text:
Student caught cheating when leaving class after handing me the exam
Usually I am quite clear that cheating and plagiarism are unacceptable. Although every semester I have to deal with several cases of plagiarism, I had not expected students to brazenly cheat in exams. A few seconds after one student handed me the exam, as she was leaving, I noticed that she had written answers on her hand. She was showing it off to a classmate and laughing as they left. In my country, just writing anything on the hands or anywhere they can read (including the table) is usually considered cheating. Students can check their answers when they are given their corrected exams back.
I know I could have created a scene on the spot, prevented the student from getting out as she was leaving the classroom, provided evidence of cheating, and graded her exam as 0. But other students were handing me their exams at the same moment, and many others were still writing down their answers. That would surely cause a commotion. I was paralyzed and did not know how to react. I am still not sure how I should have reacted, or how I ought to react in the future. I feel being aquiescent may have an impact on other students' behavior, and also on my feeling of self-respect.
Now I'm facing a dilemma. The student was not caught in flagrante delicto. The evidence for cheating is also gone. If it matters, the student's grade wasn't great either (4,8/10). I cannot decide myself between leaving the issue alone and forgetting about it, grading the student more severely in the next exams, or somehow lowering the student's grade (the last option is a little risky as the student could denounce me).

"That would surely cause a commotion." Why do you think that? In my experience calling that student immediately and failing her exam on the spot would have caused immediate silence and stillness for some seconds, and afterwards the students would have continued duing what they were doing, but maybe more quietly.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Please do not post answers in the comments. @Joseph: Please [edit] any clarifying information into your question.

Is the stated policy for dealing with cheating to give a zero? This strikes me as incredibly lenient; it sends the message that cheating is just as acceptable as not showing up, when plainly it is not. At my school the penalty for being caught cheating once was to get minus 100 on the exam, and being caught twice was expulsion. You might take this opportunity to clarify your institution's policies.

Is it possible that the student started the exam with a clean hand, copied her own answers in her hand before handing the exam, hoping to compare her answers with colleagues, immediately compared to one of them and laughed of happiness of getting the right answer?

@Hamsterrific or more likely wrote them down to pass along to another section.

Grading more severely or lowering a grade would be unethical. A possible course of action if you are convinced that the student cheated but had no hard evidence: do nothing for that time and wait for next examination (assuming there is one) to catch the student in flagrante delicto. The student will probably try to cheat again if she/he believes unnoticed the first time, and you know what to look for.

Is it possible that the writing on the hand wasn't related to the test? I'm just saying, it could be completely unrelated if you didn't get a good look at it. I would find it a little bit weird if the student had cheated, and showed of fsaid cheating to their friend within earshot/eyesight of the place that they cheated.

@GrumpyCrouton, technically yes, but as I said, where I live, just writing anything on the hands or anywhere they can read (including the table) is usually considered cheating.

Relevant meta question: https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3549/

The rules at my alma mater were very simple: bring everything you can carry in a bag, and anything you can use without a battery.

Exact rules will depend on where you are.  But normally the student has due process rights: to be confronted with the evidence of her cheating, and to appeal to some higher administrator or body if she desires.    Two of your options (grade more harshly / secretly lower grade) are things that you would do unilaterally, without the student's knowledge, and without giving her the right to challenge.  In my view, these options are therefore totally inappropriate and unethical.
The evidence against her is your testimony about what you observed.  If you think this would be sufficient evidence under your university's rules, then it is appropriate to pursue formal punishment as the rules dictate.  If you don't think it's sufficient, then do nothing, and let the student complete the rest of the course without prejudice. (Though of course you can watch her more closely in the future, and perhaps institute procedures to deter this kind of behavior in general.)

At least at my US university, I personally would report such an incident and let our academic integrity office investigate and after talking with the student they would decide if this is sufficient evidence.  If you also know the names of other students who might have seen the notes on her hand, the university might also be able to get corroboration from them.

@Kimball additionally, there may be cameras which had an appropriate angle on the student's hand. Even outside of a testing center, I imagine that most universities have some security cameras - even just evidence that there was something written on the hand may be important in conjunction with the report.

@Jeutnarg I don't think I have ever seen security cameras around academic buildings in the US.  Have you seen them somewhere?

@Kimball https://provost.harvard.edu/files/provost/files/final_video_camera_policy_may_25_2016.pdf - I know BYU does, and I know Harvard officially authorizes their usage. Some random report from 2006 says that they had over 200 cameras on-campus, and I imagine the number has only increased if anything.

If this weak testimony would be enough for anything, OP is in a crazy university.

A professor has the authority to assign grades. They don't have to hold a hearing every time they score an exam. The OP can give a score of zero for the exam unilaterally. Secretly lowering grades would be poor conduct.

@Acccumulation: A major university where I formerly worked had a rule that a professor did have to hold a hearing with the student, and inform them of the charges, before imposing a grade penalty for cheating.  The professor could assign a score of zero after the hearing, but the student could appeal.

I'm not a professor, but I'd say seeing any writing on a student's hand  is grounds for a zero on the exam... doesn't matter if it's a love interest's phone number or what; everyone knows writing on the hand is the oldest trick in the book, and it's a logical conclusion that you shouldn't have writing on your hand going into (or leaving) an exam. The fact that you witnessed any writing on her hand is evidence enough as far as I'm concerned, as a former student.

@DoktorJ - What if you had a tattoo?

@Malandy: I always explicitly allowed permanent tattoos, and recommended particular formulas as the best tattoo for the course.

For this particular incidence, I am afraid that the window of opportunity for acting on it has closed.  Be prepared for the next time.  Have a camera ready.  Have stuff to say ready.  Make sure to watch this particular student on the next exam: she's not going to fly under your radar next time round, and over the length of her coursework, that brag might cost more than the one cheat bought her.
If she no longer has courses with you, she likely will with others.  You can tell them of your goof informally so that they keep an eye open.
The easiest way out longer term is to create exams where cheating (short of communication) does not help.  I remember exams where people were allowed to bring one hand-written sheet of A4 paper (in the U.S., you could declare one sheet of "legal" legal): condensing the course contents like that was so much of a learning experience that you usually could then forego the sheet anyway.  There were others where you were allowed to bring anything except electronic devices: the time on those exams just was far too short for applying significant amounts of knowledge not suitably internalized.
Remember: in their job, they will be allowed to look up things, too.  So try teaching and checking for skills that go beyond dictionary lookups.

I am afraid that this is the only non-Law and Order answer so far. Seriously, what good is an exam or course when you can summarize a significant portion of it's content on a hand or two (even on large hands)? This seems to me like the classic "will be forgotten in a week" exam.

In my maths course, you could bring all the books you wanted to most exams. If you didn't study, you would never manage to apply formulas or theorem proofs in time or correctly anyway.

and it sounds like it wasn't even a good effort at cheating....seems odd

The American way is better, and actively helps you revise and summarize your cheat-sheet

@smci What’s the “American way”?

@KonradRudolph: what I said, they allow students prepare their own cheat-sheet, which minimizes cheating and actively helps you revise and summarize

@smci Oh, is this your answer? The account got dissociated. Anyway, you’ll be happy to know that this is also common at European Universities.

No this is not my answer. I'm just echoing the others.

I would argue for the abolishment of written exams. There is so much evidence against this form of "assessment". Not in all subjects perhaps, but a general rule to have continuous assessment, would solve many problems, especially this one.

-1 for suggesting teachers should prepare cameras and be expecting to take damning photos of their students.

They won't be always allowed to look up things in their jobs: for example, they won't be allowed to use dictionary when talking foreign language...

@Suuuehgi: It could well be the case that the student was just desperate, and the notes wouldn't have helped her much anyway, but she wasn't following the course well enough to understand this is the case. Indeed, if a palm's worth of notes makes a difference in an exam, something is probably off with it or with the course anyway. (Unless someone has access to the actual answers).

It’s either OK to take photos of people without their consent in an exam venue or it’s not. I think most people would say it’s not. In that case, it’s not OK to take any photos, damning or not.

It's not proven that she cheated.
I have known several students who would write their answers on their hand during the exam, so they can later compare their results with others.
I don't know in what country you are in, but if you should go after the alleged cheating, the student might carry this situation to court.
It's then up to you to prove that she had the notes before she entered the exam, which I doubt is possible for you. Therefore, my suggestion is to let it go and be more careful next time, should you see the student again.

That was my first thought as well. It is in fact a common practice to discuss answers just after leaving test, so people have an idea what the grades they will receive.

+1! I am glad I dont need to write that answer myself, and can upvote it instead. I often compared results afterwards and more than once I had the answers written on my hand, so I could remember that. Nothing wrong with doing that. And of course, if I had the right answer, and my friends would not, chances were high I would brag.

Playing devil's advocate this was my 1st guess as well. I've seen people taking out questions to solve later and for future years.

