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What to do if a colleague is reviewing an unchanged paper that has been rejected before on my recommendation?
Around a year ago, I reviewed a paper for a journal. The originality of the paper was questionable, and content and presentation were severely lacking throughout. Consequently, both another reviewer and I recommended rejection and gave detailed explanations with which the associate editor agreed. The decision, including the review reports, were sent to the authors.
Now, a colleague of mine just told me of a review request from another journal. Briefly summarizing the content of the paper, I realized that this sounded quite familiar. Expressing my concerns to my colleague, we compared the authors and the papers, and realized that this was exactly the same paper that was reviewed and rejected earlier; nothing has been changed (apart from some journal style-specific things).
How should we proceed?

Probably would be inappropriate to influence your colleague's review of the paper... evidently the authors did not agree with your appraisal, rightly or wrongly, and resubmitted elsewhere. This is allowed. If the paper has serious problems beyond matters-of-opinion, your colleague will see that without prompting, and say so in the review. Done. No issue.

There was a case where something like this happened to me.  But in this case the second journal sent it to me again.  (I guess I was the natural referee.)  This made it easy for me to do the second review...

As far as I know, there's nothing ethically wrong with submitting a rejected paper without changes to a different journal. It's not a smart thing to do in most cases, but it's not unethical. So there's nothing for you to do but step back and let your colleague review the paper on its merits (or lack thereof).

@user3825755, first of all, are you really allowed to talk about the papers you had reviewed in the past? Or even more critically, is your colleague allowed to talk about the paper that he/she is reviewing? In most of the journals I know or know of, I am not allowed to do so at any cost, even after reviewing it - this is built-in in the single-blind policy, i.e., the author(s) is not allowed to know who the reviewers are or were. If the two journals in your question have such a policy, then you and your colleagues have clearly violated it.

If your colleague is talking about the paper that he\she is currently reviewing, it is possible that the author of the paper may know who the reviewer was. Such a violation does have consequences that I have heard of - the journal banned the particular reviewer from reviewing or submitting the papers to this journal. In your case, the risk is double that since there are two journals involved. The other aspect is, as @paulgarrett mentioned, you shouldn't influence your colleague's decision. You could very well be a 'competitor' or 'enemy' of the author - one of the reasons for the above policy!

@John, indeed, I think that (e.g., in the U.S.) people submitting manuscripts to journals (e.g., in math) have a reasonable expectation of confidentiality, that would preclude any such discussions. Similarly with grant proposals and such. A poor quality submission is not entitled to less... or, as these things usually go, it's a slippery slope: violation of rules is rationalized by declaring people outside the protections ... of the rules.

FYI: What percentage of papers submitted to a conference or journal have been previously rejected in the same or another venue?

@paulgarrett: even aside from a slippery slope argument, you can say that the value of the confidentiality is considered higher than the unfortunate cost in duplicated effort. Therefore, seeking to avoid a re-review of an identical submission isn't a legitimate reason to breach the confidentiality (although the questioner presumably started out in disagreement with this principle or they wouldn't be seeking to do something about it).

It seems that many of the answers disregard the reason for the rejection, namely the originality of the paper being in question. Could you clarify how much in question? I would say that if the material was shown by the reviewer comments to be already known then just resubmitting is unethical, but if is is just a bit unclear precisely how much "new" is in the paper, it is less clear.

@TobiasKildetoft  which ethical principle would submitting to a new journal without revision be violating, as I just don't see it?

@ScottSeidman When submitting a paper, you are claiming that the work presented is new (or if it is not, you obviously need to point out in the paper who did it prior to you). If it is pointed out to you by reviewers that the work is not new, then it is unethical to attempt to pass it off as new to another journal.

@TobiasKildetoft  yes, the work is new, as in unpublished.  You are not swearing, or even suggesting, that the work has not been submitted before.  You are only promising it is unemcumbered, and that the journal has legal right to publish it until such time as they waive that right by turning it down. There are no ethical considerations here.  It's not the most productive use of anyone's time, but not ethically questionable.

@ScottSeidman No, if you are aware that the results are in fact not new (as in, have been published by someone else before you), then trying to publish those results as if you were unaware of this fact is unethical.

@TobiasKildetoft, who is asserting that the work was previously published?  I haven't seen anyone say that.

@ScottSeidman That is why I asked for a clarification of this. The originality being in question can either mean that the work is not original, or that it is only slightly original. The difference is pretty big.

@ScottSeidman: While it is true that authors can know and declare that a manuscript is not under consideration for another journal, the corresponding question for reviewers is more tricky: I review for a journal that asks for reporting of manuscripts that I know are under consideration somewhere else. As a reviewer, I typically do not know when a manuscript stops being under consideration - so I'd have to report that I met the manuscript before but do not know whether it is still under consideration.

Here everyone knows the paper was rejected, as the reviewer has seen the decision letter @cbeleites

(getting slightly off topic) @ScottSeidman: Yes, I read that the OP knows of the decision - which is something I've never encountered with the journals I review for. I conclude that the details of ethical conduct and confidentiality seem to vary considerably.

If you were asked to re-review an "unchanged" manuscript there are a number of things you can do (e.g., Asked again to review a paper, when the authors don't wish to modify it). The issue is that this is not the case. You are no longer part of the review process.
The first thing you should do is STOP. The behavior you have engaged in so far has been completely unethical and a clear violation of every reviewer agreement I have ever seen.

Your colleague should never have told you about the paper under review.
You should not have mention that you reviewed a similar paper in the past.
Neither of you should have mentioned authors or the title.
The actual manuscripts should never have been shared and/or compared

To a lesser extent, it is not even clear why you still have your copy of the manuscript.
The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) provides Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers which can be thought of as best practice. These include:

respect the confidentiality of peer review and not reveal any details of a manuscript or its
review, during or after the peer-review process, beyond those that are released by the
journal
not involve anyone else in the review of a manuscript, including junior researchers they are
mentoring, without first obtaining permission from the journal; the names of any individuals
who have helped them with the review should be included with the returned review so that
they are associated with the manuscript in the journal’s records and can also receive due
credit for their efforts.
keep all manuscript and review details confidential.

I agree with your answer, thanks for the plain-spoken reply

This sounds like a step-by-step instruction to push unsound papers through the review process by retrying just for long enough until the authors are lucky to encounter a set of reviewers who happen not to notice the flaws.

@O.R.Mapper there are lots of unethical ways to get unsound papers published and from my understanding the peer-review process was not designed to protect against unethical authors. That said, in my opinion, disagreeing with reviewers is not unethical.

@StrongBad My understanding is that reviewing is kept anonymous to protect the reviewer from retaliation by the author, therefore allowing negative reviews if appropriate. Your points sound completely over the top to me. Also, there are obvious cases where this must not be followed, such as when a new researcher is learning how to do a referee report.

I just want to point out that not all journals do have an absolute confidentiality requirement: For example, the Analyst's reviewer guidelines say: "except in special cases, where specific scientific advice may be sought". (The editor has to be told that and who was consulted, though). So in case the OP is one of the "natural reviewers" and in case the journal in question has a similar policy, it is OK for the colleague to ask the OP his expert opinion.

The Analyst's policies also explicitly ask "To inform the editor of any similarity between the submitted manuscript and another either published or under consideration by another journal". The consideration part here is IMHO tricky: as a reviewer I'm typically not informed on the decision of the editor - so once I got a manuscript, there is typically no way to know that a manuscript is not under consideration any more - which would create an ongoing duty to report that I've met the manuscript before. Taking these points together, sorry, I downvote as the answer is too absolute.

@JessicaB there is a big difference between anonymous and confidential. This answer has nothing to do with the anonymity of the reviewer, it is about the confidentiality of the manuscript. As for new researchers, you need to ask the editor if you can consult someone. They almost always say yes.

@StrongBad I guess I don't tend to see that as a big issue since  confidentiality of the manuscript makes no sense when the paper is already freely available on the internet. Usually I could legitimately read the paper without being asked to referee it. Indeed, a couple of times I had already done so.

it is not even clear why you still have your copy of the manuscript - is there any journal asking that reviewers should delete / destroy their  copy of the manuscript after review?

@silvado I have never been told to destroy/delete the manuscript, but why would you keep it? COPE says that post review reviewers should "continue to keep details of the manuscript and its review confidential".

In that case, there's no need to question that the OP still has their copy of the manuscript in your answer.

@silvado: the policy I linked above does ask for destruction of the manuscript. I file the review I wrote, though - in case questions come up I can refer to my record.

You mean the COPE policy? I can't find this statement there. Getting rid of something is not the same as keeping it confidential. I see the latter, but not the former.

Even in the contrary, the COPE policy formulates several post-review expectations for which it seems to be helpful to keep the manuscript on file.

Agree with everything except "it is not even clear why you still have your copy of the manuscript". There is nothing unethical about keeping a copy of the manuscript on a secure computer, as long as you keep everything confidential. Early access to new knowledge is one of the only personal benefits of donating your labor for free! Building on and referring back to that knowledge is perfectly fine as long as you don't publish anything before that manuscript comes out.

