text:
What to do if a special case of a theorem is published
I published  a paper in a reputable journal in 2021 December. I had proved a conjecture.
Today I discovered that another author published a special case of the conjecture and published it, in another journal, in 2023.
I think it is wrong on the journal's part. Why did the Editors publish the paper when they can see that it is a special case of my paper?
Shall I write to the journal and ask them to remove the paper from their website?
Or do I file a case of plagiarism against the author?
If someone can kindly help, I will be grateful.

Did the author of the other paper cite your paper?

Is the proof your proof adapted to the special case, or different?

@Nobody; no they did not

@erstwhileeditor; somewhat different

Do you have strong evidence that the author of the 2023 article was aware of your article? And was the 2023 article also published in a reputable journal?

Out of curiosity: what would happen if it turns out that neither the authors nor the reviewers of the new paper were aware of OP's paper, and that there is indeed substantial overlap in the content (such that in light of the existence of the earlier paper, the new one cannot be considered original).  does the new paper get retracted?

@Aqualone It will likely happen nothing. Lack of novelty is not a reason for retraction, which typically is reserved for cases of scientific misconduct or for egregiously wrong results.

There are numerous cases in physics and mathematics of different authors publishing similar results, often years apart ... and we often find that the result is credited with a double-surname title as in "the Smith-Jones theorem". So your suggestion that "the new one cannot be considered original" is not, I think, correct. But that hinges on whether you take "original" to mean "first ever published", "first ever published in this language", or "something created without knowledge of, or reference to, the other".

Related: How to get priority acknowledged, when a paper in mathematics is a special case of your own paper, but it does not cite your work?

@Aqualone Before the internet this was really common, because it was difficult to get information to everyone/to find work of others, especially if you were coming at a problem from different directions. Now it's common because there is just so much out there that it's easy to get lost in the flood of information.

@CrimsonDark By "original" I mean "worthy of publication", whatever that may mean  .  Basically, my question was about the situation when: paper A is published. years later, a similar paper B appears, but it makes to publication only because neither the authors nor reviewers of B were aware of A.

what are you trying to achieve?

My immediate thought is that if somebody independently proved a similar result, they're likely in/adjacent to a field you're going to continue being involved in. Becoming enemies with them doesn't serve you at all. It feels like any action you take should be weighed in light of the question "is it really worth burning this potential bridge"?

Are special cases of more general theorums not still worth knowing about?

I remember reading a paper whose most important contribution was "We notice that in our context, theorem 1 from paper X can be reworded as...". So basically they just wrote a particular case of a previously-published theorem. Just noticing that this theorem from an abstract math paper applied to their domain was already huge.

Put yourself in their shoes. What if someone else had provided the proof and you were unaware of it? Would you retract? Would you cite them? Would you voluntarily submit to the consequences of plagiarism, even if it was clearly not involved?

You haven't said whether it would be obvious to anyone that their conjecture was a special case of yours, or whether demonstrating that this is the case is in itself a significant intellectual achievement.

With the amount of papers that are published nowadays, it’s not rare that a result gets overlooked, whether your are an author, reviewer or editor.
If the proof published in the new paper is somewhat different from yours, it can hardly be considered plagiarism, and if the work in the new paper is legit there’s no reason to withdraw it.
My suggestion is to submit to the journal where the new paper has been published a “Comment on <published article>” where you point out that the other author’s result is a special case of yours, highlighting the differences. Keep the comment mathematical and don’t make any accusation of plagiarism, sloppiness or malfeasance.

In the above, I assumed that your paper wasn’t cited in the more recent one from the other author. From a comment below, it seems that you’ve just happened to discover that the authors did cite your work.
Then, if this is really the case, be happy with that and do nothing.

So, what action can I take against the authors. What if they cite my paper after I submit the allegation?

@Charlotte You shouldn’t take any action against the authors: overlooking a result is not a fraud, and it’s something that might happen to anyone. As I wrote above, you should not submit any allegation. You simply let a wider audience know that there is also your result, which is a more general one.

Actually, now I found that they have cited my paper but in a passive way

@Charlotte What do you mean by "in a passive way"? They cited a paper which cited yours?

@Charlotte Please, don’t start analysing the exact words in which they cited your work. Indeed, we would all love our papers to be cited like “As the wonderful M. Ortolano brilliantly proved in [1]…”, but most of the times we are all cited as in “This problem is also considered in [1-27]”. They did cite your work, and so no further action is needed.

I too am extremely curious about what makes a citation "passive". Could you explain what you meant, please?

@MassimoOrtolano I think it's fair to say that "This problem is also considered in [1-27]" would be an inadequate citation in the case that the present theorem is truly a special case of that in one of the references, say [16]. It (unintentionally, I grant) misleads the reader by implying that the previous results are related but distinct and the present theorem is novel. The paper should clearly acknowledge the key previous result (OP's) and clarify the actual novelty (in the method or application).

@A.I.Breveleri; They said "related work on this was done in [1]". They did not say that mine was the more important mone

It is possible that a special case has obvious applications that are not so obvious from the general case. It is possible that the special case had a much simpler proof (which is a good thing to have), or a proof that can be adapted to unrelated situations, while the proof for the general case can't.

I was also going to comment on proof techniques, and also point out that a simpler proof is not necessarily a requirement either. A merely different proof that ties in different areas of math or relates two previously unrelated concepts can be very publishable even if the result is not novel.

It can also require a non-trivial amount of work to show that theorem A is a special case of theorem B.

@quarague Which, seeing as how the OP seems to have done that, might also be a publishable paper.

You assert that "... the editors can see that it [the 2023 paper] is a special case of my paper?" but neither editors nor reviewers normally undertake extensive literature searches to check for overlaps between existing papers and newly submitted manuscripts. They rely, instead, on the general integrity and honesty of most of the authors who are making submissions.
And lest you think that I'm suggesting that the author of the 2023 paper was dishonest, I'm not! It seems to me unlikely that you have discovered a a case of plagiarism; it is much more likely to be a case of having overlooked or not noticed something. It is notoriously difficult to undertake a complete search of the the literature in any domain. Mathematics, because of the structure of Mathematical Reviews, has always seemed particularly difficult.
Even in the unlikely event that the 2023 author used precisely the approach to their proof as you used in yours, it is not uncommon to see papers that focus on even small, but non-obvious special cases of previous work.

I don't understand the part regarding Mathematical Reviews. Are you suggesting that MR makes literature searches in mathematics more difficult?

@Charlotte: I think a simple and effective solution is to mention this to someone who works at Mathematical Reviews (MR) so that the review of the 2023 paper (if not yet completed) can mention your earlier more general result. I suspect having your paper cited in the MR of the 2023 paper will make your paper more visible than most anything else you can do, since probably most anyone citing the 2023 paper will read over its MR.

@FedericoPoloni I might not have expressed myself very well; I certainly don't mean to impugn a wonderful resource like MR. What I meant was that I think it is often hard to search for, and then narrow down and identify, all the other papers that might possibly overlap with one's own. I  was primarily trying to highlight how the 2023 author might reasonably have overlooked the OP's general paper (it actually turns out that the didn't, and that they cited it). Searching often seems to me to be easier in the social sciences ... but perhaps that is reflective my lesser familiarity with MR.

@DaveLRenfro Please consider making this an answer!

(edited/extended from a comment made 2 days ago)
I think a solution that is both simple and quick to carry out, as well as likely being quite effective, is to mention this to an editor who works at Mathematical Reviews (MR) so that the review of the 2023 paper -- assuming the review is not yet finished -- can mention your earlier more general result. I suspect having your paper cited in the MR review of the 2023 paper will make your paper more visible than most anything else you can do, because people who are interested in the 2023 paper will probably look at its MR review. Looking at the list of MR editor names, I recognize 3 who participate in Stack Exchange -- 1 & 2 & 3. In fact, the first 2 of these participate in Academia SE.


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After my abstract was accepted I learned that the journal is predatory. How can I protect my abstract?
I submitted an abstract to a journal that is on the predatory list of publishers. It has been accepted within hours, but I only now learned that publishing there involves fees and that the journal is on the predatory list. What can I do to protect my chapter? I have not sent the full manuscript as yet.

You use three different words to refer to what you have written: (i) abstract, (ii) chapter, (iii) manuscript. I assume that when you say chapter you mean the same thing as "manuscript". Is that correct?

I have submitted a section of my manuscript as an abstract. Yes, you are correct.

the journal is on the predatory list - I guess you mean Beall's list?  This alone does not necessarily imply the journal is predatory (though it surely is based on the rest of your post, which sounds very strange).

Do you know for sure the journal is predatory (apart from their strange behaviour)?  Can you say what the journal is I can check the website, I'm just curious to make sure I also don't get stung.

Money is the great motivator for predatory journals. If you write and tell them that:

You do not wish them to publish your abstract
You will not be paying them anything
You will not be sending them the manuscript

then it is very unlikely that they will publish even the abstract. The only reason for doing so would be so that they could pretend that you owe them money.
Since they won't have the manuscript, they will be unable to publish that part of your work even if they wanted to.

I don’t think that’s true. They want to establish credentials as a bona fide, reputable journal. Submissions from genuine academics are valuable to them. They may well use your abstract for those purposes even if there is no prospect of money from you.

