During my engineering final year, I created a research paper entirely by myself, not even the faculty guide helped me. We submitted the paper to be published in an IEEE conference but it was rejected.

Fast-forward to 2023, this professor moved to a different college and started pursuing PhD. She copy/pasted my entire research paper word-to-word, and just added a few topics in intro, and published the paper under her name with two entirely different folks. She even copy/pasted the flow chart from my research manuscript.

Now, I would like to claim the ownership of the work as this is unfair. I do not want to do any legal stuff or take the paper down. Can I ask the editors of the Journal to revise the authors and add me? Can I also ask them to remove the other two authors? What will be the best way to get credibility of my work? I feel devastated, as it was my hard work, and now it is published on an IEEE journal with three names who haven't done anything except adding one or two paragraphs in introduction. Please help, as I have emails where I emailed my manuscript to my college professor back on 2021. She moved to a different college in 2022, and paper was published in 2023 with her PhD guide.

“Donald Trump’s return to the White House is already having a big impact at the $47.4 billion U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), with the new administration imposing a wide range of restrictions, including the abrupt cancellation of meetings such as grant review panels. Officials have also ordered a communications pause, a freeze on hiring, and an indefinite ban on travel.” Science

By the time he retired in 1996, he was uncomfortable with the new academic culture. "After I retired it was quite a long time before I went back to my department. I thought I was well out of it. It wasn't my way of doing things any more. Today I wouldn't get an academic job. It's as simple as that. I don't think I would be regarded as productive enough."

Another interesting quote from the article is the following:

He doubts a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today's academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. He said: "It's difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964."

Source (the whole article is pretty interesting): http://theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system

My post did well in the gradschool sub so i'm posting here as well.

I don’t condone this type of thing. It’s unfair on students who actually put effort into their work. I get that ChatGPT can be used as a helpful tool, but not like this.

If you're in uni right now or you're a lecturer, you’ll know about the whole ChatGPT echowriting issue. I didn’t actually know what this meant until a few days ago.

First we had the dilemma of ChatGPT and students using it to cheat.

Then came AI detectors and the penalties for those who got caught using ChatGPT.

Now 1000s of students are using echowriting prompts on ChatGPT to trick teachers and AI detectors into thinking they actually wrote what ChatGPT generated themselves.

So basically now we’re back to square 1 again.

What are your thoughts on this and how do you think schools are going to handle this?

Hi all. New grad student here who doesn’t yet understand what needs to be shared with the PI and what is too much information. I was almost kidnapped by a driver during my commute to a research facility to characterize samples, but was saved by the police. It didn’t affect my performance because I finished the trip, so I don’t know if it’s unprofessional for me to send my PI a message telling them about this event.

If you were a PI, would you like your grad student to tell you about this?

Edit: Your responses are making me emotional . Thank you all for the feedback.

Second edit: I don’t think this is likely to happen to anyone else here because this is in a big metropolitan area in the US, so Uber rides are super common and kidnapping is not a local issue.

Third edit: I told my PI, who was in absolute shock and was super supportive. They also reassured me that I am not at fault and encouraged me to seek counseling. I think I’m still not thinking rationally because it took so long for me to even realize that my life was genuinely in danger. All I was thinking of at the time was that I need to make it to the research facility on time.

Today I called Uber and reported the incident. The good news is that they have the ENTIRE recording of the conversation between the driver and I in their database so they will listen to it and decide whether to ban the driver from Uber. The bad news is, from a safety standpoint, the driver also works with Lyft (I saw the sticker on his car) so he would continue to endanger people, unless Uber decides that it was dangerous enough that they report him to law enforcement or Lyft as well. Obviously I had reported it to multiple levels of the law enforcement in real time as well.

Uber also gave me a refund because I was sure to emphasize the urgency and magnitude of what happened, as well as cite the exact state law violations that the driver committed. I realize now that the combination of having satellite service to call 911 in an area without reception (serendipitously, as I recently got the new iPhone) and the loud notification from Uber that I should call 911 immediately potentially saved my life.

I did it. I passed! I’m so happy 😭

Edit: WOW! Thank you all so much for your kind words and congratulations! I tried to thank each and every person commenting but I didn’t expect this post to get so much attention and it got hard to keep up😅 It’s definitely making this achievement extra special. Also, thank you for the awards!

I have a classmate in my cohort who I genuinely thought was struggling with school by the way he portrayed himself. The first thing he said when we met was how he wanted to learn all of these skills because he didn’t know them. For example, he would say he didn’t know anything about mixed-effect regression, but I later learned that he knew the concepts more than everyone else. He wanted to fully understand every step before admitting he knows it. Every time we talk about different concepts, he would start listing things he didn’t know, instead of what he knew.

