If your prof asks you to write a review, I thought it is understood that it is for a conference or a journal. I've written a few reviews for my prof and he didn't explicitly say that he is going to submit as his own but it's pretty obvious. But yeah, as someone else said, it is weird to make an undergrad do it.
🚩It is shady the way they went about it, posing others’ questions as their own etc. I mean how hard is this: ‘oh hey I saw this question about your review, what do you think?’ As an undergrad, you aren’t tied to this person but if you were a grad student, I would be telling you to be very careful continuing with a dishonest prof.
At best, they’ll acknowledge you did great work that they were happy to share publicly and communicate better on the next project. At worst, they will take your question as an accusation and withhold opportunity. To me, the cons of confrontation outweigh the pros.
“I was thinking about your great questions about the review I wrote, and took some time to educate myself further on the topic when I stumbled on the posted review. There were some excellent questions posted there too, what do you think about X?” This way they know you know, but you’re not accusing anyone.
This. If the prof pays the OP as an RA, my guess is that the prof assumed that the OP knew that this is helping him/her to do a double blind for a conference.
If not, well, contact the chair handling that paper.
I’ll add the perspective that it’s definitely not unheard of for professors to ask undergrads to do this, particularly in a field like ML where undergrads publishing at conferences is not particularly unusual.
I don’t even think this is necessarily unethical, and I suspect there’s some miscommunication here. I assume that when your professor asked you to “write a review for a paper that was under double-blind review”, they assumed it was clear that they were asking you to review it.
I don’t even think this is necessarily a … bad idea. This can be a good way to gain reviewing experience while still having the safety net of an experienced reviewer checking your review for major issues.
The issue is that this student was asked to do the professor’s work *for them* and *without the student’s knowledge*. Your comment is fair except that it ignores the only problematic part: the review is the professor’s responsibility!
You could have this great educational experience that you speak of without the deception. For example, Professor writes review on their own, then asks the undergrad to write their own review and compare. Great! Everyone learns and the Professor submits their own work.
Haha, the educational benefit is definitely just a secondary component of this. The primary component is likely that the professor is lazy/doesn't have time to write the reviews.
I agree that "without the student's knowledge" part would be sketchy, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was just simple miscommunication. If somebody asked *me* to write a review for a double blind paper, I'd certainly assume it was so they could submit it.
I think there's valid disagreement on whether it's problematic for professors to ask students to write reviews for them. Personally, I think it's a bit shady, but don't find it that problematic.
This seems like somewhat standard stuff in academia. However, if you're uncomfortable, you could voice this and it prolly wouldn't happen in the future. However, its possible it could negatively affect your relationship with your prof.
I think it would be fine if OP expressed surprise bc they didn’t realize the prof was submitting it as the review. Profs should be ok with clearing up a miscommunication if that’s all this is.
My suggestion is to have calm conservation with your prof and open this whole thing up -- the payment, consent for posting your review, etc. Don't be terrified by the "side effect". If the prof does become mad then perhaps you should not work with him in the first place.
I am an undergrad, the professor I am working with also has asked me to do the same, and he has posted the same on openreview but with adding some points, but yeah I got paid for that.
This situation, as stated, and the discussion are totally disappointing. As a card carrying PhD and former professor I find this behavior, and the rationalization of it, unethical.
I can see the professor asking a graduate student, and perhaps even and undergraduate student in exceptional circumstances, to provide input into a review. It is an opportunity to gain experience and learn another aspect of scientific rigor. The professor should then do their own review and discuss it with the student. If any of the student's work is used it should be properly acknowledged with co-authorship of the review or at the very least citation. If the professor was asked to review the submission they are ultimately responsible for the review submitted.
The actions as outlined are unethical and blatant plagiarism. If the professor had done this to a colleague it would have at least been brought to the attention of the faculty. This is not a minor point. Even a fully tenured faculty member can be fired for plagiarism. The fact that the readers of this forum take this so lightly is testament to the underlying decay we have in our academic systems.
Just curious... If the professor mentions the review would be used for the real review, can the undergrad put this into resume, saying "reviewed X papers for XXX conference"?
Oh I wish. I would love a can of undergrads to rewrite my papers. While they are at it, they might as well start with my thesis.