@innisfree They may publish but that simply makes legal problems for them, as they will have ignored an explicit direction that the OP does not want them to.  The OP does, however, need to make clear that they do not want the journal to publish them even if they do not want to be paid.  Most likely the journal will move on to more easily fooled prey.  They want, first and foremost, the money and, typical of con artists everywhere, they want easy money and (regrettably) they'll probably find it.

This is not a certain strategy: One of my PhD students sent a paper to a journal that was in fact predatory and despite asking for a withdrawal, not paying anything, and no signing a copyright agreement the paper ended up published.

Certainty??  If only there were! Absence of certainty was the reason for choosing the words "very unlikely".

Usually with journal publication there is some kind of publication agreement, and until there has been a publication agreement between author and journal, the author may withdraw the paper.  The obvious way to proceed here is to let the journal know that you have decided to withdraw the paper, and then don't send them the manuscript.  (Make sure to be polite in your correspondence; you have previously started a publication process with them, so it is appropriate to be polite and cordial in now withdrawing your submission.)  If they don't have the actual manuscript then this substantially limits their ability to proceed, and if you don't yet have any contractually binding publication agreement with them, then they would have little recourse.  Depending on the ethics of this particular predatory journal, at worst they might publish your abstract without an article, but that won't really help them or harm you much.

Thank you so much. As I have not published in a journal for a while I did not think about several factors which I should have.  This is extremely helpful for an early career researcher.

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As a private tutor, is it ethical to recommend the student take more classes?
I'm tutoring a student. Unfortunately he's not very good; for example, he has trouble with basic manipulations that one would expect a student of his level to have mastered. He scored 15% in a recent test, and that was a lucky score, since some of those points came from multiple-choice questions that he guessed correctly.
I don't believe he's beyond saving, but any rescue would have to involve close oversight and substantially more time spent studying, i.e., more classes. Furthermore, if one were going to attempt a rescue, then the rescuer had better start as soon as possible since the student's lecturer will be moving on to new material and not waiting for him to catch up.
However, if I recommend this to him/his parents, then I am indirectly recommending they hire me for more classes. This sounds like a conflict of interest. I could say "hire another tutor", but this looks artificial because from the point of view of the student, it's obviously better to work with the tutor who already knows you. Can I ethically recommend the student take more classes?
Related: Is it ethical to profit by having my students buy my textbook? which also deals with the teacher recommending students do something that benefits them financially.

Is the student required to take this class (and, possibly, follow on classes), or is changing streams / dropping out an option?

@cag51 I'm not sure, would have to ask. I suspect changing streams is possible, but the cost of doing so would be substantial. Dropping out is always an option, but the cost of doing that to one's lifetime earnings is even more substantial.

Is the student in college? If so, why would you involve his parents? And if it’s him making the decision of whether to follow your advice, wouldn’t he be in a good position to understand that you’re giving him honest advice rather than out to scam him? (If he is so delusional that he can’t see the wisdom of your advice, that seems like a very bad sign and it’s possible he’s a lost cause.)

@DanRomik No, the student is not in college. I don't know exactly how old he is, but based on the difficulty of the material, I'd guess ~16.

I think you can make clear that "take more classes" means "he needs more help than I can provide alone". Whether he needs a tutor for or in addition to those classes can be addressed separately.

Context is important here. If you are talking about student having trouble in passing class, you may suggest students where their knowledge gap is and fill it through peer-learning or tutoring. If he is not learning in class from you, then I am not sure how in-person tutoring with you would help him. If it’s about learning, is it even necessary for the student to learn everything for their future? Contents can be learned in the future as well when needed as long as student has interest and knowledge of basic principles.

15% after your tutoring in stuff you taught? Or 15% in a somewhat related class? If it is 15% after your tutoring... there is an enormous hole to climb out of. You are probably trying to teach him how to think and actually solve problems, but what he actually needs is a recipe to squeeze by on a test. Yeah, he will spend the rest of his life using a phone app to figure out how much a 10$ item costs after a 50% discount (even calculator is too complicated ... but some can't be helped).

If you have an explanatory rationale (that isn't rooted in your wallet) for your student needing additional tutoring by you and you can accept a no; then you can suggest it.

Is it ethical for a skilled tradesman to make recommendations that would benefit the tradesman? Its like asking for a plumber to look at your sink leaking but he comments about how he can hear your sump pump is about to fry itself. Or a carpenter that's there to put a cabinet in for you but notices a sagging floor. Maybe you hired an electrician to put in a dimmer switch in your bedroom and on the way in he says he can fix the fire hazard of a situation you have around your electrical box. That or you might be thinking of yourself as the mechanic offering to sell blinker fluid.

Ever met some selling something thinking that selling something is unethical? You're selling something, the fact that the other side actually needs what you're selling is a bonus. Go sell something.

@ZizyArcher the 15% is in the topic I'm teaching. It is an enormous hole, yes, which is why the rescuer had better start as soon as possible. If the finals were literally tomorrow then I can see teaching "hacks" that raise the score without raising understanding by much, but there is still time to get something more substantial done.

@DonQuiKong Ironically, the fact that OP wonders this means there is not a problem making a recommendation. Conversely, the very people who don't give this a second can mean there is a problem. I used to work for a boss who felt it was always eager to try and and sell his services to friends because he felt was doing them a favour solving them their problem. But after working for him and seeing how he does things...I beg to differ.

@DKNguyen you can be bad at your job, but selling it to other people is still your job then. That's not unethical. (Unless you start recommending stuff by lying, of course.)

I don't think it's unethical. It happens all the time with driving license classes, for example. The instructor is the one that decide when the student is ready to take the exam....

@DonQuiKong It's quite a bit different when you're the boss and you're selling products and services your company produces with the intent to oversell and overcharge. And if we're talking about ETHICS, then just because something becomes your job doesn't suddenly make it ethical to do.

Why is suggesting more classes a conflict of interest? You could say the student needs to learn material A, which can be found on the internet - and you are there to help if they need you. Maybe even the parents could help with A (or good Internet material).

I don't see a problem with saying what you think; indeed, some readers would consider it to be unethical not to say anything.
As for the problem of looking as if you are merely being self-serving, I think the easiest way is to tackle this head on. Have a conversation with the student and his parents, point to the evidence (e.g., the 15% grade) that you mention in your post, along with any other evidence that you have, and acknowledge that your comments leave them with at least four options:

to abandon all classes on the basis that they (student and parents) might be aiming for something that is unachievable
recognize that things are not going well but nonetheless continue the current classes until some natural end-point ... but not seek further tuition for the student
hire you to continue with more classes
hire someone else.

The parents, at least, are adults. They can think for themselves about what a 15% grade means, and what it means to have to study harder than your student appears to be doing. They might also have a better sense than you do about whether there is any external evidence that the student is even capable of achieving what they hope.

Good response. A good counter to conflict-of-interest scenarios is ruthless transparency. Putting the cards on the table, and making explicitly clear that this is your professional opinion and that they making their decision after careful consideration is the way to go. It is nonsense to exclude a careful and insightful tutor from the choices they have, but you have to put the possibility of a conflict of interest clearly in front of them to evaluate for themselves.

Great answer overall, though I'd add a fifth option: Find a study group at school / study with friends or classmates, i.e. more studying, but no additional paid classes. The more options that are not "more money for OP", the further OP is from any ethical issues.

If I have an electrician or a plumber at my house for some minor work, and they spot some major issue that they believe should be addressed, they absolutely should tell me, "even" if they would be the logical person to do so and get the business. What's the alternative? Not telling me, and me running the risk of having my house burn down, or a broken pipe, just so nobody could accuse them of trying to acquire more business?
If I as a customer suspect they are only trying to get more business, the way to go is to get informed, perhaps get a second opinion. And keep in mind that there is a continuum here - reasonable people can differ as to what motivation is stronger between helping the customer and getting more billable time.
In the present case, not saying anything would be unethical.

In short, it's ethical provided that you are being honest in stating that the work needs doing.

A natural part of any advisory or teaching profession is to be candid with people about when they need more advice/teaching than they are presently using.  Such situations are common in a range of professions and there is nothing inherently unethical with suggesting more advice/teaching if that is necessary.  Indeed, it is common to give an initial set of advice or teaching and then provide an assessment about what further assistance might be beneficial.  So long as you are not unduly influenced by a desire for more work that is not necessary to the development of the student, I see no problem with this.

There is no ethical issue and no conflict of interest as long as you are delivering value in your tutoring. A medical doctor might also recognize that a patient needs for care from themself and recommend more frequent visits. This is only problematic if the doctor isn't improving the condition of the patient and is doing it just for the money.
So, the question you need to ask yourself, is whether you are effective with this student. What evidence do you have? The 15% is a worry for me. Are you taking the right approach? Do they have a condition (or an attitude) that makes you ineffective no matter what you do? Will more hours make a difference or does it require a difference in the nature of the interactions? Does the student want to succeed at this or are they being compelled?
Note that it is possible that a given tutor might be effective with some but not all students. That might be attitude from some students, but it might also be that the tutor needs to up their game, seeking a better match in tutoring technique. Either or both can be affecting what is going on.
I'll also note that some students do poorly in, say, a Calculus class because they are ill prepared to start. For some of them it is a result of poor (very poor) earlier teaching that left them without the resources to succeed later. I've seen students like this and even students who have deeply ingrained but wrong ideas about some facts because earlier teaching was harmful instead of helpful. It took me much of a year once to convince a student that I didn't hate him and wasn't lying to him about operator precedence  in math and computing.
Sadly, some "teachers" think that explaining something (once) is enough to assure learning. Some teachers forget their own struggles with learning. Some teachers, especially bright ones, assume that all of their students learn easily, just like they did. Some teachers assume that their students all have the same interest in a subject that they do themselves. I had some of these misconceptions myself at the start of my career.

