unclear that the internet would become directly relevant to most peoples' lives, and the manner and scope of its relevance nowadays would have been unimaginable at the time. Cell phone batteries were terrible, too, and memory was much less dense. Bandwidth was trivial. 56k phone modems!?! Given the last 25+ years, I hesitate to try to predict anything.

Do I, as an author submitting papers to the arXiv, want the successor of the arXiv to still have the same permissions?

@JessicaB Who decides which website is "the successor of the Arxiv"? Can I self-appoint myself as one? If so, then that license gives everyone a perpetual right to distribute the articles...

Wouldn't Law.SE be a better fit for this question?

My answer is more to the question How future proof is the arXiv?.
How future proof is anything in this day and age?
The license itself is built on the idea that the system will continue roughly as it currently does, but substantial unforeseen changes both technological and of society (doesn't have to be a war) can easily derail it, as you have outlined in the various scenarios.
However, I don't think there is any reason to worry (your scenarios are too pessimistic), since the arXiv serves a very good purpose to all involved parties:

authors can quickly disseminate their results to all interested,
the scientific community (in fact the world community) get open access to (preprint versions) of many published articles (most in certain fields), and
the journals get a free preprint publication service which boosts their visibility and hence impact (since citations will be to the journal version, not the arXiv version - I know of no journal that disallows publication at arXiv). If a journal reverts this policy (in order to earn on copyrights), most authors of good articles will turn away from it.

Because of these points, funding at Cornell should be possible into foreseeable future.

This assumes that the publishers think in terms of preserving their impact factor, rather than in terms of copyright trolling. Something that might change if publishers start going bankrupt or getting bought up by hedge funds... And this is one of the more realistic scenarios: Pretty much everyone agrees the paid publishing model is not long for this world, at least in mathematics. Once the cash flow slows down, expect a fire sale...

@darijgrinberg Your scenario is not a danger, at least not in the long run. If a journal starts to copyright troll and disallow arXiv publication, authors (at least of the good papers worth reading) will stop publishing there. The journal cannot prevent arXiv access to articles published in the past.

Could the downvoters please explain how this answer can be improved and/or what is wrong with it?

You didn't actually answer the question that was asked.  The question was "how resilient would this be in the face of catastrophic events", and your answer was "Oh you don't need to worry about catastrophic events.  They're super-unlikely."  That's... not an answer.

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text:
Should I switch groups if my postdoc group leader is guaranteed coauthorship regardless of contribution?
I started to work as a PostDoc two years ago (2 more years of funding left) and our group leader is guaranteed a coauthorship of nearly every publication in the group, even if she does nothing. I am aware of answers here saying that such a thing is unethical, however the situation will not change in the group as the PI enforces this behavior as a rule. She is aiming at a tenure, he is helping her out. Note that I have addressed this directly.
This is starting to annoy me because for every result I publish, I have to declare the colleague as a coauthor even though she does nothing to help me. I have worked in the industry long enough to know how complaining about this to higher instances will reflect on my carreer - both the PI and the colleague are well connected in the industry.
I really love academic research, trying out really new things, conferences, battling the reviews and all that, but I am starting to think that academia is not the option for me. Should I switch groups, take on another PostDoc position and hope I dont land in another nepotistic situation?

I'm not sure how anyone can tell you whether to switch groups or not. We really don't know what other options are available to you, how easily you can find another postdoc, what the other (not-authorship-related) benefits of this postdoc vs others would be, etc.

Ethically, you should switch groups. You may be constrained by circumstances, but then you shouldn't ask this question here - do not ask questions if you are not likely to like the response. Keep in mind that other groups may have other problems with ethics, depending on the field.

Note that this is not nepotism; it’s abuse of power (not that this makes it any better).

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text:
Depth and difficulty of mandatory courses that could be elective
Background
Some universities around the world still don't adopt the common system of elective classes. To broaden the scope of this question, one could also consider the applicability of answers in high school or any other technical degree.
Problem
Consider the following scenario: every available class is mandatory. How should a course be given knowing that is not a strong requisite for your students but you still want to give them the opportunity to go deep in to the subject?
Concrete example to discuss
In a computer engineering department, there is a course on Web Programming. Strictly speaking, Computer Engineers are not expected to be proficient in web programming, but it is a valuable skill nowadays and is of interest of many of them.
For all engineering students, there is a two-semester course on linear algebra. The second semester is focused on complex spaces and cover topics like Jordan Canonical Form. The course is highly theoretical and focused on theorem demonstrations instead of applications and engineering concepts.
Approaches
What methodology would be a best practice? If the answer may vary according to situation, what factors should influence the choice of one over another?

In-depth lectures, broad coverage but low complexity exams/assignments
In-depth lectures, basic concepts but higher complexity exams/assignments
Basic coverage overall, with in-depth extra material provided.
< Open to suggestions >

One idea I'm particularly fond of is extra credits in assignments and exams that cover the deeper knowledge available.

