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Decision about getting a job while completing MSc Studies
Last year I got accepted in a full time informatics MSc. During that period I also had a fulltime job as a software developer in a startup and I was trying to make some publications with my thesis supervisor from my BSc. However all these simultaneous activities had a very negative impact on me, since I had no free time and I slept very little time every day for an extended period of time. Things became worse when a close relative of mine died.
As a result I decided to quit my job and although we managed to publish some papers with my supervisor I decided to end my collaboration with him as well (although it was very fruitful) .
The aforementioned situations also had a great negative impact in my studies and as a result I passed only 2 out of 5 courses in the first semester.
My studies are really important to me as I want to pursue a PhD. Therefore i decided to fully focus on the MSc and improve my grades. So, during last summer I managed to pass almost every course I had failed before, with high grades.
Recently my BSc thesis supervisor called me offering a job in a research program.
This job interests me a lot since:

I would really like to work with him again since we had a great
collaboration...
there is a high chance of publishing again...
I would also earn some money...

However:
I am afraid that this may impact negatively once again:

my studies (despite being close to the completion of the MSc)
my grades (and as a result this could possibly affect getting accepted in a PhD)

I am afraid that if I refuse the offer, he may deny future collaboration.
What is your advice about this ?
Should I accept the job or would that possibly be a bad idea ?

It's clear that you are reluctant to take on full-time employment after your recent experiences, and understandably so. However, this does not mean that you can't take on part-time work to help pay the bills. This is a fairly common phenomenon for master's students, particularly in countries where the master's degree is considered an "undergraduate" degree (such as in Europe). Exactly how much is up to you—you probably know how much time you could spend on external work without compromising your desired work-life balance.
If your bachelor's advisor is understanding and supportive of you, then he would likely be willing to let you work part-time on his project while you finish your studies. If he isn't willing to do so, then that might be a sign that he's not someone you should have as a long-term advisor. (A good research advisor and mentor will want what is best for both of you, not just what is best for the advisor!)

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Why did my professor criticize my performance indirectly?
I'm an international graduate student studying theoretical physics in a US university, and I'm in my 4th year of PhD study and plan to graduate at the end of the 5th year. Yesterday, I heard something from my advisor really hurts me.
Yesterday afternoon, I was working in my office while my professor was having a meeting with a prostdoc in our group in the small meeting room just outside my office. We are in a suit-like office so that there is a very small common meeting room outside our offices. The meeting room is very small and very close to my office, so that I can hear what they said rather clearly. Usually I will close my office door when there is a meeting outside, but yesterday I left my door opened because my professor planed to have a meeting with me after they finished the meeting with the postdoc, and there was only a short period of time between they started the meeting with the postdoc till the time we scheduled to meet.
And then in the middle of their talk, I heard my professor talking about she was very happy about a new graduate student is about to join the group, so that the new student can help the postdoc to run part of the numerical calculations, because "XX is not productive as before", where "XX" is my name.
As a background, before the new postdoc joined our group about 3 months ago, I had a great time working together with our former postdoc, who is also international with the same nationality as I'm. We worked very closely together with many of the projects, and published several papers together in about two years. Just before the end of last year, my professor assigned me to work independently onto a new project which is in a new area that no one in our group has any experience before. It went smoothly until early this year when I plan to take my general exam. I originally plan to take my general exam at late February, but until the very end of approaching the exam data, the exam was rescheduled one month later and moved into March, due to misunderstanding of emails between our department and the graduate school. So in that two months period, I almost stopped updating the new project and totally devoted into the preparation of my general exam. After I passed my general exam at the end of March, I thought I could pick up my research, then I was caught by another unfinished project we started last summer. This project is a collaboration between our group and an experimental group, and we did have some disagreement of the results between the experimental data and the theoretical simulations from the beginning. Then this project get stop-and-go until just after my general exam, we get pushes from the experimental side that they want to finish the project and submit a paper soon. Since the former postdoc is already left, I was placed to in charge of it. I have to deal with all the conflicts between the experiment and theory results and exchange drafts of the paper with the experimental side, and almost have no time to deal with the new project I was doing. The last important update of my project is about 7 weeks ago.
I think I'm a hard working student, at least in the standards of my friends in my department. I work almost 10 hours a day and almost 7 days a week. After I hear about her criticism yesterday, I almost started to rethink whether it still worth my devotion into this.
So, what should I take from my professor's criticism of my performance, in her talking with others, under the obvious condition that I can hear it? She never criticized me before as far as I know. And what suggestions do you have to deal with this situation?

(1) don't throw away your graduation because of this, so don't give up and (2) ask direct feedback from your advisor. It may well be that you misinterpreted what you heard. Maybe it wasn't intended to be as harsh as it sounded.

I tend to be a workaholic. You are working 10 hours a day and almost 7 days a week. Sometimes in life we have to step back and realize there is a point of diminishing returns and we may have reached it at 70 hours of work. You may in fact be less productive by working too much. Try working only 5, 8 hour days per week for a month and see if you are producing better quality and quantity work.

Maybe you really are not as productive as before? I mean, it can happen and it is very human.

This may differ from department to department and professor to professor, but in the departments I worked in PhD students at the end of their project are supposed to be less productive when it comes to participating in other projects: They need to focus on finishing their own dissertation.

I would also advice to talk to her directly. The sentence, taken literally, is true: you are not producing so much (because you had exams and are working on difficult projects), so we need more people.

supervisors are human too; they pass on judgments based on their current mood which may vary on time and who they are speaking to. I would not be surprised if all you say at all time should be taken at face value by someone eavesdropping?  :-)

Your advisor said, in the context of a conversation on a new student picking up some of the workload in the lab,

xslittlegrass is not productive as before

and you seem to have interpreted this as a personal criticism, i.e.,

xslittlegrass is not working hard enough. I'm disappointed with xslittlegrass's performance

I question this interpretation. Your advisor is eager for the new student to arrive because she recognizes that there is a lot of work to be done on the current projects in the lab, and that your attention is on other things right now - hence your low productivity. That's not necessarily a bad thing. You simply can't "produce" a lot on "your" project right now.  You have been splitting your time and efforts between multiple things: your exam, the collaborative project, and "your" project.
Next year you'll be even less "productive" - you'll be writing your thesis, devoting time and effort to your job search, making sure ongoing projects transition smoothly when you graduate. That's a good thing :)
I also question your characterization of the situation as "under the obvious condition that I can hear it" - your advisor probably did not expect you to hear this conversation. As you said "usually I will close my office door when there is a meeting outside" - so usually you do not hear meetings going on outside. I don't think your advisor noticed your door was open, thought "xslittlegrass can hear this meeting," and decided to use it as an opportunity to give you some indirect criticism in middle of an unrelated conversation.
If you are really concerned about this comment, it's often helpful to have a "checkup" with your advisor. You can ask her directly: "Are you satisfied with my current work? Do you think I am allocating my time and efforts in a useful way?"

that's a good suggestion. Have a casual meeting with your advisor and ask her how things are going. Either she'll tell you that you're not being productive to your face and you can have a discussion about it, or she won't in which case you can safely assume her remark was not a well-thought out criticism.

Would you suggest the OP deal with this directly with the adviser i.e. "I was waiting for you for the meeting the other day and left my office door open. I did not mean to eavesdrop but did hear a comment whereby you stated xxx. I was wondering if I haad not been working hard enough" Any thoughts?

@RJ It might be difficult to have that conversation with sounding accusatory and putting the advisor on the defensive. If the OP can resolve his concerns by having a general conversation with advisor about productivity, without mentioning the accidental eavesdropping, that seems preferable to me.

@RJ however, OP does seem rather hurt by this - so if bringing it out into the open with the advisor is the only way he feels he can move past this, then I guess that's what he has to do.

@ff524 I would opt for the open and honest approach if I were the OP. I think it sets the stage for open communication with the adviser though admittedly, different people may have different communication preferences (including the OP and the adviser).

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Best practices for dissertation committees to review chapters?
From talking to colleagues in a variety of fields and different institutions, there seems to be a huge variability in the ways committees handle their responsibilities of reviewing dissertation chapters. I would like to know two things:

What do you consider the best practices for advisors, other committee members, and candidates in order to move the dissertation writing along efficiently?
Does the Journal Review policy (specified below) seem reasonable to you?