He would say he’s the worst at writing, but I’ve peer-reviewed his assignment and realized it was probably the best one I’ve ever read.

Over time, it was clear that he was winning more grants and publishing more than everyone else. I’m still confused, though, because I would definitely think he was incompetent if I was hiring him.

Please. If you tell your students to keep their presentations at a certain length, do not praise the ones who go above the set time limit by half an hour and praise their work for its depth. This has happened to me second time now. My professor asks me to cover one of the most controversial and comprehensive subjects in social sciences in 10 minutes and rolls their eyes for it not having elaborated enough in certain aspects while praising the 40-minute-though-supposed-to-be-10-minute presentation of my classmate for covering more on the same subject.

If there are any professors reading this; please don't do this. Some students put a lot of work into making the damn presentation as concise as possible and literally rehearse a few times so that they do not go over the time limit. Covering more by going waaaay above the limit you yourself set is not something to be encouraged. Nor is it fair.

I find a lot of students who get into top universities such as UMich, Harvard, UPenn (Ivy’s and public Ivy’s)and other top schools are naive with how hard it is to actually get a job as a professor at any university on top of that, the “best” universities.

I remember talking to a junior who was at Columbia and her cousin got a job at University of Cincinnati as an Assistant Professor at age 29. Basically trashed talk that they were not good enough to be a professor at Harvard or something. Now I myself, graduated from one of the top 5 schools in the world and I’m teaching my first job at a school ranking about 100-150 In the world. Some may find it off, but honestly there was only 1 job available for my field for 3 years now.

What are you experiences?

Do you think students who go to top colleges have unrealistic expectations about where their first job might land?

Many who go to top unis like Harvard think their options to teach mean only other Ivy leagues or top public ivys, what is this snobby attitude?

Title

I’m trying to create assignments and structure the class so that they don’t really rely on AI. The take-home portion is that students get together in groups of three randomly selected by me and they have to answer questions on a case study. After I receive the result, I noticed that more than half of them had similar answers. I now have to confront them saying that we can’t do this anymore and now we have to, study out and replace it with something else. Some replacements I’m thinking of are doing the case studies in class, replace the case studies with two exams for the semester in class, or a debate structure. What other suggestions does anyone have to help mitigate the use of AI programs?

I will start by saying I acknowledge I chose this path, and that I’m extremely privilege to be in a PhD program. HOWEVER…but I've been feeling so dejected and lost lately. So this is a lite rant.

I'm a Black American woman in my mid-30s, in my fifth year of a PhD in an ecology. I grew up with a single parent in a very low-income household, and lately I can't shake the feeling that I've failed my family. I feel too smart to be this broke.

One of the hardest things I've learned is that I didn't realize academia is, in so many ways, built for people who already have financial security. Almost everyone in my program, including most of the faculty, comes from upper class or wealthy backgrounds. A lot had two-parent households with stable incomes, and more than half have parents with PhDs.

Meanwhile, I'm drowning in credit card debt, car debt, and student loans. Our stipend is low, and I realized pretty early on that almost everyone else has some kind of financial safety net. They get help from family, have a partner they split expenses with, or both. I don't have either.
Being one of the oldest people in my department and being single, I honestly don't know how to make this work financially anymore.

What's really getting me is that while I've spent years making very little money and doing field jobs prior to my PhD, it’s at the point most of my friends from back home have stable jobs now. They're helping their families and I’m so jealous and sad I can’t do that. I wanted to do something meaningful, but instead I feel selfish for choosing a PhD when my mom could have used my help years ago. Sometimes I feel like people from backgrounds like mine don't get to be "selfish" enough to do this.

I recently told my advisor that if I don't finish this year, I'll probably have to leave because I literally can't afford to stay. The reactions I've gotten have honestly shocked me because people are acting like financial reality is some kind of personal failing. They’re uncomfortable hearing it. It makes me feel even more alone.

To make things harder, I'm the only Black American in my department. The other Black students are international and so there’s no cultural similarities. I don't really have anyone around me who understands where I'm coming from. And my family doesn’t understand why I’m doing it, but they are proud and supportive.

I guess I'm asking does it get better?

PhD student here. As a PhD student I have the dubious pleasure of interacting with undergraduate students in the courses I teach/TA. This year, I have found that the students were the most incompetent I've ever seen.

Why don't we fail students who can't cut it? These are things I commonly see:

• Chemistry students who eat/drink chemicals in the lab

• Students that cannot do basic algebra

• Students do not show up on time, do not pay attention, and do not give a fuck.

• Students complain any time they're given an assignment.

• Most students expect an A.