In such an inflexible curriculum, this may not be possible, but one thing that I frequently encountered in my undergraduate and graduate education was courses with an option "add-on" component.  The lectures were the same, but the students who opted into the add-on were expected to do extra work outside of class.  In different classes, this can take on different forms, such as extra assignments, or a final project, or a stronger version of the same project everybody else was doing, or something else entirely.  In exchange, the students a) get a deeper education in the material, and b) receive additional units for their transcript.  The latter can be a significant incentive, particularly since students usually don't opt for extra units unless it's a subject they are likely to receive a good grade in.

Could you clarify for an international audience the meaning of "additional units"? More marks? For instance, when I was a student (now it's rarer), several courses allowed students to choose from a lighter exam (with a maximum equivalent grade of say B or C) or the full exam with a maximum equivalent grade of A (I gave rough equivalences from the Italian grades). For a number of years I gave this option also in a course of mine.

@MassimoOrtolano What I encountered was different: in the US, each class is typically worth a certain number of "units" or "credits" towards graduation.  Taking the harder option would make a class worth more units, effectively increasing its relative weight in calculating GPA (and possibly meaning less were required for graduation, though that wouldn't be the case for the OP).

Thank you, so units==credits (we have credits too nowadays). Yes, the strategy is different.

Thanks for sharing your experience. I know some high schools that offer "special" classes, usually targeted for scientific competitions, that resembles this strategy. But yes, the inflexible curriculum makes that near impossible. It would be as difficult as to convince the institution to adopt electives (which is already in process, but I can't rely on this for the next two years).


text:
Two Papers Accepted. Co-authors presenting
I am a first-year PhD student and I have two accepted publications as a first author since the start of my program.
The thing is I thought I would be the one to travel to the conferences and present my work but my advisor is making the presentation, as he made me aware of it today. The conference is in Europe. He gives me an excuse that the reason he will be going is because he will be on the committee of reviewers for the same conference next year and this will be a good opportunity for him to know what is going on.
The first conference is somewhere on the west coast and his co-PI also will be making that presentation.
I feel a little frustrated that all my hard-work is being presented by people who had little or nothing to do with the hundreds of hours of work that led to these results.
I feel this might be a trend that will continue throughout my PhD. My question: do you think I should challenge these folks or quietly accept their excuses for wanting to go, though unhappy about it as it is, and hope for a better deal in the future.

Welcome to Academia SE. I do not think that we can give you a satisfying aswre to your question here as it mostly depends on the personalities of your co-authors and how much risk you are willing to take. You might instead ask about the ethics of such a situation (but just knowing whether you are being treated unethicaly does not help you much) or common practices in your field (which may not be helpful for related reasons).

Are those conferences top, good or medium in your scientific area? Or are we talking about some workshop?

May I humbly suggest the OP anonymize themselves here as this might not end well should the concerned parties read the question.

Just as one data point, I had a previous experience similar to you, in which the PI said they wanted to go to the conference because they were hosting it the following year.  I actually had my own funding and went, the PI had no problem at all with me presenting, so I wouldnt discount that excuse.

This must be part of the (substantial) difference between whatever your field is and mine.  How is it even remotely possible, much less ethical, for someone who had "little or nothing to do with the ... research that led to these results" to even exist in the same universe as the concept of "co-author"?  The hell is wrong with the hard sciences, or whatever your field is?  I would think that in any sane universe the most any of these guys would get is a meaningless little blurb in a footnote about how "this research was down as part of the author's Ph.D. thesis under the direction of X and Y".

One lesson you should take from this is: not everyone has the same expectations about what will be done (e.g., who will be co-authors and who will present).  When things are not clear, it is generally good to discuss things explicitly up front, as suggested in the answers.

Whatever you ultimately decide to do, avoid using the word "hijack".

Depending on the financial background of the department, the cited reason doesn't necessarily sound like a "flimsy excuse" to me at all.

@zibadawatimmy "The hell is wrong with the hard sciences, or whatever your field is? I would think that in any sane universe" you may consider getting off of your high horse here. Standards between fields vary. (also, if a student says that their advisor has had "little to do with the research", I wouldn't take the correctness of this statement for granted).

@xLeitix Just because a (sub)culture has long done things in a particular way doesn't mean it is correct, or that they should continue to do them that way.  I concede the point in the parenthetical, though.

My question: do you think I should challenge these folks or quietly accept their excuses for wanting to go

Well, you've already asked about going, and the answer was "no." Nothing wrong with asking again, though.
However, I want to point out that the way your question reads, it sounds like your previous conversation was more about your PIs attending, not you. So, you should make it clear that you are interested in going. If you were to ask again, I would suggest asking something along the lines of "are there any funds available for me to attend the conference(s)?"
If this conversation does not change the outcome, you could always check with your institution to see if there are funds available for students to travel to and attend conferences. Some schools have these, some schools don't. You may be able to receive some partial funds and be required to cover the rest of the cost out of your own pocket if you really wanted to go and were willing/able to pay your way. In any case, it's a good idea to see if these funds are available to you.

though unhappy about it as it is, and hope for a better deal in the future.