Journal Review Method
In this model, the dissertation advisor treats his or her role as the
  chair of the candidate's committee as if he or she were the editor of
  a journal and the dissertation chapters articles submitted for review.
  The student submits a chapter to the advisor who decides whether it is
  ready to send for review. If it is, then the advisor sends the chapter
  to committee members for review. The committee members make a brief
  (2-4 page) report to the advisor that either: accepts the chapter as
  is, accepts it pending minor revisions, rejects it pending major
  revisions, or rejects the chapter entirely. The advisor then makes the
  final determination as to the status of the chapter. It will be the
  advisor's responsibility to make sure other committee members submit
  their reports in a timely fashion. The defense is held when the
  advisor judges all of the chapters to be "accepted".
The primary benefits of this policy are that it creates a clear
  organizational structure which allows candidates to receive prompt,
  actionable feedback on their work.

This looks to me like it would be a good Community Wiki candidate... good, relevant question, but asking for a "best prctices" list. Thoughts?

My thought is that this isn't a question about the best practices for the site here, but best practices for the departments that the members of this site are members of IRL. My hope is to collect some ideas to suggest to my department about how the process of handling dissertation review might be improved. Hopefully the information would also benefit other graduate students and professors in other departments. I think it deserves an exception.

I fully believe it would, and I'm not looking to close this question.

Sorry! I misread your previous as wanting to move it to the meta board rather than wiki. I'm fine with that, but don't know how to move it. (I'm still kind of new here.)

No problem. Just FYI, the implication of Wiki is that (1) no one gains any reputation from answers on the question and (2) editing requires lower reputation.

I have no objection.

If this is turned into a Wiki, it may be useful to specify what form of thesis is considered since an article-based and a monograph are produced in different ways and, in addition, the way advisor/committees work differ between academic cultures. I think this is one point that speaks against a wiki since it cannot be inclusive and hence has to be narrowed down quite substantially (alternatively having one wiki for each case).

I am not sure that a similar process couldn't work for both article-based and monograph style dissertation. I think you might want to tweak the amount of time allowed for comments to come back, since on average monograph style dissertations would tend to have longer chapters. But I don't see why a unified process for both isn't possible.

The policy is straight forward but an open question is what use a complete reject means if the advisor has deemed the chapter as passable. As I see it the advisor has (should have) both the insight into the details of the problem and research as well as general knowledge of academic expectations to deem when a manuscript is in shape for passing on. If a committee member does not think this is right then the question still remains who may be right and who may be wrong? Is the decision by vote in the end since there will likely be three or five persons involved in reading the chapters? In my system it is possible for a student to defend even if the advisor or committee member advise against it. Only fools do but it is possible. It is however, still possible for committee members to disagree but usually when issues arise it is because the student-advisor communication has failed for one or the other reason.
So in my view the "journal review method" is a good start but you also need to consider what will happen if there is disagreement and how to possibly weigh the input. Do all committee members have equal weight in all aspects or are they experts in some parts and therefore carry more weight in those chapters than in others. I think the system requires some tweaking in order to accommodate the clear differences that exist between a journal publications and a thesis (sensu monograph) where a thesis typically contains larger quantities of more detailed information than would be possible in a published paper.
As a side point, in my system where paper based theses are the norm, it is hard to "reject" a published paper; one can disagree but something that has passed peer review (albeit a poor one) has still passed. The key pint is thus the overall quality of the work and of the emerging scientist behind it. This i snot necessarily covered by the "journal review method" alone.

I was worried about what to do if there is a failure on the advisor's part, but I don't know how a general policy can fix that. Those sorts of failings are the kinds of things that the chair of the department, or some other departmental officer would have to have responsibility for.

Maybe the use of the outright rejection would be to try to show the student that the direction of research on this particular point is a complete dead end? I am thinking that the advisor should have the final say, because ultimately the advisor should have the most say about whether the dissertation is passable or not, since he or she is supposed to be the authority on the topic.

Here's what I think from the point of view of mathematics in the US.
For us the usual system is that the advisor is expected to read the thesis carefully, judging its correctness, significance, and novelty, at a level of depth comparable to or higher than would be expected of a journal review (which in mathematics is already pretty deep).  The other committee members are expected only to give a more cursory reading, basically to satisfy themselves that the contents of the thesis appear to be mathematics research at an appropriate level.
As such, I think your system would face the following problems:

Expertise.  Mathematics as a field is highly specialized, and most of the members of the committee will not be experts in the same area as the candidate.  They will not have the necessary background or expertise to carefully read and evaluate the dissertation at the level you propose.  For a journal submission, referees can be chosen from anyone in the world, and even so there may only be a few dozen people whom an editor would consider well qualified for that particular topic.  The intersection of that pool with the candidate's university is typically just the advisor.
Workload.  Even supposing the committee members to have the necessary expertise, what you propose would require a very significant time commitment from them.  An average dissertation chapter in mathematics might be 20 or 30 pages of dense computation and logical argument.  To read a paper of that length, evaluate its correctness and significance, and produce a 2-4 page referee report, a mathematician might easily spend at least 10-15 hours.  Multiply that by 4-6 chapters and that is a lot of work, especially considering that a single person may be on several committees.

Let's say 4 chapters @ 10hrs each = 40hrs per dissertation. That seems quite reasonable to me in that: (1) the workload is spread out over a year or more in almost all cases, (2) readers on dissertation committees are standardly given course reductions to compensate them for time expended. Different universities calculate the reduction differently, but something like 1/3 of a course seems common. Hence, by serving as a dissertation reader three time one spends between 120 hours. That's less work than teaching a semester long class. Some dissertations will take longer, of course.

@shane: Whether it's reasonable or not is an argument that one could make.  It's certainly much more than they are currently asked to do.  If committee members really did get course reductions I might agree with you, but no university I know of actually does that.  The advisor might get a course reduction (usually not) but the other committee members never do, in my experience.

It might also be a good idea to note that this answer is about the American system. As far as I can tell, the comittee has a different role and composition elsewhere (at least in Denmark).

@TobiasKildetoft: Thanks, clarified.  I see that the asker is in philosophy in the US.

@NateEldredge,  I was under the impression that course reductions for this kind of work were standard. I know my university offers them, and we tend to be stingy about this sort of thing.

@shane: Maybe this is field dependent, but it's certainly not standard in mathematics.

I wonder if others would share the policies at their universities, and maybe also mention the field and location just so we can get a more robust picture of the prevalence of these policies.

@shane: I'd suggest asking that as a new question.

@NateEldredge, ok done.

Thanks for clarifying (I got confused by several questions about thesis committees until I realized how different a role they play in the American system compared to here).

10-15 hours to carefully review a 20-30 page mathematics research paper is incredibly ambitious, in my opinion. Maybe you read faster then me, but I'm lucky if I can carefully review even a single page in one hour.

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What is your university's policy on course reductions for service on dissertation committees?
This is a question branching off of this one. I would like to judge how common it is for universities to give course reductions for service on dissertation committees.
Two questions:

Does your university offer such reductions for the advisor, readers, examiners?
How generous is the reduction? (1/3 of a course, 1/4 of a course, etc.)

Please include your discipline and location in the reply so we can get a more robust picture.
For instance: USA, Philosophy, 1/2 course for the dissertation advisor, 1/3 course for the readers, 0 for the examiners.

I'm not aware of any such reductions. Can you add your experience to the question (or indicate that your for-instance is an actual example)?

I believe that my example above is correct for my university. I don't have a copy of the faculty handbook handy though, so I won't hold my hand in the fire for those numbers.

As of now, it is a polling question (and such questions are discouraged on SE sites). Please, fix it.

I have to agree with @PiotrMigdal, this is exclusively a polling question and not appropriate for this site. Can you modify the question to be more focused?

I'm happy to change it. Does someone have a suggestion as to how to make the question more constructive?

What's the reason for asking the question in the first place? Is there anything beyond just getting the data that you're hoping to learn?

The original context of the question was how to structure policy for dissertation committees. The hope was to see how much compensation faculty are given for such service in order to know how much work it is reasonable to ask them to do.

Maybe the question is better posed in terms of searching for some literature that gives average benefits packages for service?

In mathematics in Minnesota, the advisor gets a half-course reduction, and committee members no reduction.
Thus, some years ago, when I taught a crypto class and a coding class that were popular with some engineering dept grad students, and I found myself being asked to be on about 250 Master's and PhD committees within a few years, it was a task that was not literally directly compensated-for, despite consuming significant time. But I figured it was part of my service duty. I allocated an hour or two prior to the actual presentation to review the document, and the presentation itself would take an hour or two.
(My chief benefit was amusement with some of my "colleagues" who apparently thought I was grossly exaggerating, since "obviously no one would agree to being on so many committees"...)