The worst part is that we hardly ever fail students. In my opinion, about half of the students in these classes should be failing. In reality, most will have their grade curved up to a D or C so that they squeak by and pass. There are people in the classes I've taught that will now have classes on their transcripts that they know nothing about despite having As, Bs, and Cs.

It's really a disservice to other students. If two students graduate with a degree and one is a fuck up and the other is excellent they will both have to compete for the same jobs. How is that fair to the student who put in effort and had ability?

I really wish we would start weeding people out of college.

As a public school teacher in Kentucky I helped create a project that brought University of Kentucky (UK) professional students into our K–12 classrooms to inspire kids. My husband and I coined the name, chose the color scheme, designed the lesson plan process, and even took the original photos. This wasn’t a one-off. We worked on this idea for years before ever moving to Kentucky.

I coordinated between UK and the school district and helped students design accessible lesson plans for younger learners. Now, UK medical students and a staff member published an article claiming credit for this initiative — using our words, our pictures, and our concept, without giving us any recognition. They volunteered at our events but didn’t create the idea or the program. Even others who did contribute intellectually were left out.

UK’s College of Medicine and legal team have ignored every attempt we’ve made to correct this. I feel betrayed. As a teacher, I always tell my students to value honesty and give credit where it’s due. Institutions should be held to the same standard.

Plagiarism is wrong. Silence is complicity. Everyone deserves credit for their work.

What can be done about this?

EDIT:

A few clarifications:

1. Posting here was a last resort. We actually reached out to the 3 students and the staff member weeks BEFORE this poster came out, asking specifically about continuing with the publication that we (my husband and I) had initiated...they didn't even respond to us.

2. This was a poster in a research conference at University of Kentucky, College of Medicine. We had larger publications in talks and if it wasn't for me calling them out on social media, I have reason to believe they may have taken this further, considering that they and everyone we have reached out to within UK has ignored us.

This new wave of PhD students honestly feels cursed. They’re like the pandemic’s leftovers — high school during Trump, college during COVID, now graduating into yet another dumpster fire of an economy. Every step of their academic life has been some kind of hellscape.

And yet universities keep cranking out PhDs like it’s a factory line. It’s insane. Every department is bloated with grad students, but the job market is a bloodbath. Tenure-track? Basically a lottery ticket. Industry? Doesn’t want most of them. So what happens? Thousands of shiny new “COVID-era PhDs” floating around with no real place to land, stuck in postdoc purgatory or adjunct hell until they burn out.

At some point you’ve gotta wonder: what’s the endgame here? Because right now it looks less like “training the next generation of scholars” and more like “academic pyramid scheme with better branding.”

I am a first year PhD and reading some of the shit that's been written on here has had me scared to death of the coming years. Then I realized it's just that it seems most people here are from America

In (most of) Europe, a PhD is essentially:

• decent pay (USD 50k+)

• teaching optional

• 3-4 years after a completed master

• Immediate access to higher paying jobs in most fields after finishing, PhDs are financially a good decision

• Supervisors have hands-off approach and are only there to help

• Flexible hours, home office, etc

Meanwhile in America (apparently?):

• indentured servitude to the university

• Requires saint-like dedication to the field

• High suicide rates

I see post after post about stressed-out postdocs/grad students with advisors that expect them to respond to messages/emails/texts over the weekend.

Yo, like, ignore them. It's the WEEKEND. If they ask why you're ignoring them, tell them it's the weekend and you have personal plans. It doesn't matter if those plans include eating a whole tray of pot brownies wearing nothing but socks and watching Hulu reality cooking shows, your personal time is YOUR PERSONAL TIME.

Obviously, if you have to go into a lab and clean animal cages or something on a schedule, that's a different story. You should probably follow through with whatever you've committed to.

But I'm talking about the people who have these overbearing advisors who ask them to do extra work or respond to messages over the weekend. Like bro, you're camping out in the woods. No signal. It's sleep-o-clock.

It is 100% okay to ignore them. If they don't like it, then they need to learn some management lessons. That's THEIR problem, not yours.

IDK, sounds like some of you need to hear it.

Edit: Thanks for the awards! :D

Also edit: I'm so glad to hear that so many of you value your personal boundaries. I think that's amazing. Keep on truckin'

I've never written a post for clickbait, but this is IMO catastrophic. GOP is on track to cut huge amounts of NSF funding in academia. For example, in the math and physical sciences, research is cut by 75.2%, eduction by 100% (yes, all of it), and infra is down by nearly half. This will kill research in this country.

Also, just as infuriating, and this should make you extremely mad, is that the only area saved from budget cuts was the Antarctic Logistic Activities, where the current head of the NSF used to work. This is so unbelievably corrupt.