No, hoping for a better deal in the future is not a good strategy. You need to have a chat with your advisor(s), and express your desire to attend the conferences where your work is presented. Again, as above, ask specifically about whether or not there are/will be any funds for you to attend conferences.
Depending on the answer, you may be satisfied that you will be taken care of the next time around. Or, you may find that at your school/department, students are more or less on their own in obtaining funds for attending conferences (at my PhD-granting institution/department, it was common for the PI to secure the funds for their students to attend conferences where their work was presented — your field/institution may be different).
In the end, if you are not able to come to an agreement about how your travel to conferences will be covered, it will be up to you to decide if your advisor's inability (or unwillingness, etc.) to help you cover these costs is a deal breaker or not.

Money is a finite resource. Your adviser may have very good reasons to attend (his "excuse" certainly doesn't sound "flimsy" to me but very reasonable from the perspective of a PI) and there may simply not be enough money to pay for both of your trips. There may in fact be no money at all to pay for your travel and he may be paying for his travel from some grant that allows him to go to the committee meeting (because the committee is related to the topic of the grant), but that wouldn't allow you to go the conference (because your area of work is not related to the topic of your grant). Since your adviser pays for it (and is legally responsible for the appropriate use of his funds), you need to understand that he gets to make the decision.
As other have pointed out, that does not imply that he doesn't want you to go either. He may wish that he had enough money to send both of you, but doesn't. He may wish that some other (student travel?) money could be found to send you and may in fact be quite happy to write you the necessary letters of recommendation. We could speculate about this all day long, but at the end of the day, you can only elucidate whether this is the case or not by having a conversation.

There may be good reasons why your advisors aren't encouraging you to go to these meetings. For example, they may feel the costs of sending you are out of proportion to the benefits you would get from the experience, particularly given that you are at a very early stage in your PhD. Without knowing more about your specific circumstances, it is difficult to judge.
I suggest you have a friendly, non-confrontational discussion with them about which conferences they think you should aim to attend over the next few years. That way, everyone will know what the goals are, and (hopefully) no confusion will arise in future.

"There may be good reasons...For example, they may feel the costs of sending you are out of proportion to the benefits you would get from the experience, particularly given that you are at a very early stage in your PhD." This is outside of my direct experience (my field works differently) but this explanation doesn't sound good to me.  Presenting a paper in which one was a first author sounds like an excellent reason to go a conference.   Also they are going to the conference instead, so there is no clear savings.  Could you give a specific scenario in which this would be reasonable?

You are assuming that the advisor would not have gone to the conference if there wasn't this paper to present. That need not be the case. I have taken my students' poster presentations to conferences before (in fact, usually because they weren't able to attend for personal reasons, but circumstances may differ...)

My point was that having the professor go instead of the OP is not a savings of money.  If the question is whether it is too expensive for them both to go: the OP's question reads as though he was not given the option to try to raise the money and give the presentation.  But for a non-first author paper to present a paper in place of the first author on the grounds that the first author is too junior to benefit from the experience: again, to me that does not sound very reasonable.  Does it sound that way to you?

I agree that the presumption should be in favour of the first author presenting, and that it's almost always good for students to have the opportunity to take their work to conferences. I'm not trying to argue that the situation described definitely is reasonable - but the OP appears to be starting from the assumption that his advisors want to screw him over. Never assume malice where incompetence will suffice.

@anon-4 The statement "never assume malice where incompetence will suffice" and its variants is about how a person (you, in this context) should not assume that someone (your advisors/PI/whatever) has done something (this thing you are going on about) out of malice, when it can just as easily be explained by incompetence (if this is an inexperienced advisor, maybe he does not realize the benefits for you doing this, etc.).  You seem to have assumed you were the incompetent one referenced.

@PeteLClark: It is an excellent reason for the student to attend the conference, but someone else might be having even "more excellent" reasons to go there (e.g. brokering participation in an upcoming project with people who will be at the conference, too). Some departments do not have the money to simply send two people, so they have to weigh whose presence is more valuable.


text:
Is it a proper etiquette to restrict questions from conference presentation only?
Until now, I never engaged in presenting a conference paper. In the near future, I may likely need to give a seminar on a conference paper. In order to gain knowledge about conference presentations, I watched videos of seminars given by authors of accepted papers of previous years which are available on YouTube.
I can classify the seminars based on the type of questions asked by participants into 3 categories:

No questions from participants;

Questions solely based on the contents of the presentation;

Questions about research that happened a long time ago (say 20 years) that might be related to the presented paper.

The questions of category 3 are generally from domain experts. The questions are along the lines of:

The technique used by your published conference paper (say, on page no:3) seems similar to the technique that has
been used in some other paper titled ______ by _____. How is your idea
different from their techniques?

In some cases, if the corresponding author, who is presenting the paper, encounters such questions, other people from the audience, probably other authors, responded to the questioner since the corresponding author was not necessarily aware.
In this context, is it proper etiquette to prevent such questions by saying something like the following?