I think what is missing from this otherwise useful answer is putting the possibility of a conflict-of-interest explicitly on the table concerning the suggestion to take more lessons. Note that OP specifically said they believe the student might be salvaged. I remember a case where I made no headway whatsoever, no matter what I tried; in another case, however, a change of tack literally got the student from 10 to - well not 100 - but ~80 and later even higher. Sometimes the approach matters. Sometimes the teacher matters. Sometimes nothing matters.

First of all, it's not unethical to propose oneself if you have a conversation with the parents explaining the pros and cons. As for the reason not to go to other teachers because the student is comfortable with you is not necessarily true.  Students in a school have various teachers who specialize in certain subjects.  If they are good at what they do they can make a new student feel comfortable right away.  Also, hearing different voices is a positive thing. You the tutor may know other teachers who are qualified in knowledge and temperament.  If so that would be a better way. If you are concerned you can vet any teachers before they are accepted. Good parents will appreciate this and recommend you to others.

If there is a mismatch between achievement and expectations then you should highlight this at the earliest opportunity.
Not doing so is unethical, and may cause upset for various reasons.
Both the bill payer and the student should know, unless there is a compelling reason to withhold information. e.g. if the student is young, or takes news very negatively, then it would be sensible to discuss with the parents first.
Note: they may opt to cancel the lessons, rather than asking for additional ones. If you think that additional lessons would be helpful then you should say so but you should only suggest this if you feel confident that this represents a good way forwards. Keep in mind that students don't have unlimited time and that self study is usually an important component to achieving progress. Doubling the tuition time won't double the self study time nor the support from school/lectures.

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MSc thesis written jointly by two students
Have you encountered such a thing? A thesis submitted jointly by two people? Is that allowed anywhere?
I didn't realize it was even remotely possible until I looked up the MSc thesis of one Benjamin Netanyahu. Turns out he submitted it jointly with a Zeev Zurr, under the name Benjamin Nitay.
Was this common in MIT in the 1970s?

Nevermind MSc thesis -- John Rhodes co-wrote his PhD thesis at MIT with Kenneth Krohn (who was at Harvard).

I don't think there is any kind of universal rule regarding MSc theses, at all. You could even get an MSc diploma without writing an MSc thesis at all.

Yes, this is possible. For example it is explicitly stated in the university law codex of multiple European countries that cooperative master theses are allowed if the individual contributions are clearly marked and can be graded separately. This is useful and often necessary in experimental disciplines that require a lot of lab work that cannot be done by a single student.

at my uni in Germany, I knew several students that did joint theses. It is not super common but definitely possible.

At my university in Sweden we were actively encouraged to work in pairs instead of alone for the thesis and it was definitely more common to have joint theses than not. I didn't take the option so I don't know if there was something about marking contributions separately at the time of examination but there's definitely no distinction of what each author did at the published thesis. This was a couple of years ago and I have no reason to believe this isn't still the case.

It's also strongly encouraged here in Denmark.

Also from Sweden and wrote a joint thesis - you do not need to indicate the individual contributions but you regularly interact with supervisors/examiners who are expected to ensure that both students are contributing to the thesis.

As lordy’s answer points out, this is allowed in many European countries. In Italy, I actually supervised several MSc theses of experimental nature which were jointly developed and submitted by two and even three students.
At the defence, the students would then divide the presentation allotted time so that each one could deliver a part.
The final grade is generally a weighted average of a student’s exam grades, the thesis work grade and the presentation grade. In the case of a joint thesis, the thesis grade is typically the same for all joint defendants, whereas the exam grades and the presentation grades are indeed independent.

To answer the MIT-specific question: at present it is allowed, given departmental approval (from what I can tell, this policy tends to be the same across departments).
Based on a quick survey of some selected publicly available theses (here), it appears to be uncommon but not unusual to submit a joint thesis at MIT in the 1970s.


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Recommendation letters for multiple applications
I am planning to apply to a lot of positions including faculty positions, postdocs, and in the industry. I do have a list of recommenders who would recommend me. My question is, if I apply for 100 positions in total among all three sectors, then would my recommenders have to recommend me 100 times? Because, nowadays, institutions usually ask for only the contact information of the recommenders and they expect that the recommendation be given directly to the institution.
Isn't this going to be overkill for my recommenders? What is the usual process for a recommendation if I apply for a lot of positions in different sectors?
Thanks in advance.

100 positions? Wow.

I am not surprised by this number, @JonCuster

Such is my state of affairs you know, also considering the job market(academia + industry) right now... :)

No, they would not have to deal with 100 recommendations.
First, you are correct that the letters go to the schools without passing through the hands of the applicant for faculty positions. But this doesn't always mean they need to come directly from the supervisor every time. There are tech solutions like Interfolio that can work.  There are also more low-tech ways of handling this as well. When I was a grad student, our department actually had an administrative coordinator who collected the faculty letters and then sent these out when needed.
For industry positions, you normally write down the name of your recommenders, but they don't send letters for every application. The HR department will call the recommenders when final interviews are conducted and they are close to making an offer. So your supervisor will only have to deal with a few of these calls.
For postdocs, the process is probably between these two extremes.
It will be some effort, but, in general, faculty consider helping students apply for positions to be part of the job.


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Are PhD Students and PhD Researchers the same thing?
Similarly to how a Postdoc researcher is a researcher, I think that a PhD student should be considered a researcher. Especially when:

A salary is obtained for the research that is done as part of the PhD studies. Per definition, I would say that students pay, they are not paid.
A research master has been studied before and there are no lessons, classes, exams, etc. So in fact the person is not a student, but "at least" an "apprentice".

I know that naming things in one way or another may not make a big difference for those in academia that read the CV, but it may evoke different ideas for those out of academia that read it.
As far as I know, they are absolutely equivalent, even if one is more used than the other (mistakenly, IMHO). Nevertheless, I would like to get confirmation, if possible from an authoritative source (like a dictionary for titles), and at the same time I think that the question may be useful for many people.

A "PhD researcher" might easily be confused with a "researcher who has a PhD". PhD students are researchers in training, and hence of course do perform research.

I think the main issue is that people who are working towards their PhD are considered "students" in many places, but not all. For example, I obtained my PhD in The Netherlands, where most PhD "students" are employees and a master is a prerequisite. Others and I have used the term "PhD candidate" to distinguish from the "student", but this term also has other connotations in English, see https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10972/phd-candidate-vs-phd-student

I agree with @Gerhard, and I'd go a bit further. To me, "Ph.D. researcher" unambiguously means a researcher who already has a Ph.D.

There is no correct answer.  Language varies wildly across disciplines, countries, and institutions.  For extra confusion, let's throw in "PhD candidate"!

@Gerhard Doctoral researcher should then convey the meaning unambiguously, thanks to the term "Postdoctoral researcher".

@AndreasBlass Doctoral researcher should then convey the meaning unambiguously, thanks to the term "Postdoctoral researcher".

@Trylks: i unfortunately do not think so. "Doctoral researcher" might be a bit more ambiguous (in a good way from your perspective), but comparing it to "postdoctoral researcher" has the same problem as distinguishing between graduate and postgraduate students: there is no difference. Many languages have a separate word for phd students, like "Doktorand" in German, which reflects what you want to say. English unfortunately does not. The closest I can think of is "PhD candidate". I have also seen people advertise Predoctoral posts, which might also work, but sounds quite odd to my ears.

Predoctoral, as predoctoral fellows (in wikipedia) refers to people still not studying a PhD, who might be considering whether to study one or not, possibly depending on whether they can find a grant or some funding for the duration of their PhD studies or not. If there is no difference between graduate and postgraduate students, I think we have found a "bug" in English, and IMHO it's a bad one http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/71563/7571#comment-174731

@Trylks: language is the way it is, and unilateral "bug fixing" does not work, as communication requires both parties to buy into the premise. As for "pre-doctoral researchers": I agree with you (and wikipedia) that I would interpret it as a period BEFORE the start of a phd-project. I just described that i have phd-project advertised as pre-doctoral-positions, usually from Spanish universities (so possibly it is a 1:1 translation from the original Spanish term).

And if you really just want to avoid the word "student" on your CV: why not just write "PhD-project", potentially adding "in subject/topic"? Or maybe "PhD research project"?

Anecdote: During my PhD I always wrote "PhD researcher" on business cards etc. There are two audiences: One is people in academia, who will know exactly what that means. The other is people outside academia, who may see "PhD student" as "student". For those people, the fact that I was a researcher was more important for most intents and purposes than whether I had a PhD or not.