Besides venting, this is a warning to those planning on going to academia, whether for school or for professorships. It will be extremely difficult in the next few years to do any sort of research, get funding, etc. Be prepared.

Link to doc:

https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.gov/files/00-NSF-FY26-CJ-Entire-Rollup.pdf

I cannot be the only person who has this problem, and I'm dreading its recurrence as we go back into registration advising. A solid 20% of my undergrads will show up 15, 30, sometimes 45+ minutes too early for meetings, and then try to start the meeting right away.

One time I was on a Zoom call at 1:50 and my 2:00 started knocking on my door, yelling "Dr. X? I'm here for advising! I can hear you in there!" One time I was coming back from the bathroom at 11:30 and found my 12:00 trying to open the door of my (thankfully locked) office; she said she knew I was out but figured she'd wait for me in there. One time I was midway through what I thought was my 3:30 appointment when my actual 3:30 showed up and I discovered this was my 4:00 with a similar name.

I hate spending an entire hour before appointments half-waiting to be ambushed. I'd love to have 10 minutes before each meeting to go over the advisee's file in peace. I get that this isn't intentional rudeness, just 18-year-olds being clueless about social norms, but it's driving me up the wall. Has anyone found a solution that works?

Here's a small excerpt from the paper:

Abstract: Many people wonder: what’s the deal with birds? This is a common query. Birds are pretty weird. I mean, they have feathers. WTF? Most other animals don’t have feathers. To investigate this issue, I looked at some birds. I looked at a woodpecker, a parrot, and a penguin. They were all pretty weird! In conclusion, we may never know the deal with birds, but further study is warranted.

Keywords: birds, ornithology, behavior, phenotype, WTF, genomics, climate change

You can read the PDf version of the original article here: https://irispublishers.com/sjrr/pdf/SJRR.MS.ID.000540.pdf

Alternatively, there's a press summary of the situation here: https://gizmodo.com/sketchy-science-journal-publishes-article-titled-whats-1842924936

How much does it cost to maintain a user login and password for academic journals?

I can see how physical products could be an issue, so what if--since so much is digitized now--universities offered lifetime access to academic search engines and journals for PhD graduates?

Just seems odd (and sad!) to me that once you become an expert in your field and a philosopher of your subject, you are immediately cut off from the resources that could continue to help you grow and contribute to your discipline.

Most PhD graduates spend 5-10 years becoming specialists in their areas, and then unless they land one of the increasingly rare tenure-track positions, they lose access to the very knowledge they helped create.

Has anyone's university implemented something like this? Or are there affordable alternatives for independent scholars who want to stay connected to research in their field?

She's 5yo and very well-behaved. My best friend will be watching over her and can easily step out of the room if necessary. Plus, my thesis presentation should be engaging—I'm graduating in animation—so I don't think she'll find it boring.

Why this idea in the first place? It started with her asking if she could go with me. Initially I thought it's not a good idea but then I started to think about it more and more...

She’s grown up alongside my studies, watching every stage of my work. She’s seen the evolution of my animation from rough sketches to the final product, and she's even part of the film herself!

More than that, she's witnessed many of my struggles. Among other things, during my studies, I fought through depression and gave birth to her sister. It was tough, but I never gave up. I want her to see what perseverance and hard work can accomplish, and that it's always worth fighting for yourself. I think it's important for her to be there and to remember that I brought her to such a significant moment in my life.

Or maybe I’m just romanticizing the whole thing and I’ll come across as a bit of a crazy mom.

Does anyone have experience with this? I’m in a tenure track position in the social sciences at a school in the Midwest. Last semester, I flunked a student for plagiarizing part of a paper (it was a clear case of copy and paste from an obscure source). The student did not take it well. Things are winding their way through the administrative process.

It has come to my attention that this disgruntled student has apparently hired a private investigator to follow me and look into my life. I feel extremely violated. However, it has unfortunately also come to my attention that this PI has learned that I am in an open relationship. I suspect this would not be well received by my department and would likely jeopardize my ability to get tenure.

It has been strongly implied that details of my personal relationship will be leaked to the department unless I stop pursuing internal discipline against the student. However, it’s not clear to me that I could stop the proceedings even if I wanted to. What exactly am I supposed to do in this situation?

I work in admin at a university and today a student found a gun in the bathroom. Police were called, and while the gun was being secured, the owner came back to retrieve it. The police gave it back to the owner. A police officer later called me to update me on the situation so I could alert colleagues on the status of the situation. The officer said, "the owner made a 'boo boo' by leaving their gun in the restroom."

Every week I hear of grants and funding being cut, gender inclusive housing being banned, and new lists of words we can't use... however, someone can make a 'boo boo' with a lethal weapon...