I will gladly answer any questions about the contents that
are present in my presentation slides.
If there are any other questions, feel free to email me.

In the example you give, it appears that the question is ESSENTIAL and very relevant to the presentation. It should probably have been answered before the research was even started.

@Louic It is possible that the expert is from a related other domain and asking for a similar technique in her domain.

I think you are starting from a wrong premise. Why would you want to restrict such questions? It is useful for you to get them. If you find out about relevant research from 20 years ago that you did not know about, you learn something new. Maybe it contains useful techniques for your next paper. Maybe it can help you focus on a different problem.
Are you afraid that you might get questions you don't know the answer to? There is nothing wrong in answering "I did not know about this paper. Could you send me a reference?". There is no shame in that. Even if it is something you should have known about, it is a learning moment, and you will know the next time. Even if you solicit questions via e-mail, maybe people will not want to take the time to send an e-mail to you, and you have lost that knowledge.
By restricting questions on your presentation, you give the impression of someone who is not interested in feedback, exchange of opinions, and learning something new. We all have things we should know but don't. Embrace it and don't be afraid. If you hide your head under the sand, you will not become a better researcher.

I suggest that you don't try to restrict questions in any way. Among other things it might be resented, but probably just ignored. Welcome any questions. Feel free to answer with "I've not thought about that, sorry."
But a better "answer" is to invite the questioner to discuss the issue off-line. It is an opportunity to expand both your scope and your circle of collaborators. You don't/can't know everything, but you can learn from others.
Deep questions are fine, but it is hard, even for an expert, to give a good answer with the time constraints of conference presentations.

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text:
In which countries do more universities provide provision of 'baby care' while working time?
Many software and multinational companies provide 'baby care' centres for their employees. It generally helps (married) women to do their work peacefully as the employees or maids in baby care centres take care of children's needs till the completion of working time. It seems to be an essential provision for couples with babies.
In India, many married women drop the idea of working in academia after completing studies for baby care, and it is very rare to find such provisions in educational institutions. Without the provision, it is extremely difficult for women to take of their babies during working time. During workshops and conferences, I hear the struggles (or I can say agony) faced by several senior lady faculty in academia due to the absence of child care.
As it is hard to find campuses that provide on-site baby care, I want to know the name(s) of countries where the colleges/educational institutes/universities actively provide child care centers for employees.
What is/are the name(s) of countries where more universities provide on-site childcare centers for their employees?
Note: In fact, I want to know the countries where the academic institutions are conscious enough and take the responsibility of providing child care for their employees to facilitate the work.

"It seems to be an essential provision to be provided for married couples" - Marriage is neither a prerequisite nor a guarantee for having children. Many unmarried people require childcare. Many married people do not.

@BryanKrause Thanks. I updated.

What about countries where colleges/education institutes/universities have nothing to do with providing child care centers, because providing child care facilities is the responsibility of other entities (e.g. cities, the state, supportive organisations that are formally not a part of the institution, etc.)? In these places, your concerns would be taken care of, but they would not fit the question as currently written, so it's not clear how narrow the question is intended.

@O.R.Mapper Actually the question is to know only the names of countries in which the (major) academic organizations themselves provide the provision.

One model that I have seen in numerous countries involves a private company operating a child-care facility on campus, using buildings/space leased from the university - much as there might be an on-campus branch of Starbucks [other coffee providers also exist]. Sometimes university employees and students get priority for places, and/or reduced fees; sometimes not.

Big list questions really aren’t a good fit for SE.

@JonCuster I don't think this question will get a big list of countries as the answer.

@avid Ha. I think it does depend on the number of working women in the place.

@hanugm Is there a practical issue you're trying to address? Do you plan to apply for jobs in foreign countries? Are you trying to make the case to your employer that universities elsewhere provide child care, and yours should as well?

@academic Do you plan to apply for jobs in foreign countries? Yes, I want to know the places that provide so I can know about countries to apply for positions (not necessarily for jobs) in academia.

Actually, you don't even have to be woman to require childcare. It would be great no to propagate the stereotype childcare = womans work.

@Sursula-they- I wrote the question based on the knowledge I got from discussing with senior faculty. In my country, it is woman's work, and no male faculty yet discuss or share their hard times as they didn't have the responsibility of handling daily activities related to their child care. I didn't get an opportunity to communicate with faculty from abroad regarding these.

It would be nice if someone explicitly tells in the comments the details they required so that I can provide them. And what clarity the question is lacking.

Let me start my answer by pointing out that not only mothers need child support, but fathers as well (or rather, parents in general).
Most countries in Europe have state-organized childcare that is either free or affordable, so there is no need for the employers (in this case the universities) to offer additional childcare on top.
But e.g. at my university (one of the larger ones) in Germany, there is a kindergarten (child care center) on the premises, that is integrated into the normal state system, but preferably takes on children of students and employees at the university. People don't see this as much of an advantage, though, as they prefer a childcare close to the place of residence rather than at the place of work. If you e.g. work from home a couple of times a week or during semester breaks, you would have to bring your child to the uni to the childcare and have to commute even though you normally wouldn't have to.
They also offer additional short time "emergency" childcare that you have to book per hour and that you have to pay a small amount of money for per hour.
So from a point of view of living in a country with well organized general childcare: it is much more sensible to look for countries that offer childcare than to look for single institutions that offer it.