I don't see the point in your distinctions in either bullet. Some students get a salary, some do not. Neither of these is determinative of whether a student is a researcher. Not every PhD student did a Master's degree before the began their PhD studies. I certainly did not.
Why do you care if PhD students (who I agree do "research") are "researchers" or not? Of course they are researchers because I think that anyone who does research is a researcher (paid, student, or otherwise). Are you looking to validate your ego, to overcome an officious rule that says that only "researchers" may do some thing or other, or are you looking for something else? Except in a few places, titles matter little. If titles matter where you are, then find the law or bureaucratic codes that define "researcher" and follow them. If you don't like the answer you find, you can either live with that, find a workaround, or fight (presumably through a legislative body if that place has one) for change. You haven't given us enough detail about why you care for us to helpfully answer your question.

Some time ago I have read some papers about the separations between phd students and junior researchers in terms of the possibility to apply for grant applications.

@MikeyMike, I've seen similar things, but they almost always make the distinction that the applicant must be within X years after receiving their PhD. They're often very clear about their requirements. Being just a "researcher" is not a requirement I've ever seen. The word may be thrown around a bit cavalierly in the RFP, but the Requirements section lays out the details clearly in every case I've ever come across.

Being a researcher is important, to become a senior researcher after several years of research. Not being a student is important, because a PhD is a real job, even if it is not recognized as such, and the pay is really low. Both things are important for the salary, a very important thing, especially when it means the difference between being able to afford something important or not. Human resource departments are (or pretend to be) quite clueless in many occasions. Therefore, it is better to write things in a way that gives them little excuses to not acknowledge your work or skills.

@Trylks, that's a pretty vague response to my question. Are you being rejected for a position or pay level because you're not a "researcher" in someone or some bureaucracy's eyes? I think PhD students are researchers and should be paid. I was regarded so and was paid, though not very well, but tuition was free and I got healthcare benefits. If you're trying to fudge or puff up your CV by adding the word "researcher" to it somewhere, that might not be OK. Some people might not even read far enough to notice. My student title was "Graduate Research Assistant" and everyone knew what that meant.

@BillBarth Well, I personally finished the PhD and moved out of academia, where HR people may care or not care about the word "researcher" (which I think would be the appropriate term), but in general they despise the word "student". However, I think that the whole topic may be relevant and important for people that are not me (or you for the matter). As such, I have not tried to be vague, but to be general, for the general interest of the community.

@Trylks, I haven't seen this to be a problem. Not all places use HR people to do the screening, and many hiring managers are aware of what a graduate student researcher was doing when they are looking to hire a PhD. They know that being a student researcher was part of the role, and they know this because they have hired PhDs before.

@BillBarth I really doubt that even a PhD can know what was part of the role or other PhD. There is a huge variability, especially depending on the supervisor, who may be guiding the student, micromanaging the student, or giving a complete freedom (doing of the student more of a research fellow). There is also a huge variability in theoretical vs applied fields, and many other variables. In any case and to the very least, the word "student" is misleading.

@Trylks, which is why we don't have discussions in the comments. I meant that people who hire PhDs generally know what the role of a PhD student entails. It shouldn't be a downside to see the word "student" on a CV.

"people who hire PhDs generally know […] entails." My point: That is impossible. 2. "It shouldn't be a downside […] on a CV." Few things are the way they should (if any is). If they were, we would not be using misleading terms in our CVs. Maybe we can fix that! Maybe there is already a fix for that, some common alternative term, I thought I found one, that's why I asked. A correct answer would have been "No", a good answer: "No, but X is equivalent". Where I live people are going on strikes for similar matters. But that's not the point, the question was meant to benefit all in the community

@Trylks, technically impossible, yes, but likely close enough. Maybe you can edit your question to add the stuff about strikes so that it's not so vague. Things are basically fine in the US right now. There's no apparent need to point out to everyone who reads your CV here that students and research assistants are researchers, too. People seem to get it. I hire PhDs who are mostly off the academic track, and I don't need to ask "Did you do research during your time as a PhD student?"

Many people don't know the term 'PhD'. If I say I am a PhD student then people think I'm just a student. What I do doesn't correspond with their mental image of a student. That is one reason for using the term 'PhD researcher'

"PhD Researcher" implies that this person has a PhD. Also a post-doctoral researcher is something more specific. It usually refers to a person taking a short term 1-3 years individual Post-Doc after his/her PhD. Also, if you are a Researcher it should imply that you have a PhD since a PhD candidate/student is learning how to be a researcher and therefore not a qualified researcher yet. Also, a "PhD Researcher", "Researcher" or "Researcher PhD" could be more experienced than a Post-doctoral Researcher and it usually implies a more permanent position.
Personally I think it is important to stick to the title to avoid confusion. Personally I would like to see "PhD candidate" instead of "PhD student" since it sounds better. PhD candidates should be paid in my opinion as they do research for the university. But payment is independent of the title. Avoiding using wrong name is also advisable. If I was an interviewer and I had found out that I was cheated on thinking that you have a PhD, then I would not appoint you. I will loose trust on the rest of your skills on your CV. Keep your CV as truthful as possible.

PhD students and PhD researchers are not the same thing.
A "PhD researcher" is a researcher who has a PhD, while a PhD student is working on a project in order to obtain a PhD (i.e. does not have the degree yet).
I agree with you, that the term "PhD student" in English is rather unfortunate - in reality, it is much closer to an apprenticeship, as you are training to perform research. And you do this by performing research under guidance.
Other languages have separate words for people doing a PhD, e.g. "Doktorand" in German, which give less of an impression of "studentship". In English, this is (AFAIK) not possible, and the closest I can think of is "PhD candidate".
If you just would like to avoid the term "student" on a CV because you believe that it could be misinterpreted by people outside academia, I would instead refer to something along the lines of e.g.

"PhD project (in SUBJECT)"
"PhD research project"

This still covers what you have done, but avoids giving the job title you feel is ambiguous.
Making up new "job titles", especially if they can be misinterpreted, is not a good idea, as unilateral "bug fixing" of a language does not work: communication requires both parties to buy into the premise. In the best case, you will create confusion, in the worst case you will be guilty of fraud.

The closest translation of "Doktorand" seems to be "doctoral student". The latter is also a preferable term to "PhD student" because the German doctoral degree is not actually called "PhD".

@lighthousekeeper: for all intents and purposes the translation of German (science) doctorates is "PhD", so making a distinction between "doctoral students" and "PhD students" is mainly academic (pun intended :) ). Neither of the terms helps the OP.

About unilateral "bug fixing", I completely agree, that is why I am asking and I consider this very important. What would be the name for a person that has finished a master and is doing research (just like a PhD student would be) but is not pursuing a PhD? Predoctoral researcher? Could PhD Students be semantically equivalent to predoctoral researchers?

What would be the name for a person that has finished a master and is doing research — "Researcher".

@Gerhard: The German term that helps your argument is Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter: "knowledge employee."

@Gerard, at our uni in Austria, pre-docs are always PhD students (who may or may not be PhD researchers, depending on whether or not they have a research job at the uni) in contrast to postdocs, who already hold a PhD.

@aeismail or 'scientific employee'.

The generally accepted job title of a researcher who already has a PhD is a post-doctoral researcher. Unless you want to argue that doctoral and post-doctoral mean the same thing then a doctoral researcher is a researcher who is seeking a PhD.  This makes sense considering that we do not say doctoral student for students that already have obtained their doctorates.  The purpose of avoiding saying "PhD Student" as your job title on your CV is because a common prejudice against people with PhD's seeking to work in the private sector is that all they know about is life as a student.  This is obviously not the case if you work at a research institute where some of the researchers may not even have a phd and get to claim there time there as work experience.  In German and French this is not an issue because the meaning of the words "doktorant" and "doctorand" are commonly known.  In English, "doctorand" is actually the word you are looking for (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/doctorand), but it is not as widely known which makes it less suitable for a resumé/CV.  When I did my PhD there was a person from human resources responsible for all the doctorands in the French speaking part of Switzerland who explained all of this using survey data and examples.  My suggestion is to use "Doctoral Researcher" because "PhD Researcher" could potentially be confused with "PhD-level researcher".

Downvoted. People are not dictionaries, and human language is not logical.  Idioms also vary significantly across different countries, institution types, and research communities.

"The generally accepted job title of a researcher who already has a PhD is a post-doctoral researcher." This is just not true.  Postdoctoral researcher means something much more specific.  "This makes sense considering that we do not say doctoral student for students that already have obtained their doctorates." In modern anglophone academic parlance, once you get your doctorate in X you are no longer any kind of student of X.  Also, "doctorand" and "PhD student" are synonymous.  If someone wants to stigmatize PhD students, then they will regardless of what they are called.

@JeffE Idioms are expressions whose meanings are not deducible from their individual words and doesn't have anything to do with job titles.  Also, language does have logical structure, it is called grammar.  I think what you are trying to get at is that expressions evolve based on repeated usage, regardless whether it is correct or not (e.g. main courses are called entrées in the US).