What you mention is a possibility, but do you have any evidence to suggest there's a precedent for this interpretation to be official favoured above the cheating interpretation? Since making such notes aren't necessary by any means, I imagine most formal decisions would favour the cheating interpretation, if not immediately, then at least going forward. Or, if you're merely saying that cheating is not the only possibility, regardless of what any formal body would conclude, then that's true of pretty much anything and why we speak of reasonable doubt.

The act of recording quiz questions or answers - often sharing them out over the internet afterwards is technically cheating too ... as it's used to give others previews or unfair advantages in the testing.  In the technical  certifications it's really common to sit outside a class room & pay students to verbalize questions they were asked.

For all the OP knows it could have been the phone number of a girl or boy the student was keen on which they got just before the exam.  There's a presumption of guilt being made by the OP and regardless of circumstances that's not fair.

@StephenG Perception is sometimes more important than reality. If you can't see how having something written on your hand during a test can get you accused of cheated, that's a problem that could very well royally screw up your life at some point. Failing that test can be seen as a life lesson. Also, OP does mention "answers", not just "something".

@NotThatGuy It's not an a exam supervisors job (or right !) to impose "life lessons" on someone based on a suspicion.  That would be totally unethical.  And if writing on your hand could "royally screw up your life" then something is very wrong with the world, not the people doing the writing.

@StephenG I didn't say writing something on your hand could royally screw up your life. I said not being able to see how doing so could be perceived could screw up your life. If you ignore perception in favour of reality, you could run around in public pointing a toy gun at people and be legitimately surprised if some police officer shoots you, or be wrongly convicted for speaking the truth, or lose your family because you assumed your partner wouldn't think much of something that looks a lot like you cheated on them when you didn't.

If the person didn't know the exam questions in advance, and only had those answers written on the hand, then it would be easy to presume the answers were written during the exam to take home. If the person had general info from the course written on her hand (historic dates, formulas, whatever the course was about), it would make it more obvious that it was written beforehand to help with the exam.

@Mirv i find that interesting (and a bunch of other things on this page), since most of exams from the uni I attended are posted publicly on courses/professors webpages, and those that aren't are freely shared between students, without anyone caring about that.  But it is a STEM enviroment, so it's just a bunch of different applications of math, so there is an almost infinite supply of exam questions/problems.

@Mirv "The act of recording quiz questions or answers - often sharing them out over the internet afterwards is technically cheating too ... as it's used to give others previews or unfair advantages in the testing." It's not technically cheating. That's like saying remembering the answers and sharing them is cheating too, or doing exercises with similar solutions like in the exam.

I'm not here to debate you in the comments - just making people aware what is considered cheating in places like NY, FL, TX, MN, CA (US) for different fields.

@Lebbers Remembering answers and sharing them IS cheating. Doing anything to give answers to someone who hasn't taken the test is cheating.

@mbomb007 It's not considered cheating here, maybe it's just the case in your country. There's a reason why exams are supposed to have new questions each semester. We even have tutorials where old exam questions are used for exercises..

@Lebbers I'm talking about between class periods. Professors often have more than one section of the same class in the U.S. so some students might take it later the same day, or perhaps another day in the week. Same for anyone who is sick and has to make it up.

@mbomb007 That seems lazy (can't be bothered to make new questions). here all exams for a given class are done simultaneously (if necessary in a different venue with more space if multiple student-groups must take the same exam). Everyone gets 2 chances: There is a re-exam (different questions) for those who failed or where not able (with good reason) to attend the 1st one. (If you are in the latter category and you fail the 1st attempt you get 1 retry next semester.) Most exams are open book anyway. They focus on understanding, not on rote-learning stuff you can lookup in a book when needed.

@NotThatGuy And being sassy to someone who is bigger than you can get you beaten up. That doesn't make it a "life lesson" for teachers to punch kids when they talk back.

@mbomb007 This depends on the rules of the particular exam (and if you don't know, you should ask before you do something that may be a violation). In some classes, it's not uncommon for students to be given the question paper to take home with them and the instructor posts old exams online. In other exams, the questions remain sensitive and nobody is allowed to discuss them. The policy should be stated clearly so there's no uncertainty.

Adding my 2c's worth: It is preposterous to declare sharing questions and answers as cheating. I would say this is merely a sign of weak student organizations; once students set their mind to it, they regularly publish booklets of former exam questions - and believe me, neither you, nor those US states would be able to do anything about it. It's an untenable position which should be let go.

You have to have the cold hard evidence.
I had a student hand me his paper with the hand with the notes on.
Excuses were:

these are not for this exam – oh yes they are
  Sorry I made some notes last night and did not wash my hands – been to the bathroom lately?

I took photos and it went to the exam board: safe and case closed. Student can submit a letter of appeal explaining their side. The photos were clear and conclusive.
So, get the evidence or you cannot act.

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

“You have to have the cold hard evidence.” — Where is this? It’s absolutely not true in German Universities. It would put a crazy lopsided burden on the instructor: few cheaters nowadays leave evidence.

Well not in Germany obviously and some cheaters are not intelligent enough to get rid of the evidence before they are caught....

@KonradRudolph: Seriously? Students can be convincted of cheating with absolutely no evidence except an instructor's say-so, which is itself weak and inconclusive? I sure hope not.

SolarMike: +1 for the lesson you're imparting, but in this case - I wouldn't even assume OP actually saw cheating.

@einpoklum Depending on the situation, yes. Of course the instructor can’t just fail a test after the fact without evidence but if the cheater is caught during the test, there’s no need for further evidence or procedure. Germany has a less litigious climate than the US: no need to make a bigger thing out of this. Given that you are (according to your profile) in the Netherlands, I’d assume that your culture is fairly similar.

@KonradRudolph: We're not talking about "a cheater", nor someone caught in an act of cheating during the test. In the latter case, there are numerous witnesses, and the instructor's testimony is clear and conclusive regarding the act.

@einpoklum Precisely. We seem to be on the same page after all. I agree that in OP’s situation, the ship has sailed. But for the examples in this answer, nobody in Germany would bat an eye if the examiner failed the student without taking photographic evidence (the latter would in fact seem weird).

@KonradRudolph: Yeah, I guess we do agree. An instructor's word is good evidence, but not when his testimony begins with "I think I saw ... it was probably... " and so on.

Sorry, but you did not catch a student cheating
While distracted and surrounded by many other people and some noise, you saw something on a student's hand, which you assume was written text, which you assume was illicit. You assume the student was laughing about having cheated on the exam.
Well, you know what they say about what happens when we assume (urbandictionary.com)...

I can give you multiple reasonable explanations of what happened, none of which involve the student cheating (and, in fact, some other answers have already done so).
... but try talking to the student regardless.
Ask the student to come to your reception hours, or at some other time to your office. Ask her about her experience in the course. Ask if she had any difficulties, and if so, what they were. If she gives any indication that things were not perfect, and doesn't maintain a perfect poker-face, give thought to how you, or others, can help her cope with this difficulty.
Now, you may think that this is rewarding criminality with kindness - and I guess that's true. But this would have the potential of getting a student who's having trouble academically to pursue a positive way of facing their difficulty. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't - but students are our charge, we should try to help them, and this student might be in need of help.
There is also the - non-zero - probability that the student will admit wrongdoing on the exam. If that happens, deal with it as you see fit, but don't "fish" for this explicitly.

To add another perspective on the problem: There are two things which may be used by the student as excuse

You do not know if the notes were used. It is a very weak excuse, but they could appeal that the notes were not used and possibly not even useful for the exam. Probably this exuse will not hold, though.
The more complicated part: They can claim, they made the notes during the exam. As long as you cannot disprove it, this would be fully legitimate.

So it is important to catch them in the act. The other option left is to confront them and they admit it.

They can claim, they made the notes during the exam. As long as you cannot disprove it, this would be fully legitimate. - Really?  I think most faculty and students would agree that notes on a hand during an exam is suspicious, and grounds for investigation.  Maybe if the student asked if they could do this beforehand and showed me clean hands at the start of the exam...

At least in the future, both of these issues can be easily mitigated by declaring up-front before the exam that any notes must go exclusively on the proctor-provided sheets of paper and nowhere else, and that any notes found elsewhere will be considered as a sufficiently conclusive sign of cheating and result in immediately failing the exam. These rules were a part of the standard announcement before each exam at my university.

Suspicious and grounds for investigation, absolutely. But if the notes match the exam paper (especially if there are mistakes), and don't look like the contents of any textbook, then the suspicion is disproven.

@O.R.Mapper That would be a valuable lesson. Allow every student to bring one sheet of paper with notes if you like, and have three sheets of empty paper for note taking. Marked so the student can take them out.

To be technical, the OP doesn't even know that they were not comparing answers they wrote down during the exam not before,

@Cal: Indeed. See my answer. allo: No offense, but you would make a weak defense counsel. You're underplaying your hand...