Another reason for preferring local child care over university child care is that kids develop friendships in child care. Local child care attract children from the direct area, so a kid can just walk to his/her friend, or go to the local play area in the weekend and meet her/his friend. The university childcare attract children from a larger area, making it harder for the kids to play with their friends outside "work hours".

Here is one example from the US:

Childcare
UC Berkeley operates five centers on or near the UC Berkeley campus which serve University families.

Probably worth noting that these are fee-based offerings (though subsidies seem to be available according to need; it's not immediately clear to me what the extent of those subsidies can be expected to be for someone with a salary in the range of a professor).

@BryanKrause sure, it is fee-based like practically everything else in the US.

Yes, it's not really clear what OP means by "provide provision". On-site child care certainly has potential to be more convenient, but it isn't necessarily more affordable than other options (though right now finding any child care, particularly for very young kids, has become nearly impossible in many places in the US). So, is that a provision, or not? I don't know.

@BryanKrause I answered the question as it was asked. I’d love to engage in an extended discussion about the woeful state of child care in the US. Sadly, being a parent to young children I don’t have the time for such frivolities these days…

It is also necessary to note, for non-US readers especially, that this isn't ubiquitous in the US. It isn't a national program, but one offered by a specific university.


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Does taking on an assistant professor position prevent me from doing post-docs later?
I have been offered an assistant professor position at a university in my home country. As I don't have any other offers at the moment, I want to accept. However, I believe that a post-doc or two will help me improve as a researcher, and also will help with my two-body problem.
I want to know that if I take this position, am I still eligible to apply for and do post-docs? My field is physics.

The main problem is not about being eligible, it's that you would certainly have to quit your assistant professor position should you get a postdoc position. Would you be ready to do it, knowing that it would probably close this door in your home university forever?

In the US (perhaps elsewhere) there sometimes a position called Research Assistant Professor, which is functionally equivalent to a senior post-doc - it is not tenure-track. It wouldn't be odd to move from that position to another post-doc, but it would be considered odd to go from a true Assistant Professor position (tenure-track) to a post-doc. You might want to clarify if the position in this case is tenure track or not.

@Erwan I'd be more hesitant to say eligibility is not an issue; post docs are considered training positions, and for tax or funding reasons they may not be allowed once someone has obtained a "higher" position. For example in the US, the NSF does not award post doc grants for someone 3 years past their degree or in a tenure track position (as iayork indicated, knowing whether the position is tenure track may be quite important).

@BryanKrause fair enough, I knew about postdoc conditions such as maximum time since graduation but didn't know about conditions related to current status.

I should add that university policy may come into play too...for example, at my institution, post docs are not eligible for certain benefits like the retirement plan (but also pay grad student rates for health insurance) because they are considered temporary employees. Therefore, policies exist to prevent "taking advantage" of the situation somehow by designating someone as a post doc who should not be.

Thanks for the replies. @Erwan The university is actually fine with me taking a long unpaid leave. I am also okay with not being employable at this uni if I have to leave - as the two-body problem is more important. The university does not have a tenure track system at all. Every faculty member is on a three-year annually-renewable contract.

I'll have to guess a bit on this, never having heard of the situation before. I think you are wise to be worried, though. The intention of post docs is to provide research (sometimes also teaching) experience to people who have just finished their doctorates. Some positions will be explicit about that.
But even if you are technically eligible, I think a lot of people would wonder about you if you took that path. "Why is he leaving a regular position..." They might even question your qualifications since leaving an Assistant Professor position (in the US) often means that tenure was denied or the candidate assumed it would be. That isn't a good impression to leave, even if it is inaccurate.
Assistant professor may mean something different in your country, of course. But consider the "expected" career path of such a person in your decision.
On the other hand, it is also (US, again) possible to move from an Assistant Professor position at one university to a similar, regular, position at another. The new position might enable more research possibilities, especially if there is a larger, more active, faculty.

Or one could do a 'sabbatical', or be a visiting researcher, or various other temporary titles while off doing something in another country. It likely would reduce the number of options, though.

The question "Why is he leaving a regular position" could probably be largely addressed with a well-written cover letter. It would still be an unusual situation though.


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APA reference same author, one dated, one not dated: which order?
If I have the same author twice in my reference list, and one work is dated and the other is not, which comes first in the list?
E.g.:
Lastname, F., (n.d.). Title [etc.]
Lastname, F., (2019). Different title [etc.]

Does it matter very much? Pick one, and stick to it.

This has been described quite clearly on the APA Style Blog:

An “in press” work has yet to be published, so if you have one or more references that contain a publication year, these references will always come before an “in press” reference because they’ve already been published.