I was interested to read that the advisor gets a half-course reduction (presumably during the semester of the thesis defense only?).  In my department there are absolutely no teaching breaks for advising of any kind, and I do feel like this serves as (i) a disincentive for many faculty to take students and (ii) a source of resentment for many faculty who take multiple students, get absolutely no formal benefit from it, and hear talk of "everyone doing their duty" for much more mundane and quick things like undergraduate advising.  Do you happen to know if your system is common?

@PeteL.Clark, the "reward" goes into a bank of "teaching credits" which can be spent at the discretion of the faculty advisor. No, I don't think this is very common, and, in fact, I don't know of any other place that does this. It doesn't seem to provide sufficient incentive for many faculty to have any students at all, but it's a nice token for those of us who do, while being small enough to avoid accusations (ridiculous as they'd be) that one might have lots of students just to avoid teaching... :)

In my department (mathematics at the University of Michigan), there is no direct compensation for thesis advising. It can be taken into account, along with all one's other work, when salaries are set, but having one more student won't make much difference there.

Does your university offer such reductions for the advisor, readers, examiners?

NO. Advising students and serving on dissertation committees is a normal and expected duty of all faculty members at my university.

I would interpret the policy from a different perspective.  It is a normal and expected duty and if you don't we're going to penalize you with other work.

No, I've never seen that happen, either.

In Sweden, main advisors may get symbolic compensation, in my department 3% time, co-advisors receive 1%. If you serve on an examination committee you do not receive any compensation by either your own department or the department where the defending PhD student resides. At a public defence there is an official examiner, referred to as "opponent". this person typically receives about USD 1000 for the task which includes a 1 + hour public discussion of the work.
In short, none of very little compensation is given to anyone involved with the study and defence of a PhD student. For the PhD defence, all costs involved for travel and housing is of course covered.


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Hard data on students using W's to enhance their GPAs?
I teach at a community college in California, where students can drop a course with a grade of "W" up until the 12th week of the semester. Within the last year or so, I seem to be seeing an increase in the number of students who find themselves passing the course at the 12th week, but who decide to drop because they want a better grade and are willing to take the course again later. However, I'm not sure that this increase is real, since my sample size is small. And if it is real, I don't know how widespread the phenomenon is or how to probe for possible causes for the change, since a number of different variables have changed in this time frame (including changes in state law and school policy).
Is there any source of hard data or method for getting data on this? I think there's a pretty big literature on student success and persistence, but the impression I get is that a lot of the literature takes it as a matter of definition that if the student doesn't pass the course with a C, it's because the student didn't "succeed," i.e., the student's academic performance wasn't passing. It seems like it would be difficult to gather statistically robust data to measure the phenomenon of drops due to grade dissatisfaction, since instructors aren't systematically asked to submit or retain the grade records of students who are no longer enrolled at the end of the term.

Not related to the grade inflation issue, but in the US, this behavior is self-defeating. In the US, a W is a "non-complete" grade, and students need to complete 66% of their credits to remain eligible for federally support student financial aid. A student who is trying to game the system to maintain a higher GPA (perhaps to maintain scholarship eligibility) may just cheat themselves out of their financial aid anyway.

@BenNorris: There are certainly disincentives for this GPA-enhancement strategy, but there are also incentives. For example, I teach a lot of students who want to get in to graduate programs in physical therapy (DPT), and that requires a very high GPA. Arguably the students are not to blame. They respond in a rational way to a system that they have to work within.

I've just done 15 minutes of moderately focused research, and found nothing.
It looks like in most exit surveys students claim to have dropped because of family or work conflicts, which may be true but is not the acute reason for the drop for your students.
A Google search for "drop and retake" finds dozens of recommendations like this for pre-med and other highly grade-motivated students.
I'm rather intrigued, actually. If these students could be motivated to stay and get the grade, it would save the state a lot of money. And if they couldn't drop after Week 2, they might work much harder much earlier.
I sense a possible research project...

Interesting thought on the potential cost avoidance. I'd be curious to learn what the number of students that use this method are doing it just once or twice and also if there really exists a correlation between whether a student uses this method and if they graduate on time vs. late. I'd imagine it's possible to overload on classes so as to not risk a late graduation.

They might manage to finish in the same amount of time, but there is still a cost to teach that student the same course twice - and about half of that cost is covered by the state and property taxes. (http://extranet.cccco.edu/Portals/1/TRIS/Research/Accountability/ARCC2_0/state%20of%20the%20system%202013.pdf, http://www.cpec.ca.gov/SecondPages/FAQ.asp?Category=13)

@Adrienne: At a California community college, about 76-82% of the cost of instruction is covered by taxes. The trouble is that community colleges have a strong financial incentive to let students do this. If the student takes the same course three times (the maximum for which the state currently provides funding), then the college is harvesting three times the state funding. Until recently, my school would allow a student to repeat a course up to 7 times, but the state cracked down and stopped giving funding for more than 3.

Good golly. There are other kids that need those spots, yes?

@Adrienne: Yes, that's basically why the state legislature cracked down a few years back.

As far as method goes, it surely could make for an interesting study! In my recent literature review of factors predicting student success I didn't find anything about this phenomenon - but I wasn't looking for it directly, so that doesn't prove there aren't good studies about it!
But as a data point, I've regularly had professors explicitly tell students before a withdraw deadline to review their grade and if you aren't doing well or just unhappy with your performance so far, they strongly suggest you consider withdrawing from the class! I myself did it for a comm class where I unavoidably missed a few early days that guaranteed I couldn't do better than a B+ even with perfect performance, so I retook it later once I had a more stable schedule.
Now as for systematic gaining of data, you are quite right that it is difficult. A number of factors make this hard, even if we assume that the withdraw deadline is half-way through the course:

Is the first-half of material, and performance on it, an accurate reflection of the rest of the material?
Do later projects/papers/tests disproportionally skew one's final grade for a class, such as having the final project be worth more than the entire first half of the semester?
Are "worst-grade drop" provisions available in the course, as when some professors give five exames but only count your four highest?
Is the class cumulative or "increasingly difficult" in nature, where if you can not master early material you are sure to do even worse on later material? (Math classes are often this way, in my experience)
Since students are dropping the class, by definition you don't know how they would have done had they stayed in the course!
Can missed/failed early work be made up for, without major penalty?

Most studies I've seen simply consider those who drop or withdraw as experiment mortality and ignore it completely. On drop and/or withdraw forms at institutions I've attended they also generally don't even ask you why you are dropping, so this data might not yet be retained in any way and would have to be done as part of the experiment.
One could certainly conduct studies where simply drop/add forms are given options to indicate reason for dropping, and then use that data to try to determine if the problem is reported widely enough to merit further research?

My mother worked in a U.S. university records department for several years and, as you suggested, they don't keep track of how the student was doing in a class at the time of dropping. At this particular university, dropping before the 2 week mark resulted in no grade at all (e.g. it wouldn't even appear on your transcript.) Dropping before about 4 or 5 weeks before the end of the semester (I forget the exact deadline) resulted in a 'W' grade which was listed on the transcript, but with no GPA effect. After that time resulted in a 'WF' which counted as an 'F' for GPA purposes.


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Am I morally obliged to report what I judge as self-plagiarism?
I tried to search in the previous Q/As, but I do not think my case falls in any of the previous entries.
While looking for a certain topic in my field, I found two papers.
The first paper was authored by authors A, B, C, and D and published in some conference proceedings. The second paper was published in a journal in a year after by authors A, E, D, and C. That is, the second paper lost one author and gained a new author.
The two papers report the same research hypotheses, the same data collected, the same data analysis, the same results. That is, the "numbers" in the papers are the same (even the table contents).
The texts differ in a subtle way. The first paper is entitled "Studying topic T in the domain D". The second paper is entitled "Using Measurement Instrument M to measure T in the domain D". The second paper somehow avoids copy/pasting of the paragraphs from the first paper-they rewrote the sentences. It is a little bit longer than the first one. The authors actually spent some more words talking about measurement instrument M, which is taken from another discipline and it takes 3 minutes of Google Scholar searching for learning more about it. There is even a Wikipedia page about the instrument.
I think that this is a case of self-plagiarism. The second paper does not add anything useful to the first one. Additionally, the second paper does not cite the first one. This ringed a bell.
Please note that in my field, conferences are archived and are often considered more important than journals. Regardless of which venues are more important, both papers are formally considered publications.
Now, am I morally obliged to contact the editor of the journal where the second paper was published? This is not precisely a double publication, nor are the authors damaging me nor anybody else. Still, I feel they did something wrong. Should I instead live and let die?