@Kimball: 1. Not necessarily. 2. Suspicion is not proof. 3. OP can't even prove there was anything on the student's hand.

@gnasher729 “Suspicious and grounds for investigation, absolutely. But if the notes match the exam paper (especially if there are mistakes), and don't look like the contents of any textbook, then the suspicion is disproven.” Actually, if the notes match the exam paper, doesn’t that make them more suspicious?

A complication is that a university is a business nowadays, and students its clients. If they don't get their degree, YOU have failed to deliver the service the client has paid for. This is an important factor, and in your situation I'd kick myself for letting this one go, be more wary in future, and not pursue anything punitive.

Somewhat similar situation: I was assisting invigilation at a Russell Group university in the UK (so, sub-top; not Oxbridge but just below). My job is guarding exams between sessions (receiving new ones, handing over finished ones),  keeping a record of any time a student takes a toilet break (from/to), replacing active invigilators that need a toilet break, and various sundries like phoning assistance when a student had a seizure. As one of my checks, during each session I check the cisterns of all toilets, and similar hidey holes [unconnectedly, this is how I quickly found one of the porters wasn't quite the 'recovered' alcoholic he claimed].
One day I find a set of engineering course notes, in a taped-close map, with only four students in that building taking that specific exam. So I put a post-it on it basically stating, "You're in trouble, better go check with your course admin before things get worse"...  A too-obvious ploy, but might work on a stressed student? I also passed a message to the head invigilators in both rooms that had a student sitting that exam. So both testified my record that exactly one of the four went on a toilet break, about one third in, and then continued the exam till full time. And this student actually contacted the admin immediately after, about this issue; so you have full confession this specific student prepared for cheating and opened their notes midway their exams. Not sufficient for any steps!!!
What then happened was a meeting of a committee, with the student plus a student representative for support; plus the course head and a representative of the Vice-Chancellor; plus me and various written statements by the invigilators. They eventually ruled that yes, the student did try to cheat[!?], but there was no proof that they actually benefited from it. No reprimand, no official statement, nothing; I'd guessed a re-sit of that paper would be the absolute minimum consequence. All in all I lost a lot of (unpaid!) hours on paperwork; a low-paying job I was doing because it's fun most of the time, and about 50min out of each hour I could effectively work on my laptop on other business.
A suspected factor in this all is that it was an overseas student, meaning they pay far more than the UK cap of £9000/year; they almost all pass even though most struggle with the language. Another bitter reminder that I was working in a degree printing business, is that universities in the UK (since previous 'Conservative' government) don't fall under the Education but under the Business department.

Nobody forces you to play by the rules laid out in your first paragraph. They are patently stupid. Don’t play along.

I would suggest that avoiding a public scene is the top priority actually. Besides the student herself, a public drama/humiliation would upset other students and make it harder to do your job.
Secondly, you did catch her in the act in the sense that you personally saw it. Just as if you saw someone peeking over their neighbor's shoulder. Tell her you saw this, escalate it perhaps (even if it goes nowhere she'll do some serious sweating). And she's on notice she better count her blessings and not do it again.

OP did not catch the student in any act. It's just a bunch of assumptions, combined with the circumstances which reduce the credibility of even what he physically saw. See my answer.

@einpoklum the act in this case was bringing written notes in a closed-book exam. There will always be alternative explanations and excuses. And witnesses can always be accused of being wrong. That can be judged later in the process. Plus there may be a record of accusations followed by suspiciously-unlikely excuses. If not, there will be one going forward.

@ASimpleAlgorithm: No such act ever took place in OP's case and OP has no evidence to suggest otherwise. His own testimony is extremely sketchy, and even if you accept everything his factual claims, no offence is proven.

@einpoklum And the OP says it did take place. You are arguing by assertion.

@ASimpleAlgorithm: 1. I countered your argument by assetion that OP caught her in the act. 2. I'm arguing what the student would argue, and OP can't disprove the student's assertion in any way.

@einpoklum You just repeated arguments we are well aware of. I am well aware of your arguments and their basis as I referred to them in my comment above. Perhaps you missed it.

As anyone with even a cursory legal background knows, your eyewitness testimony of what you saw the student do is evidence.  It is not true that you have to film some event in order to have evidence that it occurred.  My guess is that the university would take first-hand eyewitness evidence from one of its instructors very seriously, and there is a reasonable prospect that when confronted with this evidence, the student would not deny it.
If you want to pursue this, you need to go through the proper procedure to make a complaint about academic misconduct.  There is no reason you would need any additional evidence beyond your own eyewitness account, but if you want to augment this with other evidence, you could try asking some of the students she was showing off to.  Whatever you decide, do not bypass this process and then unilaterally penalise the student by marking her more harshly on other work - that is tantamount to acting as judge, jury and executioner yourself, and if it comes to light, you will be dropped into a world of shit.

A couple of thoughts on 'what should I do in future?':

If you spot something similar, don't make a big deal of it, but simply call the student over to you and ask them to wait to talk to you after the others have gone. That way you have more time to deal with the situation, and the student has less ground to complain that you accused them in public.
When you talk to the students about cheating being unacceptable, remind them that knowingly allowing others to cheat is also unacceptable.

Are you a TA or a faculty member.  If you are a TA, tell the professor of the class.  if you turn your grades into someone else, notify that person.
If you are the teacher, notify the head of the department and possibly an assistant or associate dean of the student's college.
People are going to cheat and sometimes they will be brazen about it. Willful ignorance, including cheating your way through college, is becoming increasingly common.
I am rather glad that I was a graduate teaching assistant more than 30 years ago and willful ignorance didn't seem quite so prevalent back then, but maybe I was just naïve and innocent. That was more than half a lifetime ago for me.

Despite disagreeing with your advice, I share your sentiment about the onset of spineless passivity.

I would just let it go...for now. For the next test, bring out all the artillery to catch her in the act. Try to get a proctor so that there are two teachers in the room to serve as witnesses.

What you should NOT do:

Reduce her grades/marks as a secondary consequence .
Judge her based on this instance throughout her coursework.
Approach her about the issue, as she might try to avoid you throughout the
course.

What you should've done:

Check students BEFORE they enter the examination hall for bits of paper,
electronic devices and any other aids that students may use for cheating.
(A handheld metal detector will eliminate all electronics.) Ask students to
empty their pockets.
If you clearly see cheating going on at any point in the examination and it is
an individual case, ask the person to stand back after everybody gives the
papers and exits the class. If there is CCTV, you can surely find evidence to
book the person as per the examination rules.
Catch the cheater and hold him/her back before he/she leaves the exam hall.
(if you have CCTV cameras, then this might not be necessary)
If you suspect someone is cheating during the exam, slowly walk toward them
and stand near that person, if they know they're being watched, it is
unlikely they will continue.
Before the exam starts just brief the students, telling them that you will
not take cheating lightly and those caught cheating will suffer extreme
consequences. Also tell them the CCTV footage will be reviewed after every
exam.

And if you do decide to take action, do it officially, by consulting with the school administration, also, try not to make the student hold a grudge against you later.

I'd like to know what the downvoters didn't like about this answer.

Heh....me too !

You really want to check students with a metal detector before the exam? You must have a lot of time! As a student, I would feel both insulted and even more nervous.

@aparente001 I have not downvoted it yet, I just noticed this answer. I can tell you why I don't like this answer - CCTV. I don't think CCTV is something people would like. As far as I know, there is no CCTV in the classrooms in the college in my location. I just found an article about installing CCTV in medical colleges in India. You can see how bad the author feels about it.  Do people like the idea having CCTV in the college classroom in the US?

@scaaahu - Thanks for explaining.  I haven't really given it any thought.  I upvoted because of the rest of it, and because the author was careful to say "IF there's a CCTV."

@aparente001 I don't think it's a good idea to mention CCTV, even it's an "if". And the author forgot to have an if in the last bullet.

@scaaahu - Again, thanks for explaining your reaction.  I think the last bullet should be taken as a follow-on to the "if," but I can understand your reaction. // This issue would make a very interesting question for this site.

Most of the schools around where i live in India have CCTV in each and every room , corridor , ground...
But the footage is not monitored real-time by someone or reviewed later unless the need arises.

@mafu , here in India you will undergo a metal detector test for most important exams , mostly nationwide/statewide exams, i was part of the JEE exams, which were conducted just a month ago ,we were not allowed to take even pens inside the exam centre, students were asked to remove their shoes/sneakers for checking, they frisked us and then there was the metal-detector. We were then moved to a temporary holding room where we waited for an hour before the exam started.
1.2 million people write that exam each year and security is tight !

@aparente001, footage is not viewed real time nor reviewed unless the need arises, and it gets overwritten every week that was the policy at my school.