Between the two reviewers, you've created quite a nasty situation.  First -- the author did NOTHING wrong.
Second, you and your colleague have done something very wrong.  The fact that you know nothing substantive has changed means you were essentially handed the manuscript, which is very bad behavior on both your parts.
My recommendation is that the new reviewer should probably contact the editor that sent him the manuscript and say simply "for reasons I choose not to discuss, I suddenly find myself in conflict, and can't provide a review", delete the paper, and never discuss it again.  Your colleague is not in a situation where he should try to provide a fair review, as he's obviously poisoned.

Exactly. All accidental, and perhaps with good intentions, but, nevertheless, ...

"Your colleague is not in a situation where he should try to provide a fair review, as he's obviously poisoned." - I suppose this hinges on whether the review is supposed to be a test of the reviewer's knowledge, and nothing else (so using information the reviewer did not find on their own could be called "unfair" and thus spoils the result), or a test of the manuscript's quality (so chances are, the result becomes more accurate if the reviewer receives additional information).

Other than that, I find your claim that "the author did NOTHING wrong" interesting, in the light of answers I received on a somewhat related question of mine.

@O.R.Mapper -- First, "wrong" is very different from "failed to take advantage of an opportunity to make something clearer". The author has an unencumbered manuscript, and it is certainly within his rights to submit it wherever he wants without having former reviewers influencing new reviewers for no reason.  Second, I really don't see the parallel in your somewhat related question.  The issues at hand here are reviewer misconduct, not the actions of the author.  Had you submitted to a new journal, nobody would have questioned your right to do so without revision.

@ScottSeidman: It's not "failed to take advantage of an opportunity to make something clearer", it's "failed to make something as clear as it should have been". Which seems quite like a way of doing something "wrong". Then, the manuscript is not exactly "unencumbered" if possible flaws have already been found therein. The issue at hand seems to be authors-resubmit-until-manuscript-slips-through, and unless the primary reason for rejection is failing to address the journal topic, I do not see how this strategy can become ethical by trying to conceal it and switching target journals. ...

... The parallel that I see to my question is that the bottom line of most answers I received was that authors should almost never completely ignore any reviewer comments. I do not necessarily agree with this, but as an author, I also do not think exchanging reviewers until I find some that review to my liking is the way to go. If this "reviewing to my liking" happens because of different opinions, I consider the practice borderline, but once it gets as bad as expecting that the reviewers do not find a flaw that others have found before, I consider it downright frauduluent.

@O.R.Mapper - we have NO WAY of knowing if the reviewer is right or wrong here -- and no way of knowing the basis of the criticism, or the standards of the two journals.  The author, though, is entitled to a review based upon the merits of the ms, and not one based upon the collusion of members of his community.  There is nothing unethical about submitting a manuscript that has been reviewed and rejected (though it may not be the most effective use of anyone's time or effort).  There IS something unethical about agreeing to conduct a review on a confidential ms and sharing the ms.

@O.R.Mapper The review process is of course supposed to be a test of the manuscript's quality, but individual reviews should be independent of one another.  By having two reviewers confer over the manuscript, you end up with correlated reviews, which is surely undesirable.

@O.R.Mapper "Should" is being used in difference sense though. "most answers I received was that authors should almost never completely ignore any reviewer comments." -- "should" there means "unwise", not "unethical". It was probably unwise of the author to keep resubmitting the paper without taking prior reviews into consideration. That doesn't make it unethical. The author isn't the one asking the question, therefore what is wise or unwise for the author to do is irrelevant.

You only get a problem of correlation if there are two reviews to correlate. In this scenario, that objection doesn't hold. (separate journals, entirely) Whether or not the conversation unduly influenced the more recent reviewer can be argued, but not whether that constitutes any sort of violation of independence of reviewers.

The goal of the review process is to fairly and accurately evaluate the merits of the submitted manuscript, while making sure no one gains an unfair advantage through knowledge of the manuscript before it is available publicly.

I see no issue about unfair advantage here, since you and your colleague were both already in possession of the same manuscript.  That being said, ethical boundaries are very field dependent, and the culture in your field may be different.  For example, I have reviewed a number of papers and have never been explicitly asked to keep submitted manuscripts confidential (though it is generally understood that I should).
As for your colleague's responsibility of evaluating the paper, there is some unfortunate tension between the goals of fairness and accuracy, and you need to make a judgement based on the specifics of the situation.  But here are the main points I think are important:

It is unreasonable to expect every reviewer to understand every tool used in a submitted paper.  Discussion of papers (which both parties already have access to) is to be encouraged (though the fact that one is reviewing the paper being discussed should perhaps be kept confidential, depending on the situation).  From this point of view, I would consider it unethical not to let your colleague know about a serious logical error in a paper they are reviewing.
On the other hand, your colleague should form their own critical opinion about the paper.  Their knowledge that the paper was previously rejected and then resubmitted without any revision has (probably) already biased them against it.

So, if there is a serious issue in the paper which absolutely has to be pointed out, then by all means do so.  Otherwise, I would do as the other answers suggest and let your colleague form their own opinion about it.
The fact that the authors have not addressed your original reasons for rejection is unsettling and could be a reflection of unethical behavior on their part, but without more information, we (and perhaps you) cannot know for sure.

Your field has some very liberal ethics compared to mine. In my field, if I want to discuss a paper with a colleague, I need to mm pass it by the editor.

One difference in math might be that the paper is usually already publicly available on the arXiv. (For example, the suggestion that one might discuss a paper as long as one hides that one is refereeing it.)

"One Man's Ceiling Is Another Man's Floor". A paper unsuitable for one kind of journal might  be suited to another. While non unethical, submitting the same paper suggest a lack of critical thinking by, at least, the submitting author.
[EDIT] I do undertand, though, that, depending on the domain, authors  may consider their paper could be resubmitted, without changing a line, to another journal. This really also depends on the reasons for rejection.
[EDIT] I agree that the peer review system requires confidentiality, and independence. Authors deserve several chances to get published.
[EDIT] Yet, some misconducts are becoming apparent. Redundant publications, plagiarism, for instance. This is not the case here. However, some authors do not hesitate to resubmit again and again, sometimes to journals with  putative lower expectations, with hope they will finally go through, with some chance and unwary editors and reviewers.
Such practice floods the peer review system.
Since the paper already made it to the reviewers (and was already reviewed in the past), there are two options:

let it flow without interference,
interfere.

I am in favor, in the OP case, of the second option. I feel important to let  the editor know about the situation, while performing the review. This would warn  him from accepting the paper solely based on  other lacky reviewers (which might be the intend of the submitting author: to get lucky with reviewers). I do feel an editor should be, at his place, capable of critical judgement on such a warning.

What would be optimal is to have Journal 1 editor inform Journal 2 editor that he got aware of the situation, and inform Journal 2 editor about his decision for rejection. It is possible if you know well Journal 1 editor.
Summmarize the  main traits of the evaluation (including those from your co-reviewers for Journal 1), to save some time for your colleague, and invite him to write these concerns in the section "information to the editor only". I believe non-so-ethical to provide all the initial reviews to your colleague, yet, in extreme cases...

I don't think it would be appropriate to tell the new editor that the paper had already been submitted-to and refereed at another journal. Nor to give the colleague a copy of the earlier referee report.

@paul garrett I fully aggree with the 2nd point. Could you please tell me more on why the 1st point does not fell appropriate when submitting exactly the same paper to another journal, if it is in the same domain?

Telling the editor that the paper had already been submitted may inadvertently prejudice them. That fact should be irrelevant to their judgement on it, which should be on its palpable merits-or-not alone. Any other action suggests collusion against the authors... even if not intended.

I understand the concern. Let me think about this to edit accordingly. The fact that both reviewers talked and compared the paper might prejudice the authors as well? This is not the case here, but cases of plagiarism, or redundant publication, are sometimes discovered with discussion between reviewers.

Possibly, this might depend on the field. In mathematics, I fully understand. I have concerns with this specific case with the somewhat "subjective" comment here that "originality of the paper was questionable, and content and presentation were severly lacking throughout"

You point about journals with lower expectations seems a bit off. Many journals have high expectations about "importance and impact", but I like to think that all respectable journals have high expectations about "correctness".

I am talking about all journals, including those one can pay to publish crap

I see no evidence supporting subjective interpretation.  This is pretty black and white.  The editor of the 2nd submission is not entitled to the history of the manuscript in this case.

Suggestion #1 (informing the editor) is terrible advice. You are effectively suggesting, that reviewer #2 admits to the journal, that he disclosed a confidential-for-review-only article to a 3rd person (reviewer #1). Unless reviewer #2 is feeling guilty for his misconduct, to the extent, that he's willing a deal a hit to his own reputation, but admit to wrongdoing, the best option is to decline to review and forget about it.

@LLlAMnYP I shall discuss about such practice with additional colleagues in my field, to better fathom possible wrongdoing in my suggestion.

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Is it better to NOT have an RA, and instead be doing a TA for the first couple of years of PhD?
I am a first year PhD student intending to work in convex optimization and its applications. I don't have an advisor yet, so I am still TA-ing. I had a long talk with a very helpful senior grad student in this field at my university today, and he recommended that I focus on taking lots of classes and learning a lot of mathematics for the first couple of years while working on small class projects and reading lots of papers in different areas, as opposed to trying to find an RA. He said having an RA means one is forced to work on  one problem, and that doesn't let you explore on your own.
This is a totally new perspective to me. Until now I felt very ashamed of not having an RA, as I thought it reflected professors' lack of confidence in my capability as a researcher. Now maybe I am starting to see this as an opportunity to explore. However, I want to know other people's thoughts on this too; is it wise to spend the first two years just studying? He said that this would make life very easy for me about three years down the line when I am actually attacking problems. But I am just scared that this would be too late.
Do people in theoretical fields typically do this? Or do they learn on the fly? I don't want to be left behind and have regrets after two years at having taken things too slow now.

Sometimes senior graduate students give terrible advice.  What do you want to achieve in graduate school?  Usually the goal is to perform as much research as possible.  In that case, get an adviser, seek an RA, and start doing publishable research.  Otherwise your PhD will take three years longer than it needed to.  This is why many PhD programs expel students who do not have advisers.

In my field (Engineering) being an RA at the beginning is actually important. You get to work on 1-2 problems, publish 2-3 journal articles and couple of conference papers. This will help you in the long run, since publishing, establishing your name and getting citations needs a long time. The earlier you publish, the better you chances of getting higher number of papers and citations (will help when applying for academia jobs or even immigration in some cases). TAing will help too (but let's as an assistant professor, having a good research background almost wins over having a good teaching exp. Since as a TA, you do not really get to have the full teaching exp. (search committees know that!!). This is my 0.02!!

I really like this answer. You are right, getting publications and establishing one's name as a researcher does take time. I am back to being stressed about this, but I guess that's better than being under the delusion that all is well the way it is. Thanks a lot for your response!

I strongly disagree with this answer.  Doing research is important.  Being an RA is not.

There are two separate issues here, and it is important to keep them separate.

You absolutely need to get involved in research as soon as possible.  The entire point of a PhD is to do research.  It's important to get into the practice of doing research from the very beginning of your PhD program, if not sooner.  Do not wait until you're done with classes.  Do not wait until you've read another book, or five more papers.  Do not wait until you have an advisor.  Start now.  Yes, your inexperience does mean that there are problems you aren't prepared to work on; work on something else.
It is not necessary and it may not even be desirable to have an assistantship to support your research.  First, you work in a research area that does not require specialized equipment or a laboratory; your research only requires time.  You can acquire that time either by acquiring a research assistantship or by signing up for research/independent study/thesis credits. If you can't do the former, do the latter; arrange your classes accordingly. Second, accepting a research assistantship may constrain you to work on one of your advisor's research projects, but you need to develop your own independent research agenda.  It's your PhD.  You need to hunt it down and kill it.

In short: You absolutely need to be doing research now.  Being an RA is of secondary importance.
(My students and I are theoretical computer scientists.)

Thank you. I have follow-up questions on both your points: (meta question- hitting enter saves this as a reply, how do I prevent that?) 1) So when you say start research despite lack of a 'complete' math background, does it mean read papers, understand them as best as possible and try to extend them? 2) Developing my own research agenda: is this also done by reading papers and figuring out what I like?

Regardless of being a TA or RA, you will have duties you are expected to perform and at the same time you can explore ideas and learn. Those aren't mutually exclusive, but which one will give you more time to do so? RA.
Being a TA means you have duties such as grading, proctoring, tutoring, and lecturing which may not lead to you learning anything or make progress on projects. It is a good opportunity to meet other students, professors, and see how classes are ran though.
Being an RA means you won't have those tasks and can devote all of your time to a project and exploring other ideas.
From what I have read, in various science fields, it is recommended to TA for a few semesters but then be an RA. Being a TA won't help you progress in your PhD.

which may not lead to you learning anything — If you're not learning anything from teaching, you're doing it wrong.

@JeffE Good point, but I don't know many TAs that actually teach. All I had the opportunity to do was grade when I TAed a discrete mathematics course.

I had to TA through most of my PhD.  Call it Stockholm syndrome, but I enjoyed it, and often found it more fun than my research.  Teaching is a good change of pace, and keeps you more active, since you are doing a wider variety of things, and have to be at certain places at certain times.  You get more social interaction, both with students and other TAs, and if you TA introductory classes you can really bond with the large number of TAs on your team.  It kind of felt like being part of a student organization, except I got paid, and we hosted midterms instead of parties.
If all you do is research, it is easier to get depressed when your research doesn't work, and it's easier to never talk to people.

If you go for a PhD, you want to go into research. To get to do research as part of your duties, and get paid for it, is the ideal match. Sure, you should also teach (it'll probably be part of your duties later on), but your evaluation of that as a professor will be more in the line of "OK if no very serious complaints" and move on to the next item.

Some of the guys who posted earlier don't understand that when you are a funded PhD student (i.e., most international students in Engineering including myself!), you can get to choose to be an RA or TA (in some cases), however most of the time this is determined by your adviser and how his/her and the Dept.'s funding is allocated.
For instance, in my case of being an RA, I got more free time to explore research and publish more since I didn't lose any time grading or TAing. But, still even when I was a TA, I still made the time needed to continue my progress and maintain the same number of publications/year. Keep in my mind that some advisers tend to go a lil easier on students with TA since they understand that you need more time to do your own research. I work with a rockstar adviser and he has told me from day one that if you want to be successful, you'll need to find time and stay HUNGRY for more! If you can do 1 paper/semester, next semester you better work twice as hard to get 2 papers done.
I'm still a PhD student (Civil Eng.) and have a high number of publications and citations. To be honest, my adviser has always asked me to be an RA since my record is really good. He gets to travel a lot and I keep the research mill running. He is very supportive and always there to answer my questions.
I see merit for TAing too. You get to directly interact with students and learn how to structure notes and lectures. Get some motivation and learn to improve your teaching skills. But if your TA is pure grading, then that is a very sad job!!
Keep in mind, when you apply for Academia, your research record and not your TA record is what matters the most!!!

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Is there anything a student could or should do about a professor who gives lectures so dry that less than 10% of the class turn up?
He's clearly a very nice man, but his delivery is reasonably monotonous, and his lecture material is reams and reams of definitions and rules.
I make sure to attend every lecture, and try my best to concentrate, but do find I have had to use other sources (generally online) to be able to answer the questions he sets.
All my peers that I have asked, say they find him very boring.

Where in the world is this happening? The leverage that other people may have on your professor varies widely.

If he is young, there is hope for improvement.  If he is old, I would not bother informing him, as he may be beyond any hope of improvement.

Ahh.. The dilemma of 'he is a great person' but 'a bad teacher'..!

What course is it?

@AmitTomar everyone I know myself included is great in one area but lacking in others. He is a great husband but a bad parent He is a great researcher but a bad teacher - so there is no dilemma.

To some extent, whether you find something interesting or not depends on the enthusiasm you yourself bring to it. Some subjects are dry and full of definitions and rules, and to teach it in an "interesting" way might be at the expense of conveying important information.  It is much more difficult to give an interesting lecture to unenthusiastic students, so being engaged with the material and asking (and answering) questions  is likely to help.  It may not be all the lecturers fault!

@DikranMarsupial my enthusiasm for the subject is why I find the lectures 'ok'. I have had some amazing lecturures, who engage the class, explain things very clearly, who are bright and lively, who enjoy being there, and enjoy trying to communicate difficult ideas to the students; and most importantly, have the gift of explaining things at such a level that almost everyone understands them. They also interact with the class a lot more. I can't exactly ask this lecturer to change his whole personality though. There is clearly objectively something wrong, if 90% don't attend some lectures.

Besides the content of the lectures, you might want to pay attention to what your professor does in class (or does not do in class) that seems to help with learning (and what does not help with learning), at least if your future plans include teaching. If nothing else, engaging yourself in this way could help with boredom.

@kjldfg the students as a class need to be engaged with the lecture; it is perhaps a bit of a chicken and egg situation.  It may be however that it is dry material and there are good reasons for presenting it in the way it is being presented.  Lectures are not a form of entertainment, they are for communicating knowledge/understanding, if you can make lectures entertaining without compromising informativeness then that is a very good thing, but being informative is the primary goal.  I know from experience, some subjects are easier to lecture in an interesting manner than others!

@DikranMarsupial I agree, though in an ideal world a lecture should be entertaining; it's much easier to learn if its enjoyable! In this case the material is interesting, but the presentation boring.

@Mindwin I meant dilemma in the sense of 'He is a bad teacher, let me just go report him to the HOD' but 'he is such a nice person'..

@AmitTomar ah. Well, people need to up their professionalism and stop taking this kind of feedback personally. And the other party needs to up their game too, and put the extra mile to make it a constructive feedback. And everyone should lay down their arms and hug their enemies. And redistribute world wealth. And fight Zika virus together. But I digress.

I believe there's nothing bad in dry lectures. A lecturer should never flatter the audience by adding entertainment to his/her lecture. The whole point is whether the lecture is pedagogically good: is it structured for efficient learning. That's it. I think people eventually like to learn and understand. Whether they "enjoy" the lecture when it happened is usually not important.

Since I cant answer anymore, it goes here:
First ensure THAT HE ACTUALLY CARES. At most Unis Profs HAVE to teach if they want money for research. Therefore they teach just to fill contractual obligations, they don't care (and you notice it as a student, your descriptions sounds like such a case). If he doesn't care, you can't do anything.
[Also, at my Uni attendance is rarely above 50%, even with good profs who care (Bachelor, Computer Science)]

That you asked the question shows that you feel that there is something that you can do, and that you somehow should do something. However, the question lacks motivation. The lecture is boring - OK. Many things in life are boring. Here are some different motivations you may have (certainly not an exhaustive list):

You would like to have better lecture for yourself to facilitate your learning. That's a good motivation. Especially, you can bring this point across without judging the lecturer or the lecture. Focus on what you experience and what you perceive. Note the difference of "I can not focus for the whole lecture." and "The lecture is boring."
You feel with the students not coming, think they skip the lecture because they find it boring, and wish they would have better opportunities for learning. Note that students skip lectures for all kinds of reasons. I myself skipped lectures because I did not like the lecturer (although the lectures were anything else but boring), because the lecture were indeed boring, because I did not like the lecture style (e.g. it being to fast and reading from a book suited me better), because I was just "not in the mood" (although anything else was OK with the lecture). But it seem that you checked the premise. Then here be sure to stick to the facts when formulating your suggestions/feedback. Note the difference between "The students find your lecture boring." and "Other students I talked to agreed with me."
You want to help the poor lecturer. Also a valid motivation, but quite tough to deduce some action here. First, it's hard to be sure if the lecturer really wants help or could do something.

So, there is no general advice in this situation. Some points to consider: Do not judge persons, do not blame anybody. Describe your experiences, suggest changes that would help you. Be prepared that nothing will happen and do not insist. Think twice before involving a third person.

The poor old lecturer may be a bit hurt about the incredible lack of attendance. He must know that about 90% of the class think that he is very boring. If you turn up you will be more likely to ask him lots of questions because there wont be many others asking questions. This is actually a great oppertunity for you to learn stuff that the other 90% probably wont. Remember that grades at the end of the day are relative so you could get a decent grade for the boring course. If the lecturer really gets the pricker which depends on his human nature which I cant guess then he will at some of his most poorly attended lectures basicley tell you what is going to be in the exam. I have seen this done but I was too niave probably due to learning disability to work this out.

What do you mean by “grades are relative”?  Are you talking about grading systems that do not attempt to measure abilities absolutely, but only rank students or define the scale to match a desired PDF of grades?

gerrit .In my country NZ exams are often but not always scaled .In one year the feminist studies dept gave everybody an A+  so that grade would be worth less than a C in a normal course that not everybody passes.

@Autistic that depends a lot on the system. In many other cases grades are not relative.

I don't think there was a single class in university that wasn't graded on a curve.

"If the lecturer really gets the pricker which depends on his human nature which I cant guess" Can you clarify this? Strange phrase.

@Barry The Hatchet .I will try to explain the "strange phrase" .It kind of means getting the pip or getting his nose out of joint .The lecturer may eat and breathe his subject matter and may not have much else happening in his life.He may be upset that people find the material boring.Different people will react differently and I am not a good predicter of human nature because my screen name is not entirely innacurate.

I googled "gets the pricker" (with quotation marks) and found only one other hit apart from this answer.  http://brianedwardsmedia.co.nz/2012/10/5-on-key-to-step-down-before-the-middle-of-next-year-thanks/ For that matter I don't know what "getting the pip" means either.  Perhaps you could choose language that will be broadly understood by an anglophone audience?

In my experience with classes having such low turnouts, student-teacher were a bit more informal in the interaction. Try to get your point across to him in a subtle way in any such moment you might have. Anonymous mail could be a good idea in case you wouldn't want him to find who the person was. Whatever you chose, don't just tell him the problem, but solution which you think might work. eg. Sir, it would be cool if we could have more group discussions / movie related to the course etc.
If not anything else, at least consider filling up that year end feedback form, properly mentioning the reasons why you think people don't attend his lectures and what all can he improve upon. This will at least give the Prof. a chance to reflect upon his teaching, if he really wants to, that is.

In general I think this is good advice, but not sure about anonymous mail. I think that might come across as rather passive-aggressive.

What the lecturer thinks about the turnout rate will depend a lot on the lecturer and their work environment. In many places teaching is not valued, whether explicitly or only implicitly (it can count very little towards pay/promotion/social-standing). So some lecturers simply do not care. Others will care, but may not know what the problem is or what to do about it, since many will have little or no training in how to teach.
Also, be aware that what students want and what student need are not necessarily the same thing. Just because you and your course-mates agree on what you don't like, that does not automatically mean you are right. In the end, most students will want their degree to be valuable more than fun.
My suggestion would be to propose a discussion on what the purpose of a lecture is, and what part it is intended to play in the learning process (and indeed what you are meant to be learning). This is often not discussed explicitly, since each person may feel the answer is set in stone, but in fact the answers in people's heads may be very different. It may be that just having such a discussion will get the lecturer thinking (which might not result in change within the time-span of your course, because change takes a lot of effort, and is also prone to being unpopular with students), and it may also show you a different side of the lectures that means you can make better use of them (which admittedly won't help the students that have already chosen to leave).
As an anecdote, every single one of my lectures consisted of the lecturer writing on the board, which we copied down (with some minor variations). The content was all abstract mathematics. Yet I never felt the need to label the lectures boring. A couple of my friends did consider one class boring, because the pace was too slow. But the lectures were what we expected, gave us what we needed, and covered some interesting topics (and others I was less interested in).

Yes you should! That's when head of department comes in. Have a meeting with a head of department and explain to him/her about the situation.

Escalating this to the HoD? Really? Surely just talk to the lecturer first, and if the situation doesn't improve then you can start going over his head.

@TEK yes really! Good luck talking to middle men/women to make your case get resolved in a huge organization like a university. What are you afraid off? Students pay huge amount of money, they need to be happy about the lecturers the HoD put together and work with.

@TEK - I had a lecturer once—a quite elderly man—who was simply abysmal. The lectures were simply streams of consciousness, interspersed with him losing his train of thought. It was very clear that this man was well past his teaching prime, if indeed he ever had a "prime" to begin with. I did go to the HoD, who said this guy was still teaching because politics. Talking with the HoD about this was one of the most straightforward conversations I had in all graduate school; it is what it is, and it ain't changing. Sometimes that discussion is worth it.

All my peers that I have asked, say they find him very boring.

I had a similar situation, where I ended up failing the course (literally with F grade) while all my peers passed with reasonably good grades.
I think, you should try to get along and, at least, pass that course.
If you don't gain much you won't lose either.
Focusing on his monotonicity or the class turn up will not bring any good to you.
EDIT:
After all, that's one course out of many. There are professors who are not monotonic and interesting too, yet they do not deliver what they are supposed to, which we only recognize down the road over years.
However, if you are really interested in learning (which actually is not bounded by the issues you have mentioned), there are many ways out there, some of which have been mentioned in other answers too.
Bottomline: Fixing the problems you have mentioned is neither your responsibility nor you can do. Why not take them as challenges and figure out ways and learn to survive in such situation with flying colors.

You are doing the right thing by attending. Even if those lectures are far from optimal, you will learn about the specific parts of course literature that this professor finds to be the most important. This will make it easier to pass the exam later.
And maybe you can suggest to him, in a nice way, how he can improve the lectures? I would. If it is difficult, do it anonymously after the course is completed.

The question is entirely about how to suggest in a nice way how the lecturer can improve, so your post doesn't seem to contain any useful answer.

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How to deal with the wealth of "help" available for programming assignments?
I teach programming, and I myself learned mostly self-taught about 30-35 years ago (pre-internet). I learned mostly by thinking things through and trying out alternate solutions. It never occurred to me that students could, or would, just "grep" the solution to many textbook assignments off the 'net. It sometimes seems that they do not make much effort to solve the problem themselves.
Sometimes I see two students's solutions with the same weird anomalies in them and it makes me go, "Hmmm..." It seems that the students who do NOT come up with the obvious best solutions are the ones actually thinking for themselves and not doing "research". In one case I searched on a strange method name and found one and only one hit on the web: a PDF that exactly duplicated the student's submission, including a lot of concepts and methods I have not taught yet.
Is this a problem generally?
How do Instructors deal with the fact that there could be many possible solutions available (most of them flawed) to students who know how to type some words in their browser?
(I have seen this question, and I do not agree and my question is more about how to handle the situation.) The assignments at this point are simple decisions and loops, nothing that requires knowledge of frameworks, etc. Most people should require nothing more than the textbook and my lectures.
Addition: I think the real problem is - now that my naivete is shattered, I have two doubts:

Could anything they hand in potentially have been copied?
Am I teaching effectively?

Good question. In my opinion, a good part of the solution is not to give standard assignments.

Before we fix the rest of the world: maybe ask if there there places within stackexchange where students can get their programming homework done for them?  And if so, should we try to stop it?

A teacher should not concern themselves too much about students plagiarising the exercises. After all, they only cheat themselves and they will face the consequences tomorrow. Just be a good teacher and leave them the choice to decide on their own what the best practice to learn is.

@GennaroTedesco After all, they only cheat themselves, I beg to differ. The students cheat themselves now and they will cheat their employers and their clients/customers later. They will create software bugs and then everybody will be hurt. Imagine that you are flying on an airplane which has buggy flight control software. Will you be scared?

In any respectable work environment/academic environment projects and results are always double checked. Before building the airplane someone else will check it and if wrong warnings will be raised. It's not the exercises that you give at school that make good employees.

@GennaroTedesco "are always double checked", True. Actually, more than double in reality. However, there are many cases that people just assume the code is trivial and then escaped from the code review. Those trivial code are the kind of code the OP is talking about, that is, you're supposed to learn them during your first programming courses.

@GennaroTedesco Not to pile on, but I am teaching a vocational rehab program, one year full-time in class instruction with a few adults. If I don't care if they succeed, what am I doing there? I don't get to opt out of their future: I am their future, to some degree.

@nocomprende "caring if they succeed" is not achieved by checking homeworks like in primary school: it is achieved by giving good classes. Whether someone wants to make use of it, it is their personal choice and your pressure will not change their behaviour anyway.

@GennaroTedesco I guess I am just old-fashioned then. I do a fair amount of lecturing and bring in a lot of interesting and useful topics and connect it with what they learned already and what they will be learning. We have a textbook, and I assigned exercises from it in blissful ignorance that someone would even bother to post such simple things online at all, let alone that there would be oodles of such sites. I guess more people should be making a living helping other people get out of doing real work. That would be success. We get the culture we deserve.

@nocomprende Connecting topics is fine and I agree; it is checking exercises as in primary schools that I disagree with, but that is just my honest opinion.

@GennaroTedesco OK. I wish I could ask how you would structure a programming curriculum and teach and see if the teaching was being understood. I don't know a forum for discussing that. Aside from exercises and lecture and a textbook, what do I really have? Could I just drop the book on the desk and say, "See you in a year for the certification"? They could do that at home for themselves. In fact, why do we have school at all? You get 20 years of free food and housing, and if you choose to be able to support yourself after that, good. Otherwise, you die. Maybe that would be an improvement.

@Davidmh You think that creating your own assignments solves the problem? I found solutions for my assignments being sold on the internet. Yes, I constructed them myself, so I had no problem identifying them down to the precise requirements.

You may have the problem of actually giving assignments which are just too simple - so easy they can be effectively Googled - but not at the same time making it clear that this is building to a compound problem that isn't so easily looked up, while building up skills that will make them good at their job.
A simple example: use regex to check to see if an email address might be valid. In theory, this is to help students learn regular expressions, as well as developing their skills of debugging, problem solving, and familiarity with string-handling in their computer language. The problem? Students think the problem is just about checking to see if an email is valid. As a real programmer, you absolutely should not even attempt to build your own solution for this - Google it and find a high-quality implementation suitable for your needs, then conduct your own testing and make sure it works. But your students might only be learning how to copy-paste ineffectively, not testing, altering, or understanding, and they do not learn how to modify the solution to fit custom business rules.
So, in this example I would suggest you twist it. The new problem is "test to see if an email address might be valid, using regex". Encourage them to find a nice regex online if they'd like, or build one on their own if they want extra practice on regex. Now, part 2 of the problem: our business rules only allow certain email addresses in our application. We only want to allow addresses that have a '.edu' extension, and before the @ symbol there must be 3 numbers (of the form: sjoe123@clowningacademy.edu).
This is not a complicated problem, but now there are two parts: 1) you need to find or build a regex to check an email, and 2) you need to be able to change it so it supports a non-standard rule that's terribly hard to Google. Hey, if you can find an answer on Google, knock yourself out - cite it so I can see where you found it and you'd still get full credit.
You may even want to state the 'hard' version of the problem first, then note how this is actually a few sets of simple problems combined together - then assign those easy ones right from the book if you like.
This is also a perfect way to then have the small in class problem that ff524 suggested. If they did the problem, then they should have no trouble with a solution to a minorly modified version like "this time, we want 4 numbers and a .co.uk extension - and you can use the solution you turned in to help your memory". Done right, at least some students will hopefully get the idea that it's actually harder to take the shortcuts than it is to genuinely understand the material so they can solve any problem that comes up in the future.
As a closing remark: I tend to try to skip most "try this problem from the book" type of assignments as a student myself, especially in anything programming related, because I find them trivial and unrecognizable compared to the kinds of problems I deal with as an actual real-life professional. So I don't really blame other students for not wanting to do them, either. I try to skew all my programming tasks towards real-world issues, preferably grounded in personal experience or existing applications, but I realize this is not always possible for teachers. Still, a little twist goes a long way!

OK, I am trying to completely absorb all of your suggestions. My first reaction is that we are in the chapter on loops, and the previous chapter (a week ago) was decisions. So, they don't know enough to build custom solutions to business problems. If I ask for a user-input loop that counts values within the range 1-99 and also counts how many values are outside that range, would you expect a solution that uses two Lists? (One gathered the input, the other tested it.) Wouldn't it have been easier for them to write the 10 line program that was asked,especially when most of it is in the book?

@nocomprende Most business problems are trivial - it's when you slap them all together that things are hard. So I'd start with a problem they couldn't solve yet, like data validation. Business problem: entering the price of comparable houses to determine appraisal value. Enter base house price (one being appraised), then the price of 2-5 other houses (the 'comps'). You could hard-code what is too complicated to enter just yet. First, collect the data and print it out (problem X in book). Then add validation - entered prices more than 0, less than 1 mil, within 500k of base home price, etc....

@nocomprende ...and that's similar to "loop through ints 1-99", problem X in book. Let's insist on 3 entered houses, and use a for() loop for that. Next, let's use a while() loop to accept practically limitless input. Say, what if people put a comma in - oh, our program crashes. Whoops. We'll talk about try catch and error handling later, and string manipulation later too. For now we'll pretend people actually enter real numbers. In class, take that solution you turned in and make it so all houses are more than 10k and less than 200k, and also if it is less than 100k output "bargain!".

You have a bright future teaching here :-)

According to this question, validating an email address with regex is nothing but simple.

@nocomprende Answering is easy - it's thinking up the right questions that's hard! :)

@MassimoOrtolano Implement a complete state engine to validate an email address and correct it...wow, that actually sounds like a fun use of state machines and cellular automata (for some very nerdy value of 'fun'). I'm not sure if that would teach the right lesson (do it right!) or the wrong one (be efficient in solving your real problem, because you can't know if the email address exists for real in advance - it's just good to know if it kinda might possibly exist)...but it's still tempting :)

@MassimoOrtolano Gee, only a quarter million views on that question. I am still trying to find a general solution to "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" Maybe a List... Or two...

Most people should require nothing more than the textbook and my lectures.

Probably most professional programmers today could do their jobs armed with nothing but the lectures from their programming coursework and the complete official reference material for the programming languages and libraries they are using. But why would they, when there are much more useful resources available online that allow them to do a better job, more quickly?
Your students (understandably) approach this the same way. Why would they do their homework with just the textbook and lecture notes, when this isn't the most efficient way (with respect to time, getting a good grade, and actually learning)? (Yes, the Internet can be a tremendously useful aid for learning and not just copying.)
In my experience, the best way to deal with students using online resources is:

Encourage students to use online resources. Recommend specific online resources to them that you consider most helpful and reliable.
Require students to cite all the online resources that they used. (And depending on the assignment, to also explain how they used it.)
Educate students who use online resources that are flawed about how to better evaluate the online resources they choose to use. ("This website seems useful at first glance, but it actually doesn't apply to the problem in the homework assignment. Here is how you could have known that...") If you do this successfully, this will probably be the most valuable thing they learn in your class.
Assign a mix of problems, including some that can't be answered immediately with a simple Google search.

If you want them to have some practice solving programming problems without the assistance of the Internet, you can occasionally give them a small (< 10 minute) problem to complete in class.

I would want to emphasize that in programming you will absolutely want to know how the code works and why it works. I don't believe that copying code is a bad thing, however if they do it, they should know EXACTLY how it works. Simply asking a student what a certain line of code does and how it works could make them sweat. If they actually know the code. Then even the students would have no problem explaining it. and may even do so proudly.

Up to now I disregarded the idea that they could be looking online. Most of the exercises were just too simple to seem to require research (this is chapter 5, OK?) I didn't realize that they would not try to solve it themselves. They have ample time, and are sitting in front of a computer full-time, which is more than I could say 30 years ago. So when I saw two basically identical submissions with weird flaws, I realized that they are not trying to do the simple assignments. What are they doing with their time? I look at them all day long. Don't they want to be able to work in the future?

Regarding your last comment, I often (when I teach some programming in my math classes) give paper programming quizzes or simple programming problems on paper exams just to make sure they can write simple code on their own.  I also usually meet with them in a computer lab once/week and have them work on lab exercises, and go around and see how they are doing.

@Kimball I have been studying mental development (throughout life) and trying to figure out what will be useful to "teach" abstraction, but haven't come up with much. It is a process of relentless application: keep trying to solve algorithmic problems. Peoples' ability to think symbolically varies, and it can grow, but not really be taught. It is like weightlifting: you have to lift the weights yourself, nothing will remove the effort required. So when I see students short-cut the effort, it is like watching someone lift balloons: what are they thinking?

When I was about 13, I could guess the answer to most simple algebra problems and then check that my guess was a solution. My mathematics teacher explained that the objective was not to get the solution. The objective was for me to learn and practice techniques I would need later, for problems that would be too difficult for guess-and-check. Similarly, your programming students should be building up skills they will need to write programs they cannot just copy.
I don't know whether this would work or not, but it is something to try. Ask them to over-comment their programs, and give most of the grade for the clarity and quality of the comments.
They should begin by explaining the approaches they considered, and how they picked the one they actually coded.
Each line, or small group of lines, needs a comment saying what it is doing.
Whether or not they got the code from the Internet, they should demonstrate understanding of the purpose of every line in it. I find it easier to understand code at that level if I wrote it myself than if I am reading code someone else wrote.

Thank you. I was an "intuitive" algebra solver also, but that doesn't work for long! I guess I have been naive or lazy. I am consulting with the other programming instructor to see what will help. Your explanation technique is a good one.

This was going to be my suggestion too. What I've done is write a script, then leave empty comments at specific places in the code for students to fill in. IME it works.

@D.Salo I will think of how I can do this, thank you. We often use flowcharts and pseudocode in these early chapters, so that I know they can write structured code. I am not really concerned about the details of a particular language, I think I have learned about 30 of them, and made up several more (lex and yacc are your friends, or used to be...) In tests the other Instructor says, "assume that this part of the code is provided, and you just write this part..." but they often cannot seem to jump in and "assume" the way we expect them to. This means they don't grasp modularity and nesting.

What worked for me(*) was forbidding anything not in class. The syllabus had something like: "The purpose of assignments is to get practice with the new stuff from that week. To solve them, you may only use things covered in class.  Don't worry about the exact way. But if someone helps you using a feature you've never seen, tell them about this rule." It seems obvious -- you lecture on loops, then give problems on loops.
The basic problem is a fair one: students have seen lots of mismatches between the material, the tests, the stated goals, what they actually learned, and their final grade. They have no special reason to think the assignment during loop week is even about loops. It's a lot of work convincing students that learning the stuff from class is their only job, and you'll make sure that translates into getting a fair grade and having a useful skill. For examples, solving assignments beforehand for difficulty -- especially after any "minor" changes; double-checking that test Q's are similar to something from an assignment; and cutting busy-work (long unsigned byte, do-while).
The rest of the system that worked for us was having tests be worth 65-75% of the grade, fully closed-book. That emphasizes that by the end of the class, you'll have skills, especially the early ones, down cold, like tying your shoes. The first few test Q's are warm-ups like "what does this loop print?" to help students who freeze-up. 30% for the assignments is enough to make them worth doing, but clearly they're meant for practice (and hardly worth cheating on).
The other thing with assignments was making them oddball: reading a made-up code, or scoring the sport of "tongo-ball". That lets you tinker until it's exactly as complex as you need, good coverage of class material, with ALL the rules in one place (as opposed to assuming everyone knows about football safeties and the 2-minute time-out). It works better than real problems, and also makes googling tough. Some students don't love that -- they want to say they solved a real-world problem. But I go back to the first idea -- we're learning how to write loops. Once we know them, we can solve all the real problems we want.
(*) for several years at a US state college teaching 1st-year Com Sci.

Reword some Euler problems and assign them to the student to test their strength. I believe that if you become more creative with the assignments, they will be harder to Google and copy

Yep, it is up to me to be more clever, that is why they are paying me. I just hadn't run in to this situation before. The other Instructor had not either. It is so contrary to common sense. Or is it? Did you watch "The Big Short"? Sickening.

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Linking to printed books on archive.org
I am a postgrad PhD student. I occasionally participate in answering academic questions a Q & A site when I hit a block with getting on with my thesis.
I often cite a particular large and well-known academic source in my answers. I have my own copy of this book. It costs between £180 and £240 and is therefore beyond the reach of anyone who isn't a very serious enthusiast or a serious academic. It is a very important resource in my field of study.
Recently, I found that this resource is available online in pdf form at a not-for-profit website called Archive dot org. I have done some cursory research into that organisation. It has an entry on Wikipedia. I can't find any substantial criticism of it.
I am wondering whether it would be academically unethical of me to link directly to this resource in my answers, given the unknown copyright status of some of the content on archive.org. On a related note, I'm also worried whether it could get me into trouble academically to do so. Any insights would be appreciated!

If you're asking about posting answers on a Stack Exchange site, I don't see how this is a question of academic ethics. The rules of academia don't apply on SE. You should check the rules of that site, perhaps by asking on their meta site.

http://archive.org isn't an "institution", it's a website which stores data that's been previously published on the Internet.  But just to check, are you sure you are not talking about http://arxiv.org (which is pronounced the same)?

archive.org is not in a "questionable copyright status"; some of its user-submitted content is, but policing your sources for possible breach of copyright is neither mandated nor even encouraged by academical ethics (which is about honesty rather than legality). It is another question whether the link is practical (e.g., it may become a dead link, or editors might remove it in the publication process -- though the latter issue is not an issue with a thesis), but it cannot possibly pose an ethical problem.

I asked about this in general terms in regards to AC.SE. http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/questions/752/link-to-free-pirated-papers-or-official-versions-behind-paywalls

I occasionally participate in answering academic questions in online forums when I hit a block with getting on with my thesis.

No worries, we all procrastinate (ehm... cough cough).

I often cite a particular large and well-known academic source in my answers. I have my own copy of this book.

You really don't need to own a copy of a book to cite it: many, if not most, academics borrow the books needed for their work from the libraries. Moreover, its cost is irrelevant to your question.

I am wondering whether it would be academically unethical of me to link directly to this resource in my answers, given the questionable copyright status of archive.org.

If the archived copy is legal (e.g., the publisher might have released the copyright because they no longer print it), it is certainly ethical to link it. However, I'd avoid referring to the copy if it's legality cannot be reasonably established. In addition, should the copy be removed due to copyright infringement, you would end up with a series of broken links.
It is worth noting that links to books are seldom seen on academic papers, unless a book is exclusively available online. Therefore, the issue is more related to whether or not posting the link online.

Achive.org operates in a grey area with respect to printed works that are still under copyright.  In some areas it is completely fine.  For instance, in software it is legal in the US to link to anything on archive.org, as they have an exemption from the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) that allows them to host copyrighted material.  From the wikipedia article

The project advocated for an exemption from the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act to permit them to bypass copy protection, which was approved in 2003 for a period of three years. The Archive does not offer the software for download, as the exemption is solely "for the purpose of preservation or archival reproduction of published digital works by a library or archive." The exemption was renewed in 2006, and in 2009 was indefinitely extended pending further rulemakings. The Library reiterated the exemption, as a "Final Rule" with no expiration date, in 2010.

However, this exemption does not extend to other media.  I believe some authors have strongly objected to having their work hosted there.  (Harlan Ellison, I believe, successfully got all of his material removed.)
My inclination would be that it is fine in academia.  There is a process by which authors or publishers can have their copyrighted material removed from the internet archive.  If they have chosen not to exercise that right, then I don't see that linking to it is problematic, legally or ethically.  Your links may rot in the future if you do this since Archive.org might be required to remove the copyrighted material at some point in the future.


text:
Is it typical to use an uncertain affiliation within a paper?
I am an international graduate student, recently-admitted to a Canadian university. My admission has been finalized and I am just within the visa processing to acquire required study permit.
Now, I am going to submit a proceeding paper and feel myself in a dilemma to determine my affiliation within that, appropriately. As a matter of fact, my preference has been focused on utilization of my position
in the new university, instead of my undergraduate affiliation. But one might, realistically, imagine the situation that I use my favorite affiliation for the target paper, but (for any reason) I will be rejected by Canadian embassy to acquire the study permit. In this case (I hate even thinking about it!), I not only lose that position, supposedly, but that applied affiliation onto the paper will, also, be invalid, actually.
Now, technically:

Is it ethical to do something like that in academia, or I must bite the bullet for stabilization of my expecting affiliation to be applicable,
formally?
What are the potential consequences for me and my paper, if above scenario would be happened?

No. There is no bullet to be bitten. Whenever you submit a paper, you just list your current institution as your home institution, no matter what you want to put here.
The affiliation on a paper has two purposes:

to allow others to contact you - nowadays it's mainly a disambiguation in case your name shows up multiple times on an internet search, but in former times, the institution information was necessary in order to send the author a letter or in order to call him/her;
to assign credit to the institution that supported you during your research.

The Canadian university did not do any of that (yet), so they should not be listed. Note that if you already started at your next institution when the final version of the paper is due, then it is entirely reasonable to update your affiliation then, just as you would update an e-mail address that expired. However, for reason number two from above, you would add a footnote stating that the work was carried out while you were still at your former institute/university.

I've just left my former university for a couple of years. With due attention to this fact, it does, also, not really deserve for that credit, does it?!

Well, when did you do the work? Have you been supported by some industrial company for your work? If you were independent researcher, you can leave the institution field blank.

Actually, the research has been supported by no distinct organization. I was already aware of the "independent researcher" option; however, I'm a little reluctant to use that

Well it sounds like you like to eat the cake and have it. I do not see another way, then, than to wait until you are enrolled and then submit. Everything else smells fishy. Or else, if you have contacts to your old place, you could attain some visiting fellow position, for which you would credit them as affiliation. I do not so how to credit an affiliation that has - as yet - no role in your writing the paper (even if it were just to provide the table for the last two days in which you clean up your paper).

@CaptainEmacs: Thanks in advance. The state space is now considerably more clear!


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What is a strategy to do theoretical research?
Thanks to some great SE answers on a previous question I posted, I realized that even though I don't have an RA at the moment (I am a first year PhD student), I must start my research ASAP. I am convinced that this is great advice and want to follow it.
But the concept of 'doing research' is still not perfectly clear to me. I am interested in convex optimization, that's what I intend to do my PhD in. So as of now, for my thesis, I have this vague idea in my mind that I'd solve a problem by maybe coming up with a cool algorithm and give some nice proofs using convex analysis.
But exactly how to start is a mystery. Here's what I think I should do: read a paper that looks interesting to me (this could be because of the abstract, or maybe it's a paper that has suddenly got very popular, or it could simply be based on the author's reputation, etc), thoroughly understand their results by working out proofs of all their statements, and then try to see what happens in slightly different cases than what they mention. Maybe relax some assumptions they make; or go the other direction, add a constraint and see if the algorithm can be improved because of this constraint, etc.
Is this how it's done? I feel so lost right now. When I try doing this, I have so far (in six months) not been able to really think of anything new. Even the existing proofs that I get are so complex, I can't think of any way to come up with something new. Can someone please give me some tips on how one gets started in theoretical research - how to come up with a problem, and how to proceed from there?
EDIT_ Adding more information: I don't have an adviser yet, and this is the post I am referring to in the first paragraph.

Missing step: Discuss the subject with your advisor, repeat as needed.

I remember from OP's previous question that he has not an adviser yet.

Maybe add a link to the other post?

Missing step: Find an advisor/mentor.

In mathematics, a paper with 20 pages of proofs does not have twenty pages of original ideas. It might have a page worth, maybe. The rest are combinations of 2-6 previously known ideas, often with little or no acknowledgements of their first appearance [footnote 1].
To beginning graduate students, I strongly suggest to read much older papers. They are usually much shorter, much simpler, and actually allow to learn ideas in their simplest. In my branch of mathematics, that means papers that are at least 30 years old. General useful mathematical background papers go at least 60-100 years.
A good way of doing research is just to be curious --- after all this is what got you into the position you are now, right? Whenever you are curious about something, try figuring it out, look for some way of doing it, search references, read whatever looks interesting, swear at whatever does not. Keep journal with your questions, observations, dead-ends, ideas and swearing. Occasionally, when there is something particularly nice, add those 5, 10 or 15 pages of formal expository and technical scaffolding that is needed to convey your message to others [footnote 2] and share with the world. That is research.
[1] Many find it embarrassing, awkward and out-of-place to write ".... by Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. (This way of applying Cauchy-Schwarz inequality I learned from [ref] which is completely unrelated to the current topic). Next we can bound (5) by..."
[2] After spending much time thinking about X, you will find that you need to spend much time to explain the basics of X to anyone who has not spent the same time thinking about X. That is why you need all that scaffolding.

"find it embarrassing...  I learned from [ref] which is completely unrelated to the current topic" That's also known as having an impressive ability to relate ideas from different fields.  Most readers will not look down on unusual citations.  And of course it is unethical to omit them.

What you describe (look at paper, understand it in minute detail, look at next paper) is a depth-first search. This is probably a bad idea (oblig. xkcd).
It's very common at the beginning of a PhD to do a proper literature study. This means writing a report (maybe just for yourself and your supervisor) that summarises everything the human race knows about convex optimisation. Of course, this will not include detailed proofs of everything. The point is to get an overview of the field. If you're lucky, someone has recently written a review paper in your (sub)field, which helps a lot.
When you have an overview, you will (hopefully) at least know one very important thing: which problems have been solved, and which problems are still unsolved, or solved in a poor way? Then comes the hard work: trying to come closer to solving the unsolved problems in your chosen sub-sub-field.

I'm a Ph.D student who seems to be doing well and from my perspective, I think it came really naturally by finding an interesting problem, and just "doing it". I started in a Math Bio program and switched into the Math Ph.D, but what I made a bunch of connections with Bio students and found some interesting problems in zebrafish that I wanted to model. However, there weren't the right mathematical tools to computationally simulate it at the error I wanted (stochastic dynamics), so I started doing what made sense, went through the literature to find everything out about the area, and started making algorithms to solve the problem.
Convex optimization is a field a lot like stochastic dynamics where you can find real problems that need to be solved. Go find one that's interesting: cancer biology, mathematical finance, etc. and try to solve it. Maybe you get a free "applied" paper because existing methods work. Most likely, it hasn't been done because it's mathematically/computational hard, and now you have a problem that is both mathematically and scientifically interesting. With a concrete idea of what you need, it will be much easier to move forward. Even if you don't want to do applied work, you will find "pure" theoretical work that needs to be done that is also very applicable.
Also, I second Semi's suggestion to start writing. I started by thinking that reading counted as doing work. How many times have you read a proof and thought you understood it, but couldn't reproduce it with the book closed? I took my advisers advice: reading doesn't count as work, only count writing time. Read everything and compose your own notes, or basically your own book on the subject. Prove extra generalizations / interesting side stories as you think of them (some of these will later go into a paper!). Sooner than later it will become the best source of information that you know of on the subject.


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Have any academic superstars succeeded in a subject while disliking it?
This question is limited to only academic subjects that exist in internationally recognised universities (eg: exclude celebrities and Internet sensations), and is inspired by a discussion with a teenage family member who questions the maxim that interest is most important for deciding your academic subject: are there any academic luminaries who succeeded in a subject that they (secretely or not) despise?
For example, has any Nobel Laureate or Rolf Schock winner despised the subject in which he/she won, or has any Fields Medallist despised maths?

I'm not sure how we could know.  If I met a Fields medalist who claimed to hate math, I wouldn't conclude that this was necessarily true.  Instead, I'd suspect that this person was a contrarian or loved being provocative.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because there is no way to get a verifiable answer.

@vonbrand Presumably, famous researchers have been interviewed about the extent to which they enjoy working in their profession. Furthermore, famous researchers may have had private conversations about their attitude to  their research, and this information may be made public at a later date. So to my mind, it seems like an answerable question.

An interesting case - not in science, but cerebrally close enough, chess - is Emanuel Lasker: he considered Go to be superior to Chess despite being multi-year chess world champion.

@CaptainEmacs, that doesn't mean he hates chess.

@JeromyAnglim, I've had bad days, when I was ready to throw it all out the window too. If you ask somebody who is already burnt out and retired, they'll presumably answer differently than when they were enthusiastic and active. Everybody hates one aspect or the other of their work, however much they love it overall.

@vonbrand Agreed. However, I try to approach the question in an as plausible way as possible. Note that you can be so good at your field that you are still excellent in a subfield which you detest but which you do very well, e.g. from a sense of duty (I know personal examples). It is, of course, unlikely that one will excel in a field that one overall detests from the very beginning. There will likely be a time when or other aspects where one will have liked it sufficiently for having had spent time on it. But that scope and time could have been quite limited and short-lived.

I've heard that Paul Cohen looked down on logic before resolving the Continuum Hypothesis, but this may be apocryphal.

I agree with @AnonymousMathematician (and I have voted to close).  To answer this question one would have to decide what it really means for someone to dislike something that they have worked intensely and protractedly on and had great success.  This is an interesting philosophical question -- e.g. how do we know that the sensations that we describe as "pleasure", "pain", "liking", "detesting"... are anything like the sensations that others use the same words to describe?  But this is not a question about academia.

To succeed in any highly competitive endeavour requires long, concentrated, hard work. To put this into something you hate would certainly be a novel type of masochism, even if not successful.

Actually, there is a nice example, Einstein himself: he helped inventing/discovering Quantum Mechanics (by linking quantum hypothesis to photoelectric effect) but later fought against significant aspects of it (especially probabilistic outcomes, and incomplete state knowledgeability); nevertheless, he even later contributed the EPR paradoxon as a "counterexample" (but it became one of QM's foremost illustrations for nonlocality).

I guess this is more of an academic form of disliking. i.e., its not that Einstein disliked doing work in an area, it's that he questioned the academic merits of an approach or idea?

@JeromyAnglim I think it's probably as close as you can get with this question. He made several very negative and discouraged comments about the field. Amongst other: "Wenn es bei dieser verdammten Quantenspringerei bleiben soll, so bedaure ich, mich mit der Quantentheorie überhaupt befaßt zu haben" - have a translation at Google.

Einstein's field was physics; calling attention to (perceived) shortcomings of quantum mechanics is not at all an instance of saying that you dislike doing physics: in fact it is doing physics.  You seem to be interpreting the question by as asking whether a proponent of a certain academic theory later reversed herself and advocated against it: of course that happens quite frequently (in some fields and at some periods, more than half the time!).  I don't find this to be a plausible interpretation of the question.

@PeteL.Clark I was tempted to agree, however: Quantum Mechanics was a very big chunk of physics at that time. How large does an area have to be for it to count? Since this is not very well defined (I know people who made their career in one field, but as soon as they could afford to they moved to another subfield in the major category and spoke not too flatteringly about their earlier field which built their career in the first place). Both fields belong into the same general category - but how large is an acceptable category? Science? Hate biology, love math? Hate algebra, love calculus?

@PeterL.Clark Sorry if my question were unclear; you are correct that I did not intend my question to include dislikes or retractions within a subject as in Einstein's case.


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Will publishing a paper hinder graduate admissions if errors are discovered?
I believe I have developed a formal proof for an unsolved conjecture in mathematics; however, I'm not yet enrolled in university and I know maybe one individual who could check my proof.
Should I still submit this paper to a journal and risk it being published and then later errors being discovered? Furthermore, would an incorrect paper hinder admission to graduate schools? It's not that I would be upset about being wrong, it certainly wouldn't be the first time I was ever wrong. I just wouldn't want those errors to ruin my future. I wouldn't be concerned if the paper was denied by the journal because the error wouldn't be publicized.
I'm confident that my method is rigorous and proves the conjecture. However, I know the likelihood of errors being present is almost certain.
The overall question is: If I submit a paper to a journal and it is published, but later errors are found, will that hinder admissions to graduate school; or is that just a risk one takes in sharing research?
Note: I don't expect that the proof is wrong, I truly believe that it is correct. However, I must consider the event that it is proven incorrect.

It honors you that you consider it likely that the proof may be incorrect, even though you think that it is correct. This is what it takes to be a careful mathematician.

"I'm confident that my method is rigorous and proves the conjecture. However, I know the likelihood of errors being present is almost certain." These statements contradict each other.

Have the one you know check it out. If it has merit, they'll know who can look at it closer, and tell you what to do.
It is very probable that your proof s wrong, or contains holes. Even so, you learn something (and learned by working it out).

Thank you for your answer. I will take your advice, and I do realize that it's very probable that it's wrong. It almost seems too simple for it not to have been guessed, but from other proofs in this field I can see that this approach isn't taken very often; I am still hopeful however.

@UnconsciousStream, best of luck. You just might have seen something nobody before saw. Drive by MSE and/or MO for further discussion.

In the event that I do publish this paper, and no one seems to notice errors until after its publication, will that negatively impact graduate school admissions later down the line?

@UnconsciousStream, the whole review process is meant to catch errors before they get published. Not foolproof by any means, and it takes quite some time. If an error slips through, it will reflect negatively on you, sure; but the damage should be limited. No way to know...

Ah, thank you. I will trust in the review process. After all, I do plan to review it with at least that one potential individual who is far more knowledgeable than I am on the subject. If it gets past that individual, and any people she recommends, and the peer reviewers, it is almost certain to be correct (even though it almost certainly is not). In any event it's comforting to know that the damage is limited. Thank you once again.

@UnconsciousStream, if it passes all that scrutiny it is almost certainly correct. Believe in yourself and your work, but be prepared to be proven wrong (and to work on fixing it or applying what you learned elsewhere).

I disagree with vonbrand. Publication is NOT an effective way to determine whether or not your argument is correct. In particular, not every referee considers it their job to check the correctness of the proofs in a paper.


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Can I submit the anonymous referee report from a previous submission to another journal together with my manuscript?
I sent an article to Annals of Mathematics and after 4 months of review process it was rejected. I received a report from an anonymous expert. Could I send this report, together with the manuscript, to another journal?

Could I send this report, together with the manuscript, to another journal?

This is a confusing wording: the first two times I read it, I thought you meant you were submitting the referee report for consideration of publication!  But I think I understand what you mean now: I'm guessing (though please confirm) that the referee said some good things and in particular regarded, either implicitly or explicitly, the result as being correct, but just not good enough for publication in Annals (as are at least 99.9% of mathematical results), and you would like the positive aspects of the referee report to follow you to your next submission.
If all of the above is right, the answer is that you cannot do this directly: it is simply not the part of the established protocol for paper submission.  And there are good reasons for this.  On the one hand, how does the next editor know that you did not fabricate the report or modify it in some way?  On the other hand, referee reports are never anonymous to the editors, so "submitting an anonymous referee report" undercuts most of its value.  However the next journal could contact the Annals and get the report officially and the identity of the referee.  Which brings me to what you should do: if you want a referee report from Journal A to be carried over to Journal B, you should write to the editors at both journals and request this to happen.  This definitely happens sometimes, although in my experience it is most commonly initiated by someone other than the author.

I see no reason why the referee report could not be submitted as part of the cover letter, or as an ancillary document. The question to me is not whether it could be submitted, but whether it should. But the question does not contain enough information about the content of the reviewer report to make any suggestion on this.

I managed to get this done once: the handling editor for the rejecting journal worked at same institution as one that was a realistic 2nd try, and (based on a friend's suggestion) emailed the 1st ed. to say "would you object if I passed your name on?" then added a note to the 2nd submission saying "this paper was rejected from X but they are happy to pass on the referee report if you wish to use it"

Side point: in view of your second sentence, I suggest chasing the link to MSE to see the history of the post and its author.

Could I send this report, together with the manuscript, to another
  journal?

I have several times thought of doing just that, and one time decided to take a chance and try it. Somewhat to my surprise, the strategy worked brilliantly: the editor of the second journal decided to accept my submission on the spot without sending it out for another review. Looking back, I think that the forces in play that made the strategy successful (which is also why at the time I decided to try it) were:

The editor of the second journal I submitted to was already somewhat familiar with the work in question and was someone I had a relatively high level of confidence would give my paper a fair hearing.
The referee report from the first journal was fairly detailed, actually said several positive things about my paper, and did not question that the results of the paper were correct.
There was only one particular issue that led that referee to recommend rejection, and that was a somewhat unfair judgment (in my view, which I thought the editor of the second journal would agree with, which he did) regarding the novelty and importance of the paper's results.

Note that this is just an anecdote and offers little predictive value about what would happen in your situation. However, it demonstrates that unusual strategies of this sort can sometimes pay off and that there is nothing that makes them invalid or taboo.

Did you just include the referee report in the cover letter, or was there some way for the editor of the second journal to learn the identity of the referee?

As far as I recall it was an email submission, and yes, I did just include the referee report, but I was also fully transparent about where it came from, so the editor could easily contact the first journal to verify the authenticity of the report (whether he could find out the identity of the referee might depend on the policies of the journal). In any case, I don't think he bothered, and those details were largely irrelevant since there was a high level of trust involved - my reputation was good enough and the referee report detailed enough so that those concerns didn't exist.


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What are the advantages of top 20 universities over top 70s for CS PhD in USA?
I am a Computer Science M.Sc. Student in a university in a developing country. I am planning to apply for PhD this year. Actually my main reasons to not continue my PhD here, are the issues related to my country economics and infrastructures. Poor dorm conditions, no funded PhD, unstable internet, no proper study place in university are some of them where decrease the quality and contributions of a PhD student and I think that those issues will be solved by the migration to USA itself and is not related to the rank of the destination university. to make my question clear, actually I want to know what are the benefits of a top 20 university in USA saying, Caltech over a top 70 university saying, Oregon State University . I can imagine one or two like the strong advisor and peers but I can't think more. please note that I am not asking about the after-graduation job perspective, I mean What is the effects on the quality and contributions of a PhD student to study in a top-20 instead of a top-70 university.
P.S: if it matters ranks are according to the US News portal.