@PeteL.Clark This was based on a seminar that was available to all PhD students in Switzerland to help them plan their careers. They specifically advised us to avoid the term "student" for these reasons. Take from it what you want. I didn't make it up. It is possible that postdoc has a different connotation in certain countries such as the US. I only have experience with the Swiss and French systems where a postdoc is just a category of professional researcher who has already obtained their PhD and is not a part of the permanent staff (like a senior scientist). Maybe you could explain what you

Perhaps the difference is in what Masters and PhD entail in different countries. I've spoken to several people in the US who have very different course content in comparison to what we have here in the UK. In the UK, Masters level research is of higher quality and rigor than a Masters in the US (the same can be said about Bachelors in the US and the UK). By the time we finish our Masters here in the UK, we are quite familiar with how to do research. We are no longer students of research. From this perspective, I believe those who are doing PhD are researchers, not merely students. Someone who is already granted a PhD is a post-doctoral researcher, not a doctoral researcher.

I don't think this applies anywhere near as universally as you claim here: if what you say is true, I think this is going to depend heavily on the institution and the discipline. (And by Masters in US are you thinking MSc, MPhil, .. ? )

This definitely isn't generally true

Six years late, but I would say they are the same.
An undergraduate researcher implies an undergraduate student who does research.
Similarly, a Ph.D. researcher implies a Ph.D. student who does research.
In my opinion, Researcher, in general, without the degree as prefix, is someone who does research as a job.

"a Ph.D. researcher implies a Ph.D. student who does research" - does it, though? Could be someone with a PhD doing research. A PhD student is not a PhD, so why use PhD as an adjective? Perhaps (PhD Student) Researcher is implied, but perhaps not.

As a Ph.D. student, you may do extensive research and prove it in a number of ways, like soloing papers and having an h-index in the double digits. Still, when you hand your CV to some people in the industry they will look down on you and think that "you have no real experience". What I have learned in these 6 years is that those people are idiots, and you are better off ignoring them and working with someone else, if you can. By discarding your CV, they are making you a favor.

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text:
What do I do if I cannot give a good reference to my PhD student?
I've seen several questions from students about bad supervisor references but this is on the other side.
I have a PhD student whose priority during their PhD was family (had two children in 3 years) and social life. They are smart but simply did the minimum for the PhD. We had a talk some time ago and they were clear that their target was the minimum requirements set by the school and nothing more. Which is fine by me, since that what they want.
They've now asked me to write a reference letter for a very prestigious ECR fellowship. I personally know many members of the committee. The reference guidelines ask me to address the candidate's ability to work well under pressure, attract funding, take initiative, work independently, etc.
I am conflicted. My options as I see are:

I write a statement of facts. Worked in the group from X to Y, published N papers, etc. However, this will basically signal that I cannot support their candidacy since I don't address the specific guidelines.
I tell the student I cannot give a support letter. However, given they haven't worked with any other professor or group, it will leave them in bad place.

Any other options?
Update: Some more information based on questions/comments below.

The student was clear after the first year of their PhD (pre-COVID) that they want to do the minimum. For example, the requirement set by the university is to have "publishable" work and not to have published. So, the student did not want to go through the publication process except for "easy" conferences (2). All of my other PhDs until now have had 1 journal accepted and at least 1 submitted by the submission date.
The fact that they focus on family is the positive aspect for me. E.g., if they did the minimum because they were lazy, I wouldn't have problem to say I don't provide a reference letter. I don't know how many hours they actually put since I don't keep monitor (also, last 9 months have been remotely due to COVID).
I don't believe I can truthfully say that they comply with what I'm asked to comment on. E.g., good organizational skills: they have missed multiple deadlines, missed meetings, missed report submissions for their own funding which has a fixed yearly date (!). The excuse is always family or technical problems, but for the 3 years of joint work, I cannot truthfully say they have good organizational skills. I'll not extend to other aspects, but similar picture.

Will the student see your reference? or is it confidential?

Same student as here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/111305/phd-student-failing and here: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/140987/phd-student-wanting-to-do-the-minimum-required ?

Comments are not for extended discussion (nor for answers); this conversation has been moved to chat. Please see this FAQ before posting a comment below this one.

For those not yet familiar with the singular they, see here, here. Note also that usage of gender-neutral language is generally to be preferred according to the Code of Conduct.

Why don't you reject writing a reference? Are you bliged to write a reference, even if you cannot see any positive features on the student? Are you obliged to write a reference if student will most likely not be considered for such programs, because of lacking output, skills, or motivation?

@noslenkwah This is in the UK I believe, so there is nothing to stop the student to ask to see the reference, if push comes to shove under a Freedom of Information request. You can choose not to look, but you cannot waive the right not to look, so there's no point asking the student to do so.

I'd think you should have a candid discussion with the student about what they think you should write.
Yes, (as in another reasonable answer here), university administrations will never tell you you'd done enough, nor will funding agencies, nor even will departments when it comes time for salary raise consideration. Right, so one should avoid being driven by external approval, in some regards.
At the same time, the/one ideal of academic function is self-direction, and taking lots of initiative, regardless of bureaucratic pushes. Not "sacrificing family life", necessarily. But, also, not necessarily forgetting about everything after a 40-hour work-week, either. Much more amorphous. (Fortunately, my own family is fairly indulgent of my endless distraction [sic] by math stuff... partly, because I do manage to pay attention to them and participate, in a complicated way of integrating family-and-math.)
As a sort of diagnostic, you could ask the student to "persuade you", on a professional level. If they can give cogent reasons that everyone benefits from their choices about life/work balance, then it's a winning situation. If their notion of "balance" is more of a negative about the work part, you can/should point out that they are failing to offer a good exchange for such fellowships... and much other funding.
Btw, for my own PhD students, I certainly do not try to micro-manage their schedules or time allotted. If they say that they don't have time to do something for a day or two, I believe them. If they say that a family vacation will take them away from work for some days, I believe them and it's fine. Fortunately (for me and for them) no one has ever said to me that they definitely wanted to aim to limit their interaction with the mathematics, somehow thinking that "thinking about math" is in conflict with "being a good parent/partner/friend". I myself honestly do not see this supposed distinction as genuine.
Perhaps you can provoke your student to think a little about a less naive conception of "work-life balance", and then ask them why they think you should write a (helpful/supportive) letter for them?
EDIT: In addition to myriad other complicating issues, we should definitely note that (at least) the NSF currently cares about "broader impacts" and such. It's not literally about work/life balance, but is about impacts of one's work outside one's office/classroom and so on.

@Wetenschaap, thanks... I should really have been even clearer, namely, that I simply don't ask or tell about any ideas about work-week or hours or evening-work or weekend-work. In a sense, to know my students' attitudes would be "TMI" (too much info) ... that I do not want to have. I pretend that all I care about is "outcomes", but there is ambiguity there, too, if we look at a broader sense of that...

@paulgarrett I think as a supervisor you should be having those conversations, and setting reasonable expectations. That is the only way the culture can begin to change, is by senior people explicitly guiding behavior.

A student who did the minimum during their PhD has very little chance of getting a prestigious fellowship.  In the sciences, you must have publications to get prestigious fellowships; a student who did the minimum will not.  Your role as a mentor is to guide students to attempt things they might succeed in.  Tell the student they will not succeed in this application.  Tell them to compare their record to past successful applicants.
You should not write the letter.  It will not help the student and it can hurt your reputation.  But you should have told the student that they would not get a letter for prestigious fellowships when you discussed their goals for completing their PhD.

This may simply not be what people want to hear. Academia is highly competitive, and while doing the minimum necessary will allow you to get a Ph.D., you will simply not be able to compete at high levels with people who do more. This is simply a fact of life. (And of course it also holds in other areas, like industry - many people do what they are paid to do and have a decent career, but they will simply not move up very far. If that is what you want, great. But it doesn't make sense to complain.)

+1. This answer is spot on. The student is fully entitled to prioritize family life over academic career but if they explicitly made it clear that "they WANT to do the minimum" then the prestigious fellowship is simply not for them. It's a valuable and competitive springboard for very keen people who want to do a lot more than the minimum, and achieve greatness. It's not a parking spot. Embellishing the reference letter is dishonest and would rob a more deserving candidate of the hard-to-get fellowship. The OP is the student's mentor and their role includes managing the student's expectations.

+1 Was about to write a comment saying the same! Even if he got the position, he would not be able to prioritize family anymore afterwards, and that seems not to be the road they want to take.

@user2768 No downvote, but: While the first sentence is unfortunately true, a PhD student who raised kids may still have very high potential, they were just not able to realize it yet. The point of a letter of recommendation is to testify to such potential, thereby giving a more complete evaluation than one based only on publications. (I'm not saying the student in question has such potential. I'm saying that a LoR that merely states "student has great publications" is useless.) The only sound reason given in this answer for not writing a LoR is reputation. But this needs elaboration.

@henning--reinstateMonica I absolutely agree, a PhD student who raised kids may still have very high potential. The student in question doesn't seem to have demonstrated that though. Of course, it's a catch-22.

@henning--reinstateMonica However, in this case, the student does NOT "have great publications", rather the student "has no publications at all".

@CGCampbell of course not. I'm speaking hypothetically, explaining what the purpose of a LoR is and is not.

@Trunk I'm sympathetic to that, but this is part of the job of advising. This is absolutely a professional problem, and the right answer is clear (if not pleasant to enact).