When dealing with “no date” references, simply follow the same “nothing precedes something” guidance that the Publication Manual gives regarding alphabetizing author surnames in the reference list (see p. 181). Using this guideline, “no date” references should always precede references with “some date.” Also remember that “no date” is abbreviated as “n.d.” in both the reference list and the in-text citations (see p. 185).


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Why I can't get a PhD offer?
I am so tired of contacting potential supervisors and submitting applications only to get rejected! Is the problem in my qualifications?
I graduated university with a GPA of 4.94 out of 5 (A Saudi Arabian University), and then I got my masters from Warwick University with a Merit but a distinction on the dissertation. I scored 7.5 in the IELTS exam as well.
Additional details: I am considered as an overseas student, and I have a sponsorship. My field is in digital marketing but my Bachelors was in Management Information Systems, and my masters was in e-Business Management. The research proposal I wrote discussed the bad and good behaviour of customers in the financial services industry, and its implications on the companies' ecosystems.
Thanks

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

Perhaps your research proposal just hasn't appealed to anyone. Have you considered dropping that and looking to an advisor for a project instead. Not every program expects the student to start from their own ideas rather than from the professor. But if you insist that you want to work on that and no one wants to supervise it, you are out of luck.

Getting an offer for a PhD program can be difficult, and if you are receiving repeated rejections it may be worth seeking some feedback on your applications.
 Given that your undergraduate degree is from a non-English speaking country, if you are applying for PhD candidature in England or the US (or some other English-speaking country), you will need to make sure your writing is clear and grammatically polished.  That is a major aspect of what professors are looking for when seeking research candidates.
Without wishing to be unnecessarily critical, I note that in your three-sentence question in this post I can see two obvious spelling errors and at least one major grammatical error.  This might just be because you are writing while upset, or it might be indicative of a low standard of written English.  If the latter, I would suggest you engage in some practice writing essays and other papers in English and getting feedback on your work until you have improved your writing.  This may assist you in future applications.  Good luck.

No problem - it is difficult coming into the education system in an English-speaking country where you have to learn double what the other students are learning.  Good luck.

@lujain Even your edited version still show errors. (1) but form Warwick University (2) Is the problem in my qulifications! There should be a question mark at the end. (3) Does a Merit in a master level is acceptable should be Is a Merit in a master level acceptable (4) universities view Universities are not people. They cannot view.

In fairness, I think that the personification of a human institution as a singular actor is a reasonable shorthand; I wouldn't consider that fourth one to be an error.

@Ben Thanks for pointing out my error. I wish the OP would also have this attitude like mine, admit the problem, improve it and then try it again.

I think the answer to the first question is "Yes, a Merit is acceptable".
As the second question, I doubt if many UK academics have a sufficiently detailed understanding of the Saudi Arabian system to know whether a Warwick MSc (Merit) is better or worse than a Saudi GPA of 4.94.
However UK academics will know that a Warwick MSc(Merit) is not as good as a Warwick MSc(Distinction) and it is very likely that many of your competitors for the PhD places have Distinctions.


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What affiliation to put on paper?
I finished my Master one year ago and now I am writing a paper from my master thesis. But now i am a PhD student in another university (another country). Which affiliation i should write in the paper?. Is it ok to write both university names on paper?
Thanks

Changing affiliation on publication is another relevant question.

Put the current affiliation and make a comment in the title page (i.e., a footnote) stating "this work was conducted as part of a master's dissertation [in the older university]".


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Does case of the first letter in disciplines such as Mathematics, Physics, etc. need to be capitalized?
Does the first letter of disciplines such as Mathematics, Physics, etc. need to be capitalized in research papers of computer science?

Whatever it is, it should be consistent, i.e. if you capitalize CS then capitalize Mathematics

Is computer science special in this regard? The general answer is 'no'; see Capitalize fields of study?

In Physics we study the physics of physical phenomena.

No, none of those are "required" to be capitalized in general usage when used descriptively, but often are, as they are seen as titles rather than descriptions. Names are usually capitalized. CS isn't really different. "I taught computer science to a lot of people" works generally. But, "I was a Professor of Computer Science" implies a title.
When used in titles, either of papers or persons, they would be capitalized. Jerry Doe, PhD(Physics), for example.
As long as the usage is consistent, no one is likely to complain. However, Calculus, sometimes written as "the Calculus" or even "The Calculus" seems to be in a class of its own, though, still, not required.
Capitalization is useful, however, in naming subfields with names that have words with more general usage. Category Theory, or Algebraic Topology, for example, where the usage indicates the formal name of the subfield. That is to say, they aren't just descriptions of the subfield, but actual names.
There may have been a time in the past when such things were more consistent.

“Jerry Doe, PhD(Physics)” seems like a bad example, as physics is usually not part of the title, which is only “PhD”. For example, I could style myself similarly since my PhD was awarded in the field of physics, but I do not have any diploma or similar that bestows that particular title upon me. Similarly, your example “I was a Professor of Computer Science” is wrongly capitalised, since it there is no title here, as indicated by the indefinite article (“a”). It’s just description of job or rank.

Follow the convention most common in the papers you read or  the journal to which you submit your paper.


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Time commitment to review very long article
I've been asked to review an 80 page article (63 pages + 15 page appendix, it's computer science). I've already sunk a lot of time into this, and am maybe 2/3rds of the way through. Luckily, it is a good article, and I'm learning new things, but it is just taking so much of my time, and as a result I don't want to check everything in detail.
How do you deal with reviewing long articles? Is it fine to not check everything in detail? What would you expect/hope from your reviewers when you submit a long article?

Whatever you end up doing, be transparent with the journal editor. Let them know how much you managed to do, especially if you decided that you couldn't afford been as thorough as you would have expected for a section of the document. Also, I think it's valid feedback to say that they have asked for a task that is beyond what you are willing to volunteer.

I suggest that you take the time you need to do a good job. Being fast but sloppy helps no one.
But you might also warn the editor that it is taking time due to the length.
Authors should expect that long articles, as well as complex ones, take time for adequate review.


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Is a corrigendum required for this error?
Our manuscript, for which I am  the first co-author, got accepted in a journal. However, upon careful review of our manuscript, I noticed that there are errors in one table. The percentages were calculated as: % = (total number of positive samples/total number of samples analyzed) x 100. The value for the total number of samples analyzed was wrong, so we reported the wrong percentages.
I tried to calculate the correct percentages, but they are very much in line with the erroneous percentages we initially reported and they will NOT affect the conclusions in our manuscript.
Does this error warrant a corrigendum? Or should I wait for someone to notice our error and send a letter to the editor?

Whether or not a corrigendum is issued is usually decided by the editor(s).  You should talk about this matter with your coauthor(s) to make sure everyone is on the same page.  If they agree an error has been made, you can contact the editor and detail the nature of the error, it's impact on the results or lack thereof, and provide the corrections.  If the error significantly altered the results and conclusions of the paper you'd be more in the territory of a retraction, but if as you say the paper remains essentially intact then this shouldn't be a worry.
If the editor rejects the need for a corrigendum, there's not much you can do about that, but you could include a page on your professional site detailing the corrections you felt necessary, or possibly even upload to the arxiv if appropriate.
Making sure coauthors know what you're doing here is important. They will be understandably upset if they are caught unawares by this.  Things get complicated if your coauthor(s) disagree with your assessment, however, or otherwise don't want you to pursue the matter.  That's a different sort of minefield needing a different question and answer.  The short of the matter usually ends up being "is this a hill you're willing to die on or not?"

You certainly shouldn't "wait for someone to notice our error".  The danger of uncorrected errors is precisely the fact that people might rely on them without noticing that they are errors.  Personally, I would think that reporting wrong numbers in a table requires a corrigendum, even if the correct numbers are close and do not affect the conclusions.  I would suggest contacting the journal to arrange a corrigendum, or if this is unavailable you could write a letter to the editor with the corrections yourself.


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Switching postdoctoral advisors within the same university
I am a math postdoc at a university in the western hemisphere. Within a very short span of time, relations with my mentor have turned sour, and our relations have become increasingly acrimonious. My mentor has a reputation for being arrogant and dismissive, which I had initially dismissed as manageable. However, I feel that things will only go downhill from here.
I want to switch advisors.

Is this generally possible to do? Note that my funding is drawn from my department through teaching duties, and not the advisor. However, my advisor is my official postdoctoral mentor, and he had vouched for my selection at the university.

Will it make my life unmanageable in the department, if he chooses to indulge in vengeful behavior?

I was once in a somewhat similar situation as a doctoral student, though not as stark. My advisor at the time was more interested in getting tenure than in helping me. There was another faculty member that would have been much better for me.
However, being very introverted, I didn't speak up for myself, either to the department head or to that other faculty member. Had I done so, I suspect that I'd have graduated much earlier. As it was, my solution was to change universities, in which I found a much better advisor, fairly naturally, but at a cost of three years.
I suggest that if you have an alternative, that you talk to them. You don't need to complain about your current advisor, but with their help and the chair/head, things can be made to happen. But they won't if you don't initiate it.
I'll also note that some professors in some departments aren't very well respected generally because they are known to abuse students. What the advisor says about you to others may carry weight or not, but another professor can mediate to make things happen. Open a conversation.


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NSF grant proposal not reviewed despite being received
I submitted an NSF research grant proposal (Mathematics) last year. The status for my proposal shows "pending" on the website.
I was talking to a professor recently, who told me that she was expecting to see my proposal, but didn't see it at all. She said that all the people who were being considered had their names up on the screen, and my name was not there.
How could this be possible? Is there a preliminary "weeding out" process, where my proposal could have been chucked even without being considered?

I would say that the professor you have talked to violated NSF confidentiality rules by discussing this matter with you.

@MoisheKohan- Thanks I would agree with this (although I inferred that she was on the committee, and she didn't say anything directly. She merely said "why did you not apply?" I will edit the question to reflect this.

@MoisheKohan- But is there a preliminary weeding out process or something like that which would have caused this?