In your user profile, you indicate you're a high school student. When you say Most of the schools around where i live in India have CCTV, were you referring to high schools or colleges?

i was part of the JEE exams JEE is for high school students to write in order to go into colleges. I sincerely hope that you will feel the difference between high school and college now. In college, you enjoy more freedom. CCTV is something un-welcome in colleges.

@scaaahu i see ...i was referring to high schools...

I'm teaching CS, and I'm really full of this cheating endemic. I've got 3.5+ students copying code from the internet. They practice the ancient technique of obfuscation by renaming the variables. Also found that the same student was not able to solve a problem two degrees of magnitude less complex on her own. Upon being confronted, she denied the "allegation". She continued her streak of copy/paste/rename the whole class. Final grade was 1.01, the next to minimum passing grade, which is 1.00 because I didn't want to do plagiarism research for her next year too.
My approach is to spend as less time as possible with students not willing to learn something. I just pass them the exam, with minimal grades (so that I get rid of them, otherwise they will keep register my classes). Why spending energy with such individuals, while the focus shall be the increase of the level of knowledge, and not acting as an intellectual police?
The company of the students willing to learn (which are not necessary the good students, but they turn into good students by time), asking academic questions is preferred to policing/enforcing rules to the students only interested of their grades. I try to limit my interaction with the latter category.
I don't think I'm alone here. I've interviewed people for private sector, and for example fresh master graduate was unaware of any language other than VBA (but only Excel) and when asked to solve an introductory problem involving a if in a for loop the candidate was lost. Given the grades, the candidate should have been more than fluent in algorithms, databases, C++ and Java.
My advice: minimal grade and move on.

How is copying code from the internet cheating? ... I've never seen that, for CS? Just a requirement to not use certain packages or something. You gave a problem, they found a solution. ... Unless you specifically say they can't copy code and riguorously enforce it, etc, you have nothing to stand on? ... You test if they actually understand stuff, using quizzes and tests, where they can't just look things up, it has to be on the spot. ... Also, what is 1.01? Is that good, or bad? ... What scale is that? ... Where are you?

1.01 is the next to minimum passing grade, which is 1.00

Concerning your other questions, are you serious? In OOP, AOP, TDD or MDD it is not about solving the problem, but meeting specific design requirements. Simply achieving functional goals is not enough. This is more or less similar to industry requirements. If you solve a problem, the industry cannot do anything with your solution if it cannot be integrated in existing applications and maintained. Many people understand if/for and basic data structures, but they fail to implement a class, to understand external libraries (most of them are object oriented) or to  use the right data structures.

They're not in a business environment, but a teaching one? You give them stuff to learn, and you help them do so. ... Or are you talking about a project-based course?

90% of the students are preparing for the industry, although only 20% are  employable IMHO. More than half believe they know for example Java or C++ and they resist learning anything new like OOP. I'm doing both teaching and industry. Talking about assignments, such as integer factorization or polynomial operations, or interview questions like find in a vector 10 most occurring number ending in zero and divisible by 3, not project assignments. I had this too, and I've seen plagiarism too.

It depends on your relationship to your students in general and this student in particular.
If local laws and regulations permit, I'd have the student come in for a conversation about it. Potentially, you could record this conversation, or have a witness (who would ideally not be another professor in this department). Also, realise the student may be doing the recording, even if you don't.
I'd approach it as a point of inquiry - "I saw you walk away laughing and pointing at your hand, and I'm concerned that you might not be taking this class very seriosuly. Am I right about this? You scored a 4.8/10 on this. What was that laugh about, anyways? I don't like to assume people are cheating, but it quite looked like it to me. Was there something else going on?" If you start from a place of empathy (and not presumed guilt!), you'll probably get further and you've created a chance for a conversation.

I don't think that you can do anything right now about it.
If you would bring it up now, she could just say you are lying and since it is her word against yours and you don't have any evidence, the administration is mot likely to take her side.
So I wouldn't do anything about it right now, but for the next exam I would pay more attention towards her and if she is doing it again, you can call her out on it.

the administration is mot likely to take her side - is this true?  witness testimony is generally considered evidence, and only one party here likely has a motive for lying.  potentially one can find other witnesses as well.

@Kimball, as one can guess by my comments above, the dean herself has motives to believe the students more (once she even accused me, obviously without proof, of inventing classes I didn't teach and penalizing students for not attending those fictitious classes. Go figure.)

@Joseph - How is that possible? Inaccurate class lists have re

@Joseph - How is that possible? Inaccurate class lists have remained unfixed, and propogated to such a high level? There's something wrong there.

@Joseph - How is that possible? Inaccurate class lists have remained unfixed, and propogated to such a high level? There's something wrong there.

@Joseph - How is that possible? Inaccurate class lists have remained unfixed, and propogated to such a high level? There's something wrong there.


text:
For PhD, prestigious fellowship at university with poor infrastructure, or prestigious university?
Two PhD positions were offered to me:

EPFL in Lausanne (Switzerland)
In Italy, through a H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship.

I know that Marie Curie are quite prestigious, but also EPFL is ranked among the top 15 universities in the world.
I like both projects and both offer good scholarships. Although the cost of living in Switzerland is much higher than in Italy, the infrastructure in Italy is really old and scarce.
I'm afraid of choosing the MSC ITN, which is at a university not as prestigious as EPFL.
To what extent does the prestige of a fellowship vs. the prestige of an institution matter to a researcher or professor career ? Is infrastructure a limiting factor for graduate studies in chemical and materials engineering?
"Poor infrastructure" means old equipment, not so nice labs, lecture rooms and PhD students offices. Also may you have to wait long for use an equipment...
The infrastructure (roads, trains...) of Italy is good, not so good as Switzerland but acceptable.

Prestige of university is far less important than your relationship with your supervisor and interest in the topic.

Welcome! On Academia SE, highly specific choices are usually off-topic. I made an edit to add in the underlying questions that seemed central to your question, but feel free to [edit] further, especially since it would help us to know what kind of infrastructure your PhD would need.

The advisor makes or breaks the whole thing, not the institution....

Just a comment to second @cactus_pardner: it would be very helpful if you could clarify "infrastructure" further. Are you talking about academic infrastructure or about the fact that the roads in Italy aren't as well-maintained as they are in Switzerland (no clue if that is true - I'm just demonstrating the different interpretations your question could currently have)?

As astronat says, the prestige of the university matters very little when you do a PhD. However, the prestige of the fellowship that funds you matters even less. Divorce yourself from the notion that these are the important metrics to evaluate, and instead look at:

Which advisor will you work with, and what are their students doing now?
If you have a chance to talk to PhD students at both institutions, do so.
Which university/grant will offer you better conditions, such as salary (of course after taxes and costs of living) or teaching load?
Which city would you rather live in for the next 5-ish years?
And, last but not least, which of the options makes you more excited, personally?

nice answer, but doesn't prestige matter when soon-to-be PhDs / new PhDs apply for post-docs?  or does a strong PhD dissertation get noticed even from a non-prestigious school? I wonder if doing a PhD at a place with "poor infrastructure" is effectively career suicide ...

@ConfusedMathStudent The university's reputation is less important than the advisor's reputation for that. A good advisor will find you contacts during your PhD that will help you find a postdoc. Also, you're taking OP at their word regarding the "poor infrastructure". No offense to OP, but myself before I started my PhD I was not qualified in any way to gauge a university's infrastructure or what mattered regarding working conditions.

I'd add the scientific infrastructure to this list as well.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
My manuscript gets "with Editor" then "Editor invited", What is the main reasons for this?
My manuscript status shows "With Editor" after initial submission. Then, (after two days) it takes "Editor invited". So, once, it with Editor, It should take the next step. However, it backs again to the first step. I really do not understand why it takes this two different status in a very short time?  What would this indicate? That is, my paper at the first time finds an editor, then they look for an editor to my paper?!

Possible duplicate of What does the typical workflow of a journal look like?

Welcome to Academia.SE! Your question already has an answer here, so it will be closed soon. Thank you!

@TheDoctor I am not asking for the process of the journal, I just wonder why my paper was with Editor then Editor invited?

@TheDoctor: I don’t see how this case is covered by the proposed duplicate.

@Wrzlprmft It is impossible to answer exactly what the specific status of a journal means and why someone in the staff changed it. For example, I have a paper that changed status in the following order in the same day: Quality Check started-> Editor Assigned -> Quality Check started. Should it be a valid question for Academia.SE why that happened? Some status changes are only for the staff, not for authors. The best answer we have is about the general and typical workflow of a journal.

However, we are able to edit the answer for that question and introduce the possibility of this situation happening. This status change may appear when the initial editor is not available anymore.

@TheDoctor: We may not know what happened exactly, but we may make an educated guess. Worst thing that can happen is that the question remains unanswered. — we are able to edit the answer for that question and introduce the possibility of this situation happening – the canonical question exists to cover a regular workflow, i.e., the basics. It was created to avoid hundreds of redundant questions on this. It cannot, needs not, and should not cover every eventuality.