My reading of your question is that you don't think that you can actually recommend the student to your colleagues. It is a separate discussion whether we think that the student was right or wrong prioritizing family, so I'm simply going to address the question of the recommendation, devoid of whatever reason you might have for not wanting to recommend them.
The problem ultimately comes down to where your allegiance lies or should lie. You're stuck between your professional ethics to only write letters that are truthful, and your personal allegiance to your former student. That is an uncomfortable position to be in, but one every faculty knows. My take is that your professional ethics provide the overriding objective for the same reason as we would expect a professional engineer to not sign off on a bridge design they know is faulty, even if their employer is generously paying them (or even if the CEO of the company is the spouse of the engineer). What respect would we, as a profession, command if we had no ethics?
So, then, how do you find a way to do the professionally right thing in a confidential way? The usual approach is to write a letter that is short and says nothing. We have all seen such letters and we know what they mean.
Now, that is ethically correct but personally not satisfying. The solution to that is probably to have a candid conversation with the student about the fact that you cannot unconditionally recommend them for the position and that they might be better off asking someone else for a letter. I've had to have these conversations, and they're not pleasant, but students in this situation generally know that they might not be the best qualified ones, and respect the ethical argument.

+1 for your professional ethics provide the overriding objective...write a letter that is short and says nothing... have a candid conversation with the student about the fact that you cannot unconditionally recommend them for the position and that they might be better off asking someone else for a letter With regards My reading of your question is that you don't actually want to recommend the student, I think they do, but feel they cannot.

There is no possible substitute for a reference letter from the PhD adviser. The absence of such a letter is even more of a red flag than a letter that doesn''t really say anything.

@mment I am not sure of that. "No letter" could mean the student and the advisor had a strained relationship at the end of the PhD, which is fairly common and rarely 100% the student's fault. OTOH there is no good explanation for a poor letter.

@user2768 Yes, language is ambiguous. I did mean to say something along the lines of "feeling unable to recommend the student to the letter writer's colleague". I think I clarified.

@mmeent I do not know the solution to the problem, but if what you said was absolutely true then any PhD with a deceased adviser would have no possibility of an academic career.

I really don't understand what the question is here.
The student has openly said they only want to do the bare minimum of work.
They have indeed only done the bare minimum.
They are now either sufficiently stupid, or sufficiently brass-necked, to ask you to write a recommendation letter for them.
Just write a statement of the facts (as in paragraphs 2 and 3) and let them take the consequences of their own lifestyle choice.

I'm seeing a troubling trend in this thread that is being particularly brutal in the evaluation of the student, and completely discounting the effect an advisor has on the student's development. What is the point of going through a PhD program if there are zero expectations of mentorship from advisors? Jeez.

@Well... it is not how I read this: rather it seems the supervisor respects the choice of the student, but that the student has expectations that are not in line with the competitive nature of some scholarship processes.

@CottonHeadedNinnymuggins Sorry that I mistakenly rejected your suggested edit.(there was some characters that I thought should not be there so I missed the typo you tried to correct) Hopefully two more users will approve/edit it. I apologize for the mistake.

-1 for not considering the impact on the letter writer's reputation or the effort required to write a useless letter.

@ZeroTheHero The fact that the student's expectations are so misguided, to me, points to bad mentorship. If the advisor had a passing interest in the student's goals after completing the PhD, they could have responded to the student's plan of doing the bare minimum by explaining the drawbacks to that method (it's basically sorting yourself out of an academic career, not selecting into a less ambitious one). Not all students are in the know about how all of this works, and part of the job of the advisor is to mentor, at least a little bit, meaning to inform about the realities of academia.

Also the fact that this is the accepted answer kind of confirms my suspicions. This answer says basically the same thing as other, more upvoted, answers, but also manages to call the student stupid and brass-necked. Interesting that OP reacted positively to this.

@Well... I'm not sure either about the qualifiers used to describe the student, and I get part of your point, but my observation of a similar situation is that there's only so much a supervisor can do, one thing being to make sure the student does graduate.  Of course we only have one side of this story.

I think there are multiple different strands to this issue, and it is helpful to try and disentangle them and think about each separately.

Ignoring any matters of 'how they got here', where does the student stand today?

What does their portfolio of achievements look like (results, papers, presentations, service to the community, external recognition, etc...). How does this compare to other students at this point in their careers? This may be something you can usefully discuss with other colleagues in your institution for a somewhat 'external' opinion. Is the candidate's CV realistically competitive for the fellowship? What positive things could you write in a reference?

What is the student's attitude to research?

Because of the way your original question was phrased, much of the discussion here has hinged on the reasonableness of students prioritising family. However, it sounds to me as though this is a red herring. The real issue is an apparent lack of engagement with the realities of academic life, e.g. a stated unwillingness to try and publish any papers. This is at best only loosely-connected to circumstances in the student's personal life.
I think it is reasonable to take this attitude into account when writing a reference. In any job, there are people who do the minimum required for their paycheck. There is nothing inherently wrong with that as an approach -- and their work may be entirely competent -- but it is generally accepted that the people who get promoted are (or at least, should be) those who perform above the baseline.

What conversation should you have with the student? What should you write?

You probably need to be frank with the student about (a) your answers to the above questions, and (b) what you are, and are not, able to write in their support. There are surely some positive things you can say, even if there are other areas where your silence might be deafening.
In reality, it seems to me that you may be overthinking your dilemma as regards this fellowship. If students typically have 1-2 papers by the time they graduate, excellent students probably have more. Is anyone going to look twice at your students' application?
The more concerning issue is that the student appears to have ambitions that are not matched by their current profile. This is perhaps a more useful focus of discussion: what does the student really want? Where do they want to be in 5 years? How do they see themselves in comparison to their peers? This may be an uncomfortable conversation to have - but personally I'd rather be told if I'm wasting my time and energy pursuing something not (currently) realistic.

Get the student to bullet-point their positive qualities and pass the list to you.  If it is accurate you can put it in your own style and write it in good conscience
Give them the guidelines! Ask them to give concrete justifications and instances for each positive point they make about themselves.
If there is any inaccuracy then you can say that you are not convinced - could they provide more evidence.
When the student has provided you with their ideal set of bullet points and you have ascertained that every part of it is true, then you can write the letter in good conscience. It will be up to ECR to decide whether this is sufficient.
Example

I have demonstrated my organisational skills by successful pursuing my studies whilst simultaneously bringing up a family of n children.

I made the following contributions at the following conferences ...

I have always maintained a good relationship with my supervisor.

I satisfy the following requirements of the post because ...

Etc.

Hmm. Careful, though. There's some debate around this practice. https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/86859/how-widespread-is-the-practice-of-delegating-lor-writing-to-the-applicant

@henning -- reinstate Monica - Thanks for that, it's a very useful discussion. I think that maybe the "bullet points with justification and examples" route is the way to go. This can then be shaped  into the standard form that the supervisor uses.  At the very least it will make the student reflect on how suitable they really are for the new position. If the best recommendation they can write for themselves is merely lukewarm, they may wish to reconsider the application.

@henning - I have edited my post as a response to your comment.

In my past experience several of my endorsers asked me to send them a draft, in order to spare them the trouble of recollecting all the details.
You could ask him to do the same and then have a frank, true-to-the-facts, face-to-face discussion on the statements contained in it. So you can position yourself in spoken words first, and then move on to the final version, which you sign, without compromising your standards.
If the candidate has a fair sense of self and fair recollections, you get a helping hand, at no embarrassment.
If he is attempting to drop names (yours), it will be easy for you to recall the milestones of your shared work experience and bring the necessary nuances into the draft, without further justification at the point of editing.
There could be better candidates with a poor supervisor who then get a reference biased downwards. If he gets a reference biased upwards, the system of reference letters ends up twice as unfair upon producing both false positives and false negatives. Lower sensitivity, lower specificity. So your concerns are justified. The prestige of the grant and reviewers is a secondary consideration here.
My two cents.

This suggestion is pretty close to the other answer https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/155759/73304. You may want to consider the comments there as well.

It seems to me both options 1 and 2 that you propose are perfectly ethical, and both also leave your student in a bad place.
If you're looking for a third option, I'm not sure one exists this late in the game.
You probably should have told the PhD student earlier that their choices about doing the bare minimum would hurt them specifically in this kind of way later down the road. Part of your job as an advisor is to give advice. Just because a student expresses choices doesn't mean those choices are informed. This is especially true for folks underrepresented in academia, and someone with children in a PhD program is a minority any way you slice it (people with children in the common PhD age range have less contact with academia than average, and PhD students, particularly women, are unlikely to have children and the complexities that arise around this).
Also the comment about organization may be perfectly valid, but it does give me some pause. Academia tends to be accommodating to disorganized people (think the absent-minded professor trope). It's traditionally women who are penalized for being disorganized, and men who are forgiven, so if your PhD student is a woman I would rethink a lot of this language for any recommendation you write her (the prompt isn't helping much here, but we can still work to undo bias).  What other talents and skills did this student show? Being smart is pretty vague.

If OP could have read the student's mind, he might have had a chance to give them better advice indeed. It's clearly delusional to target the bare minimum requirements on the one hand, and think that one has a shot at a prestigious fellowship on the other hand.

Clearly delusional to you, maybe, but obviously the student didn't realize these were incompatible. That points to the student being out of touch with the norms of the field, a trait commonly associated with bad mentorship.

Also I'm not so sure that it takes mind reading to react to the student shooting for the bare minimum by saying, "what are you planning to use this PhD for? Let's make sure you're doing at least the minimum to accomplish your goals."

If the student planned to stay in academia and apply for prestigious grants (we don't know if that is actually the case), her communication was misleading according to the rules of common sense. In no professional field is a bare-minimum effort an entry ticket to accolades.

Communication is a two-way street, no? Should we put the onus of bad communication on the person with the least experience and power in this situation? Maybe the situation was misleading, but a passing interest in the student's future would have cleared up any misunderstanding. To me that's the bare minimum expected of advisors.

You had a talk with the candidate when the candidate clearly stated about their desire to meet the bare minimum. You can have a similar talk now along the lines - ‘The bare minimum doers cannot be recommended by me for this scholarship since it has a very high bar.’
The fact that the candidate may not get a good recommendation from you is not really a matter of discussion today. It got implicitly decided long back when you had the first discussion where the candidate decided to meet the bare minimum.

Caveat:
It is possible that while the scholarship sets a very high bar but does not really follow up with it. In that case there may be people who have also done bare minimum just like your student but they will get the scholarship because their guide is not as strict about the rules. If that’s the situation, then it is up to you to decide whether you want to conform to common standards or you want to stick to your guns.


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Etiquette regarding mathematical writing
This is a question about etiquette regarding writing mathematical papers, but I feel like this venue is more appropriate than MathOverflow (though I could be mistaken). The question is as follows:
If one proves a theorem, which was known conditionally, how should one refer to the conditional proof?
For example, one may write "Theorem XX was previously proved by Y, under the assumption of Conjecture Z". Is this appropriate?
On a related note, if in the literature Author A proved Theorem S, which was previously proved conditionally by Author B, how should B be acknowledged when referring to Theorem S? Would it be appropriate to call Theorem S "A's Theorem" or "A-B's theorem"?

At the risk of pointing out the obvious (for those in math, at least), many dozens of papers have been published in which theorems were proved by explicitly assuming the Continuum Hypothesis (this being before 1963, when its logical status was finally resolved) and many dozens (probably hundreds in this case) of papers have been published in which theorems were proved by explicitly assuming the Riemann Hypothesis (not yet resolved).

a follow up to Dave L Renfro's comment, there are also many papers proving unconditionally results that were previously known assuming the Riemann Hypothesis. OP may want to consult such papers to see how they describe this circumstance.

I don't think that "etiquette", per se, is a real issue. If the previous author's result was published, it was no doubt considered to be a useful contribution, even with the proviso (conditional). You don't have to remind everyone that it's OK to publish such results.
Simply state the facts: "Smith 1 provided a proof of theorem X under the assumption that Y is true. Here, we present a new proof without the necessity of relying on theorem Y"
As to the issue about how the theorem is named, there can be quite a bit of variability. Eponymous theorems or hypotheses (Pythagoras's theorem, the Riemann Hypothesis, etc.) compete with more descriptively named theorems (the prime number theorem, the convolution theorem, etc). Early proofs of the prime number theorem rely, to my knowledge, on complex analysis, whereas the proofs by Atle Selberg and Paul Erdős are "elementary" (in the way that only mathematicians can sensibly use that word) ... but the theorem is still known as the prime number theorem. It is likely that the system of referring to the result, rather than the method of proof, will still hold, whether the later simplification is doing away with an underlying conditional (as you propose), or changing the approach altogether.

Isn't the parenthetical remark a bit confusing? It seems to read almost as if Smith proved theorem X also in the case when Y turns out to be false, no?

Yes. I see what you mean, and have changed it.

For example, one may write "Theorem XX was previously proved by Y, under the assumption of Conjecture Z". Is this appropriate?

No, I think this is sloppy phrasing. I see two issues here. The main problem is that it's technically incorrect to refer to a mathematical assertion as a "theorem" unless it has been proved (meaning that is has been proved unconditionally on anything else).
A more minor issue of a similar nature is that I think in cases of conditional proofs, one should not say "proved" but "proved conditionally". While "under the assumption" conveys the same idea of conditionality, in your phrasing "proved" and "under the assumption" are separated by several words and a comma, creating some risk of confusion. Writing "proved conditionally" makes things clearer and is the best practice IMO. My point is that, as with "theorem", "proved" is one of the most important words in a mathematician's vocabulary, and we should be careful to use it in a way that does not dilute its meaning.
In terms of how to correct the main issue, I can think of two possibilities. The first one is to rephrase the sentence to avoid the use of the word "theorem" when referring to the conditionally proved statement. For example, if the assertion that was proved conditionally has been conjectured to hold unconditionally, then its formal status is that of a conjecture. Therefore it would be correct to say
  "Conjecture XX was previously proved conditionally by Y, on the assumption of Conjecture Z."
If the conditionally-proved claim was not a conjecture, you can still refer to it as a "claim", an "assertion", or a "hypothesis", or simply state its content as part of the sentence. E.g.:
  "Claim XX was previously proved conditionally by Y, under the assumption of Conjecture Z"
  "The indecomposability of non-Riemannian hypersquares was previously proved conditionally by Y, under the assumption of Conjecture Z,"
etc.
The second approach to correcting the issue with the use of "theorem" would be to use the word "theorem" after all but in a correct manner. The point is that Y did in fact prove a theorem, just not the theorem you were referring to but the theorem that includes the extra assumption of Conjecture Z; thus you could write simply
  "Theorem XX was previously proved by Y"
but take care to add the conditional assumption of Conjecture Z as part of the statement of Theorem XX. That is, Theorem XX should now be phrased as
  "Theorem XX. If Conjecture Z holds, then [insert claim here]."
When describing your own contribution of coming up with an unconditional proof of the same claim (if that is what you are doing), you would say something like
  "The main result of the current paper is an unconditional version of Theorem XX. We prove:
  Theorem AA. [insert claim here (same as before but no mention of Conjecture Z)]"

On a related note, if in the literature Author A proved Theorem S, which was previously proved conditionally by Author B, how should B be acknowledged when referring to Theorem S? Would it be appropriate to call Theorem S "A's Theorem" or "A-B's theorem"?

There's no universal rule about who gets credit for theorems in cases where the proof is an accumulation of insights from different authors. This would depend on how significant the relative contributions of A and B are towards the final unconditional result. One can imagine situations in which author B's initial contribution was only a trivial step and the real work of figuring out why the claim is true unconditionally was done almost entirely by author A; and other situations where author B did come up with some very significant insight already in the conditional result, which was improved upon only in a small way by author A to arrive at the unconditional result. In the first of the two scenarios, it might make more sense to call this "A's theorem" and in the second, "A-B's theorem" (or possibly "B-A's theorem") could be more appropriate.
Even the above dichotomy is a simplification of the many nuances that could occur. Also, however you end up calling the theorem, it's possible that someone will be unhappy and think they deserve more credit.

(+1) This is exactly what I'd expect to see in the literature in cases like this.


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Alternatives for when your institution doesn't provide you an e-mail address
I study in an institution that never provided me or any other student with an institutional email address. I feel that this is highly prejudicial to my academic success because

it does not allow me to access closed content, unless I'm accessing it through an institutional computer; and
it prevents me from being acknowledged by the scientific community.

Because I don't have a valid institutional email address, my profile at Google Scholar doesn't on searches. I cannot create a Scopus profile for the same reason. I really feel that it's holding me back when it comes to fully participating in the academic sphere. I've already filed 2 requests with my institution for an email, but they simply answer that they don't hand them to masters' students.
My question is whether there are alternatives that are suitable to my case that don't involve arguing with the dean about it, because I'm literally days away from my graduation, and if I'm not mistaken, I believe those expire when you graduate. Am I wrong?

Probably it is worth arguing with the dean. Point out the negatives for you and other graduates. Of course, it may be that your institute is just incompetent and no one has adequate IT support, I guess.

I have heard that Google Scholar will accept a .org email address if you can get one of those.

@BenTrettel that is useful information. Indeed, Google Scholar listing is my main concern. If you have any tips on how to get one, I'm all ears.

@EricLino Please clarify what your problem is with Google Scholar. You only need a gmail address to create a Google Scholar profile.

Some scientific organizations like ieee provide an life-long (or membership-long) e-mail adress which can be used in an academic context. The advantage is, that it will stay valid even if your affiliation changes. The downside is, you will collect spam forever ;-).
In our university, all students are in a dedicated "firstname.lastname@student.our-university.de" scheme, and they are deleted a few months after graduation. This does not help for long-term communication issues, but allows access for restricted content during the time of study.
In general, I believe your institution should provide an e-mail address due to many reasons (e.g. authentification, ease of communication, etc.), honestly it is hard to imagine how we would run our institution without.

The Institute of Physics does this too, you get a nice @physics.org address.

In CS you can join ACM and get an acm.org address. You can have it forwarded to any other account you like.

@OBu You're right, it's very difficult, both on the administration side and the students'. Important messages get lost in personal e-mail storage and students have limited access to articles most of the time, which worsens research quality and results in low productivity. Anyway, unfortunately those alternatives are very costly from my developing country perspective, so it doesn't really solve my issue. On the other hand, your answer is the most useful, so unless nobody gives a better solution to my problem in the coming hours, I'm accepting yours.

First off, sorry to hear that your institution is being unreasonable. They really should offer an institutional email address.
In addition to the other answers, another option is to buy a personal domain and set up email. That costs about $1/month. That gives you bob@bobsmith.org or similar. I use this (and also have a website) and consider it a good alternative to ever-changing institutional email addresses.
Answering your other questions:
Either your institution provides institutional access to various services or it doesn't. An email address will not change this. You need to work with your institution to see what options there are for off-campus access. Most places provide off-campus access through a proxy service. Check the library website for such information. The alternative is to pay for such services yourself.
The expiry of institutional email addresses is a matter of the institution's policy and this varies from place to place. Some will expire immediately when you leave. Some will remain active for, say one year. Some will continue indefinitely. I have experienced all three policies. Many people prefer to use personal email addresses wherever possible in order to avoid dealing with expiring email addresses.
Regarding your concerns with Google Scholar:
To have a public Google Scholar profile, you only need a Gmail account. There is no need for an institutional address. The verified address can be a personal domain (I just checked).

I understand, but personal e-mails doesn't grant you institutional access to papers.

@EricLino Neither do the suggestions in other answers. So I'm not sure why you downvoted my answer. The only way to get institutional access is through an institution. Sorry.

I downvoted the answer because it wasn't helpful, no offense. I feel like maybe you misinterpreted my question. I asked: a) if institutional e-mails expire after you leave an institution and b) what are equivalent alternatives to an institutional e-mail when it comes to accessing closed content. Your answer didn't contemplate any those. Other answers, on the other hand, answered at least one of the topics. I hope you didn't get offended in anyway by my downvote - it's just the way i was taught to use the forums. Feel free to explain it further or add information.

@EricLino I think you need to clarify your question.

The question is rather clear. Some websites will only work with an institutional address, like google scholar. And I do agree that it should be provided to current students. Outside access to paper is another matter, but that's solvable with VPN/ssh. It really is something to kick up to IT

@FábioDias Google scholar just requires a gmail address. I don't know what you are talking about.

@EricLino It's not clear to me that institutional emails grant you institutional access to papers - I don't think I've ever encountered a publisher where it did, but I may have an unrepresentative sample. If you've got particular places in mind where that's not the case, perhaps either an edit to the question or (more likely) a new question with that detail would be suitable.

Thomas, I'm sorry but you're wrong. @FábioDias understood my point exactly, thanks for the input. While it is possible to sign up on Google Scholar, without an institutional e-mail, one is needed to be indexed on searches as a researcher. Here, I've attached an image proving my point. link

@EricLino Please specify this problem in your question! We cannot answer questions you don't ask. I think this should be a separate question, as your problem is not with your institutional email, but with Google Scholar.

@EricLino I just checked this with my own Google Scholar profile. I verified my personal domain email address and the message disappeared. In other words, my answer solves this problem.

Thomas, I think we're discussing for so long that we might have drifted away from the main issue.

I just checked your newly edited answer and it is indeed much better, thank you for editing. However, since my question is, in a nutshell "what alternatives do I have to get access to closed content journals, such as Science Direct?", I feel like an appropriate answer should contain at least one alternative. The answer you provided (personal domains) works as an alternative for Google Scholar indexing but it still misses the main issue. OBu's answer, for example, provides an actual strategy for solving all issues at once.
Either way, I'm upvotting your answer since it's useful.

It’s becoming more acceptable to use non-institutional email addresses to contact collaborators or prospective employers. For example, I use my Gmail account frequently and know several others who this as well. You can create an account for free and even have it forward to your existing email address (or forward your existing address to Gmail).
However, for the purposes of having an “institution” email for academic services, you gave a valid reason for getting one. These do not typically expire after your candidature but it is worth checking University policy on this. In my experience, so do allow you to use them for personal reasons and to continue to access them after you graduate or take up another job. As a researcher, it is in their benefit to support you to do your research, including participating in conferences, publishing on journals, and establishing a reputation with citation tools etc. This means that your email address on your publications should reflect your affiliation with them and you should be able to be contacted with it to support the publication, such as answering questions about published methods and data.
You can dispute their rejection of including you. I did the same when I was a postgraduate student. I was mistaken for an undergraduate and denied an institutional email address. I had to explain that I am conducting research as part of my project which will benefit the University. The status of my course was being changed at the time and there was a lot of confusion about it. I think now those enrolled in it are issued postgraduate email addresses automatically.
In my case, I did not have to involve the Dean. I just had to clarify the status of my course. They handle a huge number of emails each year so there should be no reason that they cannot add an account for you. It will cost them almost nothing. You may need your supervisor to vouch for you that you will comply with university policy for using an email address. As you are not a staff member, it is more difficult to hold students accountable. They may want to ensure that their servers are not used to distribute spam or such things (it’s a huge inconvenience to staff if their domain is blacklisted). There may be some minor paperwork involved. Just ask what you need to do to.
Make sure that you are polite. University administrative staff may not fully understand the details of your course. They handle a large number of students requests per day and likely mostly deal with undergraduates (so they may not understand that the needs of postgraduates are different).

Have you asked your institution's librarians about getting access to databases via the library when you're not using a campus computer? My institution lets me log in to its library from anywhere, using my computer access password. Once I'm logged in I can access all sorts of databases through the library's subscription.

There is a VPN service, however the university IT is implementing a new network and for some reason they had to take it down for a while. Not to mention when it gets back, I'll need to get my laptop registered on the university's network again and it usually takes a couple weeks, which I don't have.

To respond to your question at the end of the post: Yes, your email address with your institution would most likely expire after your graduation. For that reason, I barely used the email address provided by my University.
Without going into detail of benefits of an email with your institutions domain, I would suggest creating an email account that you will keep throughout your carrer. I think its nice to have one that wont change if you change the institution you work for.
Personally, I created an address with startmail.com. I felt like it looked more professional  than a @yahoo or @gmail address.

though I appreciate your input on alternatives to gmail and yahoo, I feel like it is expected from researchers to have e-mails with expiration dates, so I personally don't really have a problem with a usage deadline. That is why social networks such as ResearchGate are so effective.


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Writing graduate school reference letters
I know there are many posts out there geared towards requesting reference letters. I have a question (as a newly established PI) about writing them. I am based in Europe, and want to support one of my former student's graduate school applications in the US.
US-based profs & PI's (specifically in cognitive science/neurosciences), what kind of information do you look for in letters of recommendation for prospective graduate students? I am relatively unfamiliar with the US graduate school system (it's radically different here), but I know superlative praise is called for. Just, praise in what specifically? What are qualities you look for, or other things that make a reference letter informative to you? The student has a bit of a non-traditional CV and I want to make sure I highlight things that might be relevant.
Thanks!

For graduate school admissions, the goal of the reference letter is to recommend a candidate who you think will make an excellent future researcher. So you need to explain what the candidate has done for you, and why you think that gives the candidate the preparation she needs to succeed as a graduate student.
That means you should talk about:

The skill set the student has developed under your supervision.
Any noteworthy accomplishments (papers, awards, etc.)
Anything else you believe highlights the candidate's independence as a researcher, leadership skills, potential as a teacher and researcher, and so on.

Since your audience is fellow researchers in your field, effusive praise for someone who doesn't merit it is not helpful. I've known professional working relationships that soured because one PI tried to "sneak" a less-than-meritorious candidate through into a colleague's group as a postdoc.

I think this answer is a little oversimplified. There are some countries where anything but high praise is likely to sink a candidate (a lot of US, but not all, Austria, China) and countries where people want honest assessments and to know what the greatest weaknesses are, or they don't believe the letter (e.g. UK, but I think also Germany to some extent.) I'd love to see a list of such tips compiled somewhere.


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What do the bulk of the pre-calculus questions in the mathematics (subject) GRE look like?
I am planning to take the mathematics subject test this year and have decent foundations in pre-calculus. However, I would like to study it thoroughly again but I don't want to spend too much time on it, preferring instead to focus on calculus as it makes up half of the problems. For those who have taken the test before, what aspects of pre-calculus should I focus on in my revision of it and what kinds of problems should I be routinely solving

The subject test is focused much (much) more on more advanced courses. Precalc will get you nowhere. Even calc alone won't get you a good grade. The exam is intended for upper level math majors. I'm curious about what you are studying that you would attempt this test.

Note also that the "calculus" portion is more than elementary calculus and includes advanced calc and beginning analysis. Also differential equations. Any precalc is included in the 50%. The "algebra" in the other half isn't elementary algebra but Abstract Algebra, such as Group Theory and beyond. I took the test long ago and was a strong math major close to graduation. For a surprising number of questions, I had no idea, even, of the terminology since the test is very broad; broader than most math programs. Broad enough that a math major might do well independent of details in their major.

The most direct way to learn about the nature of the GRE mathematics subject test is to look at a GRE practice test. You can then form your own opinion about what you will most need to study.