This case does not strike me as any kind of ethical violation or plagiarism. If the ABCD paper was, say, an arXiv preprint, there would obviously be no problem. Papers evolve on the way from preprint to publication, and sometimes even gain or lose authors. I would not cite the preprint in the finished publication. Appearance of the preliminary paper in a conference does not seem to me substantially different.

I don't like this idea of moral obligation, as if it somehow frees you from having to make a decision and frees you from responsibility for its consequences. In the end, you have to do what you feel is right for you, and it has to be your decision, not some imposed "moral imperative". Asking for advice is a great move, of course. I hope the answers help you decide what to do!

@David: I agree with you.  If I were in the OP's position I would probably at least write to the editors of the journal.  But I don't think I would feel morally obliged to do so: doing so may well be the right choice (I think it is), but it is still my choice.

Regarding the venue of the 2nd publication- does it explicitly prohibit this kind of work? Many journals will ask you to state that the work covered by the submission has not been published elsewhere, or at least not in some specific forms. Others will tell you what alternative publication methods they do not consider problematic (often, conference abstracts and your PhD thesis fall under different rules).

just to make sure, in some situation you may change names (in some country you can do it when you change gender, get naturalized or get married for example). Did you check that E is not B with another name? Odd chance, I know...

@P.Obertelli that was a nice thought! But I guess that it would not make much of a difference in the debate "is this case unethical?" and "shall this be reported?" Still, something to think about.

This is an interesting case that you cite. I think it falls somewhere between 'standard behavior' and 'clear misconduct' (though I am sure others will disagree). Some thoughts and facts:

In Computer Science, even though both journals and conf proceedings count as papers, it is common accepted practice to submit extended versions of proceedings papers to journals. Typically, journals expect between 30% and 50% new content for such papers.
Realistically, many journals (especially ones that are not exactly top quality) are not super-strict with what they consider "additional content". Describing only their methodology in more detail, without providing new insights or results, is certainly very little new contribution, but I am not sure if that already qualifies as misconduct.
That one of the original authors was missing in the journal version is curious, but there may be reasons for that. Presumably, something a little shady has happened along the lines, but it is impossible to tell from the outside. One realistic possibility is that first author A has submitted the conf paper while at institution (1), with help from B and C. D was the supervisor and contributed little to nothing at all, but was added due to lab policy. Now, before submitting the journal version, A moved to institution (2), and has replaced lab head D with lab head E.
What strikes me as very, very odd is that the journal paper does not make clear that it is an extension of an earlier conference paper by citing it (and saying so explicitly in the introduction). This is the one thing that I certainly agree has a very bad smell to it. If I receive such a "hidden" journal extension for review, it is an auto-reject for me.

Now, am I morally obliged to contact the editor of the journal where the second paper was published? This is not precisely a double publication, nor are the authors damaging me nor anybody else. Still, I feel they did something wrong. Should I instead live and let die?

In summary, I would say the entire case certainly does not look good. That being said, I do not think that the case is blatant enough that you need to feel required to report to the journal editor. To be honest, even if you did, I think not much would happen. Likely, it is not a paper that the journal feels overly proud of, but I do not think that the case is bad enough to warrant formally retracting the paper.

Isn't a bad smell enough to "flag" the article for its editors? The decision is ultimately theirs but it seems fair to make them aware of the prior work.

I don't know. In my field, contacting the editor to, presumably, ask for retraction of a paper is a very serious step, and should not be done lightly.

You could word it in a more diplomatic way: say that that paper is missing what you consider a very important reference, the proceedings. Then it would be up to the editor to consider if it is bad enough to retract or to ask the authors.

This is a grey area in my opinion. Findings were published in proceedings, and then a journal. Technically, they should have cited themselves. If this had been two journal publications of the same work, I would argue you should bring it the editors attention. However, in this case, I'm not so sure..


text:
How to make academic life bearable under stressing circumstances?
I have been teaching a humanities course at a higher education institution for about more than three years now. I am expected to get full tenure this year. Perhaps it is the only chair dedicated to my field in my country; it is certainly the only one in the subfield I teach. In other words, yes, I am the only professor who teaches that subject in the whole country, and the only professor totally dedicated to teaching and researching in the broader field of study. However, before I took the position, I was not specialized in the subfield I teach now. At the moment, my research and publications in field A are split between subfields A1 (in which I pursued research for my MA and PhD) and A2 (my new teaching position). To complicate things, I am in a multidisciplinary department in another field.
There is no available teaching position in my whole field (A) in the whole country in the foreseeable future (say, 10-15 years, unless a miracle happens). I could teach in related fields, and that is what I am doing (and plan to do in better conditions in the not-so-distant future).
The conditions under which I work might be described as both appalling and depressive. I know there are worse conditions in my country; and I know that I earn just as much as anyone else, but that is not the issue. The issue is having no perspective of future research; virtually no intellectual life; almost no contact with other faculty. There is only one room for more than 18 professors in the department; in it there are some 5 computers, 3 of which do not function. The library does not have the books I need for my basic, mandatory course -- in fact, it only has one textbook I use in class! I have to make do with articles and books from the Internet, when and if available. Grants and funding are virtually non-existent. I am in debt because of a conference in which a paper of mine was accepted. After that, I could not attend 3 international conferences because there was no funding.
So, in the end, my question is this: is there any way (attitudes, habits) to make academic life more bearable under these circumstances? Should I give up research and focus on teaching basic subjects, at the risk of fading into oblivion for not publishing?
A note:
I cannot just "run away", because, as I said before, there is no way I can find a similar job anywhere. I have been trying to busy my mind with other part-time activities, so as not to worry or stress too much, but that also leaves the feeling that my "real" job is useless, or worse: a fake.

Since you seem to have decided that you must accept the situation where you work, let me make some suggestions to make it less depressive. Some of these might not be good ones for you, so pick and choose those that appeal.

the room. One room for 18 people? They don't seriously expect you to use it. What can you use instead?  Do you meet students there, or write conference papers, or prepare coursework? Can you do those things somewhere more pleasant? Your own living room, a coffee shop, a park bench, a table in the library, a classroom that's empty more often than not? Do you have to sit in a crowded place jammed with broken things, or can you go somewhere nicer and get more done?
no funding for conferences. Good for you managing to get a paper accepted and managing to get yourself there. That's probably one more conference than many of your peers. If there is someone who goes to more conferences than you, go and ask them how they do it. They will probably be happy to show you the tricks. In the same spirit, if you can get your own computer you won't care that the department can't provide decent ones.
intellectual connection. The people in the depressing room are half of your peer set - the other half is the A1 and A2 people around the world. Find them! Follow them on Twitter, read their blogs, download their conference sessions and papers, email them with questions about something they published. Use the internet to forge ties with these people - you aren't a moonstruck teenager, you're their peer and they will be happy to hear from you. Who knows, this activity might even lead you out of your current situation some day, but more importantly it will help you grow and solve a pain point for you.
the rest of your life. It's common to push everything else aside while chasing tenure. Do you have any hobbies or habits? Even just following a sports team? Try to ramp up that side of your existence, make some friends who don't work at the university, spend some time cooking or hiking or reading the latest celebrity gossip or watching that tv show everyone watches. Do some fun stuff, whatever fun is for you. Meet some people who can bring you joy.
find a way to be more connected to the university as a whole, not just your department. Join a club or team that has profs from all faculties, or even better has faculty, staff and students from all faculties. Attend (if appropriate) religious activities that happen on campus. Go to the "our university day at X" events. Help with fundraising or political activities that will let you meet people from all over the campus. You're going to be here a long time right? Get to know the place and the people and weave it into your life.
if the tenure you're expecting comes with a raise, start working out now what the consequences of that are. Will you be able to move to a nicer place? Get specific about looking for that place now. Imagine being able to have a lovely view, or a spare bedroom you can use as an office, or quieter, safer nights. The hard work you have put in will be bringing you benefits soon, start to think about those now.