It could be that someone pressed the wrong button.
Or the editor wasn't able to review after they initially took in on and put it out for another to pick up (probably good practice, rather than it sitting in someone's in-tray unread).
If you think it's a big deal, then contact the journal. But maybe give it a couple of weeks first.

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


text:
Will "academic expert" for study website hurt me on the academic job market?
I've been offered a side job working to answer submitted student questions (at my own discretion) related to my field of expertise for a study website. Seems pretty harmless as a way to earn very minor extra cash.
Would this have any implications for my prospects through the academic job market? I probably wouldn't list it on a CV, but would a committee seeing this kind of activity see it as a bad thing?

If it does, I would not work for an institution that consider that kind of job as something negative.
We all have to eat and live at the level that we like and  getting some more cash to achieve that should not be seen as a negative.

Is this something like "CourseHero" or a site that also does ghostwriting? Even if you choose to only answer ethically on such sites, an association with such sites may be seen negatively.

I don't see it being harmfull to your career if you don't answer asignment questions or doing something that can be thought as unethical. may be you can elaborate on why you think that it can harm your career?

Possibly the interpretation that this activity could help students get answers to homework that they should do themselves. Especially those students who pay to avail this service.

Than, You should really check the site and be sure that the site has some policy/policies against cheeting. If someone asks about it in a interview, you can  tell them they are ethical. It might even be helpfull in as a teaching experience. You can claim that because you interacted with students in a QNA site, you improved your communication skills etc.


text:
Can the supervisor ask a student to add them in an acknowledgment without any useful feedback
I am a PhD student. At the beginning of my study, my supervisor told me that they are able to help me with my topic. However, later I found that they cannot even understand what is my topic. They wasting my time for more about one and a half year without any comments or help with my topic. Then, I worked entirely alone with my topic. I have done the first chapter of my study, they asked me to be co-authors with me for nothing but just because they are my supervisors. I refused this. Then, they asked me to add them in the acknowledgment as they are the supervisors of this project. They asked me to write this in every single paper of my Ph.D. papers. They did not help me with anything, they even cannot understand the difference between my objectives. My question, Must I acknowledge them in my papers?

Who devised this "project" you are on?

Do they pay you?  If so, you must acknowledge their funding.  Did they provide you with any resources at all—a laptop or an office, for example?  Then you must acknowledge that support.

@JeffE They did not provide me anything. Only an office from the Uni for all the student.

@Karl I devised the project.

Now wait, you're not even payed? You are free to do whatever you want, and chose to do that, by devising your own project?

You shouldn't include a co-author unless they deserve to be included. But what do you gain by excluding them even from the acknowledgements? You're supposed to be there to learn from them, not to do whatever you want and get their degree for it. It's their school and you're the trainee. If this isn't the situation then you're the one who doesn't belong. You need to find another adviser if you're going to finish.

@F.Thomas: I'm puzzled - you turned down your supervisors' request for co-authorship, and they accepted that (seemingly without complaint) and asked if you could simply add them to the acknowledgements (which costs you absolutely nothing), and you still said no? Seems a bit harsh (not to mention rather inadvisible) - do you really hate them/want to burn bridges with them that much? Because at least in my field, that's probably how they'd interpret it - refusing even to acknowledge your supervisors' existence is kind of rude (to put it mildly). Not to mention that it may impact their funding.

Acknowledging your supervisor means many things, ranging from thanking their funding and fundamental supervision to suggesting that your phD relationship is ok, although this is not necessarily the case.
Non-helpful supervisors are not only those who ignore their duties but also those who do not give the input but keep pushing you back. So, my suggestion is to change your supervisor. Move on to work with more professional people. Doing research alone is hard enough. You don't want any other barriers in your way as your journey will become harder and harder.

They even do not give me a sponsor. If I asked them a question they said they do not know or even give me a wrong answer.

Let's think in this way, it is good that now you know early. But you should talk to someone of the higher power such as the postgrad office. Once, you inform about them; then, it is best to move on with a better person. This is very serious, especially when it comes to no funding. I believe that if you work hard enough, someone might consider taking you under his/her supervision. Many of them only want a student who can do good publications, even if it is not about their works.

By the way, you should talk to the postgraduate office to decide whether you should add them in acknowledgment. This is   something to do with the authorship, and having the third party should help.

Giving a mere acknowledgement to supervisors is a pretty low bar, and it would be a pretty extreme reaction to deny this.  Even if they did not succeed in assisting you with this paper, presumably they must have made some attempt to assist you in their supervisory role, and they have taken time out of their own schedule to try to assist you as a student.  That in itself warrants an acknowledgement and thanks, even if you are of the view that they did not contribute anything of value.  It is usual to add someone as a co-author only when they have made a substantial contribution to a paper, but the bar for an acknowledgement is much lower.
I note from your further comments that you are of the view that your academic supervisors do not understand your topic, and the Dean of the Faculty is "with their side".  I also note your comment that they have asked you to withdraw from the university, or at least take a long vacation.  Under such circumstances, you should try to engage in some self-reflection and see if you are acting reasonably, or if you might be contributing to the problem.  Refusing any acknowledgement of assistance (or at least attempted assistance) by a supervisor suggests that you are not acting in a manner conducive to good relations with your supervisory panel.
It is not entirely impossible that a supervisor could be incompetent to assist a student, or that a Dean could incorrectly side with the supervisor in this case.  However, it would be very unusual if multiple professional scholars do not understand the topic of a student they are supervising, and are not able to provide a student with any assistance.  Application of Occam's Razor would lead an outside observer to conclude that the more likely explanation is that it is the student might not properly appreciate the efforts made by their supervisors.  The refusal even to acknowledge and thank them in a paper contributes to this perception.

However, later I found that they cannot even understand what is my
  topic.

and

Then, they asked me to add them in the acknowledgment as they are the supervisors of this project.

simply don't add up. If they are supervisors of some project, chances are they have written the proposal of the project, and defined aims/goals/methods etc.
Moreover, because you are involved in a project supervised by your advisor(s), no matter what you do, they must take some credit. Without them, the project wouldn't exist. Without the project, that particular work wouldn't exist.
A similar reasoning is, when you publish a paper, you write the name of your university even though the university did literally nothing.
By the tone of your question and your tendency to self-righteousness, I think you should be more worried about your future in that project. If your tone to your supervisors is as rude as it is in this post, you probably will have a hard time in near future.

I find the objectives of the project, the relative literature reviews (all the papers in my area), data, statistical code to run the algorithm, methodology of every single objective. They entirety did not do anything

@F.AMER They gave you funding and just let you do your own stuff? I'd certainly acknowledge them for that.

no matter what you do, they must take some credit — No, I'm sorry, this just isn't correct.  If the supervisor provides intellectual guidance or physical/monetary resources, those contributions must be acknowledged.  But writing a paper while coincidentally under someone's formal supervision does not require acknowledging that supervision, for the same reason that faculty-authored papers do not automatically acknowledge department chairs and deans.

even though the university did literally nothing — Not true; the university gave you an office, working internet, an email address, and a job title.

@JeffE With the same reasoning, in this case, the supervisors give the OP a project to work on and allocate some research money for the user.

Fields (and universities) differ a lot in how projects are set up. Sometimes students have a lot of latitude, especially if the research doesn't require consumable resources.

Also, I cautiously agree with your comments on the tone of this question. Though there might be language/culture issues involved, the OP's question here seems to lack nuance and consideration of their own potential faults. Hopefully OP can get a diplomatic friend to edit further messages to the supervisor and/or department.

@padawan I see no evidence in the question that the supervisor "gave" OP a project to work on.

They created the project. If there was no project, there would have been no funding. Similar to if there was no university, there would've been no office.

Whether you must add them to the acknowledgements is, I guess, down to your institution.
From a practical and pragmatic perspective, you should add them to the acknowledgements. It doesn't cost you anything, except perhaps some pride, and it avoids worsening relations between you. If you're going to have a fight with them, save it for something that matters :-)

This is likely to be Country and / or Institution dependant, but have you considered speaking to the Dean or the next level above them?
Is there some type pf PhD committee that could help?
Do consider that they may become vindictive if you do not include them and could cause harm or slow down your continuing progress...

The Dean is with their side. They asked me to withdrawable from the uni but I said to them I will go to the court. Then, they asked me to have a long vacation. If I do not obey then they will not make me graduated.

I am working entirely alone. Even they do not want to help me to know how to deal with a journal to publish my paper.

From the tone of your two comments it sounds like you have already burnt the bridges - “have a long vacation” ergo take some time and think about your next move...

They want me to have a vacation because they then can easily say for me there are no supervisors for you (this is their rule).