It is possible that your proposal was eliminated by a decision by an NSF program director, or that it was routed to a different program (with some research areas it is a real issue, just think about Topological Data Analysis).

Someone who was conflicted would have been asked to leave the room before your proposal was discussed.  In some cases proposals will be dropped from consideration as non competitive before the panel starts its discussion.  As a panelist I’ve been asked to vote to approve those decisions to drop from consideration before we began discussing other proposals.

In the question you write: "She said that all the people who were being considered had their names up on the screen, and my name was not there." In the comments you write: "she didn't say anything directly. She merely said "why did you not apply?" These cannot both be true. Please clarify.

Even if you apply in the same division at NSF, there are multiple subpanels in each division to handle different proposals. It could be that she simply was in a panel that did not have your grant allocated to it, despite being in the same division.

@RyanHendricks, I have provided an answer below to explain Return Without Review.

You really can't know, and it's a waste of your mental energy to wonder too much about it.
Most programs run multiple panels if there are too many proposals. Some proposals fit poorly into the program they were submitted to and are routed to other programs. Some proposals are so obviously not fundable that the program managers after review decide that they do not need to be discussed by the panel. There are a million other possibilities.
Since you can not possibly know or find out what the situation is until you get the proposal back from NSF with a decision, it is not worth worrying about. Spend your time being productive on other stuff!

I disagree! If you're planning to resubmit this--or submit anything else--you should really figure out if something about your proposal caused it to be administratively withdrawn (missing paperwork? broke one of the rules?) or routed somewhere unexpected.

@Matt Of course. But you will find out eventually when the proposal comes back from the funding agency with reviews (or without). At that point you can also inquire for more information, but at this point (where all you have is hearsay) there is nothing to find out.

You don't say what kind of grant.  If it's a GRFP, there are hundreds of reviewers, and the odds of any given reviewer seeing any given grant are long. Further, if your prof is from your school, she would never see it due to conflict.

It was a research grant proposal (I have edited the question to reflect this). The impression I got was that the whole committee would at least see the names of the applicants, even if she wasn't given my grant to review. Is this not accurate?

I haven't done non-GRFP reviews for NSF, so I don't know.  I do know NIH tries to triage about 50% of grants before discussion, but study section participants are given an opportunity to "rescue" triage grants.

@RyanHendricks, I am not a PI so have no perspective on the review side.  However, as an administrator, I can tell you in terms of conflict of interest, the entire point of the COA document is to prevent the situation you are in.  If you or your PI disclosed incorrectly about a relationship, that is something they would take seriously.  Please check your COA file to make sure you did that correctly.

Some grants go for mail-in reviews before the panel. A poor mail-in review likely means that the proposal doesn't make it to the panel. I don't know which grant you applied for and I'm in DoE grant world not NSF so take this with a grain of salt.
Depending on your position, you should try to meet your program manager to (a) get to know them and (b) learn how the process works. Also talk to anyone in research administration at your institution.

For most NSF programs, especially recurring annual programs, there are usually

Way too many submissions for everyone's names to fit on a single screen, and
Many panels with grouped expertise

Most likely whoever you talked to saw a list of all proposals for whatever panel they were on (typically around 10 proposals per panel), and your proposal was simply in another panel, which is not something to stress over. Even if they were shown a list of all applicants to the program (which is highly unlikely because that would at least brush against conflict of interest issues, so I doubt an NSF program manager would do that) the whole list wouldn't fit legibly on one screen (even for smaller programs).

Research administrator here, so my perspective is from the university and not from a researcher.  There is a way to check the status by whoever is PI or Co-PI.  If you are Senior Personnel, but not a Co-PI, then it will not show up in research.gov for you at all.  It's as though it's not your proposal.
As you can see in the screenshot of research.gov below, it takes a lot of time for them to review most standard proposals.  I would never assume an award will happen within six months unless it's specifically an expedited call that is focused on short turn-around, which they normally say in the call.  I actually assume either a year for larger centers like MRSEC, AI Institutes, Expeditions, etc. or for general calls, 6 months is the minimum, with NSF most likely to dump their budget in the summer before the end of the FY.  In the screenshot below, there is a pending proposal since December.  I am not going to ask the PI the status of the proposal until October.  I should specifically note that proposals 1 and 3 are to the exact same solicitation, and yet have different status dates.
If your proposal was RWR (Returned Without Review), in my experience, NSF notifies you of that.  This was much more common with FastLane and is less likely with Research.gov which has automated checks for many things.  You should check your solicitation for RWR criteria.  E.g., if you were required to include an evaluation plan, and didn't, they are allowed to RWR.  This type of checking prior to submission is the job of your sponsored programs/research administration team.  Technically, NSF reserves the right to RWR anything in the checklist in the PAPPG, but that doesn't mean they do it.  My institution is an R1 school that has been called out for having et al in the references as a reason for return without review.  I used to work at a smaller university, and had never heard of such a thing.  But if you check the PAPPG, it is in fact a requirement to list full author names, and they do say anything in the checklist that is not fulfilled is subject to RWR.