Your department would be amazing if they handed you a bright sunny office, a delightful collection of peers who you enjoy talking to, plenty of important work, a steady stream of bright students, a fully-equipped working environment and a library that's the envy of everyone in your field. But very few places are really like that. So roll up your sleeves and get yourself what you need to excel, and fill your days with work and not-work that make you happy. Your department is never going to do that for you, but you can do it for yourself.

Kate, that's what I was looking for. Not that I haven't tried most of those things before, but the situation is so weird and unusual that sometimes I feel I'm living on another planet.

I'd rather not bother you with more details, but just for the record: people here give you that awkward, sarcastic look if you ask them about funding for research and conferences, as if they were hiding a secret. Besides, there are no fund-raising, and no "political" (except communist/extreme-left events) or sports activities on campus, and no available table and chair at the library... anyway, I'd better roll up my sleeves, as you say.

This question is very specific to your circumstances so it is hard to respond with solid advice.
Your problem is not unique. By the time most faculty get tenure, they are extremely specialized in a single field or have huge sunk costs that make it very hard to move geographically or topically.
There is also the issue of post-tenure blues (or in your case, pre-post-tenure blues) which you should explore.
In any case, you should remember that your university is just one part of your intellectual and personal life. If you don't find your university stimulating, then you could be more active in your academic association's activities -- or be more active in your local community, etc.
Getting tenure is a perfect time to withdraw a little bit and discover new things. People generally expect the post-tenure blues so they won't be surprised to see  less of you for a while.


text:
failure in research
I failed to complete my research project (undergraduate) in the time I said I would, because of overconfidence. It seemed like a quite simple project to both me and my advisor initially considering that it was very similar to a project another student of his had worked on, however for some reason (much of the blame is my own) I ran into countless difficulties and now I will not finish in time. How do I get past something like this? I do not know how to continue after such disappointment.
As an addendum: How does one develop an "aptitude" for research? I would like to go to graduate school, but a lot of the advice hinges on whether one not only enjoys but has an "aptitude" for research. Based on my minimal accomplishments this year, it seems clear that I do not currently have an aptitude for research. Can I ever develop such an aptitude?
Edit: I do not feel that this question is a duplicate. This is about UNDERGRADUATE research. Undergraduates have a very different situation - I cannot simply take another week and work on it as the semester will end soon, after which I will undertake an internship, and I have commitments to my courses and other things.
Also, this is not a case of me getting data that don't support my hypothesis - I do not have any data. Or rather, I have data, but it is meaningless until I finish my current project. Which I was supposed to do today.

Your second question is probably better posted as a separate question: the SE format is designed for 1 question per post.

The question on discouragement and disappointment is a duplicate. Please post the "aptitude" question as a separate question (or edit it to remove the part about dealing with discouragement).

@ff254 I disagree with marking this as a duplicate. The linked question is similar, but it's about someone having doubts after three years of PhD research. This is a case of someone's first encounter with negative results.

The answers to the linked question (e.g., research is hard; failure is normal; it doesn't mean you don't have an aptitude for research) apply to undergrad, grad student, postdoc and faculty researchers alike. I understand that undergrad research is different in many ways, but with respect to "how to move on after a failure" I think the same answers apply to both situations.

There is no such thing as undergraduate research. There is only research that happens to be done by undergraduates.

@user2258552: Your question, as written, did not indicate that you wanted advice on how to deal with not having useful results on a time-sensitive project. That is not something I recall seeing on here before. But that's also not what was written, which is why the question was closed as a duplicate. As we've also mentioned, you also have another question on aptitude that should be asked separately.

"I failed to complete my research project (undergraduate) in the time I said I would, because of overconfidence. It seemed like a quite simple project to both me and my advisor initially considering that it was very similar to a project another student of his had worked on, however for some reason (much of the blame is my own) I ran into countless difficulties and now I will not finish in time."
The fact that I used the word "time" multiple times in the question didn't indicate it was time sensitive?

I think one of the most important things you learn as a PhD student (or Master's) is to deal with research that doesn't quite pan out as you'd expected. Because guess what, that's not the exception. That almost always happens. If research always conformed to our expectations, we wouldn't need to do it.
The trick is to learn to look at it with fresh eyes. The main problem is not that the research did not conclude as you had hoped, the main problem is that you're letting it affect your confidence. Find a new perspective. It may not have yielded what you thought it did, but you did the work and you found stuff out. Now figure out how to present it:

Forget about the original expectations. Those tend to make for bad science. Look at your research so far, and pick out what's interesting, and why it's interesting. Let go of the original story.
The fact that it was more difficult than it looked is a good indicator that you may have found out interesting things. Don't think of them as difficulties you created for yourself, think of them as results.
What would you tell someone starting this research tomorrow?
What's the shortest route to a publishable result? You may have learned many interesting things, but you need to find a single compelling result that you can explain in an abstract. Once you have that, you can fit all the stuff you learned into the story of that result.

"Look at your research and pick out what's interesting"? You should never cherry pick data or results. Present all findings - interesting or not. Many funding agencies have very specific expectations and demand results. The OP said he did not finish the research. There's no way to know how far along he got, but funding agencies can actually demand research dollars back if a study falls apart or isn't completed. You also mention "What's the shortest route to a publishable result?" IMO, shortcuts tend to "make for bad science".

@SoilSciGuy that refers to a single experiment, not to research. Research is a chain of investigations. A failed experiment that is not worth publishing can still help you set up another one that gives better results. There's no obligation to publish all the stuff you tried before you got to the stuff that works. And I'm not talking about taking shortcuts. Once you've hit your budget limit you can get extensions, but only if you can show that you had some unexpected results (which will surprise nobody) but that you can make them work for you with some small additional experiments.

That said, if you work this way you should be very transparent and make sure you're not inadvertently cherry-picking. But how strict you should be, depends for a large part on your field.

@Peter I wonder though, if everyone agreed to publish their dead ends, how much time would be saved by others trying exactly the same thing?

@kleineg I agree, but unwillingness to publish is only part of the question. I can barely find relevant positive results in my field, and the negative ones must outnumber them ten to one at least. Still, it's not unimaginable that some system could be devised. Anyway, that's sort of my point in this answer. Even if your results aren't what you expected, that doesn't mean they're useless. Don't let your disappointment stop you from finding their worth. In a way, discarding failed research creates a kind of cherry-picking effect too.

I see, so you meant taking the data you gathered and trying to reveal different patterns... Just maybe not the ones you started looking for. Is that an accurate assessment?

@kleineg Yes. You could divide experiments into those used to generate hypotheses and those used to prove them. If an experiment fails to do the latter, you can always reuse the data to generate further hypotheses (eg. about why it failed). You'll need another experiment to test that hypothesis properly, but the first wasn't a wasted effort.

Regarding your first question: undergraduate research projects are a great way to experience some aspects of doing research, but deadlines are one way in which they differ from research in graduate school or beyond.  So you shouldn't worry about the mere fact of not meeting your deadline.  I can tell you that I set deadlines for myself all the time, and they always seem easily achievable, but then I often don't actually achieve them.  Also I often think I should be able to prove some result in a certain amount of time, but then for whatever reason I'm not able to.  So I turn that around and decide that my intuition must have been wrong, and in fact the result is more difficult than I expected; and I see this as progress since I've advanced my understanding, and I further try to identify what was the specific reason why my intuition was wrong.
Also, one great feature of the long-term research that is done in graduate school or beyond is that there is lots of flexibility to change the direction of a project mid-stream, or to pause the work on a project and finish a side project, or to split a large project into several papers, or to decide at a certain moment that the work has reached a stage where it's natural to publish what you've done so far, even though you'll keep working on it further.  This type of flexibility is missing in a short-term project like one typically does in undergraduate research.
Regarding your second question about developing an aptitude for research: keep in mind that there are many different types of research projects, which rely on different types of talents.  For instance, some people are great at big-picture thinking, some people are great at clever solutions to tricky questions, some people have the patience to do enormous amounts of seemingly routine things which put together can yield great results, and so on.  The main thing you should strive for is to find some area of your subject, and some way of working on that area, which you love to do and which matches your particular talents.  Don't get discouraged about not having great success in one particular project -- maybe that project just wasn't the right fit for your particular skills.  I can tell you that one of the keys to "aptitude for research" is to have a kind of psychological toughness that enables you to keep working on a problem for a long time, despite setbacks.  If you love what you do, and you have that type of resolve, then good things will happen.