Perhaps you should seriously consider finding and moving to another institution...


text:
Duties of a shepherd in a CS conference
I reviewed a paper, which was then accepted as "presentation-only" with a possibility to submit a revised version to be re-reviewed. Upon acceptance, I was asked to be a shepherd for the paper.

What are the typical duties of a shepherd?
Which duties might seem shepherd's duties, but, in fact, are not?
Does the shepherd get any academic credit?
Do paper authors get to know the shepherd's name?

EDIT: This question is partially (i.e., not fully) covered by Thanking a "shepherd" in acknowledgments. Here, we ask for a more detailed, canonical description. In particular, feel free to add more items to this question by means of editing.

My guess is that if the authors are your "sheep" (rather than the paper being your sheep), then you will be in charge of emailing them at some point. This sounds like an informal role, and I'm curious to know whether there is one canonical answer for CS. Good luck!

This notion of "shepherd" is one that I've seen only in computer science conferences, and there it was quite informal. Usually, when a paper was given a shepherd, the program committee had already discussed what needed to be improved in the paper, and the understanding was that the shepherd would (try to) get those improvements made.

Possible duplicate of Thanking a "shepherd" in acknowledgments

in my experience, the shepherd is supposed to produce constructive feedback, and basically setting a shepherd on a paper tells the authors they need to keep working on the paper for as long as possible. Don't worry about it too much, you're not meant to rewrite their paper. Ask the person that set you up to be shepherd whether the authors will know you or not.
You might get mentionned, same as reviewers in the proceeedings, but think of it more as building experience and goodwill in your research network.


text:
Why are research papers written in language that's difficult for undergraduate students?
As an undergraduate student, I find it hard to understand research papers on any particular subject.
Why don't researchers use simple language for their reports, so that everyone would understand?
Update: I will leave this post as a general discussion on this topic. Feel free to edit question.

Strongly related question: Why do researchers sometimes use extremely complicated English sentences to convey their meaning?

https://github.com/papers-we-love/papers-we-love#how-to-read-a-paper

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Please use comments only for their intended purpose, i.e., to suggest improvements to the question, hint to relevant related material, and similar.

Examples please? ... And all research papers, or papers geared to undergrads?

Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?

Papers are not necessarily written for undergraduate students to understand.  They are usually for other researchers in the field.  Filling in all the gaps that would allow undergraduates to understand everything would result in a textbook (which is probably most of what you are reading these days...).

what subject are you refering to? Personally I think math and physics papers use easy language (but hard content). Some other subjects might do it reversely.

As an example, recently, I have been trying to write a report on: "Solution of Schrödinger equation for Dirac delta potential". And i came across this research paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226953738_Solutions_of_the_Schrodinger_equation_for_Dirac_delta_decorated_linear_potential/citations .  And i understood the linear algebra process but it was hard to understand how they did their calculations and how they came up with the solution.

In addition to the many fine reasons given below, it takes time to figure out how to present results in an easily understandable way. If you go back and read the original papers on topics you have been taught in school, you'll find that quite often the paper is hard to understand. Over many years teachers figure out the best way to present the material. Good examples are developed. Sometimes in reading the early papers you also notice that ideas aren't fully formed yet and simplifying concepts have been thought of.

@ZulfidinKhodzhaev Well, that's totally excusable. They're just showing the calculation while skipping trivial steps, i.e. the steps that every physicist knows how to fill in themselves. Because you're still a student, you don't know the trivial steps yet, but that's not their fault. If they had as much detail as an intro QM class the paper would be 200 pages.

What is the audience for a research paper?

@ZulfidinKhodzhaev The language of the paper seems to simple. They use short sentences with simple english. What sentence is bothering you as difficult English? The math is of course not so easy.

I updated the example and relative question.

@BobJarvis the primary audience of a research paper is the researchers in the same subfield/community, who would be expected to have read (or at least be aware of) most of existing knowledge that the paper is builds upon; the main purpose of an original research paper is to disseminate the new knowledge that wasn't known to anyone and wasn't ever published before.

@Peteris: exactly my point. Hopefully OP takes note of this.

Partly it's because they're intended to be read by persons who know a lot more than what undergraduate students know. But there's also a less innocent reason. (1) They write in a way intended for a narrower audience than what they could potentially reach, sometimes consisting only of persons working in a narrow sub-specialty, partly because it's easy, and (2) Sometimes they're not trying to reach anybody, but only to add more stuff to their publications list. There are many who are not guilty of (1) and (2), but there are also many who are.

I've often found myself wishing research papers were published in a wiki-like format, where an editor could easily turn jargon and other potentially-unfamiliar terms into hyperlinks for those who need/want more information.

In short, because it is difficult to express something concisely, and precisely in language that any undergraduate can understand.
Conciseness is required not just because without it every report would be inconveniently long to write and to read, but because it would be harder to understand.
It would be harder to understand because the jargon neatly encapsulates a bundle of concepts (e.g. its definition and related properties) into a single concept.
And we can only be thinking about so many concepts at a time.
Consider the statement about the Stone–Weierstrass theorem:
A mathematician might say:

Polynomial functions are dense in C[a,b] ⊂ (ℝ→ℝ)

To expand out the math, so that one does not have to know the notations on gets:

Polynomial functions are dense in the space of continuous real-valued functions defined on a closed interval.

But still perhaps the word dense is beyond the understanding of an undergrad.
So let's expand it to not use that:

For every continuous real-valued function defined an interval; then for any positive real constant one might care to define, a polynomial can be found such that for every point on that interval the absolute difference between the value of that polynomial and the value of the real function at the point is smaller than the constant.

So that is how much most space it took and how many more ideas one has to keep track of for that fairly simple use of jargon.
When thinking about such a problem rarely is the mathematician thinking about what is going on with the distance of points in a hypothetical polynomial.
They are just thinking "it is dense".
Now imagine expanding all the terms in the generalized version of the above:

Stone–Weierstrass Theorem (real numbers). Suppose X is a compact Hausdorff space and A is a subalgebra of C(X, R) which contains a non-zero constant function. Then A is dense in C(X, R) if and only if it separates points.

(This last is a direct quote from the Wikipedia page on the Stone–Weierstrass theorem, the preceding quotes are not, though are to some extent paraphrases.)
Then to go the other point on preciseness,
There is a really high chance someone is going to comment on this answer saying that actually my statement is not quite correct, that I've not fully captured the definitions in my explanation
While, yes, every paper could repeat some introductory information,
then that would inconvenience any reader who is looking to find the core idea,
since it would be drowned in a sea of background material.
And you might say that "this answer is hard to understand, in the expanded form, you did a poor job at making it understandable to an undergraduate.",
and I'ld say "Fair enough; I'm not great at making things easily understandable."
And that statement holds for most other researchers too.
Not what most are good at -- it is why there are specialists in scientific communication.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. @LyndonWhite: If possible, try to [edit] answers to questions raised in comments into the answer.

Your expansion of the definition of "dense" brings up a different problem. I didn't know the definition before, but it took me several minutes to realize that it boils down to "A polynomial can approximate any continuous function on a closed interval arbitrarily well", which, I think, is far more accessible.

@LLIAMnYP  that is more accessible indeed, but it is less precise. (Honestly it is pretty good; the fact that I didn't use it, in part demonstrates my final point: Like most researcher's I'm not great at making things easily understandable.")

@LLlAMnYP Note in particular that there are many reasonable topologies one can put on a set of functions, which each yield different notions of what "approximate" means.

@LLlAMnYP: Let me also, in addition to the others, that if every time someone writes "D is dense in X" they should replace it by "we can approximate every point in X by some collection of points from D ordered in some particular way" (read: every point in X is a limit of a net from D), that would be a serious hindrance in both reading and writing. This is why we have a word for "phone" or a word for "sofa", to convey information in a short and precise manner.

@inkblot very true. We absolutely should use correct words like "X is dense" and "Y is a sofa" and "Z is a phone" and not, god forbid, a "communications device", just because that sounds more "academic".

The intended audience of a research paper is not 'everyone'; it is other researchers in the same field.
As a comparison, consider things like car manuals, or legal documents. It would be possible to write these in more accessible language, but that would detract from the primary purpose of the document.

I understand your point, but in my experience (maybe I am newbie yet), when you work on a project you may need to look to researchers on other fields too. As an example, as a physicist, if you are working on wearable gadget, you have to understand the research papers on these to build one.

@ZulfidinKhodzhaev That's why the "crossbred" scienists are scarce and wanted. They are capable of reading and thinking in multiple universes.

Put another way, the purpose of a research paper is to report, not to educate. You don't teach your fellow researchers, you simply tell them what you discovered in a language that they can readily understand.

@J.R. I thought the primary purpose of a research paper was either to fulfill a contractual obligation of a grant or to advertise for a new grant.  Reporting and educating is discouraged.

