I had noticed a sudden change in the quality of the essays submitted two of my students. When I confronted them, they were quite frank and admitted that due to lack of time, they had assigned their papers to be written by an outside source, an essaywriting service (a booming business that must be).   What is the proposed penalty?   If I take this on an administrative level, they face a pause of educational activities for 6 months to 1 year. But since this is the first incident, I do want them to learn their lesson, but at the same time taking into account that they were honest with me, not being punished too hard.  What do you propose? Is there something I can do to keep this from an administrative level and at the same time punish them?
121097
I am at the moment dealing with an academic dishonesty incident in a class I'm teaching (a few groups of students submitting identical code, when the class policy forbids getting help from another person on a graded assignment).  When I noticed indications of plagiarism, I emailed each affected student something along the lines of:     The code you submitted is nearly identical to another student's work. Can you comment on this?   Their reactions mainly fall into three categories:   "I made a mistake and I take full responsibility for it, I hope you will let me make it up but I understand if you can't." "I talked about the assignment with another student, but I didn't copy anyone's code." But then when I inform them they're getting a zero grade for the assignment, they don't argue. "I didn't do it! You can't give me a zero grade for the assignment when I didn't cheat, I refuse to accept a zero grade."   Assuming I have evidence that all of these students cheated, is there a good reason to adjust the penalty based on whether students own up to their misconduct, or continue to lie about it?  On the one hand, I appreciate honesty, and doubling down on a lie seems like something that should be punished. On the other hand, I've never heard of anyone adjusting penalties like this, so I'm wondering if there's some reason I shouldn't.   It's also not clear to me what the relative difference in penalties should be, if there is one. I thought about it and it's hard for me to come up with one penalty that's appropriate for Group 1, another penalty that's appropriate for Group 2, and a third penalty that's appropriate for Group 3.  I would very much appreciate answers based on research and/or experience with policies like this, rather than just opinion.  (My school has no official policy on the matter.)
31711
I am moving from one job to another (postdoc to tenure track) this summer and I have papers in several stages of being written, these go from handwritten notes with all the necessary arguments to under revision at a journal. All the papers will have my new contact information put on them but where is the line for changing affiliation? It seems obvious to me that the one that is still in the handwritten notes stage will get the new affiliation and that the ones under revision won't. So somewhere in between is a line.   Where is it?  There are some similar questions so far (see  and  but they do not seem to be quite the same situation since I am not changing fields and the appointments are not concurrent.
91336
... or should I offer them a separate formular/window where the user can fill the data to the related person?  Its about entering marks/grades of pupils for a certain subject. So sliding to the wrong line could be bad or good for the one or other pupil...  A separate Window could help, but the productivity is smaller.  What do you think?
104588
I sometimes spend too much time on grading students' homework in the class I am a TA for. I am asking if there are some ways to improve grading speed? I hope that I can learn some useful tips from experienced people here.  For example, which one do you think will be faster, grading student by student, or problem by problem?
111773
My university's subscription is really limited (I come from Lebanon). I never found any paper related to my research or essays using the database that my university is subscribing to; even the basic pioneering papers in business. Yesterday, I started writing my master's thesis and the very basic papers behind my topic cannot be accessed through my university's portal (cannot simply ignore them) and I, obviously, don't have access/cannot pay for individual papers. What to do in this case? Someone here recommended a Reddit page that provides and shares papers upon requests. How legal/ethical is that? The page claims that all the shared papers are based on the concept of fair use.  Eventually, I have 3 options: Follow this way, adopt a bad scholarship behavior by not tracking down original references to check myself (which is out of the question) or I just go home and forget about writing a master's thesis or a literature review because it's almost impossible to access those papers without the help of option 1. As for emailing individual authors, well none have replied so far so it isn't always a practical option as I cannot wait days for 1 particular paper to be received (if any).
78436
I have submitted an article for a journal in which it was stated that the review time was from 80 to 120 days, that is approximately 4 months at most. The submission of my article was approximately 13 months ago and I did not get any answer in the allotted time they mentioned. I sent an email to the editor after 8 months and I was told that the review process has suffered a delay, but that they soon will fix that issue.  I waited until September and sent another email and again I got another reply of an apology and nothing more. I believe that it has passed too much time, until now it is almost like one year, so I do not what to do.  Would there be any problem if I submit my article to another journal or should I send another email to the editor of this journal? Or rather just wait until I get a response?
90513
I taught a large class last summer, and one of my students asked me to write a letter of recommendation.  I said yes, and at this point I think it is too late in the application process to change my mind.  The student got an A in the class, but never came to my office hours or talked to me at all before she asked me for a letter of recommendation.  She also hasn't done anything specific to distinguish herself.  At this point I'm really not sure what to write about her, although she did give me a "brag sheet" with information about her interests and previous projects.  How should I go about writing the letter?
54201
Is it common to supervisors to email their students papers to review (which were apparently assigned to the supervisor, and not to the student). The field is Computer Science, but I  would also like to hear from the other fields.
88768
As a student, I make mistakes all the time, and stealing my idea will not face heavy retaliation. I don't mind if someone comes up with concurrent works, but I do mind if my key idea is leaked. Many graduate students in my field therefore only use pre-print services if their papers are either publicly presented or conditionally accepted. I am looking for a website that can do most of what ArXiv does, with an additional private option or limited visibility, for example an option to make the paper unindexed by search engines. This way, my paper cannot be seen for at least a few months. By doing so, I can at least claim that I am one of the first few researchers who got the idea right. And most importantly, I can privately correct my mistakes, if any. Publishing mistakes is embarrassing and sometimes harms one's career. Many mistakes will be revealed during the peer-review processes and I have a chance to correct them before publicizing. Please kindly think twice before giving ethically and &quot;politically correct&quot; comments like no one will scoop me, everyone will cite me, and the scoopers will be punished. At least in my field, scooping and idea-stealing is commonly observable, and big-names don't care about publicizing pre-prints because they have resources to punish the scoopers. I do understand that keeping my work private might harm the community as the information becomes less transparent. However, it could also be possible that my un-reviewed flawed works misguide the community, and a paper reviewed will benefit the society more. I personally wasted six months because of someone else's mistake in a published work.  I heard that in molecular biology there is a widely-used service to upload your research data, like protein structure and sequencing, to get a timestamp. The uploaded materials can be set to be private for a period, and fully disclosed later. A lot of people do use this function. This is not exactly what I am looking for but shares some similar ideas. If I remember correctly, there is an interesting paper studying the scooping patterns with the aid of this database.  Solutions found!  and some other university-run pre-print services do have an embargo function. Moreover,  is a widely used repository, that, unlike arxiv, only displays the newest version to the general public, although still keeps a tag on the first submitted date!
25333
I have written an email to a professor asking him for a letter of recommendation. It's been almost a week and he didn't answer back.  I have already seen questions on this topic here, saying that when a professor doesn't answer is probably because he forgot or he overlooked it. However my question is: what is the best thing to do next? Send him another email? Or try and see him in person?
123880
Context: A friend of mine is ending their first year in a community college (in France, called IUT, 2-year diploma) near my school, and apparently the school administration is quite lenient about cheating during exams ; I asked a few other friends of mine that are currently in second year there, and they have confirmed that nearly everybody cheats during exams, mostly because the questions don't change from one year to the other, allowing students to get the exams in advance and preparing for the questions. An important part of the exams are Moodle quizzes, which show the correct answers after submitting, and don't get modified from year to year either.  Problem: My friend does not want to cheat, for obvious reasons. The problem is that the way this kind of college works (in France) puts students in competition with each other ; your ranking among the other students is very important and is a determinant factor in your chances of being accepted in engineering schools after your second year (which is what most people in that community college do).  Multiple people have already tried reporting the cheating to professors and the college's administration, to no avail. Most professors don't seem to care, and the few that say they do care about cheating never act upon it. This results in mediocre (excuse the harsh term) students having an unfair advantage over good students trying to keep their integrity. This whole situation, combined with the Sars-Cov-2 lockdown has had quite a toll on her mental health.  My stance is to never cheat, but I'm having more and more trouble telling her to stay strong and do the same. It's gotten to the point that not cheating can have a significant negative impact on her future, and I couldn't help but feel responsible if she were to fail her year because of other people's dishonesty.  What is the best behavior to adopt here?
9290
In computer systems, it's relatively common to have a large problem which is broken up into multiple sub-problems, each of which is substantial in its own right and is in the realm of different subsets of students. Suppose there's two parts, A and B. Suppose that properly presenting B requires explanations and background which A establishes (concepts, principles, etc.), and preferably would reproduce some figures for clarity. However, A has been written but not yet accepted/published. How should the authors of B proceed? Ideally the figures would be reproduced from the drafts and clearly cited as copies, but it seems weird as the original is yet unpublished. This also creates the worry that reviewers for a later submission of A would complain that these contributions are not novel as B's earlier publication have already presented them.
2297
I sent a paper to a top tier journal in science a few weeks ago. I received the feedback from the editor saying he declined to publish/ accept my paper at the moment but if I corrected/ responded to the comments provided by reviewer, he/ she would consider to publish my paper.   I went to paper tracking website only to discover that my paper is classified as "reject and resubmit". Does that mean if I responded/ did everything suggested by reviewer, there'll be high possibility my paper will be outright rejected?   The comments from reviewer was not that harsh, but I wonder whether I'll be wasting my time if I went back to the lab and did what he said. I only have 2 months to respond.   Also, what is the difference between "reject and resubmit" and "major revision required"? This is my first submission and I'm confused.  Hope anyone can enlighten me.
62896
Is it acceptable or ok to report on students cheating?  Many times during a test or an exam, I have seen students in front of me either passing notes, or otherwise collaborating whenever the professor isn't looking.  I don't want to get into trouble, and I don't know if it's "alright" to rat on fellow classmates.  Part of me thinks they deserve being caught out, by virtue of trying to cheat their way through the course. However, I feel like I would get found out by other students if they were caught cheating.  What is the right course of action here? To be clear, I would never raise an accusation in the middle of an exam; it would only lead to me being ostracized by my peers.
67547
I'm an inexperienced researcher and I made the stupid mistake of submitting my article to a predatory journal. I realised the journal was fake when they failed to provide the reviewers comments.   I then requested that the article be withdrawn. I received an email back from the 'editor' saying that the article had been withdrawn and guaranteeing that they wouldn't publish the article without my permission. I didn't sign the transfer of copyright, pay any money and the article hasn't appeared on their website.  My question is whether my article is now a write off? Can I resubmit it elsewhere or just write off as a bad learning experience? I would really like to salvage if if possible.
95424
I have written an essay last year, as a personal exercise. I now have a course at uni on the topic and could basically just hand in this essay now, the topic fits perfectly. I have also never submitted this essay to any other course or so.  Could I just hand in this essay, or would I violate some rules with that? Is this maybe already self-plagiarism?
80902
Sometimes the Professor will say things quickly, or say things before I can write them down. It would be of great benefit if I could record audio for the course, but I am not sure the legal guidelines around doing so.