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
― Winston Churchill
You should not let one failure hold you back. I would also like to add that there is a difference between having a general interest or liking in something (i.e. research) and being passionate about it. In grad school (especially at the PhD level) you need to be passionate about your work to be successful. You have to look in the mirror and ask yourself if you truly enjoy doing research. If the answer is yes, then pursue it with vigor.
Let this set back be a learning experience, and grow from it. Just remember, "if you're not failing, you're not trying."
I could go on and on...


text:
Can non-reviewers influence the decision about a paper in a program committee?
In a Program Committee (PC), can PC members non assigned to a paper still have a look at it and make comments influencing the decision, assuming that the reviewing system allow them to access the papers and the reviews?
If they only make a comment, should this comment be sent to the authors (EasyChair, for instance, does not forward the comments to authors)? For instance, consider the case where a PC member thinks that an important reference is missing, regardless of the overall quality of the paper, what should she/he do? Add a comment? Ask to be assigned as a reviewer?

I think this depends on the settings of the submission system. One colleague told me that it happened once for a big information systems conference. Every PC member was able to see every submission first, then every review, and then every decision. I do not think that any system will allow PC members to make comments to papers not assigned to them. However, comments outside the system might happen..

@dgraziotin: In the particular instance that drove this question, all PC members could see all submissions and reviews, and the function to add a comment seemed to be activated (although I didn't try it).

But beyond the technical aspect of what can be done, I was more wondering of what should be done. Is the decision the sole responsibility of the reviewers (meaning that somehow, someone who hasn't completely reviewed the paper should not make any comment), or of the PC as a whole?

In theoretical computer science conferences (which often use EasyChair), I have seen the following practices:

Once all reviews are in, PC chairs often encourage all PC members to comment on all papers on which they have something useful to say.
Sometimes the comments are just discussion that may influence the final decision in borderline cases.
Sometimes the assigned reviewers modify their reviews based on the comments (e.g., they realised that they overlooked some important point).
Sometimes the PC chairs ask some of the assigned reviewers to incorporate the comments in their reviews.
Sometimes the PC chairs ask non-reviewers to convert their comments to (short) reviews.

Further, for big conferences such as ICSE, there is usually a physical PC meeting, where every paper with a non-zero chance of acceptance after reviews is discussed and a final list of papers is prepared. In this phase, each PC member can and is encouraged to comment on each candidate paper. Of course these comments are verbal and hence usually not communicated to the authors.

Reviewer A asks colleague B who's not a reviewer to give his opinion on a paragraph because B has more knowledge about the specifics of that paragraph, then incorporates that feedback in his review.
Just one example of how it could happen.
Or Reviewer A knowing full well that his boss, manager B, won't like a review being critical of the work of prominent person C, so he decides to recommend strongly such criticism be deleted in order to keep his boss happy and his job secure.
Could happen too.

Are both going to show up on a review of the review process? Highly unlikely. Are both plausible scenarios based on human nature, even if not part of the review process? Highly likely.

In my question, I'm specifically referring to PC members non assigned to the paper, rather than in general.

@CharlesMorisset which can be any of the above...

What I mean is that my question is about if a PC member who is not a reviewer can influence the decision, while your answer is more about whether a reviewer can be influenced by someone else. I don't disagree with it, but it's just not very much on topic.

@CharlesMorisset so the answer is yes, that member who is not a reviewer can be among those categories so can influence a reviewer.

I don't understand, are you trying to win a logical debate or to provide a constructive answer? Your answer focuses only on the title, not on the core of the question, and you just provide two hypothetical cases which are not even particularly relevant to the situation. Yes, obviously, people can be influenced when making a decision. It was not a rhetorical question, but an etiquette question to know when and how this influence is possible.

you're the one trying to work yourself into not having to accept that things happen that you don't like, it seems. These are far from hypothetical scenarios. And whether your etiquette thinks such behaviour is correct or not is a personal opinion.

I'm not saying that these things are not happening, I'm just saying that it wasn't the question. Your answer is not focused on PC, even though the question clearly is. You are answering a different question. I'm just trying to point this out to you, to help you improve your answer.


text:
Is it worthless to cite a paper as X et al. when X is not first author but performed the work?
This question is perhaps a particular case of this one. I still feel it deserves to live standalone.
I am sure that a published paper with 4 authors--A, B, C, and X--was almost entirely produced by X. X designed the study, gathered the data, analyzed the data, and wrote the paper. A helped X a little bit (sort of supervised X). B and C are listed there because of typical dishonest authorship mafia. At that time, X was a student. X could do very little to oppose adding  those authors in her/his very first paper.
Now, I am writing a paper that references this one. While A et al. paper is correctly displayed in the References, I was thinking to purposely cite the paper as X et al. (year) in the text.
That would be a subtle way to entail that I know what was going on there. I would cite the paper in the way that was supposed to be. Maybe B and C will also get it. That's a sort of nerdish academic subversive behavior, I guess.
Would that be meaningless? In particular, would that damage X citation counts? I do not think so, because the paper is correctly listed in the References. However, I am not sure because of this question.

"Would that be meaningless?" Yes. Most people would never find out, those that would find out would think you simply messed up your citation, and those that would think you are being "subversive" would wonder whether that is actually the best way to voice your concerns.

Thank you xLeitix. Another reason I enjoy posting here is that people never (or at least rarely) judge when replying or commenting.

I am not sure if you are being sarcastic (Internet problem), but my comment was not supposed to be judgemental - just an honest answer to your question.

I was completely honest and I upvoted you :-) your comment was well appreciated

References have one major purpose: to be able to trace the information provided in that source. This is why the first (named) author is always given in "et al." references. The problem you encounter is that references are also used to cast merit in the academic system but that is actually a secondary task. So if you decide to use another authors name, you make it more difficult for others to locate the paper in question. So I would strongly advise against the action you propose since it violates the purpose of the referencing system. So even though one can trace papers with for example doi-numbers, breaking the systematic representation of cited sources is not good.
There are other ways to state the source of the work in the text by stating that "the work by X (A et al. yyyy)..." or something similar. But, I would not recommend doing this for reasons that are beyond anyone's means to control because the risk is that you will not be perceived positively or at least a bit odd. I am sure that the circumstances, if based on unethical behaviour or the like, will become common knowledge in the field.

I actually did not think about making it "more difficult for others to locate the paper in question". That is also why I enjoy posting questions here!

Yes, and the original authorship order problem you described is certainly not a good situation and dealing with it difficult.

I occasionally encounter this in papers when X is the senior author, i.e. "results by the X lab (A et al.)" or "the X model (A et al.)".

To add a thing, this will most likely be counted as a typo by the community. And that weakens your acceptance of the paper. Not in a major thing, but little things add up.

I've used formulations like "a theorem of X published in [3]," where X is not the first author (sometimes not an author at all) of reference [3].

Yes, people will have difficulty locating the source when you cite the source as X et al. with X not actually being the first author.
If the X you wish to name is the most prominent or senior in the field, then you can say X c.s. (which means cum suis.)
Obviously folks these days hardly know their Latin anymore, so the c.s. will probably not be understood either.

Have to say that I have never seen this in 30 years in academia (although I'm in STEM so ... ?) Out of curiosity, can you link to a document that uses this?

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


text:
Cannot reproduce what I have learned or memorised
I am an Accountancy senior level student. My issue is due to lots of information in the books I tend to forget about every specific topic and heading even if I compile notes and memory aids. Reason being that in these professional studies anything can be asked in exams from anywhere. So how do I remember small details at this stage?

For memorisation, have a look into spaced repetition software (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition). I recommend the Anki flashcard program.

Your question reminds me of the old joke "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" To which the response is the same, "Practice, man, practice."
You will be expected to know this stuff when you graduate. When studying any subject, there will be a wide variety of rules and formulae you must learn. Normally, when a teacher is trying to get the students to learn them, the students are given exercises to practice them, or scenarios to apply them.
Learning best works in groups, so if you can find someone with whom to study that should help. You can practice with each other reading your answers to see if you understood correctly.
If you do not have an exercises or scenarios to use, ask your teacher. But in the end, it is all about practice.

Best advice I have ever gotten from my adviser: don't consider reading as work. You can convince yourself that you've learned a lot from reading. However, if you can't close the book and re-write what you just read from memory, you didn't learn it. So only count what you do, not what you read.
So go do it. I don't know how you'd just go practice accounting, maybe get an internship? Yes, it will be hard at first, but after banging your head against a wall and re-reading your books, you'll find out how to do it. And once you do it for real, you'll never forget how to do it.
A really similar case is learning to program. People ask me which books I read to learn all the programming languages I use and all sorts of questions like that, then they "study up" on the language to remember all of its features, and months later are trying to tackle the problem. I did this at first, but I never really learned how to code until I started freelance web development. When I had a markup due the next day, I was like "how do I do _______ in Javascript?". Google and Stack Exchange helped a lot. I found ways to do things. Now my own code is my source of knowledge on how to do things. All (okay, most) of the time I sat there reading the Javascript book was a waste of time.
In total, I think the biggest thing to get over is the anxiety that you don't know how to do it. You learned enough of it to figure it out / remember it as you need it. That's all you need. Start doing it.

Read and take notes -- but don't overdo this.
You must solve many problems that force you to apply the theorems and principles of Accountancy that you have read.  Also, solving many problems quickly exposes you to what you weren't actually able to commit to memory, so this is a very efficient way of building good memory -- considerably better than reading "lots of information in the books" over and over again.


text:
How to go about contacting an author regarding questions on their research?
There is a scientist I am interested in contacting with expertise in peptidomics. I would like to email them to ask if they had ever explored findings from a related area of research. How do I politely contact them for their input?

First of all, check their personal website and any other content they have published which you have access to which may already offer the input you require. It would certainly be in order to personally e-mail the researcher, but be specific as to the type of input or information you require. The scientist is probably very busy, and a broad question is more likely to go unanswered in that case.
If you intend to refer to certain findings from a related field, ensure you provide all the necessary information to answer your question, or at the very least provide links to the related papers or websites for the convenience of the researcher.

Send them a brief, polite email. Brief because nobody has time to read huge walls of text from strangers; polite because you want them to help you.

Virtually every publication will list a corresponding author along with contact information, usually an email address and/or phone number. All authors are listed with their university and department.  You can and should use any or all of this information to find these people and get in touch with the authors of any papers about which you have questions.


text:
LaTeX itemize options: are they allowed to use in a master thesis?
In my Master thesis, I used this:
\begin{itemize}[label=\ding{167}]
\item Access Windows XM from Ubuntu Server
\item List the directories contents of Windows XP
\end{itemize}

The output is:

My question: must I avoid the use of  such beautiful things when writing my thesis or is it a normal thing to do ?

The answer to this question surely depends upon your local regulations.

So each university has its own rules when it comes to writing a thesis ? no standards for that ?

There are no international standards for masters theses.

Even if not disallowed, it may be inadvisable, see: Is use of unconventional design elements or layout something frowned upon in academic context?

Adding to ff524’s comment: While there usually is nothing wrong with changing the itemize bullets in general, I would consider your choice a rather bad one, as the bullet points are far too complex (and thus distracting from the text) and playful (and thus not fitting the unemotional style your master thesis should have). You can roughly compare those to using this font throughout your thesis or appearing to your thesis defense like this or this.

Are they allowed to use in a master thesis?

I would think it improbable that such things are specifically disallowed, because it's just not something that people typically try to do. Overall, the effect is unattractive and does not follow good typographical practice. If your university policy does not object, your supervisor probably would (and should).
One or two unobtrusive ornamental flourishes may be appropriate on the title page, but certainly not in the main text.
If you are struggling for ideas on the typographical style of your thesis, I would highly recommend looking at the classicthesis and memoir packages. Of course you still must obey any official policy on the formatting, but these styles can at least provide a good start that's a little less sterile looking than vanilla LaTeX.


text:
How to handle an advisor who communicates badly and puts me in a bad position as a result?
I'm frequently put in an awkward position by my advisor: he communicates pretty badly (vague, doesn't give enough information, isn't clear with what he wants, references things that could mean many things), and then I have to interpret what he means. If I interpret it incorrectly, I often get chastised because from his point of view, he gave me directions and I didn't follow them correctly. If I ask for clarification, I often get chastised because he sees nothing wrong with the bad directions he gave me.
I'm of course open to the possibility, but I don't think it's just me -- I've been in meetings with him and several other people, showing information that everyone clearly understands but he's very confused. Inversely, I've also seen other people be confused by what he's trying to say. To try and find a positive example, the people who seem to work best with him are people who mostly do their work independently (postdocs, for example).
It's very frustrating to me because I'm genuinely trying to work hard and please him, and I do think he has good ideas -- he just acts like the things in his head that are clear to him are thus clear to everyone else.
I know he tries to stress independence as well, which I understand is a valuable trait -- I know too many grad students who are basically passive "gophers" who just go down the list of what their advisor tells them to do and never end up thinking for themselves. And I appreciate that, but it can go just as badly in the opposite direction, when I'm pulling out my hair because I just have so little information about what he wants, but he thinks I have a lot.
Is there anything I can really do? I'm usually all for it, but I don't think talking to him directly and specifically would really accomplish anything here: he's successful and seemingly pretty set in his ways.

Ok, maybe this is a stupid suggestion, but it seems you are having difficulty understanding what your advisor is instructing you to do. Is it an option to try to figure out stuff for yourself and not worry so much what your advisor is telling you to do, or is it too early for you? Of course, there is also the possibility your advisor may not react well to attempt to think for yourself. In any case, you'll have to start doing it as some point, so perhaps try to get started now? I realise this doesn't help you with your advisor difficulties, at least directly.

Thank you, no suggestion is stupid! I generally do start out by trying to figure out the problem on my own, and I think he would love for me to think for myself. The problem is that thinking for myself can mean doing the wrong thing, and he thinks he clearly told me what he wanted, so it makes me look dumb, often. Thank you anyway!

Define "wrong thing". It's research, how do you  know what the wrong thing is?

Unfortunately, the best advice may be "Find a new advisor," not because your advisor is incompetent or unethical or unlikable, but just because you don't work well together. Encouraging students to think independently is great, but it's hard to see how that encouragement can be effective without a foundation of clear communication.

@FaheemMitha, I mean more "wrong" from what he wants. A good example is he asks me to make some figure, and has something pictured in his head, but doesn't explain it well. So "right" is what was in his head.

Sorry for not having a better answer, but from personal experience I'd say: if this already goes on for a longer period, you need to get rid of him.

Just to clarify, do both of you have the same mother language? Or do you communicate in labenglish?

@JeffE, had I known he was like this before I started working with him, I almost certainly would've looked elsewhere. It took me a while to figure out, but it's kind of too late at this point.

@Jigg, we don't. That's usually not the problem though, his english is actually pretty decent.

it's kind of too late at this point — No, it really isn't. I know of several successful PhD students who switched advisors after three years or more, when it became clear their current advisor was never going to be a good match. (In fact, for many of those students, I was the bad match.)

As an advisor who often thinks I'm giving clear instructions when I'm not :), here's one thing that will require a certain amount of pain, but might help long term.
You might have tried this already, but when you're given somewhat vague instructions by your advisor, try to spell them out as precisely as you're able to and repeat them back to him on the spot.
So your advisor says, "maybe you should try (vague idea) X, Y, Z".
You  say, "so you mean that for (vague idea) X I should try A, B, ??".
Your advisor might say, "no no, I really meant D" while frowning fiercely at you. But at least then you've managed to get something precise out of him.
Or (and this has happened to me), your advisor says "Hmm. you're right: X doesn't make any sense: ignore that". In which case you've successfully eliminated one unclear option.
The "pain" here is that your first few meetings might go quite badly while you both struggle to learn to communicate with each other. But I suspect that if your advisor is merely not thinking carefully enough about the ideas he's suggesting, this will force him to think more clearly about them.

exactly what I was trying to say with my post, but much clearer! +1

"As an advisor who often thinks I'm giving clear instructions when I'm not" +1 for that.  When I first read the question I thought "Well, I know this is not coming from one of my students, because I make myself very clear.  Or, wait, maybe not...?" I wonder how many other advisors felt the same way.

Thank you for the response, it's good to hear the perspective of someone in his position. I've tried exactly what you said, going into his office with a pencil and pad and resolving to ask him questions until I can't possibly have any confusion about what he wants, no matter how dumb it makes me look. He has actually flat out told me a few times he won't answer my questions, and not after I've already asked a bunch about the subject.