"Car manuals" seems like a horrible example as they should be targeting the general population, no? Nearly every family owns at least one car and thus has a manual for its basic care.

@jpmc26 Depends on your meaning of manual. The bits that tell you how to identify that something is wrong, or how to press the buttons, is aimed at a general audience. But a manual that tells you how the car actually works and what it's specifications are is primarily aimed at a mechanic.

@emory I can't tell whether you are being serious.

Actually, according to general guideline of RSC, now we are obligated as editors to evaluate if paper is suitable for the wider audience.

In short, because undergraduate students are not the target audience of research papers' authors.

This only partially answers the question. Sure, they are not the target audience, but it's still extra effort to use difficult words where easy ones would do. This is expected of us (I'm doing a master's right now and a paper written like a blog post... well, nobody ever dared to try) but it also purposefully keeps less well educated people out. This might reduce the noise (if stupid people can't keep up with your conversation, they can't join it) but is that truly the goal? Are we all agreed on that we should keep a large group out, or is it just a practice that stuck?

@Luc 'but it's still extra effort to use difficult words where easy ones would do'; errr.... no. The 'difficult' words in this context are the ones you normally use.

@JessicaB After how much practice in writing papers? Would you use those when you didn't have experience in writing papers, but you did have topical knowledge? I'm currently doing a master's, but I got here via an odd route and while I have had subject knowledge for years, I found papers on the subject quite hard to read (understandable, but it just takes forever to parse it all). It has gotten better, but both reading and writing them takes practice. It's a different kind of English, and I just don't think it's always required to get the point across concisely.

@Luc: I got quite the opposite advise when writing one of my first papers: my supervisor told me e.g. to replace a) "advanced" grammar (genitives with 's [which are easy and natural for me as they are similar to what my native language does]) by a more plain construction (of) and b) avoid the use of synonyms in favor of one and the same term. The reasoning was to make reading easier for  non-native speakers who possibly have never met the concept of cases and may need to look up terms.

@JessicaB I'm not quite sure, what you're arguing for? I interpreted Luc's comment as in favor of We heated the sample to T=350K, rather than We elevated the temperature of the sample to a sufficiently high value of 350K.

@Luc Yes, I would use the same language for the subject as when writing papers. Mathematicians spend a lot of time saying very very carefully what they mean.

There are different possible reasons for a paper being "hard to understand".
One of the reasons was already elaborated in the other answers. It basically boils down to the presuppositions and assumptions that are made in technical terms. The writers expect the readers to have some familiarity with the subject. Special jargon or notations are used simply because they allow a certain brevity and precision. When a term has a specific meaning, the meaning is assumed to be known, and in doubt, can be looked up elsewhere. The details of this problem may also depend on the subject: In a mathematical paper, the main hurdle may be understanding certain notations. In a social sciences paper, the main difficulty may be in understanding the precise meaning of certain terms.
But there is another reason. It was also mentioned in the comments, and discussed in other questions. The reason is that the text itself may simply be written in a form that is hard to understand.
Going one level deeper, the obvious next question is: Why is the text written in this form?
I think, broadly speaking, there are two possible answers to this:

The text is deliberately written in an elaborated language to generate a linguistically challenging experience for the addressee (meaning: "The author uses complicated words to make it difficult to understand")
The author is not able to write it in a simpler form. There is a famous quote: "If I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter." (attributed in different forms to different people). Writing an easily comprehensible text is difficult (particularly when the author is not a native English speaker). But improving the text by organizing and rephrasing it so that it concisely and precisely conveys the intended message is time consuming - and people are often (not willing or) not able to invest the required amount of time.

Interestingly, English is the only language for which a dedicated Wikipedia version exists, namely the Simple English Wikipedia - although this is only indirectly related to academic writing, it shows that similar problems exist in other areas.

There's a great piece on this in the New Scientist; Science and Fiction: Plain words, please. There is also another article by the same author published there in April 1968, but I couldn't locate it online.

@LLlAMnYP Yes, I think the article makes a valid point: After reading several papers that are written like this, newcomers will imitate this style, and people might expect this sort of stilted language (and TBH: I often catch myself falling into this pattern...).  This may be related to the imposter syndrome (mentioned in another answer), or just a lack of knowledge of things like The Elements Of Style. In any case, one could explain why people are writing like this, but it's much harder to alleviate this problem.

Don't forget that tons of papers are written by non-native English speakers who possibly don't have the proficiency to choose a "plain and simple" (elegant) description but will go with however they manage to put their thoughts into the English they know. Plus, at least for Europeans, the idea whether a given English expression is easily understood will differ between speakers of Romance and Germanic mother tongues - each of them possibly prefering the part of English that is closer to their mother tongue.

I think there is a false premise to this question. Namely, the idea that researchers could write the same paper using mostly different words just does not make any sense (to me)!
Using different words makes a different piece of writing.
This is not a phenomenon that is unique to reaearch papers. I don't read books by Faulkner* to my toddler, and I would never complain that Faulkner should have written his books so that they would make sense to a 2-year-old.
Research papers are still pieces of writing. I agonize over words and phrases all the time, and when I'm done writing, there are lots of phrases that illustrate ideas and explain concepts exactly as I want. Outside of changes required/requested for journal editorial purposes, I would be quite unhappy to change these words and phrases. And yes, as others have said, this is affected by who my audience is. But all writing has an intended audience. There is no such thing as a piece of writing intended literally for everybody.
So at least from a personal stand point: I don't use different words mostly because they would be different from the ones I wanted to use :)
*William Faulkner is an American author who has a reputation for some of his writing being difficult to understand/interpret (I would say).

Researchers generally use complicated language because their research covers complex topics. Thus they use words that will be familiar and precise to people who understand the topics. And precisely because these words are familiar to other experts, there is no point trying to explain them in a paper because someone else (probably several someones) will have already explained them better somewhere else. Thus if you are reading a paper as a non-expert (that is, a non-expert in the topic at hand; this applies equally well to experts in other fields) and come across terminology that you don't understand, this is a useful pointer that you should first go and read about it elsewhere. The real danger for non-experts reading scientific papers is that they might read something without realising they didn't understand it.

"They might read something without realizing they didn't understand it" - very good point. I think it happened to me a lot.

But in addition to complicated words, the vast majority of papers also use complex sentence constructions to sound professional. It's not only because it's simply a complex topic.

Be more precise: are you talking about unnecessarily complex language, or are you confused/irritated by specific terminology?
Some scientists do tend to use overly complex language to differentiate themselves from others "of lesser intellect" as they think. That does happen and is often just a sign of bad style or even bad knowledge as it suggests a level of expertise that might just not be there.
If you have issues with all scientific papers you might need to improve on your language skills. In science you need to be very precise, and stick to certain terminology. And since science papers are intended to be read by other scientists in the same field of research, authors expect readers to be familiar with terminology in that field and will not explain fundamental things. That's up to you.
However, a good paper should at least be easy to follow even though a reader might stumble upon a few expressions he or she is not familiar with.

Thank you for your response, maybe this is one of the reasons I am having trouble understanding research papers. But, I wouldn't limit the problem on this issue. Also, the details are too much shortened. For example, in mathematics, it jumps to conclusion without properly explaining the steps it took to come up with the solution.

@ZulfidinKhodzhaev skipping mathematical steps which would be shown at undergraduate level is common, and is usually because the author (correctly or otherwise) thinks that they are obvious or trivial, and that they will be equally obvious or trivial to the intended audience.

@ZulfidinKhodzhaev Again, including all the mathematical details does not match with the intended purpose of a research paper. Personally I'd like to see us move to papers that have expandable sections with more details in. But journal space is primarily for new knowledge, not for showing you are competent in carrying out calculations.

I generally agree with your response, but: "If you have issues with all scientific papers you might need to improve on your language skills." To be fair, though, a huge portion of papers are unnecessarily complex. If it all sounds simple, one's boss might think "so why do we need you to do it?" or in case of students, they'd get lower grades because it sounds like it was all easy peasy. We're constantly encouraged (usually without the speaker even realizing it) to make it sound like we're doing true science™, even if we're describing after how many openings a door hinge breaks.

Part of what I'd consider "complicated" English may be simpler English to other non-native English speakers - and vice versa: My mother tongue is German (i.e. quite close to English). I often think e.g. scientists with Romance mother tongue using "complicated" English - but I'm sure they'd say the same of my English: it is just that constructions and terms of English that are close to their native language are not so close to my native language.