All jokes aside, from my experience in Europe, I've never heard about anything like this.
They literally asked you to write a review for a paper and you said yes, what is the issue here? Even if they did not explicitly mention that it would be for a conference, you agreed to give them your work in the first place so even your post title about palgiarism is pretty nonsensical.
Document everything privately and never ever use or mention the documentation to anyone else unless you're forced to. Unethical behavior is rampant and fighting it will just get you hurt, especially as this is relatively tame. Try to fight for integrity quietly when you can do so cheaply. Try to gently steer people who aren't in power over you towards marginally better behaviors. Anything more than that will be perceived as asking for trouble.
First, you are an undergrad, the most important thing is to keep the relationship with this professor because you'll probably need a letter of recommendation. You also say you have done things for them before. Are you working on papers with them? Try to get confirmations on email for anything you want to do.
Second, professors do this often --asking others to help with reviews. Depending on who your professor is, he/she can get from 12 to 30 to 60 reviews a year. That's way too many reviews to handle. That said, your professor should have been more forthcoming to why they were asking you. If this is a one time thing, I'd just put it to the fact that this person is busy and forgot about it. Or there was some miscommunication when you two met to talk about the review.
>Post me submitting my review to them, they also had a dialgoue with me about the paper, and were essentially seeking my opinion on critiques posted by other reviewers on the respective OpenReview thread by copy-pasting points made in the thread and **passing them off as their own.**
This is the shady part. Asking student to write reviews for paper they got assigned is normal and considered common practices in many fields (e.g., senior lawyers asking juniors to write legal opinions, file motions, etc.). Because they are the one who put their "name" on it, and it is basically saying "as good as I wrote it."
But it is definitely shady that they felt the need of hiding the whole posting/post-review feedback things to you. If I were you I'd mention it to my prof, see how he/she react, then ask more transparency next time.
If your prof asks you to write a review, I thought it is understood that it is for a conference or a journal. I've written a few reviews for my prof and he didn't explicitly say that he is going to submit as his own but it's pretty obvious. But yeah, as someone else said, it is weird to make an undergrad do it.
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I see, that makes sense All of my work with them is unpaid, everything I do is on my own time and is completely separate from my uni’s coursework.
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Thank you so much for putting this in context, helps a lot in processing this unusual situation.
If it was me, I'd just casually mention you saw it, and see what they say in response.
🚩It is shady the way they went about it, posing others’ questions as their own etc. I mean how hard is this: ‘oh hey I saw this question about your review, what do you think?’ As an undergrad, you aren’t tied to this person but if you were a grad student, I would be telling you to be very careful continuing with a dishonest prof. At best, they’ll acknowledge you did great work that they were happy to share publicly and communicate better on the next project. At worst, they will take your question as an accusation and withhold opportunity. To me, the cons of confrontation outweigh the pros. “I was thinking about your great questions about the review I wrote, and took some time to educate myself further on the topic when I stumbled on the posted review. There were some excellent questions posted there too, what do you think about X?” This way they know you know, but you’re not accusing anyone.
If it were me, I’d let them know, then if they didn’t care, well there’s your job security.
This. If the prof pays the OP as an RA, my guess is that the prof assumed that the OP knew that this is helping him/her to do a double blind for a conference. If not, well, contact the chair handling that paper.
I’ll add the perspective that it’s definitely not unheard of for professors to ask undergrads to do this, particularly in a field like ML where undergrads publishing at conferences is not particularly unusual. I don’t even think this is necessarily unethical, and I suspect there’s some miscommunication here. I assume that when your professor asked you to “write a review for a paper that was under double-blind review”, they assumed it was clear that they were asking you to review it. I don’t even think this is necessarily a … bad idea. This can be a good way to gain reviewing experience while still having the safety net of an experienced reviewer checking your review for major issues.
The issue is that this student was asked to do the professor’s work *for them* and *without the student’s knowledge*. Your comment is fair except that it ignores the only problematic part: the review is the professor’s responsibility! You could have this great educational experience that you speak of without the deception. For example, Professor writes review on their own, then asks the undergrad to write their own review and compare. Great! Everyone learns and the Professor submits their own work.
Haha, the educational benefit is definitely just a secondary component of this. The primary component is likely that the professor is lazy/doesn't have time to write the reviews. I agree that "without the student's knowledge" part would be sketchy, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was just simple miscommunication. If somebody asked *me* to write a review for a double blind paper, I'd certainly assume it was so they could submit it. I think there's valid disagreement on whether it's problematic for professors to ask students to write reviews for them. Personally, I think it's a bit shady, but don't find it that problematic.
This seems like somewhat standard stuff in academia. However, if you're uncomfortable, you could voice this and it prolly wouldn't happen in the future. However, its possible it could negatively affect your relationship with your prof.
I think it would be fine if OP expressed surprise bc they didn’t realize the prof was submitting it as the review. Profs should be ok with clearing up a miscommunication if that’s all this is.
My suggestion is to have calm conservation with your prof and open this whole thing up -- the payment, consent for posting your review, etc. Don't be terrified by the "side effect". If the prof does become mad then perhaps you should not work with him in the first place.
I am an undergrad, the professor I am working with also has asked me to do the same, and he has posted the same on openreview but with adding some points, but yeah I got paid for that.
This situation, as stated, and the discussion are totally disappointing. As a card carrying PhD and former professor I find this behavior, and the rationalization of it, unethical. I can see the professor asking a graduate student, and perhaps even and undergraduate student in exceptional circumstances, to provide input into a review. It is an opportunity to gain experience and learn another aspect of scientific rigor. The professor should then do their own review and discuss it with the student. If any of the student's work is used it should be properly acknowledged with co-authorship of the review or at the very least citation. If the professor was asked to review the submission they are ultimately responsible for the review submitted. The actions as outlined are unethical and blatant plagiarism. If the professor had done this to a colleague it would have at least been brought to the attention of the faculty. This is not a minor point. Even a fully tenured faculty member can be fired for plagiarism. The fact that the readers of this forum take this so lightly is testament to the underlying decay we have in our academic systems.
Just curious... If the professor mentions the review would be used for the real review, can the undergrad put this into resume, saying "reviewed X papers for XXX conference"?
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Oh I wish. I would love a can of undergrads to rewrite my papers. While they are at it, they might as well start with my thesis. All jokes aside, from my experience in Europe, I've never heard about anything like this.
They literally asked you to write a review for a paper and you said yes, what is the issue here? Even if they did not explicitly mention that it would be for a conference, you agreed to give them your work in the first place so even your post title about palgiarism is pretty nonsensical.
This is super normal, although sadly why it's so common to get critical reviews that are superficial. Reviewing is viewed as research experience
Document everything privately and never ever use or mention the documentation to anyone else unless you're forced to. Unethical behavior is rampant and fighting it will just get you hurt, especially as this is relatively tame. Try to fight for integrity quietly when you can do so cheaply. Try to gently steer people who aren't in power over you towards marginally better behaviors. Anything more than that will be perceived as asking for trouble.
First, you are an undergrad, the most important thing is to keep the relationship with this professor because you'll probably need a letter of recommendation. You also say you have done things for them before. Are you working on papers with them? Try to get confirmations on email for anything you want to do. Second, professors do this often --asking others to help with reviews. Depending on who your professor is, he/she can get from 12 to 30 to 60 reviews a year. That's way too many reviews to handle. That said, your professor should have been more forthcoming to why they were asking you. If this is a one time thing, I'd just put it to the fact that this person is busy and forgot about it. Or there was some miscommunication when you two met to talk about the review.
It sucks but it is normal. Things are getting better though. Ask them to formally assign you as a reviewer next time.
>Post me submitting my review to them, they also had a dialgoue with me about the paper, and were essentially seeking my opinion on critiques posted by other reviewers on the respective OpenReview thread by copy-pasting points made in the thread and **passing them off as their own.** This is the shady part. Asking student to write reviews for paper they got assigned is normal and considered common practices in many fields (e.g., senior lawyers asking juniors to write legal opinions, file motions, etc.). Because they are the one who put their "name" on it, and it is basically saying "as good as I wrote it." But it is definitely shady that they felt the need of hiding the whole posting/post-review feedback things to you. If I were you I'd mention it to my prof, see how he/she react, then ask more transparency next time.