As a concrete example, yesterday he said a figure I made "looks rather poor" but nothing else. To make it more confusing, it was alongside several other nearly identical figures that he didn't mind. I asked him "What about it do you think I should change?" and he said "It is a question for you to answer I'd think". That is verbatim the (email) conversation. I understand not wanting to baby me, but I have literally nothing to go on. To me, this is akin to saying "I'm thinking of a number. What is it?"

That's a weird response.

@Yung: Based on what you've related in your comments above, I think it may be time to look for a new advisor.

Every graduate student I have ever met or been spends more time than is ideal wondering exactly what their advisor wants them to do.  Similarly, all advisors used to be graduate students, so they are familiar with the phenomenon, whether they presently have it in mind or not.  As MHH says, graduate students tend to err on the side of "not wanting to look stupid".  Again I speak from personal experience: my advisor was (and is) one of the quickest and deepest thinking mathematicians on the planet, and -- despite the fact that he is one of the warmest people I know -- I was powerfully intimidated in our meetings for several years.  At one point I decided that he thought that I was a little bit quicker and lazier than I actually was...and I decided to nurture the "quickness" and reveal my very solid work ethic at a later, more appropriate time.  In retrospect I am amused by the fact that I had such a psychologically astute approach -- indeed, I still believe that opinions about people's abilities are earlier formed and less mutable than opinions about people's practices -- which was nevertheless distinctly -- obviously, really -- counterproductive.
Because many students approach meetings with their advisors with a lot of trepidation, they also want to err on the side of having the meetings go as smoothly as possible, again in a distinctively unproductive sense.  If your advisor says something that you think is not a good idea or outright false, it's so tempting to swallow it in the moment, go back and spend a week or two making sure that it's problematic, and then spending another week trying to figure out how best to break the news.  But again, though psychologically understandable, that's exactly wrong: why are you spending weeks exploring an idea that you immediately perceive is bad?!?  Instead if you have a thought like this, you should share it with your advisor right away.  It might make him frown or momentarily dampen his enthusiasm: but that's all obviously worth it.
That advice is slightly off-center for your question, but let me return to center in repeat it in a context which makes it even harder to follow: if your advisor tells you something and you don't understand it, should you really go away for a day, a week or a month trying to implement the thing you didn't understand?  Of course not.  You should ask for clarification.
In your particular situation you seem fixated on the fact that it's not your fault that you're not understanding your advisor.  In my view if you really see it that way, you're more than halfway to the decision of choosing a new advisor, which may in fact be the right one for you.  Sometimes two intelligent, competent, friendly people who want to work together in practice can't interlock professionally.  That's really a bummer when it happens -- I've been there -- but a certain point you have to acknowledge it and move on to a better relationship.
In your case though it sounds like you're not there yet.  I think you included in your question what in some sense you know you should do and then brushed it off: you need to talk to your advisor about the the lack of precision in your communication.  (You say that he seems set in his ways.  Okay, but who cares?  What matters is -- hat tip to the Prince of Denmark --  whether he is set in his ways.)  It's either that or finding a new advisor, and since the latter is a larger undertaking in every way, definitely try the former first.   In preparing for this critical meeting, you should practice conveying the problematic lack of precision without making either party "to blame" or individually being accused of being "unclear".  This is actually true: in any communication, the onus of understanding lies on both parties.  Rather, bring it up in a very positive way: you have perceived something that you feel will make things work much better.  In the conversation, listen carefully to how your advisor feels and especially how he feels about you.  If he is not open to this conversation or explicitly enunciates frustration with you for needing too much hand-holding: okay, you gave it a try.  But if you phrase it in the terms that I did above -- you're serious, he's serious, but it's got to be better to spend a few more minutes to make sure you understand each other properly before you go off and spend all kinds of time and energy implementing those partially understood suggestions -- I really think your advisor should be receptive.  In fact, as others have pointed out, I would go into that meeting with at least the hope that he's not actually at all unwilling to be more explicit and your perception of that is part of the miscommunication.
Good luck.

Now I can't be certain that what I'm about to say applies to your advisor, but it does apply to many interactions. I've learned that with any advisor (given that you have adequately prepared yourself for your meetings) always err or the side of "appearing stupid" to trying to "interpret vague directions". Science is all about clarifying confusion, and asking "dumb questions". In fact, some of the best research has it's origin from scientist questioning something that "didn't quite make sense" to them. Most likely the questions you ask aren't dumb, and even if they are, hiding the misunderstanding will only lead it to be revealed at a later time. Even worse, something might seem vague or confusing because the advisor is wrong or hadn't thought out all the details. Never set out do something your advisor told you, when you don't understand, that usually leads to problems down the road. Instead ask for clarification, even if you think it will tarnish your reputation a bit. If he appears fussy now, oh well, you still need to learn. If you think he is the one who is wrong or vague, asking (politely) specific questions is the best non confrontational way of approaching the situation, so you two can discuss the issue and mutually come to a consensus (which might be a consensus to disagree - for now - and come back to it later). If he is a good advisor he will respect someone asking him questions.
I know you said "If I ask for clarification, I often get chastised because he sees nothing wrong with the bad directions he gave me." What exactly does he say? I can often think I am being chastised by someone who doesn't intend on that being the case. Without more detail than this, I'd like to give your advisor the benefit of the doubt. It's possible that he really is frustrated, but that may not be the case here.
Note that many advisors can appear agitated when they aren't in the slightest bit upset or annoyed. This can occur for a bunch of reasons, but two common ones are (1) the advisee is projecting his own feelings of inadequacy onto the advisor and assuming the advisor thinks bad things of the advisee, when he actually doesn't, (2) he makes scowling or upsetting facial expressions when he is confused or thinking hard (this may have nothing to do with you).
I suspect (1) is especially at play here. Graduate students (and sometimes even professors!) frequently suffer from an impostor syndrome (me included), and the description of your advisor relationship could go along these lines.
If your advisor focusses on fostering independence, his students are going to fail a bunch of times; he (hopefully) knows this and views it as a good thing (and I agree independence is a very good thing to foster!). Your advisor most likely knows that asking a "good research question" and coming up with procedures and algorithms on your own, with only vague tips, is very difficult. He has likely had many students fumble around for years with nothing to show for it until one day, with their hard work it eventually pays off. You will come to your advisor with "strange" ideas; that comes with the territory of being this kind of advisor. The key for you is to not let your frustration lead into thoughts about what your advisor thinks of you. I often spin stories in my head about how my advisor thinks about things I do. These thoughts are unhelpful, and while it's easier said than done you should try your hardest from going down this path. Beyond working hard, what your advisor thinks of you is out of your control. Ask him the stupid questions, the people who ask stupid questions are often the people who get ahead in life.
When I was in undergrad I asked professors, grad students, and peers all types of questions. I thought, what do I have to lose, I'm just an undergrad. When I got to graduate school, I all of a sudden shut the "question asking off" out of intimidation and now realize that this was a major mistake which hindered my success during my earlier years of graduate school.

The problem isn't unique to academic circles.
One person telling another exactly what they actually want without confusion on either side is one of the hardest problems in the world.
So perhaps stick up an grad-student version of this old chestnut with "what the supervisor asked for" and "what the grad student heard" substituted for some of the silly ones to remind everyone that it's a common problem that's nothing to be embarrassed about but does have to be handled.
http://community.secondlife.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/37541i926E3612BA3F8DFA/image-size/original?v=mpbl-1&px=-1
(it's been floating round the net in various forms for a long time)
I was lucky enough to be doing my postgrad in a different area to my undergrad so wasn't so embarrassed to keep digging detail out of my supervisor but you have to both invest the time in making absolutely sure you know what's wanted.

For situations like this, I think its important to rely upon other members of your committee for clarification.  You probably aren't going to change the way your adviser communicates, but you might be more successful overall if you consistently communicate with your other committee members... or make sure one of them are present when you meet with your adviser.  I was quite intimidated by my adviser in my PhD program, but my other committee members helped to keep things in perspective and clarify goals in ways that my adviser never could.

Note that this answer is only applicable in places where the committee works like in the american system.

You have to be somewhat careful about going this direction. Of course, if you have a committee, talking to them consistently is a great idea (regardless of your advisor). However, until you have addressed the situation directly with your advisor and decided that you have exhausted all options, your committee shouldn't "replace" your advisor for most functions. Obviously farrenthorpe didtn't say to replace your advisor with your committee, but you have to be careful that your committee collaborations don't even appear that way.