I don't think anyone can answer this for sure, but here's a personal guess.
Researchers don't actively attempt to write in an arcane manner. Making one's research accessible is a good thing! However, a genuine concern when writing is that one might be making too many "obvious" statements. Nobody wants to be making obvious statements since it both makes the author look junior + makes the work done seem simple (c.f. imposter syndrome). This gets more drastic the more experienced a researcher is, since more statements appear obvious to them. Of course what's obvious to an experienced researcher is probably not obvious to undergraduates, who are the unfortunate casualties of this.
I also get the feeling that authors want to make it seem like they have processed what was previously written (or simply want to avoid plagiarism), so when they write a paper using an equation in a previous paper, they commonly write the same equation in slightly different notation, e.g. by using different but equivalent expressions for the same factor. Again, experienced researchers have no trouble but undergraduates are unfortunate casualties.
Here are a couple more articles about this: an article in The Atlantic and another in Nature. Googling for "why are academic papers so hard to read" finds a lot more results.
If you find this ridiculous, then when you write papers in the future, try to make it accessible to a wide audience!

For that to be true, the fast majority of faculty would need to suffer from the imposter syndrome. While I would not be surprised if the majority of PhD students have suffered to some extend from the imposter syndrome, most got over it.

@MaartenBuis how do you know?

@Flyto How do I know what?

@MaartenBuis that most people get over their imposter syndrome.

@Flyto those who get tenure

@maarten buis: it seems to be a bit of a stretch to assume that all those who have tenure believe that they deserve it... It's also something of a misrepresentation to describe those who get tenure (or similarly senior positions in places without tenure) as "most". I have no evidence, but I would not be surprised if a majority of academics suffer imposter syndrome from time to time, not just PhD students!

I edited this - idea is that the more experienced a researcher is, the more statements they find obvious. I don't mean that everyone feels the imposter syndrome, but making the work done seem simple is psychologically difficult.

@Flyto those who stay in academia are the ones who write articles. Those who leave are irrelevant to this question. Now you have selection. Those who could not overcome their imposter syndrome, are not going to stay in academia. So it is not that getting tenure makes you loose the syndrome, but that those with the syndrome are "weeded out" at this stage. Academia is a very unforgiving environment.

@maartenbuis I think you are making some major unwarranted assumptions about people's internal thought processes. But, let's leave this here.

I don't think impostor syndrome is needed to explain the observation. Lazyness (it's more work to write more, particularly if you'd need to dig out references for things that you've long known) and a biased (routine-blinded) oponion of what is obvious and well-known in the context are probably sufficient.

There is another pair of reasons that many articles are not easily understood but undergrads.

Most authors are ESL

I once heard a prominent scholar joke "The language of Physics is broken English". This funny thought stems from the fact that while most articles are published in English, the scholars who write them generally know English as second language.
As a native English speaker, and a graduate student, I have found it difficult to write a paper. Why? Because I had to learn the language as it is used in my field of research. For most papers[1], the primary audience is for other scholars within the same field. Thus the language of the research field becomes a sort of dialect that others must conform too.

Published research must be unambiguous

A good sentence in an article should have one, and only one, interpretation. If a sentence has more than one meaning, it does not properly convey the ideas to the reader. This is critical for a big reason. Each sentence makes a claim, and each claim should be provable by research.
Making sentences with only one meaning is sorta hard; it tends to make them technical, long, and ugly.
In contrast, fiction and journalism tend to give you room to imaging things as you want. Much easier to create beautiful flowing sentences if they can be ambiguous.

Writing by committee, edited by a grad student

So from what I've seen, most first drafts are written by a grad student who don't write very well (me). It then gets emailed around, and everyone makes changes here and there, and the text of the document becomes incoherent. Then the grad student edits it some more, and is told to submit it. Imagine eating a dinner cooked in this manner!
[1] The exceptions are review papers, which are longer and use much more general language. Easier to read, too

A lot of research papers are arguably written in a deliberately convoluted style to enhance the prestige of the authors: see https://www.plainenglish.co.uk/news/1212-unreadable-academic-writing.html
I rather like this quote: “In academia, it seems that when we have nothing much to say we attempt to distract attention from that sad fact by saying it as pretentiously and at as much length as possible.”
My research supervisor, Maurice Wilkes, had a disarming way of writing that made complex ideas seem very simple, and I have always tried to follow his example. The danger if you do that is that people might not appreciate the value of what you are saying, and many academics don't want to take this risk.
In reviewing papers for conferences I have generally found that when you take time to cut through the jargon, the ideas in difficult-to-read papers are no more profound or precise than the ideas expressed in papers that are much easier to read.

Jargon is not something you need to "cut through". It is there to help avoid having to write 5 extra pages explaining each and every concept which will already have been covered better in any introductory textbook on the subject (which the reader is assumed to be familiar with, or why would they be reading research on the topic anyway?).

The person who wrote that article doesn't seem to understand what they are saying. 'People read' does not have the same implication as the given statement, when you are dealing with research on the topic.

"People read" was from Richard Feynman, not from the author of the article, and was clearly swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction for dramatic effect. But he's justified; the sentence he's quoting uses long words to make what's essentially obvious sound like a profound observation.

Incidentally, I had fun recently trying to write a technical conference paper in blank verse. I never finished or published it, but the exercise was fascinating in making me think really hard about which words and phrases were actually necessary to convey my meaning, and the surprise (for me) was that the whole thing could be cut down to about a third of the length without losing anything meaningful.

I noticed, in my undergraduate courses, lecturers who understand the topic well, can explain the theory in an easy language. For example, lecturer who came from different field (i.e. physics), had hard time explaining calculus to us. He tried to avoid the meaning behind the theory/ equations and wrote more definitions.

@ZulfidinKhodzhaev: I agree, and I disagree with this answer in that I find that people typically appreciate good explanations.

@cbeleites sure, and then they see that you aren't doing anything complex and illegible, and then you lose status

@amara: well, that's not my experience. But maybe my field (chemometrics) carries enough impression of complexity ;-) I've found clear explanations of research results to lead e.g. to spontaneous invitations to job interviews - which I don't take as indication of loss in status. (And in any case, I don't care to be associated with groups where illegibility increases status.)

In addition to the comment of Jessica B, there are even some "method" articles which don't even have a general introduction and directly report technical knowledge. The target audience of paper is crucial. However, after reading 10-20 papers you will start to see general outline so you will not find that difficult.

It is difficult to write scientific papers so that everyone can understand. The reasons have been nicely covered in other answers.
I want to point out that the authors would normally include their emails or addresses in their papers so that anyone can write to them and ask questions about their reports.
If you need to do research and read papers from other fields, you can always contact the authors about their papers. If you indicate your purpose and background, they can usually help. Just don't expect them to teach you the whole subject. I would say using the same etiquette for asking questions on stackexchange.

Research papers are not generally intended to teach; rather, they are designed to inform.  However, that does not mean that an undergraduate cannot use them as a resource.  Take the following example sentence from a research paper:
"Theory predicts, and some evidence demonstrates that in lakes, the depth of the thermocline can have a large structural influence on the spatial distribution, and strongly influences the composition of plankton communities."
This one sentence could take an entire chapter of an undergraduate limnology textbook to fully explain.  However, there are dictionaries, encyclopedias, and, oh yeah, this thing called Google, that can make short work of gleaning its meaning.  Terms like "thermocline" and "spatial distribution" and "plankton communities" can all be Googled and within a few minutes the meaning of the sentence will become clear, even to the most uninitiated.
In summary, if one simply accepts that most high-level research papers simply do not stand alone but in general contain terminology that requires additional research to properly understand, they can become very valuable sources of information.

The grammatically incorrect comma placement doesn't help either. A lot of academic authors tend to over-extend themselves like this.

Quite a lot of answers here being quite defensive of writing in papers. While it is true that jargon is not necessarily bad, that papers aren't aimed at undergraduates and some concepts are just difficult to get across, many papers are more difficult to read than is necessary.
There are several things in the culture of science writing that tend to lead to complex sentence structures and difficult to read prose. This becomes worst when students read academic texts and immitate the style in their own writing because they believe that is the way we must write.

The use of the passive voice. This is where the author removes themselves from the text: "The liquid was added to the flask" rather than "We/I added the liquid to the flask". There is no reason for this other than tradition. In my view it almost always makes things harder to read and should be stamped out.
Space requirements in journals. Some journals even have character limits. This leads authors to try and find "clever" ways to try and word things in as few characters as possible.
Use of unneccesarily formal sounding words "utilized" rather than "used" for example.

After some months, I realized that you may be on to something. As you said, I am imitating previous papers too (I am afraid that otherwise it will not be accepted). And I have noticed that simple sentences are just converted to complicated sentences using advanced vocabulary for no reason.

In addition to the good answers above: One additional reason is that the intersection of extraordinary science, literary talent and the will to exercise both is extremely small; the number is probably in the single digits. They all are famous. Russell, Feynman, Hawking, Dawkins come to mind. More?

How do you know they are all famous? If there were members of this set who aren't famous, would you know about them?

@MichaelKay True, we only know what we know, in case that wasn't obvious. Residual debate may focus on whether the unknowns are known or not; I think in this case they aren't: If writing scientists are not famous they lack one of the three requirements.

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні